On 12 December 2012 00:04, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Looking at the big picture, I don't think we'll ever see widespread editing from mobile devices. The user experience is simply too awful. The best I think most people are hoping for is the ability to easily fix a typo, maybe, but even then you have to assess costs vs. benefit. That is, is it really worth paying two or three full-time employees so that someone can easily change "Barrack" to "Barack" from his or her iPhone? Probably not.
OTOH, see recent coverage of Wikipedia in Africa, where it's basically going to be on phones. Cheap shitty smartphones. That the kids are *desperate* to get Wikipedia on. Do we want to make those readers into editors? It'd be nice.
Perhaps mobile uploading could use better native support, but again, is the cost worth it? Does Commons need more low-quality photos? And even as phone cameras get better, do those photos need to be _instantly_ uploaded to the site? There's something to be said for waiting until you get home to upload photos, especially given how cumbersome the photo upload process is (copyright, permissions, categorization, etc.). And this all side-steps the question of whether there are better organizations equipped at handling photos (such as Flickr or whatever).
This is a version of the general argument against participation. There are reasons it's not favoured.
- d.