The art of curiosity - an example of to enjoy the WOK ecosystem for Wikimedians

Are the apps in WOK quiz apps, social network or just a different version of Wikipedia? Well, WOK is a mixture and when you mix ingredients something new come up. Let us, therefore, discuss WOK from the curiosity example. Erik Bolinder explains in this article why he is addicted to his own creation.   

As the founder of World of Knowledge, I have been through a long journey with the clear ambition to create the Knowledge Network. Just as Facebook is the Social Network: I had the dream of creating the Knowledge Network being the hub in the future for learning facts.

I am writing this article just after Stephen Hawking died and it seems very clear to me that Science has prevailed the fixed idea that everything in Universe had been created by something that was already sorted out in some holy books centuries ago. The drive from a child to be curious and always ask questions and find out new information is so powerful. As Neil deGrasse Tyso put it : Drop an egg worth 20 cents in order for the child to keep her/him curious.

Everything in the exploration of the World adds to the knowledge base. Data turns into information, information turns into knowledge. Knowledge turns into insights. insights turn into wisdom. And the more we know and worship science, the better we can make the World with new inventions and creativity. Creativity thrives in the ocean of knowledge. Hence, the more information and facts we learn as humans, young or old: the better. 

When we started the development of the apps in WOK we had a rough idea of how we would proceed. As in all development: you build, you learn, you fail, you rebuild and then you test and learn again and get it better and better. But the main leap of faith is kept in sight for the vision we are aiming at. And in WOK case: To build the Knowledge Network. 

Curiosity is a leading ingredient in WikiMaster, the core of the Knowledge Network WOK. 

Let me go through a guide on how I approach the app on the daily basis. 

First of all: As the main Project Leader of World of Knowledge: I am responsible for the app developer team tasks, targets, and validation. I come up with ideas and bounce them with my team. sv.bollplank  (the Swedish word bollplank and uppstuds should be a word in English like the Swedish words smorgasbord and ombudsman). In this process, I see functions that do not work properly, design in need for enhancement and slowness in the API connecting client side in the app with the server database. This is normal stuff for a project leader. Generate ideas, prioritize them. Make them into materialization. Encourage the process so everybody is on the same page. 

I also find out functionality that I miss after using the app. This process includes the hole team that comes up with ideas for improvement. 

So its functions that shall work as expected, a design that shall look beautiful on all devices, server response that shall be of the speed of light and all this shall feel seamless and natural for the woker that download the app. 

On top of this, I am also a Content Manager (among others) in validating the efforts done by the Community of wokers who contribute to WOK database with new questions on top of the Wikipedia articles. Questions shall follow the guidelines, be correct in the format and relevance and shall be indexed with the tags = Wikipedia articles in which they are relevant.

The Community of WOK is a cousin to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has over 100000 Wikimedians who do this work. WOK has just handful administrators being a much smaller Community. One could argue that some Wikimedians would turn to WOK and help since WOK is the extension of Wikipedia. And that good questions on the most important articles would have a higher marginal value than new articles on a database of over the existing 5 million articles, but the number of Wikimedians helping WOK forward is yet marginal. 

WOK is primarily a Wikipedia project. And yet; having done this project actively for over 7 years, I had expected much more enthusiasm among the Community: Why is this the feeling? I don't know, but I have faith in this process.  The symbiosis of Wikipedia and WOK in WikiMaster is so obvious. Perhaps this is due to WOK being developed outside the Community. Some Wikimedians have truly and fully supported the project and in end of January, WOK held its first joint conference together with Wikipedia in Lagos Nigeria. So I believe 2018 will be a year of much more support among the cousins in Wikipedia!

I will try to explain a bit about why the learning process and symbiosis works so well in this article. And why I am fully convinced Wikimedians over time will then be able to login with their accounts on Wikipedia, the database of MCQ would be hosted in the Wikipedia environment, the funding of the project will be within the community and the support from people now not showing will be much more open and the Wikimedians at large would actively support and enjoy the benefits of WikiMaster and WikiFlip as a natural movement. 

Why is that? 

Because the WikiMaster app drives the learning process and makes the Wikipedia content so much more accessible. 

