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On 16 April 2012 18:41, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features at all???
>
> These go in the right direction:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
>
> Is WMF going to act finally???
>

Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
and so on. And editors don't want it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc.

English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
with.

If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]

I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.

You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
browser level.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html

--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>

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Hi Kozuch,
While not specifically a "social" feature, you might be interested to look
at a major project the WMF seems to be preparing for the future - called
"Echo": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_%28Notifications%29
It is a proposed, fully integrated, notification system for mediawiki. As
it says: "This feature is designed to replace and augment existing
notification systems as well as providing significantly more control to
both users and developers as to how their notifications are handled, read,
and deleted."

It appears that this project is the top priority in the WMF's 2012-2013
Engineering plan under the heading of "reversing editor decline". See
section 5.1: here
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals

-Liam

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata


On 16 April 2012 17:41, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features at
> all???
>
> These go in the right direction:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
>
> Is WMF going to act finally???
>
> Kozuch
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Tom, you're assuming that adding "social features" to Wikimedia projects
must mean integrating with commercial social networks. I don't think that's
a given at all. If we accept that social interaction, and more
opportunities for positive social interaction, are beneficial for
collaborative projects like the English Wikipedia (which I think we
should), then it's perfectly possible and quite common to internally add
certain social features.

There are many different ways to achieve a better social atmosphere;
whether its better discussion systems, better notifications, better tools
for exchanging ideas and interests, internal communications (like e-mail
style messages to individuals internally, or to groups), or any one of a
thousand other options. Boiling it down without reason to a decision over
Facebook "like" buttons is a disservice to honest discourse.

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Tom Morris <tom@tommorris.org> wrote:

>
>
> Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
> social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
> and so on. And editors don't want it.
>
> See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
> .
>
> English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
> community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
> with.
>
> If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
> deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
> hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
> discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
> the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
> were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
> which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
> Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
> information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
> as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
> advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
> wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
> shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
> that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
> allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
> Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
>
> I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
> services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
> Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
> sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
> Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
> networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
> we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
> and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
> popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
> de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
> big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
> We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
> to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
>
> You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
> the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
> sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
> Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
> experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
> adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
> discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
> browser level.
>
> [1]
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Hi guys,

I understand your objections. Surely privacy is a key here. We should
make "social" our way, taking in account various aspects of privacy
and commerce...

The goal definitely is rising the the number of editors... we should
do this through all possible ways... as someone wrote here the only
question is _how many resources_ (money etc.) is WMF wanting to invest
into editor retention...

Kozuch

2012/4/17 Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com>:
> Tom, you're assuming that adding "social features" to Wikimedia projects
> must mean integrating with commercial social networks. I don't think that's
> a given at all. If we accept that social interaction, and more
> opportunities for positive social interaction, are beneficial for
> collaborative projects like the English Wikipedia (which I think we
> should), then it's perfectly possible and quite common to internally add
> certain social features.
>
> There are many different ways to achieve a better social atmosphere;
> whether its better discussion systems, better notifications, better tools
> for exchanging ideas and interests, internal communications (like e-mail
> style messages to individuals internally, or to groups), or any one of a
> thousand other options. Boiling it down without reason to a decision over
> Facebook "like" buttons is a disservice to honest discourse.
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Tom Morris <tom@tommorris.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
>> social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
>> and so on. And editors don't want it.
>>
>> See
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
>> .
>>
>> English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
>> community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
>> with.
>>
>> If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
>> deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
>> hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
>> discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
>> the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
>> were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
>> which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
>> Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
>> information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
>> as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
>> advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
>> wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
>> shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
>> that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
>> allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
>> Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
>>
>> I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
>> services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
>> Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
>> sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
>> Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
>> networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
>> we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
>> and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
>> popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
>> de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
>> big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
>> We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
>> to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
>>
>> You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
>> the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
>> sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
>> Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
>> experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
>> adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
>> discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
>> browser level.
>>
>> [1]
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
>>
>> --
>> Tom Morris
>> <http://tommorris.org/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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On 17 April 2012 15:56, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I understand your objections. Surely privacy is a key here. We should
> make "social" our way, taking in account various aspects of privacy
> and commerce...
>
> The goal definitely is rising the the number of editors... we should
> do this through all possible ways... as someone wrote here the only
> question is _how many resources_ (money etc.) is WMF wanting to invest
> into editor retention...
>
> Kozuch
>

I think my major concern is that "social features" encourage the wrong sort
of editor - i.e. those here for hat collecting, chat, community, etc. I'm
not against the idea of community but I think that
a) On-wiki it should be incidental/casual (as it is now)
b) Any more social collectives should exist off-wiki (what we are missing)

The editor retention program should be looking to bring in quality editors
willing to work primarily on article content. Whether they also want to
socialise with other editors is somewhat a secondary
consideration/distraction.

