[Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

[Milos Rancic]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell
<keegan.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> While I would like to see good articles about every episode of
>> whatever on Wikipedia, this was not the point.
>>
>> The point is to make "personal space" on Wikimedia projects. Adding
>> features to the profile (now: Special:Preferences) will increase
>> number of those who are willing to stay on project.
>
>
> I can only speak from my experience on the English Wikipedia, so I'll
> address this relating to that project:
>
> It will never happen.
>
> We've been through these discussions there before on what is and what is not
> acceptable use of the space for social networking.  We have come to the
> conclusion that it is not[1] in several different ways[2].  The purpose of
> the English Wikipedia, and all Foundation projects for that matter, is to
> provide free knowledge in whatever for it comes in, when it's an
> encyclopedia or a quote or a sourced document or a book or news.  We also
> have determined that we use a collaborative model to build these project.
>
> Therein lies the key: build these projects.  This is accomplished by working
> together in a communal manner and this is the "social" networking that we
> need, working together on projects with those of the same interest, or even
> just wandering around the wikis doing things.  So, to me, these ideas as
> features diminishes the interest of maintaining a volunteer, amateur
> userbase but one that is dedicated and willing to work together.  Akin to
> the HAM radio system, I think.

You are missing the point again :) I am not talking about transforming
user pages into MySpace pages, but about new layer at all Wikimedia
projects, which would stay at the place of Special:Preferences. So, it
is about personal space, which rudimentary exists inside of watchlist
and similar. It is also about customization. For example, as a
registered user, I want to have customized Main Page for myself. Also,
those who don't want to use that, they should be able not to use.

Treat it as a feature which extends logging in to the site. During the
1990s the most of sites didn't have log in option. The first "social"
extension of the log in option was profile. The last are social
networking extensions.

We've implemented the first one, but we've stopped after it. And time
is passing and new projects are passing us with options which aren't
treated as the edge of technology or something specific, but as a
common part of being on Internet.

HAM is exactly something which shouldn't be our model. *Social* (in
contrast to technological, military or whatever) impact of HAM
community is around zero. Although I am a GNU/Linux admin and although
I am including HAM drivers whenever I compile kernel ("just in
case..." :) ), the only time -- known to me -- when HAM network had
wider social impact was during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.
Nothing before, nothing after.

Contrary, our social impact is for a couple of years at the
civilization scale and there is no sense to go backward. Besides
building the encyclopedia, Wikimedia community has already built
cultural movement of unprecedented scale. And present MediaWiki
implementation is not enough to support the movement. In other words:
Wikimedia is not just Wikipedia.

> There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the time
> for at the moment.  The premise of the presentation is that studies have
> shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and other
> measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation.
>  The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and believers
> in the process do not ask for these rewards.  A pat on the back and a "good
> job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is the
> only true recognition that is needed.  The other fluff only inspires
> distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which, in
> turn, become more important than the end result.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

As well as dopamine works during the work, not when the prize has been
get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s

But, it is just about money and goods, as well as that part of
psychology is at the very beginning. Social rewards are much more
powerful. (Note that there are many social stigmas because people
won't do something for money or goods.) I believe that we would have
an editor boom just with "like" button for edits, talk comments and
comments [on Wikinews].