On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here: * If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late. * For those who really don't want to have social networking options, there should be an option "turn it off". * I think that I am not the only one who is using social networking sites just to be in touch with friends. And a lot of my friends are Wikimedians; and I am more interested in their Wikimedian activities than what did they do at Elven Blood :) However, I think that games at some future social networking for Wikimedia projects would be much better: there are a lot of possible educational games which may be very nice.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
We should keep in mind that there is a much broader community out there beyond Wikimedians, who are interested in cooperative efforts in promoting priojects.
Personally, we've had great success working with the 2 Students For Free Culture chapters in New York City, who have supported Wikimedia projects as ardently as any Wikimedians.
On a level of real-life organization, there should be no sharp line between people with Wikimedia user accounts and those without. The basic skills in organizing real-life events and projects are orthogonal to particular technical skills or specializations.
What we really need is a social networking site for the whole Free Culture/Open Source community, so that we can build a thousand coalitions in a thousand different cities.
In researching this idea, I happened upon this proposal last year from the Free Software Foundation for a "Planet Libre":
http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundation...
That particular initiative appears to have foundered over recent months. I suggest we should revive it, and in cooperation with Free Software Foundation, develop a "Planet Libre" social networking site based on Elgg.
I would like to see such social networking site. But, I am skeptical about making one another social networking site. I've got calls for some academic and free society social networking sites, but I don't see them as active. Maybe it may function in some areas, like Orkut functions well in Brazil (I saw one more in Russia and one more in India). But, none of them is near to even MySpace, not to talk about Facebook.
At the other side, Wikipedia has the potential to gather significant community. We don't even need a notice at the site. We just need to make it and to tell that to the world. And we will be in this position for some time; at least until Wikipedia is at the top ten sites. Also, I am sure that free software community would treat Wikimedia social networking platform as their own.
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late.
- For those who really don't want to have social networking options,
there should be an option "turn it off".
- I think that I am not the only one who is using social networking
sites just to be in touch with friends. And a lot of my friends are Wikimedians; and I am more interested in their Wikimedian activities than what did they do at Elven Blood :) However, I think that games at some future social networking for Wikimedia projects would be much better: there are a lot of possible educational games which may be very nice.
I've always looked at it from this perspective: Imagine you are a donor, who doesn't edit, who knows nothing of the inner workings of the projects, and who only sees the content pages. You see a great resource full of lots of information, so you think "Of course I'll support this" and donate. Later you find out that the sites are also being used for social networking and that your money is going to fund a free-content, open-source version of Myspace/Facebook. If you could care less about free content/open source stuff, and donated simply to help spread information, you're probably going to be a little mad that your money isn't going to fund what you though it did.
Whether making the "social networking" aspect of the projects "official" parts would make this issue better or worse I'm not sure. If its official, there's going to be a lot more resources put into it (though software-wise, Wikia has already done a lot of the work), but it would potentially seem less deceptive or hidden from the general public.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
We should keep in mind that there is a much broader community out there beyond Wikimedians, who are interested in cooperative efforts in promoting priojects.
Personally, we've had great success working with the 2 Students For Free Culture chapters in New York City, who have supported Wikimedia projects as ardently as any Wikimedians.
On a level of real-life organization, there should be no sharp line between people with Wikimedia user accounts and those without. The basic skills in organizing real-life events and projects are orthogonal to particular technical skills or specializations.
What we really need is a social networking site for the whole Free Culture/Open Source community, so that we can build a thousand coalitions in a thousand different cities.
In researching this idea, I happened upon this proposal last year from the Free Software Foundation for a "Planet Libre":
http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundation...
That particular initiative appears to have foundered over recent months. I suggest we should revive it, and in cooperation with Free Software Foundation, develop a "Planet Libre" social networking site based on Elgg.
I would like to see such social networking site. But, I am skeptical about making one another social networking site. I've got calls for some academic and free society social networking sites, but I don't see them as active. Maybe it may function in some areas, like Orkut functions well in Brazil (I saw one more in Russia and one more in India). But, none of them is near to even MySpace, not to talk about Facebook.
At the other side, Wikipedia has the potential to gather significant community. We don't even need a notice at the site. We just need to make it and to tell that to the world. And we will be in this position for some time; at least until Wikipedia is at the top ten sites. Also, I am sure that free software community would treat Wikimedia social networking platform as their own.
The other option is to create a separate social networking site and encourage Wikimedians to use it. The Freenode IRC network is heavily used by Wikimedians and fairly integrated into some projects, despite it being an entirely separate service.
Hoi, If you do not know the inner workings of a project, you would not get mad because you would be happy with what you love about the project. This would be all the great information that is available to you. Once you learn about a project and you learn that this social networking software has as a benefit that the cohesion of our community improved and as a result the quality of the data improved with it, you would applaud the social networking that is facilitated by the software.
Really, your point is as valid as mine. It just has a different orientation. As it is, there is a lot of networking going on. This networking is fragmented over many platforms and consequently we are not reaping the benefits as we might do. A strong case can be made for implementing existing social networking software. However, when it comes to straight functionality, there are other things that i would give priority over developing our own social software. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Alex mrzmanwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late.
- For those who really don't want to have social networking options,
there should be an option "turn it off".
- I think that I am not the only one who is using social networking
sites just to be in touch with friends. And a lot of my friends are Wikimedians; and I am more interested in their Wikimedian activities than what did they do at Elven Blood :) However, I think that games at some future social networking for Wikimedia projects would be much better: there are a lot of possible educational games which may be very nice.
I've always looked at it from this perspective: Imagine you are a donor, who doesn't edit, who knows nothing of the inner workings of the projects, and who only sees the content pages. You see a great resource full of lots of information, so you think "Of course I'll support this" and donate. Later you find out that the sites are also being used for social networking and that your money is going to fund a free-content, open-source version of Myspace/Facebook. If you could care less about free content/open source stuff, and donated simply to help spread information, you're probably going to be a little mad that your money isn't going to fund what you though it did.
Whether making the "social networking" aspect of the projects "official" parts would make this issue better or worse I'm not sure. If its official, there's going to be a lot more resources put into it (though software-wise, Wikia has already done a lot of the work), but it would potentially seem less deceptive or hidden from the general public.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com
wrote:
We should keep in mind that there is a much broader community out there beyond Wikimedians, who are interested in cooperative efforts in promoting priojects.
Personally, we've had great success working with the 2 Students For Free Culture chapters in New York City, who have supported Wikimedia projects as ardently as any Wikimedians.
On a level of real-life organization, there should be no sharp line between people with Wikimedia user accounts and those without. The basic skills in organizing real-life events and projects are orthogonal to particular technical skills or specializations.
What we really need is a social networking site for the whole Free Culture/Open Source community, so that we can build a thousand coalitions in a thousand different cities.
In researching this idea, I happened upon this proposal last year from the Free Software Foundation for a "Planet Libre":
http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundation...
That particular initiative appears to have foundered over recent months. I suggest we should revive it, and in cooperation with Free Software Foundation, develop a "Planet Libre" social networking site based on Elgg.
I would like to see such social networking site. But, I am skeptical about making one another social networking site. I've got calls for some academic and free society social networking sites, but I don't see them as active. Maybe it may function in some areas, like Orkut functions well in Brazil (I saw one more in Russia and one more in India). But, none of them is near to even MySpace, not to talk about Facebook.
At the other side, Wikipedia has the potential to gather significant community. We don't even need a notice at the site. We just need to make it and to tell that to the world. And we will be in this position for some time; at least until Wikipedia is at the top ten sites. Also, I am sure that free software community would treat Wikimedia social networking platform as their own.
The other option is to create a separate social networking site and encourage Wikimedians to use it. The Freenode IRC network is heavily used by Wikimedians and fairly integrated into some projects, despite it being an entirely separate service.
-- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hoi, If you do not know the inner workings of a project, you would not get mad because you would be happy with what you love about the project. This would be all the great information that is available to you. Once you learn about a project and you learn that this social networking software has as a benefit that the cohesion of our community improved and as a result the quality of the data improved with it, you would applaud the social networking that is facilitated by the software.
Really, your point is as valid as mine. It just has a different orientation. As it is, there is a lot of networking going on. This networking is fragmented over many platforms and consequently we are not reaping the benefits as we might do. A strong case can be made for implementing existing social networking software. However, when it comes to straight functionality, there are other things that i would give priority over developing our own social software. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Alex mrzmanwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late.
- For those who really don't want to have social networking options,
there should be an option "turn it off".
- I think that I am not the only one who is using social networking
sites just to be in touch with friends. And a lot of my friends are Wikimedians; and I am more interested in their Wikimedian activities than what did they do at Elven Blood :) However, I think that games at some future social networking for Wikimedia projects would be much better: there are a lot of possible educational games which may be very nice.
I've always looked at it from this perspective: Imagine you are a donor, who doesn't edit, who knows nothing of the inner workings of the projects, and who only sees the content pages. You see a great resource full of lots of information, so you think "Of course I'll support this" and donate. Later you find out that the sites are also being used for social networking and that your money is going to fund a free-content, open-source version of Myspace/Facebook. If you could care less about free content/open source stuff, and donated simply to help spread information, you're probably going to be a little mad that your money isn't going to fund what you though it did.
Whether making the "social networking" aspect of the projects "official" parts would make this issue better or worse I'm not sure. If its official, there's going to be a lot more resources put into it (though software-wise, Wikia has already done a lot of the work), but it would potentially seem less deceptive or hidden from the general public.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com
wrote:
We should keep in mind that there is a much broader community out there beyond Wikimedians, who are interested in cooperative efforts in promoting priojects.
Personally, we've had great success working with the 2 Students For Free Culture chapters in New York City, who have supported Wikimedia projects as ardently as any Wikimedians.
On a level of real-life organization, there should be no sharp line between people with Wikimedia user accounts and those without. The basic skills in organizing real-life events and projects are orthogonal to particular technical skills or specializations.
What we really need is a social networking site for the whole Free Culture/Open Source community, so that we can build a thousand coalitions in a thousand different cities.
In researching this idea, I happened upon this proposal last year from the Free Software Foundation for a "Planet Libre":
http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundation...
That particular initiative appears to have foundered over recent months. I suggest we should revive it, and in cooperation with Free Software Foundation, develop a "Planet Libre" social networking site based on Elgg.
I would like to see such social networking site. But, I am skeptical about making one another social networking site. I've got calls for some academic and free society social networking sites, but I don't see them as active. Maybe it may function in some areas, like Orkut functions well in Brazil (I saw one more in Russia and one more in India). But, none of them is near to even MySpace, not to talk about Facebook.
At the other side, Wikipedia has the potential to gather significant community. We don't even need a notice at the site. We just need to make it and to tell that to the world. And we will be in this position for some time; at least until Wikipedia is at the top ten sites. Also, I am sure that free software community would treat Wikimedia social networking platform as their own.
The other option is to create a separate social networking site and encourage Wikimedians to use it. The Freenode IRC network is heavily used by Wikimedians and fairly integrated into some projects, despite it being an entirely separate service.
-- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Alex mrzmanwiki@gmail.com wrote:
The other option is to create a separate social networking site and encourage Wikimedians to use it. The Freenode IRC network is heavily used by Wikimedians and fairly integrated into some projects, despite it being an entirely separate service.
You have to be a Wikimedian (or from free software community, or from freenode staff) to know that some channels at irc.freenode.net are useful. We don't need one more cabal place, but one more place attractive for users who are possible contributors.
However, Wikipedia *is* very attractive, but not for participation! All of my non-Wikimedian friends with Internet access are using Wikipedia without any will to make an account. But, they are participating in Facebook very extensively.
BTW, usual impression related to Wikipedia is something like: - Wow, this is the new Babel Tower! It is so impressive, I am looking at The Tower every day. - But, inside... Oh, this is The Taboo! This is just for The Priests of The Cabal!
Or a typical conversation with a person well introduced in Internet (including the fact that Wikipedia may be edited by anyone):
- Oh, you are working for Wikipedia! - It's not like that... - Oh, this is great! Wikipedia is so great! - Yes, it is, but... - I am using it every day! It is so useful! - Yes... - And you are so lucky 'cause you work for Wikipedia! - ...
Usually, it is useless to try to explain that it is not so hard to "work for Wikipedia". Actually, because it *is* hard -- to explain it. Even we are an open community, there are tons of implicit and explicit rules which should be learned to start to participate at any level. As I mentioned before, I am finding Wikipedians with 2-3 years of experience who don't know for this list.
Whatever the reasons are (global culture which is not able to believe that there is a really open community somewhere in the world; or idiosyncratic culture of Wikipedia), we are in the position that we have to try to work to transform users to contributors. And social networking platform is one very valid option.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Whatever the reasons are (global culture which is not able to believe that there is a really open community somewhere in the world; or idiosyncratic culture of Wikipedia), we are in the position that we have to try to work to transform users to contributors.
Why? Maximizing the number of contributors is certainly not the goal. What if you take the declines as a given? How can the foundation best achieve its goals then?
And social networking platform is one very valid option.
I'm not sure how Wikia does it, but something tied in to single user login would probably be useful. Of course, for myself personally I wouldn't be interested in a social networking platform that isn't based on real world identities.
Given Brianna's comments about losing interest in article writing in favor of blogging and chapter work, due to its better distribution of egoboo, I think the foundation also has to worry about Knol and projects like it speeding along the contributor decline. This is especially true if the relicensing plans threaten to take away what little attribution and egoboo the project still offers.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
on 11/2/08 1:40 PM, Milos Rancic at millosh@gmail.com wrote:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles...
A sidebar: When The Apple Computer organization was created, a conscious decision was made by its creators to establish a company culture that was, by existing corporate standards, considered informal. This encouraged creativity, reduced stress and produced a culture of tolerance and, ultimately, a great product. Their mission was to create the best damn computer a creative mind in a creative culture could produce. "Socializing" among its employees was not only encouraged, but the ability to socialize was almost a prerequisite for being a part of the team.
The quality of a culture can be measured, in part, by what that culture produces.
Be healthy,
Marc Riddell
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:24 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
on 11/2/08 1:40 PM, Milos Rancic at millosh@gmail.com wrote:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles...
A sidebar: When The Apple Computer organization was created, a conscious decision was made by its creators to establish a company culture that was, by existing corporate standards, considered informal. This encouraged creativity, reduced stress and produced a culture of tolerance and, ultimately, a great product. Their mission was to create the best damn computer a creative mind in a creative culture could produce. "Socializing" among its employees was not only encouraged, but the ability to socialize was almost a prerequisite for being a part of the team.
I think we already have a very social environment, but this socialising is "focused". We chat about topics that interest us all the time on the wikis, usually with people who are also similarly interested enthusiasts and often with people who are surprisingly well informed. But, we are always doing it in a way that is also "productive".
For example, we dont endlessly tolerate trolling and idle speculation on Wikipedia, because it isnt productive. It isnt strictly forbidden, but if it is done on pages that others frequent, it will be viewed as an interruption, because there is more valuable discussions going on, and the rest of us want to focus on those, and we want to "clear the air" so that more valuable contributions are attracted.
There is so much to learn and participate in on the wikis, that if someone is primarily socialising, they havent caught the "wiki bug". These are the people who would be fired from Apple because they didnt fit in.
The quality of a culture can be measured, in part, by what that culture produces.
I think it is fair to say that the Wikimedia culture has already proved itself to be a producer of the "impossible". This speaks volumes about the culture as it is.
Can our culture be improved? Perhaps.
But ... it isn't broken, so we should be wary about trying to "fix it".
