On 07/14/2014 10:39 AM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
I still believe, that the success of English Wikipedia hinges on the ability of the community to generate content, and that that's the absolutely most important part of English Wikipedia - all else, including consumption by end users - follows from that.
I don't believe that's where the value lies. While I am certain we have a number of contributors who write for the sake of writing; ultimately we are *all* beholden to the readers. Collecting the world's knowledge and making it available only has value insofar as it is, in fact, used as such.
The servers running, the editors editing, the coders coding are all necessary components but all, in the end, subservient to the actual objective of serving the readers. Everything else is replacable.
In my long stint on the meta-side of the biggest project (and keeping abreast of what goes on elsewhere) I saw a very great deal of self-important navel gazing, but very little actual consideration that the "community" (if there is such a thing) is only a means to the actual end. The WMF certainly does not do everything perfectly, but at the very least it actually /attempts/ to keep an eye on the prize.
-- Marc