I will now explain the process of learning with the app WikiMaster. From my own viewpoint. For those who are Wikimedians could follow this process and read more here. 

Take a Quiz and learn more in the review mode. 

Many wokers download the app and take a random quiz in a random article. So let's shake the device and find a random Wikipedia article. 

A. When in Home screen. Shake the device. 

B. I shake the device and after some tries, I find something that interests me. In this example the wiki: Spanish Colonization of the Americas

C. I can read the Wikipedia article to learn as much as I want and swipe down (with the Take Quiz and Create Question buttons being removed for better reading experiance.)  

D. I can swipe outside in from the right and check if someone had played this article before me. When empty, I knew I will be the first to "play", in this sense I will Take a Quiz and other can play me later.

 
E. Clic Take Quiz will start the countdown for the amount of question set in Settings (5 as default) to load the questions from Server.

F. Ok, here we go. First question (see upper right corner) Let's see. Was it 1540 or 1740...? 

G. Question nr 3:  All questions in the database has not yet an image from Wikimedia Commons. All questions are not perfectly tagged. This seems to be a question that has a relation, but a very weak connection to the subject (Spanish Colonization of the Americas). And should actually not be on this quiz. Someone in the WOK community has made an error based on lack of knowledge, mistake or understanding. We will found out later. 

H. Ok. I suppose this question was easy since the context was Latin America and Argentina was the only country there among the alternatives. Some questions are easy just because of the context. Green color show directly on the answer when you have taken a question to give you a learning experience directly. 

 
I. The last question had nothing to do with the subject. This needs to be fixed by some editor in WOK, just like a Wikipedia article is in need for editing and quality enhancement. The question itself is a good one, but the tag is misplaced.  

J. I happen to know the Nepal flag, so its Red. As this being the last question in this quiz, the current position among all wokers who played is nr 1. I am now the WikiMaster of the Spanish Colonization of the Americas. I earned 100 WOKbits (Wb). I had 2/5 correct, being 40%. 

 
K. Bells and whistles. If you want to move on: just click and the confetti stops. 

L. The blue inner circle is the average of the questions answered overall. The green circle is "you".  Some question can have been taken in other wikis so the average can differ from the result even though you were first. 

M. Clic on Go open up a bouquet of alternatives. Eye is review. Yellow graph is view. Read the wiki, INvite or play random challenge (grey due to "nobody to play with yet") 

N. I choose graph to view me (green) vs. average. Average overall in WOK would have given a little bit over 150 Wb. 

Q. If I click on the graph I can see the score for a question. 78 Wb after 2. I can also clic on this to go to review mode and see a question without swipe from 1. 57/57 means I can swipe among all 57 challenges and quiz taken in this view. This was the last I played. 

 
O. I clic on the graph on 2 in the horisontal axis and junp to the 2nd question. Now I can see and learn more. First of all : I was correct in the Spain alternative. I see the 78 Wb and the 1.9 seconds it took for me to answer. 
I can also see that the question is in two wikis. Spanish Colonization of the Americas and Conquest of Peru. They are relavant. But we could add a lot more articles in which this question is relevant. 

P. I click on Add tag to add more tags (=Wikipedia article). Now I can Search in Wikipedia: All articles in the language chosen for this question (english). 

 
Q- I am curious on learning more about Pizarro. So I search for his name and of course, there is an article about him.

R. I click on the row and the tag is jumping up in the box of articles that are related to this question. Now I can click Finish or add more. 

S. Since WOK like Wikipedia is all about the Community helping each other to build content, this question can be found in other articles as well where the question is related and make sense. I write "Inca" and add Inca Empire. 

 
T. I also add 16th Century 

V. Clicked finish I now see the question with much more tags than before. Everyone coming after me will see them. This put the question into a context. Just by looking at the tags you get a very good idea of where this event took place. I now want to add an image so I click on Add image button or the green question mark (Main Category symbol) in the upper left.

W. This question has been put in the General Knowledge Category. This is "the unknown" Category used in WOK. Main Categories are used in app WikiMaAster, WikiFlip and in Quiz King. It's a large categorization into 20+1 (GK) categories on all questions. 

