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

[David Gerard]

On 26 February 2011 13:52, Aaron Adrignola <aaron.adrignola at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was given permission to forward any portion of an email I received from
> MZMcbride, and this is a relevant portion:
> "Sure, but there is a more fundamental question about what the goal and
> mission actually is. I see it as about content creation. Wikimedia's focus
> should primarily be creating the best free content it can. Others seem far
> more interested in creating a "movement" (a large social network)."


Although Wikipedia is not a social network, and the community seems to
rotate every 18-24 months, volunteer motivation remains tricky. Humans
interact like humans. Volunteers are not employees, and can't be
expected to just shut up and work. It really, really deeply doesn't
work like that.


> That proportion of active administrators to content pages is already the
> case at Wikibooks.  It pains me to say it as a heavy contributor, but the
> number of admins has fallen to a third of what it was in 2007.  [1]  While I
> could hope for content growth instead, that's also stagnated. [2]
> If Wikipedia is the Titanic, the sister projects are the Britannic. [3]  I
> mourn the loss of many "missing Wikibookians" myself who were seriously
> involved in the community, helped mentor me and give me the enthusiasm I
> have for the project, but have since left.  Nowadays I feel alone and the
> discussion rooms are nearly empty.  I was disappointed that the usability
> initiative and outreach focused solely on Wikipedia.


Blog post I just made: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/?p=543 Key quotes:

Motivating volunteers is like herding cats. “Herding cats is easy if
you know the local value of tuna.” — me, some years ago. An
observation I know of no-one else having made before me, so I’m taking
this as my law of volunteer motivation. Lure them with something
*compelling*.

Volunteers will work ten times as hard as any employee, but only
because they want to be there and only on things they want to. But
that motivation is so fragile, and volunteer effort is not fungible.

So, for WIkibooks: what's the tuna? What's the compelling attraction
that will keep people lured in?

Repeat that question for each project.


- d.