On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:50 PM, Erik Zachte <erikzac...@infodisiac.com> wrote: > Examples are: article views per hour, unique visitors, percentage of > potential audience reached (unique visitors per million speakers). All of
Why are people without computers or reasonable access to computers considered potential audience for editing a website? Why are people whom are effectively illiterate considered potential audience for editing an encyclopedia? I agree that in some stretched sense of 'potential' it's absolutely true; but since solving these problems is pretty far outside of the activities of the Wikimedia foundation today, are metrics which include these people really that reasonable? I don't believe they are. In particular, using speaker estimates will cause us to misunderstand the relative success of the site: If the penetration for X is better than Y is it because of something we've done better or could do better? Or is it simply because Y has less literacy and less access to technology? (If we aren't to limit the scope of 'potential' to potential which can conceivably reached within the scope of the WMF's mission then I would propose that by far the most cost-effective way to increase our overall "percentage of potential" would be to promote increased birth rates in developed nations with high literacy and access to technology) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
