Remarks regarding [[Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health]]

You asked for my thoughts regarding Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health over at Talk:Task_force/Reader_Conversion#Conversion_hurdle_race_606.

1. With regards to your "implementation" section, I do have some suggestions. I do absolutely agree that better tools are needed, overall, wikipedia has had the same editing interface for years...something rather uncommon in the web world. I would recomend that rather than having the wikimedia foundation invest both funds and volunteer time into devolping a WYSIWYG interface, that they work off something that already exsists such as tinymce. The current beta vector skin editor is absolutely aweful in that it only has 6 default buttons and you must now do formatting without buttons. I know that sometimes less is more, but this simply isn't the case when it comes to an editor.

My recommendation is that wikimedia adapt tinymce or a similar little editor rather than what they are doing now.

In addition, there should be a separate editor/application for more advanced editors. A simple line add/remove or syntax change is fine in such a simple WYSIWYG editor, but for more advanced editors, there should be a "developer " interface. As a simple analogy, you can use MS Paint to do simple changes to a picture(the current interface), Adobe Elements to "touch up" an image(simple WYSIWYG editor), but without Photoshop, it's going to take a lot more effort to create a digital masterpiece(developer interface). Likewise, you can edit html in notepad or dreamweaver, the latter in theory being more productive. Or you code C from command prompt rather than using visual studio/delphi. I'm sure you're getting the point=P. A developer interface could be offered as an addon, a standalone application, or as a browser application with a massive backend. It would provide all the tools an encyclopedia writer would need, research, dictionary, IM with other people...use your imagination. The developer interface would have a ton of options and buttons...specifically for advanced users.

2. Citations could be made a lot easier. You could easily offer an "autofill" option for books based on isbn, and most news websites clearly state author, date, publisher...all you need to do is write a web parser for them. It's really a waste of time to see people going in and filling in references when a valid weblink should be all you need.

3/4. You should have some kind of "forms" for rating/reviewing/creating articles. You also ought to have some kind of W:shoutbox for each article, for each wikiproject, noticeboard etc. Ideally, you should allow collaborative/simultaneous editing ...possibly by implementing w:EtherPad on wikipedia. Talk pages are often too formal and clunky to use effectively.

5. The watch interface is rather poor, as is its support. There should be some type of watch filters too.

For volunteer recognition, I would like to recommend that the user/user names be put up in a meta-banner. The meta-banner could, and should also be used to solicit people to certain wikiprojects based on their edits, and to advertise to readers to become editors. Its current use as simply to serve as a reminder for certain wikimedia activities which do not concern the vast majority of users and to solicit donations isn't really the best way to go...

Well that's all for now. Hope you find this of some use...I would appreciate a response. Cheers!

There is also a general lack of thorough documentation (or it is very difficult to find). There needs to be some kind of policy handbook or policy central. The noticeboards are too spread out...while certain ones receive traffic and posts they shouldn't.

In your Index of recommendations: you seem to neglect the need for good "documentation".

The tutorials for Wikipedia are severely lacking. Wikimedia ought to invest into writing "An Idiot's Guide to Using and Contributing to Wikipedia" and also develop some videos with interactive tutorials.

From the technical side, there is also a lack of documentation which makes it difficult for potential volunteers to develop apps to interface with mediawiki. There needs to a thorough selection of examples and how-to's as well as an active noticeboard on developing wikitools, wikibots, and the like.

Hi Smallman12q - I'm acknowledging that I've seen these, but haven't had the chance to read them thoroughly. I will try to do so soon. Would you be willing to also post them to the task force's working page so that they could comment on them? They're far more deeply involved with this than I am. :)

Thanks!

Sure...can I get a link where to post?

Sure - Talk:Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health - I'll do my very best to give your ideas some time, I appreciate that you put so much into them!

There's no one there...I guess I'll be first=P. Well I've had some thoughts regarding wikipedia's development and UI for some time...but there isn't much of a place to put them on wikipedia. Thanks for the link. I've put up a bulleted version at Talk:Task_force/Recommendations/Community_health#Suggestions_3080 I would like to see Wikipedia "succeed"...I personally find it intriguing that it got this far. It's amusing how tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers could write millions of quality articles...and to do so in the modern world of spam, where ignorance, a lack of common sense, and a generally discontent population thrive is a feat in and of itself.

I also wanted to suggest that wikimedia form some kind of partnership with nasa. Nasa has hundreds of thousands of free images, diagrams, and other resources that would greatly help the commons and wikipedia. Nasa currently posts videos on youtube and other social medias...I don't see why they wouldn't participate if wikimedia invited them.

Has the WMF ever invited some sort of "invitation" or sought cooperation from nasa?

To my knowledge, WMF has never actively courted NASA.

