Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-02-04/Opinion

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One issue in filling in the gaps of coverage on Wikipedia is that it can be difficult (although not impossible) to obtain the materials needed to fill those gaps. In my own experience writing articles on a non-Western country -- Ethiopia -- I found my public library often lacked the books I needed, & was forced to buy them. It would be helpful if the Foundation had a program to assist in getting these materials, which would benefit increasing information on these neglected subjects. (Yes there is Wikimedia Library, but that is but a single tree where Wikipedians need an orchard of resources.) -- llywrch (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

• Another of the many gaps gets some attention. That is fine, but it is just another one of many. We write about what interests us, what we have enough knowledge about to be able to describe usefully, and what we can find sources on. There are just not enough editors with enough breadth of competence to do everything at the same time. However it is good that these gaps get recognised, and I hope that more gaps will be identified, analysed and listed. It is part of knowledge to know which knowledge is poorly covered, and knowing what is missing may kick-start some enthusiasts to start filling in those gaps. Also, I agree that one of the things WMF can legitimately do is identify and document gaps and make useful sources available using donors' money. Donors can also provide good sources, possibly by making use of Wikimedia affiliates as custodians and distributors. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:22, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
• llywrch Good point. One possibility would be a collaboration with the Internet Archive's book digitisation/book lending programme. The WMF could fund IA purchases; this would put the book online, so Wikipedians and the general public would be able to borrow the digital copy, one person at a time. --Andreas JN466 12:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

• That suggestion solves an ethical problem about requesting funds to acquire books. (It's not unusual to find that copies of an out-of-print academic monograph are priced at more than $100.) The Foundation buys the title, donates it to IA who scans it & makes it available to all, & not just one person who might vanish after obtaining the volume -- which would be a waste of money & discourage further grants for this purpose. -- llywrch (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Ocaasi: Could you look into this for us? Cheers, Andreas JN466 18:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Samwalton9 (WMF): Could you as the current Wikipedia Library Manager let us have your thoughts on this idea? Andreas JN466 02:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayen466 @Llywrch This is an interesting idea. We've talked a few times about access to non-digitised works - as noted above it's especially relevant to areas of the world which are underrepresented in the library at the moment (i.e. most of it outside North America and Europe). There have been various attempts in the past (I can't find links at the moment) to purchase and ship books to Wikimedians. If I remember correctly they didn't really scale well due to admin time involved in sourcing and purchasing the books and the costs and shipping fees/logistics involved. If I recall correctly we decided that this program only really worked if it was being handled by Wikimedia affiliates who could more easily work with local editors and reduce shipping costs - I think some still operate a program like this. Sending those books to IA to scan might help make this easier and more worthwhile but I'm still concerned that the cost is hard to justify - is it worth spending dozens or hundreds of donor $ to get one digitized book and one citation out the other end (or none, if it turns out the text actually isn't as useful as you thought it would be - it might often be impossible to know until you've 'opened' the book)? Off the top of my head there are some other options we could explore here. The most obvious to me is that we could leverage our global volunteer network. We could create a system in the library which facilitates Wikimedians putting out requests for undigitised texts like a 'bounty board' for other editors to check in their local libraries for. They could then scan individual pages or type up the relevant passages. The obvious downsides would be that the editor doesn't get their hands on the full text, but the running costs would be effectively zero. What do you think? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  This is one of the previous attempts I'd seen - purchasing and shipping turned out to be really difficult, and very few requests were made. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

• @Samwalton9 (WMF): Right now, if a given book isn't available at a local library -- & not all Wikimedians live in a community with a public library, let alone a university or research library -- there are only a few options said Wikimedian has to obtain that book: (1) look for a copy online (which might sometimes be a copyright violation, an activity I assume is not an option the Foundation wishes to encourage); (2) resort to InterLibrary Loan (which I assume is not an option if there is no local public library, or said library does not offer ILL services), but this only provides the book for a limited time, unless one photocopies the work (which again I assume is not an option the Foundation wishes to encourage); or (3) purchasing the book, which permits the Wikimedian indefinite access. If the book is less than $20, IMHO as a middle-class Westerner this is not an unreasonable cost, but I am finding more & more that the books I need have a price of over $100. For example, I am finding Encyclopaedia Aethiopica is a valuable resource to anyone performing research on Ethiopian topics, one of the areas we need to battle systemic bias over: many academic articles freely reference articles in this compendium of information. However, each volume is around $150 apiece, & at 5 volumes it is a steep price to pay for, & I am unaware of any library -- public or academic -- in my area having a set. I could cite other examples of important but uncommon or expensive works like this, especially academic monographs which are published in small numbers. Now I'm not saying that Wikimedians should have a carte blanche for expecting the Foundation (or an affiliate) to purchase any book requested, but I'd like to see a clear & publicized process where one could justify having a book purchased, then perhaps sent to IA for scanning & sharing with the general public. I've been a volunteer here for over 20 years, & I've never seen it announced that the Foundation or one of the affiliates is willing to do something like that; AFAICS Foundation grants appear limited to expenses like pizza & soft drinks for Wikipedia Edit-a-thons. -- llywrch (talk) 18:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'm in happy agreement with @Llywrch (and recall purchasing a book costing about $100 myself in order to be able to finish a featured article ...) A digital library program like this would be a totally on-mission thing for the WMF to do – making free knowledge available. At any rate, if you're currently financing any book purchases at all, it would make sense to buy the book for the IA and have them digitise it rather than send hardcopies to an individual Wikipedian, or a group of Wikipedians.

