On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Marc Riddell<michaeldavi...@comcast.net> wrote: > on 8/11/09 7:15 PM, George Herbert at george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: > >> >> I think there is a significant structural risk in the community >> steadily getting less welcome to new blood. >> >> A. People burn out, we need new recruits on an average roughly 18 >> month cycle just to maintain a participation level. >> B. The more insular and inwards looking we become the less likely we >> are to see structural problems, both internal and external. >> C. We are (still) missing diversity of coverage due to a focus of our >> userbase in certain demographics. I found a few days ago that one of >> the most commonly found light mechanical / structural construction >> materials used in modern first world construction had no article >> (strut channel / unistrut). I keep tripping over this sort of stuff >> every time I turn around. 3 million articles minus epsilon is not >> done by any means. >> D. And a narrow standard worldview in some respects is not good for >> community consensus building, if we want the encyclopedia to be >> representative of the world around us that we're writing about. >> >> The "Well, it's getting worse, but it's always been getting worse" >> misses the point - we're useful and relevant because we meet certain >> criteria for our user base. This sort of stuff strikes out at our >> usefulness and relevance to our userbase, not just internal problems. >> If people see us as an insular, crazy bunch of encyclopedia nuts >> rather than as a genuine open movement that's important to them and >> society writ large, we lose everything. >> > > Well said, George! The problem is that the executive suite will sit up there > and watch us ruminate and commiserate and, as they see it, "get it out of > our systems" as they have many times in the past when this subject has been > brought up, then return their attentions to what they think is important. > The bottom line here is: what can we passengers do about it when we aren't > the ones driving?
What? This is Wikipedia. The passengers *are* driving! Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l