Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Birgitte_sb]

> 
> Hi Birgitte
> 
> I greatly respect your opinion, and rarely found myself disagreeing with
> you. I didn't want to reply in-line because I believe majority of your
> opinions stem from the wisdom of the crowd model, which might best describe
> the wiki model and the assumption that, it will continue to
> prevail indefinitely. There have been several good points made by you and
> others so far, but I have a direct question for you based on the assumption
> that increased contributors will eventually increase quality of articles.
> What if we add 50,000 vandals tomorrow? What if we also add 20,000 PR
> agents/marketers bent on promoting their client?

> What if they make 10 or 20 edits each for the next month, it will satisfy
> the statistical criteria for increase in contributors for WMF, it will also
> satisfy your criteria for increasing the size of the crowd. What will
> happen to the quality of articles, the work-load on admins and veteran
> editors?

I snipped previous emails because your summary is accurate and this ended up 
being massive. Fair warning.

Let's say this doesn't happen.  Things stay exactly as they are now. No 
increase in vandals nor PR agents nor anything other kind contributor for the 
rest of the year.  Do you imagine the workload for admins and veteran editors 
to be acceptable? Do you imagine the quality of articles to be acceptable? They 
are not.  I and am not talking about award-winning levels of quality. I am 
speaking articles right now that were tagged as being inaccurate, 
contradictory, or biased many months ago yet still are unaddressed.  I am 
thinking of known contributor's of copyright problems whose edits are cataloged 
and are waiting for someone willing to tediously review them. I suspect a large 
factor in the attrition of veteran editors is the current workload as it 
stands.  It is hard to stay motivated when you can't hardly notice your work 
has made any dent in the backlog.

I suppose I simply see the bigger concern to be: What if we don't add 1,000 new 
curators who care to learn how to interpret copyright law and 3,000 new 
contributors who are willing respond to RfCs and participate in peer review?  
The vandals will come as inevitably as 8 year-olds transform into 12 year-olds. 
The PR agents are equally likely to remain consistent. I don't really 
understand the basis of the concern that this outreach is expected to add more 
vandals and PR agents. Why is it so suspect that this project could add sincere 
and useful people which are, perhaps in some aspects of their personality 
and/or circles of interest, simply a different kind of person than you and I 
who self-selected to contribute without any such an overt program? But 
truthfully while there are certainly tasks I selected to work on my own, 
because I find them inherently captivating (poetry) or because I am inherently 
driven to understand and make sense out what is presented as arbitrary and 
seeming senseless to me (copyright law), there are many contributions of 
significance I have made only because an overt effort was made asking me to 
contribute personally (peer review Evolution pre-FA) or by a generalized 
campaign (Proofreads of the Month).  So perhaps, the people brought in by such 
outreach won't be such a different kind of contributor after all.

If the underlying concern is that there are not enough veteran editors willing 
to educate them, or that these newcomers won't conform to our ways sufficently. 
Well then maybe the newcomers can educate us instead. We are great at some 
things we have done, but we are crap at a whole bunch of other things.  And was 
all trial and error to begin with! If new people come and want to do things 
differently, I can only imagine they will be trying to change the crap things 
not the great ones. 

> 
> The Wisdom of the crowd model is based on the notion that average of
> assumptions will improve as the sample size increases. As the size of the
> crowd increases, the mean of its aggregate estimates will keep improving.
> For that purpose of the crowd, there is no distinction between any two
> members of the said crowd, they are homogeneous. Real world rarely has such
> a group, not to mention, there is no distinction made between the
> motivation of why someone joined that crowd. Whether a member chose to be
> there or was given a temporary incentive. The crowds model discounts both
> these real world problems.
> 

I disagree with this summary.  In fact, the wisdom of crowds is considered 
wiser because it assumes the members are *not* homogeneous. The model, however, 
does not give more weight to members with qualities that normally would earn 
them weight in more traditional models, which the point most people find 
counter-intuitive. The reason a larger crowd is supposed to be wiser is because 
a larger crowd is assumed to be more diverse.  I do not see see why a diversity 
of motivations to participate should be any less desirable than other

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Samuel Klein]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 12:39 PM, Gregory Varnum
 wrote:
> Oh come on people - this is yet another Foundation-l discussion that has gone 
> off the rails.."the elusiveness of Samuel Klein"?  sounds like a thriller 
> novel..  I'm not sure we need to be attacking other volunteers here.  :/

That's the *other* Sam Klein.
http://thrillingdetective.com/eyes/sam_klein.html

Cyrano writes:
> I feel compelled to express my agreement with MZMcBride. I find his 
> questioning pertinent.

The questions are pertinent; in particular, everyone should be aware
of the cost of experiments (and should wrap that into any proposals or
evaluations).

> I wish the quality of content were at the core of the WMF. I feel 
> disappointed by the direction
> it is choosing

You mean specifically the focus on editor retention and new editor
engagement over the past year?

We all care a lot about quality; the question is whether that is a
driving force or a symptom of pursuing our mission well.

Personally, I'd guess that basic improvements to how many
account-creators make their first edit, and how many months the
average new editor stays on the projects, will directly impact our
quality in a good way.  (I would also love to see focused experiments
that target improving article quality.  We've certainly had success
stories, with wikiproject assessments and contests.)

> What are some concrete things folks would like done now that this decision 
> has been made?

Thanks for keeping the thread on topic, Greg.  There have been a few
concrete suggestions already; MZM's suggestion to thoughtfully assess
the cost of any experiments beforehand is a good one.

> Personally, I think this is fantastic direction for WMF to be taking (I know 
> that's a shock).  It seems if Wikipedia
> didn't follow this strategy we'd still be using Nupedia.  Focusing on 
> recruitment of just the experts over the masses
> didn't win out then - doubt it will now.

Good to hear!  Wikipedia itself was a big, low-expectation experiment
back in the nupedia days.
But it was designed not to interfere with the existing nupedia
process, so it didn't antagonize those who were committed to what was
already in place.

SJ

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Steven Walling]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Sarah  wrote:

> Does anyone know what kind of experiments we're talking about?


I can partially clarify here...

- These will not be "pilot projects" resembling the Global Education
Program in any particular country. (Which is why it's very strange to be
using it as an example in the context of this announcement and the ensuing
discussion.) We won't be doing offline outreach to thousands of students or
any other particular group.
- These will not be large-scale new features that move quickly to permanent
deployment, such as the Article Feedback Tool or PendingChanges.

The best example I can give now is the A/B testing of user talk templates
that Maryana and I have done. Since we'll have design and developer
resources for these new experiments however, they will be different in
regards to how quickly the tests happen and how tech-heavy they are.
Another decent example was the Account Creation Improvement Project which
happened last year, though that was another example which took longer than
the timeframe we want to work on.

We're still in the beginning of working on our list of experiments (we
don't actually officially start until April ~16th), but by then we'll have
a list of possibilities to share. Since these won't be English Wikipedia
only, the documentation will be on a wiki like MediaWiki.org and Meta. If
you have any strong feelings about how you'd like updates to happen or have
experiment ideas, we'd be happy to hear them.

Steven
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Re: [Foundation-l] Timeline for the Observers

[Etienne Beaule]

Wrong mailing list, sorry.  Ebe123


On 12-03-24 10:23 PM, "Etienne Beaule"  wrote:

> Just to note that I¹ve been bold have added a timeline for the Observers.
> It¹s under a collapsible heading and could get some tweaking.
> 
> Etienne Beaule
> Ebe123
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Theo10011]

 On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 5:10 AM,  wrote:

>
>
>
>
> On Mar 21, 2012, at 10:07 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
> > birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >> On Mar 21, 2012, at 8:53 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> >>> Sue Gardner wrote:
>  Everybody knows that reversing stagnating/declining participation
>  in Wikimedia's projects is our top priority.
> >>>
> >>> Thank you for sharing this.
> >>>
> >>> How much discussion has there been internally about this being the
> wrong
> >>> approach? A good number of active editors (who I imagine Wikimedia is
> also
> >>> trying to engage and retain) feel that Wikimedia's sole focus is on the
> >>> numbers game. That is, Wikimedia is all about adding people, but
> doesn't
> >>> seem to care about the quality of the content that it's producing (or
> the
> >>> quality of the new contributors, for that matter).
> >>>
> >>> The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to create a free and accessible
> >>> repository of (high-quality) educational content; the vision is not
> about
> >>> trying to get as many people involved as possible (or even build a
> >>> movement).
> >>>
> >>> 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)?
> >>
> >> This strikes me as a very oddly articulated concern about a
> crowd-sourcing
> >> project. The basic premise underlying the whole model is increasing the
> >> quantity of contributors increases the quality of the content.  Is this
> really
> >> disputed?
> >
> > How do you draw that correlation? It seems like you're missing a very
> > important "may." Surely it depends on what kind of contributors you're
> > pulling in and why. It would be trivial to add a lot of contributors
> through
> > gimmicky incentives ("make ten edits, win a prize!"), but are those the
> type
> > of editors we want?
> >
>
> On the content level it doesn't really matter what what kind of
> contributors you are pulling in.  Given increased contributors over time
> (given they stick around after the contests you find distasteful end)
> quality of content improves.  This is the model assumption wikis are based
> upon.  Which why I find your stated objection so odd.  Now that said, I
> must admit there one and only one kind of contributor I find to have a
> significant negative impact on the quality of Wikipedia (and I imagine
> perhaps Wikinews as well): the "true-believer".  But I do not see this
> being a practical concern of the sort project under discussion.
> True-believer's seem to be one of the kinds of people that begin
> contributing without any encouragement.
>
>
> > Content is king. People visit Wikimedia wikis for their content and the
> > Wikimedia Foundation's stated mission is to "... empower and engage
> people
> > around the world to collect and develop educational content " The
> > hawkeyed focus on simply bumping up the number of contributors doesn't
> > necessarily improve the content. It may. But if the focus is purely on
> the
> > numbers (and not the quality of the contributors being added), it may
> also
> > make the content worse.
>
> I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I truly believe the only ways to bring
> about a significant improvement in the quality of content on a project as
> mature as the English or German Wikipedia are A) increase the numbers of
> contributors, or B) increase the average life-span of activity for
> contributors. Every other sort project I can imagine, while possibly
> leading to a net improvement in quality, would only amount to dumping a
> bucket of water into the ocean.
>
> Seriously, and with all due respect, do you really believe it likely the
> content will actually become less accurate, less comprehensive, less
> neutral, and/or less understandable because of WMF inadvertently
> encouraging the wrong "kind" of people to join in?
>
> I cannot imagine this happening.
>
> >
> > It isn't the Wikimedia Foundation's stated vision or mission to build a
> > movement; the idea is to find ways to create and disseminate free, high
> > quality, educational content. So I continue to wonder: is the current
> focus
> > of adding more and more people overshadowing the arguably more important
> > focus of producing something of value? There are finite resources (as
> with
> > nearly any project), but they're being used to develop tools and
> > technologies that focus on one project (Wikipedia) and that often have
> > questionable value (MoodBar, ArticleFeedback, etc.). ArticleFeedback has
> > gone through five major iterations; FlaggedRevs was dropped after one.
> > Doesn't that seem emblematic of a larger problem to you?
>
> No it really isn't a convincing concern for me.  But I do understand this
> objection a great deal better.  Still I would rather see WMF put full
> effort into what it believes most worthwhile, than to be grudgingly
> addressing what I might think to be somewhat mor

Re: [Foundation-l] Pages very slow to load since March 21

[Sarah]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 10:10 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>>> Could someone from the Foundation confirm that they're looking into
>>> it? It's getting to the point where it's quite hard to edit.
>
>> Tim's investigating it now.
>
> This appears to have been a networking issue causing packet loss and
> timeouts, which should be resolved. Please reopen bug 35448 and
> provide details if you can reproduce the issue at this time.
>
> Thanks to Leslie and Tim for investigating.
>
> Erik
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
Erik, I've just tried loading some of the pages I was having problems
with. They're loading well, and preview is working well again. Many
thanks to everyone who helped to fix this.

Sarah

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[Foundation-l] Timeline for the Observers

[Etienne Beaule]

Just to note that I¹ve been bold have added a timeline for the Observers.
It¹s under a collapsible heading and could get some tweaking.

Etienne Beaule
Ebe123
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Re: [Foundation-l] Pages very slow to load since March 21

[Erik Moeller]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>> Could someone from the Foundation confirm that they're looking into
>> it? It's getting to the point where it's quite hard to edit.

> Tim's investigating it now.

This appears to have been a networking issue causing packet loss and
timeouts, which should be resolved. Please reopen bug 35448 and
provide details if you can reproduce the issue at this time.

Thanks to Leslie and Tim for investigating.

Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] Pages very slow to load since March 21

[Sarah]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Sarah  wrote:
>
>> Could someone from the Foundation confirm that they're looking into
>> it? It's getting to the point where it's quite hard to edit.
>
> Tim's investigating it now.
>
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Thanks, Erik.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Pages very slow to load since March 21

[Erik Moeller]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Sarah  wrote:

> Could someone from the Foundation confirm that they're looking into
> it? It's getting to the point where it's quite hard to edit.

Tim's investigating it now.

-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] Pages very slow to load since March 21

[Sarah]

Several editors in different countries on the English Wikipedia have
reported problems since March 21 with pages being slow to load, or not
loading at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#is_it_me_or_is_wiki_very_slow.3F

As today wears on, the situation seems to be getting worse. MZMcBride
has reported it, and someone has produced a graph confirming there is
a problem.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20120324/41311a44/attachment-0001.png

Could someone from the Foundation confirm that they're looking into
it? It's getting to the point where it's quite hard to edit.

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Birgitte_sb]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 10:07 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> On Mar 21, 2012, at 8:53 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>> Sue Gardner wrote:
 Everybody knows that reversing stagnating/declining participation
 in Wikimedia's projects is our top priority.
>>> 
>>> Thank you for sharing this.
>>> 
>>> How much discussion has there been internally about this being the wrong
>>> approach? A good number of active editors (who I imagine Wikimedia is also
>>> trying to engage and retain) feel that Wikimedia's sole focus is on the
>>> numbers game. That is, Wikimedia is all about adding people, but doesn't
>>> seem to care about the quality of the content that it's producing (or the
>>> quality of the new contributors, for that matter).
>>> 
>>> The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to create a free and accessible
>>> repository of (high-quality) educational content; the vision is not about
>>> trying to get as many people involved as possible (or even build a
>>> movement).
>>> 
>>> 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)?
>> 
>> This strikes me as a very oddly articulated concern about a crowd-sourcing
>> project. The basic premise underlying the whole model is increasing the
>> quantity of contributors increases the quality of the content.  Is this 
>> really
>> disputed?
> 
> How do you draw that correlation? It seems like you're missing a very
> important "may." Surely it depends on what kind of contributors you're
> pulling in and why. It would be trivial to add a lot of contributors through
> gimmicky incentives ("make ten edits, win a prize!"), but are those the type
> of editors we want?
> 

On the content level it doesn't really matter what what kind of contributors 
you are pulling in.  Given increased contributors over time (given they stick 
around after the contests you find distasteful end) quality of content 
improves.  This is the model assumption wikis are based upon.  Which why I find 
your stated objection so odd.  Now that said, I must admit there one and only 
one kind of contributor I find to have a significant negative impact on the 
quality of Wikipedia (and I imagine perhaps Wikinews as well): the 
"true-believer".  But I do not see this being a practical concern of the sort 
project under discussion. True-believer's seem to be one of the kinds of people 
that begin contributing without any encouragement.


> Content is king. People visit Wikimedia wikis for their content and the
> Wikimedia Foundation's stated mission is to "... empower and engage people
> around the world to collect and develop educational content " The
> hawkeyed focus on simply bumping up the number of contributors doesn't
> necessarily improve the content. It may. But if the focus is purely on the
> numbers (and not the quality of the contributors being added), it may also
> make the content worse.

I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I truly believe the only ways to bring about 
a significant improvement in the quality of content on a project as mature as 
the English or German Wikipedia are A) increase the numbers of contributors, or 
B) increase the average life-span of activity for contributors. Every other 
sort project I can imagine, while possibly leading to a net improvement in 
quality, would only amount to dumping a bucket of water into the ocean. 

Seriously, and with all due respect, do you really believe it likely the 
content will actually become less accurate, less comprehensive, less neutral, 
and/or less understandable because of WMF inadvertently encouraging the wrong 
"kind" of people to join in?  

I cannot imagine this happening.

> 
> It isn't the Wikimedia Foundation's stated vision or mission to build a
> movement; the idea is to find ways to create and disseminate free, high
> quality, educational content. So I continue to wonder: is the current focus
> of adding more and more people overshadowing the arguably more important
> focus of producing something of value? There are finite resources (as with
> nearly any project), but they're being used to develop tools and
> technologies that focus on one project (Wikipedia) and that often have
> questionable value (MoodBar, ArticleFeedback, etc.). ArticleFeedback has
> gone through five major iterations; FlaggedRevs was dropped after one.
> Doesn't that seem emblematic of a larger problem to you?

