Anders Wennersten wrote:
The discussion on the proposed amendment is now closed
[1) and it is up
to the Board will review the community comments. And with almost 5,000
edits in the discussion - with more than 2,000 editors and 320,000 words
in various languages and with very different opinions on the subject, it
will be a challenge for the Board to come to a common standpoint if it
as all is possible
Stephen LaPorte writes: /The !vote is one strong indicator of the
importance of addressing this topic/, in which I fully agree
[...]
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment
Hi.
Thanks for starting this thread.
I think it's important to note that the paid contributions amendment
discussion (or perhaps more accurately, the straw poll) was very heavily
advertised, using a banner at the top of Wikimedia wikis for several
weeks that displayed to both logged-in and logged out users (as is
required for a change to the site terms of use). Due to the heavy
advertising, it's no surprise there were several thousand participants,
but that number needs context, of course.
It may or may not be a good use of time and energy to address paid editing
(or rather, paid advocacy) or article quality or any number of other
strategic goals, but we shouldn't allow a heavily advertised discussion
alone sway what we feel is important to focus on, particularly not without
better understanding whether this specific set of self-selected people
(i.e., people who saw the banner and decided to comment) is representative
of the overall Wikimedia community.
I personally agree that measuring and improving the quality of the work on
Wikimedia wikis is important and deserves renewed focus as the next
strategic planning process gets underway. Though as others in this thread
have already noted, it's difficult to measure article (or transcript or
dictionary entry or news story or data item or...) quality. And I'll add
to this that the current Strategic Plan sets a fair number of goals that
likely won't be reached, so we'll need to figure out whether the
expectations and/or the resource allocation needs adjustment.
MZMcBride