Discussion: looking at the list, which recommendation is the weakest link?

Not all recommendations are created equal. We can even try to measure that.

• Impact: Some recommendations tackle a root problem and cause a chain reaction. Some just nibble away at symptoms.
• Feasibility: Some recommendations are very realistic. Others are riskier, and may be impossible in practice.
• Desirability: Some recommendations would go over very well with the community. Others would face serious objections, both fair and unfair.
• Priority: Some recommendations are just more important than others.

I'm curious what other people think. I know the recommendations are still in a preliminary form. But with some discussion and some imagination, we can probably recognize that one recommendation is just not going to achieve as much as the others. (And if we don't, then we'll have some great reasons to support why we kept a certain recommendation.)

If you had to cut one recommendation, which one would you say is the weakest link?

In case anyone is having some trouble, let me suggest what I think is the weakest link:

• Help and Tutorials

Experts in ergonomics and human factors believe that "help and documentation" is your last resort. Ideally, you want to design a system that can be understood without documentation. Because of that, "Help" will always be a weaker solution than "Good Interface". (Which isn't to say Good Interface will be in the top four, but it's better than "Help" by leaps and bounds.)

Keep in mind that help files will do nothing to address core user burnout. They understand Wikipedia, but something caused them to leave. We're now focusing exclusively on half the problem: new editors leaving in their first two weeks.

And I don't think new editors will benefit that much from help files. How many people read instruction manuals? Only if they spent $2000 on something and need to make it work. When a new user encounters a problem on Wikipedia, they're more likely to just leave than read help files. In fact, we arguably already provide LOTS of documentation to new users. "RTFM!!". But new users don't want to read all that crap, and I don't blame them.

We'd help new users a lot more if the interface were more clear. Design these little windows so that it's easier to get things done, and harder to get into trouble in your first two weeks.

I'd rank this recommendation very low. Low priority and impact (compared to improving Wikipedia's interface). Feasible, but not highly desired either.

I hate to sound too direct about this but we don't HAVE a long list of recommendations. What we have is some headings that haven't been written up or explored. At my last look we have:

Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health_1 - aka "volunteer recognition"

We then have:

Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health_2 - aka "vision, direction, cooperation"

...which I am not, I'm afraid, very keen on. The reason being that it talks about vision. Wikipedia already has a vision: "to bring the sum of all human knowledge, for free, to the world". Also the recommendation has facts that are not referenced. It seems to be in a bubble all its own; it doesn't link to a single thing outside of its own page. I challenge anyone to read it and put themselves in the shoes of a WMF board member and then come up with something that you could act upon. It is, in short, something that strategy could have aspired - at best - to address three or four months ago. I would be against putting this before the WMF because it isn't "something to be done" it is "something to think about". I'm not saying it can't be rescued. But it needs to talk about actionable behaviours. Things that the WMF or volunteers can do. Not philosophy.

And then:

Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health_3

Is empty!

So, Random, when you say cut some recommendations... I realise that you're talking about our list of nine areas on the table. But I'm left thinking "well, sure let's throw those 5 or 6 overboard because... um... well, because the headings don't mean anything tangible to me; nobody's presented me with an argument."

Now, ideally, I would be part of the solution. I would love to fill out those headings with a recommendation each and have us all vote on them. But I'm simply not able to. I don't have the knowledge or even the research skills to provide the arguments, background and everything that's required because those headings don't give me a path to follow and they're not something I'm comfortable in addressing. If I tried to write those up it would be like me wearing a little moustache and claiming to be Charlie Chaplin. They would be nothing more than dressing, because I don't have any passion, knowledge or belief in them.

All that said; Random, I would support you in ditching 'help and tutorials' because The Bookshelf Project is going to be generating materials to help newbies... they have a whole budget for it and designated staff - I spoke to them earlier today. They are looking at mainly paper materials but the materials surely will be available online too. So I would say ditch that as being taken care of by others.

Ah, I've just caught up with Random's draft at Policy_and_community_health. Good work, I have responded on the talk page. So perhaps we can drop any attempt to fiddle with policy too, which would give us less to think about.

You're right that we're sorely lacking on details. There are details scattered throughout the wiki, but we haven't done a good job of bringing them together. I have a decent idea of where to find details for nearly everything in the list though. So I'm confident we'll be able to get to work, if we could just focus our efforts on a smaller number of good recommendations.

