Hoi,
James is right in that we could do better in growing the number of people
contributing to our projects. So what is it that makes people back?
Typically it is that they find the information they look for. Typically it
is that their contribution is valued and does not take too much effort.
When you look at our efforts they typically require a "big intellect". That
excludes many people because it is often more that you are expected to
conform to particular expectations than being brainy. We are focused on our
existing largest community, we cater for what is important to them and
consequently we do not consider those that are not obvious targets for that
largest community.
When we do venture out, for instance in "Wiki loves monuments" we do really
well; we make the Guiness book of records. It is however not the WMF that
learns the lessons; it is left for the communities, the chapters. The same
is for the GLAM participation, it is not even the WMF that provides the
infra structure, it is the chapters and they are "blamed" for having an
agenda that does not align with the technical aspirations of MediaWiki et
al development. The GLAM cooperation is another area where we as a movement
shine.
When you want opportunities where we expand on things outside of core
en.wp, have a look at the games developed by Magnus [1]. People find them
highly entertaining and they do serve a need. In the "Reasonator" people
can get information about data in Wikidata even when there are no "labels"
in their language because it provides language fall back. However,
Reasonator is served from Labs and it is not consistently available to our
users. Its "up time" is not consistent with what is needed for an end-user
experience and consequently its growth is stunted at the current level.
We do not know what people are looking for and fail to find. We do not know
that for any language and consequently we cannot ask things like: "do you
know the name of what you are looking for in another language". This could
add labels to Wikidata and help in finding results for other people using
WD-Search support in a Wikipedia.
Really when we want to engage more people, we should not only cater for
what our most visible and most loud community is looking for. We should
consider opportunities outside that community. When the en.wp may benefit
as well, it should be a fringe benefit !!
So yes, lets grow our community and the most growth is where we have
achieved the least.
Thanks,
GerardM
[1] http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/#
On 29 May 2014 10:06, James Salsman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Lila Tretikov wrote:
> >...
> > Allocation should follow strategic priorities and it
> > is the strategy that helps answer this question.
>
> On this point, it should be enormously helpful to point out that the
> only strategic goal which the Foundation has ever failed to achieve,
> and has consistently failed to achieve, is this one:
>
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Increase_participation
>
> That specific strategic priority of increasing participation is the
> focus of the sixteen proposed additional strategic goals below. Some
> people have substantial objections to some of them, but I'm not clear
> on the details. Nobody has suggested any reason that Foundation goals
> would not benefit from at least an attempt at alignment to volunteer
> contributing editor preferences on these issues.
>
> But what have I forgotten? What have I left out? If I could only get
> one suggestion for every two people who take issue with specific
> things already on the list, I would feel a lot more comfortable and
> confident that there isn't anything being forgotten.
>
> >... On a more operational scale, resources tend go
> > to where the users are or where the opportunity is.
> > When they go to opportunity, it is towards verifying
> > hypothesis that it would yield results.
>
> I agree with measuring what is likely to work best, but for some of
> these proposals, including some of the lowest hanging fruit, that is
> very hard. So again, I recommend depending on the wisdom of
> contributing editors. To that end, an editor survey is something which
> really needs to be done to prep for this. I trust the Board and Staff
> to be able to veto things which are unworkable and reach through to
> the opportunities in an agile fashion. What I don't understand are the
> few who suggest that the Foundation should not be more active on
> trying to improve the lot in life of potential volunteer editors. How
> can that possibly be part of a strategy to increase participation?
>
> 1. Labor rights, e.g., linking to fixmyjob.com
>
> 2. Support the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the
> Child and its protocols without reservation
>
> 3. Increase infrastructure spending
>
> 4. Increase education spending
>
> 5. Public school class size reduction
>
> 6. College subsidy with income-based repayment terms
>
> 7. More steeply progressive taxation
>
> 8. Negative interest on excess reserves
>
> 9. Telecommuting
>
> 10. Workweek length reduction
>
> 11. Single-payer health care
>
> 12. Renewable power purchase
>
> 13. Increased data center hardware power efficiency
>
> 14. Increased security against eavesdropping
>
> 15. Metropolitan broadband
>
> 16. Oppose monopolization of software, communications, publishing, and
> finance industries
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> [email protected]
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
[email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
