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

[geni]

2008/11/2 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
> 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.

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)
-- 
geni