I know the lack of detail makes it hard to evaluate them at this stage. But you'll see that some of them, just from the heading, appear to be problematic.

We should definitely discuss chopping "vision and goals". I agree with you that it might not be the best area to focus on. It's hard for a task force of 5 people to set vision for millions. And if we just say "well, think about your vision and clarify your goals", then we've given out nothing actionable. You can see that's kind of the same problem we have for recommending concrete policy changes.

I'm glad that the bookshelf project is working on things from an outreach perspective. I think "educational material" can be really effective to get new volunteers, and I'm glad that another team is working on it. Our task force focus is a little different. We're trying to improve editor retention once people have already tried Wikipedia, rather than outreach. I don't think help files help much with retention, for the reasons I stated.

We're already making big progress on the recommendations.

We just listed three recommendations that look like they'll produce fewer results than the others. I know we're just getting started. But it would be fantastic if we all agreed those three were lower value than the other six. That would let us focus on the remaining six for the next month, and I'm confident we could have four of them in great shape by the mid January deadline.

Between the two of us, we've flagged three proposals as having less impact than the others:

• Help and Tutorials: Users already have lots of reading material. We need to find other ways to improve their experience. (Also, a project is already creating videos for outreach.)
• Policy changes: Doesn't look like we have the power to decide policy for the entire community. (And even then, it's not clear which policies have hurt the community.)
• Vision and Goals: Our task force probably can't decide goals on behalf of the community either. (And WMF already has goals. What they need now is an action to achieve them.)

I know these three are not bad recommendations. But compared to the other recommendations on the list, these three are weaker (in terms of impact and feasibility). I think it is highly unlikely that these would end up in our "top four" (a limit set by the Wikimedia Foundation).

Does anyone else agree/disagree?

I agree that these three will not end up in our top 4 in that they could be included in other recommendations by other task forces better than our own with the exception of Policy changes which I think we need to address but not necessarily in a separate recommendation.

FloNight, have you seen the work thus far at Policy and community health? I'm talking specifically about the quote from Sue Gardner, which makes a lot of sense and seems like a significant barrier. The good news is she offers a way around the barrier, so that we can attack the policy issue indirectly.

Is that what you had in mind when you said we could address policy as part of another recommendation?

I think you're probably right, although it hurts to say it. A broad mandate to curtail and rationalise the reams of policy would have major benefits but would be difficult to implement and would undoubtedly require further reams of policy to enforce. From my personal standpoint I will be sorry to kiss this one goodbye and I think that failure to rectify this will inevitably result in continuing tensions and hostility within the community, an increase in wikilawyering to a point of reductio ad absurdem, and, in my view and in the light of some interesting overtures I have seen floated in various places, a possible fork, but I can and do understand why we can't take this one on board.

Help & comprehensive documentation for noobs is less of a thorny issue. A simple "what to do" in virtually all foreseeable circumstances FAQ surely shouldn't be that difficult to organise. If it is that difficult, then it will flag up the horrific complexity of policy (see above).

Visions and Goals can go. WP has quietly abandoned all its stated visions and goals as it has progressively been systematically usurped by bureaucrats and wikilawyers over the years anyway, (excuse my cynicism). As far as I can see now, WP is about as intellectually and philosophically bankrupt as it possibly ever could have been. The only way is up or a fork. If given a choice I would at this moment in time opt for the latter.

I have my doubts about the proceedings here. As I tried to state, the original nine are recommendation fields, not recommendations. And our brainstorm hasn't got anywhere near stating clear, recommendable, concrete, sustainable recommendations backed up with research and arguments. So if we want to present four to six practical recommendations by mid January, we need better than just wipe out some fields. I've been very confused here too, and I'm sorry. But I've changed my mind. If we don't need blurred recommendation fields but clear and consistent singleminded recommendations, we'd better take a few days more for a brainstorm, clear up our minds, and take the holidays to work those recommendations out. We need an extra step here, that is first to dismiss the fields that don't need Strategy Task Force thought.

1. Help and Tutorials. I agree this partition can be dismissed. Any of our wikipedias is doing the utmost to write their own tutorials, they can do that without help from above. No advice from outside would be more helpful that they can do by themselves. Therefore, no Strategy task.
2. Policy changes. Some good work has been done there, but we'll agree that from a strategy point-of-view, this Task Force won't be able to add much of a clear-cut practical advice in the form of a recommendation. If some other Task Force manages to do so, we can add our backing or our expertise: not for us, not now.
3. Vision and Goal setting: I hope you'll understand that I disagree with dismissing that. I feel that we're on the verge of bringing up at least one good recommendation that should attract the attention of the Board. It's just one pinch, a finger nail. But I also understand Bodnotbod's worries here. Let me say this. There was a vision needed to start the whole thing up, and that vision was presented by Jimmy Wales. But he can't hold the whole thing together on his own. We need a second fresh vision about holding it together and bringing it back alive, that's what I'm heading to. Goal setting is part of it. The other side of the medal, is that muddling on without a further vision won't work either. Muddling on while losing impetus and momentum will mean that we can forget the rest of our targets. I plead for another three to four weeks to give body to this idea.
4. What about the rest of the recommendation areas? Bodnotbod is right, they're empty. Which one of them can we fill before mid January, or which one can we at least make credible by midnight?
5. I hope that we agree on these very important things: momentum is dropping, people are confused about how to get on with Wikipedia, conflicts will rise without guidance, they will seek other ways to converse if we don't offer them enough and at the end, Wikipedia will be left with some police officers who think they know best and some contributors who'll defend their own island. Task Force:Community Health is about reversing those trends and the time is now.

I definitely agree that we're lacking specifics. But just as a matter of process, the best way to get to specifics is to wipe out certain fields as not worthwhile, and develop specifics in a few of these fields. Unless we do that step, we'll be spread too thin, trying to fill in the specifics for nine different areas. There's no way we can come up with specific recommendations by midnight, but it would be a huge step if we said "we know we need to do something with rewards", and "we know that we're not going to focus on creating more help files".

From what it sounds like, there's some consensus to pass over "help" and "policy". That will help us a lot as we focus over the next month.

But I'm glad you're raising some debate about vision and goal setting. I'm not sure I agree, but now is a good time to make the case for it.

• Priority - Bodnotbod raised a good point: there is already plenty of vision at Wikipedia. Start with "bringing the sum of all human knowledge, for free, to the world." On top of that, they've designed this strategy process that has a ton of goals, including international growth, an improvement in quality, and so on. In terms of community, there is another task force working on gaining new editors, while our task force has been told to reduce burnout, and reduce hostility to new users. It's hard to say "we need clearer goals" when we already have plenty of goals to pursue. Just a relay of the current strategic priorities would be a big benefit to the community.

• Feasibility/Desirabiliy - Maybe we could drill down and come up with very specific goals that will settle old conflicts about where Wikipedia should go. Heaven knows that would reduce the amount of in-fighting. But can a small unelected group of volunteers make that decision on behalf of millions? There's no way we'll be able to say "listen, we think that Wikipedia should settle the religious conflicts in this way, and settle the ethno-nationalist conflicts in that way". No matter what vision we set, there will be one half of the community who will reject it. The board isn't going to touch that with a ten foot pole.

• Impact: So we're back at a paradox for impact. If we make vague or general goal statements that everyone can agree with, there's no guarantee that it will change anything. But if we make specific goal statements that could result in meaningful change, we're more likely to face resistance from the community, and thus the board.

I think those are the problems with using up one of our "four wishes" just to set goals. Maybe those problems aren't as bad as they seem. But then we need a solid counter-argument to support that "goal setting" is a strong area to focus on. That's why we're having this discussion :)

OK, let's keep it simple. I made my case (with the right timing) and both of you put strong arguments against Vision and goal setting as a priority. If I had strong arguments right now for one kind of vision or one goal that would support our cause of Comunity Health, in short one recommendation I'd put it forth, but I haven't. It's philosophy as Bodnotbod says, and this strategy site is packed full of goals and vision, as Randomran says. We'll discard this as being a priority.

Getting back to the Emerging strategic priorities page, reading over the task force goals there, one thing strikes me immediately: "to develop a strategy for retention and good community health". To me, good community health means first of all: to contain and minimize conflicts. That's what my hearts says and with 1,5 years of AC also what my experience points towards. Now if we get back to our draft docoment of recommendations, what's lacking altogether? The field "Dispute Resolution and Decisions". Why? You could even say that recommending on this field is vision and goal setting. You could say that if Wikipedia as a whole is unable to contain in-fighting and vicious conflicts, it's doomed. So here's my argument to pick it as a top priority.