Tom
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On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Thomas Morton
<morton.thomas@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 17 April 2012 15:56, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:

>> The goal definitely is rising the the number of editors...

Yes.

> The editor retention program should be looking to bring in quality editors
> willing to work primarily on article content.

No. Aiming for quality, would only reduce the number of editors.

Remember: "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

> Whether they also want to
> socialise with other editors is somewhat a secondary
> consideration/distraction.

I disagree. A lot.

--
Fajro

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>
> >> The goal definitely is rising the the number of editors...
>
> Yes.
>
> > The editor retention program should be looking to bring in quality
> editors
> > willing to work primarily on article content.
>
> No. Aiming for quality, would only reduce the number of editors.
>

Quality editors; perhaps should have said quality authors/writers.

We have no end of vandal fighters, admin material and so forth, who are
also critical. Those people will keep coming in. But we sorely lack people
with a quiet focus on content creation and prose. Doubling our current
numbers of that sort of editor would be a huge step toward improving our
content. Doubling the other sorts of editors would not have the same effect.

The idea that having more quality editors would reduce the number of other
editors is... somewhat confusing. But if that really is the case (and we
can swap low quality editors for high quality editors) then fine by me.

But I would be interested to hear your reasoning as to why looking for &
engaging quality writers would drive off others?


> Remember: "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
>

Just because they *can* edit doesn't mean they should. We are aiming to
create free content here *not* create a place anyone can edit. Important,
even critical, distinction.

We do not blindly follow that pithy tagline (i.e. the existence of
semi-protection, bans/blocks for total incompetence).

> Whether they also want to
> > socialise with other editors is somewhat a secondary
> > consideration/distraction.
>
> I disagree. A lot.


Of course that is your prerogative.

But I think in holding that view you've critically lost sight of the point
of being here. We are not building a social network in the background. A
social structure has to exists to keep the community going, but the prime
purpose is to write/develop free content.

But perhaps it would be useful to suggest some specific social features
that you'd want - that might help focus the discussion.

Tom
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On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:44:48 +0100, Thomas Morton wrote:

>> Whether they also want to
>> > socialise with other editors is somewhat a secondary
>> > consideration/distraction.
>>
>> I disagree. A lot.
>
>
> Of course that is your prerogative.
>
> But I think in holding that view you've critically lost sight of the
> point
> of being here. We are not building a social network in the
> background. A
> social structure has to exists to keep the community going, but the
> prime
> purpose is to write/develop free content.
>
> But perhaps it would be useful to suggest some specific social
> features
> that you'd want - that might help focus the discussion.
>
> Tom

I actually do agree. It is not a secret that we are attractive for
people having personal problems of some sort, who hope that they can get
kind of attention in Wikipedia/Wikimedia they can never get in real
life. At some point I was even put in a situation when I had views
opposed to the views of such people, and I basically had to defend my
views against them. This proved to be impossible: I am pretty much
successful in my professional career, and for me Wikipedia is, well, a
hobby. But for them it is life. It is very difficult to argue with
people who are fighting for life, does not matter who is defending what
views. Finally, I inevitably had to say "fuck you" and leave the
argument.

