On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]>wrote:
> 2009/6/1 Brian <[email protected]>: > > While I'm thinking about it: > > > > I would like to see the WMF solicit feedback on these kinds of issues - > how > > it might further its goals (distribution for example) - from the wider > > readership. The small, well informed and focused group on foundation-l > can > > do a lot, but what about inviting everyone to the conversation in a > medium > > that makes it easy for them to contribute their ideas? > > > > Erik, you had pitched us the Ideazilla application not too long ago. That > in > > coordination with a site notice would be an awesome experiment. Let's do > it > > sooner rather than later? :) > > Did you see this email (and the resulting thread)? > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051580.html > > The kind of discussion you suggest could well be part of that, or at > least done in connection with it. > I'm glad they are doing that but it's not quite what I was thinking. My idea is more of a combination of the ideas that liquid threads and ideazilla bring to mind (not necessarily related to how those applications actually work, however - just the ideas they elicit). I got the impression from Michael's e-mail that Wikimedia's Strategic Planning would mostly be done by really smart Wikimedians who are already meta-contributors. It was broad enough to include all volunteers, but wasn't really oriented around helping those volunteers become strategic planners. Ultimately, strategic planning will be best done in coordination with a vast amount of evidence and opinions. It doesn't make sense to create a strategic plan before considering all possible options in detail. Nowadays we can do that better than its ever been done before. Idea: You perform a Google search for some topic and end up at Wikipedia. You find your information and are now looking for your next distraction when you see a prominent site notice that says, "How can we make Wikipedia better?" or somesuch. You click it and end up at a fully ajaxified application that doesn't require (but supports) login, has no captchas and does all anti-spam and anti-ballot stuffing on the backend (and a "report/flag this thread" link for human spam detection). What you see is a list of idea threads that are ranked according to simple ajax thumbs up / thumbs down votes in addition to a fully ajax form for adding a new idea. Clicking on it loads the threaded idea conversation on the same page. You can vote on individual comments and reply to them on the same page. As you can tell I am of the opinion that loading pages incurs a heavy cognitive load, lowering the probability that you will convert the reader into a collaborator. There is of course the spam/ham tradeoff, but Gmail and Craigslist have nailed the solution and we could too. An important takeaway from the brain sciences regarding executive function is that you need to "trick" yourself (or your users) into switching tasks. Task switching is tough and every single additional degree of freedom that you add between your user reading and then following up on that with some creative writing lowers the probability that it will happen very significantly. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
