Samuel Klein wrote: > Technically, we could attract raw contributors with the flick of a > finger: by encouraging editing via sitenotices. > But attracting people who won't contribute well, or will have a bad > experience -- or doing so when there is no good way to integrate them > into the project -- could simply waste everyone's time. That's a > reason to try lots of small experiments and see what works and what > might scale.
Did you read <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2012-March/072776.html>? Experiments are acceptable... sometimes. They come with a cost. I think both sides (the Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedians) acknowledge that the past experiments have failed or haven't done as well as everyone hoped. I don't think both sides acknowledge the cost of performing these types of experiments. _That's_ an issue. > There are many good reasons to attract new contributors - from > countering systemic bias to higher quality over time to new forms of > collective wisdom that emerge as people currently overwhelmed with > admin work have time to reflect and find better ways to work. Right, but going back to my opening reply, my questions still seem to sit unanswered. I think everyone agrees that you're going to need people to do the work. But the larger issue is that not everyone seems to have the same mission right now. Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality educational content. At some point this jargon about "the movement" came along and there's a huge focus on "building the movement." But my question was (and is): how much discussion has there been internally about this (the focus on simply boosting the number of contributors) being the wrong approach? And is there a concern that the current focus on simply boosting the numbers (a focus on quantity) is overshadowing the arguably more important goal of improving the content (a focus on quality)? There seems to be a fundamental difference of opinion about what Wikimedia's mission actually is (and how to best achieve it). For the Wikimedia Foundation, the goalposts seem to have shifted and it's now all about adding people to build a movement. Is this the right approach, though? MZMcBride _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l