On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 12:52 AM, koltzenburg@w4w.net wrote:
fair enough, the "versus" reads a little strange to me in this context but never mind ;-)
in my view of the matter, and my thanks to Laura for filling in with a few concrete examples, taking positive action in this context would mean, I guess, to stop talking about any numbers that we might have to consider to be harmful - precisely: harmful for swift and wonderful encouragement for *positive* action
I don't think it is a case of talking about harmful actions, but making sure if we're going to act on research, we understand the research methodologies and their weakness... and that if we're working towards solutions and needing to do research to understand a problem in order to do something, we talk about best research practices for conducting that research. :) A lot of people, especially in a grant funding context, may need research to validate their willingness to fund action. This is when things matter A LOT. Listening to what those people tells you is even more important. My government contacts ask ROI for investing on Wikipedia and I say page views. They say not good enough: Develop a new metric. Thus, I do.
On a side note for interesting data I've come across.... I was telling some one that page views matter and one of the reasons I like English Wikinews more than editing English Wikipedia is you can see an immediate result and impact by covering a topic that gets little coverage. I went to look at the numbers as I've been working rather hard on Australian water polo news this month.
This is the following list of articles I have ever written about the Australian women's national water polo team and their page views on English Wikinews for the past 30 days:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australian_Stingers_stung_by_US_at_FINA_World_Le... - 1340 views http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australian_women_to_meet_USA_in_water_polo%27s_F... 1527 views http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australia_women%27s_water_polo_team_into_FINA_Wo... 1212 views http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australia_women%27s_water_polo_team_into_FINA_Wo... 1274 views http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australian_women_win_VISA_Water_Polo_Internation... 468 views http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Australian_women%27s_water_polo_team_takes_test_... 263 views
Compare that to the Wikipedia article about the team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_women%27s_national_water_polo_team - 1207 views
If I include every article about the national team, I get closer to those Wikinews totals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Arancini - 195 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemma_Beadsworth - 469 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowena_Webster - 367 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Lincoln-Smith - 357 times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronwen_Knox - 358 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Gynther - 271 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Buckling - 221 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Brown_(water_polo) - 315 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobel_Bishop - 351 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_McCormack - 320 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Moran - 258 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencora_Ralph - 225 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Rippon - 242 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Smith - 323 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashleigh_Southern - 230 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelsey_Wakefield - 168 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Zagame - 447 views http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_McFadden - 162 views
6,486 total views spread out across 19 articles compared to roughly 5,700 views spread out across six articles. I love my Wikipedia work, but it feels better recognised and, at times, more lasting on Wikinews than Wikipedia. As some one writing about women, there are just more ways and easier ways to do this on Wikinews, plus more page views and original research.