Reply to wiki-research-l only:
I found Lila's speech had three powerful images: a dark-complexioned
young girl holding a mobile phone, the innovation diffusion S-curve, and
the phrase "you're welcome". Altogether they demand us to think hard about
the path to "every one".
Most of us, as the early adopters (or even the innovators) of the
Internet and open knowledge movement, should prepare ourselves to say to
the potential new users: "You'e welcome." Before that, we need to do
something to win well-deserved thanks.
The S-curve innovation diffusion theory provides some methodological
starting points to classify user groups in a culture/society, which could
be a country, a demographic segmentation, a platform-based users, or the
whole humanity.
Some literature of innovation diffusion used by high-tech product
marketing professionals identifies the challenge to be the diffusion from
the early adopters (visionaries) to the early majority (pragmatists), or
from the diffusion rate of 16% to 50%. This diffusion phase is supposed to
be the fastest-growing period.
What I found in the diffusion of Internet in mainland China was that
Chinese Wikipedia was *forced* to miss out the the fastest-growing period
of 2006-2008 (See
http://goo.gl/4n9MId). Thus I will argue that
Wikipedia as a website cannot afford to miss out cultures/societies that
are experiencing internet population growth from 16% to 50% (or
alternatively 12.8% to 40% if the full internet penetration rate is
expected to be lower at 80%).
One practical research implication for researchers like us is that we
cannot be satisfied with survey research on the current users of Wikipedia
or other Wikiprojects (Such research is still important though). That is
NOT "every one" in Lila's speech. We might need to lobby other more general
social science survey projects like the World Internet Project (
http://www.worldinternetproject.net/#members) to include simple survey
questions such as online encyclopedia usage or user-generated content.
This alone of course is not enough to indicate how the development path
to "every one" can be done. Also, I believe there are other better research
ideas that hold other possibly more important missing pieces. In any case,
as researchers we need to be imaginative, methodological and empirical on
the target of "every one".
Best,
hanteng
2014-08-09 22:32 GMT+01:00 Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>om>:
Hi all,
I would like to encourage those of us who may have missed Lila's keynote
speech at Wikimania to listen to it. [1] In her speech, Lila takes a long
view of Wikimedia's history and future. She talks about incremental and
disruptive changes that are happening socially and technologically such as
the shift toward mobile and wearable computing, and the use of technology
in the developing world. She also talks about modes of contribution, and
changes inside the Wikimedia projects that would encourage more people to
participate actively.
Thanks very much, Lila. I look forward to seeing how the trends and
opportunities that you describe are addressed in our new strategic plan.
Pine
[1]
http://new.livestream.com/wikimania/saturday2014
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