[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems

[Fayssal F.]

On one hand Nielsen Online says Wikipedia U.S. growth is decreasing while a
professor at British Columbia University is advocating for its use. By the
way, Guy Chapman says that "Wikipedia is headed to court soon".

That is the story about Wikipedia. We strive to do our best but there would
always be someone unhappy for a happy one. If I have to agree with something
here it would be with the fact that we have to review our approach toward
newcomers. I know, yes... that would not solve sockpuppetry problems -
afterall, sockpuppetry harms our NPOV label and subsequently harms the
reader in terms of the quality of the material they are getting. So, yes
Marc, we think about our readers and i don't believe we are taking the issue
from a marketing side. No, because we are volunteer encyclopaedists and
nobody here is a marketer.

And yes, the foundation needs to take some actions. Do we have a kind of a
guideline designed for the media? There's a press kit but it is vague. Does
the media know about the 5 pillars? How many hits the Wikimedia press room
page gets a day/month? It appears that the media is misunderstanding our
processes out here and something needs to be done - but not necessarily
changing our philisophy or the way we work.

Fayssal F.



> On Fri, 16 May 2008 17:34:57 +0100 "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has PR Problems
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <f3fedb0d0805160934q7426ba59v21e10e6bb9ce61b6 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> 2008/5/16 Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>:
>
> >> Everyone may hate
> >> Wikipedia, but they still use it, and that's what matters.
> >>
> > Once again, the product is more important than the people.
>
> I really don't understand why you keep saying this as if it's a
> scandalous revelation.
>
> Surely it's self-evident that a community of volunteers, who have
> gathered together *to work on a specific goal*, will elevate that aim
> over and above the process of community formation?
>
> [Yes, we as a culture treat people badly, especially newcomers. Yes,
> we need to improve our default interactions with the outside world.
> But this doesn't mean we need to consider the community as more
> important than the encyclopedia... without the encyclopedia, the
> community is an ill-matched and purposeless crowd of people, and would
> implode fairly quickly]
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
>
>
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> End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 58, Issue 32
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>