Mailing List Archive

Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3)
(thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)

The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
projects... but also those who care enough to donate money or critical
rants or expert advice, readers who would not dare contribute to an
encyclopedia but have relevant experiences in other areas of life to
add to planning discussions, and the friends and colleagues and family
of the above, interested enough to participate in such discussions if
they knew about them but not yet aware they exist.[2]

Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years
a) for Wikipedia,
b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media
repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity
[.I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might
double their annual list traffic]
c) for Wikipedia and its sister projects in their secondary
capacities of language preservation, debate facilitation, education,
archiving
d) for the Wikimedia Foundation, as a supportive entity and as an organization
e) for each of us individually as community members

[.forgive me for lumping together all of the smaller projects; and all
languages, large, small, living, and dead]

Let us seed a longer discussion about planning for the future. To
begin with, it would be helpful to gather together the many places
where related discussions have already been held.

For instance, here is a new page on the subject:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/strategic_goals
And an older page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Three-year_plan
And a series of essays:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads

There are similar pages on individual projects and mailing lists, and
in many languages other than English. Perhaps you have run across one
before. I've started an Yet Another MetaMeta page on meta. Please
contribute links to it and translate it:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_future

++SJ


[1] Perhaps a very long time.
http://community.livejournal.com/wikipedians/17778.html

[2] For those who feel broad-based discussions are criminal, or wastes
of time: the process of discussing plans for the future helps
strengthen shared purpose and naturally passes on the message of the
projects. And we don't have enough people talking about these ideas
now; even excellent suggestions for investigation and research are
allowed to lie fallow. We are very far from having too many voices
offering their pearls of wisdom.
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
I am reminded of a wonderful commercial on American television.

A group of business people are sitting around a table and one of them begins
to choke on his food. They then spend the next few minutes in a casual
discussion about the Heimlich manoeuvre, until someone from another table comes up
and actually does it.

Danny
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:
> (thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)
>
> The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
> on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
> just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
> to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
> projects...

There are only 23,611* active registered editors (as of June 1, 2006)
on all projects.

Kelly

* "Active" is defined as "400 edits lifetime and 100 edits in the past
year on any given project". This number is overstated because many
people are "active" on more than one project, and until we get SUL I
can't readily account for that.
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
Where is that definition from? I was using Erik Zachte's definition
of "active member", as used in a half dozen presentations on Wikipedia
-- ~80k editors with over 5 edits in the past month... 210k with over
10 edits in all. I think "100k active editors" is accurate, though
perhaps "200k contributors" would be better.

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

SJ

On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:
> > (thread 1 in a 3-thread microseries)
> >
> > The long-term discussion about planning for, devotion to, and passing
> > on the message and goals of the projects falls to all of us -- not
> > just the 700 people subscribed to this list, nor the 2000 contributors
> > to Meta, nor just the 100,000 active editors across all the
> > projects...
>
> There are only 23,611* active registered editors (as of June 1, 2006)
> on all projects.
>
> Kelly
>
> * "Active" is defined as "400 edits lifetime and 100 edits in the past
> year on any given project". This number is overstated because many
> people are "active" on more than one project, and until we get SUL I
> can't readily account for that.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


--
++SJ
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
On 9/21/06, SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is that definition from? I was using Erik Zachte's definition
> of "active member", as used in a half dozen presentations on Wikipedia
> -- ~80k editors with over 5 edits in the past month... 210k with over
> 10 edits in all. I think "100k active editors" is accurate, though
> perhaps "200k contributors" would be better.

It's one I came up with recently. Five edits in a month is not a good
measure of "community". 400 edits lifetime and 100 edits a year shows
more of a commitment to a project than five edits in a month, which
could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang around. I'm
considering running another stats run at 100 lifetime and 25 per year,
since I think the higher number shortchanges the community size of
smaller projects. (Almost half of our projects have no active editors
by the 400/100 standard.)

Kelly
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's one I came up with recently. Five edits in a month is not a good
> measure of "community". 400 edits lifetime and 100 edits a year shows
> more of a commitment to a project than five edits in a month, which
> could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang around. I'm
> considering running another stats run at 100 lifetime and 25 per year,
> since I think the higher number shortchanges the community size of
> smaller projects. (Almost half of our projects have no active editors
> by the 400/100 standard.)

Interesting. It seems to me that community is proportional to
attention and interest, not to edit count. Until we have measures of
this, we are discounting the active readers and lurkers who edit only
occasionally. On the other hand, we are overcounting people who edit
on more than one project.

I look forward to single login, a decent user survey, and better metrics.