• We have the notoriously dangerous segments of religion and ethno-nationalism. Conflicts in those segments tend to be contained by falling back on basics, such as neutrality, citations and references, seperating articles to show both (or every) sides of an argument, and reinforcement by moderators and AC. We might ask ourselves if that's enough and if it's all.
• I've seen vicious conflicts on subjects that should at first sight be pretty safe. Spelling, taxonomy, genealogy, music, the titles of kings, name it. If people forget that they're in a fragile discussion-and-consensus environment, it's hard and it gets even harder if they forget that the overall environment they're working in, is Internet. It's less personal than real-life fighting and people tend to say more than they would in real life (not talking about alcohol or drugs).
• Then, there's a definite tendency of various people to take on roles that they go on to live, more or less forgetting their boundaries. Ultimately, that will lead to estranging other people - who will leave, most of them silently - and to more conflicts.

Well, putting this together, I think there's ample stuff for three recommendations. I will use the now empty Recommendations-3 space to specify (later tonight and tomorrow). There's one binding factor: diplomacy. If you are committed to this worldwide project, you have to be very aware of all those other contributors that you're working with and also be aware that a semi-anonymous username doesn't mean a freedom do be rude or do what you want. Does it sound moralistic if I put it this way? Well, diplomacy is the one way of mankind to avoid open conflict, and more optimistically, it's the best that mankind has to create understanding between very different cultures.

If the only thing that Task Force:Community Health has to say on this strategy forum is: Diplomacy is the way and now create the means to forward it, I wouldn't be ashamed of our efforts. If we could also put forward one or two suggestions that would be accepted throughout to improve our discussion and decision-making, I'd be delighted.

So here's my stand for now. Look at: [1]

Art Unbound, that's a very powerful argument for improving dispute resolution and decisions. I definitely think it's in the top four. You may be right that it could be our top recommendation, after we've worked out the specifics. Only because I think it's the closest to tackling the "root problem".

Diplomacy lies at the heart of it, and I think it has to be a goal. But if there's one thing I've learned from those debates, it's that diplomacy will only happen if there's an incentive to make it happen. Right now, we actually have incentives to disengage, be stubborn, and even passive aggressive. Let me explain.

Right now, we have a battleground where you can simply be the "last man standing" in a debate, and then you get your way. Or you can be sneaky and try for the "first mover advantage", and push your point of view hoping that no one else will notice it. Of course, your opponents have the same advantage too. So you have polar opposites (think ethno-national-religious conflicts) battling across a topic area, and they often meet at key articles, even follow each other around to make sure they're not up to something.

Every once in a while, a sane person in the middle (along with a few soft supporters from either side of the conflict) realize that this battleground is no way to build an encyclopedia. They're tired of fighting and re-fighting the same battles. "Let's hammer out a policy that meets halfway, and tries to address the interests of both sides."

If you're an extremist, you have no reason to support a compromise. In the battleground, you can *sometimes* get your way. But if you support a compromise, you have to accept that you *never* get your way, even if it means that your opponents never get their way. What's even worse is that the extremist has an advantage. Because of rules of consensus, they can't make changes without your support. You and a small group of friends can block the compromise, and force the battle to continue. (After all, you've already won the battle at a few articles, and hopefully you can win more.)

And that makes consensus building impossible. It would be hard if you locked 50 people in a room, and 10 of those people were extremists on the left, and 10 of those people were extremists on the right. The 30 in the middle can't move on without winning over some of the extremists. But on top of all that, the extremists don't even need to discuss. They can just draw a line in the sand. They can even leave, while people gradually make inroads, and then show up at the last second to say "my god, this is the best compromise you could come up with? Forget it!" Personal attacks and incivility may be sins on Wikipedia, but you can't punish stubbornness.

Whatever our recommendation is for decision making, it has to recognize that we need real systemic reform, not just a polite request that people cooperate. We need to reverse a system that rewards stubbornness, where the most hard-headed group will have the most power in every debate. We need to come up with new decision-making processes that empower the bridge-builders, the compromisers, the people who listen to each other and adapt. Even if these new decision-making processes were only used as a last resort, they would start to show people that you can't "win" by simply sticking your head in the sand.

