[Wikimedia-l] What community initiatives have made an impact on editor engagement?

[Asaf Bartov]

On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hoi Steven,
>
> When the facts show that having the CAPTCHA is a demonstrable BAD idea. It
> should be easy to prevent CAPTCHA from being implemented again.
>

To be precise, the facts do not show that.  They show the CAPTCHA is
responsible for significantly fewer good-faith contributions from casual
editors.  That is is or is not a "bad idea", however, is a subjective
judgment, based on one's weighing of multiple factors.

Evidently, large parts of the PTWP community remain convinced that the
downsides of not having the CAPTCHA (easier vandalism? admin workload? --
I'm not really following that debate) outweigh the upsides.  You (and I)
may well disagree, but let's recognize that this depends on our _judgment_
of priorities.

Whether or not an editing community's mandate for self-governance should
extend to the right to make such a fundamentally anti-wiki measure as the
emergency CAPTCHA feature a permanent one is debatable, of course.

   Asaf
-- 
    Asaf Bartov
    Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>

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