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

Sat Mar 24 16:39:42 UTC 2012

Oh come on people - this is yet another Foundation-l discussion that has gone off the rails.."the elusiveness of Samuel Klein"?  sounds like a thriller novel..  I'm not sure we need to be attacking other volunteers here.  :/

There are dozens of ways to approach new editor engagement.  I respect that we should allow equal space for each of those ideas.  However, once a decision has been made, and you re-voiced your ideas and concerns..do we have to do it over and over and over again after that?  I think everyone on this list understands where folks stand, but can we have a more productive conversation about how to move forward and not get into long philosophical discussions on the way we wish things were...

This decision has been made.  I haven't read any new ideas or bits of information in this thread for a few days.  What are some concrete things folks would like done now that this decision has been made?  Other than SJ being less elusiveness (whatever that means) and for WMF to once again contemplate content quality in decision making.  Although it's not clear to me that it wasn't considered here - there's just a basic disagreement on the value of types of editors..which has been ongoing for years and is not going to be resolved in this thread.

Personally, I think this is fantastic direction for WMF to be taking (I know that's a shock).  I would rather invest in teaching a classroom of students how to become Wikipedia editors rather than hope that the existing pool of editors remains alive forever.  This all seems like rather basic and fundamental volunteer recruitment strategies.  Maybe not if this were an academic research institute run by Harvard...but it's not...tolerating people's mistakes along the way to molding them into a growing team of great editors seems well worth the investment of other volunteers time.  If you disagree - don't engage in cleaning up their mess.  I'd sacrifice one obnoxious A+ quality editor for ten committed, enthusiastic and community oriented B+ quality editors any day.  History has shown repeatedly that the work of the ten will outshine the work of that one person.  Many nonprofits have to sacrifice hostile and highly productive volunteers to attract more volunteers for future growth - there's always concern it will backfire (usually coming from the hostile volunteers on their way out) and it almost always works out..given Wikipedia's size..I'm not losing much sleep over it..I'd be surprised if the board, staff, developers or others were..  It seems if Wikipedia didn't follow this strategy we'd still be using Nupedia.  Focusing on recruitment of just the experts over the masses didn't win out then - doubt it will now.

-greg aka varnent

On Mar 24, 2012, at 11:44 AM, cyrano <cyrano.fawkes at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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