There is in principle nothing wrong with people who want to get
attention. For instance, they might want to get attention by writing
articles, creating a big number of FAs abd GAs. Or by fighting vandals.
Or by writing useful gadgets. I am all for it. And of course not
everybody behaves like the types I mentions in the above paragraph -
only a small fraction. But I am afraid that the more we socialize, the
more attractive we become for this type of people. And then they tend to
form circles, voting collectively at RFAs - up for the those from the
circle, down for those not from the circle. Or discussing RfDs. Or
whatever. It is extremely dangerous when people start mixing personal
and professional relations - to speak in a not-so-much-correct way, when
they start making love while in the office. This does not help writing
the encyclopedia. And I have seen plenty of examples - and I guess all
of us had. This is why I am not particularly looking forward to
increasing socialization. Wikilove - fine, as a sign of appreciation
(though I personally prefer appreciation written in plain English).
Barnstars - ok. But going to a full-scale social network - I am sorry,
this is going to kill us.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Thomas Morton <
morton.thomas@googlemail.com> wrote:

> But perhaps it would be useful to suggest some specific social features
> that you'd want - that might help focus the discussion.
>

I'm not sure that it makes sense to talk about adding "social features" in
the abstract -- we're not aiming to build a social network in the real
sense of the term. Rather, we should be looking at the features that drive
participation at social networks (and particularly at Facebook), whether
those features are an inheret part of the "social network" concept or
merely incidental to it.

Consider, for example, that Zynga and Facebook have successfully managed to
get millions of people to log in at all hours of the night to milk
virtualcows and harvest virtual beans (or whatever it is that people
actually do in Farmville). Could we do something similar to drive
particpation, particularly in editing areas that don't require
long-duration sessions (e.g. adding or verifying citations, categorizing
articles, etc.)? Even a few percent of Farmville's user base would be an
order-of-magnitude increase of our own editor base; and if the price for
that is letting these editors display Citationville badges on their user
pages and send each other silly messages, is it not worth it?

Cheers,
Kirill
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I generally agree with what you have said, Yaroslav.

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 9:34 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod@mccme.ru>wrote:

> Wikilove - fine, as a sign of appreciation (though I personally prefer
> appreciation written in plain English). Barnstars - ok.


But I do think we have taken the idea of "Wikilove" and "Barnstars" too
far. They were good as they had existed previously, but now with the
integrated Wikilove feature, their value has depreciated, I am afraid.

It's not too difficult to find pages and pages littered with biscuits,
kittens and barnstars, just because it is too easy to give them out.
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> Consider, for example, that Zynga and Facebook have successfully
> managed to
> get millions of people to log in at all hours of the night to milk
> virtualcows and harvest virtual beans (or whatever it is that people
> actually do in Farmville). Could we do something similar to drive
> particpation, particularly in editing areas that don't require
> long-duration sessions (e.g. adding or verifying citations,
> categorizing
> articles, etc.)? Even a few percent of Farmville's user base would
> be an
> order-of-magnitude increase of our own editor base; and if the price
> for
> that is letting these editors display Citationville badges on their
> user
> pages and send each other silly messages, is it not worth it?
>

This is actually a very good example. Imagine this happened, and we got
for several hours a million of users who do not know anything about BLP,
verifiability, POV, notability, and other issues. Would we be able to
clean up their edits? I doubt it. If I remember well, when 80K landscape
pictures of British Isles were donated to Commons more than a year ago
(which is certainly a good thing), they were not categorized, and many
of them (several dozen of thousands) remained uncategorized last time I
checked. We will not just be able to digest this.

The way out obviously that we do not have a million random editors. We
want a million of editors who understand basic principles and know what
they want to do. I just do not see how it could happen. When I
personally ask my friends to upload photos which are clearly needed (for
instance, to illustrate an already existing article), my best success is
to ask them to send a mail to OTRS, and then I upload photos myself. And
uploading a photo is generally easier than to find a category for an
article or to source a statement.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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On 4/17/12 12:07 PM, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> Consider, for example, that Zynga and Facebook have successfully
> managed to get millions of people to log in at all hours of the night
> to milk virtualcows and harvest virtual beans (or whatever it is that
> people actually do in Farmville). Could we do something similar to
> drive particpation, particularly in editing areas that don't require
> long-duration sessions (e.g. adding or verifying citations,
> categorizing articles, etc.)? Even a few percent of Farmville's user
> base would be an order-of-magnitude increase of our own editor base;
> and if the price for that is letting these editors display
> Citationville badges on their user pages and send each other silly
> messages, is it not worth it?

Gamification is a huge aspect of crowdsourcing these days. It isn't
enough to just "share free knowledge," anymore (and for many people who
currently contribute, it is, but..). People want some type of validation
that goes beyond the mission, whether it's a "prize," an award, etc.

