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

Milos Rancic millosh at gmail.com
Mon Nov 3 16:01:47 UTC 2008


On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> What do people think of the idea of asking the "social networking"
> type *communication* extensions to be enabled on meta?
>
> I was thinking about this, and talking to Gerard, and he pointed out
> that unless it was integrated into MediaWiki most people wouldn't use
> it, and I think he is probably right.
>
> Meta makes the most sense, since it is already supposed to be used for
> coordination, and maybe if it has some extra functionality that will
> even encourage people to use it more.
>
> Thoughts?

I agree with Gerard about the point related to MW integration.
User-friendly interface means that user is the center of their world.
And it is not because of some egocentrism, but because of usability:
Just do those 30 things at the project, then 20 more at Toolserver,
install this and that... -- this the best way how to alienate user. We
have a great idea and it [still] keeps users with us, however we are
not building an encyclopedia for aliens or historians from the future,
but because of the present users -- at the first place.

Second, I think that Meta is good for testing; as well as Metians are
[I think] the most interested in this. However (!): this will be just
our toy until it starts to function for all projects.

And one more heresy :) As someone who has @wikimedia.org email
redirect, I found useful @wikiPedia.org alias just for joining
Wikipedia network at Facebook. Otherwise, I used @wikimedia.org
address just a couple of times because of formal reasons. I want to
say that for a lot of people it would be really cool to have email
accounts (or, at least, redirects) @wikiPedia.org. If it would be
integrated with the social networking abilities of MediaWiki.



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