Wikipedia talk:Wikimedia Strategy 2018–20/Coordinate Across Stakeholders

Coordinate Across Stakeholders
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Which of these are fad phrases?

This is cross-posted from the meta page:

"equitable decision-making" peaked in 1982 and may be a fad phrase from the business world: ngram viwer results

"cooperation and collaboration" peaked in 1996 and may be a fad phrase from the business world: ngram viewer results

"unity of purpose peaked in 1943, but does not appear to be a fad phrase. For obvious reasons, though, it appeals to monists rather than pluralists. ngram viewer results

"Distributed leadership" peaked in 2006 and may be a fad phrase from the business world. ngram viewer results

"define our relationships" peaked in 2001 and is potentially a phrase term. ngram viewer results

"threats or opportunities" peaked in 1989 and may be a fad phrase from the business world. ngram viewer results

"support structures" peaked in 2006 and is potentially a fad phrase. ngram viewer results

"new functionalities" peaked in 2005 and may be a fad phrase. ngram viewer results

"internal knowledge peaked in 2006 and does not appear to be a fad phrase. ngram viewer

"goals and areas" peaked in 1979 (when smoothed; unsmoothed peaked in 1952), not sure if it was a fad phrase. ngram viewer results

"management of knowledge" peaked in 2005 and may be a fad term. ngram viewer results

"What Why How" appears to be a derivative of the so-called Hegelian triad, which I explained in more detail on the Plan Infrastructure Scalability talk page.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 04:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover:, thank you, I also think that it'd be nice if instead of a technical, specialist register, a middle school version of English was used. Keep in mind though that those who wrote this are of different backgrounds (in this context, I'm talking mostly about their mother tongues) and it's just easier and more efficient for them, in the process of writing, to use professional terms instead of creative and not precise simplifications.
What's your opinion on the matter of this particular recommendation? How could it be improved? Let's assume that wording is more about the form rather than the matter. (I know it isn't necessarily true, but I'd like to make sure if you think the authors might be wrong about something or they improperly assessed the priorities, etc., so some points not related to the surface of the message). Thank you in advance. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 03:54, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I see from your handle you work for the WMF. That tells me you could possibly be in a position to solve this problem. Yippee! I'm going to get on my soapbox. I am hoping you can run a large amount of your material through a service like writewords.org (free, good for small jobs) or Wordstat 8 from Provalisresearch (this is expensive but can handle large documents. I no connection to this software company; I downloaded a free trial once and was impressed). I did not use either to do the analysis above, I just found what I thought were unique phrases.

After running your material through the software, look for patterns. An expert might be able to advise you more on this, but I am of the understanding that it is possible using statistics from word and phrase frequency figures to answer basic questions, such as

1. Do the pronouns indicate the author is egotistical? (There are blogs and stuff that look for these sorts of questions, here is an example.)

2. Does the author appear to be "talking down" to an audience due to using words and phrases usually used by those in authority? If you are familiar with Eric Berne and his transactional analysis, ask yourself whether there are any crossed transactions going on and what to do about them.

3. Which form of literature does this most resemble? (Tt may be helpful to also run public comments through the frequency analysis and then compare the results to see how they compare)

4. Are there any inexplicable patterns? (There shouldn't be, but keep your eyes open as it is possible they may be generated subconsciously in a phenomenon akin to pareidolia. The sort of patterns you might want to look for would be things like a lot of phrases repeated the same number of times, or a certain word or phrase being repeated, say, 11 times when the first occurrence of the word occurs near the number 11. You find weird patterns especially with certain genres such as medieval Kabbalistic literature; I would not expect to find any here. If you find patterns, it wouldn't be hard to remove them.

Besides answering these four questions, here are two other things you could do word and frequency data:

5. Run common phrases through ngram viewer, and remove phrases that have meanings that are not generally understood by the general population lacking a college education or worse, have meanings associated with only one political movement.

6. Someone with a background in collective epistemology research needs to evaluate the documents for material that will not appeal to a broad audience. It could be you if you are willing to first dedicate a few hours reading up on the journals publishing this research. The person could both evaluate entire documents and also look for individual phrases which may appeal to only one group and not the other. For example, hard science majors have been found to have a higher respect for authority than soft science majors; as a result if you want to speak to both groups at once you need to both avoid appealing to authority of any sort and disparaging authority. One way to evaluate your thought patterns is to compare how different groups solve the Münchhausen trilemma. Do WMF materials balance the trilemma in the same way as their audience or in different ways?

