WMF is trying to push and pull on editor retention,
but that is pulling
a dead horse as long as the environment is not adapted to those the
people.
I fully agree, Romain
Greetings from Vienna, Heinz
Am 04.05.2015 um 18:51 schrieb Romaine Wiki:
Hello Lodewijk & all,
Yes we disagree on that, but that is fine.
My personal goal of organising Wiki Loves Monuments is to get the
cultural heritage monuments on Wikipedia with photo, and that is the
actual thing that happens for sure with Wiki Loves Monuments. If other
people want to set other goals, I am fine with that.
But, I have analysed for myself what is to me a realistic goal, and I do
only come out on having more cultural heritage monuments on Wikipedia
with photos. As side effect it is fine to have more people on board, but
not as main goal. Let me explain why.
For me personally Wikimedia/Wikipedia is a relative nice environment as
I well in easily learning myself new things and to pick up new stuff.
For people who have the capability to explore the Wikimedia environment
themselves, it works fine. For those people it is easy to continue after
a contest with taking pictures and writing articles, because they have
the capability to find those other things to do. But I think most people
who have that as strong personal characteristic have already tried this
and are still active or found it not interesting enough. The software
and environment is excellent for those people to work with, for early
adopters and pioneers. But those kind of people are almost sold out now.
But still the focus is still pointed towards this kind of people.
Over the past 5 years I have helped many people with editing Wikipedia
and with uploading pictures to Commons, and I have spoke with a lot of
people why they stopped editing Wikipedia. Almost none of those people
have the capacity of exploring the environment on their own. Besides the
(hostile) mentality and atmosphere on Wikipedia, the environment of
Wikipedia/Wikimedia does not full-fill basic needs those people have.
There is not a really friendly environment, there is no productive
environment that gives sufficient stimulation, and it is not a really
social environment the large majority needs. With the VisualEditor there
is an easy way to edit Wikipedia for people who are not comfortably with
wikisyntax, but it still lacks a social environment in what those people
are comfortable.
As a figure of speech: The early adopters like the assignment to build a
house in the middle of the desert, the large majority wants that house
already been built and wants to do the decoration only or wants a much
more comfortable living.
There is after a contest like Wiki Loves Monuments no environment at all
that fits to handle all the participants and give guidance so that they
can continue to be active. Those users that participated in a contest
fall in a black hole afterwards. This is with all the contests
volunteers from Wikimedia organised. But not just with contests, this is
also the core problem why edit-a-thons and workshops in editing
Wikipedia gives so little result in editor retention: it is going fine
during the edit-a-thon and the workshop when they have a personal coach
next to them to ask questions. But after the edit-a-thon or workshop,
those users are on their own. Wikipedia is aiming on creating content,
with all kinds of pages that try to support that. What Wikipedia misses
is a social environment that fits with these people and gives them
stimulation.
With past edit-a-thons I noticed also another strong need with the
participants. After the editing they all are interested to continue
doing this together as group. Then you can say that they can use a
project page on Wikipedia, but that does not work for them at all. It
appears way too primitive for them.
WMF is trying to push and pull on editor retention, but that is pulling
a dead horse as long as the environment is not adapted to those the people.
And please understand me well: I consider it as the most important to
get more people on board, but with the current environment it seems to
me to be unrealistic to have a big influence on this.
And yes, I think it is great all the organising teams have done so much
work. All the organisers have achieved something really great. <- This
is actually something I miss as well in this "evaluation".
Romaine
2015-05-02 14:02 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org
<mailto:lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>>:
I think this is a clear demonstration that WLM is a diverse project
:) You identify that having a picture for each monument is the main
goal, but as you know I disagree with that: for me the competition
is and will always be a tool to get more people on board, to get
people aware of the fact they can contribute, and help them over the
threshold. For many local competitions, it is more important however
to use WLM as a community building tool. I have seen great outcomes
in this field in the Middle East, where communities work together in
real life for one of their first main projects, and after that
continue to organize other activities as well.
Best,
Lodewijk
On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 1:54 PM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com
<mailto:romaine.wiki@gmail.com>> wrote:
The focus of the evaluation is very much biased.
The focus is too much on money, it gives me a horrible feeling,
the community/participants are not a factory plant in what every
employee needs to work a minimum number of hours. The goal of
Wiki Loves Monuments is to get all monuments with a good picture
on Wikipedia, not just of the most popular or easy monuments.
The first time a contest as such is organised the low hanging
fruits are done first, but they forget to mention that getting
the low hanging fruits is not the core goal of Wiki Loves
Monuments. The goal of Wiki Loves Monuments is to get a photo of
every monument. The more monuments get a picture, it becomes
much harder to ge a picture of the other monuments. It are too
much easy thoughts without thinking it through. It is failing in
describing the actual situation and misses totally what Wiki
Loves Monuments is about.
WMF has set some objectives for itself, and now the evaluate
those objectives/goals, even while Wiki Loves Monuments has a
different focus.
To me the evaluation is a signal that WMF is too far away from
the actual community.
Romaine
2015-05-02 13:26 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org
<mailto:lodewijk@effeietsanders.org>>:
Hi all,
it seems that the WMF evaluation department has once again
put together an evaluation of Wiki Loves Monuments. Out of
curiosity, were any of the organizers involved in this? A
quick glance suggests some factual errors, and again a big
focus on assuming WLM is a consistent project, that is
similar in each country (while in reality it is a diverse
collection of projects, tailored to the needs of each
country, by its community) and with a focus towards number
crunching.
Statements that begin with 'the average Wiki Loves Monuments
implementation/contest' make my eyes bleed... Did anyone
make a more thorough analysis of the report?
Best,
Lodewijk
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