[Wikimedia-l] Apparently, Wikipedia is ugly

[Kim Bruning]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 09:04:46PM +0100, Thomas Morton wrote:
> 
> This all ties back to my view that we don't think of the average reader
> enough :)


What do we want the "average reader" to do? Who do we want them to be.
Do we want them to be an encyclopedia reader, a wiki editor,
or ... something in between? 

A novel thought that!

I think that every person who comes to take something away, also
has something to bring back in. 

Actually, that's pretty much certain, sooner or later.

An encyclopedia is a starting point for research. Once you're even
just halfway researching your topic, you probably know more than the
encyclopedia does.

This is how I sometimes contributed to wikipedia early on. [1]

Rather than giving up and calling people "the average reader", can
we think about how we can get them to give something back?

Sure, we probably can't get 100% of readers to give something back, but we
can definitely do better than the meager fraction-of-1% we have now. 

Our policies/procedures/work-patterns have swung a little too far
encyclopedia-ward. We need to get the pendulum swinging back
wiki-ward for a while.

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lost_functionalities#Using_wikipedia_as_an_.28anonymous.29_research_tool