On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 1:54 AM, James Salsman <jsals...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Steven Walling wrote: > >... > > We practically can't and don't take on initiatives that directly > > try to provide more free time or money to editors.... > > That is absolutely false. Individual Engagement Grants have recently > been proven to be substantially more cost-effective in achieving the > Foundation's stated goals than any other form of grant spending, on a > per-dollar basis. Is there any evidence that any Foundation > engineering effort of the past five years has done as well? I haven't > seen any. > Individual engagement grants are not a monetary reward for contributing content. They are, just like larger programs internally at WMF or in a chapter, intended to produce another outcome which has a wider and more sustainable impact. Suggesting that the success of IEG is evidence we should/could just pay editors directly in some way is quite the stretch. Providing cash on a large scale to motivate contributors has diminishing returns as an alternative strategy to usability improvements, when you consider that the software platform which enables content creation will continue to show its age. Even if we lived in a parallel universe where every editor of Wikipedia was paid for their work, we'd still need to continually improve the platform they used to make the encyclopedia. It's interesting you bring up IEG though. If you're not talking about 1:1 alternatives to software improvements, but instead you want us to consider potentially complementary new ideas to motivate people to edit... go for it. No one can deny the positive impact of initiatives like The Core Contest on English Wikipedia (I've been a contestant myself).[1] Piloting a larger scale set of contests where there are rewards or prizes for winners might be a pretty cool IEG project that could prove your theory. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Core_Contest _______________________________________________ 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>
