Florence Devouard, 29/07/2012 13:37:
But seriously... I would feel fine with us trying to claim that the GEP is the largest system effort to INCREASE the number of articles. It is probably true.
But we all know that the result is... so and so. Possibly good content, but also lot's of crap being reverted and deleted afterwards. Claiming it is the largest effort to boost high quality content is not only disingenous... but I actually find it counter productive and a tiny bit offensive toward the actual community.
Another passage is interesting too: «We've successfully brought in thousands of students [...] they typically make a small number of edits [...] and then leave. [...] initiatives like "Wiki Loves Monuments" have also achieved very high multimedia participation in spike months (22K uploaders in September 2011, when WLM took place, returning to normal levels immediately afterwards).»
Where are the statistics validating this interpretation? I didn't find anyone able to answer me how many of the thousands participants to WLM contributed to Commons or another project afterwards. Their motivation is very different from the students'.
Nemo