Don't let Wikipedia happen to you, don't be left behind in the video
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2024 6:32 am
in 2020. And Wikipedia will be one of the biggest losers in this. When Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger created this portal in 2001, they did so with the idea of free knowledge, so that any user could contribute content, and everyone who accessed it could do so for free.
The concept of the Encyclopedia changed to such an extent hungary phone number list that, today, and almost 20 years after its birth, it has been the great repository of knowledge on the Internet for more than 10 years.
But not all that glitters is gold. Images may work very well, but short videos get even better results and Wikipedia is having trouble adapting to this revolutionary format, video . In an interview with Xataka , a website that publishes news about gadgets and technology, Santiago Navarro, president of Wikimedia Spain, explains: “We have realized that Wikipedia is falling behind in terms of the video format , which does not mean that text and photographs are not useful, but today there is a certain public, perhaps the youngest, that is looking for something quick, a summary video, and we are not giving it to them.”
Wikipedia would have numerous problems adapting to the video format, but the main one is due to its philosophy and way of working . This great encyclopedia was created so that any user who visited it, voluntarily, could contribute extra data to the articles. According to Xataka, more than 56 million articles have been written in 288 different languages in less than 20 years. This does not include the collaborators linked to Wikimedia Commons , in charge of editing the texts and improving their quality and veracity.
As Navarro explains in his interview, “The problem is that the articles are constantly changing, and changing the video format requires a lot of work. Also, not everyone knows how to edit videos, it is more laborious and volunteers sometimes do not have the necessary tools at their disposal.”
But as we know, video is a fundamental strategy for B2B in 2020 and the fact that a giant like Wikipedia does not incorporate it is serious.
What videos does Wikipedia have?
The director of Wikimedia Spain claims responsibility for this and explains that Wikipedia has almost 150,000 videos, a number that Santiago Navarro considers “very low”. That is if we compare it with the 57 million photographs that Wikimedia hosts.
Esteban Zárate, Wikimedia administrator, explained to the Xataca platform the following: “We have made some promotional videos like this at Wikipedia, professionally, but they were made by volunteers. And with volunteers it is impossible to make a video of all or many of the articles in the encyclopedia.”
Furthermore, the videos are not a summary of the text, as other platforms have; the videos hosted on Wikimedia Commons are animations that lack audio or short recordings made and uploaded by volunteers, of poor quality.
How to fix this?
On the one hand, Navarro proposes that Wikipedia organise training courses open to any volunteer who wants to contribute videos. He also points out that alliances could be formed with other institutions and other projects. “ I can think of educational collaborations , for example, with students of audiovisual communication, design or translation who contribute to improving the encyclopedia in their field,” he adds.
Zárate, for his part, proposes expanding the number of collaborators and improving the quality of the media as a solution : “We need time and, above all, more volunteers. Although it is more complicated to process videos and takes longer than uploading a text, right now the possibility exists: anyone can edit Wikipedia videos,” he explains.
There are more encyclopedias on the Internet
Of the many encyclopedias that exist on the Internet, the one that currently best combines the video format is the Encyclopedia Britannica , which does accompany many of its articles with summary videos of between two and eight minutes of what you can read in the text.
The concept of the Encyclopedia changed to such an extent hungary phone number list that, today, and almost 20 years after its birth, it has been the great repository of knowledge on the Internet for more than 10 years.
But not all that glitters is gold. Images may work very well, but short videos get even better results and Wikipedia is having trouble adapting to this revolutionary format, video . In an interview with Xataka , a website that publishes news about gadgets and technology, Santiago Navarro, president of Wikimedia Spain, explains: “We have realized that Wikipedia is falling behind in terms of the video format , which does not mean that text and photographs are not useful, but today there is a certain public, perhaps the youngest, that is looking for something quick, a summary video, and we are not giving it to them.”
Wikipedia would have numerous problems adapting to the video format, but the main one is due to its philosophy and way of working . This great encyclopedia was created so that any user who visited it, voluntarily, could contribute extra data to the articles. According to Xataka, more than 56 million articles have been written in 288 different languages in less than 20 years. This does not include the collaborators linked to Wikimedia Commons , in charge of editing the texts and improving their quality and veracity.
As Navarro explains in his interview, “The problem is that the articles are constantly changing, and changing the video format requires a lot of work. Also, not everyone knows how to edit videos, it is more laborious and volunteers sometimes do not have the necessary tools at their disposal.”
But as we know, video is a fundamental strategy for B2B in 2020 and the fact that a giant like Wikipedia does not incorporate it is serious.
What videos does Wikipedia have?
The director of Wikimedia Spain claims responsibility for this and explains that Wikipedia has almost 150,000 videos, a number that Santiago Navarro considers “very low”. That is if we compare it with the 57 million photographs that Wikimedia hosts.
Esteban Zárate, Wikimedia administrator, explained to the Xataca platform the following: “We have made some promotional videos like this at Wikipedia, professionally, but they were made by volunteers. And with volunteers it is impossible to make a video of all or many of the articles in the encyclopedia.”
Furthermore, the videos are not a summary of the text, as other platforms have; the videos hosted on Wikimedia Commons are animations that lack audio or short recordings made and uploaded by volunteers, of poor quality.
How to fix this?
On the one hand, Navarro proposes that Wikipedia organise training courses open to any volunteer who wants to contribute videos. He also points out that alliances could be formed with other institutions and other projects. “ I can think of educational collaborations , for example, with students of audiovisual communication, design or translation who contribute to improving the encyclopedia in their field,” he adds.
Zárate, for his part, proposes expanding the number of collaborators and improving the quality of the media as a solution : “We need time and, above all, more volunteers. Although it is more complicated to process videos and takes longer than uploading a text, right now the possibility exists: anyone can edit Wikipedia videos,” he explains.
There are more encyclopedias on the Internet
Of the many encyclopedias that exist on the Internet, the one that currently best combines the video format is the Encyclopedia Britannica , which does accompany many of its articles with summary videos of between two and eight minutes of what you can read in the text.