Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request/Archive 2: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:29, 14 February 2024

Revision as of 12:51, 17 March 2024

Line 170:

:: That's an illuminating list of most prolific editors; thanks for the link. --[[User:Usernameunique|Usernameunique]] ([[User talk:Usernameunique|talk]]) 03:00, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

:::Huh, that's a lot of my name showing up there... [[User:Jo-Jo Eumerus|Jo-Jo Eumerus]] ([[User talk:Jo-Jo Eumerus|talk]]) 13:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

== Brainstorming ways to make RX more productive while reducing load on volunteers ==

In discussions on a tangentially related topic (building repositories of book citations at the incipient {{tl|Reflib}} project), {{u|Mike Christie}} came up with a great idea for RX, based on leveraging some of the ideas that are going into building Reflib into a system that could turbocharge productivity at RX, while simultaneously reducing load on volunteers. This is just an idea at this stage, but I wanted to involve RX asap to see what you think and get your feedback. You may be aware that some users maintain lists of their own home library holdings as a user subpage, for example, [[User:Mike Christie/Reference library|this one]]. I only just learned of this list, though it's been around for years, and it's not the only one out there. So Mike's idea, and I hope I'm representing it correctly, is to somehow centralize, or import, all these user lists into a data repository of some sort which would be available to RX for search purposes, and to help fulfill user RX requests by linking them up with users holding the requested book.

Without saying anything at this point about how this would get built, let's imagine that we take a short ride in Doc's DeLorean, and when we step out, the system is finished and ready to go.{{efn|As far as the "magic ride" part, this may be ambitious, but it is not pie in the sky; there's nothing cutting edge or even particularly difficult here. It can all be done, it's mostly just a question of volunteer ability and time, and how ambitious we want to be in defining what it should do. We don't need a SQL db for this; flat files and a few templates or a Module will do. If this gets huge, an indexer to create book ⟶ user reverse index from user ⟶ list of books would help, but that's 10-15 lines of Python, and maybe it exists already in some Lua Module.}} Now, when someone comes to RX with a request, either we look it up in the system and return a list of holders of the book, or maybe we just notify holders of the active request for the book being sought. (Thinking about privacy/outing issues here, and whether we want to deal with that.) The DNA of RX would change somewhat, so that instead of members of RX acting mostly as servers who watch incoming requests and serve up books to requesters themselves, RX would become more of a platform or intermediary, connecting requesters with servers (book holders) in the central repository, with RX members maintaining and improving the platform and getting notified automatically when some request matches a book in their library. In theory, over time this could goose the productivity of RX a lot, as the size of the repository grows by importing more and more lists of user reference libraries, which in turn, will make it more interesting for users to come search here and increase the likelihood of a successful match. There will always be a need for the traditional RX book-serving function, because no repository will ever have everything. Mike, please jump in and correct anything I missed or got wrong.

I came into this by the side door, so to speak, namely via the {{tl|Reflib}} project, which is not about building repositories of books, but rather building repositories of [[Help:CS1|CS1]] and [[Help:CS2|CS2]] citations in given topic areas. But there's a clear parallelism between the two ideas, and the two projects could each benefit by linking with the other, improving the user experience even more. Someone applying to RX for a given book might be connected to the book holder and at the same time also get a link to a preformatted citation for the book so they wouldn't have to write it themselves. Someone coming to {{tl|Reflib}} looking for some good sources on [[Template:Reflib/Ancient seafaring|Ancient seafaring]], would come away with a few pre-made citations, and maybe also a notification informing them that one user has book A, and three users have book B, with links to the RX platform to discuss the book. So, that's it in a [coco]nutshell; would love to hear your thoughts about this, whether you like it or don't, and if you do, what you think the functionality ought to be. [[User:Mathglot|Mathglot]] ([[User talk:Mathglot|talk]]) 08:21, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

:That's a lot of words but I'm all up for making resources easier to find. I have my own library ([[User:HJ Mitchell/Library]]) inspired by Mike's and would love for it to be more discoverable. [[User:HJ Mitchell|<b style="color: teal; font-family: Tahoma">HJ&nbsp;Mitchell</b>]] &#124; [[User talk:HJ Mitchell|<span style="color: navy; font-family: Times New Roman" title="(Talk page)">Penny for your thoughts?</span>]] 10:21, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

:This sounds like a proposal to make [[WP:SHARED]] more efficient. A searchable repository would make the personal libraries easier to use, but we've already got a catalog of 2.7 billion items in 72,000 libraries - WorldCat - a catalog that Wikipedia editors don't have to maintain.

:It's swell that volunteers are willing to share their personal libraries, but most of what's in them is already easy to obtain. Consider, for example, the first book in each of the first three major sections of the fine [[User:HJ Mitchell/Library]]: {{ISBN|9780950996745}}, {{ISBN|9780080370989}}, and {{ISBN|9780755316335}}. Two of the three are available to any editor for almost instant checkout at archive.org. The third is held by 53 WorldCat libraries. One would think that some RX volunteer would be able to access one of the locations easily, even if not quite as easily as HJMitchell. The books RX has real difficulty with are those that aren't in WorldCat at all or are very thinly held. Take for example, current requests for two specific years of the ''Dobson High School Yearbook'', or {{ISBN|9789994400249}}, held at only three WorldCat libraries. It's highly unlikely that those sorts of books are in any Wikipedian's personal library. --[[User:Worldbruce|Worldbruce]] ([[User talk:Worldbruce|talk]]) 16:31, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

::I bet it could be more workto enter your entirelibrary than the current system. ([[User talk:Buidhe|t]] &#183; [[Special:Contributions/Buidhe|c]]) '''[[User:buidhe|<span style="color: black">buidhe</span>]]''' 16:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

:This is an interesting idea, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be implemented. However, we have to ask: How many requests at REX could have been answered by these resources faster than they were answered here? How many editors who aren't active at REX would be willing to handle random requests to scan their personal libraries? How do we keep this list up to date with who is active and inactive? I live within a 10 minute walk of a library with several million items and have full access to it. It's not practical to list all of those in the way you're suggesting, yet I may as well own them for how quickly I can pop over and scan a section. [[User:Eddie891|Eddie891]] <small>''^{[[User talk:Eddie891|Talk]]} _{[[Special:Contributions/Eddie891|Work]]}'' </small> 18:17, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

=== Notes ===

{{cot|bg=cornsilk|indent=1.6em|Notes}}

{{notelist|title=}}

{{cob}}