Here's my question to you: Who is best positioned to do this kind of work? There are literally thousands of potential partners. The Wikimedia Chapters have been successful at these kinds of partnerships in the past. Are there others who could be fulfilling this role? And when should the Foundation step in to do this kind of work?

I was a bit confused by your question "Who is best positioned to do this kind of work?" Do you mean in courting NASA?

I would assume those in the Wikimedia Foundation most involved in the Commons and Wikipedia...

NASA has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of images, videos, diagrams, and 3d models that could be used for the commons.

It also has rather extensive documentation and mission/project summaries that surpass those on wikipedia.

Hi, I just wanted to step in and support smallman's point. I think a collaboration with NASA would be really beneficial for the both parties, a separate wiki could be created with all the info directly from NASA acting as a public repository with all the info and pics etc.. I do think the collaboration's benefit would only be focused on some astronomy, astro-science sections etc., rather than any large benefit to the overall project. Any user or representative acting on behalf of the foundation (with their permission and support of course) could approach NASA, the content once provided could be organised and arranged by the community just like any other wiki project. Although I doubt NASA would release things not in public domain currently, but a public collaboration might bring some positive PR as well, releasing content to an encyclopedia like wikipedia which updates every minute might provide a better outlest for the content than many other currently used by NASA to engage the public directly.

Most of their content is in public domain...its just a matter of making it accessible/useable here. I would support a nasa wiki...though my main goal is to get them to post their content on the commons...they have millions of records including diagrams, videos, models, fact sheets, graphs...etc.

I do agree that it would be great for Nasa's PR=D.

there also needs to be a consideration about the massive size of NASA's content. As you mentioned yourself, there are millions of records, it would rival wikipedia's size at the very least, bringing with it increased costs. Also, smallman I meant positive PR for both the parties.

I did request a bot upload at the commons a while ago.

Erm costs...well I don't really have to say on that...that's for the wikimedia foundation and nasa to figure out. My goal, as a contributor, is to improve the quantity and quality of "stuff" available on wikipedia=D.

Well, Nasa could use some positive PR, wikimedia generally has good PR, but more wouldn't hurt=D.

I think that collaborating with NASA and similar groups is a fantastic idea. I think we need to assume that, for the most part, the Wikimedia Foundation is generally not the right group to be doing this. In her February letter to the board, Sue Gardner stated that the Foundation will not be prioritizing content partnerships.

That means that some other entities need to do that. Wikimedia Chapters are the most obvious groups to do this. But it also raises some larger questions worth discussing: If the Foundation itself is not going to be negotiating partnerships, what can it do to support groups that will be?

It also raises the interesting question of territory- chapters have traditionally guarded their national borders rather zealously - this falls into an area with no national chapter...

The goal should remain to foster cooperation. I for one am disappointed at the lackluster approach Wikimedia takes towards real world partnerships. NASA currently coeperates with dozens of other web 2.0 companies including youtube, the internet archive, and scribds...

I don't see the benefit in avoiding real-world collaboration, especially when NASA (among other agencies) has so much to offer from a nearly license-free standpoint.

We're going back-and-forth here. The Foundation isn't avoiding real-world collaboration at all. Witness the recent Telefonica announcement as an example, or the recent Subject-Matter-Improvement Pilot Program, which is a partnership with university public policy initiatives to improve the quality of some articles.

The Foundation only employs 35 people. It's responsible for the up-time of the servers, protecting the brand, improving the software, and many other things. So it has limited resources to take on other projects. Just to give you an example of how underresourced the Wikimedia Foundation, Facebook recently announced that it has one million users for every developer. For comparison, the Wikimedia Foundation has 30 million users for every developer.

Three years ago, the Foundation was even smaller. One of the reasons that Wikimedia Chapters emerged was to specifically take on the task of content partnerships. The Chapters agreement with the Foundation allows it to use the Wikimedia brand so that it has the power to make these kinds of partnership deals. There are probably ways to improve the Chapters agreement, and there may be ways to empower other people to do the same. We should definitely have a conversation about it.

Here's my point. I totally agree that a partnership with NASA would be wonderful. The point of doing a movement-wide strategic planning as opposed to simply a Foundation strategic-plan is to also answer the question, "Who should do it, and how can they be further empowered?" The answer cannot always be, "The Foundation should do it," because that's not realistic.

So the question, at the end of the day is, who might take this on? Chapters? What's preventing this from happening right now, and how could this be resolved?

Those are the questions I had in mind...and being that this is the "Strategic planning" wiki, I was hoping that someone could answer them...

The point of the wiki is that people who care about them toss out an idea. So why don't you start that? And then we can discuss it. There's nobody here with all the answers - it's not a top down project... so let's get started with that :)