Slide Show Bob does Wikipedia

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CrowsNest
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Slide Show Bob does Wikipedia

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:40 am

Doc James is anything but tenacious. Not dissuaded by his earlier experiences, he has managed to find a way to create video content for Wikipedia.

Headline critiicism? It's not video!

https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/vi ... furst.html
These Wikipedia video summaries are not fun infotainment like Vox explainers, nor do they have the beautiful production value of Netflix’s Our Planet. In its current beta version, VideoWiki is more like Siri giving a PowerPoint presentation. Each “slide” is a free-use image or video, and the Google text-to-speech engine reads the wiki script for that section using a synthesized voice.
The product is every bit as horrific as that makes it sound. It is basically a PowerPoint presentation.

But credit where it's due, they have indeed found a way to present Wikipedia content in a reliably sourced* "video" format, while making it editable, either to make it better, or correct inaccuracies.

(*) - Wikipedia's idea of reliably sourced.

On the one hand, their technical solution is impressive, despite the crudity of the product, and speaks to my tech head, cobbled together as it is from bits of the Wikipedia ecosystem and new code. It surely won't be beyond the wits of anyone who considers themselves a skilled Wikipedia editor.

On the other, it seems obvious that this technique of knowledge creation/curation can still never really become more than a niche activity, and if it necessarily then only focuses on headline articles, it can and probably will be surpassed by people who have the skills to do it better, and upload to YouTube.

They have made other very basic mistakes. Basic branding and terminology is an issue, as you would expect when coming this late into a market. There is also just defining what it is, where it fits into what Wikipedians understand about their movement, and therefore coping with the inevitable disputes about who controls what.

Because it has been cobbled together, it will only make sense to existing wikishits - a script hosted and edited on Wikipedia, using media from Commons, with the whole thing pushed through a tool on ToolLabs to create the final video, also uploaded to Commons. Currently organised as WikiProject within Wikipedia, but with a Meta proposal for full sisterhood, because it is both an attempt to augment and stand apart from Wikipedia, maybe. Sheer gobbledygook to a n00b just learning the correct parameters for {{fuck-you-n00b}}.

Overall, it is probably unlikely to be the step change some people seem to think it will be. Hopefully their futile efforts to get there will serve the purposes of HTD.

In an ideal world, with a harmonious and effective relationship between a healthy and motivated community and a useful and motivated Foundation, this could have been done well, and a long time ago. But the Wikipedians in their wisdom have truly poisoned that well. No soup for you! The ghost of Fram, screwing Wikipedia for eternity.

Perhaps the funniest part is some might be thinking it can be good, and if they just spend ten years on it, it will be. It would seem obvious that if Wikipedia wants to transition to video in any meaningful way (let's say reaching a point where they get more video views than article views), they really don't have ten years to waste perfecting it. Not when they arguably should have already started ten years ago.

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Re: Slide Show Bob does Wikipedia

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:16 pm

And let's not forget the shitblast back in early 2018, when Heilman killed the project off:

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... f=13&t=516

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