We've seen how valuable awarding people Barnstars are in English
Wikipedia. It helps with user retention - when it's genuine and awarded
to people for the right reasons (yes, I've seen malicious barnstar
awards in my day), it has a powerful impact on keeping that editor
around. I also think it's valuable when people see that other /people/
edit Wikipedia. While I'm against becoming a social network in the
traditional sense ("traditional" meaning Facebook, Myspace, oh, remember
Friendster?), I think there is a lot of value in encouraging people to
bring their personalities to Wikipedia by way of their user page, etc.
In this world we live in today, people want to share a picture of
themselves and so forth. Saying "That is what a user page is for," isn't
enough, and we've struggled to make an easy to use userpage that
encourages new editors to share images of themselves. Wikipedia has
served as a social network for me - whether people like to hear that or
not. I have friends I care for a lot around the world that I spend time
with online and offline. I think it'd be really valuable to express that
to the world and it could be used to encourage participation. (We do it
for donations..what about for attracting editors?)

Through Wikipedia, not only have I gotten to share knowledge with the
world for free, but, I have also gotten to know an amazing group of
people that have inspired me.

-Sarah


--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow/*
>>Support the sharing of free knowledge around the world: donate today
<https://donate.wikimedia.org/><<
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I believe the Geograph images (the UK landscape pictures of which you
speak) may be slightly more than 80,000 images...

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod@mccme.ru>wrote:

> Consider, for example, that Zynga and Facebook have successfully managed to
>> get millions of people to log in at all hours of the night to milk
>> virtualcows and harvest virtual beans (or whatever it is that people
>> actually do in Farmville). Could we do something similar to drive
>> particpation, particularly in editing areas that don't require
>> long-duration sessions (e.g. adding or verifying citations, categorizing
>> articles, etc.)? Even a few percent of Farmville's user base would be an
>> order-of-magnitude increase of our own editor base; and if the price for
>> that is letting these editors display Citationville badges on their user
>> pages and send each other silly messages, is it not worth it?
>>
>>
> This is actually a very good example. Imagine this happened, and we got
> for several hours a million of users who do not know anything about BLP,
> verifiability, POV, notability, and other issues. Would we be able to clean
> up their edits? I doubt it. If I remember well, when 80K landscape pictures
> of British Isles were donated to Commons more than a year ago (which is
> certainly a good thing), they were not categorized, and many of them
> (several dozen of thousands) remained uncategorized last time I checked. We
> will not just be able to digest this.
>
> The way out obviously that we do not have a million random editors. We
> want a million of editors who understand basic principles and know what
> they want to do. I just do not see how it could happen. When I personally
> ask my friends to upload photos which are clearly needed (for instance, to
> illustrate an already existing article), my best success is to ask them to
> send a mail to OTRS, and then I upload photos myself. And uploading a photo
> is generally easier than to find a category for an article or to source a
> statement.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
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Am 17.04.2012 18:20, schrieb Sarah Stierch:
> People want some type of validation that goes beyond the mission,
> whether it's a "prize," an award, etc.

Gamification might be a strategy for many things, but I don't think that
it is working as a general approach throughout all communities. I doubt
that european or asian communities would appreciate a playful approach
on gathering and sharing knowledge as much as the en does.

>
> I think there is a lot of value in encouraging people to bring their
> personalities to Wikipedia by way of their user page, etc. In this
> world we live in today, people want to share a picture of themselves
> and so forth. Saying "That is what a user page is for," isn't enough,
> and we've struggled to make an easy to use userpage that encourages
> new editors to share images of themselves.

"encouraging people to bring their personalities to Wikipedia" -
gamification might be of help for that. Trouble starts to make the
brought-in editors stay when they see, that earning likes, favs and
pluses is much more easier elsewhere, as you do not have to contribute
lengthy on brazilian 200-m-sprinters, extinct languages of western
papua, villages of western-central estonia, artillery battery commanders
of the civil war, fossil species of foraminifera or fluid dynamics before.

Maybe it might be more useful to support editing instead of collecting
people only. I can't imagine that sharing a new picture on my userpage
is helpful, while I am trying to figure out, if there is convincing
information on the dispersal events of the genus Lilium in Japan and
North America or trying to find a reference for the second album of a
japanese ultra drone doom metal band.

Would love to find help therein.

Regards,
Denis


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Hi,

A couple of quick comments.

