Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 March 10

= March 10 =

How is Wikipedia reused?
So I am updating my open license prezi on teaching about Wikipedia, and I want to include more up to date examples of how Wikipedia is reused. I have QRPedia, and the use by Google and Facebook, but what else? The Google Map Wikipedia layer is dead, and I couldn't find anything useful in Category:Wikipedia. Is anyone aware of who is using Wikipedia content, outside the average variety of trash mirrors and forks? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:56, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you have a specific definition of "reuse" in mind. What is it? For example, Wikipedia is reused by teachers in teaching all the time, but that does not seem like the kind of "reuse" you are talking about.
 * Right, I think OP is interested in something like WP:NOTABLE re-use. So as they say, not junk mirrors, but beyond the big famous re-use campaigns of Google and Facebook that are fairly well known. While educational use of WP is common, it's not clear to me that that is reuse (or at least it often isn't), and there won't be any notability to the fact that I passed out some wikilinks in my last course assignment. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:50, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * A teacher who uses Wikipedia for research in preparing for class is using it, but one who prints an article off (or part of it) to give to students as handouts is reusing it. Some examples in this vein could be "notable", for example, the New South Wales Higher School Certificate English curriculum includes material from Wikipedia as part of the compulsory text material.
 * But I didn't think that necessarily fitted what the OP was looking for, as the examples given are all large scale, possibly automated, digital incorporation, rather than more conventional derivation. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:02, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Here's a story about how the BBC uses WP content. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The one that excites me the most is DBpedia - which takes Wikipedia content and turns it into a formal knowledge representation that can easily be parsed by a computer. If I wanted a list of all 18th century astronomers who were born in July - that would be impossible for Google or Wikipedia search to find for you.  Merely searching all of the articles in the category of 18th century astronomers and looking for the word "July" would fail because that word is used to describe other dates than their birthday...and it would assume that we've been diligent in using the category system (which we aren't!).  DBpedia can find things like that because articles are transformed into formal descriptions of the facts they contain.


 * Another very high profile example of re-use was when the IBM Watson computer won the Jeopardy! game - among many other sources of data, it had a complete copy of Wikipedia stored in it's memory and used that in answering Jeopardy questions (urgh...questioning Jeopardy answers...whatever). But as SemanticMantis points out - it's a thin line between "use" and "reuse". SteveBaker (talk) 18:13, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * A matter of Semantics no? ;-D - 220  of  Borg 09:04, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Wounded warrior
what would a person have to do to start a project for wounded vets, i was thinking about useing short wave radio to help vets talk to other people, so it take thair mind off of the flash back that they might have? i have been through this with my dad and my brother when thay got wounded in the war, this is just a thought? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.168.144.229 (talk) 14:03, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If you are in the USA, contact your local chapter of the VFW. Here is a pamphlet on how to start a community group. It is published by a UK group, but many of the concepts apply to any location. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:54, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If you're in the US, I'm not sure why this would be needed. There are VFW posts all over the place. Additionally, short wave would require a significant investment in hardware as well as all the learning that they would need to do to just use the radios. And I think that short wave radio users in the US require an FCC license. So, why not do something computer/Internet based?  Most everyone has access to a computer, so why wouldn't forums do? Or if voice is so important to you, then maybe forums where users post their Skype usernames?  Dismas |(talk) 16:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It's possible that the mechanics of short-wave radio would offer some kind of benefit over Internet chat rooms or Skype sessions - but I think you need to start off by understanding what those benefits might be. If you're approaching it from the direction of "Hey, I like ShortWave - what possible applications are there?" - then you're not doing it right.  You need to ask "What do these people need?"...and from there come up with an answer.  What you have is a solution that's looking for a problem.


 * I've actually worked on PTSD treatment (that's not quite the same thing as "wounded Vets" - but it's the actual problem that mostly needs to be solved - wounded Vets with stable mental conditions need surgery, prosthetics and other treatment - and chatting with other vets isn't high on their list of needs).


 * The only thing that really seems to help PTSD victims is the ability to tone down their recollections. Not erase them completely - but soften the raw edges.  It is a psychological fact that when someone re-tells a story, they tend to embellish it - and (experiments show) that these embellishments tend to get re-remembered as the truth.  (Think: Fishermans' tales of "the fish that got away" that gets an inch longer and 5 ounces heavier each time they tell the story!)  So it's known that allowing PTSD sufferers to re-tell the story and inadvertently embellishing it with more horror makes their memories even worse.  What you need is to DILUTE the memories.  One (and only one) method of doing that, which seems to work, is to use art therapy.  If you can get sufferers to paint pictures, write poetry, do sculpture...things like that...then the restrictions imposed by their chosen media imposes a softening of memory and makes sharpening it difficult.  Real studies with real victims show this to be true.


 * The problem is that most people who come out of those conflicts with problems have "type A" personalities and are typically relatively young. These people don't like painting and writing poetry!  They may not have the skills and they probably don't have the patience or the desire to do it.  In general they hate being forced into doing art therapy...which can make PTSD symptoms even worse.   So what we did (experimentally, under a DARPA contract) was to build software to help these people to generate comic books ("graphic novels" to use the fancier term) - which is something that those kinds of people tend to want to do - we could sneak in "art therapy" under the radar.  We'd help with the actual process of generating the images - using clip-art and 3D renderings of stock models and online tools that let you put together stories very quickly...and we provided ways to share them with friends or therapists - or just keep them private.


 * That was experimental work - and I left that job before it got completed, so I don't know whether it was ever used.


 * But my point is that just getting them to talk to each other ISN'T a cure. It may help some, but it can just as easily make others worse.  My feeling is that if experts in the field felt like using short wave radio somehow improved on what internet chat, social media and teleconferencing can do - they'd be beating a path to your door...but I doubt that's the case.  I'm pretty sure short-wave makes communication harder and adds to the frustration and the equipment cost.  I suspect that the random nature of the connections you make could be useful - but we could do that much more easily using the Internet.


 * I admire your enthusiasm, and your heart is in the right place - but this isn't as easy as you think.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 18:35, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * We don't offer professional advice, see our guidelines above and our disclaimer below. μηδείς (talk) 03:41, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Face-devil-grin.svg: I'm a Wounded Warrior too. -- Apostle (talk) 21:11, 13 March 2016 (UTC)