To refresh memories (or maybe James wasn't around back then), we
actually did this kind of SM pretty intensively for about half a year
in 2013/14 - including DYKs (mostly custom-crafted by the SM team),
but also with "On this Day", Wiktionary words of the day and such. See
e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_media/Calendar/2014/01 ,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_media/Calendar/2014/02 and
surrounding months.

I don't recall a rule that the social media channels could only be
used for blog posts. What's true though - and that was also a major
factor why that experiment ended: Those custom-crafted SM messages
about project content required significant effort to draft and review
(even so, we sometimes got called out by followers or community
members for inaccuracies, typos etc. that slipped through). And on the
other hand, the aim to send them out daily often distracted from the
SM promotion of blog posts, which often was lagging for several days
during that time or dropped altogether, when we also had less capacity
overall.

So I think Joe's first point is spot on, about saving work by reusing
the already carefully crafted and reviewed hooks by the ENWP DYK
community. It's something I encouraged a few times myself back then
(also regarding On This Day), but it wasn't practiced consistently.

Another point we should be aware of is that unlike many other websites
that practice this kind of thing on their SM channels, we can't
realistically hope to significantly increase the overall readership of
Wikipedia through DYK tweets. I'm looking forward to an evaluation of
this new experiment (I know that the SM team has made huge strides
this year in systematically measuring its impact). But keep in mind
that our projects get about half a billion - 500 million - pageviews
per day. So even if we have a outrageously successful DYK tweet or FB
message that goes viral and achieves, say, 10,000 clicks (back then
the best numbers I seem to recall were in the hundreds), that would
still be a minuscule increase of 0.002% that day. There may be other
benefits, such as gaining followers, but it would be good to try and
quantify them too.

On the other hand though, we can make more of a difference for sister
projects like Wikivoyage or Wiktionary, which have good content too
but much less traffic, and also still lack in brand recognition even
among many of our followers. I think it's a fine to tweet interesting
Wiktionary Words of the Day, or to highlight the monthly featured
topics from Wikivoyage.

Similarly, we also have a much higher potential for noticable impact
when it comes to raising awareness and appreciation of the work of
editors and the whole movement (i.e. the community behind the
content). Therefore a big +1 to James' idea to do a blog post about
the DYK process itself.

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I like this, let's use #DYK.
>
> "too much stuff the social channels are really only useful for blog posts
> and we don't want to be unprofessional by doing more social stuff that's for
> those other more commercial organizations". That this was an argument mades
> me a little sad.
>
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Joe Sutherland <jsutherland@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for your thoughts Michael! Looks like that Twitter account is a
>> bot, based on its use of ellipses. I think we'd need to curate our output
>> more strictly for obvious reasons, not least for length.
>>
>> best,
>> Joe
>>
>> On 6 August 2015 at 19:02, Michael Guss <mguss@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello everyone,
>>>
>>> Late to the thread, apologies. There has been quite a bit of interest in
>>> what I call the "surfacing" of the content from the English Wikipedia
>>> homepage as of recent, and I wholeheartedly agree this is a fine idea.
>>> Personally, I've been experimenting with our accounts for the reception of
>>> "extremely" interesting Wikipedia articles, brought to light by the
>>> wonderful people at the Wikipedia subreddit and the Cool Freaks Wikipedia
>>> group, and some other sources (which pass the test of being non-offensive,
>>> culturally insensitive, or anything which would render a nasty media
>>> mention, etc.). That said, I believe we have some "competition" on Twitter
>>> with an account called "Wikipedia's DYK" - this is ran by a community
>>> member?
>>>
>>> The #DidYouKnow is mostly them, but #DYK is far more popular. But that's
>>> Twitter.
>>>
>>> The editorial curation will need to be figured out I think. Ed, Joe,
>>> Andrew myself are working on that, but we invite everyone to offer their
>>> opinion, suggestions, comments, insights!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:33 AM, James Alexander
>>> <jalexander@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Heh, fair point there was a lot of context missing there ;)
>>>>
>>>> For the record I'm all in favor, and I was doing a cheap joke for the
>>>> entertainment of those who knew the history :)
>>>>
>>>> The worst problems are usually something that we will have on our radar,
>>>> these articles are not hard to quickly review, and the community IS actually
>>>> very good at reviewing these. When there are DYKs we're not interested in
>>>> sharing there is no issue skipping them, there are 24 a day :) it's not like
>>>> we're going to run out.
>>>>
>>>> James Alexander
>>>> Community Advocacy
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>> (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Joe Sutherland
>>>> <jsutherland@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay, fair point. In fairness I think something like that's unlikely to
>>>>> happen in the future :P
>>>>>
>>>>> (For context for those unaware, he's talking about this:
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltarpedia ... think this may have been
>>>>> pre-Katherine :) )
>>>>>
>>>>> On 6 August 2015 at 18:26, James Alexander <jalexander@wikimedia.org>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Joe Sutherland
>>>>>> <jsutherland@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's gotten a lot better in fairness. Checking the article isn't
>>>>>>> awful before we publish it on social is also pretty trivial, thankfully.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Joe
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes.... Yes it has....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BUT DYK that Gibraltar was ceded to Britain "in perpetuity" under the
>>>>>> Treaty of Utrecht in 1713?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> /Ducks/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> James Alexander
>>>>>> Community Advocacy
>>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>>> (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Social-media mailing list
>>>>>> Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Joe Sutherland
>>>>> Communications Intern [remote]
>>>>> m: +44 (0) 7722 916 433 | t: @jrbsu | w: JSutherland
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Social-media mailing list
>>>>> Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Guss
>>> Research Analyst
>>> Wikimediafoundation.org
>>> mguss@wikimedia.org
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Social-media mailing list
>>> Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joe Sutherland
>> Communications Intern [remote]
>> m: +44 (0) 7722 916 433 | t: @jrbsu | w: JSutherland
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Katherine Maher
> Chief Communications Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 149 New Montgomery Street
> San Francisco, CA 94105
>
> +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
> +1 (415) 712 4873
> kmaher@wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Social-media mailing list
> Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media
>



--

Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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