P.S. I can give you a very nice example of this happening in practice from my personal experience. Few years ago, we produced high-quality videos documenting physics and chemistry experiments that had to be added to related articles. The project was welcomed by some chapters, mostly despised by the Wikimedia Foundation, while the communities appeared to be not ready for the introduction of such videos with only some users on Wikimedia Commons showing some interest and sharing their thoughts.
The main problem seems to be the lack of coordination between various stakeholders inside the movement on technology-related questions that are strategically important for the future of Wikipedia. Best, Kiril On Mon 31. Dec 2018 at 19:59, Kiril Simeonovski <kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Paulo, > > I agree that more or less we know what activities are intended for new and > what for experienced users. The challenging part is to make a sensible > decision on whether to reach out to new users using the visual editor and > the translation tool or to continue with the old-fashioned code editor. > There are multiple pros and cons of either decision but it is reasonable to > believe that these tools were developed for some specific purpose. This > will gain even more weight once the mobile editing gets improved. > > Other examples soliciting important decisions are whether and how to allow > new users to use videos across articles or how to shape an article's > structure that differs from the standard one. In many cases, people that we > reach out to are smart in pinpointing Wikipedia's weaknesses and are eager > to propose innovative solutions that primarily aim at making the articles > reader-friendlier. The problem is that a general community consensus can > not be easily bypassed even when the novelty is an obvious improvement and > the changes usually get rejected as good-faith attempts. > > Best, > Kiril > > On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 19:09 Paulo Santos Perneta < > paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Kiril Simeonovski <kiril.simeonov...@gmail.com> escreveu no dia segunda, >> 31/12/2018 à(s) 10:05: >> >> >> >> > some innovations. The problem with expanding an unchanged and obsolete >> > infrastructure to underrepresented groups might result to no avail and >> > further incentivise a major shift, thus doubling the cost invested in >> > infrastructure. Definitely, it is an open topic to discuss whether >> outreach >> > to new communities should be done using the old methods or experimenting >> > with something new. >> > >> >> I've been experimenting this personally for some time, firstly with the >> Art+Feminism initiative, which past experience has shown to be highly >> counterproductive if handled in a simple, amateurish way - events have >> been >> organized here in Portugal without appropriate support, which resulted in >> massive eliminations of the articles created, with a consequent >> traumatizing experience for the people that took part in them, that never >> again wanted to hear about Wikipedia. The 1lib1ref in its basic form also >> do not seem to be ideal to catch the attention of librarians over here, >> but >> alternative ways of organizing it seem to result. Edithatons in general >> have shown to be a bad option for reaching to new editors, except in the >> cases where we have some motivated work force already available (feminist >> activists, students being evaluated, etc.). My personal experience is that >> participating in edithatons "just because" is simply not fun nor >> attractive, there must be something to gain from it (promoting a specific >> cause, getting good grades, etc). We should indeed get innovative here, >> and >> above all, share our experiences, so that we can build something on this >> together. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Paulo >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, >> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
