Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
Kozuch, Others have responded to many of your other points. I just wanted to help with two things: On 04/25/2012 02:49 PM, 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). The reason that feature is not moving towards deployment is because of the issues that the other developers explained in their Bugzilla comments. Can you help by asking Robert Horlings Gérard de Smaele to respond to those comments? I have tried to contact them but haven't heard any response. I am not a dev and thus can not contribute any code. Kozuch We welcome the contributions of non-developers to the software development process! For example, you can: * help test the software and file bug reports (example: http://www.mkltesthead.com/2012/04/weekend-testing-on-march-5th-something.html ) * help document the current state of engineering activity so everyone's more aware of what's happening: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Project_documentation_howto * join the wikitech-ambassadors list to help communicate between your wiki communities and WMF about upcoming and desired changes: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors And I see you're already on the Bug Squad to help monitor new incoming bug reports and check whether old ones are still valid: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:WikiProject_Bug_Squad Thank you! Thanks. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
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 oke...@wikimedia.org: 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 kozuc...@gmail.com 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 suma...@wikimedia.org: 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 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Oliver Keyes Community Liaison, Product Development Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
On Apr 29, 2012, at 1:04 AM, Jan Kučera wrote: 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.) You are comparing apples and oranges. Facebook: * Has *hundreds of millions* of dollars to devote to developer staff; * Does *not* have a community that demands to be consulted for every change; * Does *not* require that features work in ancient browsers; * Does *not* have to support skins and other technology built ten years ago; * Does *not* have to develop in order to support non-Facebook installs of their software; * Has *only* about 100 languages to develop for; * Pays *above* market rate 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.. I'm not sure I agree with you that Features Engineers should be the core of the Foundation's staff but that's not really relevant. There are two major constraints that I think need to be understood. First, the multi-million budget we have is actually *nothing* by the standards of sites and tech systems that are 1/20th of our size and scale. Bear in mind that features engineering only receives a fraction of the 30 million (or whatever) each year. (For comparison, a friend of mine runs a moderate-sized e-commerce site. Her budget, per year, is $300 million dollars. They get probably 1/100th of our traffic and users. Probably less.) Second, and this is going to make people surly, but the we don't pay crap. Our salaries are the lowest of the low. It is close to impossible to attract experienced talent when you are offering 80% of market rate. So even if we decided to put ALL the budget into hiring software engineers, it wouldn't mean anything because we still couldn't hire those people. 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... This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing. If you feel strongly about this, you should lobby more and more people, and create a greater consensus that your chart software is important to everyone and should be elevated. Leaving the community isn't the solution: you miss 100% of the balls you don't take a swing at. --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
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 kozuc...@gmail.com 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 suma...@wikimedia.org: 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 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Oliver Keyes Community Liaison, Product Development Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
Sumana writes: so if you could help me in alerting the extension's author to those comments, that would be great. Thanks! Jan Kučera writes: 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. +1 to investing in supporting code written by others. I think Sumana put it very well above :) You can help facilitate better/faster communication between core mediawiki devs and extension writers. SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
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 suma...@wikimedia.org: 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 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 18:41, Jan Kučera kozuc...@gmail.com wrote: 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 Hello, I put together that second link during the strategy process. Others have since added to it but the page looks much the way I remember it from back then. It's really hard for me to recall quite what I was thinking. I did believe that some kind of social glue would make the site more sticky (as the geek parlance goes) but whether I still believe that would lead to a better encyclopedia... I guess I'm not so sure about that now. Probably I was more driven by a sense of loneliness and isolation I felt whilst I did my Wikipedia work. Thing is, I think there are already vibrant communities within Wikipedia and I'm sure there are bonds. Although, I confess, I'm guessing because I'm not involved with any of them. But I would assume that those that put together Signpost each week feel connected. Those in the Military History group I imagine work together. I think if one wants to join a group for social interaction there are plenty of possibilities open to one. So now, time having passed since I put together that page, I more feel that the type of stuff I do on Wikipedia doesn't really lend itself to bonding. I tend to read articles on myriad topics and follow where my curiosity takes me. Is there the possibility of an Autodidact reader's group? If so, what would they talk about? I read *this* today! Cool! Today I read this *other* thing! Is there much value in such exchanges? It seems to me that, no, there probably isn't. There is also the Copyeditors Group but my relationship to it is that there is plenty of info there for me to learn from but I don't feel qualified to add to it. But I do know where to go if I have a question, which is not to be sniffed at. So if I am left daunted I know where to find support. Good. What do I think about it all now... Personally, I think there is no good on-wiki way to address my feelings of loneliness as a volunteer but - guess what - that's fine! Because if I want to salve my solipsism then I am a member of plenty of other websites where I have friends to talk to. However, I imagine there are ways to improve things for the groups that already exist. I would suggest anyone wishing to pursue this interviews regular contributors to the larger Wikigroups such as MILHIST and the Signpost crew. What innovations can be made to MediaWiki to help them do what they're already doing more easily? Maybe liquid threads is enough? (I'm afraid I'm not a fan). Perhaps it would be better if the Signpost guys, for example, want to feel more bonded they simply exchange Twitter/Facebook details? Of course many people want their Wikipedia identity to be separate from their identity elsewhere and so would not wish to share such details. Is there a solution to that? Dunno. To finish: your post as quoted at top states there are ZERO social features. People can quite readily share text and images; there's a talk page on EVERY page we have. I'm not sure what else you expect a computer to do short of adding Skype/Voicemail. en.wp.User:Bodnotbod ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
hi, Please do thank the journalist concerned. I agree with the line of reasoning.But I sway away from one of his conclusions. So I think the answer is that Wikipedia needs to be more social. It needs a different kind of moderation. And it needs more mechanisms for positive feedback. Wikipedia does need a different kind of moderation and more mechanisms for positive feedback but do not think that the reasoning makes the case for making it more social. Harlock. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
Tom, has a reputable news source actually verified this? Even Wikipedia editors know that HuffPost isn't reliable... On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: On 16 April 2012 18:41, Jan Kučera kozuc...@gmail.com wrote: 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??? 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 http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:44:48 +0100, Thomas Morton wrote: Whether they also want to socialise with other editors is somewhat a secondary consideration/distraction. I disagree. A lot. Of course that is your prerogative. But I think in holding that view you've critically lost sight of the point of being here. We are not building a social network in the background. A social structure has to exists to keep the community going, but the prime purpose is to write/develop free content. But perhaps it would be useful to suggest some specific social features that you'd want - that might help focus the discussion. Tom I actually do agree. It is not a secret that we are attractive for people having personal problems of some sort, who hope that they can get kind of attention in Wikipedia/Wikimedia they can never get in real life. At some point I was even put in a situation when I had views opposed to the views of such people, and I basically had to defend my views against them. This proved to be impossible: I am pretty much successful in my professional career, and for me Wikipedia is, well, a hobby. But for them it is life. It is very difficult to argue with people who are fighting for life, does not matter who is defending what views. Finally, I inevitably had to say fuck you and leave the argument. There is in principle nothing wrong with people who want to get attention. For instance, they might want to get attention by writing articles, creating a big number of FAs abd GAs. Or by fighting vandals. Or by writing useful gadgets. I am all for it. And of course not everybody behaves like the types I mentions in the above paragraph - only a small fraction. But I am afraid that the more we socialize, the more attractive we become for this type of people. And then they tend to form circles, voting collectively at RFAs - up for the those from the circle, down for those not from the circle. Or discussing RfDs. Or whatever. It is extremely dangerous when people start mixing personal and professional relations - to speak in a not-so-much-correct way, when they start making love while in the office. This does not help writing the encyclopedia. And I have seen plenty of examples - and I guess all of us had. This is why I am not particularly looking forward to increasing socialization. Wikilove - fine, as a sign of appreciation (though I personally prefer appreciation written in plain English). Barnstars - ok. But going to a full-scale social network - I am sorry, this is going to kill us. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: But perhaps it would be useful to suggest some specific social features that you'd want - that might help focus the discussion. I'm not sure that it makes sense to talk about adding social features in the abstract -- we're not aiming to build a social network in the real sense of the term. Rather, we should be looking at the features that drive participation at social networks (and particularly at Facebook), whether those features are an inheret part of the social network concept or merely incidental to it. Consider, for example, that Zynga and Facebook have successfully managed to get millions of people to log in at all hours of the night to milk virtualcows and harvest virtual beans (or whatever it is that people actually do in Farmville). Could we do something similar to drive particpation, particularly in editing areas that don't require long-duration sessions (e.g. adding or verifying citations, categorizing articles, etc.)? Even a few percent of Farmville's user base would be an order-of-magnitude increase of our own editor base; and if the price for that is letting these editors display Citationville badges on their user pages and send each other silly messages, is it not worth it? Cheers, Kirill ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
