Recommendation selection
Given that we have to make at most 4 recommendations, this thread will be used for discussion about which recommendations will make it to the final version.
Right. I must say that I haven't looked at the recommendations yet. This may be a good thing. I have decided that I will review the current recommendations based on relevance to the Wikimedia Foundation's goals, acceptability in the current community, and if they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound).
This is my top list (lowest score at the bottom):
- Strategy 2: Outreach - make us known to them
- Strategy 3: Stimulate creation of content that is important for people in local regions - have what they need
- Strategy 4: Localization of the MediaWiki software - allow them to read and work in their own language
- Strategy 1: Minimize the bandwidth that is required to load pages - just less important to me; if they need what it has, they will download it; it's what I did in the days my connection was slow.
- Strategy 5: A simpler translation interface - this is already a higher level of functionality in my point of view. None of the currently successful Wikimedia projects had these tools. People will write it anyway if they think it is important to their audience, regardless of availability of more tools than we currently have.
I recommend to drop the bottom two proposals in the final recommendations (minimise bandwidth and improved translation interface).
I agree with you except maybe for Strategy 1 which I am unsure about if I would push higher up. I remember that my first contact with internet was through a 56kbps dial up connection and I where not to disturbed by the loading times. However, the webpages where at that designed to be loaded over 56kbps connections, and it was an important thing for webdesigners to ensure that the sites loaded fairly fast over such connections. Today it is important for webdesigners that their pages loads well on Mbps connections, but it leaves the less developed regions unable to benefit from the same pages. Actually I don't think my interent conection ever was so slow that it on an average took about half a minute to load each new page (on an average would mean that it is not very uncommon with loading times of one or severeal minutes), which I suspects might be the case in a fair amount regions.
I also think that I was inclined to accept the access times of the 56kbps connections because I had a genuine interest of new technology and developments. In Sweden I think it took until somwhere in the first years of 2000, when "instant access" speeds where achived, before internet usage became a part of the general publics daily life. And to get a large volunteer basis we want to bring Wikipedia to the large mass, not just to those especially interested, which makes me think that access speeds are very important.
This is the question I have worked most recently on though, which might make me a bit biased.
It looks like it is just the two of us deciding here. I propose we pick the top 4 recommendations from my list, ordered in the way you choose, and reword those in the way Philippe has indicated (assertions and facts). OK?
Yeah, seems like there will be no more comments. I agree with you, and think we can list them in the order you did. Do you think we should link to "further information" where the analysis performed is laid out in the way the proposals are written now?
There is also this note at the top of the document about taking care to not automatically implement policies globaly, do you think we should keep it there? It is not a recommendation, but a cautionary word I think is important to get through.
I have taken a first swing at reorganizing the recommendations into the right structure. It's a bit lengthy at the moment, but it's really time consuming to try to condense the information into neat statements. And I am not sure about how much more time I can devote to this over the next days. Will try to make my best though.
I agree with this comment. It is more relevent,as it will be useful for smartphones, where data connection speed could still be a constraint.
