On 25 Nov 2009, at 13:18, Brian McNeil wrote: > On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 13:08 +0000, Gordon Joly wrote: >> Michael Peel wrote: >>> I've just spoken to Rory by phone, and managed to touch on a number >>> of different topics with him - including the Usability Initiative, >>> the bookshelf project, Britain Loves Wikipedia and other local >>> events, etc. There were lots of issues that I didn't cover >>> (different >>> language versions, strategy, different viewpoints on the >>> numbers, ...), so I would encourage others to also get in touch with >>> him. > > Apparently, Mr Ortega's work is based on people who register an > account > and make one edit or more. > > The WMF stats are based on slightly different metrics; only people > with > five or more edits are classed as "contributors". > > I am not a scientist or, more importantly, a statistician. But, these > seem like radically different criteria for an analysis.
He's posted his blog article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/wikipedia_on_the_wane.html Sadly a lot of the points I was hoping to get across didn't make it into the post, but the last paragraph of his post is great, and something I wish the newspaper articles would end with: "So this is a project that is suffering plenty of growing pains - but with a Wikipedia entry coming top of Google's search results for just about any topic you can imagine, the online encyclopaedia is certainly not on the wane." >>> I've had no other calls/emails from any other media organizations >>> about this story. > > The Press Association are looking for comment. They called me shortly after I sent that message; I spent ~ 10 mins talking to them on the phone. Hopefully something good will come out of that... Mike _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org