[Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:14 AM, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:

> Quote:Many volunteers don't have a lot to write.
> This sounds like an opinion, not like a fact. Even on English wikipedia, we
> still have about two hundred thousand plant species to describe, and
> millions of animal species. And then I'm not talking about fungi and other
> kingdoms


That is a good point, Teun, and work between Wikispecies and Wikipedia has
done more to fill taxonomy than would anywhere near exist.  However,
participation and growth is not purely content creation and expansion.  The
content is most important, but it is impossible to do so forever on the
English Wikipedia in isolation.  If we want to focus on how to "get a
Wikipedian", it is my firm belief that we cannot.  The focus, in my meager
opinion, is not on instructions, wizards, or templates.  The solution is
what we want to acheive: knowledge.  This comes from helping new users and
appreciating that our content is ridiculously misunderstood for the fifth
most popular website in the world.


-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan