[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Thomas Morton]

>
> I oppose any form of reader/editor dichotomy in the strongest possible way.
>

And yet speak in support of the current system - which makes no effort to
listen readers... it enforces a dichotomy of its own!


> A wiki operates on the premise that all readers are editors, and all
> editors are readers.
>

I used to think this. I've come to realise this is a naive view; there are
many people who are consumers of knowledge and are incapable, unable or
uninteresting in *creating* knowledge (i.e. an editor). Theoretically they
could be an editor (and we should of course work on the principle that they
could manage that at any time) but in practice most aren't and we need to
cater for them where possible.

Let's consider this in another format; most of us eat chicken. Theoretically
it is not all that hard to raise chickens, kill them and eat them. But in
reality various hurdles exist to me keeping raising chickens. But I still
like to eat chicken, raised by poultry farmers.

Now it would be a poor group of poultry farmers who made decisions purely on
what is right for them as a distinct group, on the basis that anyone could
theoretically raise a chicken. Instead they make decisions that a) maximise
the customer experience and b) make their job easier.


> Any kind of distinction is pathological within the context of a wiki and
> will hasten its demise. (As we are in fact seeing) [1]


Where are we seeing this? Encouraging readers to become editors is a good
thing; we are not at all good at it - conversion rates are low and the
community is insular, closed, discouraging and elitest to most newcomers.


> So as a matter of dogma in the context of running a wiki, readers are

important in the sense that they need to be converted into
> editor/readers.


I don't see this as mutually exclusive - we can cater primarily for the
needs of a reader, and we can encourage them to become editors as much as
possible. In fact the two aims are highly complementary.

My point stands, though, even in this case; whether you are making it
"better" to read WP, or converting them to editors you are still focusing on
the reader, as it should be.


> Possibly if we feel that certain encyclopedias are finished; we may
> indeed want to stop running those wikis, kill off those communities,
> harvest the content; and start using ye olde Nupedia model to polish
> the final product.
>

As I say; I don't see the link here between considering what our readers
want....

We are making this knowledge primarily for it to be read; every time i make
an edit to Wikipedia I try to consider it in the context of "is this adding
knowledge, how will this affect a reader, will it impart something useful,
etc." We don't do a lot of that.

Finally I want to point out that I wasn't really making a distinction
between editor and reader; every editor is generally a reader. The problem
in this case is that we are asking a readership question of the editing
community - which represents a small and *biased* portion of the readership
:) Just because someone does not want to edit the Wiki does not mean their
view on what they would like to see is valueless.

We don't appear to listen to our readers much at all.

Which is sad.

Tom