  I also believe there would be partners that might like to come on board for such a program. For example – academics might draw up a list of standard works (especially in areas that are underrepresented at the moment) that should be available to Wikipedians to kickstart content generation. Etc. Andreas JN466 18:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Seeing only seven "visual artists" out of 124 being non-western might be the most visceral indictment on Vital Articles I have seen yet. Of course, the only of these non-European artists I knew myself are Hokusai and Tezuka. (Oh, there's also Imhotep in here. Yay) It is an... interesting challenge to see how we can get a better grasp of non-European traditions as editors. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I missed Frida Kahlo as well on that list. There's also some people with a mixed background. I don't intend to get too much in the specifics of the content of the list, it's indeed filled to the brim with French and Italian names. Wikipedia is in a great position to write detailed articles on people from different cultural backgrounds. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Really interesting work! Thanks :). @User:MartinPoulter It would be great if we can get some proposals at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4 to replace some Western artists with a more international cast. These VIT lists do get used for prioritisation, for instance in WP:The core contest and in Wikipedia:Discord/Team-B-Vital. Don't know enough about art myself to make sensible suggestions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:41, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This was a concern even back at the time when these lists were first made. Discussions of bias towards western Europe, the US, and the few times we managed to get outside of there, Japan. An artist can have great regional fame in, say, Kenya, but the rest of the world doesn't know about them. Meanwhile, in Kenya, they could name dozens of American movie stars. The cultural influence is not symmetrical, and it seems difficult for the concept of the "Vital articles" list to go against this cultural force too hard. It's hard for Wikipedia to make any subject more popular than it already is, no matter how well we write about it. We do have some useful lists for which regionally important articles need work, at least... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:38, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

• Many interesting ideas here, thank you. On the specific question of Islamic art (I guess that's "religious" by definition), there is Islam's aniconism to consider, whether it was an absolute prohibition or (apparently) not. On non-representational Islamic art, we certainly do have coverage; Islamic geometric patterns, for instance, which I wrote some years ago, is illustrated with many handsome photographs from Commons. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Chiswick Chap: That article is so gorgeous and I'm really glad it's a GA! I notice that the article doesn't seem to mention any Islamic artists by name. I'm sure this is an aspect of Islamic artistic tradition too, but I would be very interested to learn about a Great Man who made beautiful Islamic art. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:01, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you. Yes, names are few and far between among the artists and craftspeople who made those things. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  We might be running into a bunch of cultural issues here. Here's a category of Islamic artists that might be of interest in this field, but I wouldn't be surprised if the architects have been lost to time, unlike the calligraphers. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  Cultural indeed. The idea of the "artist" as someone important is, far as I know, an invention of the Western Christian Renaissance. Before then, going back pretty much to eternity, anyone who was writing about painting or sculpture or tapestry etc was writing about the subject and paying little attention to the artist. Suddenly it became possible for an artist to be famous, comparable to a theologian or a military commander, rather than just an anonymous workman like a carpenter or smith. Globalization later brought this idea to the world, and nowadays the principal focus of art scholarship is biographical (for example, most WP articles on modern art are biographies) but for most of the world grist for this kind of art scholarship mill is only available for the past century or two, if that. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

  FWIW, Pliny includes a number of anecdotes about Greek & Roman painters & sculptors from the Classical period. So the idea of the artist existed before the Renaissance. (ISTR reading Chinese & Japanese accounts providing biographical information about painters in their respective cultural traditions, but this needs confirmation since my memory can be fallible, as I am often reminded.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)