[Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia

Fri Jul 22 08:25:29 UTC 2011

> From the perspective of our mission, they are indeed doing things
wrong.  [From the perspective of running a small business, they may be
doing just fine.]

Our mission statement: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to
empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop
educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to
disseminate it effectively and globally."

Erm ... looks to me like that's exactly what Stack Exchange do. They empower
and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational
content under a free license. And they are VERY effective in doing so. And
the do it globally. That's all the boxes from our mission statement checked.

> Proprietary software is often inefficient...

The issues you raise about open-source vs. proprietary software, that's an
open-source vs. proprietary software debate - and one that sounds like it is
on the ideological edge of that arena. As a software engineer who develops
proprietary software, I can almost guarantee that a whole bunch of
open-source software (e.g. MIT licenced) is in the Stack Exchange software.
Indeed, just by looking at their web source its possible to see proof of
that. Because of this, the matter of the benefits of open source software
vs. the proprietary software is a theoretical one. In modern practise, the
two cannot be so cleanly separated.

In any event, is it really relevant to us? And how does it pertain to the
specific example of Stack Exchange? Stack Exchange content is freely
licenced. It is content that we are interested in.

(Never minding the fact that the only credible suggestion thus for for a
replacement software is a clone of the Stack Exchange software itself.)

> There's no need to re-invent the wheel.

The "wheel" in this case is not only technological, it is human. A body of
people already exist who will do this work. There is no need to "re-invent"
those people and your reasons for doing so (in your reply to Thomas) sound
positively tribal.

Oliver

On 22 July 2011 04:22, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Oliver Moran <oliver.moran at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > It is a disappointment in some respects that Stack Overflow uses
> proprietary software (not least because it is so wonderful) but in all other
> respects, as a community, they do a great job. I have had wonderful
> experiences with them and I would urge anyone to get behind them.
>
> I like their spirit and community too.  I would be happy to see a
> wikipedia StackExchange site exist.  But it won't contribute to the
> global free toolchain for collaborative knowledge that we are part of
> -- that will have only limited long-term value.
>
> Proprietary software is often inefficient for developing good and
> flexible toolchains, and subject to risks of external control and
> monopolistic pricing.  It also tends to be inefficient for users at
> scale.  We have a good bit of scale -- we might want a few instances
> of whatever Q&A tool we use -- and lots of custom existing help
> processes which we'd want to integrate into a Q&A system (aude listed
> a few of them).
>
> > Sure, they do things slightly differently — but that doesn't mean they do
> things wrong.
>
> From the perspective of our mission, they are indeed doing things
> wrong.  [From the perspective of running a small business, they may be
> doing just fine.]
>
> Effective access to collaborative knowledge is important to a
> harmonious society.  As a result, basic knowledge-sharing tools and
> toolchains should be free, for any sort of use, customization, and
> improvement.  The universal value of a Q&A system is directly tied to
> the importance that good free tools should be available to set one up.
>
> We want to support these free toolchains, which is why we release all
> of our own code, and also why, when there are good free versions of
> proprietary tools, we should support them and help them grow.  That
> support is one of the ways we contribute to the greater movement, and
> has a lasting value to other knowledge projects around the world.
>
> > There's no need to re-invent the wheel.
>
> Noone has suggested building our own Q&A tool, but rather choosing one
> of the available free-software tools.
>
> Whether we host that ourselves or not is a separate question.  Both
> OSQA and Question2Answer offer hosted services.
> (However we don't want one of our services vulnerable to being shut
> down by an unfriendly host, so any solution we use must be one that we
> could choose to host ourselves, if necessary.)
>
> Thomas writes:
>
> > the main advantage is that your putting it under a name and community
> > who are already experienced at doing really good QA - so your seed of
> > volunteers is going to be that much better! You will get SE veterans who
> are
> > also Wiki editors that will be much more inclined to contribute, for
> > example. With a site such as this, kudos and points means everything -
> > because answering questions (especially the horribly mundane ones..) is
> > tedious and boring work. And SE have nailed that vibe.
>
> I agree that they have nailed that vibe.  Quora have tapped into it as
> well.
> It is a valuable vibe :-)  and also one deeply rooted in human nature,
> like wiki editing.
>
> For precisely the reasons you mention, it is important for us to have
> a better in-house QA tool.  We need a better channel for the people
> who are in that zone to shine on Wikipedia -- beyond simply manning
> the Reference Desk and similar pages in various languages (which many
> hundreds of them already do).
>
> We have some pretty stellar community groups to seed such a site with
> ourselves -- and this will offer a place for many more who are
> nonplussed by wiki editing to get involved and stay involved.
>
> SJ
>
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