On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 10:36 -0700, ext Sue Gardner wrote: > We do all see the world from where we sit, and we interact with the > people we already know ... so, experienced editors will be more > exposed to the kinds of concerns shared by other experienced editors, > and those concerns will instinctively resonate more for them.
Fully agree. About "from where we sit", 5 and 10 years ago Wikimedia was basically 'a sitting user experience' both for readers and contributors, just like any other online project at that time. This defines the vocal community we have today, but things have changed and now communities like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc can't be conceived without all the users and contributors doing whatever NOT sitting in front of a computer. In fact Wikimedia content is also popular among mobile users (directly or through apps), but what about mobile contributions? After a decade swimming in free software development communities one can't avoid seeing the parallelism on this and on another important topic: - Editing is not the only way of contributing, therefore it's good to think explicitly of 'contributors' beyond 'editors', and think of contributions that don't require editing. Which is parallel to the well known - Developing is not the only way of contributing, therefore it's good to think explicitly of 'contributors' beyond 'developers', and think of contributions that don't require coding. A very promising land can be found precisely (paradoxically?) in the crossroads between editors and developers. Editing is mainly a manual task, requiring a higher community involvement as your edits grow. Software won't write articles for you anytime soon, but it can help channeling the unilateral input of zillion users doing each a small contribution. Busy editors know where that input is most needed and in which form it's more useful for the project. Inspired developers can make these contribution tools seamless and even fun to use - and rewarding. Mobile devices are very promising in this sense. People spend huge amounts of fragmented times checking/posting online stuff and playing mobile games, in situations that are *not* in-front-of-my-laptop-again. Many of them would welcome to use some of that time doing something more useful to the World, as long as it's not demanding and doesn't require sitting in-front-of-my-laptop-again. There is a collection of proposed casual mobile contributions at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/App_Features_% 26_Roadmap#New_features . Editors are encouraged to have a look, add more use cases, help prioritizing those features and of course bring amazing ideas. With a bit of luck (and persistence) those features will end up in mobile apps used by a massive and diverse wave of new contributors. A % of those users will have a curiosity to get involved beyond the almost unconscious one-hand mobile contributions, and hopefully they will receive another hand from the established editors to get them enrolled in one of the many interesting tasks and projects around. -- Quim _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
