We’re preparing a bigger survey that will see wider distribution, but to help me calibrate it and know what I want to ask, I want to run some preliminary questions here.
Your answers will help us improve the wiki in the short-term, so thanks for participating! You can simply comment below or send me a DM if you want to remain somewhat anonymous.
Section 1
- Do you have an account on ProleWiki?
- If not, why?
- Were you aware that having an account on ProleWiki allows you to edit pages and participate in the editor community?
Section 2
- How often do you visit ProleWiki in a week or month?
- What keeps you coming back to ProleWiki?
- What impact has ProleWiki had on you? Either positive or negative (please detail)
Section 3
- Where do you feel ProleWiki is lacking?
- Please take a page you remember that you didn’t entirely like and provide your criticism of it, not only on the content but on the phrasing as well. Please don’t choose a stub (we know they’re too short 🙏)
- How would you rate the language and tone used on ProleWiki from 1 to 10? With 1 being casual (as if between friends), and 10 being academic (as if presenting a paper to an auditorium).
- Do you perceive ProleWiki to be a credible encyclopedia?
Bonus question: how would you like to see ProleWiki evolve?
Be as honest as you can, I won’t take it personally.
Hexbearers can answer too now that we’re federated btw, but this remains a small-scale internal survey until the real big one gets published.
Perhaps additional question if you’re reading this comment:
- Were you aware we had a Library of texts? (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Library)
- If yes, how do you feel about the card system for categorization?
Section 1
Do you have an account on ProleWiki?No
If not, why?I do not make wiki accounts
Were you aware that having an account on ProleWiki allows you to edit pages and participate in the editor community?No ** Section 2**
How often do you visit ProleWiki in a week or month?Once or twice a month
What keeps you coming back to ProleWiki?People linking to it
What impact has ProleWiki had on you? Either positive or negative (please detail)Not much. ** Section 3**
Where do you feel ProleWiki is lacking?Direction. Is it trying to be a wiki, a library, a journal for essays, or a quotes repository? I don’t go to the same website for multiple needs. For example, I don’t come to Lemmygrad for serious theory or organizing. ProleWiki is trying to be too many things at once, diluting its potential.
Please take a page you remember that you didn’t entirely like and provide your criticism of it, not only on the content but on the phrasing as well. Please don’t choose a stub (we know they’re too short 🙏)The article is too focused on defending the Soviet Union. I do agree with the article 100%, but I shouldn’t have to agree with an article. It should simply be relevant information presented in a concise, digestible way.
How would you rate the language and tone used on ProleWiki from 1 to 10? With 1 being casual (as if between friends), and 10 being academic (as if presenting a paper to an auditorium).7-8
Do you perceive ProleWiki to be a credible encyclopedia?Not yet.
I am quite critical in this review, but I’m trying to give some honesty as a casual end-user. I like the work you guys are doing and think there is some real potential later down the road after some polish.
Section 1
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No.
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I’m considering requesting an account, but I feel like I still have a quite a bit to learn until then. I occasionally draft and re-draft answers to the verification questions in order to force me to study a bit. I guess I also don’t fully understand the application process. For instance, is there room to appeal if my verification answers contain some glaring mistakes but I recognise and correct those?
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Yes, which is why I want to create an account. In all honesty, my most common contributions at my current confidence level would only be fixing a couple of typos, grammar errors and transcription errors and some phrasing that I’ve noticed while reading. Eventually I might also want to help out with some pages relevant to the South Atlantic world.
Section 2
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I visit it about once a day.
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A certain admin’s reading list ;). Besides that I also like to check if there are pages for historical events and people that are currently mired in lib propaganda, and sometimes I also just click on “Random Page” just to learn something new while on the bus. It’s like wikipedia dumpster diving but without the dumpster level content.
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Very positive, it’s much easier to get a shallow understanding of things I explicitly avoided reading about because it’d take ages to form a critical opinion of. Before then I had to literally check the sources on wikipedia all the time before trusting the content there and it took a lot of time to find out that yet another “commonly known fact” is complete bunk. It’s also nice to have so many good references compiled in a single page for ease of reference.
Section 3
- I think one point that is unequally developed is the Country Pages. Some countries like Brazil have huge and well written pages despite not being the first thing I think of from an ML wiki, but then Syria (which is usually a point of modern interest and discussion) has a tiny page and doesn’t go into much detail of the ideology and functioning of Assad’s government.
I also don’t really like how sometimes there are whole paragraphs without citations, sometimes even referencing authors but not when exactly they said that thing. This one on the last paragraph is a mild example of that.
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I don’t have any individual page that I have a particular issue with, besides lack of content. I guess I could make a small complaint that Cuba’s page is a bit bloated on the History section (which I think could become its own very interesting page), with the other sections very small. Since Cuba is geographically is the ML state right in the middle of the NATO domain, I think they could use a bit more of love there.
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I’d say it “reads like wikipedia” which I guess is around a 7 on the academic scale. Formal enough to be taken seriously, but still accessible enough that I can read it without having to look up definitions of words.
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In so far as encyclopedias can be credible, it’s at the top. Having gone through my fair share of those, I don’t think that any of them can be the absolute most credible and neither that they should strive for it. That is why I generally avoid encyclopedias that don’t provide lots of citations for their statements so that they can easily be verified by other editors and users. But Prolewiki is usually better at this in the citation front than most Wikipedia non-STEM pages, so it’s at least a good start. Obviously I wouldn’t put it as a reference in an article, but I would acknowledge it as the starting point of research or link it to casually interested folks.
Bonus question: It’s a bit of “more is better,” because I think the only issue right now is it being small sometimes. I don’t know how the internal process works, but if there isn’t already, I think it might be cool to have a “Help wanted” list of pages that could use a bit more love.
Extra bonus questions:
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Yes, and they’re much better to browse than marxists.org
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They’re pretty neat! I just think that it falls apart a little bit after you actually click a card and are met with a ton of "Library: " links. Some of those are obvious on what they are, but others have specific titles that are hard to put in context without previous knowledge. Mao’s work for example can have some cryptic titles like the “Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung” which I didn’t even know was the one I knew as just “little red book” (also it seems that the one on the PW is broken). I think they could use some small (1 paragraph) prefaces to at least understand what they are about at a glance. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some wiki-like website that had a category page with a feature like that, but I can’t recall which and don’t know if it’s possible with mediawiki.
Edit: Just want to point out that despite the criticisms, it is no joke the best website I’ve learned about this year, tied only with lemmygrad itself.
Thanks for your feedback! (And everyone else too)
I’m not going to reply directly to the feedback so as not to influence new responses, but since you answered about the library, what do you think of this pilot project? https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Comrade:CriticalResist/sandbox#Communists we made mini cards that can be used now in lieu of the bigger ones
edit: also I can answer that, since the library questions were sort of a bonus; we decided to link the topics to categories to make the new design faster to deploy. It’s possible to fill in category pages with whatever you want at the top, before the list, it’s just that we haven’t done it yet lol. You can see an example in my reading list: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Category:Crit’s_absolute_beginner_reading_list, it’s a category but it has some introductory copy before the list of pages in this category
I’m not sure what I should be noticing. Is it the Communists 2 section? If that’s the case, I prefer the current big ones on desktop. The colourised photos look great and are a bit easier to tell at a glance who the author is. But on mobile the smaller ones are way less cluttered. And it’s harder to “hover” over the pictures on a touchscreen too. And if I were to pick one of the formats, I’d pick just the name of the author, and if possible the number of works right underneath it. They are all “Library works of Author” after all.
Thanks for the feedback, I’m noting all this down! The idea was to use them alongside the bigger cards possibly for topics instead of authors
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I want to answer this survey, but it’s not the easiest of tasks on mobile.
No account. I didn’t know that would be enough to edit it, but I don’t think I’d have anything to contribute.
Probably once a month, if much? It’s hard to find which is the most relevant read/page on any given day/week. Featured articles could be update more frequently, based on current world events. I’m just happy it exists, I’d like to contribute more to that kind of initiative, the positive impact is that it got me thinking about how to contribute.
I feel it lacks a audio mode. Those articles are really text heavy, if we had a one click download of audio version for podcast I’d be very happy. I’m working on something along these lines I’ll share when it becomes slightly useful.
I think the tone is great for us, but it may be a barrier for people that have no understanding of our terminology and world view. Some introductory articles could help with the gap, maybe a guide to prolewiki world views, and how to read our content.
It feels credible, but sometimes I feel it misses the overview of a subject I could get from Wikipedia. It contains only differences, not the full picture, maybe? Do you think it could link to Wikipedia articles to help explain context, where relevant, or is nothing in Wikipedia salvageable? It could contain observations for context on how to read Wikipedia’s linked articles too.
I appreciate the energy you put in this work, and the results of it!
Hey, thanks for the feedback! There’s many ways to contribute, even just proofreading or adding sources is a great help!
For your other suggestions, it’s actually stuff we’ve looked at before so this probably means we’re on the right track.
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TTS: we’ve looked at it but there’s no ready-made solution that integrate with mediawiki. Also if we want something that updates, we’d probably have to pay for an API so that every time you make an edit to a page, it recompiles a TTS file instantly, making it always up to date. It’s possible to make these files manually and link them on each page, but they would get outdated pretty quickly. I wonder if there’s other solutions we don’t know about though.
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We’ve been thinking about opening a Portal page for like basic marxist concepts or just theory, much like wikipedia has. It’s technically not difficult at all (it’s just a page in a Portal: namespace and you dress it up however you want), but putting them front and center so that people check them is more difficult. We also have bluelinks though which should redirect to hopefully beginner-level explanations of like imperialism, the bourgeoisie, etc.
