[Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)

[MZMcBride]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> tl;dr:  we can attract thousands of new contributors with almost any
> combination of skills and availability, if we ask nicely.

Hmm, prove it. :-)  You talk a good game and I'm not sure you're wrong, but
I haven't seen much to suggest that you're right.

There was a "contribution campaign" following the most recent fundraiser. It
was a campaign that was specifically designed to get people involved in
editing (in combination with the English Wikipedia's tenth anniversary). Do
you have any idea if that had a measurable impact? It's essentially what
you're talking about, as far as I can tell. Which is to say, there may
already be preliminary evidence that can prove or disprove this theory of
yours regarding the "ask and receive" culture that you suggest exists.

> what should we ask for first?

Assuming that it's possible to simply ask people to get more involved and
receive willing, competent volunteers, I think you'd want to start by making
editing less painful, if the goal is to build (better) free content. Editing
sucks currently, for a lot of reasons. So you'd need developers who can work
on solutions to make it suck less. From that, better content and
contributors flow.

Somewhat tangential to this, Wikimedia needs a tighter focus. It's been
quite obvious for the past few years that Wikipedia is the Wikimedia
Foundation's primary focus. This is reflected in the way in which Wikimedia
generally presents itself nowadays; this was reflected in the "Wikipedia
Foundation" fundraising materials; it's reflected in many other places as
well. I think it's unfair to the other projects to continue stringing them
along, pretending as though one day they'll get the attention they
desperately need to grow. Wikimedia needs to refine what it actually wants
to be. Rather than trying to do many things and ending up doing none of them
well, Wikimedia should focus on doing a few things very well.

>> Making bold
>> claims like "30% of the entire Internet" is great for Wikipedia advertising
> 
> Is it good for advertising?  (advertising what?)

I'm not sure if you noticed, but a lot of the Wikimedia Foundation's work
has been trying to build the Wikipedia brand. :-)

MZMcBride