Samuel Klein wrote: > On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride <z...@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 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
