On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 5:52 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
Facebook has many disadvantages as a communication tool. The only reason to use it just because more and more people adapt to it.
TL;DR version of my response - I feel your analysis is too simplistic.
Along with those “disadvantages” also come advantages. In the WW group, more than 450 people (nearly 200 new people in one month) have found it useful by providing interactivity and immediacy while cutting through noise. You’ll find far fewer pontificating missives and a lot more sharing, dialogue and encouragement. As I said in the intro message to the group, it’s not meant to replace this list or to supplant on-wiki conversations. A main role it has played is to bring the most significant messages on this list to their attention, as many folks have abandoned Wikimedia-L as not worth their while.
The main disadvantage is the lack of good archiving - it is pretty hard to find something on fb after say - half a year.
Compare that to IRC which disallows logging altogether. It’s not just hard to find discussions, it’s impossible.
The other issue is the distraction which Facebook is causing… due to this
have no more time to edit Wikipedia :-( Some people
are more resitant to distraction some less - but fb affects everyone who go there and eat your time, which is the most precious asset of our volunteers.
Or, Facebook groups could be the exact reason you got back into editing Wikipedia.
See 100 Wikidays for example, which is a multilingual, international community of folks sharing their one Wikipedia article per day writings with each other. At Wikimania, the Facebook group was showcased as the reason this community of international editors was able to thrive, building on the “sharing, dialogue and encouragement” theme mentioned earlier.
You completely miss the role that Facebook, or any other social media site, can have in evangelizing Wikipedia.
- Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1426807560950747/ - Wikimania talk - https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/100wikidays - Wikimania video - https://archive.org/details/videoeditserver-91
-Andrew