X. In this question: History is the best choice of a (Main) Category. 

Y. I can jump on the upper tab Image to add a relative image. The image shall be a trigger for the question, but not reveal the answer to it. 

Z. Clic on the image you can zoom it: And see the WikiCommons License. Among the images I found this image to illustrate Pizarro's conquest. Even if it's not him, its related to the question. It adds value to the beauty and woker experience to take the question in all WOK apps and it is my favorite choice. There is no absolute right and wrong. It's a matter of taste. This will be my choice of illustration to this question. 

A1. I click Finish and am back to the review. Now it looks pretty good. But then I am curious and wants to learn more. Who was this Pizarro? I think I heard about him, but let's find out. I click on the link to go to the Wiki. 

 
A2. Start to read this article I discover new tags that should have been there as related subjects to explore. 

A3. I think a very related tag wouöd be Conquisator, so I clic on this link inside the Pizarro article and read about this. I see its 7 questions related to this wiki so I will add it to this question as well. Go into an article and learn about something not only gives you new knowledge: It gives you new ideas of tags missing. Since it is a bit hard to spell, I mark it to copy it for later paste in Add tag 

A4. So Going back with the back button upper left I now Add tag and paste the Conquistador in the Wikipedia Search and add the tag as described above. 

A5. And while at it I realize that the larger tag Colonization should be there. So I got new ideas and added this. And Spanish Empire. Perhaps I should have added Latin America also. If not, another woker may assist and do this indexation, making WOK more valuable as a learning tool for every day. Will AI do this in the future? This is the same debate as the Wikipedia Community has with Bots. We are sure it can be done to a certain extent, but you don't want to have tag inflation but you want the most related wikis to be there. So good librarians, wikimedians, and wokers will do this indexing process by hand and this is PART OF THE LEARNING PROCESS. You help to make the question into a context in the same tie as you read and put the knowledge into a context; hence, we think the human hand is to prefer to bots unless we are proven otherwise. 

A6. Now! We spend some time but imagine someone taking this question for the first time and not knowing to much: He or she will instantly see the tags as a group. Aha: Pizararro was conquering Inca. Aha: It happened during the 16th Century. Aha: This is Peru today. Aha: It was the Spaniards doing this. Ok: I got it. This density of information in the group of tags on a question makes learning quicker, more efficient and easier. And just like a hashtag on Instagram: The wokers can review and in a flash go to a wiki and learn more and explore the vast World of fantastic written articles. The Wikipedia and WOK are in symbiosis. It's beautiful and enjoyable. 

 
A8. We leave question number 2 and swipe left to next question and do the same. When we arrive at question 5, we remembered that this question was out of context so we need to remove and add tags here as well. 

A9. By click on the wrong and irrelevant tags (Spanish colonization of Americas and Conquest of Peru) to remove them and then search Nepal, Asia and flag as 3 new much more relevant tags: This question is now "cleaned". 

 
A10. After adding Nepal; I check that the question actually is correct and make sure this Nepalese flag is NOT added as a picture in the question revealing the answer. 

 
A11. As an administrator, I can make sure some minor spelling, grammar or sentence issues like space is improved as well. Going through the step 1-5 in Creating a question but from the Edit pint of view. By the way, I found the landscape of Nepal a beautiful pic in the question.

A12. If I would leave the Review Mode after a quiz, challenge or personal quiz or challenge taken in Quiz Store, I could always go back and review my taken questions in the Review Mode from the Footer menu 2nd row. (Footer menu/ More/ Review): This shows me all my taken question in WOK. As an administrator: I have also access to all the questions created in the WOK system and while making this article, I saw this questions just created by a woker in the Community. Perhaps a Wikimedian! 

Thanks for reading this blog post so far and read it to understand the indexation as well as the joy of learning new stuff in the process. Today when this article was written we had a total of 403556 questions in the database of which 130623 was with an image. 

Thanks for being a woker and enjoying the Wikipedia Universe created by all great Wikimedians through the WikiMaster app. 

Love you all 
Erik Bolinder 

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