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Yeah, that’s a problem in some pages. They’re trying too hard to dispel propaganda rather than just lay out the facts. We try not to copy from Wikipedia as much as possible though because it’s just so anticommunist, and their sources are always going to be liberal drivel. Like even if you want to use one specific part of their source to support your point, if people actually go read the reference itself, it’s going to contain some redfash tankie bullshit. I do sometimes get inspiration from Wikipedia to see how they introduce a topic or what they call it when I’m missing the word, but otherwise we actually made it a soft rule not to plagiarize from wikipedia or other encyclopedias lol (also because we are able to come up with our own material and don’t need to simply copy from other sources to talk for us)
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1
No
I didn’t realize it was a thing
2
Not too often, if I’m looking for a definition that’d be better from a communist source I’ll search it out there. I’ve done it twice or three times ever.
What I already said, and also articles linked on Lemmygrad.
Positive
3
I don’t have any specific criticisms
6?
To an extent, not that I’d expect anyone I send a link to to trust it like encyclopedia brittanica or something.
Section 1
- Do you have an account on ProleWiki?
- Nope
- If not, why?
- Didn’t plan on editing anything there so no point
- Were you aware that having an account on ProleWiki allows you to edit pages and participate in the editor community?
- Yes
Section 2
- How often do you visit ProleWiki in a week or month?
- I think I have visited maybe 2-3 times total
- What keeps you coming back to ProleWiki?
- I don’t really, but sometimes people link to it
- What impact has ProleWiki had on you? Either positive or negative (please detail)
- It hasn’t really had an impact on me
Section 3
- Where do you feel ProleWiki is lacking?
- Mobile app, I looked at the contribution page so realize it is difficult to do, but I read wikipedia in my down time and would replace it with ProleWiki if it were possible
- Please take a page you remember that you didn’t entirely like and provide your criticism of it, not only on the content but on the phrasing as well. Please don’t choose a stub (we know they’re too short 🙏)
- Not applicable, too small of a sample
- How would you rate the language and tone used on ProleWiki from 1 to 10? With 1 being casual (as if between friends), and 10 being academic (as if presenting a paper to an auditorium).
- Not applicable, too small of a sample
- Do you perceive ProleWiki to be a credible encyclopedia?
- From my limited viewing I didn’t view it as a traditional encyclopedia but more of an in depth theory explainer for some more obscure(by western standards) topics
Bonus
- how would you like to see ProleWiki evolve?
- Mobile app so I can browse more easily when killing time on the go
- Do you have an account on ProleWiki?
Section 1
- Do you have an account on ProleWiki?
I don’t.
- If not, why?
I don’t think I know enough to contribute in some aspects. I think I could contribute sometimes, like transcribing Parenti videos and with niche knowledge I have about some Socialist countries.
- Were you aware that having an account on ProleWiki allows you to edit pages and participate in the editor community?
Yes, I’m decently familiar with Mediawiki.
Section 2
- How often do you visit ProleWiki in a week or month?
I like browsing ProleWiki quite a lot, it has useful knowledge about worldwide workers’ movements I didn’t know before. I’d say more than 5 times per week, it depends.
- What keeps you coming back to ProleWiki?
The Marxist viewpoint which I can’t find without prior searching. Also the sources are great.
- What impact has ProleWiki had on you? Either positive or negative (please detail)
I’d say a positive impact as I managed to find a couple of good sources from there and expand my knowledge.
Section 3
- Where do you feel ProleWiki is lacking?
More country-specific details such as Socialism in Czechoslovakia, and more information about different Marxists.
Please take a page you remember that you didn’t entirely like and provide your criticism of it, not only on the content but on the phrasing as well.
Czechoslovakia on ProleWiki - could be much more detailed. Although I personally don’t know enough about Czechoslovakia to contribute, so perhaps more knowledgeable comrades could fill it up if it’s on the priority list. It’s just an example though.
Treaty on the Creation of the USSR - doesn’t exist
1936 Soviet Constitution - doesn’t exist
- How would you rate the language and tone used on ProleWiki from 1 to 10? With 1 being casual (as if between friends), and 10 being academic (as if presenting a paper to an auditorium).
It’s good in my opinion. About 8.
- Do you perceive ProleWiki to be a credible encyclopedia?
Yes, much more than Wikipedia.
Section 4
- How would you like to see ProleWiki evolve?
The historic articles are great, so I’d definitely like more of that. Perhaps I could contribute a little.
- Were you aware we had a Library of texts? (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Library)
Yes, it’s the feature of the Wiki I use the most. It’s very useful.
- If yes, how do you feel about the card system for categorization?
It’s great, better than before I’d say. Although the old one being text-based was a bit more easier to search in a way.
Edit: I’ll probably sign up
