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@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
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@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@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
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.
I'd really love to know more details about this.
Most of all: Did you consider consider getting new people to contribute on mobile, or did you consider getting experienced desktop contributors to contribute also on mobile? These are separate things. My intuition tells me that the second is much easier to do than the first, though this will probably require talking to experienced editors and asking them what changes do they need to make it easier to do it?
And in general, can you write more details about what you considered and tried till now?
And what do you mean when I know that I make edits on mobile web and apps occasionally[1][2][3], and I see the "Mobile" tag every day in recent changes and watchlist, but I don't know the actual numbers. I supposed that there is some data, but I couldn't find any on mediawiki.org easily. For example * What's the number of mobile edits? * What's the number of mobile edits per namespace? (I was surprised at the number of mobile edits that I made to talk pages, given that the classic talk pages [unlike Flow] work so horribly on mobile.) * What's the number of mobile edits by anons? * What's the number of people who start editing and don't save?
It would be nice to read about all of the above broken down to web and the two apps (the two big apps are quite different).
(Finally, when you say "we", do you mean Apps, or all the mobile developers?)
== Footnotes == [1] Flow works very well on Mobile web, and I made a lot of Flow edits, but unfortunately they aren't tagged: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T93431
[2] Hebrew: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=&title=%D7%9...
[3] English: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=Mobileedit&t...
[ Resending - the previous email had too many silly syntax mistakes. Am I a Wikipedian or not? Sorry about the spam :) ]
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.
I'd really love to know more details about this.
Most of all: Did you consider getting new people to contribute on mobile, or did you consider getting experienced desktop contributors to contribute also on mobile? These are separate things. My intuition tells me that the second is much easier to do than the first, though this will probably require talking to experienced editors and asking them what changes do they need to make it easier to do it.
And in general, can you write more details about what you considered and tried till now?
I know that I make edits on mobile web and apps occasionally[1][2][3], and I see the "Mobile" tag every day in recent changes and watchlist, but I don't know the actual numbers. I supposed that there is some data, but I couldn't find any on mediawiki.org easily. For example * What's the number of mobile edits? * What's the number of mobile edits per namespace? (I was surprised at the number of mobile edits that I made to talk pages, given that the classic talk pages [unlike Flow] work so horribly on mobile.) * What's the number of mobile edits by anons? * What's the number of people who start editing and don't save?
It would be nice to read about all of the above broken down to web and the two apps (the two big apps are quite different).
(Finally, when you say "we", do you mean Apps, or all the mobile developers?)
== Footnotes == [1] Flow works very well on Mobile web, and I made a lot of Flow edits, but unfortunately they aren't tagged: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T93431
[2] Hebrew: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=&title=%D7%9...
[3] English: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=Mobileedit&t...