[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia’s Foundation Plans Expansion"

[Charles Matthews]

Liam Wyatt wrote:
> On 13 July 2010 09:05, Charles Matthews 
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com 
> <mailto:charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>> wrote:
>
>     James Alexander wrote:
>     > On a related note: someone brought this Times article to the
>     meetup in
>     > Boston Monday
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/business/media/12link.html.
>     > There is some truth to it I think and the staffing changes
>     reflect that some
>     > with a larger focus on development outside en.
>     >
>     >
>     Having discussed certain things with Liam Wyatt face-to-face after the
>     British Museum workshop, I'm prepared to say that I disagree somewhat
>     with him as a pundit (as distinct from an activist). It is so not true
>     that enWP is "full" in any sense. We still don't get careful
>     analysis of
>     our "brand" in the media, though they make fewer complete blunders
>     about
>     WP in the past.
>     <snip>
>     Charles
>
> Just a quick reply - I also do not think WP (and especially en-wp) is 
> "full" in any sense. The quote from the article is: “By definition, as 
> it gets bigger, people don’t have as many places to start. It is a 
> good problem to have, but it is a problem.” And that's just one quote 
> pulled from a much wider conversation and therefore has a necessary 
> lack of contextualisation. As Noam's article put it, the community in 
> general and the WMF are starting to push (in a variety of ways) into 
> engaging different kinds of people - people in developing countries 
> and also subject-area experts especially. I think everyone agrees that 
> it's no longer as easy to "just jump right in" to en-wp as it used to 
> be which is because we have much better content than we used to - this 
> is the "good problem". But I also think that we all agree that there's 
> definitely a long way to go before en-wp could be considered "full". 
> IMO we're only just scratching the surface of what we can eventually 
> achieve :-)
>
Of course I'm well aware of the perils of believing anything in the 
press. But even so, I don't see the point in that way. Remember that it 
is _easier_ to add to an existing article than to start a new one. 
Remember that it is easier to more-or-less clone something others have 
done (a template, say) than to figure it out for yourself. Remember that 
the existence of a WikiProject in an area gives a starting point for 
contact, that is easier by far to use than searching around for other 
editors who share your interests. It may be harder to add to articles 
that are already reasonably complete, but there are a couple of million 
that are nothing like complete.

We didn't really settle our differences when we talked at the Museum 
Tavern. (Fortunately it wasn't a question of going outside the pub to do 
so - we already were outside the pub!) There were two strands I remember 
that seemed to be tangled. "Jump right in" is actually the attitude of 
the young and technically-minded: that is not going to change, and so 
the key issue is that the learning curve, for the learn-by-doing 
editors, should not be spoiled by harshness. But there is the "adult 
learner" issue, and this is a major part of the "different kinds of 
people" front. If the potential reader-turning-editor is saying "I 
wouldn't know where to start", i.e. the complementary attitude, then 
(yes) we get to the usability issues that got us the Vector skin. But 
there should be brief  but good versions of what you need to know to get 
started, which is why I asked recently on this list about how we were 
doing with cheatsheets.

I feel a kind of frustration every time one of these discussions goes 
flatly one-sided and omits what seem to me to be some basic distinctions.

Charles