Thanks for your input Marc.
-- John Vandenberg
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 2:18 AM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:24 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
on 11/2/08 1:40 PM, Milos Rancic at millosh@gmail.com wrote:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles...
A sidebar: When The Apple Computer organization was created, a conscious decision was made by its creators to establish a company culture that was, by existing corporate standards, considered informal. This encouraged creativity, reduced stress and produced a culture of tolerance and, ultimately, a great product. Their mission was to create the best damn computer a creative mind in a creative culture could produce. "Socializing" among its employees was not only encouraged, but the ability to socialize was almost a prerequisite for being a part of the team.
I think we already have a very social environment, but this socialising is "focused". We chat about topics that interest us all the time on the wikis, usually with people who are also similarly interested enthusiasts and often with people who are surprisingly well informed. But, we are always doing it in a way that is also "productive".
For example, we dont endlessly tolerate trolling and idle speculation on Wikipedia, because it isnt productive. It isnt strictly forbidden, but if it is done on pages that others frequent, it will be viewed as an interruption, because there is more valuable discussions going on, and the rest of us want to focus on those, and we want to "clear the air" so that more valuable contributions are attracted.
There is so much to learn and participate in on the wikis, that if someone is primarily socialising, they havent caught the "wiki bug". These are the people who would be fired from Apple because they didnt fit in.
I'm more-or-less satisfied with our online discussions of specific topics, i.e. specific articles on Wikipedia.
I think the greatest benefit of social networking will be putting people into contact with other Wikimedians in their cities, therefore facilitating more real-life contacts in "productive" meetups, and the more mature and humanized social environments and structures that can hopefully foster.
Thanks, Pharos
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:24 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net
wrote:
A sidebar: When The Apple Computer organization was created, a conscious decision was made by its creators to establish a company culture that was, by existing corporate standards, considered informal. This encouraged creativity, reduced stress and produced a culture of tolerance and, ultimately, a great product. Their mission was to create the best damn computer a creative mind in a creative culture could produce. "Socializing" among its employees was not only encouraged, but the ability to socialize was almost a prerequisite for being a part of the team.
on 11/3/08 3:18 AM, John Vandenberg at jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
I think we already have a very social environment, but this socialising is "focused". We chat about topics that interest us all the time on the wikis, usually with people who are also similarly interested enthusiasts and often with people who are surprisingly well informed. But, we are always doing it in a way that is also "productive".
For example, we dont endlessly tolerate trolling and idle speculation on Wikipedia, because it isnt productive. It isnt strictly forbidden, but if it is done on pages that others frequent, it will be viewed as an interruption, because there is more valuable discussions going on, and the rest of us want to focus on those, and we want to "clear the air" so that more valuable contributions are attracted.
There is so much to learn and participate in on the wikis, that if someone is primarily socialising, they havent caught the "wiki bug". These are the people who would be fired from Apple because they didnt fit in.
The quality of a culture can be measured, in part, by what that culture produces.
I think it is fair to say that the Wikimedia culture has already proved itself to be a producer of the "impossible". This speaks volumes about the culture as it is.
Can our culture be improved? Perhaps.
But ... it isn't broken, so we should be wary about trying to "fix it".
Thanks for your input Marc.
Thank you for yours, John. What disturbs me a great deal about the Wikipedia Community culture (and I only speak of the English one) is its seeming inability to accept criticism or "dissent". And I am not speaking of the crap that such sites as Wikipedia Review puts out. I'm talking about honest, often well though out, criticism from persons within the Community itself. Most often when such criticism is offered, the wagons get circled, the defenses go up, and the critic is seen as "unpatriotic" (sound familiar :-). For me, I have rarely, if ever, learned anything from someone who agrees with me all of the time.
Marc
-- The intelligent person knows his abilities - The wise person knows his limitations.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late.
- For those who really don't want to have social networking options,
there should be an option "turn it off".
- I think that I am not the only one who is using social networking
sites just to be in touch with friends. And a lot of my friends are Wikimedians; and I am more interested in their Wikimedian activities than what did they do at Elven Blood :) However, I think that games at some future social networking for Wikimedia projects would be much better: there are a lot of possible educational games which may be very nice.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:47 PM, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
We should keep in mind that there is a much broader community out there beyond Wikimedians, who are interested in cooperative efforts in promoting priojects.
Personally, we've had great success working with the 2 Students For Free Culture chapters in New York City, who have supported Wikimedia projects as ardently as any Wikimedians.
On a level of real-life organization, there should be no sharp line between people with Wikimedia user accounts and those without. The basic skills in organizing real-life events and projects are orthogonal to particular technical skills or specializations.
What we really need is a social networking site for the whole Free Culture/Open Source community, so that we can build a thousand coalitions in a thousand different cities.
In researching this idea, I happened upon this proposal last year from the Free Software Foundation for a "Planet Libre":
http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundation...
That particular initiative appears to have foundered over recent months. I suggest we should revive it, and in cooperation with Free Software Foundation, develop a "Planet Libre" social networking site based on Elgg.
I would like to see such social networking site. But, I am skeptical about making one another social networking site. I've got calls for some academic and free society social networking sites, but I don't see them as active. Maybe it may function in some areas, like Orkut functions well in Brazil (I saw one more in Russia and one more in India). But, none of them is near to even MySpace, not to talk about Facebook.
At the other side, Wikipedia has the potential to gather significant community. We don't even need a notice at the site. We just need to make it and to tell that to the world. And we will be in this position for some time; at least until Wikipedia is at the top ten sites. Also, I am sure that free software community would treat Wikimedia social networking platform as their own.
If we pursue an idea of this kind, we could implement some kind of "Wikicommunity" features in userspace.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicommunity
Possibly we could have some minimal standards of being an actual contributor before the Wikicommunity feature is activated for a particular user.
This would be a check on non-Wikimedians using us as their Myspace alternative.
Thanks, Pharos
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If we pursue an idea of this kind, we could implement some kind of "Wikicommunity" features in userspace.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicommunity
Possibly we could have some minimal standards of being an actual contributor before the Wikicommunity feature is activated for a particular user.
This would be a check on non-Wikimedians using us as their Myspace alternative.
Thanks, Pharos
This is a routine feature on MUDs where a point system results in levels with different prerogatives. Obviously, as in a MUD, there are numerous ways to game any such system. However, someone who has made 10,000 edits might be permitted to have a personally oriented web page and access to wikicommunity features.
Fred
2008/11/2 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
There are many who seem to feel that using Wikipedia for socializing and fun is contrary to our mission, especially if it attracts people who aren't contributors to the encyclopedia. Personally, I think that's nonsense, and the community benefits from increased cohesion when there is fun and socializing to be had, but I realize that many people don't see it that way.
There are three issues here:
- If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have
social networking because of the principles -- besides your (positive) point -- I have one more (negative): We are not able to choose anymore what do we like, we are in the critical position and we desperately need some fresh blood. Even it may be not so obvious at the field, leaving this discussion for the next year this time -- may be too late.
Social networking features will not help you there. You can't move for sites with social networking elements. People don't use them.
Lower participation is probably a mixture of a number of factors:
Wikipedia seems complete. It is now somewhat unusual to look up a subject and find nothing.
Wikipedia looks complete for the most part. Red links are increasingly uncommon.
Anyone can edit hits a wall. Can anyone really add anything useful to say [[Tank]] or even the better known sub articles such as [[Challenger_2_tank]]? Most people are not going to see articles they can add something to.
People don't communicate a vast amount for a number of reasons:
1)lack of need. You don't really need to communicate to find things to do or edit.
2)People are tending to work on rather specialist articles so there may be a slight lack of other people to talk to. Lots of people can and will talk about the leopard 2 tank the [[Pz-61]] less so.
3)Information overload. There are still a lot of people trying to tell you things. People tend to filter them out and after a while that filter becomes a bit aggressive (talk page templates are one example of this)
On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 8:07 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Social networking features will not help you there. You can't move for sites with social networking elements. People don't use them.