No it really isn't a convincing concern for me.  But I do understand this 
objection a great deal better.  Still I would rather see WMF put full effort 
into what it believes most worthwhile, than to be grudgingly addressing what I 
might think to be somewhat more worthwhile. If I could convince the people at 
WMF heart and soul to agree with me, that would be different. However I don't 
wish anyone to start acting as I might suggest without actually becoming 
convinced t

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[David Gerard]

On 24 March 2012 23:16, Sarah  wrote:

> Does anyone know what kind of experiments we're talking about?


Only those who read to the top of the thread. (Article feedback tool,
new article wizard, etc.)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Sarah]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
>> Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.
>
> MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!
>
> I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
> 'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
> build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
> simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
> and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.
>
Does anyone know what kind of experiments we're talking about?

Sarah

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[rupert THURNER]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 02:26, 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.

wise words, indeed. very, very important when going forward, at least
imo. i can tell you why as well. i tried to be a new editor for a
couple of weeks now. let me give the most striking examples out of
this experience:

1. mediawiki buggy
changing user preferences resulted in a very helpful "... problems
with some of your input". there is no way to click through to "bug
report" and follow further. unfortunately i cannot remember which ones
i changed :( but coding something which tells you what was wrong
should be state of the art.

2. article feedback is surveyed sometimes, but it ends in a "black hole"
on article feedback the feedback privacy statement
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Feedback_policy) popped up. i
found it somehow inappropriate, because it was foundation centered,
but i wanted to contribute to wikipedia. to my big surprise, somebody
really read the article feedback and asked details. but - this person
then was unable to follow through. the privacy statement is still the
same.

3. edits are reverted with unhelpful comments
i added a paragraph to an article where it might have not been
completely right. it got reverted with a comment "not like that". no
further help where it could fit better, no suggestion of improvement,
no edit help as well.

4. new articles are deleted immediately
i tried to create a new article with wikibasha, which did not do its
job and i ended up with an empty new article. so i put "wikibasha" in
it, saved, to try again. seconds later the article was marked for
speedy deletion. there is obviously no tool to quickly traverse
"articles created three days ago not yet marked as good enough". so
patrols revert to what is most easy with the current software, namely
for newly created articles, with disastrous effects on new editors.

5. should one be lucky and know the right template, a threat follows
now i used knowledge a new editor does not have and put a "currently
beeing edited" template. this gives you 24 hours time to edit the
article on your own. a very heartwarming comment "if there is not
immediately some useful addition, this nonsense will be deleted" was
the result.

in all five cases i had no possibility to give feedback using
mediawiki which then would result in something which somebody takes
care of until it is solved. in my highly biased opinion this is an
indication that the editor retention investments were not yet
successful (enough). there seems to be some deviation between
"identify a challenge" and "act to relieve the pain". neither the
technical, nor the organizational challenge seems to be addressed.

rupert.

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Internal-l] Wikiwomencamp Buenos Aires, Argentina May 23-25, 2012 (updates)

[Béria Lima]

cross posting
_
*Béria Lima*

*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a
construir esse sonho. *


On 24 March 2012 14:28, Siska Doviana  wrote:

> Apology for cross posting.
>
> Hello all,
> On behalf of the organizer, please be advised that WikiWomenCamp is up
> and rolling.
>
> Although participation page for those interested to come and would
> like to receive scholarship funding closed last Friday for
> "international women" (for Germany will be close next week, and
> Austrian participant is much more flexible) if you know any other
> participants willing to go (and doesn't need a scholarship) please be
> advised to fill out participation form in here:
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGU5MTNTY0VuWFhJZG1Oc3ZFc0Fub3c6MQ#gid=0
>
> Up to date we have roughly 25 participants from all over the world.
> Exciting!
>
> For complete info please refer to this link in meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp
>
> Thank you,
> --
> Siska Doviana | Ketua Umum (Chair) 2011-2012
> Wikimedia Indonesia
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Gregory Varnum]

Oh come on people - this is yet another Foundation-l discussion that has gone 
off the rails.."the elusiveness of Samuel Klein"?  sounds like a thriller 
novel..  I'm not sure we need to be attacking other volunteers here.  :/

There are dozens of ways to approach new editor engagement.  I respect that we 
should allow equal space for each of those ideas.  However, once a decision has 
been made, and you re-voiced your ideas and concerns..do we have to do it over 
and over and over again after that?  I think everyone on this list understands 
where folks stand, but can we have a more productive conversation about how to 
move forward and not get into long philosophical discussions on the way we wish 
things were...

This decision has been made.  I haven't read any new ideas or bits of 
information in this thread for a few days.  What are some concrete things folks 
would like done now that this decision has been made?  Other than SJ being less 
elusiveness (whatever that means) and for WMF to once again contemplate content 
quality in decision making.  Although it's not clear to me that it wasn't 
considered here - there's just a basic disagreement on the value of types of 
editors..which has been ongoing for years and is not going to be resolved in 
this thread.

Personally, I think this is fantastic direction for WMF to be taking (I know 
that's a shock).  I would rather invest in teaching a classroom of students how 
to become Wikipedia editors rather than hope that the existing pool of editors 
remains alive forever.  This all seems like rather basic and fundamental 
volunteer recruitment strategies.  Maybe not if this were an academic research 
institute run by Harvard...but it's not...tolerating people's mistakes along 
the way to molding them into a growing team of great editors seems well worth 
the investment of other volunteers time.  If you disagree - don't engage in 
cleaning up their mess.  I'd sacrifice one obnoxious A+ quality editor for ten 
committed, enthusiastic and community oriented B+ quality editors any day.  
History has shown repeatedly that the work of the ten will outshine the work of 
that one person.  Many nonprofits have to sacrifice hostile and highly 
productive volunteers to attract more volunteers for future growth - there's 
always concern it will backfire (usually coming from the hostile volunteers on 
their way out) and it almost always works out..given Wikipedia's size..I'm not 
losing much sleep over it..I'd be surprised if the board, staff, developers or 
others were..  It seems if Wikipedia didn't follow this strategy we'd still be 
using Nupedia.  Focusing on recruitment of just the experts over the masses 
didn't win out then - doubt it will now.

-greg aka varnent


On Mar 24, 2012, at 11:44 AM, cyrano  wrote:

> I feel compelled to express my agreement with MZMcBride. I find his
> questioning pertinent.
> I wish the quality of content were at the core of the WMF. I feel
> disappointed by the direction it is choosing, and by the elusiveness of
> Samuel Klein whose wisdom I used to respect greatly. What happened, Samuel?
> 
> Le 24/03/2012 12:52, MZMcBride a écrit :
>> Samuel Klein wrote:
>>> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
 Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.
>>> MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!
>>> 
>>> I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
>>> 'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
>>> build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
>>> simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
>>> and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.
>> You seem to continue to ignore the cost of experimentation. When you unleash
>> a classroom full of people on Wikipedia who start messing up articles and
>> performing other actions that need to be reverted, is it Wikimedia
>> Foundation staff who will be cleaning up the mess? It becomes a whole
>> different issue when it's not random people messing up articles, but instead
>> it's Wikimedia Foundation-sponsored contributors. You're far too smart to
>> not realize this already; why are you ignoring or side-stepping these and
>> other costs of experimentation?
>> 
 Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality 
 educational
 content.
>>> It's funny, you've said this three times so far this thread :-)
>>> But if you read the mission again, I think you'll find you are mistaken.
>>> 
>>> Wikimedia's mission is to *empower and engage people* to develop
>>> content.  There's nothing about quality, unless you assume that an
>>> empowered and engaged society will produce high quality materials.
>>> (As it turns out, in practice if not in theory, we do.)
>> Imagine a world in which there's a global movement with only mediocre
>> content to show for it. That should go on a bumper sticker. If the Wikimedia
>> Foundation is allowed to a

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[cyrano]

I feel compelled to express my agreement with MZMcBride. I find his
questioning pertinent.
I wish the quality of content were at the core of the WMF. I feel
disappointed by the direction it is choosing, and by the elusiveness of
Samuel Klein whose wisdom I used to respect greatly. What happened, Samuel?

