[Foundation-l] Social networking (was: Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline)

[Pharos]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at 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 at 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_associate_members
>>
>> 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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