[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[cyrano]

I feel compelled to express my agreement with MZMcBride. I find his
questioning pertinent.
I wish the quality of content were at the core of the WMF. I feel
disappointed by the direction it is choosing, and by the elusiveness of
Samuel Klein whose wisdom I used to respect greatly. What happened, Samuel?

Le 24/03/2012 12:52, MZMcBride a écrit :
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>>> Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.
>> MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!
>>
>> I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
>> 'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
>> build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
>> simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
>> and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.
> You seem to continue to ignore the cost of experimentation. When you unleash
> a classroom full of people on Wikipedia who start messing up articles and
> performing other actions that need to be reverted, is it Wikimedia
> Foundation staff who will be cleaning up the mess? It becomes a whole
> different issue when it's not random people messing up articles, but instead
> it's Wikimedia Foundation-sponsored contributors. You're far too smart to
> not realize this already; why are you ignoring or side-stepping these and
> other costs of experimentation?
>
>>> Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality educational
>>> content.
>> It's funny, you've said this three times so far this thread :-)
>> But if you read the mission again, I think you'll find you are mistaken.
>>
>> Wikimedia's mission is to *empower and engage people* to develop
>> content.  There's nothing about quality, unless you assume that an
>> empowered and engaged society will produce high quality materials.
>> (As it turns out, in practice if not in theory, we do.)
> Imagine a world in which there's a global movement with only mediocre
> content to show for it. That should go on a bumper sticker. If the Wikimedia
> Foundation is allowed to add "movement" jargon, I think I'm entitled to say
> that the goal is to make something high-quality. Fair's fair.
>
>> Our goal is global engagement of creators; and providing
>> infrastructure to empower their work.
> This sounds great. Is that what's actually happening? Providing
> infrastructure that empowers people is fantastic. Build better software and
> other tools that allow people to create beautiful and creative and
> interesting content.
>
> What you're saying nearly anyone on this list would have difficulty
> disagreeing with (which is, I believe, partially why you're saying it). But
> "snap back to reality": what's happening right now is a hawkeyed focus on a
> boost of the number of contributors. Increasing participation for
> statistics' sake. And the associated infrastructure (tool development, staff
> allocation, etc.) is equally focused on this goal. And this doesn't even get
> into the issue of sister projects (or any project other than the English
> Wikipedia, really), which have received no support.
>
>>> At some point this jargon about "the movement" came along and
>>> there's a huge focus on "building the movement."
>> See above; this isn't new.
> The word "movement" is not new. Its prevalence is.
>
>> I do support those who focus on the quality of our existing content.
>> But other priorities -- from expanding content scope and formats, to
>> expanding the editing community -- also deserve support.
> For me and for the people that Wikimedia serves (its readers), it's never
> been about the community. I'm reminded of this quote from Risker's user page
> on the English Wikipedia: "Our readers do not care one whit who adds
> information to articles; they care only that the information is correct."
>
> Your suggestion that there is something more important than the content
> simply seems wrong to me. The content is what people come for. The content
> is what people return for. The content is king. As iridescent once said,
> "without content, Wikipedia is just Facebook for ugly people."
>
> Obviously _a_ focus on the human component is important. Bots aren't writing
> articles or writing dictionary definitions or taking and uploading images
> (yet!), but content has to be _the_ focus. The primary focus cannot simply
> be adding more people to the pile to build a movement. We are not trying to
> Occupy Wikipedia; we are trying to build something of educational value for
> the future. The idea has always been that even if the movement disappeared
> (and with it the Wikimedia Foundation), the content would remain. It has to
> be treated with respect and be given due deference in resource allocation
> and in the goals that the Wikimedia Foundation makes a priority.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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