[Foundation-l] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions

[koteche mcintosh]

Why can't people pay £2 per month and be a member of Wiki-everything!

Better than [pledging.

Have a on line active site that tells you what is going on how much money
there is! Get a members package?


What do you think?!
On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 5:13 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 2011/1/29 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>:
> > Having many wikis is an ongoing source of irritation for many, and it
> > would be great to resolve this issue. Are there good arguments *for*
> > having separate sites?
>
> Yes, and I think most people generally underestimate the complexity of
> the issue. The reasons for WMF to spin up separate sites have varied,
> but to try to put it as simply as possible, a dedicated wiki, in all
> technical and social respects, focuses collaborative activity, which
> can enhance productivity and reduce barriers to participation. In the
> case of e.g. StrategyWiki, it also allowed us to try some radical
> changes (like using LQT on all pages, or receiving hundreds of
> proposals as new page creations) without disrupting some surrounding
> context. I have absolutely no regrets about our decision to launch
> StrategyWiki, for example -- I think it was the right decision, with
> exactly the expected benefits.
>
> Meta itself has grown organically to support various community
> activities and interests that had no other place to go. It has never
> been significantly constrained by its mission statement. The "What
> Meta is not" page only enumerates two examples of unacceptable use:
>
> 1. A disposal site for uncorrectable articles from the different
> Wikipedias, and it is not a hosting service for personal essays of all
> types.
> 2. A place to describe the MediaWiki software.
>
> Its information architecture, in spite of many revisions, has never
> kept up with this organic growth, making Meta a very confusing and
> intimidating place for many, especially when one wants to explore or
> use the place beyond some specific reason to go there (vote in an
> election, nominate a URL for the spam blacklist, write a translation).
>
> So, let's take the example of OutreachWiki as a simple case study to
> describe the differences between the two wikis.
>
> 1) The wiki's main page and sidebar are optimized for its stated purpose;
> 2) As a new user, you receive a welcome message that's specifically
> about ways you can support public outreach (
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcome )
> 3) All special pages remain useful to track relevant activity or
> content without applying further constraints;
> 4) Userboxes and user profiles can be optimized for the stated purpose
> (e.g. http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Languages_and_skills )
> 5) There's very little that's confusing or intimidating -- the content
> is clean, simple, and organized.
> 6) If the OutreachWiki community wants to activate some site-wide
> extension, it can do so, focusing only on its own needs.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> 1) Activity is very low;
> 2) The wiki is largely in English;
> 3) Meta has a long tradition of hosting outreach-related content, and
> many pages still reside there or are created there.
> 4) The existence of yet-another-wiki brings tons of baggage and
> frustration (more dispersed change-tracking for users who want to keep
> up with all activity, more creation of meta/user page/template
> structures, more setup of policies and cross-wiki tools, etc.).
>
> It's not a given that 1) and 2) are a function of having a separate
> wiki. As we've seen with StrategyWiki, activity is largely the result
> of focused activation of the community. The small sub-community that
> cares about public outreach on Meta is ridiculously tiny compared with
> the vast global community that could potentially be activated to get
> involved through centralnotices, village pumps, email announcements,
> etc. So the low level of activity on OutreachWiki is arguably "only" a
> failure of WMF to engage more people, not a failure of a separate
> wiki. (It certainly makes all the associated baggage much harder to
> justify.)
>
> But, I think the disadvantages of working within a single system can
> be rectified for at least the four most closely related backstage
> wikis (Meta/WMF/Strategy/Outreach). I do think working towards a
> www.wikimedia.org wiki is the way to do that, importing content in
> stages, with a carefully considered information architecture that's
> built around the needs of the Wikimedia movement, a very crisp mission
> statement and list of permitted and excluded activities, a WikiProject
> approach to organizing related activity, etc. But it also would need
> to include consideration for needed technological and configuration
> changes, in descending importance:
>
> - namespaces (e.g. for essays, proposals, public outreach resources,
> historical content)
> - template and JS setup to support multiple languages well (e.g.
> mirroring some of the enhancements made to Commons)
> - access controls (e.g. for HTML pages)
> - FlaggedRevs/Pending Changes (e.g. for official WMF or chapter
> information)
> - LiquidThreads (e.g. for a movement-wide forum that could
> increasingly subsume listservs)
> - Semantic MediaWiki/Semantic Forms (e.g. for event calendars)
>
> To simplify security considerations, we might want to have all
> fundraising-related content elsewhere (e.g. donate.wikimedia.org).
>
> An alternative strategy, of course, is to focus on making the
> distinction between different wikis as irrelevant as possible by
> vastly improving cross-wiki tools, but the former approach seems more
> viable in the not too distant future. I don't think "just move it all
> to Meta" is the correct answer.
>
> --
> Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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