[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Fabrice Florin joins Wikimedia

[Fabrice Florin]

Thanks, Bod and Erik!

Great idea. 

At your suggestion, I have scheduled this on my calendar, and plan to write an update  about my first month at WMF on my MediaWiki userpage in mid-February.

Since I'm still a Wikipedia newbie, I will also will also write up my observations about my own user experience so far as a new editor. This will help identify what works and doesn't work for me as a user, while my perspective is still fresh. Then I will proceed to find solutions that would have made it easier for me to participate -- and see if they could help others as well. 

In my experience, participation is an issue for all civic media sites, and Wikipedia has been luckier than most in that respect. Some of the biggest issues that prevent users from contributing typically include lack of time, lack of expertise, fear of rejection, insufficient motivation, abusive behavior, mistrust and cumbersome UI, to name but a few. 

We hope to address some of these tough issues by providing a range of tools and incremental improvements to the Wikipedia user experience over time. Can't wait to work with you all to experiment with some of these ideas together.

More on this in a month ;o)

All the best,

Fabrice

__________________________________

Fabrice Florin
Product Manager,
Editor Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 (415) 388-6688 work
+1 (415) 860-6484 mobile
Email: fflorin at wikimedia.org

Article Feedback Tool V5: 
http://bit.ly/aft-v5



On Jan 10, 2012, at 3:37 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> < holds up big WELCOME sign >
>> 
>> If I say that this sounds like a hugely important role the rest of the
>> office will fold their arms and  rightly harumph at me for the implied
>> negation of their value, so I won't say that. But you can't keep up
>> with Wikipedia news without being made constantly aware that gaining
>> new editors is a serious business. I will be fascinated to see what
>> you make of the ideas for volunteer recruitment we've had so far and
>> any innovations you can come up with.
>> 
>> Congratulations and welcome to the other recent new hires as well.
>> 
>> It would be lovely if each of the new hires could guest post on the
>> Foundation blog and/or write a page for Signpost once they've settled
>> in and let us know what their average day is like and some insight
>> into what they're working on. The staff is now getting to a size where
>> even close followers of Wikimedia are liable to lose track. Some
>> effort to keep the community feeling that they know all the staff
>> would be much appreciated.
> 
> Hi Bod,
> 
> I like the idea of having some kind of "first month at WMF" post,
> especially from someone in a very community-facing position like
> Fabrice. Let's plan to do that in February. I don't think it's a blog
> post but we can broadcast it here and in a couple of places.
> 
> Cheers,
> Erik
> 
> -- 
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
> 
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