You have two way to approch gamification of content/service/product :
* Built a game experience on top of the content/service/product
* Lauche services/products dedicated to gamification based on your initial
product

What people are mostly talking about here is the first one. But we could
also think of the second, like we could have a game interface to edit
Wikipedia. You could have X thousands of sentence ready to translate and
you could translate them one after the other little by little, and add a
ranking of the top translators. This is how Facebook or Twitter translated
their website.

Gamification is a way to lower the threshold for a product/task. Making it
fun and easy and something non-involving.

We could also have the same thing for categorization of images. Corercting
spelling mistakes. And so on. And the goal would be to make people that
would have never edited, edit.

As for making our content "social" or easier to share. There are, to some
extent, privacy issues. But I doubt we would end with X thousand new people
editing just that way. Would having those buttons hurt our mission or
damage the user experience ? I doubt it.

Would it be a major change and would generate press attention ? Definitly.
So not a light decision to make as it can impact our image :)

So even though



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Let's separate the two big issues here - the first is whether we want to
encourage large numbers of new editors, and the second issue encompasses
all the cool feature ideas we could add to accomplish the first.

On attracting new editors and improving editor retention - editor retention
explains itself, of course, and I think many people agree that improving
the "social fabric" of project communities (and specifically en.wp)
contributes to better retention metrics. There is some disagreement over
the value of large numbers of new contributors. Many people in the en.wp
community want to make contributions from these folks, especially
"anonymous" editors without a registered account, more difficult rather
than easier...

The position of the WMF has lately been that this is misguided; in fact a
large proportion of content, even the majority, has been added and improved
by anonymous IP contributors. While individual editors devoting hundreds or
thousands of hours to Wikimedia are highly valuable, the subset of
contributors who are anonymous are so vital to project success that we
should absolutely focus on increasing their numbers and encouraging them to
return often.

On cool features, we could brainstorm all day on different things that
would be great to have. I'm sure everyone has a list of things they'd like
to see, and most probably can think of much better features than I can.
Here's my quick list:

1) Internal messaging - using "e-mail this user" is cumbersome, especially
if you don't want to reveal your e-mail address, and divorces communication
from the project itself. It also doesn't lend itself well to communicating
with more than one individual. There is a place for non-public
communication in our projects, and we should improve that communication by
adding internal tools.

2) Discussion and comment threading. Not sure whatever happened to
LiquidThreads, but the ten year old method of discussing article content is
antiquated and far behind the current standard. You get better discussion
on Gawker. Why, for instance, is the newest content still added at the
bottom of every page instead of the top? Makes no sense.

3) Notifications and other quick, public communication. Warnings, bot
notices, system messages, hat tips, barnstars, and quick notes should all
be integrated as notification types in an internal notification system.
There might be ease of access issues, but since these are focused on
editors and not readers I think those hurdles can be overcome. Talk pages
are as antiquated as the article discussion pages, and there are far better
ways of organizing message content.

4) Article feedback. Our article feedback progress is just getting started,
but it has a long way to go. I'd like to see a sidebar or footer that tells
me how many people approve or disprove of the article content, aged for
relevance to the current revision. Readers (logged in editors or otherwise)
should be able to add Tweet-length comments, which can be +'d or -'d by
others so a reader can get an 'at-a-glance' sense of what other readers
think about an article and why.

5) 'Request an article' - it should be a feature of MediaWiki to track what
article titles for pages that don't exist get the most hits, and it would
be a really cool scrollbox to show readers and editors "500 editors looked
for 'page XYZ' today and didn't find it - create this page now!" We might
have to curate it like TfA, but maybe not, and I guarantee you'd get an
article in OK shape for each featured redlink.
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Tom, has a reputable news source actually verified this? Even Wikipedia
editors know that HuffPost isn't reliable...

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Tom Morris <tom@tommorris.org> wrote:

> On 16 April 2012 18:41, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi there,
> >
> > how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features at
> all???
> >
> > These go in the right direction:
> > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
> > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
> >
> > Is WMF going to act finally???
> >
>
> Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
> social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
> and so on. And editors don't want it.
>
> See
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
> .
>
> English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
> community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
> with.
>
> If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
> deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
> hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
> discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
> the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
> were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
> which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
> Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
> information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
> as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
> advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
> wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
> shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
> that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
> allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
> Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
>
> I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
> services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
> Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
> sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
> Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
> networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
> we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
> and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
> popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
> de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
> big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
> We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
> to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
>
> You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
> the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
> sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
> Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
> experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
> adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
> discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
> browser level.
>
> [1]
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
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Just to chip in here; Privacy, with *any* feature we introduce, is a top
priority. When Product Development was coming out with the features
engineering plan, anything that looked like it could screw with individual
privacy was very, very quickly nipped in the bud.

