[Foundation-l] help.wikimedia.org - Q&A site

[Jan Kučera]

FD seem to collect lots of crappy feedback...

Why WMF promis always think a wiki interface will save the world? It
definitely will not, because newbies will never touch this
interface... and this is a BIG BIG problem nobody wants to
acknowledge. We do need services that are easier to use than a wiki
is... OMG can nobody understand this simple thing? And yes, it
actually may be cheaper to develop such interfaces from scratch...
than to try to bend MediaWiki over and over again.

Teahouse is a good concept but in wrong software environment (wikitext
and MediaWiki again).

Why is LiquidThreads on hold? Who stopped it? Things are going to hell
again then... This project was a light in the end of a tunnel...
unfortunatelly the "consesnus-based" community probably blew it up...
because there were few NO-sayers who sent this promising projet to the
hell...

2012/4/7 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Peter Coombe <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Wasn't there a proposal a while back for a Stack Exchange [1] site
>> like this? It seems like the ideal software for it.
>
> StackExchange and the open source OSQA equivalent are indeed powerful
> tools and worth experimenting with. Anyone wanting to set up a public
> instance of these or other tools to play with can do so through
> Wikimedia Labs and of course the toolserver. See
> https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Access for Labs access and
> policies.
>
> We've focused on creating a more integrated help experience with two
> projects, the feedback dashboard (FD) and the teahouse.
>
> The FD gives new editors an opportunity to ask a question or register
> a complaint. It pops into view the moment you first click edit, which
> is a more obvious affordance than a separate help site you have to
> find out about and visit. It's been active on en.wp and nl.wp for a
> few months, and was recently activated on French Wikisource as well.
> On en.wp, we register about 100 feedback submissions a day, and about
> 30-50 responses.
>
> FD includes a few features which elevate it above ordinary talk page responses:
> - an in-line response tool on the dashboard itself which shortcuts the
> path to the user's talk page
> - a "mark as helpful" feature which the recipient of a message can use
> to indicate that they were helped.
> - friendly email notifications (not the standard talk page notifiers)
> - a leaderboard of top responders, which has been helpful at
> incentivizing participation
>
> FD for English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FeedbackDashboard
> FD for Dutch Wikipedia:
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:DashboardTerugkoppeling
> FD for French Wikisource:
> http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A9cial:FeedbackDashboard
>
> We're currently letting the project sit for a while to gather metrics
> about any impact it has on editors who are being helped.
>
> The teahouse is a less technical and more social initiative:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
>
> It is supported by some shiny templates and a nice little in-line
> response gadget. But it's primarily an effort to mobilize lots of
> people to engage in user-to-user help. As you can see, lots of folks
> have signed up as hosts (people who respond), and early metrics
> indicate that there's indeed a positive impact on retention.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Teahouse/Metrics
>
> IMO setting up a separate Q/A site would be in some ways a workaround
> for Wikimedia's poor internal discussion system, and would incur lots
> of disadvantages (detached from workflows, no easy login integration,
> no easy integration of wiki markup / templates, separate technical
> infrastructure with additional maintenance/scalability/security
> burden, need for additional policy development on copyright, terms of
> use, etc. ......). But it's worth experimenting with, for sure, if
> only to find out what UI/UX patterns are worth applying to our own
> solutions.
>
> LQT is on hold for now, because it's an overambitious and
> underresourced project. We're going to start work soon on this
> project:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)
>
> This is a larger effort to improve Wikimedia's notifications
> infrastructure, and will lay the groundwork for messaging
> improvements, as well as other next generation features. We hope that
> we'll be able to improve user-to-user messaging features in this
> process,  which would be a technical foundation for improved direct
> user support systems.
>
> For the tech side of things, our goals for next fiscal are still
> draft, but give a good idea what we're thinking about (pending
> approval of associated staffing/funding):
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals
>
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l