Question of the week/Ideas

Suggest interesting data from Wikimedia-pedia and possible questions of the week below. Questions should be data-oriented. In other words, they should start with some concrete numbers/research.

Draft Sequence

11/23 -- What ratio of contributors to readers should Wikimedia aim for? What could be done to increase the number of active contributors to the projects? (Data slide presenting percent of visitors who were active contributors for different wikipedias) done

11/30 -- How could Wikimedia be a friendlier and more welcoming place? done

12/7 -- What changes to Wikimedia's technology would enable a friendlier and more welcoming environment? (Data slide showing survey results on factors that would make non-contributors more likely to contribute) done

12/14 -- What could Wikimedia do to increase its penetration outside of Europe and North America? (Data slide showing opportunities to deepen penetration in countries with many online) done

12/21 -- What can Wikimedia do to support the growth of slow growth projects? Based on current growth rates, it appears that many Wikipedias could reach the size of Encyclopedia Britannica within the next five years, but that others are decades away from this goal. (Data slide showing cascade growth toward 120K 1.5KB articles) done

12/28 -- What 2 or 3 investments or changes would you make to encourage the improvement of quality in Wikimedia projects over the long term? (Framework slide with different dimensions of quality in terms of breadth, depth, overall project and individual articles)

1/4 -- What roles should different members of the Wikimedia play in advancing the mission? (overview slide on benchmark data from other global organizations - link to detail; slide on “must do” roles for the Foundation, chapters, independent volunteers, highlighting gaps)

1/11 -- What are the most important metrics that Wikimedia should track to measure progress and success? (Slide with possible metrics re: participation, reach, quality?, up time, etc.)

1/18 -- Priorities – question TBD

1/25 -- Priorities – question TBD

When is something "controversial"?

User:Witty lama had a great post where he wrote:

At what point is something "controversial"? As far as I can remember there hasn't been a single decision in the history of Wikimedia that has received universal support. Some people will complain no matter what happens. When you're the person doing the complaining it is your POV that the issue is "controversial", whereas when you're the one who isn't complaining then it is your POV that the issue is NOT "controversial" and the complainers are just overreacting.

This would be a wonderful QOTW as it has reverberations for the entire strategy project. There seems to be an ongoing paralysis to try things, because people are waiting for feedback from "the community", and they don't necessarily know how to get it or how to interpret it. If we can reframe our thought process for how we decide how to do things, that would be huge.

I posted this question over at the Movement Roles Task Force discussion page. --Eekim 19:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Integrated Watchlists for all projects in Wikimedia projects

It has been suggested on Wikiversity Colloquium that there be an integrated Watchlist (And possibly integrated profile and Talk pages, which bring together the contents of each projects Watchlists, Profiles, and Talk pages into files integrating all the projects for that function.)

The idea is that many users are involved in multiple projects, and often fail to check the watchlists, and Talk pages associated with their less used project identities. As a result,interwiki communication is a problem with members of one wiki dumping inappropriate materials on another and not responding to the concerns of the project they are using as a dump site. Administrators can't contact these people because their talk page on the project is never read. Meanwhile they are active on their original project, and could be contacted if the talk pages were integrated.

Another reason to do so, is project like this one, where the interest in the project is a side-line to their main project, and therefore they may never actually realize that someone has posted to their suggestion, because they are not notified by e-mail when the watchlist changes.

I second this idea. It's clearly the Right Thing to do. Is there a bugzilla feature request for it? 99.27.203.250 20:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a very important topic for Question of the week. Integrated watchlists would greatly increase the number of people editing other projects such as en:Wikibooks, en:Wikimedia Commons, en:Wiktionary, en:Wikisource, en:Wikiquote, en:Wikinews, en:Wikiversity, en:Wikijunior, en:Wikispecies, and additional projects. There are many proposed projects that integrated watchlists could help. See: meta:Category:Proposed projects and meta:Proposals for new projects. These projects are not being done because there is not enough participation in (and thus donations for) existing projects. So new projects aren't started. If people could have some integrated watchlists set up the way they like them, then there would be more participation, growth, and donations.

People could select which watchlists to unify, and which ones to keep separate. People could have more than one integrated watchlist. Many new English-speaking editors (less than 5 edits a month) quit because there is little room for new interesting articles on English Wikipedia. People can't be bothered to open multiple watchlists, especially new editors who barely understand watchlists, signatures, time stamps, etc.. Other Wikimedia projects have a great need for editors (new and old), and a wide range of topics to cover. Plus there are the meta and other peripheral wikis (like this strategy one), and their watchlists. Timeshifter 16:21, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

What should be in a Wikipedia API?

As wikimedia's projects mature the data becomes more useful for others to use in various mashups.

Use cases:

1. a web site includes a wikipedia infobox or lead paragraph in a sidebar or a pop-up for background info on a story.
2. Other use cases?

What is the best route for developing such an API?

Role of administrators, and their leaving

I actually neglected to study this picture. I haven't thought too much about it, but the project is hemorrhaging administrators. Is that a problem? Do we need more administrators? Do we need better administrators? Do we need multiple different kinds of administrators, or a set of administrators to police the administrators? Do we need to protect volunteer administrators from abusive situations?

That's a lot of questions.

This sounds like an important topic. Why are so many administrators leaving? Is it a matter of how an admin is defined as "active"? Admin-related edits per month? 3 months? 6 months? I remember that the Commons required a certain amount of admin-related edits per time period, or the user would lose their admin status. Last 6 months if I am remembering correctly. I don't know if this is still a requirement. I thought this rule could be a problem when I first heard of it. I don't want to lose good admins just because of periods of inactivity.

By the way, where is the signature icon on the edit toolbar? I shouldn't have to remember the tildes, etc. in order to create a time stamp. Many people will not remember. Timeshifter 22:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)