On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Mingli Yuan <mingli.y...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > * Towards better content and community, what is the most important things > we want our user to observe? > > Mingli, Thank you for raising this excellent and important question. I have long maintained -- and I think many others agree -- that the idea of a monolithic "English Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia" community is, at best, an anachronism. While we can look at places like this email list and similar venues and see community behavior, that community is much better described as "Wikimedians who choose to spend their time on broad discussions" than it would be as "Wikimedians." The choice to spend time on broad discussions does NOT lead to a representative sample of the larger whole. Instead of trying to figure out how to improve the non-existent "Wikimedia community," I would say it is absolutely essential that we find ways to support the many, many sub-communities in our universe. These overlap of course, but they are distinct and, I believe, much more important. To name a few kinds of sub-communities: * WikiProjects (some of them) * Wikipedia in languages that have smaller communities * Wikimedia projects that have smaller communities (e.g., English Wikisource) * Administrative communities on projects, e.g. Commons (note, I said administrat*ive*, which should not be restricted to those who have the administrat*or* rights) * Those doing GLAM outreach etc. etc. etc. If we are going to focus on what supports thriving communities, we must engage with the questions -- and the existing research -- around smaller, more genuine sub-communities like these. To date, I would say nobody in the Wikimedia movement -- least of all the Wikimedia Foundation -- has done an effective job of identifying and exploring the right questions -- much less coming to the right conclusions. How can we shift the focus of our social interventions in this direction, effectively? Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
