Hi Dan,
Let me ask about this question from a different angle. What *is* WMF's plan
for growing our contributor base?
Pine
Pine
*This is an Encyclopedia* <https://www.wikipedia.org/>
*One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies The deep rock of
our past, in which we must delve The well of our future,The clear water we
must leave untainted for those who come after us,The fertile earth, in
which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,And the broad
fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not
know.*
*—Catherine Munro*
On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
I've split this off because it has the potential
to derail the other
conversation about Wikidata descriptions.
On 22 March 2015 at 09:53, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I do wonder if it would be better to focus on encouraging more mobile app
users to become Wikipedia and/or Commons contibutors instead of Wikidata
contributors. Thoughts?
We've considered such problems at great length, and so far never actually
managed to succeed at drawing people in to editing on mobile devices. As
always, there are the obvious exceptions to that (people like you and me),
but we're by far the minority.
No other mobile app out there has the same kind of barrier to entry for a
contribution as Wikipedia. Some of that is a result of the core product
(contributing to an encyclopedia requires serious thought!), but some of it
is for no good reason (wikitext is scary to newbie).
On the other hand, the mobile uploads feature did draw a lot of people
in... to uploading selfies. So that was problematic from the other side: it
got a lot of engagement, but of the totally wrong kind. There was
considerable backlash, which naturally makes the team want to avoid trying
something similar again.
Do you have any specific suggestions?
Dan
--
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation