WikiEN-l October 2010

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41 participants
20 discussions

Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)
by Philippe Beaudette 20 Nov '10

20 Nov '10

Hi everyone, I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to date on the planning of the 2010-2011 fundraiser, and ask once again for your participation in the process. Our updated meta pages (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010 ) will give you an overview as well. There's a lot of information here, because we've made huge progress: I hope you'll take the time to read it and join in the planning for the fundraiser. There's no doubt about it: the appeal from Jimmy Wales is a strong message. We've tested it head-to-head against other banners, and the results [1] are unequivocal - especially when you also compare its performance last year and the year before. But nobody wants to just put Jimmy up on the sites and leave him up for two months! So we're issuing a challenge: Find the banner that will beat Jimmy. Data informed conclusions Here's the trick: We have to make our decisions based on the facts, not our instinct. Please read the summaries below for really important details from our focus group and survey of past donors. Focus Group Wikimedia conducted a focus group of past donors in the New York City area in September 2010. It's important to note that this was a single focus group, and in a single city. We'll need to do more to make sure that results correlate universally. But we came out of it with a few important take-away points. It's important to realize that these points reflect ONLY donors - they should not be read as a wider feeling about mission or strategic direction - they're messaging points to help us refine and deliver the best messages possible. ** The most powerful image is of Wikipedia as a global community of people who freely share their knowledge and self-police the product. For everyone who participated, the idea of a global community of people sharing knowledge that is accessible to anyone who wants it free of charge is incredibly powerful. Respondents in this group were highly unlikely to be editors themselves; most consider themselves users. They love the idea of the community and want to support it, but they are reluctant to put themselves out there by being more than a user and a donor. ** Keeping the projects ad-free is a powerful motivator. Respondents were unanimous that keeping Wiki[m\p]edia ad free should be a priority, even if it meant that Wiki[m\p]edia would be approaching them for money more often. Accepting paid ads could corrupt the values and discourage the free flow of information. ** Independence is critically important. These respondents consume a lot of media, and they place a high premium on the free flow of information. They have little patience for “sponsored” news or information that excludes other perspectives. The Wikimedia model of openness and community engagement facilitates that. ** It’s a cause because it’s a tool. This may sound a bit like a chicken/egg argument, but it’s actually an important nuance. These folks use Wikimedia every day for things from simple curiosities to serious research. So it’s a tool that lets them get what they need. But it has grown to 17 million articles in 270 languages. Because it has that kind of depth and it reaches so many people around the world, it’s worth protecting what the community so successfully built. And that makes it a cause too. ** Growing isn’t always a good thing, when positioning for donors. Like many tech savvy folks, our respondents are a suspicious lot. The idea of Wikimedia growing brings up concerns about what Wikimedia would become, and fears about the path of companies like Facebook. It’s not just a privacy concern; it’s a concern about what would happen to the democratic model of Wikimedia inside a growth strategy. Supporting the organic growth of the community doesn’t raise the same concerns. ** Supporters strongly reject any agenda being attached to Wikimedia, even when that agenda would extend the current offerings. An agenda implies ownership, and respondents feel pretty strongly that the community owns Wikipedia. They think of Wikipedia as an organic thing, not like a typical nonprofit, and any attempt to steer it would disrupt that. Community support is one of the key values, and not everyone in the community would support new initiatives. ** There is room to fundraise more aggressively. Across the board, respondents were surprised that they didn’t have the opportunity to give to Wikimedia more often. Obviously, there is a balance and a PBS-style solicitation schedule wouldn’t make sense both for Wikimedia’s personality and for this audience, but there is much more space available than we are taking. ** Wikimedia donors are highly suspicious of marketing gimmicks. Simple, direct messages are likely to work best. Jimmy’s message worked not so much because he was the founder, but because it was a simple plea for support delivered authentically. As we know, that’s something that also needs quantitative testing to prove. Sometimes donor response in a focus group and donor activity don’t line up exactly. But, some things already line up with early tests. The more gimmicky the banner, the less likely it is to drive donations even if it increases clicks. Reaction to banners like “572 have donated in New York today” also raised concerns about privacy – not a good reaction in an already suspicious audience. Appeals to “keep us growing” or that highlight a contributor’s work raise earlier concerns about an agenda. Donor Survey Highlights Wikimedia produced a random sample of 20,000 individuals from the much larger number of individuals, from many countries, contributing less than $1000 between November 1 2009 and June 30 2010. These individuals were invited to participate in a 29 item (but around 70 question) survey. 3760 agreed to participate, and the survey was conducted in August 2010. The participants probably differ from those who declined in ways that are associated with survey answers. Hence the respondents do not represent an entirely representative sample of the < $1000 donors. The survey participants are committed to Wiki[p/m]edia, visiting it frequently. They say that they are very likely to donate again, and they support all the survey-mentioned reasons for donation. They were not aware of Wikipedia chapters. A majority of respondents did not appear greatly concerned about possible threats to Wikipedia’s identity. About 1/3 of these individuals have edited, though not frequently. Those who express more support for Wikimedia as a cause appear more prone to edit. Those who have not contributed in this way say mostly that they haven’t thought about it--suggesting that they haven’t really considered the possibility—or that they don’t have time. Europeans and the highly educated especially stress lack of time. Some subgroup differences were found within the sample. The likelihood of writing or editing does vary a bit by subgroup, for example. Overall, however, responses did not vary greatly by subgroup, whether “demographic” (nationality, education, sex) or behavioral (e.g., degree of on-line activity). * The full details of the survey can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FR_Donor_survey_report.pdf * A short overview can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donor_survey_report_excerpts.pdf . Chapters Chapters will receive the specifics of how we will work with them through their fundraising contacts which were designated on the fundraising survey, in order to keep the information communicated here to the essentials. Testing We have been testing for ten weeks now, and are really pleased with the progress that the tech team has made with new tools to support the fundraiser. Geo_targetting appears to work now, and we are currently testing a 1 step versus 2 step donation process. We will have solid test results this week, we believe. In all, we believe that we are - technically and message-wise - in a really good position. We're working out kinks, definitely, but we're working them out before the fundraiser starts, so that we can maximize the dollar-earning potential of every day that we have banners up. We need you From the very beginning, Zack charged me with presenting the most collaborative fundraiser yet. I'm thrilled at the level of involvement from the community, in everything from banner creation to testing structure, to design, to actually sitting on our test fundraisers with us in virtual conferences and being a full participating member of the team. We're reporting out frequently, and trying very hard to engage with members of the community. We have dedicated staff who are outreaching to our various language wikis in an attempt to get ever more broad participation. I strongly encourage you to join in the discussions at the meta pages about the fundraiser: /http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FR2010. Your involvement is not just appreciated - it's crucial. Thanks for sticking through this email - join us in discussion and help us beat the Jimmy appeal! Thanks, Philippe [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing#Test_six_ :_September_23rd.2C_2010 ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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IRC Office Hours with Sue Gardner today (23:00 UTC)
by Steven Walling 27 Oct '10