This is a neat idea (from FloNight):

• Thread:Talk:Task force/Community Health/moving content/reply (11)

So is this:

• Proposal:Representative mediation (dispute resolution)

These other proposals just try to give authority to people that we trust:

• Proposal:Authority over content disputes
• Proposal:Two kinds of moderator
• Proposal:Create editorial boards to oversee editing of controversial topic areas

The challenge there is finding an authority that is fair in the eyes of the community. It could work, but we'd have to be very careful about how we construct it.

Randomran, we've found each other here. What I'm worried about is that this Task Force tends to decrease. We had nine participants, then five, then three, now two. We should have nine again. We still want every discussion to be open and free to all, and next, to make sure that what we find as a neat discussion, is shared by the rest of us. I propose to share our opinions where I last left it, Task force/Recommendations/Community health 3 and its talk page. (And hoping that I didn't break the template once more).

We've done well so far, now we can go further and really consider some recommendations that we can go on to develop. Anyway, I'd like to think so.

As far as I've been able to let your stuff sink in, I would say the following:

Task Force:Community Health would do very well if they were able to recommend about only one thing, namely conflict management. If we were able to improve that to a recommendation about diplomacy, we would do extremely well. Personally, if we manage that, that would be the most I can chew for the next month. But I would be extraordinaly happy if we manage only half of that goal. Leave all the rest, and I would be happy, too.

Yeah, I'm definitely disappointed in the activity dropoff. The holidays can be a busy time for people though. I'm hoping things will pick back up, and offering people more focus will help. (I think these kinds of "what's the next step" discussions are pretty dry and boring for most people.) Once we get down to even 5 or 6 tangible recommendations, we'll be able to get more concrete feedback from others. That will let us pin down the final four.

Speaking of trying to get down to 5 or 6, did you want to take a shot at rating "Dispute Resolution and Decisions" for feasibility/desirability/impact/priority? It would just be a preliminary rating, and we would tweak it as we work on it and discuss it. But I'd like to start attaching some estimates to the different recommendation areas, just so we have something quick that shows why we focused on the recommendations that we did.

(Don't worry about breaking the table. I'll jump in if you can't get it to work.)

Having done some homework, I must say that any kind of quality arbitration wil get very little support, to the point that I have to oppose to it. One of the long-term conflicts is about alternative medicine and we're not going to solve that within two to five years or much longer. The only way to resolve that type of conflict is to give both of them room of their own and put a big stamp on them that we're not responsible for the consequences. But say there's a quality conflict about how to name German kings between 500 and 1850. I've been there and almost reached an agreement between contestants by agreeing on the sources to use. I don't think we could reach an agreement by planting an expert in and as it turns out, the agreement has plummeted. But in fact, those conflicts aren't the really harmful ones.

The harmful ones as you try to explain, are the ones where 'extremists' from two sides are trying to blow any compromise from the middle. If that's true, we'd better try to locate them. For then you say, the consensus-seeking middle people are always in a disadvantage while the people from both sides can just try to get an edge, losing nothing if it doesn't work.

Well, I have to say I haven't really seen those extremists at work. What I have seen is people rather fiercely taking their stand but always with some good argument at hand. One of the most difficult and complex arguments that I've been at is the Deir Yassin massacre. Your English version looks rather neat in comparison with the Dutch version, which almost split the whole wikipedia in two. But, despite some hard words that shouldn't have been said, the discussion actually was about the use of one or two crucial sources, and the dispute was about how to read some passages in them.

The consensus-seeking middle people do have one advantage, you know. If they keep cool in the midst of projectile throwing, they can bring them back to the table once the fireworks have stopped. - Art Unbound 21:05, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Only one small problem with that, Art. The middle ground have been so weeded out by the extremists on all flanks so that there are very few left to defend the middle ground. I used to be a middle ground editor on most subjects (except maybe Cornwall where I have my own little axe to grind and stay away these days in the interests of neutrality even though I can see that the article is horribly biased and non-NPOV and moreover wrong). Nothing will ever entice me back there. Relysing on the middle ground is no longer an option. There is little middle ground left.