Also, here are some things you can do more holistically rather than with a word and phrase frequency analysis.

1. Avoid using the exact same form for each issue (such as the three one word questions). Historically, a uniform method was used by St. Thomas Aquinas to unite the epistemologicaly feuding Dominicans and Augustinians in one camp, the "schola antiqua." The upside is that he was able to get people to accept his "summa method" which asked the same questions over and over until you were sort of hypnotized into accepting whatever he wrote. The downside is that this put the form of the material over actual content. This harmed its intellectual rigor (remember that cliche about angels dancing on the head of a pin?), and historically the "schola antiqua" was supplanted by the "schola moderna."

2. Look into the four types of problem solving outlined by C. West Churchman in his Inquiring Systems, go through and classify the methods of inquiry you are using. There are more out there than just the four he mentioned, but it is a good start. When you are done, think about your audience. There are people who tend to solve problems more in one way, and consider if they are likely to accept the forms you used. The most hairy of the disparities are between what he calls the Kantian and Hegelian methods. For these you might not be able to directly integrate your methods, but you may be able add additional problem solving methods and solve the same problem from multiple angles.

3. Go through the existing community-written policies on Wikipedia and the other projects. Look for which forms of problem solving are being implemented, and which forms of collective epistemology are employed. Sometimes in the same policy you may find subsections which are oriented more towards one camp than another. You may also find policies that are written to be understood differently by the same people and that the policy is a practical example of an "agree to disagree" situation. Then, compare the results of your analysis to the material you are publishing on meta. Are the methods of problem solving different? Can this be fixed?

4. Go through the Wikiproject groups, and do the same. Can you tell if Catholicism members use a different problem solving method than than the Medical one? Have you noticed how some of the scientific oriented ones have died back in recent years? Can you tell if the ones that died had a different method of problem solving or a different collective epistemology? I think you might be able to figure out which sort of editors are currently being alienated, and how. When people accustomed to one pattern of thought are thrust into an environment where a different pattern predominates, it is possible to integrate them, but it may take years. Current research on metacognitive interference suggests that at first you end up thinking in a dumber overall. Think of how when you were a student, if there was a teacher who did things differently and how the class reacted. When people are not being coerced, people naturally self-segregate into groups with like thought patterns. As this happens, wikiprojects lose editors.

5. I noticed your comment about "those who wrote this are of different backgrounds (in this context, I'm talking mostly about their mother tongues)"--Are any more or less dissociating between their former and current backgrounds? That is, do they almost switch between the backgrounds, assimilating into each, but not relating between the two and in a shallow manner? To get the real value out of their diversity you need people who are actively integrating both cultures, yet are able to judge both their old and present cultures with confidence. This sort of thing takes year to develop. If you are not multicultural, you can relate to this intellectual growth from integrating different subjects in school that used different thought patterns. When you were a young child you weren't able to integrate your subjects' thought patterns at all, you just went along with it. Did you figure develop the ability to adeptly integrate and negotiate between different thought patterns at 16 years old? 25? Today you are above your 2nd grade reading and math classes, and could even pass judgment on them. Likewise, you need people who are above both their old and present backgrounds. Bosses may not like this and instead fight away what could otherwise be a valuable addition to their human resources. Instead what they get is the isomorphic imitation of diversity.

6. Some thought patterns take a great deal more work than others. For example, some food processors looking for managers prefer to hire people with a scientific background and teach them management theory, because they have found it is harder to teach people with management backgrounds the science needed to do a good job. Historically, the Merton thesis is an example of where the spiritual and mental discipline necessary to conduct certain research was high, yet some where able to accomplish it. The modern day version of this is where people talk about schools behaviorizing children into being able to perform well at low levels of stimulation, thus preparing them for many adult jobs.

This message is for your staff, not for you: Your English skills are fine. My criticism is not directed to you. You were doing what you were paid to do and you did a good job at it. My criticism is about what you were being paid to do and so it is really directed at the levels above you--not just your boss(es) but also the donors they have to please. I have no idea if your boss is going to implement any of the things I wrote above, but rest assured I'm not going to go through what you write with a fine-toothed comb, look for some sort of slight grammar mistake, and jump you for it.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 06:09, 6 February 2020 (UTC)