I'm not convinced that the need to retype your password was the only or even the main reason why Strategy had relatively few participants from the community.
Using Strategy as a testbed for liquid threads was also a contributory factor, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who had problems with that. I think it would have been better to ask for one of the smaller wikis to volunteer - perhaps with a promise of extra developer resource in compensation. But using Strategy as a pilot for Liquid threads meant that for most editors the Strategy wiki was less familiar than it needed to be, and when there were glitches with Liquid threads it was all too easy to stop editing on Strategy and go back to your home wiki, that's certainly what I did.
I suspect that launching a completely new wiki where all banned users could come and troll was slightly too brave and open a move for some editors, and that it would have been better to have run Strategy as a project within meta. In fact if we are serious about the simplification agenda then migrating the contents of Strategy to meta would be a logical step to take, perhaps also with a rename to "new ideas" as that was what it effectively became.
WereSpielChequers
Message: 8 Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:08:31 -0500 From: MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: C9C6A57F.1083D%z@mzmcbride.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Risker wrote:
As far as I know, since always, Casey. One must log in separately there; going from another WMF project, one's login doesn't follow. One of the main reasons for the creation of SUL was so users could go from WMF project to project without having to log in again; partly for ease of use, but also because there are an awful lot of editors who don't want to link their usernames to their IP addresses, even accidentally. Especially now that most experienced users take SUL for granted, it's a barrier to participation when a link to a WMF project seeking broad participation requires editors to log in again, and hope that someone else hasn't created an account with their username first.
You're both right. In a literal sense, strategy.wikimedia.org doesn't work with unified login. That is, when you log in through en.wikipedia.org or elsewhere, you won't be logged in to every place where you have a Wikimedia account of the same name. (Though I think if you log in through strategy.wikimedia.org, you get the cookies for that site and the other sites, but you still wouldn't get the cookies for other *.wikimedia.org wikis.) A lot of people say "unified login" to mean you don't need to re-register your account and that your account will be linked to a global account of the same name, not that it will be automatically logged in, however. That was Casey's confusion.
This particular issue is the subject of bug 14407.[1] Whether it's a real barrier to entry, I don't know. The people involved in content work really don't need to be sucked into the kind of place that strategy.wikimedia.org is, in my opinion. :-)
MZMcBride
About liquid threads. It all depends on which Wikimedia project you're editing and publishing. If you have been using liquid threads since August 2010, using them now is like a walk in the park. Aversion to change is, however, a serious question and there's always a price to pay when it is mishandled or not handled at all.
Only now did I realized that Strategy consubstantiates most of what I thought was a distant hypothesis. I wonder no more. It's right there before my own eyes and for everybody to see. Strategy is such a great project that I don't even know if it has any administrators, bureaucrats and so on. Never noticed any of them. Never felt the need to look them up for any reason whatsoever. If what was sated is correct, that Strategy is a "completely new wiki where all banned users could come and troll," I'm very sorry to be the bearer of these disappointing news: editing and discussing in Strategy is a breeze. Please bear in mind that I do not have a 100 per cent knowledge of everything that has been written in Strategy. I'm given testimony based on my own experience and observation. I can even provide some quantitative data about that experience, whose analysis is beyond the scope of this post.
A very dear friend of mine, who is a sysop, ex-bureaucrat and checkuser of the pt.wiki, who has been careful enough to publicize in 12 of 19 edits that I was either banned or blocked in the pt.wiki, while never mentioning a single accomplishment of mine on pt.wiki or any other Wikimedia project, follows me everywhere I go like a good pet. As soon as I started to participate in the ongoing Strategy discussion, at 2:19, on March 13, 2011, a little over 24 hours later, at 4:10, March 14, he started editing on the same project, allegedly "to help on vandalism combat," presumably from this vandal (add that to scourge and troll). Why does your pet dog follow you everywhere you go? Because they love you and want your company. Anyway, he has been completely out of luck.
Moving to Meta as an alternative to Strategy, would be a giant step back for Wikimedia. Meta is the worst of the worst Wikimedia projects I know. Of course, Meta Queens and Kings (no pun intended, please read Rullers) are free to run any "new ideas" page they see fit, but I wouldn't put any of my money on it. As a matter of fact I would like to see them do it, so that we could all have the benefit of the results.
Before I finish, as the runner up to Meta's undisputed leadership, let me mention the Brazilian Wikipedia, where to this day both me and my students are still the object of vandalism and abuse. It is so bad that nobody dares to do anything about it, despite my continued pleas, and I have the evidence to back every word that I'm writing here. The Bronze goes to the English Wiktionary.
On the other end of the rainbow (again, no pun intended) is a pot of gold called Portuguese Wikibooks. It has been a privilege for me and my students to work there. On every virtue, every human quality that you may think of, the guys that run that project are absolutely outstanding. I should know. I am the same person, and they handle all the grief I cause them as true civilized human beings. It' has been an honor to be in such company.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)
At 07:34 10-04-2011, you wrote:
I'm not convinced that the need to retype your password was the only or even the main reason why Strategy had relatively few participants from the community.
Using Strategy as a testbed for liquid threads was also a contributory factor, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who had problems with that. I think it would have been better to ask for one of the smaller wikis to volunteer - perhaps with a promise of extra developer resource in compensation. But using Strategy as a pilot for Liquid threads meant that for most editors the Strategy wiki was less familiar than it needed to be, and when there were glitches with Liquid threads it was all too easy to stop editing on Strategy and go back to your home wiki, that's certainly what I did.
I suspect that launching a completely new wiki where all banned users could come and troll was slightly too brave and open a move for some editors, and that it would have been better to have run Strategy as a project within meta. In fact if we are serious about the simplification agenda then migrating the contents of Strategy to meta would be a logical step to take, perhaps also with a rename to "new ideas" as that was what it effectively became.
WereSpielChequers
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:34 AM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
project within meta. In fact if we are serious about the simplification agenda then migrating the contents of Strategy to meta would be a logical step to take, perhaps also with a rename to "new ideas" as that was what it effectively became.
That's not a bad idea. It should certainly be combined with the new projects discussions on Meta.
SJ
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