Hoi, For some of our smaller projects, the number of articles are the only milestones available. It is necessary to celebrate progress. It is meaningful when the Swahili Wikipedia becomes the biggest African language Wikipedia. It is meanigful when you compare it with most of the other African language projects that have no life in them. I agree that on many levels the numbers game is of little relevance however it becomes relevant when there is a need for the celebration of progress in a project. A need to be motivated to go on with the gigantic task that is writing a Wikipedia. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/20 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com>

Hoi, I wrote articles on all the fish of the Benelux. I cheered when I was done.. Nobody else did. What we need is to celebrate something that has meaning to all. Articles do that better then anything I know. The thing with news is that it needs to be told. That is why I blog for instance, how else do I explain that a GLAM is not about getting images for Wikipedia but that they provide the basis for the credibility of the illustrations we use. Compare that to article numbers, there is the suspense of the numbers rising to this magical number... It is a great show, and while it may have limited meaning, it gives a more universal sense of accomplishment. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/20 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com>

Awesome :) -----Original Message----- From: Fowler, John Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 3:13 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Cc: Lanzerotti, Laura; Cox, Serita Subject: RE: [Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia Hi all, I stumbled across this thread when I was browsing through some past foundation-l posts. My name is John Fowler, and I'm with the Bridgespan Group, working with the Wikimedia Foundation during the strategic planning process to develop a fact base to inform future work. We're trying to pull together all available research currently on Wikimedia's strategic planning site. You can find these preliminary fact bases at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fact_base. There's good data here on article count, number of contributors, quality of articles, and the demographics of readers/contributors. This may be of some use to the discussion regarding the availability of research on Wikipedia, but any additional information would be a huge help--especially given how much knowledge seems to be passed back and forth on this mailing list. Best, John -----Original Message----- From: Gerard Meijssen [mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:22 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia Hoi, I wrote articles on all the fish of the Benelux. I cheered when I was done.. Nobody else did. What we need is to celebrate something that has meaning to all. Articles do that better then anything I know. The thing with news is that it needs to be told. That is why I blog for instance, how else do I explain that a GLAM is not about getting images for Wikipedia but that they provide the basis for the credibility of the illustrations we use. Compare that to article numbers, there is the suspense of the numbers rising to this magical number... It is a great show, and while it may have limited meaning, it gives a more universal sense of accomplishment. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/20 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com> only other progress that is is us a inquiries https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___________________NOTICE____________________________ This electronic mail transmission, including any attachments, contains confidential information of Bain & Company, Inc. ("Bain") and/or its clients. It is intended only for the person(s) named, and the information in such e-mail shall only be used by the person(s) named for the purpose intended and for no other purpose. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other persons, or by the person(s) named but for purposes other than the intended purpose, is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy this e-mail. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of Bain shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by Bain. When addressed to Bain clients, any information contained in this e-mail shall be subject to the terms and conditions in the applicable client contract. _______________________________________

Hoi, I do not know what you are talking about.. Several of our projects do not have any activity at all. others are praised because there is activity as in less then 100 new articles in the last year. So when you talk about "much progress on quality" you forgot what this thread was about. So my argument would be that the Usability Initiative contributions are extremely welcome. As they are based on actual usability studies, they are clued in into what prevents people to contribute to our projects. You do appreciate that in a project with hardly any activity what a new editor does, someone equivalent to a top writer on a de en nl ja fr or sr Wikipedia (just a sample) .. The activity on the Swahili Wikipedia is because of a handful of people. They are the community and they can be named. So when we want to know what is needed to "get greater focus on user needs" we can ask them personally. For the projects with less then 10 active editors, the question what about the public is moot. They are working their arses off to get to the inflection point where things get a momentum of their own. And we have a clue what helps bring this point down, but we do not have numbers. I name you two. - Localisation is easy to understand. When you know what you are expected to do, you understand that you have the choice to do it - Most relevant articles. This one is controversial. Is our emphasis on encyclopaedic information we think is important or is it encyclopaedic information people want to read. For the second there are two approaches. We create a 100/1000 list of must have articles. While there is merit in many of the subjects selected, do you really think American Football is relevant in Upper Volta (I do not know). The other is write what people want. We do not know what people want. If we did we had a list of most looked for articles that could not be found for each project. Now THAT would be user driven and THAT would motivate people to write not only the article but possibly also the wiki network around such articles. All in all, we need more research, we need more research about the smaller projects, we need to learn how to make them awesome (I refer to SJ's blog about this). It does not have to be academic research to serve my purposes. When our experience tells us that Localisation is important and when the delivery of localisations is broken, we need a LocalisationUpdate. When we want to know what the public for a Wikipedia is looking for, we register what they cannot find. In essence it is easy, but in order to convince people to do what seems right, we need those academic studies as well. We need them because we can be wrong.. We need them because they can be the driver to get us the statistics we need (the not found statistics for instance). Thanks. GerardM 2009/8/24 Dennis During <dcduring(a)gmail.com>

Hoi, How does a list of most read articles on any Wikipedia give a clue on what is of interest in the Swahili Wikipedia ??? Would they really be interested in subjects like "Sarah Palin" ?? If the idea is to have user driven content, let it be driven by the community it is written for. It is more likely that they are interested in an article about Mwai Kibaki or Raila Odinga and sure enough both gentlemen have their sw.wp article. The only way in which you infer information about what might be of interest for another language is when you look at the articles read from the area where the language for a particular language is spoken. Another approach to our data that would be beneficial. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/25 Jonathan Hall <jonathan(a)sinewave42.com>

Yes indeed. I have left something on that subject on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:Reach_out_by_active_promot… By the way, we have come a little bit far away from the original thread, isn't it? :-) Kind regards Ziko 2009/8/25 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde

2009/8/22 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: The main article growth rate is dropping, though, so the FA count might get a chance to catch up. I don't really see that that is a problem, anyway, more FAs is more FAs, regardless of how many other articles there are. Standards climbing is better than standards dropping, although that increase is standards is part of what made me suggest including GAs too. A GA today isn't far off an FA when they were started. Actually, it's probably stricter - we weren't too good at references back then.