Given the mission is sharing information, I'd suggest that if we have a 95% drop in readership, we're failing the mission. Donations are only a means to an end.
Risker/Anne On 24 August 2014 22:57, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: > >First, let's make one thing clear: the reader doesn't exist; it's just a > >rhetorical trick, and a very dangerous one. For more: > >https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stupidity_of_the_reader > > This essay looks fascinating. I hope to read it soon. > > >Page views, however brute a concept, exist; and I think they're telling > >us we do have a readership problem. For it.wiki, in the last year I see > >a suspiciously similar decrease in desktop pageviews and editing > >activity (possibly around –20 %). It would *seem* that every user > >converted to the mobile site is a step towards extinction of the wiki. > >Long story: > ><https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/9380388> > > The page above is just a collection of pointers that I probably > won't > >be able to pursue in the coming months, to study an unprecedented > >collapse of editing activity and active editors on it.wiki. However, > >there /are/ several things worth looking into and we do have a huge > >problem (or several). > > I don't know enough about the Italian Wikipedia to comment on it > specifically. But generally I think it's important to re-emphasize that > correlation and causation are distinct, as are readership and editorship > rates. The two items of each set can be interrelated or connected > sometimes, of course, but we need to make sure we're drawing accurate and > appropriate conclusions. > > At <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62811#c10> Jared > Zimmerman writes, "We have a reader decline, its backed by hard numbers, > any creative solution for bringing more readers and contributors into the > project should be seriously discussed without being dismissed out of > hand." There's substantial discussion in the subsequent comments. > > Let's temporarily accept the premise that pageviews suddenly drop from 20 > billion per month to 1 billion per month. The easy argument is that we'd > save a lot of money on hosting. But unlike most of the Internet, Wikipedia > doesn't rely on advertising. Why does it matter how popular we are? Does it > affect donation rates? Does it affect editorship rates? I'm not sure how > much of this we know. It's increasingly clear that much of the rest of the > Internet _is_ different: it doesn't require much thought of participants, > it's user-focused, and it's built on the idea of selling (to) people. This > difference in how we want to treat users, as collaborators and colleagues, > rather than as clients or customers, will permeate the site design and > user experience and that's okay. > > If the number of pageviews suddenly drops, for whatever reason, what > happens next? The most likely "worst case" scenario seems to be a > reduction in annual donations, which results in a smaller staff size > (sometimes referred to as "trimming the fat" or "optimizing"). There's a > lot of talk lately about the imperiled future, but we could end up with a > smaller, more decentralized Wikimedia Foundation staff in what some would > consider one of the least desirable outcomes. Eh. > > MZMcBride > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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> > _______________________________________________ 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>
