[Wikimedia-l] Stack Exchange vs. Wikimedia

[Jan Kučera]

Hi there,

is anyone out here participating in any of the Stack Exchange projects? Do
people here still really think voting is a bad thing and wiki is the
easiest way to collaborate?

I have repeatedly had proposals for employing some voting mechanism at
least on the back-stage, but no one was listening to me...

Cheers,
Kozuch
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[Wikimedia-l] Watch your vote in board elections!

[Jan Kučera]

Hi everybody,

today, board elections have begun. Please think twice on who you vote,
because past boards did not bring a lot of innovation (if any???) into
Wikimedia... and who else should bring innovation than the top governing
entity? Wikimedia suffers from declining editorship... on which the overall
quality depends.

Vote for better Wikipedia quality with a better board!

Good luck in the elections!

Regards,
Jan Kucera (Kozuch)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Featuring the edit tab in Vector (by making it red)

[Jan Kučera]

Yes this was quick (and maybe little ugly) mockup, but the idea is simple.
Someone from E3 team around here for comments?


2013/1/9 Mono 

> I'm sorry, but that is rather ugly. However, a new Wikipedia interface
> could definitely make the read/edit switcher more prominent or we could
> have a echo-style popup.
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> > 2013/1/9 Jan Kučera :
> > > Hi there,
> > >
> > > everybody speaks here about editor retention and how we dont know the
> > > reasons for editing decline. What about highlighting the the edit tab
> > some
> > > special color (maybe red) like this:
> >
> > Similar things were done in Wikipedias in several languages.
> >
> > The edit link is bold in Catalan (ca), Basque (eu) and Croatian (hr).
> > It is even more emphasized in Low German (nds).
> >
> > I believe that Polish and French had special designs for it in the
> > past, but they appear to be regular now.
> >
> > How effective was it? I don't know.
> >
> > Doing an A/B test of this should be quite easy, and can be done in any
> > language.
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> >
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[Wikimedia-l] Featuring the edit tab in Vector (by making it red)

[Jan Kučera]

Hi there,

everybody speaks here about editor retention and how we dont know the
reasons for editing decline. What about highlighting the the edit tab some
special color (maybe red) like this:

http://postimage.org/image/u7060y3bf/

Kozuch
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features

[Jan Kučera]

Hi Oliver,

the development progress definitely is very very slow. As a
comparison, did you watch how the web front-end of Facebook changes
within the last year? It was completely overhauled about three
times... You may object Facebook is commercial and not comparable to
Wikimedia, but this basically is not true at all sice BOTH sites
compete for the same users (editors in case of Wikimedia). I know that
comparison to any other commercial site is not welcome here, but that
is a sad point people in the community still think
commercial/noncomemrcial are two different worlds - they arent. There
is only one user, who actually does not care a lot about a site being
commercial/uncommercial... There is only one market, so Wikimedia has
to behave much like the commercial sites (of course with little
specifics to a non-profit like privacy etc.).

>From the point of this comparison, there is almost no development to
MediaWiki... this is very sad, from a multi-million budget we only
have few feauter engineers... :((( The software is a significant part
of the whole site and community, if you have bad software you will
never have great content... Features engineers should be the core of
all Wikimedia staff, it is pitty to see the reality is exactly the
other way round...

The example can be myself - I am missing chart features withint
MediaWiki/Wikipedia, I filled a bug, nothing happens, I may leave the
community for good... This is the same story over and over again.
Foundation did not really care till now...