Lower participation is probably a mixture of a number of factors:
Wikipedia seems complete. It is now somewhat unusual to look up a subject and find nothing.
Wikipedia looks complete for the most part. Red links are increasingly uncommon.
Anyone can edit hits a wall. Can anyone really add anything useful to say [[Tank]] or even the better known sub articles such as [[Challenger_2_tank]]? Most people are not going to see articles they can add something to.
People don't communicate a vast amount for a number of reasons:
1)lack of need. You don't really need to communicate to find things to do or edit.
2)People are tending to work on rather specialist articles so there may be a slight lack of other people to talk to. Lots of people can and will talk about the leopard 2 tank the [[Pz-61]] less so.
3)Information overload. There are still a lot of people trying to tell you things. People tend to filter them out and after a while that filter becomes a bit aggressive (talk page templates are one example of this)
First, I would like to see social networking features on and then to talk about its usefulness :) It is one thing to use social networking elements if you have to click 10 times and write 30 characters inside of very specific userbox; besides that you have to think would this userbox be deleted in a couple of months... The other thing are social networking options which would give to you close-to-Facebook interface inside of your profile.
Second, you are missing the point. You are not the first person in this discussion who is arguing that there are a lot of different reasons, even the systematic answer is very obvious. At the other side, I don't say that a number of different tendencies don't have their position in the whole situation. Systematic answer: there are some problems inside of our functioning (possibly, lack of the idea what we are doing, except that we are doing "a great thing") -> people don't like to participate as they liked it before -> less contributors [even almost the same number of readers] -> less activity -> less readers -> less contributors...
* Lower level of activity is not just related to the English Wikipedia, it is related to [almost] all projects -- even they have just ~30.000 articles. * We missed the whole generation of Internet users. People from academic expertises in humanities are now much better educated in computers than they were in 2003. * However, even English Wikipedia has very low quality articles in, for example, linguistics. (I am trying to use English Wikipedia as a starting point and something like 50-50 are chances for me to find a useful set of articles in linguistics; even I am very well introduced how to find relevant data on Wikipedia.)
So, even you detected the right problems, even the answer is so complex that we have to deal with one by one thing (but I don't think that the answer is *so* complex), we have to deal with them. Otherwise, we will go down (as we *are* going down; we are just to high to realize that the end of falling is ultimately a body which generates gravity).
Hi,
What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking" type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use it, and I think he is probably right.
Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will even encourage people to use it more.
Thoughts?
Brianna
Hi,
What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking" type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use it, and I think he is probably right.
Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will even encourage people to use it more.
Thoughts?
Brianna
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
Cheers Yaroslav
2008/11/4 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Hi,
What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking" type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use it, and I think he is probably right.
Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will even encourage people to use it more.
Thoughts?
Brianna
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
I think that is a false argument. If people don't want to write articles, they won't write articles, regardless of whether or not you take away their toys. Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to volunteers. I also think such people are far less likely to make it to meta, compared to a large Wikipedia project. If you know about meta, I would say odds are extremely good that you are a Wikimedian.
And it does depend if you consider them "toys" or "communication tools". If you don't want to use them in a "frivolous" way (or at all) then fine, don't. None of your time will be wasted.
Brianna
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
I think that is a false argument. If people don't want to write articles, they won't write articles, regardless of whether or not you take away their toys.
Huh? If you give people reasons to hang around, burdening our systems (and I'm not talking about the servers, I'm referring to things like dispute resolution, copyright vetting, and the human workload of monitoring RC), without doing anything even arguably related to the mission then some will. I don't see how there can be much question over that.
Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to volunteers.
Yet there are plenty of organizations which rely extensively on volunteer labor and yet manage to preserve a professional and focused working environment.
This often repeated claim that volunteers can't be directed false by definition. "A volunteer is someone who works for free for a community or for the benefit of natural environment primarily because they choose to do so." If someone is unwilling to stick to the mission because they'd rather be picking their nose then they probably are not volunteers. Just because we're very poor at organizing volunteers (we make up for it with volume),and we have a lot of non-volunteers doesn't mean that volunteers can't be organized.
Regardless, this discussion isn't about directing volunteers, it's about adding facilities which are external to the mission. "Our workers can smuggle in beer and drink on the job anyway, and we can't really stop them. Lets provide a keg." Unless you hope to argue that "social networking" would be a useful organization tool, but if so you're using the wrong word ("social networking" is a tainted word; linkedin doesn't describe themselves that way for example), and the wrong arguments (that some people would enjoy using isn't a good argument).
I think Pharos is generally on the ball with respect to the genuinely useful uses: If the tools are generally on-topic then it's possible for it to be productive.
I also think such people are far less likely to make it to meta, compared to a large Wikipedia project. If you know about meta, I would say odds are extremely good that you are a Wikimedian.
OKAY. Then this is the pattern we've used in the past: Relegating things to meta where they will cause no harm or effect.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to volunteers.
Yet there are plenty of organizations which rely extensively on volunteer labor and yet manage to preserve a professional and focused working environment.
A number of universities have used tools like Elgg in fostering a professional environment. I don't think there have been serious problems along these lines in academic settings.
Unless you hope to argue that "social networking" would be a useful organization tool, but if so you're using the wrong word ("social networking" is a tainted word; linkedin doesn't describe themselves that way for example), and the wrong arguments (that some people would enjoy using isn't a good argument).
I think Pharos is generally on the ball with respect to the genuinely useful uses: If the tools are generally on-topic then it's possible for it to be productive.
I think we have to draw a reasonable line with the scope of tools. Obviously there -are- certain things that would be inappropriate for a Wikimedian networking tool (these things are probably obvious to everyone).
Still, I don't think allowing say, local Wikimedians in Los Angeles to go bowling together, and organizing that through such a tool would be such an unproductive thing. It is social activities like this that can lay the groundwork for future "productive" projects.
In this, I think we should try to follow the models for such tools as used by university projects. Certainly we should be aiming for a compromise that is someway between Facebook and our userpage policy with respect to such tools.
Thanks, Pharos
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On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/4 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
I think that is a false argument. If people don't want to write articles, they won't write articles, regardless of whether or not you take away their toys. Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to volunteers. I also think such people are far less likely to make it to meta, compared to a large Wikipedia project. If you know about meta, I would say odds are extremely good that you are a Wikimedian.
And it does depend if you consider them "toys" or "communication tools". If you don't want to use them in a "frivolous" way (or at all) then fine, don't. None of your time will be wasted.
I agree with Brianna. Besides that, it may open a lot of space for making really good applications for reading and contributing to Wikipedia. For example, MW/WM may open its API for external (free software) applications (at which point we are near to the question of using AGPL instead of GPL; but, please open other thread if you [plural] want to discuss about that :) ), or an easier way how to program and upload something which would be useful.
For example, Wikipedia would be the most useful place for keeping bibliographies and personal scientific work. Such feature would gather around Wikipedia a lot of scientists.
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 3:27 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/4 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
Do we want them to be using it, on WMF servers?
We have well ordered websites because we judge content and associated pages by their utility to the mission. Pages that dont further the mission are discarded.
"Social networking" invokes a much lower bar, as freedom of expression is expected, and so any "content" that doesnt break the law is usually permissible. We have avoided these issues by having very high code of user conduct, and a large part of that is due to contributors being expected to not indulge in personal expression if that doesnt fit within the project scope.
I think that is a false argument. If people don't want to write articles, they won't write articles, regardless of whether or not you take away their toys. Cracking the whip doesn't mean much to volunteers. I also think such people are far less likely to make it to meta, compared to a large Wikipedia project. If you know about meta, I would say odds are extremely good that you are a Wikimedian.
Volunteers react to stimulus. Some people find the project work to be stimulating enough, and dont want their project environment becoming cluttered with people who no longer find the project stimulating.
