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

[David Moran]

I mostly agree with Gregory that the creation of a social media framework
within Wikipedia would greatly increase the workload of some Wikipedians, in
a number of ways, while making only a very, very tenuous claim to the
increase of our productivity.

The fact that the "low hanging fruit" is all mostly picked is indeed a
systemic problem which naturally is reducing our stats, but I think the real
problem is the consequence of that, which is that the early pickers have
formed a significant core of experienced users, which is good in a sense,
but also bad in that it raises the bar for all new users.  What we SHOULD be
talking about is not social media, but more robust tutorials and
walkthroughs for new users as they go through their first edits, and their
first created articles, &c.

David Moran



On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Well, I disagree.  I don't see how keeping users "at our sites" as long
> as
> > possible is a method to meet that mission.  I don't see how having users
> do
> > their social networking at wikiwhatever.org helps people develop
> educational
> > content under a free license.  Getting users to come to "our sites" in
> the
> > first place can be helpful, and creating plugins for sites like Facebook
> > would do that.
>
> * By making contacts with other experts from the same field by using
> social networking possibilities of Wikimedia projects. While this is
> alone a part of our goals, this would raise quality of their
> involvement in Wikimedia projects.
> * By keeping *their* knowledge (i.e. their personal work) inside of
> their "Wikipedia advanced profiles" and sharing relevant references
> with others. Conclusion is similar to the previous.
> * By on site for a lot of time, like a lot of people are a lot of time
> on FB and similar sites; which would enhance communication between
> participants and work on new knowledge.
> * By making a strong connection their scientific work (which don't
> need to be free, or even public; which they would be able to keep
> privately) with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, which would
> produce their higher involvement in the projects.
> * By having [creative] fun at Wikimedia sites, which would produce
> their higher involvement in Wikimedia projects.
> * (And, possibly, much more reasons which one HR manager may list here
> better than I am able.)
>
> While I don't have anything against making such project out of
> Wikimedia, I don't see that any project of that type has such
> potential.
>
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