Kozuch

2012/4/29 Oliver Keyes :
> Jan; we get new features fairly regularly :). At the moment we're working
> on two new pieces of software - the Article Feedback Form, v5, and New Page
> Triage (a replacement for Special:NewPages). After that we're moving on to
> a proper notifications system to allow better communication and
> participation across wikis. I appreciate the rate of progress may seem
> slow; it is worth pointing out we have a very small teem of features
> engineers (although more are being hired!) and so are limited in how many
> different things we can work on at once.
>
> On 25 April 2012 19:50, Jan Kučera  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> yes, there surely were comments from developers... that is positive.
>> But the result as general is still nothing at all (the feature is not
>> even nearing deployment). WMF should invest in new features. I am not
>> a dev and thus can not contribute any code.
>>
>> Kozuch
>>
>> 2012/4/25 Sumana Harihareswara :
>> > On 04/23/2012 01:03 PM, Jan Ku?era wrote:
>> >> Hi there,
>> >>
>> >>> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
>> >>> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority
>> -
>> >>> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
>> >>> suggestions along the way :).
>> >>
>> >> yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
>> >> How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
>> >> a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
>> >> (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
>> >> almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
>> >> not...
>> >>
>> >> Kozuch
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi, Kozuch.  I look at
>> >
>> > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806
>> >
>> > and I see that, within a day of the issue being filed, multiple
>> > experienced MediaWiki developers commented on that issue to explain what
>> > the chart software's developers would have to do in order to make it
>> > suitable for use on our sites.  I've also contacted the author of that
>> > extension to point at that bug's comments and at this procedural guide:
>> >
>> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Writing_an_extension_for_deployment
>> >
>> > so if you could help me in alerting the extension's author to those
>> > comments, that would be great.  Thanks!
>> >
>> > --
>> > Sumana Harihareswara
>> > Volunteer Development Coordinator
>> > Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Oliver Keyes
> Community Liaison, Product Development
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features

[Jan Kučera]

Hi,

yes, there surely were comments from developers... that is positive.
But the result as general is still nothing at all (the feature is not
even nearing deployment). WMF should invest in new features. I am not
a dev and thus can not contribute any code.

Kozuch

2012/4/25 Sumana Harihareswara :
> On 04/23/2012 01:03 PM, Jan Ku?era wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>>> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
>>> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
>>> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
>>> suggestions along the way :).
>>
>> yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
>> How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
>> a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
>> (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
>> almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
>> not...
>>
>> Kozuch
>
>
> Hi, Kozuch.  I look at
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806
>
> and I see that, within a day of the issue being filed, multiple
> experienced MediaWiki developers commented on that issue to explain what
> the chart software's developers would have to do in order to make it
> suitable for use on our sites.  I've also contacted the author of that
> extension to point at that bug's comments and at this procedural guide:
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Writing_an_extension_for_deployment
>
> so if you could help me in alerting the extension's author to those
> comments, that would be great.  Thanks!
>
> --
> Sumana Harihareswara
> Volunteer Development Coordinator
> Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features

[Jan Kučera]

Hi there,

> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
> suggestions along the way :).

yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
(https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
not...

Kozuch

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features

[Jan Kučera]

Hi guys,

I understand your objections. Surely privacy is a key here. We should
make "social" our way, taking in account various aspects of privacy
and commerce...

The goal definitely is rising the the number of editors... we should
do this through all possible ways... as someone wrote here the only
question is _how many resources_ (money etc.) is WMF wanting to invest
into editor retention...

Kozuch

2012/4/17 Nathan :
> Tom, you're assuming that adding "social features" to Wikimedia projects
> must mean integrating with commercial social networks. I don't think that's
> a given at all. If we accept that social interaction, and more
> opportunities for positive social interaction, are beneficial for
> collaborative projects like the English Wikipedia (which I think we
> should), then it's perfectly possible and quite common to internally add
> certain social features.
>
> There are many different ways to achieve a better social atmosphere;
> whether its better discussion systems, better notifications, better tools
> for exchanging ideas and interests, internal communications (like e-mail
> style messages to individuals internally, or to groups), or any one of a
> thousand other options. Boiling it down without reason to a decision over
> Facebook "like" buttons is a disservice to honest discourse.
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Tom Morris  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
>> social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
>> and so on. And editors don't want it.
>>
>> See
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
>> .
>>
>> English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
>> community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
>> with.
>>
>> If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
>> deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
>> hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
>> discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
>> the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
>> were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
>> which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
>> Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
>> information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
>> as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
>> advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
>> wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
>> shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
>> that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
>> allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
>> Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
>>
>> I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
>> services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
>> Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
>> sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
>> Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
>> networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
>> we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
>> and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
>> popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
>> de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
>> big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
>> We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
>> to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
>>
>> You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
>> the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
>> sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
>> Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
>> experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
>> adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
>> discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
>> browser level.
>>
>> [1]
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
>>
>> --
>> Tom Morris
>> 
>>
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[Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features

[Jan Kučera]

Hi there,

how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features at all???

These go in the right direction:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features

Is WMF going to act finally???

Kozuch

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