And it does depend if you consider them "toys" or "communication tools". If you don't want to use them in a "frivolous" way (or at all) then fine, don't. None of your time will be wasted.
I agree with Brianna. Besides that, it may open a lot of space for making really good applications for reading and contributing to Wikipedia. For example, MW/WM may open its API for external (free software) applications (at which point we are near to the question of using AGPL instead of GPL; but, please open other thread if you [plural] want to discuss about that :) ), or an easier way how to program and upload something which would be useful.
The APIs are already open; arnt they?
If someone built a beta of a cool app that Wikipedians would use often as part of their reading/contributing activities, I doubt WMF would actively prevent it from pulling down the content it needs.
Facebook apps are already possible.
For example, Wikipedia would be the most useful place for keeping bibliographies and personal scientific work. Such feature would gather around Wikipedia a lot of scientists.
It is very strange that you would think of "Wikipedia" as the host of those things. The "Wikisource" and "Author" namespaces of Wikisource are devoted to bibliographies, and Wikiversity is intended to host personal and collaborative scientific work (OR).
There is an abundance of unfinished initiatives littered around the wikis, which would encourage new participants if only someone puts some energy into them, especially on the smaller projects. Wikipedia has been the major source of new contributors for a long time, but that will wane because not every man and his dog can, or wants to, write about the remaining redlinks. That said, there are enormous gaps in the major Wikipedia projects, and the smaller Wikipedias are a long way from being usable.
We do need a continual stream of new contributors, but it is incorrect to assume that we need more or less in order to be successful. WMF is already successful, and if the projects continue at the current rate, they will be continue to be successful. I dont think we should panic if/when the bigger projects slow down and contributions start to decline. A good percentage of those people are probably moving to other projects or languages.
-- John Vandenberg
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:54 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
"Social networking" invokes a much lower bar, as freedom of expression is expected, and so any "content" that doesnt break the law is usually permissible. We have avoided these issues by having very high code of user conduct, and a large part of that is due to contributors being expected to not indulge in personal expression if that doesnt fit within the project scope.
This would be, of course, at the separate place, as an extension of user profiles. So, this wouldn't contaminate articles.
The APIs are already open; arnt they?
If someone built a beta of a cool app that Wikipedians would use often as part of their reading/contributing activities, I doubt WMF would actively prevent it from pulling down the content it needs.
Facebook apps are already possible.
So, we are making business to Facebook. The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
It is very strange that you would think of "Wikipedia" as the host of those things. The "Wikisource" and "Author" namespaces of Wikisource are devoted to bibliographies, and Wikiversity is intended to host personal and collaborative scientific work (OR).
Wikipedia is the most useful place all over Wikimedia projects; at least for the majority of users. So, this was the starting point... But, of course, such application would be able and should include organization of work all over Wikimedia projects (as well as organization of *personal* references; not bibliographies of scientists).
We do need a continual stream of new contributors, but it is incorrect to assume that we need more or less in order to be successful. WMF is already successful, and if the projects continue at the current rate, they will be continue to be successful. I dont think we should panic if/when the bigger projects slow down and contributions start to decline. A good percentage of those people are probably moving to other projects or languages.
Continual stream of new contributors is decreasing and number of active and very active contributors is decreasing, too -- all over the Wikimedia projects (with very small number of exceptions). (This is, i think fourth or fifth time in the last couple of days that I am repeating it; I became boring to myself.)
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Continual stream of new contributors is decreasing and number of active and very active contributors is decreasing,
[snip]
I've not seen any concrete evidence that supports this. Traffic in meta areas doesn't always translate into real productive work.
I can't speak for project that I don't frequently use, but EnWP and Commons haven't started imploding as far as I can tell.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've not seen any concrete evidence that supports this. Traffic in meta areas doesn't always translate into real productive work.
In one of the emails I explained it through data from a couple of projects; without en.wp, of course, because statistics are too old. However, I don't think that behavior is significantly different than in French and Italian cases (according to the list activity).
There are no statistics for Commons [for which I know], except for the list, where communication decreases, too.
Besides that, the only case which doesn't support the relation between mailing list activity and project activity is a negative one. Japanese Wikipedians talk more at the list, but their activity at the project was in decrease for the period January-May 2008.
I can't speak for project that I don't frequently use, but EnWP and Commons haven't started imploding as far as I can tell.
The main reason for raising this question is exactly to prevent imploding. (BTW, we already have one implosion: The third Wikiquote, Polish, has less than 50 edits per day, the fourth, German, has somewhat more than 50 edits per day.)
Also, I would be happy if someone [like you] checks more systematically statistics. I have very rudimentary knowledge in statistics (yes, I know that curves of development are not not straight forward and that a couple of paths are possible), so someone with better knowledge in that field should check it. (And I think that the question is very important. I would be very happy to see that I am wrong.)
[1] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046831.html
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:54 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
The APIs are already open; arnt they?
If someone built a beta of a cool app that Wikipedians would use often as part of their reading/contributing activities, I doubt WMF would actively prevent it from pulling down the content it needs.
Facebook apps are already possible.
So, we are making business to Facebook. The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
I thought the point was "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free licensehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:free_contentor in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
So, we are making business to Facebook. The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
I thought the point was "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free licensehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:free_contentor in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"
I don't see the connection between those two issues. You quoted WMF's (and our) general goal, I was talking about how to work on it. Besides all other things, one of the methods is to keep users at our sites instead of building tools for commercial (and close source) platforms.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
So, we are making business to Facebook. The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
I thought the point was "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free licensehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:free_contentor in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"
I don't see the connection between those two issues.
I don't either.
You quoted WMF's (and our) general goal, I was talking about how to work on it. Besides all other things, one of the methods is to keep users at our sites instead of building tools for commercial (and close source) platforms.
Well, I disagree. I don't see how keeping users "at our sites" as long as possible is a method to meet that mission. I don't see how having users do their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop educational content under a free license. Getting users to come to "our sites" in the first place can be helpful, and creating plugins for sites like Facebook would do that.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Well, I disagree. I don't see how keeping users "at our sites" as long as possible is a method to meet that mission. I don't see how having users do their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop educational content under a free license. Getting users to come to "our sites" in the first place can be helpful, and creating plugins for sites like Facebook would do that.
* By making contacts with other experts from the same field by using social networking possibilities of Wikimedia projects. While this is alone a part of our goals, this would raise quality of their involvement in Wikimedia projects. * By keeping *their* knowledge (i.e. their personal work) inside of their "Wikipedia advanced profiles" and sharing relevant references with others. Conclusion is similar to the previous. * By on site for a lot of time, like a lot of people are a lot of time on FB and similar sites; which would enhance communication between participants and work on new knowledge. * By making a strong connection their scientific work (which don't need to be free, or even public; which they would be able to keep privately) with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, which would produce their higher involvement in the projects. * By having [creative] fun at Wikimedia sites, which would produce their higher involvement in Wikimedia projects. * (And, possibly, much more reasons which one HR manager may list here better than I am able.)
While I don't have anything against making such project out of Wikimedia, I don't see that any project of that type has such potential.
I mostly agree with Gregory that the creation of a social media framework within Wikipedia would greatly increase the workload of some Wikipedians, in a number of ways, while making only a very, very tenuous claim to the increase of our productivity.
The fact that the "low hanging fruit" is all mostly picked is indeed a systemic problem which naturally is reducing our stats, but I think the real problem is the consequence of that, which is that the early pickers have formed a significant core of experienced users, which is good in a sense, but also bad in that it raises the bar for all new users. What we SHOULD be talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and their first created articles, &c.
David Moran
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Well, I disagree. I don't see how keeping users "at our sites" as long
as
possible is a method to meet that mission. I don't see how having users
do
their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop
educational
content under a free license. Getting users to come to "our sites" in
the
first place can be helpful, and creating plugins for sites like Facebook would do that.
