Proposal:Hold an "edit drive" to encourage new edits, perhaps around Wikipedia Day 2011

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Every proposal should be tied to one of the strategic priorities below.

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  1. Achieve continued growth in readership
  2. Focus on quality content
  3. Increase Participation
  4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
  5. Encourage Innovation



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Summary

We've proven we can mobilize hundreds of thousands of members of our audience to contribute funds in the annual fundraiser. Let's put those same abilities to work driving increased editing. Let's hold an "edit drive" to take a fixed period of time (one day? one month? 8-10 weeks) and try to meet a new editor or total editor target. As we develop capabilities, we could make an annual event (every April or May?) to complement the November/December fundraiser.

Proposal

We've proven we can mobilize hundreds of thousands of members of our audience to contribute funds in the annual fundraiser. Let's put those same abilities to work driving increased editing. Let's hold an "edit drive" to take a fixed period of time (one day? one month? 8-10 weeks) and try to meet a new editor or total editor target. As we develop capabilities, we could make an annual event (every April or May?) to complement the November/December fundraiser.

One approach would be to integrate with celebrations of Wikipedia's 10th birthday next January. Seems like it could be a great way to celebrate and also get the word out about the "anyone can edit" spirit of our projects.

In the Wikipedia 10th birthday case, specific targets could be any one of these:

  • 1 million edits across all projects over 24 hours on 15 Jan 2011 (up from about 350k a day now)
  • 25 million edits during the month of January (up from about 11 million a month now)
  • 50,000 increase in active editors -- 5+ a month edits -- during January 2011 (a 50% increase over roughly 100k now)

Motivation

Drive participation in particular to broaden the base of people making contributions and edits.

Key Questions

  • What improvements to editing UI do we need to put in place to handle 10x the first time editors? how do we test ahead of time?
  • What changes in editing documentation and community practices do we need? how do we test ahead of time?
  • How do we best scale vandalism handling, especially in context of sharp increase in new editors? Can we invest more in AbuseFilter to a) reduce vandalism that makes it into the projects and b) provide immediate friendly feedback to those making more innocent mistakes?
  • How can we best leverage our project and geo-targeted sitenotice technology from the fundraisers?

Potential Costs

Depending on software/coding improvements needed, could be meaningful amount of time by UI and engr teams.

References

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-February/056788.html


Community Discussion

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