On 12 December 2012 00:04, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Looking at the big picture, I don't think
we'll ever see widespread editing
from mobile devices. The user experience is simply too awful. The best I
think most people are hoping for is the ability to easily fix a typo, maybe,
but even then you have to assess costs vs. benefit. That is, is it really
worth paying two or three full-time employees so that someone can easily
change "Barrack" to "Barack" from his or her iPhone? Probably not.
OTOH, see recent coverage of Wikipedia in Africa, where it's basically
going to be on phones. Cheap shitty smartphones. That the kids are
*desperate* to get Wikipedia on. Do we want to make those readers into
editors? It'd be nice.
Perhaps mobile uploading could use better native
support, but again, is the
cost worth it? Does Commons need more low-quality photos? And even as phone
cameras get better, do those photos need to be _instantly_ uploaded to the
site? There's something to be said for waiting until you get home to upload
photos, especially given how cumbersome the photo upload process is
(copyright, permissions, categorization, etc.). And this all side-steps the
question of whether there are better organizations equipped at handling
photos (such as Flickr or whatever).
This is a version of the general argument against participation. There
are reasons it's not favoured.
- d.