Le 24/03/2012 12:52, MZMcBride a écrit :
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>>> Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.
>> MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!
>>
>> I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
>> 'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
>> build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
>> simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
>> and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.
> You seem to continue to ignore the cost of experimentation. When you unleash
> a classroom full of people on Wikipedia who start messing up articles and
> performing other actions that need to be reverted, is it Wikimedia
> Foundation staff who will be cleaning up the mess? It becomes a whole
> different issue when it's not random people messing up articles, but instead
> it's Wikimedia Foundation-sponsored contributors. You're far too smart to
> not realize this already; why are you ignoring or side-stepping these and
> other costs of experimentation?
>
>>> Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality educational
>>> content.
>> It's funny, you've said this three times so far this thread :-)
>> But if you read the mission again, I think you'll find you are mistaken.
>>
>> Wikimedia's mission is to *empower and engage people* to develop
>> content.  There's nothing about quality, unless you assume that an
>> empowered and engaged society will produce high quality materials.
>> (As it turns out, in practice if not in theory, we do.)
> Imagine a world in which there's a global movement with only mediocre
> content to show for it. That should go on a bumper sticker. If the Wikimedia
> Foundation is allowed to add "movement" jargon, I think I'm entitled to say
> that the goal is to make something high-quality. Fair's fair.
>
>> Our goal is global engagement of creators; and providing
>> infrastructure to empower their work.
> This sounds great. Is that what's actually happening? Providing
> infrastructure that empowers people is fantastic. Build better software and
> other tools that allow people to create beautiful and creative and
> interesting content.
>
> What you're saying nearly anyone on this list would have difficulty
> disagreeing with (which is, I believe, partially why you're saying it). But
> "snap back to reality": what's happening right now is a hawkeyed focus on a
> boost of the number of contributors. Increasing participation for
> statistics' sake. And the associated infrastructure (tool development, staff
> allocation, etc.) is equally focused on this goal. And this doesn't even get
> into the issue of sister projects (or any project other than the English
> Wikipedia, really), which have received no support.
>
>>> At some point this jargon about "the movement" came along and
>>> there's a huge focus on "building the movement."
>> See above; this isn't new.
> The word "movement" is not new. Its prevalence is.
>
>> I do support those who focus on the quality of our existing content.
>> But other priorities -- from expanding content scope and formats, to
>> expanding the editing community -- also deserve support.
> For me and for the people that Wikimedia serves (its readers), it's never
> been about the community. I'm reminded of this quote from Risker's user page
> on the English Wikipedia: "Our readers do not care one whit who adds
> information to articles; they care only that the information is correct."
>
> Your suggestion that there is something more important than the content
> simply seems wrong to me. The content is what people come for. The content
> is what people return for. The content is king. As iridescent once said,
> "without content, Wikipedia is just Facebook for ugly people."
>
> Obviously _a_ focus on the human component is important. Bots aren't writing
> articles or writing dictionary definitions or taking and uploading images
> (yet!), but content has to be _the_ focus. The primary focus cannot simply
> be adding more people to the pile to build a movement. We are not trying to
> Occupy Wikipedia; we are trying to build something of educational value for
> the future. The idea has always been that even if the movement disappeared
> (and with it the Wikimedia Foundation), the content would remain. It has to
> be treated with respect and be given due deference in resource allocation
> and in the goals that the Wikimedia Foundation makes a priority.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[MZMcBride]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>> Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.
> 
> MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!
> 
> I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
> 'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
> build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
> simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
> and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.

You seem to continue to ignore the cost of experimentation. When you unleash
a classroom full of people on Wikipedia who start messing up articles and
performing other actions that need to be reverted, is it Wikimedia
Foundation staff who will be cleaning up the mess? It becomes a whole
different issue when it's not random people messing up articles, but instead
it's Wikimedia Foundation-sponsored contributors. You're far too smart to
not realize this already; why are you ignoring or side-stepping these and
other costs of experimentation?

>> Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality educational
>> content.
> 
> It's funny, you've said this three times so far this thread :-)
> But if you read the mission again, I think you'll find you are mistaken.
> 
> Wikimedia's mission is to *empower and engage people* to develop
> content.  There's nothing about quality, unless you assume that an
> empowered and engaged society will produce high quality materials.
> (As it turns out, in practice if not in theory, we do.)

Imagine a world in which there's a global movement with only mediocre
content to show for it. That should go on a bumper sticker. If the Wikimedia
Foundation is allowed to add "movement" jargon, I think I'm entitled to say
that the goal is to make something high-quality. Fair's fair.

> Our goal is global engagement of creators; and providing
> infrastructure to empower their work.

This sounds great. Is that what's actually happening? Providing
infrastructure that empowers people is fantastic. Build better software and
other tools that allow people to create beautiful and creative and
interesting content.

