Hi Ryan,
Sorry for the delay, a lot of work came in between.
I actually suspect that the proposals that will get
the most votes will
be ideas that benefit the most projects.
Still, a large community like the English and the German community have an
overly weight on the balance simple by the fact they are with more people.
I think this unbalance has a larger effect on the votes than the factor if
the benefit of the most projects. The idea of that the ideas that benefit
the most projects get the most votes is in the ideal situation a really
great point of view, but such requires high penetration in the
communication in reaching the users around the world. (This seems almost a
request for improvements in the communication as bug first, and while that
would be great, that is not the point.)
Maybe I should explain why I write this. In my area I organise a lot of
courses, writing sessions, etc and with organising this we notice that for
new users the provided online working environment is almost completely
(yes, that worse) insufficient to continue editing. We also notice that
existing users have found their working environment and do not care much
about the difficulty new users have, as they often seem to think: I can, so
they should too be able to find it for themselves.
The we is just a few people who organise most activities and see the
effects of it.
While almost everyone in the movement think editor retention is important
to improve, because many do not have the experience in organising writing
sessions, workshops, etc nor are out for feedback from new users why they
actually stop with editing, they do not realise that Wikipedia is missing
something for new users. And those new users are already gone or do not
speak out mostly...
If you think you like to continue with the votes for the ideas that are
considered the best in the movement, I would like to suggest at least one
change in set up: organise it in such way that you create categories. Like
a category what the Wikidata users need, what the existing editors on
Wikipedia need, what the Commons users need, what the organisers of
workshops/writing sessions/etc need, etc.
Greetings,
Romaine
2015-08-26 9:22 GMT+02:00 Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 5:42 PM, Romaine Wiki
<romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Abouth the sections of Phase 1 & 2 I am
concerned. The way it is
suggested to be set up now is that the proposals with the most votes win.
First of all, large wikis & communities have more people to submit
proposals and more people to vote. So it seems that this is becoming a
popularity contest, which is the wrong direction.
I actually suspect that the proposals that will get the most votes will be
ideas that benefit the most projects. If an idea would only benefit French
Wikipedia, for example, I doubt it would get as many votes as a tool that
is usable by every Wikipedia. That said, I do agree that some projects are
probably going to be at a disadvantage. For example, I'm not expecting
WikiSpecies to make a strong showing. To some degree, this makes sense, as
we want to focus our limited resources where they will have the largest
impact. We also want to make sure, however, that we are not ignoring vital
sectors of the community. We haven't fleshed out plans for it yet, but we
have some very tentative plans to do focused technical workshops with
specialized community groups next year. For example, we might hold a
workshop for GLAM volunteers or Wiktionary volunteers or Recent Change
Patrollers to find out what their specific needs are and how/if we can
address them. This idea is dependent on what kind of resources our team has
next year and is very tentative, so don't hold me to it just yet. Right
now, it's just an idea :)
In the Dutch community it happens a lot that
users are against certain
software, until they tried, and the other way round happens as well. Basing
a voting on what people like can easily become unbalanced because of
various factors. Also what matters to one person, does not have to matter
to another person (like because he doesn't do anything with it), while it
can be essential to another.
These points are all true and this is the reason we will be offering
feedback on as many of the proposals as we can before voting begins.
Specifically, we will try to assess them for feasibility, impact, and risk,
so that voters can make well-informed choices rather than just voting for
their favorite gadget. Also, keep in mind that voting isn't the final step
for prioritization. After voting is finished, we will be taking the top X
requests (probably 10 or 20) and then doing our own analysis of them to
determine priority. It's possible some of those requests will be referred
to other teams or even rejected if they don't make sense for us to work on.
The process for this survey is still a draft, however, and we are open to
significantly revising it. If you have suggestions for a system that might
work better than voting and you can show community support for the idea, we
can switch to a different process. The current draft is based largely on
consultations with the German TCB team (which has done similar wishlist
surveys), the WMF Community Engagement team, and a few random community
members that we've talked to. I'm sure it isn't perfect, but I doubt any
process will be.
Ryan Kaldari
Engineering Manager, Community Tech
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