[Foundation-l] Is popularity a good thing for us? - Wikimedia-l

16 Dec 2007

On 16/12/2007, Ayelie &lt;ayelie.at.large(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
...
  On Dec 16, 2007 8:23 AM, Jon Harald Søby
&lt;jhsoby(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 
...
  > The Foundation has repeatedly stated that it can
not and will not reveal
 > details about this. What, then, is the use of this speculation? As I've
 > said
 > to others, it accomplishes nothing. We have encyclopædias to write, let's
 > focus on that instead. 
...
  ... and a freely-licensed image collection to build,
libraries to collect,
 books to write, dictionaries to work on, quote collections to gather,
 species data references to create, news articles to publish, learning
 materials to prepare...  ;) 

To change the subject:

This gets to the point of what we're doing this for. WMF's job is not
in fact to run a hideously popular and expensive web site - it's to
generate a body of work that's freely reusable by all.

So. Plus and minus points of popularity?

+ Proves we're doing something of value.
+ We get attention and hence contributors.
+ We have power to comment in the press to further our mission.
+ We get an income to get staff to help further our mission.

- Immediatism is the enemy of considered working, and being top-10
means we have to do far too many things really fast.
- Costs a fortune to run the site.
- We're a target for attacks from ad-banner trolls.
- Mass popularity reruits volunteers from closer to the bottom of the barrel.

Please add more. Is there a case for trying to make ourselves less
popular so we can get on with work?

- d.