Now, if by "social" you mean "features purely dedicated to
recreational/sharing activities", the answer is no: we're not currently
planning any. From my (personal) perspective, it is very very hard to do
these things and integrate into other services without putting our users at
risk. And putting our users at risk is not what we're about. We're not
doing what Facebook does because we're *not Facebook*.

If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
suggestions along the way :).

On 21 April 2012 21:52, Mono <monomium@gmail.com> wrote:

> Tom, has a reputable news source actually verified this? Even Wikipedia
> editors know that HuffPost isn't reliable...
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Tom Morris <tom@tommorris.org> wrote:
>
> > On 16 April 2012 18:41, Jan Kučera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi there,
> > >
> > > how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features
> at
> > all???
> > >
> > > These go in the right direction:
> > > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
> > > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
> > >
> > > Is WMF going to act finally???
> > >
> >
> > Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
> > social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
> > and so on. And editors don't want it.
> >
> > See
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
> > .
> >
> > English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
> > community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
> > with.
> >
> > If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
> > deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
> > hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
> > discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
> > the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
> > were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
> > which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
> > Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
> > information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
> > as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
> > advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
> > wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
> > shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
> > that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
> > allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
> > Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
> >
> > I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
> > services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
> > Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
> > sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
> > Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
> > networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
> > we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
> > and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
> > popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
> > de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
> > big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
> > We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
> > to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
> >
> > You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
> > the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
> > sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
> > Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
> > experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
> > adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
> > discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
> > browser level.
> >
> > [1]
> >
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
> >
> > --
> > Tom Morris
> > <http://tommorris.org/>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>



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Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation
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Here's a thoughtful suggestion on this topic from a journalist who emailed me today about our editor engagement challenges at Wikipedia.

I generally agree with his observations that Wikipedia needs to be more social. And one of the ways we can do this is to encourage more positive feedback for editors, both from within Wikipedia -- and from the broader community outside Wikipedia.

To be continued ...


Fabrice

______________________


Subject: Re: GIFT ECONOMY -- suggestion for Fabrice

Here's my 2-cent suggestion for Wikimedia:

The value that a user gets in making gratis contributions to any site
including Wikipedia is in the feedback from your fellow users. No feedback,
or negative feedback, and you don't hang around.

...

On Wikipedia, there is very little in the way of positive feedback if you
do something good, and a ton of negative feedback for everything from a
style/format error to those "this article needs more whatever" boxes. Yes,
those things are necessary to maintaining quality, but if you contribute
content (which I've only done a little of) they wear you down. It's like
being in a course where the professor fills your papers with criticism and
never once says, "good job".

So I think the answer is that Wikipedia needs to be more social. It needs a
different kind of moderation. And it needs more mechanisms for positive
feedback.


__________________________________

Fabrice Florin
Product Manager,
Editor Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6827 work
fflorin@wikimedia.org

On Apr 22, 2012, at 2:51 PM, wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:

> Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:34:34 -0700
> From: Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
> Message-ID:
> <CAAUQgdCH9wAurhERb_Yb1KvbY2g1oSb20bCaKMV_DSMLfMOYaw@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Just to chip in here; Privacy, with *any* feature we introduce, is a top
> priority. When Product Development was coming out with the features
> engineering plan, anything that looked like it could screw with individual
> privacy was very, very quickly nipped in the bud.
>
> Now, if by "social" you mean "features purely dedicated to
> recreational/sharing activities", the answer is no: we're not currently
> planning any. From my (personal) perspective, it is very very hard to do
> these things and integrate into other services without putting our users at
> risk. And putting our users at risk is not what we're about. We're not
> doing what Facebook does because we're *not Facebook*.
>
> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
> suggestions along the way :).
>
> On 21 April 2012 21:52, Mono <monomium@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Tom, has a reputable news source actually verified this? Even Wikipedia
>> editors know that HuffPost isn't reliable...
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Tom Morris <tom@tommorris.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 16 April 2012 18:41, Jan Ku?era <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi there,
>>>>
>>>> how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features
>> at
>>> all???
>>>>
>>>> These go in the right direction:
>>>> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
>>>> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
>>>>
>>>> Is WMF going to act finally???
>>>>
>>>
>>> Only with community approval. On English Wikipedia, we have discussed
>>> social media/social network integration repeatedly. Share This buttons
>>> and so on. And editors don't want it.
>>>
>>> See
>>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PEREN#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc
>>> .
>>>
>>> English Wikinews already has some, but there's a much smaller
>>> community there who can decide which services we wish to integrate
>>> with.
>>>
>>> If we're going to have social "features" (and I use that word with
>>> deliberate scare quotes around it) mandated by the Foundation, I do
>>> hope we are going to worry about privacy. A former co-worker of mine
>>> discovered that NHS Direct, the health information website provided
>>> the UK's National Health Service, had Facebook share this links that
>>> were transmitting every page you went to on NHS Direct to Facebook,
>>> which could be matched to your Facebook profile if you are logged in.
>>> Which is kind of shocking given that people use NHS Direct to look up
>>> information on health conditions they think they might have, as well
>>> as all sorts of other personal issues (sexual health, gender identity,
>>> advice on fixing lifestyle health issues like smoking and drinking). I
>>> wouldn't want the clickstream of people visiting Wikipedia articles
>>> shared on Facebook without them pretty explicitly choosing to share
>>> that information. We've already seen one kid in Britain who has
>>> allegedly been thrown out of his house by fundamentalist parents after
>>> Facebook algorithmically outed him as gay. [1]
>>>
>>> I do also hope we'd decide on what basis we'd choose these social
>>> services. Okay, yes, Facebook is pretty popular in the West. And
>>> Twitter. And maybe G+. But what about in China: do we want to support
>>> sharing to sites that are being censored by the Chinese government?
>>> Does the Foundation have the expertise to know what the popular social
>>> networking sites are in every country and language in the world? And
>>> we'd then become a commercial player: if we had done this years ago
>>> and had added MySpace integration, the moment MySpace stops being so
>>> popular and Wikipedia (whether that's the community or the Foundation)
>>> de-emphasizes the MySpace sharing/social functionality, there'd be a
>>> big stack of headlines about how Wikipedia is pulling out of MySpace.
>>> We really ought to be neutral in this market, and there's only one way
>>> to be neutral: try as hard as possible not to participate.
>>>
>>> You know, there might be an easier solution here: people who are into
>>> the whole social networking thing, their browsers ought to improve
>>> sharing with their social networks. Social plugins for browsers like
>>> Firefox and Chrome are opt-in for the user, and can give a better
>>> experience than Wikipedia pages being turned into NASCAR-esque branded
>>> adverts for dozens of social sites. I know Mozilla people have been
>>> discussing coming up with better ways of doing social sharing at the
>>> browser level.
>>>
>>> [1]
>>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/facebook-targeted-advertising-gay-teen_n_1200404.html
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tom Morris
>>> <http://tommorris.org/>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Oliver Keyes
> Community Liaison, Product Development
> Wikimedia Foundation


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hi,

Please do thank the journalist concerned. I agree with the line of
reasoning.But I sway away from one of his conclusions.


> So I think the answer is that Wikipedia needs to be more social. It needs a
> different kind of moderation. And it needs more mechanisms for positive
> feedback.
>

Wikipedia does need a different kind of moderation and more mechanisms for
positive feedback but do not think that the reasoning makes the case for
making it more social.

Harlock.
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Hi there,

> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
> suggestions along the way :).

yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
(https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
not...

Kozuch

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On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 18:41, Jan Kuèera <kozuch82@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> how do we want to work on editor retention if we lack social features at all???
>
> These go in the right direction:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Improving_our_platform
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_features
>
> Is WMF going to act finally???
>
> Kozuch

Hello,

I put together that second link during the strategy process. Others
have since added to it but the page looks much the way I remember it
from back then.

It's really hard for me to recall quite what I was thinking. I did
believe that some kind of social glue would make the site more
"sticky" (as the geek parlance goes) but whether I still believe that
would lead to a better encyclopedia... I guess I'm not so sure about
that now.

