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

[Anthony]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Whatever the reasons are (global culture which is not able to believe
> that there is a really open community somewhere in the world; or
> idiosyncratic culture of Wikipedia), we are in the position that we
> have to try to work to transform users to contributors.


Why?  Maximizing the number of contributors is certainly not the goal.  What
if you take the declines as a given?  How can the foundation best achieve
its goals then?


> And social networking platform is one very valid option.


I'm not sure how Wikia does it, but something tied in to single user login
would probably be useful.  Of course, for myself personally I wouldn't be
interested in a social networking platform that isn't based on real world
identities.

Given Brianna's comments about losing interest in article writing in favor
of blogging and chapter work, due to its better distribution of egoboo, I
think the foundation also has to worry about Knol and projects like it
speeding along the contributor decline.  This is especially true if the
relicensing plans threaten to take away what little attribution and egoboo
the project still offers.