[Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[teun spaans]

Quote:Many volunteers don't have a lot to write.
This sounds like an opinion, not like a fact. Even on English wikipedia, we
still have about two hundred thousand plant species to describe, and
millions of animal species. And then I'm not talking about fungi and other
kingdoms

I do agree with some of your remarks about motivation. One way to motivate
people might be to provide more information on the process that google maps
uses to locate wikipedia artciles to its maps. It's much nicer if lots of
people actually read 'your' article.

Teun Spaans

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Let's start with a couple of simple facts:
> * Our main product is Wikipedia.
> * Wikipedia has been built on Internet.
> * Wikipedia has been built by volunteer community.
> * Mature Wikipedia editions have now a lot of articles. Many
> volunteers don't have a lot to write.
> * Mature Wikipedia editions have now complex social structures.
> Complex social structures require social institutions.
> * The main features of our software are 10 years old.
> * During the last ten years Internet has changed.
>
> However:
> * Organizationally, we are focused on Internet just during fundraising.
> * Volunteer community is valued just when it's been realized that
> there are some problems.
> * Except media (i.e. Wikimedia Commons), we lack of any systemic work
> on improving content. (I don't count particular initiatives, like
> cooperation between Wikipedia in X language and University in X
> country.)
> * Wikiversity, the last started Wikimedia project is old four and half
> years.
> * Besides top bodies (Board, ArbComs), we don't have
> volunteer/community institutions.
> * New features are limited on those of limited importance.
> * We are still living in 2005 or so.
>
> To fix it, logically, we need:
> * While offline and real-life activities are very important, we need
> to be more focused on Internet. There are many options and many
> approaches for that. I'll mention just two within one approach:
> editing Wikimedia projects from Facebook and WoW would bring some
> editors.
> * Motivating volunteers to edit (not to participate in Wikimania or
> join chapters) -- would help. Let's say, a plaque signed by Jimmy for
> hard work would help. But, there are much more intelligent ways for
> motivating volunteers without money and without competition.
> * Organized work with universities and similar -- organized by WMF and
> chapters -- would help in improving quality.
> * We have a number of ideas here [1], but none of them has become a
> Wikimedia project. I don't think that all of the proposals are bad.
> * We need volunteer/community institutions. There are tons of
> frustrations because there are no ways to solve many problems.
> * We need, for example, WYSIWYG editor. Some more important features,
> too. And it is not expensive.
> * In the world where the funniest thing is to send an email, editing
> wiki sounds really cool. In the world of virtual worlds, causal games
> and watching what your friend from childhood is doing -- there is a
> thin edge between editing Wikipedia and masochism. We need to provide
> more fun.
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_proposals
>
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