Probably I was more driven by a sense of loneliness and isolation I
felt whilst I did my Wikipedia work.

Thing is, I think there are already vibrant communities within
Wikipedia and I'm sure there are bonds. Although, I confess, I'm
guessing because I'm not involved with any of them. But I would assume
that those that put together Signpost each week feel connected. Those
in the Military History group I imagine work together. I think if one
wants to join a group for social interaction there are plenty of
possibilities open to one.

So now, time having passed since I put together that page, I more feel
that the type of stuff I do on Wikipedia doesn't really lend itself to
bonding. I tend to read articles on myriad topics and follow where my
curiosity takes me. Is there the possibility of an "Autodidact
reader's group"? If so, what would they talk about? "I read *this*
today!" "Cool! Today I read this *other* thing!" Is there much value
in such exchanges? It seems to me that, no, there probably isn't.

There is also the Copyeditors Group but my relationship to it is that
there is plenty of info there for me to learn from but I don't feel
qualified to add to it. But I do know where to go if I have a
question, which is not to be sniffed at. So if I am left daunted I
know where to find support. Good.

What do I think about it all now... Personally, I think there is no
good on-wiki way to address my feelings of loneliness as a volunteer
but - guess what - that's fine! Because if I want to salve my
solipsism then I am a member of plenty of other websites where I have
friends to talk to.

However, I imagine there are ways to improve things for the groups
that already exist. I would suggest anyone wishing to pursue this
interviews regular contributors to the larger Wikigroups such as
MILHIST and the Signpost crew. What innovations can be made to
MediaWiki to help them do what they're already doing more easily?
Maybe liquid threads is enough? (I'm afraid I'm not a fan).

Perhaps it would be better if the Signpost guys, for example, want to
feel more bonded they simply exchange Twitter/Facebook details? Of
course many people want their Wikipedia identity to be separate from
their identity elsewhere and so would not wish to share such details.
Is there a solution to that?

Dunno.

To finish: your post as quoted at top states there are ZERO social
features. People can quite readily share text and images; there's a
talk page on EVERY page we have. I'm not sure what else you expect a
computer to do short of adding Skype/Voicemail.

en.wp.User:Bodnotbod

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On 04/23/2012 01:03 PM, Jan Ku?era wrote:
> Hi there,
>
>> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
>> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
>> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
>> suggestions along the way :).
>
> yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
> How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
> a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
> (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
> almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
> not...
>
> Kozuch


Hi, Kozuch. I look at

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806

and I see that, within a day of the issue being filed, multiple
experienced MediaWiki developers commented on that issue to explain what
the chart software's developers would have to do in order to make it
suitable for use on our sites. I've also contacted the author of that
extension to point at that bug's comments and at this procedural guide:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Writing_an_extension_for_deployment

so if you could help me in alerting the extension's author to those
comments, that would be great. Thanks!

--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation

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Hi,

yes, there surely were comments from developers... that is positive.
But the result as general is still nothing at all (the feature is not
even nearing deployment). WMF should invest in new features. I am not
a dev and thus can not contribute any code.

Kozuch

2012/4/25 Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah@wikimedia.org>:
> On 04/23/2012 01:03 PM, Jan Ku?era wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>>> If, on the other hand, you just mean "features to promote greater
>>> communication and networking between editors", that's a clear priority -
>>> I'm happy to talk to people about the work we're doing, and to hear any
>>> suggestions along the way :).
>>
>> yes I exactly meant that. It is about making contributing not "suck".
>> How often does Wikipedia (=MediaWiki) get big new features??? I posted
>> a bug about integrating some kind of graph/chart feature
>> (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806) and in 9 months
>> almost nothing happened... and this really sucks... beleive it or
>> not...
>>
>> Kozuch
>
>
> Hi, Kozuch.  I look at
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29806
>
> and I see that, within a day of the issue being filed, multiple
> experienced MediaWiki developers commented on that issue to explain what
> the chart software's developers would have to do in order to make it
> suitable for use on our sites.  I've also contacted the author of that
> extension to point at that bug's comments and at this procedural guide:
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Writing_an_extension_for_deployment
>
> so if you could help me in alerting the extension's author to those
> comments, that would be great.  Thanks!
>
> --
> Sumana Harihareswara
> Volunteer Development Coordinator
> Wikimedia Foundation

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