- By making contacts with other experts from the same field by using
social networking possibilities of Wikimedia projects. While this is alone a part of our goals, this would raise quality of their involvement in Wikimedia projects.
- By keeping *their* knowledge (i.e. their personal work) inside of
their "Wikipedia advanced profiles" and sharing relevant references with others. Conclusion is similar to the previous.
- By on site for a lot of time, like a lot of people are a lot of time
on FB and similar sites; which would enhance communication between participants and work on new knowledge.
- By making a strong connection their scientific work (which don't
need to be free, or even public; which they would be able to keep privately) with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, which would produce their higher involvement in the projects.
- By having [creative] fun at Wikimedia sites, which would produce
their higher involvement in Wikimedia projects.
- (And, possibly, much more reasons which one HR manager may list here
better than I am able.)
While I don't have anything against making such project out of Wikimedia, I don't see that any project of that type has such potential.
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On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
What we SHOULD be talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and their first created articles, &c.
I agree.
And moreover, this is important because *quality* not *quantity* is what we should be most concerned about. With umpteen million articles in across many languages Wikipedia has already reached "mission accomplished" level from a pure quantity measure.
Making it easier to contribute won't just help quantity, it will help quality by reducing some forms of bias, and bringing in a broader range of knowledge. If Wikipedia is only easy for techno-geeks then editors will be mostly techno-geeks, and their edits may not representative. (The [[Warp drive]] vs [[Ice pick]] effect).
Hoi, Only a few of our Wikipedias have a reasonable coverage of the subjects that you expect in an encyclopaedia. As this is at the start of your argument, i find that I have to disagree. I do however agree that improved usability will improve quality. When you consider the Commons content, it is easy to argue that improved language support will make it easier for people who read/wite other languages to contribute and thereby remove some of the existing bias.
When you observe the cooperation that happens through the skype channels of "not the Wikipedia Weekly" to be called "Wikivoices" you will agree that it is indeed greater cooperation that will become easier from implementing social software. There is a need for social software because it can and does provide tooling that enhances cooperation in creating quality content work. Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
What we SHOULD be talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and
their
first created articles, &c.
I agree.
And moreover, this is important because *quality* not *quantity* is what we should be most concerned about. With umpteen million articles in across many languages Wikipedia has already reached "mission accomplished" level from a pure quantity measure.
Making it easier to contribute won't just help quantity, it will help quality by reducing some forms of bias, and bringing in a broader range of knowledge. If Wikipedia is only easy for techno-geeks then editors will be mostly techno-geeks, and their edits may not representative. (The [[Warp drive]] vs [[Ice pick]] effect).
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2008/11/3 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
What we SHOULD be talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and their first created articles, &c.
I agree.
And moreover, this is important because *quality* not *quantity* is what we should be most concerned about. With umpteen million articles in across many languages Wikipedia has already reached "mission accomplished" level from a pure quantity measure.
Making it easier to contribute won't just help quantity, it will help quality by reducing some forms of bias, and bringing in a broader range of knowledge. If Wikipedia is only easy for techno-geeks then editors will be mostly techno-geeks, and their edits may not representative. (The [[Warp drive]] vs [[Ice pick]] effect).
Tutorials and walkthroughs are useful only after you have got that first click. We need to get better at getting that first click. Perhaps even just making the edit button bigger or a different colour.
We also need to get better at highly our different ways of attracting that first click. Luring people onto talk pages or the like. A system which went "you have view 100 pages why not try editing one" would be too annoying to allow for live use but perhaps some smarter way to target those likely to edit.
geni wrote:
2008/11/3 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
What we SHOULD be talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and their first created articles, &c.
I agree.
And moreover, this is important because *quality* not *quantity* is what we should be most concerned about. With umpteen million articles in across many languages Wikipedia has already reached "mission accomplished" level from a pure quantity measure.
Making it easier to contribute won't just help quantity, it will help quality by reducing some forms of bias, and bringing in a broader range of knowledge. If Wikipedia is only easy for techno-geeks then editors will be mostly techno-geeks, and their edits may not representative. (The [[Warp drive]] vs [[Ice pick]] effect).
Tutorials and walkthroughs are useful only after you have got that first click. We need to get better at getting that first click. Perhaps even just making the edit button bigger or a different colour.
We also need to get better at highly our different ways of attracting that first click. Luring people onto talk pages or the like. A system which went "you have view 100 pages why not try editing one" would be too annoying to allow for live use but perhaps some smarter way to target those likely to edit.
I agree, this is a problem. I've corresponded with people on OTRS who, despite the edit button on every page, the "anyone can edit" on the main page, and the "you can improve this" on various maintenance templates, really had no idea that they could edit articles. I don't recall how many of the survey questions asked about this, but hopefully the survey results will give us some reasons on why people don't edit and hopefully we can address them.
I agree with David and Greg though as well. Wikitext is /supposed/ to be simple. Unfortunately, several years of adding more and more complexities through complex templates, parser functions, and tag extensions has changed this somewhat. Its still easier than a programming language or raw HTML, but many articles are well past the point where one can look at the wikitext and easily figure out how the basics of editing work.
A while ago (more than a year now) I started work on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard designed to help new users write articles. I eventually got distracted by other things and stopped working on it, but its still there if others want to work on it. The Slovenian Wikipedia seems to have a slightly more developed version - http://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Napi%C5%A1i_%C4%8Dlanek - that they also link to in the various system messages shown when creating a new article; the en.wikipedia version never quite got that far.
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Besides all other things, one of the methods is to keep users at our sites instead of building tools for commercial (and close source) platforms.
Well, I disagree. I don't see how keeping users "at our sites" as long as possible is a method to meet that mission.
I do. If I don't have to leave wikipedia to find, chat with, and trade stories with other wikipedians, I have much lighter frictional costs of switching between chatting and finishing my last essay, uploading images that I was just writing to a friend about, &c. There are also network effects to sharing ideas stories and chat; This is why usertalk pages were a vast improvement over either including little notes in comments in the article text and using external IM clients. We could do much more along those lines; "you have new messages" was cool (and a cool color :) when it first came out, but that's effectively the last innovation in on-wiki chat in the past 5 years.
I don't see how having users do their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop educational content under a free license.
Socializing is a way of sharing goals and enthusiasm, collaborating, &c.
Getting users to come to "our sites" in the first place can be helpful, and creating plugins for sites like Facebook would do that.
Also true.
SJ
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:46 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
I don't see how having users do their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop
educational
content under a free license.
Socializing is a way of sharing goals and enthusiasm, collaborating, &c.
Except they don't do that. Socializing first and foremost produces socially active people. While I am sure there could be some benefits, I fail to see how adding social-networking features into Mediawiki could possibly make it more productive.
Out of the box, it's a damn productive package, it just tends to not seem that way when people want to make it something it's not (hint: it's a wiki).
-Chad
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 5:45 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:54 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
"Social networking" invokes a much lower bar, as freedom of expression is expected, and so any "content" that doesnt break the law is usually permissible. We have avoided these issues by having very high code of user conduct, and a large part of that is due to contributors being expected to not indulge in personal expression if that doesnt fit within the project scope.
This would be, of course, at the separate place, as an extension of user profiles. So, this wouldn't contaminate articles.
The APIs are already open; arnt they?
If someone built a beta of a cool app that Wikipedians would use often as part of their reading/contributing activities, I doubt WMF would actively prevent it from pulling down the content it needs.
Facebook apps are already possible.
So, we are making business to Facebook.
YES. This is why we license everything under a commercially friendly license.
The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
I hope not. If someone wants to blog on a Tuesday, and not create any articles, we do not need to fret that they have deserted us!
The Internet isnt us vs them. If anything, it is us empowering other websites with free content that they can use.
It is very strange that you would think of "Wikipedia" as the host of those things. The "Wikisource" and "Author" namespaces of Wikisource are devoted to bibliographies, and Wikiversity is intended to host personal and collaborative scientific work (OR).
Wikipedia is the most useful place all over Wikimedia projects; at least for the majority of users. So, this was the starting point...
Wikipedia might be the most useful, but it has the *least potential*, because most of the time, we find that the knowledge we can readily dump into it ... is already there! (at least in en.wp)
But, of course, such application would be able and should include organization of work all over Wikimedia projects (as well as organization of *personal* references; not bibliographies of scientists).
The other projects have enormous potential, but it doesnt help when the vast majority of our community are fixated on English Wikipedia. Casual readers would probably have more "fun" over at Wikiversity or Wikibooks, and _should_ be encouraged to go there.
One of the vital principles of why a wiki works is that we promote *collaborative* pages. A *personal* references page is fine, but it becomes much more useful when others assist in the development of it. We learn from each other. If someone wants the page to be unmodified, it can be in the users namespace, and it will probably be left alone.
We do need a continual stream of new contributors, but it is incorrect to assume that we need more or less in order to be successful. WMF is already successful, and if the projects continue at the current rate, they will be continue to be successful. I dont think we should panic if/when the bigger projects slow down and contributions start to decline. A good percentage of those people are probably moving to other projects or languages.
Continual stream of new contributors is decreasing and number of active and very active contributors is decreasing, too -- all over the Wikimedia projects (with very small number of exceptions). (This is, i think fourth or fifth time in the last couple of days that I am repeating it; I became boring to myself.)
I am not seeing this, and repeating it doesnt help. I am seeing a migration of active and very active users to other projects. I'd like to see stats about Commons, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikisource, etc. I would kill to see an update to the stats website, which is currently very stale, using _May_ data.
I don't see any reason for alarm in the data that we do have.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaINCUBATOR.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaSOURCES.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
-- John Vandenberg
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see any reason for alarm in the data that we do have.
According to statistics which you gave (btw, thanks for pointing to them, I didn't know where to find them):
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
Commons is in a constant and significant decrease since May 2007.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaINCUBATOR.htm
In not so strong decrease since January 2008 (but we don't have data after May 2008)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaSOURCES.htm
Old Wikisource is not so big project and it is not possible to make precise conclusions.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm
All Wiktionaries together stay well, this is true.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
It seems that all Wikisources together had begun decrease at the beginning of 2008. However, according to the second link, it seem that they stays well. (BTW, I would like to see a short explanation of the significance of ProofreadPage extension and pages which used them.)
BTW, again, number articles *will* raise except there are big problems. One new page per month means that there is one article more and somewhat bigger database. I explained in one of the previous emails [1] why some data are more relevant than others. (If you have objections to this approach, please let me know what are the errors of the method.)
And, again, I would be really happy to see that I am wrong. I didn't spend significant time in analysis just because I like to spread defeatism; but to point to the problem.
[1] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-October/046831.html
--- On Tue, 11/4/08, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
It seems that all Wikisources together had begun decrease at the beginning of 2008. However, according to the second link, it seem that they stays well. (BTW, I would like to see a short explanation of the significance of ProofreadPage extension and pages which used them.)
The proofread page extension allows a collaboration space for proofreading a text side by side with an image of each page from djvu file on Commons[1] This single page of text is then transcluded into the main area of the project in more readable/printable increments[2][3] The drawback is that the location readers use does not contain the editable text, but the benefits of simplifying collaborative proofreading off the same copy and the straightforward tracking of proofreading progress [4] are worth the tradeoff.
Birgitte SB
[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Aristotelous_peri_psuxes.djvu/43 [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Vital_Principle/Book_1/Chapter_3 [3] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Vital_Principle/Whole_text [4] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Aristotelous_peri_psuxes.djvu
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
The proofread page extension allows a collaboration space for proofreading a text side by side with an image of each page from djvu file on Commons[1] This single page of text is then transcluded into the main area of the project in more readable/printable increments[2][3] The drawback is that the location readers use does not contain the editable text, but the benefits of simplifying collaborative proofreading off the same copy and the straightforward tracking of proofreading progress [4] are worth the tradeoff.
In other words, this is a significant measure for activity on Wikisources. Good to hear it!
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see any reason for alarm in the data that we do have.
According to statistics which you gave (btw, thanks for pointing to them, I didn't know where to find them):
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
Commons is in a constant and significant decrease since May 2007.
Most people have "found" Commons by now. "Binaries" continues to climb.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaINCUBATOR.htm
In not so strong decrease since January 2008 (but we don't have data after May 2008)
Edits per month continues to climb.
Incubator fluctuates as projects migrate, and groups of people will arrive and leave together; as a result we would need to understand how this affect those stats in order to make good deductions from them.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaSOURCES.htm
Old Wikisource is not so big project and it is not possible to make precise conclusions.
We'll come back and look at this one in a year! ;-)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm
All Wiktionaries together stay well, this is true.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
It seems that all Wikisources together had begun decrease at the beginning of 2008. However, according to the second link, it seem that they stays well.
The only stat going down is "new wikilibrarians". The number of Contributors continues to climb. The RC feed is increasingly becoming impossible to monitor; I'm not imagining things!.
(BTW, I would like to see a short explanation of the significance of ProofreadPage extension and pages which used them.)
A "page" in those stats indicates a page that has an accompanying image of the *original printed page* , which means that 1. anyone can transcribe the text (even without understanding the language) 2. the rest of the world can know with 100% certainty that our edition is perfect, and has accurate bibliographic and provenance information.
BTW, again, number articles *will* raise except there are big problems. One new page per month means that there is one article more and somewhat bigger database. I explained in one of the previous emails [1] why some data are more relevant than others. (If you have objections to this approach, please let me know what are the errors of the method.)
Your focus on stats on "users" leads to bad results. All languages have a finite number of people that understand them, and the graph of new contributors is indicative of the gradual growth of the wiki into that population. When a wiki is small, the population doesnt know about it. When the wiki is large, the majority of the population knows about it, and most will have already decided whether they wish to participate or not. So, I dont put much weight on stats of new contributors. Also, most newcomers dont get the "wiki" bug. They deposit one or two pages, and then go away happy.
The number of active contributors is more important, but is still indicative of the stage the wiki is at, in relation to public awareness.
I understand that you were using stats about users to learn something about the health of the "community", and can see some value in it, however I much prefer to look at the content related stats : the growth of the wiki. The content. And all indicators there are looking OK on the projects.
I fail to see what is the problem when all of the indicators show the content namespaces are growing, even if it is a linear growth. We know that contributors often leave, but new people are filling their places, or the old people are being more productive.
The more difficult aspect to measure is the quality. For example, the German Wikisource stats look like they are having a hard time... their stats fluctuate a lot.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaDE.htm
The reality is that they have been actively turning away contributors, because they have decided that they will not accept any text that isnt accompanied with page scans. Most people are not so dedicated that they will go to such lengths. I think it is a bad decision, but the result is that they have very good quality throughout their wiki, and the project members are more proud of their work, because they are working in a very orderly environment.
Quality attracts a different class of new contributor -- a rarer breed, but more likely to make highly valuable edits. But quality is _hard_, and enforcing quality results in less new contributors.
And, again, I would be really happy to see that I am wrong. I didn't spend significant time in analysis just because I like to spread defeatism; but to point to the problem.
The most important problem is that the statistics are stale. If you want to make big decisions, you need good data, and analyse it from many angles.
-- John Vandenberg
Hoi, This thread was split from one that deals about statistics and puts forward the notion that we are in decline. This thread is about a need felt by several people that social networking functionality centred around WMF projects and communities.
The statistics that make sense in the first thread do not give a clue if social networking will provide a benefit. The indicators that we have is that many social networks have groups or causes that deal with WMF projects. The current social networks are islands, they do not allow people to interconnect between these networks and consequently the benefits for causes like our own is not what it could be.