What you're saying nearly anyone on this list would have difficulty
disagreeing with (which is, I believe, partially why you're saying it). But
"snap back to reality": what's happening right now is a hawkeyed focus on a
boost of the number of contributors. Increasing participation for
statistics' sake. And the associated infrastructure (tool development, staff
allocation, etc.) is equally focused on this goal. And this doesn't even get
into the issue of sister projects (or any project other than the English
Wikipedia, really), which have received no support.

>> At some point this jargon about "the movement" came along and
>> there's a huge focus on "building the movement."
> 
> See above; this isn't new.

The word "movement" is not new. Its prevalence is.

> I do support those who focus on the quality of our existing content.
> But other priorities -- from expanding content scope and formats, to
> expanding the editing community -- also deserve support.

For me and for the people that Wikimedia serves (its readers), it's never
been about the community. I'm reminded of this quote from Risker's user page
on the English Wikipedia: "Our readers do not care one whit who adds
information to articles; they care only that the information is correct."

Your suggestion that there is something more important than the content
simply seems wrong to me. The content is what people come for. The content
is what people return for. The content is king. As iridescent once said,
"without content, Wikipedia is just Facebook for ugly people."

Obviously _a_ focus on the human component is important. Bots aren't writing
articles or writing dictionary definitions or taking and uploading images
(yet!), but content has to be _the_ focus. The primary focus cannot simply
be adding more people to the pile to build a movement. We are not trying to
Occupy Wikipedia; we are trying to build something of educational value for
the future. The idea has always been that even if the movement disappeared
(and with it the Wikimedia Foundation), the content would remain. It has to
be treated with respect and be given due deference in resource allocation
and in the goals that the Wikimedia Foundation makes a priority.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Chris Keating]

There are so many potential ways of recruiting new high-quality editors.
However, at the moment almost all of them founder (at least on the English
Wikipedia) on the likely reception of peoples' first edits.

Take, for the sake of argument, Wikimedia UK's donor list. There are 50,000
people who care enough about Wikipedia to have put their hands in their
pockets to donate to it, and who are on the whole very well-educated - in
short, just what you want for "high-quality" contributors. (If someone has
given money to support Wikipedia, it's unlikely that if they tried to edit
it, they would be consciously trying to damage it).

It would be relatively easy to get 1% - maybe 10% - of them to try editing
with a well-written email or two. However, at the moment, most of them
probably wouldn't find it a positive experience if they did, which is a
shame...

Chris
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Samuel Klein]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:06 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Experiments are acceptable... sometimes.

MZM, I didn't expect you to become the voice of conservatism!

I cannot agree with your premise that experiments are somehow
'optional' or new.  Experimentation is the lifeblood of any project
build around being bold and low barriers to participation.  We should
simply ensure that boldness can be reverted, with fast feedback loops,
and that experiments are just that, not drastic changes all at once.


> Wikimedia's stated mission is about producing free, high-quality educational
> content.

It's funny, you've said this three times so far this thread :-)
But if you read the mission again, I think you'll find you are mistaken.

Wikimedia's mission is to *empower and engage people* to develop
content.  There's nothing about quality, unless you assume that an
empowered and engaged society will produce high quality materials.
(As it turns out, in practice if not in theory, we do.)

Our goal is global engagement of creators; and providing
infrastructure to empower their work.

> At some point this jargon about "the movement" came along and
> there's a huge focus on "building the movement."

See above; this isn't new.

We are a community dedicated to organizing and sharing knowledge; not
the knowledge itself.   That's what 'movement' means for us.

We have produced some great collections over time, yes; who doesn't
love Wikispecies, now the most thorough collection of its kind?  But
we have also produced translation networks, global citation standards,
new social norms and standards for sharing, proposed national policy
in countries everywhere; and have inspired a new generation of
creators and sharers. We aren't replicating what high-quality
publishing houses have done for centuries, just under a free
license... We are doing something fundamentally different in scale,
decentralization, motivation, and flexibility.

There are many things we can learn from old models of collaboration;
but giving up ease of experimentation and warning off newbies aren't
among them.

> the arguably more important goal of improving the content (a focus on 
> quality)?

I do support those who focus on the quality of our existing content.
But other priorities -- from expanding content scope and formats, to
expanding the editing community -- also deserve support.

SJ

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