[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[MZMcBride]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> Everybody knows that reversing stagnating/declining participation
> in Wikimedia's projects is our top priority.

Thank you for sharing this.

How much discussion has there been internally about this being the wrong
approach? A good number of active editors (who I imagine Wikimedia is also
trying to engage and retain) feel that Wikimedia's sole focus is on the
numbers game. That is, Wikimedia is all about adding people, but doesn't
seem to care about the quality of the content that it's producing (or the
quality of the new contributors, for that matter).

The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to create a free and accessible
repository of (high-quality) educational content; the vision is not about
trying to get as many people involved as possible (or even build a
movement).

Is there a concern that the current focus on simply boosting the numbers (a
focus on quantity) is overshadowing the arguably more important goal of
improving the content (a focus on quality)?

MZMcBride