On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote:

* If the point is that a part of the community doesn't want to have social networking because of the principles...

Milos Rancic wrote: 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. wrote: http://www.libervis.com/article/july_2007_letter_to_free_software_foundatio… 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

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)

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 Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:24 AM, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> 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.

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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.

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.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote: > 2008/11/4 Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru>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.

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.

Continual stream of new contributors is decreasing and number of active and very active contributors is decreasing,

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 6:54 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote: So, we are making business to Facebook. The point is to keep users at our site, not at some other site.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I thought the point was "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:free_content>or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally"

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: 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 9:13 PM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: as do educational the * 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. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:18 PM, David Moran &lt;fordmadoxfraud(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: [snip] their 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). _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Anthony &lt;wikimail(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: educational Socializing is a way of sharing goals and enthusiasm, collaborating, &c.

2008/11/3 Gregory Maxwell &lt;gmaxwell(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: 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 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

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.)

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: wrote: Most people have "found" Commons by now. "Binaries" continues to climb. 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. We'll come back and look at this one in a year! ;-) 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!. 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. 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. 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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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.