On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Erik Zachte <erikzac...@infodisiac.com> wrote: > Thanks for all feedback, > > > > To be sure, I do not think participation level as a metric makes other > metrics obsolete. My blog post can be read as ‘forget article count, embrace > participation instead’ but that pushes things too far. > > > > There are other metrics that bear witness of our accomplishments, but are > more meaningful than article count (which will always be a nice trivia). > Examples are: article views per hour, unique visitors, percentage of > potential audience reached (unique visitors per million speakers). All of > these seem better than the static 'article count' because they focus on > whether and how much our content is being used, in other words on the > relevancy of our work for the readers. > > > > I can see that for outward communication we still need to emphasize somehow > that we do matter by telling what we achieved. > > > > I would hope that internally we focus on metrics that point to the future, > to what is yet to be achieved, and what can serve as inspiration. In that > context participation level has its place. > > > > Percentage of potential audience reached (see above) shares a characteristic > with participation level, namely that the largest languages don't > automatically get all attention. At the other hand any ordering scheme that > lets the 'Volapüks' of this world take top rank is putting the horse behind > the cart. By the way right now we cannot yet measure unique visitors per > project ourselves. > > > > ---- > > > > In summary I would suggest: let us downplay article counts in future > external communications, and present our achievements in a way that > emphasizes how we matter to the public. > > > > For ourselves let us celebrate language communities that thrive, and focus > on building communities where they are absent, or small compared to their > potential, the rest will follow. > > > > ---- > > > > I would of course welcome advanced analysis of relations between metrics. My > hunch is that advanced analysis will yield interesting but complex > dependencies, and possibly produce multi-factorial composite metrics, which > will be less suitable as primary ordering principle, as they are above most > people heads. > > > > Compare economics. News media present simple metrics like inflation rate, > unemployment rate, gross national product. Each of these is too broad to be > useful for advanced economic analysis, yet apparently best abstraction level > for general discussions. > > > > Erik Zachte
It is an interesting and useful statistic, which I think has been somewhat glossed over in the discussion. The significance of it - and similar variations - is probably going to take some time to settle in, as to how much we (the community) and outsiders (the media, etc) feel it represents a useful metric to describe Wikipedia and its relationship to the world. But I see value in having it and I think it's a significant and useful number. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
