+1

It's also good to keep in mind that a huge chunk of being part of the
communities, is just browsing around the "backstage areas", spending time
reading and learning about the ongoing decision-processes, and
workflow-processes, and communication styles, and personal tasks that are
what keep us moving forward. Stumbling across other editors having/sharing
moments of joy, and being inspired by that. Perusing userpages, browsing
(layout!) guidelines, skimming villagepumps, checking noticeboards, and
investigating backlog piles. http://xkcd.com/214/ doesn't just apply to
articles!  I had to dabble and explore in a number of areas, before I found
regular tasks that I found consistently enjoyable.
[I know a few of the design team already do this a lot, because they ask me
questions frequently! (Which I encourage).  Reading doesn't leave traces
though, so it can be hard for anyone else to get a sense of who is keeping
their curiosity burning at both ends. :-) ]

- quiddity


On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Trevor Parscal <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I don't know the answer to this question, but I do think it is a good one,
> and I would be in favor of anyone making product decisions being encouraged
> and given bandwidth to immerse themselves in the product they are making
> decisions about in it's raw organic form, real active wikis.
>
> I don't edit very much, mostly just on MediaWiki.org to document software.
> I certainly feel like I would benefit a lot from editing more, and I don't
> really have any good excuses why I don't. Perhaps I will try spending some
> time editing while I'm on vacation.
>
> - Trevor
>
> On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 5:27 PM, MZMcBride <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>>
>> I just spent a few minutes catching up on this mailing list. I noticed
>> that Nirzar recently joined the design team. That thread seemed very
>> strange to me. It didn't answer the most basic question: does he actively
>> edit wikis? And if not, when will he be starting?
>>
>> This got me thinking about the larger issue. Are people actively editing
>> the projects? I mean making new pages, fixing typos, updating templates,
>> etc. on Wikipedia or Wikisource or Commons or another wiki? To me, it
>> seems like it would be nearly impossible to design well for these projects
>> without immersing yourself in them. There's so much left to be done, even
>> on our largest projects such as the English Wikipedia, and I think we're
>> failing at communicating this. I talk to people who feel Wikipedia is vast
>> and finished(!), but they're completely wrong.
>>
>> I think good design is a key component to growing the projects, but I
>> worry that more and more people are involved in name only. People should
>> be actively editing and I'm not sure that they are. So I'm left wondering:
>> are people actively editing? Do people try to reserve a day a week to
>> editing? An edit a day? How do people get involved so that they can
>> understand, protect, and enhance the projects?
>>
>> I should be in San Francisco in late January and I'm hoping to meet with
>> some of you. Be assured that editing will be a topic of discussion. :-)
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
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