On 12/29/10 7:26 PM, Tim Starling wrote: > OK, if you want a real answer: I think if you could convince admins to > be nicer to people, then that would make a bigger impact to > Wikipedia's long-term viability than any ease-of-editing feature. > Making editing easier will give you a one-off jump in editing > statistics, it won't address the trend. > > We know from interviews and departure messages that the editing > interface creates an initial barrier for entry, but for people who get > past that barrier, various social factors, such as incivility and > bureaucracy, limit the time they spend contributing.
For me the usability projects always had the unstated intent of broadening the pool of good editors. More hands to ease the burdens of the beleagured admins, and also fresher blood that wasn't quite as ensconced in wikipolitics. But overall I agree. > Making editing easier could actually be counterproductive. If we let > more people past the editing interface barrier before we fix our > social problems, [...] This is an interesting insight! I have been thinking along these lines too, although in a more haphazard way. At some point, if we believe our community is our greatest asset, we have to think of Wikipedia as infrastructure not only for creating high quality articles, but also for generating and sustaining a high quality editing community. My sense is that the Wiki* communities are down with goal #1, but goal #2 is not on their radar at all. So we probably need an employee dedicated to this. (I think? Arguments?) When the Usability Project closed down, the team was also unhappy with the narrow focus paid to editing. Research showed the most serious problems were elsewhere. We then said we were going to address UX issues in a very broad way, which included social issues. Unfortunately the person in charge of that left the Foundation soon after and in the kerfuffle I'm not sure if we now have anybody whose primary job it is to think about the experience of the user in such broad terms. -- Neil Kandalgaonkar ( <ne...@wikimedia.org> _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