27 Oct '10

Hi all, Today Wikimedia Foundation Exec. Director Sue Gardner will be in this week's installment of IRC office hours at 23:00 UTC. As usual, the format is completely open, so bring any burning questions you might have to the #wikimedia-office channel on irc.freenode.net. Local times and instructions for accessing the chat, including for those without an IRC client, can be found on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. The log of the discussion will be publicly posted on that page afterwards for those cannot attend. Many thanks, -- Steven Walling Wikimedia Foundation Fellow (wikimediafoundation.org)

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Pending Changes development update: October 25
by Rob Lanphier 26 Oct '10

26 Oct '10

Hi everyone, This is another update on Pending Changes work. Over the Hack-a-ton weekend, Chad Horohoe and Priyanka Dhanda worked on two of the bigger features for the November 16 Pending Changes update: Bug 25294 - "Reject" button confirmation screen in Pending Changes https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25294 Bug 25289 - Make review load faster by speeding up display of old revisions https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25289 As of today, both of these are now deployed to our test site: http://prototype.wikimedia.org/flaggedrevs Additionally, since the last update, Brandon Harris has made a mockup available of some additional UI changes: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/NovemberReleaseD… The full list of issues for the November 16 release is listed here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293 We're not sure at this point just how much of the list we're going to make it through, but we plan to do additional updates shortly after November 16 with things that we don't get to. Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that; otherwise, please remark on the feedback page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback Rob

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The 12 most amazing (and useless) Wikipedia pages in the world
by Fred Bauder 22 Oct '10

22 Oct '10

A list has been prepared by Alastair Plumb of Asylum: http://www.asylum.co.uk/2010/10/21/the-12-most-amazing-and-useless-wikipedi… Fred

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Number of names in one sentence
by WereSpielChequers 19 Oct '10

19 Oct '10

> Certainly we don't need something like the five names in one sentence > we currently have for Copernicus: "*Nicolaus Copernicus* (Polish: > *Miko?aj Kopernik*; German: *Nikolaus Kopernikus*; in his youth, > *Niclas Koppernigk*;[1] Italian: *Nicol? Copernico*; 19 February 1473 > ? 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer ...". There's a note on > his name in the article itself, which lists a further nine variants. > In reality, of course, all these are just variants on one name, rather > than "alternative names" in the strict sense of people who've changed > their name or published under pseudonyms. > > >From the search perspective, of course, we could use "silent" > redirects (ones not noted in the article text), but some (especially > latinised names) are essential to have clearly available to the > reader. Maybe an infobox section would be appropriate here? > > -- > - Andrew Gray > ? andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 9 > Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:56:54 +0100 > From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Aliases and the MoS? > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <AANLkTimQ_onEn_CyRQ5LsuPuqAf1-9iiVKbgNvdd=Am6(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> wrote: > >> Maybe an infobox section would be appropriate here? > > Oh, please no. You need to explain the name variants and languages, > otherwise you get nationalists edit-warring incessantly over it. The > Copernicus one is a good example. I wouldn't be surprised if there was > disagreement over whether the German name or Polish name comes first > in the list. One thing I do find helpful is having the Latin versions > of names, especially if you happen to be looking at the title pages of > books published in Latin (way back when). Trying to work out the names > of publishers and authors can be difficult at times. > > Carcharoth Five versions of the name is positively simplex. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Westbourne manages eleven without overwhelming the article. I think it is reassuring to have multiple names up front - people will come to an article from various redirects so having multiple possible names in the lede gives our readers reassurance that they are on the right page. WereSpielChequers

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Alleged Liberal Bias
by Fred Bauder 19 Oct '10

19 Oct '10

Is there anything on this list: http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia which is a legitimate complaint that we can do something about? I was led there by a link from this post: http://www.redstate.com/docquintana/2010/10/11/fighting-liberal-bias-on-wik… Which complains bitterly. Fred Bauder

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Aliases and the MoS?
by Charles Matthews 18 Oct '10

18 Oct '10

Something different to talk about. I have wondered for some time if it is really the case that we have not addressed the issue of "alias" names, where the point may simply be alternate spellings. This is not particularly important for contemporary names that are already Romanised. It is certainly matters if you go back several centuries, given that spelling was not standard. As far as I can see [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)]] doesn't cover this ground, while dealing with numerous points in the same general area of naming. My instinct is that multiple possible spellings, for example surname variants, should go into a footnote or perhaps be boxed up, as a way of keeping them from distracting the casual reader. They are certainly of interest to specialists and scholars, and have a role to play in making search work. Charles

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Building a community or building an encyclopedia?
by MuZemike 18 Oct '10

18 Oct '10

I get this feeling sometimes that some people are more interested in building a "community" on Wikipedia rather than helping to construct an encyclopedia. I tend to think that there is a notion which existed upon Wikipedia's founding: "Always leave something undone. Whenever you write a page, never finish it. Always leave something obvious to do: an uncompleted sentence, a question in the text (with a not-too-obscure answer someone can supply), wikied links that are of interest, requests for help from specific other Wikipedians, the beginning of a provocative argument that someone simply must fill in, etc. The purpose of this rule is to encourage others to keep working on the wiki." I say this is not readily followed anymore, and I personally disagree with that tenet, because of the sheer volume of the English Wikipedia (almost 3.5 million articles) that will always have some sort of positive article creation rate due to developing and new events that occur worldwide all the time. Anyways, I think the reason why we had something like that in there is so that we could preserve or expand this "community" of editors. However, that implies that a certain level of drama should always exist, not to mention that perfection is near-impossible to achieve (though I'm sure many of us strive to do the best we can to improve the encyclopedia), and that one's interpretation of an article or topic being "complete" varies. That comes to my question regarding whether or not we are here to build an online community or an online encyclopedia. Should we focus outwards toward the reading/viewing audience, or should we focus inwards towards the editors? -MuZemike

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Why the Internet dooms universities
by David Gerard 17 Oct '10

17 Oct '10

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion-analysis/stand-and… This reads like a radical anti-egalitarian manifesto by some young Internet-based firebrand ... then I got to the end and my jaw dropped at the author's job. - d.

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Reminder: Office Hours with Sue Gardner (TODAY)
by James Alexander 14 Oct '10

14 Oct '10

Hi all, A reminder that Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, will be having office hours Today in about 2 hours at 17:00 UTC (10:00 PDT, 13:00 EDT 19:00 CEST) on IRC in the #wikimedia-office channel. As usual the meeting will be an open format so bring your questions and comments! If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat using a web browser: First, using the Wikizine chat gateway at <http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join. Or, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing #wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning, which you can click to accept. I hope to see everyone on IRC! -- James Alexander Associate Community Officer Wikimedia Foundation

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WikiEN-l October 2010