[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Samuel Klein]

Lars makes excellent points here.

We need to include in our community

 - experienced professional reference-work writers (and we should help them
find ways to sustain themselves, particularly in niche markets -- one way is
by distributing the underlying work needed to find and organize data).
there is room in the world-of-WP for effective, sustainable POV and
specialist works

 - bright teenagers everywhere.  They have ample time and energy to research
topics of interest in great detail, at least some are interested in any
conceivable topic, and as they pass through higher education they will
develop more specific skills and knowledge that they will then know how to
share with the world

 - retired educators and researchers.   They have deep knowledge of certain
topics and a love of finding the right reference work for the job.  They
have time and interest in broadening subjects they love, and can often make
personal contact with experts in those fields

 - the person living down your street.  everyone lives near something
notable or of interest, from a small village to a lake or canyon to a
statue, building, or event that others may want to know about.  and many
people work with notable volunteer projects, organizations, or works of art
that deserve coverage.

> Having a bit more structure to new user induction
> seems to be the inevitable direction to go to elicit
> breadth on the projects. Out existing low-structure
> approaches need to be supplemented with attractive
> more-structured paths.

+1

SJ



On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Henning Schlottmann wrote:
>
> > Who are our actual users?
>
> This is a good question, not only with respect to level (youth or
> academic), but also for topics (academic subjects like medicine,
> or popular culture).  Retired academics might provide useful input
> on how to treat cancer, but might be out of touch with trends in
> manga or cooking.  If we discourage teenagers from writing about
> their favorite artists, they will find Wikipedia less useful.
>
> It is also a question of what alternatives to Wikipedia our users
> have.  Even if we fail to produce a good encyclopedia (in many
> smaller languages, it will take a long time to build something
> useful), we might succeed in killing all competition, especially
> printed reference works.  This is a problem for Wikipedia as well,
> as we could be running out of sources to cite.
>
> I have written many short articles based on information found in
> reference works like "who's who" from earlier decades. But many
> such titles are no longer produced, because printed reference
> works are no longer profitable, especially in smaller markets
> (smaller languages).  The Swedish "Vem är det" was published every
> 2nd year, but had a 6 year gap from 2001 to 2007, and I don't know
> if there will ever be another edition.
>
> Many printed reference works were financially supported by buyers
> who thought they were necessary to have, but seldom used them.
> Today the same people still use reference works very seldom. The
> difference is they now think (wrongly) that everything is online,
> and they don't need to buy printed reference works anymore.
>
> Another traditional "must have" is the daily newspaper, which many
> young people are now abandoning, resulting in the current crisis.
> Revenue from ads on newspaper websites isn't covering the loss of
> subscription revenue from the printed editions.
>
> We could be entering a period of scarcity of good reference
> information, as counterintuitive as that might seem.  There is a
> huge gap for Wikipedia to fill.
>
>
> --
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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