Ian's and Yaroslav's comments are related:
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 8:20 AM, Ian A. Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
A very interesting analysis of the situation. It might now be interesting to correlate this to other communication methods in community use, to see if actual discussion has decreased or if it has shifted to other channels.
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
"Trivia":
- Russian Wikipedians don't use WMF based lists for their
communication. (Or they don't use mailing lists at all, which seems to me less possible.)
They do not use any mailing lists at all as far as I know. At least I am not aware of existence of any mailing lists for ru.wp
First, as you (Yaroslav) is active here, I would like to know what Russian Wikipedians are using for communication. Just wiki? Some other ways of communication? Wikipedia in Russian is not a small project, as well as it is growing -- which demands some level of systematic coordination. I think that the answer on this question may be very significant at least in understanding some part of lists traffic decrease.
Also, Japanese Wikipedians (anyone reading this?) may give to us a relevant answer. At least during the last decades, whenever I was getting informations about technology development, Japan was at the top. From computers usage, via mobile phone usage, up to very distinctive high-tech culture. If the general trends are toward decreasing of email communications, then, for sure, wikija-l would show more decrease than other lists. However, their activity is increasing! Also, Japanese Wikipedia is one of the biggest for a long time, so it can't be explained with less activity in the past and increasing of activity in the present (like the Russian case is). Are they one step forward (culturally), so we may expect similar development in the future? Or it is because of some specific reason? In both cases, this answer may be very significant!
At last, if email-like communication is moved to social networks, like Facebook is, then we have to go there, too. (Or, as I was talking in the past: to make a social networking site from Wikimedia projects.)