SJ
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
--- SJ <2.718281828@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/21/06, Kelly Martin
> <kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It's one I came up with recently. Five edits in a
> month is not a good
> > measure of "community". 400 edits lifetime and
> 100 edits a year shows
> > more of a commitment to a project than five edits
> in a month, which
> > could easily be a driveby editor who does not hang
> around. I'm
> > considering running another stats run at 100
> lifetime and 25 per year,
> > since I think the higher number shortchanges the
> community size of
> > smaller projects. (Almost half of our projects
> have no active editors
> > by the 400/100 standard.)
>
> Interesting. It seems to me that community is
> proportional to
> attention and interest, not to edit count. Until we
> have measures of
> this, we are discounting the active readers and
> lurkers who edit only
> occasionally. On the other hand, we are
> overcounting people who edit
> on more than one project.
>
> I look forward to single login, a decent user
> survey, and better metrics.
>
> SJ
> ________

Active editor metrics should probably vary based on
the maturity of the comunity. Many of the various
communities have barely existed for an entire year.

Birgitte SB

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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
On 9/22/06, daniwo59@aol.com <daniwo59@aol.com> wrote:
> I am reminded of a wonderful commercial on American television.
>
> A group of business people are sitting around a table and one of them begins
> to choke on his food. They then spend the next few minutes in a casual
> discussion about the Heimlich manoeuvre, until someone from another table comes up
> and actually does it.

Do they save the choking man? Or does he actually die while they're talking?

Delphine
--
~notafish
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
On 9/23/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/06, daniwo59@aol.com <daniwo59@aol.com> wrote:
> > I am reminded of a wonderful commercial on American television.
> >
> > A group of business people are sitting around a table and one of them begins
> > to choke on his food. They then spend the next few minutes in a casual
> > discussion about the Heimlich manoeuvre, until someone from another table comes up
> > and actually does it.
>
> Do they save the choking man? Or does he actually die while they're talking?
>
> Delphine

Heimlich manoeuvre is no longer recomended (and yes there as an
editing disspute over this).

--
geni
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
Am Freitag, 22. September 2006 03:39 schrieb SJ:
> Questions: what are the most important goals over the next few years
> a) for Wikipedia,
> b) for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Commons and any further media
> repository, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikiversity
> [.I would forward to the other lists but for some of them it might
> double their annual list traffic]

Wikimedia Commons goals are better software which we naturally don't want to
demand solely from others but want to be able contributing to with less
friction. Some of our goals:
* Single login
* CheckUsage directly in MediaWiki
* CommonsTicker directly in MediaWiki (for example via a defined RSS feed that
can be imported in any other Wikimedia or third party wiki: See as
well "Instant Commons" idea)
* Checked Versions for files in order to review not only negatively ("this
file needs to be deleted") but also positively ("this file can be used safely
and is useful") our content.
* Wikidata in MediaWiki for uniform and queryable file descriptions. Every
serious media repository in the world uses well defined description fields.

These are some high priority requirements for the visions of Wikimedia Commons
coming true.

Have also a look at the thread on CommonsDelinker, our current pending
solution to yet another software problem, wich adresses as well some
expectations towards the Foundation (which thus has a little bit to do with
the goals of the Foundation, although not the same ;-).

Cheers, Arnomane
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Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
Daniel Arnold wrote:
> Wikimedia Commons goals are better software which we naturally don't want to
> demand solely from others but want to be able contributing to with less
> friction. Some of our goals:
> * Single login

Real soon now. ;)

> * CheckUsage directly in MediaWiki
> * CommonsTicker directly in MediaWiki (for example via a defined RSS feed that
> can be imported in any other Wikimedia or third party wiki: See as
> well "Instant Commons" idea)
> * Checked Versions for files in order to review not only negatively ("this
> file needs to be deleted") but also positively ("this file can be used safely
> and is useful") our content.

Would love to these too; bug me about them in October and keep bugging me until
they happen!

> * Wikidata in MediaWiki for uniform and queryable file descriptions. Every
> serious media repository in the world uses well defined description fields.

That could be some ways off, but useful data that's not wikidata might be
shorter term.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Re: Dreams, goals, and milestones (1 of 3) [ In reply to ]
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Daniel Arnold wrote:
>
>
>>Wikimedia Commons goals are better software which we naturally don't want to
>>demand solely from others but want to be able contributing to with less
>>friction. Some of our goals:
>>* Single login
>>
>>
>Real soon now. ;)
>
>
>>* CheckUsage directly in MediaWiki
>>* CommonsTicker directly in MediaWiki (for example via a defined RSS feed that
>>can be imported in any other Wikimedia or third party wiki: See as
>>well "Instant Commons" idea)
>>* Checked Versions for files in order to review not only negatively ("this
>>file needs to be deleted") but also positively ("this file can be used safely
>>and is useful") our content.
>>
>>
>Would love to these too; bug me about them in October and keep bugging me until
>they happen!
>
Without commenting about specific requests, I never feel right about
being a pain-in-the-ass about getting things done when I'm confident
that the person doing the work is doing as much as he can with the
resources available.

Single login would be nice, as would a more sophisticated search
function, but since I have never even figured out how to use a simple
bot.I really can't make any constructive contributions to those efforts.

Ec

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