On 25/11/2009, at 12:00 AM, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
We also might want to look into policy overhauls to reduce barriers to contribution. ________________________________ From: David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Tue, November 24, 2009 5:53:35 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Can you tell us about ... - An Idea to encourage more edits
I actually like this idea, a LOT. The main page basically poses Wikipedia as a warehouse of content, which is fine, it is that, but also does little to pose Wikipedia as a collaborative project. Yeah, new visitors can technically TRY to edit our main page articles now, but generally the stuff that makes it there is already so polished, or so intensely guarded, that neophyte editors have little to no chance of making meaningful edits on them. I've had a couple articles I created in the Did You Know space, so I can definitely say that they aren't the editor-magnets that Featured Articles or In the News are, but I think putting out there on our front page articles that need CONTRIBUTORS rather than just READERS (in an obvious way, I mean--of course all our articles need contributors) would be a very helpful, and very easy thing for us to do.
In general, redesigning the reader-facing parts of the site to encourage contribution is something I strongly support. It will benefit us in the long run.
The emphasis at present appears to be on presenting us as a place to go to learn and discover things. This is great, but it does not necessarily encourage contribution.
-- Andrew Garrett agarrett@wikimedia.org http://werdn.us/