Art Unbound, I'm curious why you think it's impossible to resolve the "pseudoscience" stuff. Don't get me wrong, I've seen those discussions, and the conflict has gone on long enough that people are visibly angry. But mediators and arbitrators have been able to resolve some incredible conflicts. Conflicts between aboriginals and colonizers. Between victims and abusers. Between unions and management. The fundamental tension never goes away. But they can agree on what needs to get done, and find a civil way to move forward. I can't imagine that it would be terrible to have an article on alternative medicine that reports both alternative and western medical practices. In fact, I think

The key is that it's not simply a matter of an arbitrator making a decision for everyone. It's about getting the community to talk to one another, instead of stubbornly posturing towards one another. Instead of "I won't tolerate the other side putting up their lies", you get them to recognize each other's interest in having their point of view represented fairly. I agree that people would oppose some kind of editorial board making decisions for everyone. But it would only be a few truly extreme people who would be against real diplomacy with one another. (And anyone against diplomacy would never admit to it, lest they prove once and for all that they were operating in bad faith, and don't belong in the community at all.)

So maybe some kind of editorial board who rules the community is a bad idea. But we could design a process that brings people to the table, lets people stay if they're operating in good faith, and basically turns a deaf ear to them if all they want to do is posture.

Even if we're wrong, and some disputes prove unresolvable... I'm confident that a few others could be resolved, if the hard-liners were forced to accept that they won't get their ideal outcome.

(... so how about rating that table?) :)

On paper Wikipedia has never seemed like a workable idea. But so far, Wikipedia is producing better encyclopedia content every year. I think that the outlook is optimistic that the trend towards higher quality content will continue.

Do you? I don't. It certainly has more links. But I look at some of the mediaeval history pages now and there are spurious citations by the score backing up some really egregious errors. Some of those pages (and I am thinking Charlemagne and Pepin) are worse than they were seven years ago.

Randomran, I could underline all of your comments line by line. I pulled out some of my own experiences when I estimated consensus on alternative medicine to take two to five years. It needn't be so; and I don't think it has to be reinforced by an authority.

On the other hand, you stressed the impact of 'extremist' users in your metaphor of the room with 50 editors in it. In your last contribution, you mentioned that "Assume Good Faith" will probably diminish those numbers to only a few.

Grossly, Wikipedia already has the basics, means and instruments to make sure that the building isn't torn apart by tribal conflicts or feuds or uncompromising stubbornness. If we need a recommendation here, it's going to be a refinement of the instrumentarium and a renewed focus on the need to cooperate.

To me, that is enough to make it a priority because:

1. conflict is a major factor that drives people away;
2. our "watchers" wil drive out new users by too rigidly sticking to agreements and rules that have been set;
3. consensus-making doesn't always work or takes so much time that some (new or veteran) aren't prepared to waint for the outcome;
4. Arbitration Committees have one serious flaw: they do not decide on strictly intrinsic matters; they go for personal conflicts, not for matters of content.

FloNight, glad you're here. You are stressing the improvement on quality. What do you think:

• do we need to have an increase of users to reach quality improvement?
• is quality improvement independent of user number, could Wikipedia actually continue to improve content with dwindling numbers - e.g. if we manage to keep our best contributors?
• what do you think of Community Health with a restricted number of users, would Wikipedia be better off with lower numbers and more dedication?
• what do you think is a no.1 priority on this Task Force?

• Volume of edits or quality of content does not strictly suffer from a decrease in the number of active editors.
• We know that some demographic groups are not well represented so we definitely need more outreach to those groups.
• I prefer to reverse trend of a stabilizing number of editors by reaching out to users in alternative ways.
• We need to recruit and match volunteers to jobs on Wikimedia projects that match the person's interest and skills.
• I don't have only one priority item because that would be too limiting for the work that the task force needs to do representing the whole Community. My focus is on 1) Organizational changes that offer a clearer "career path" for users by offering a variety of ways to contribute based on their skills and interests. Volunteer toolkit that can be offered to new users to assist them in acclimating to wikis. 2) Recognition of editors to motivate deeper participation. (This would not be a single approach because different things motive different people). 3) Improved decision making strategies from top to bottom in Wikimedia Foundation and all its wikis and chapters. (Strategic Planning is kicking off this initiative.) Training staff volunteers in conflict resolution and methods of decision making. 4) Enhanced customer service model.

Beautiful, Flonight, and thank you. I would only add one thing, as you might have heard, Dutch Wiki is in a process with Tropenmuseum Amsterdam to set up a project Maroons of Surinam. If we could interest only a few of them to contribute on Wikipedia that would be a reaching out success. We're working at it. That's it for tonight, see you all later, Maarten.