A case in point, pfctdayelise shares with me membership of several social networks. Yesterday she told me about slideshare,net. It is a great environment to share slides. It is exactly what is useful for the presentations that I gave in the past. I have uploaded some presentations, and I added them to the WikiMedia Group where only 6 members share their presentations. Brianna did a great job on some of her presentations by adding a sound file to the presentation. My point is that this is exactly the kind of functionality that we ALL need, it is exactly the kind of functionality that we should embrace.
The statistics that have been considered are clearly irrelevant to me. Thanks, Gerard
http://www.slideshare.net/GerardMe http://www.slideshare.net/group/wikimedia
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 2:46 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com
wrote:
I don't see any reason for alarm in the data that we do have.
According to statistics which you gave (btw, thanks for pointing to them, I didn't know where to find them):
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
Commons is in a constant and significant decrease since May 2007.
Most people have "found" Commons by now. "Binaries" continues to climb.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaINCUBATOR.htm
In not so strong decrease since January 2008 (but we don't have data after May 2008)
Edits per month continues to climb.
Incubator fluctuates as projects migrate, and groups of people will arrive and leave together; as a result we would need to understand how this affect those stats in order to make good deductions from them.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/ChartsWikipediaSOURCES.htm
Old Wikisource is not so big project and it is not possible to make precise conclusions.
We'll come back and look at this one in a year! ;-)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm
All Wiktionaries together stay well, this is true.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaZZ.htm http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
It seems that all Wikisources together had begun decrease at the beginning of 2008. However, according to the second link, it seem that they stays well.
The only stat going down is "new wikilibrarians". The number of Contributors continues to climb. The RC feed is increasingly becoming impossible to monitor; I'm not imagining things!.
(BTW, I would like to see a short explanation of the significance of ProofreadPage extension and pages which used them.)
A "page" in those stats indicates a page that has an accompanying image of the *original printed page* , which means that
- anyone can transcribe the text (even without understanding the language)
- the rest of the world can know with 100% certainty that our edition
is perfect, and has accurate bibliographic and provenance information.
BTW, again, number articles *will* raise except there are big problems. One new page per month means that there is one article more and somewhat bigger database. I explained in one of the previous emails [1] why some data are more relevant than others. (If you have objections to this approach, please let me know what are the errors of the method.)
Your focus on stats on "users" leads to bad results. All languages have a finite number of people that understand them, and the graph of new contributors is indicative of the gradual growth of the wiki into that population. When a wiki is small, the population doesnt know about it. When the wiki is large, the majority of the population knows about it, and most will have already decided whether they wish to participate or not. So, I dont put much weight on stats of new contributors. Also, most newcomers dont get the "wiki" bug. They deposit one or two pages, and then go away happy.
The number of active contributors is more important, but is still indicative of the stage the wiki is at, in relation to public awareness.
I understand that you were using stats about users to learn something about the health of the "community", and can see some value in it, however I much prefer to look at the content related stats : the growth of the wiki. The content. And all indicators there are looking OK on the projects.
I fail to see what is the problem when all of the indicators show the content namespaces are growing, even if it is a linear growth. We know that contributors often leave, but new people are filling their places, or the old people are being more productive.
The more difficult aspect to measure is the quality. For example, the German Wikisource stats look like they are having a hard time... their stats fluctuate a lot.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikisource/EN/ChartsWikipediaDE.htm
The reality is that they have been actively turning away contributors, because they have decided that they will not accept any text that isnt accompanied with page scans. Most people are not so dedicated that they will go to such lengths. I think it is a bad decision, but the result is that they have very good quality throughout their wiki, and the project members are more proud of their work, because they are working in a very orderly environment.
Quality attracts a different class of new contributor -- a rarer breed, but more likely to make highly valuable edits. But quality is _hard_, and enforcing quality results in less new contributors.
And, again, I would be really happy to see that I am wrong. I didn't spend significant time in analysis just because I like to spread defeatism; but to point to the problem.
The most important problem is that the statistics are stale. If you want to make big decisions, you need good data, and analyse it from many angles.
-- John Vandenberg
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 7:13 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Commons is in a constant and significant decrease since May 2007.
[snip]
Milos, you are in error.
See "Active authors" is holding steady just fine.
Counting new users registrations is flawed because many registrations are just vandals or the confused public and they never edit. A decrease in new accounts can just mean that less people are confused. For some projects, like enwp, the majority of accounts created are of this type. I'm also not sure how SUL creations are getting counted, I suspect they aren't.
The better metrics are usually the most direct ones. Active contributor counts haven't seen much change, for example, Uploads to commons continue at a nice clip.
Obviously there will be some up and down activity: We should expect seasonal variation, just as is seen in traffic levels on major internet backbones. It's important to be mindful that the absence of explosive growth is not a decline. Nothing can grow explosively forever.
Of course, we should continue to do things to encourage new contributors and new contributions. Just as we should find way to encourage more use and donation. This is always true. But to claim that there is some impending great failure appears to be unsupported by the data available thus far.
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
So, we are making business to Facebook.
YES. This is why we license everything under a commercially friendly license.
The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.
I hope not. If someone wants to blog on a Tuesday, and not create any articles, we do not need to fret that they have deserted us!
The Internet isnt us vs them. If anything, it is us empowering other websites with free content that they can use.
I didn't say that Internet is us vs. them, I said that we are building others' businesses instead of using our advantages to work on our goals.
2008/11/3 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
You could say the same for meta in general, I suppose :-)
2008/11/3 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
You could say the same for meta in general, I suppose :-)
Well, I guess meta pretends to exist for coordination and not for social networking.
Cheers Yaroslav
Hoi, The fact of the matter is that on many social networks there are special interest groups of Wikimedians in one form or another. I have many friends in several networks that are fellow wikimedians and it makes better sense to have them in one environment, an environment that is shared by us all. Now Facebook, Myspace Hyves Orcutt LinkedIn Plaxo are all environments where Wikimedians share my network and are friends.. They do not know each other because these networks do not connect.
When we just have something that "just works" for now, it would be great. Yes, it needs to be a WMF network. Now once we start this, we can help build our own social network and continue functionality like a "skype" .... I am sure that people like Anthony, Gregory or Genie will love to ensure that this is based all on relevant Open Source and Open Standards.. :)
I am sure that it will prove to be a distraction to some, but at the same time it will create a pull for new people.. THAT would be a good thing.. When our software scales and works in countries like Nepal, Togo and Angola as well, I am sure it will prove to be worth our while. Thanks, GerardM
NB The question is how to deal with licenses for the content that is part of the social networking :) Now let this not stop us having social networking.. :)
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ruwrote:
Hi,
What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking" type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use it, and I think he is probably right.
Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will even encourage people to use it more.
Thoughts?
Brianna
Do we actually WANT people use it? The argument goes that the more they (we) use it, the less they (we) have time for writing articles.
Cheers Yaroslav
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking" type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use it, and I think he is probably right.
Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will even encourage people to use it more.
Thoughts?
I agree with Gerard about the point related to MW integration. User-friendly interface means that user is the center of their world. And it is not because of some egocentrism, but because of usability: Just do those 30 things at the project, then 20 more at Toolserver, install this and that... -- this the best way how to alienate user. We have a great idea and it [still] keeps users with us, however we are not building an encyclopedia for aliens or historians from the future, but because of the present users -- at the first place.
Second, I think that Meta is good for testing; as well as Metians are [I think] the most interested in this. However (!): this will be just our toy until it starts to function for all projects.
And one more heresy :) As someone who has @wikimedia.org email redirect, I found useful @wikiPedia.org alias just for joining Wikipedia network at Facebook. Otherwise, I used @wikimedia.org address just a couple of times because of formal reasons. I want to say that for a lot of people it would be really cool to have email accounts (or, at least, redirects) @wikiPedia.org. If it would be integrated with the social networking abilities of MediaWiki.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org