I'm still here following the conversation. But I confess I can't think of much to add. I'm wondering whether we can drop interface/tools from the table, since the WMF already has its own usability team? Also I thought there was a task force looking at this but perhaps it was a task force that never got off the ground as appears to have happened with some of them?

I'll give my table figures here as I don't know how we'll know what the average scores are unless we just vote our own values here; the, for example, third person to edit won't know whether the figures that are already present are the average of two people's previous votes or one person's so won't know what figures rightly belong there... does that problem, as I outline it, make sense to you?

Anyway, here goes, I've left 'org structure' blank as I don't really feel any confidence giving it a rating:

Area of Recommendation	Priority (#/5)	Impact (#/5)	Feasibility (#/5)	Desirability (#/5)	Total (#/20)
Volunteer Recognition	05	04	05	05	019
Social Networking	05	05	03	04	017
Interface/Tools	02	04	04	04	014
Decision making: Dispute Resolution and Policy.	04	04	02	05	015
Organizational Structure	00	00	00	00	00
Research and Measures	05	04	04	05	018

Bodnotbod, this is very helpful. I could change a number here or a number there. But considering we don't have detailed recommendations yet, this is a good estimate.

Would you mind updating the page? (Or anyone who feels comfortable cutting and pasting what Bodnotbod did?)

May I suggest you, Random, Art and Flo... plus JCravens if she happens to be around, pastes their own copy of the table here on this thread and puts in their numbers? Then one of us (I'll be happy to do it) does the maths and then fills in the actual table with the average figures?

Bodnotbod, I think that's a good idea, but not now. We've already narrowed the recommendations to 6, which is very good. There is also a discussion below to fold up research into the other proposals. That would bring us down to five. At this stage, that's all we're trying to do. Distinguish the high leverage proposals from the low leverage ones. Your table helps confirm that these areas are stronger than others.

We should spend more time debating and discussing the ratings later, once we have more specifics. ("Organizational structure" remains vague to me too, but it's worth discussing). We'll need the ratings to help pick our top four. But we're better off doing that later.

Well, Sjc has come on board and made a plea for Policy somewhere upward this thread. I think we should take that in (it's still in Bodnotbod's table) and if Sjc can bring up a decent way to take it to a recommendation there's three more weeks to consider it. If I can't do it and Sjc does see a way to bring it forward, let's have it.

I have to say though Sjc, you seem to grind some bitterness over past experiences that shines through your posts. I'm trying not to be too cynical, therefore I still believe in the middle ground. If you could bring yourself to a draft recommendation about policy that rewards optimism over pessimism, we might get a strong point. Make yourself at home and draft our Recommendation 4 and we'll listen to it. - Art Unbound 20:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I didn't take him to mean that. In other discussions, Sjc and I have talked about tackling policy indirectly, by improving the decision making process. That's something echoed by FloNight and Sue Gardner too. (That's why the "Decision Making" heading has been expanded to include policy making too.) I'd prefer not to re-open the door to making actual policy changes ourselves, because I don't think the community (and hence the foundation) will ever let us do that. But I don't want to steamroll over other people who have a good argument otherwise.

Decision making did get 15 points in Bodnotbod's table. Let's hear what Sjc has to say about it, I'm curious to know.

Well thanks god Bodnotbod you're still here and thank you for your homework. Makes sense to work from here, wouldn't it? - Art Unbound 20:38, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Reading the thread back, I'm picking up one of Flonight's thoughts, and it's this one:

1) Organizational changes that offer a clearer "career path" for users by offering a variety of ways to contribute based on their skills and interests. Volunteer toolkit that can be offered to new users to assist them in acclimating to wikis.

It's Flo's foremost recommendation, isn't it? What can we do with it? Flo mentiones "organizational changes" that none of us really seems to be able to handle. I'll break it up into parts.

1. Offer a clearer "career path" for users; by:
   1. offering a variety of ways to contribute based on their skills and interests;
2. (Create a) Volunteer toolkit that can be offered to new users to assist them in acclimating to wikis.
3. Create organizational changes to reach those.

Broken up this way, I think we need to give it another thought. (Sorry, I won't make it throught the night though, so see you tomorrow).