Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Resource Allocation/I

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

Most likely, new comments will not be taken into account by the new three Working Group members in their work of developing the final Recommendations. You are free however to continue discussing in the spirit of "discussing about Wikipedia is a work in progress". :)

Support

I strongly support this recommendation. Libcub (talk) 06:20, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

• Some real data on what readers are using the projects for should be helpful to those editors who are trying to create a quality product. It will probably make little difference to the majority of occasional editors. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:48, 13 August 2019

Commercial wording

I don't see anything wrong with the recommendation substance, but we should be careful and not start adopting a commercial framework in which the Wikimedia community turns into a knowledge service provider for a knowledge consumer market. --MarioGom (talk) 12:55, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

The part of the recommendation that reads,

We need to consider what services people and institutions in their different contexts need from our projects, and how we can provide them. Potentially, we also want to consider including readers eventually as a stakeholder in decision-making.

could be interpreted as "a commercial framework" particularly if those institutions are included "as a stakeholder in decision-making." The Revenue Stream Working Group envisions collecting $400,000 per month for using the WMF API. If those paying customers are included "as a stakeholder in decision-making," they can quickly over-whelm the volunteer editor base in terms of influencing decision-making. The Working Group should also be more concrete regarding what "institutions" are included in the recommendations. I can understand a school or library being an institutional knowledge consumer, but what about an ad agency, public relations firm, or a vendor that wants to use WMF projects as a basis for Siri or Cortana? Hlevy2 (talk) 15:20, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

We are already a knowledge service, That is what an encyclopedia is. Our readers are already knowledge consumers, hopefully reasonably discriminating ones, and if we can get feedback from them about what they like, need and find useful, and what is missing, inconvenient or not usefully presented, we will have valuable guidance on how we can improve our services. Much of the feedback is likely to be completely useless, as that is the way things work, but amongst the garbage may be the occasional gem. Reader feedback could be useful, but it needs to be elicited in a way that less garbage is produced than last time it was tried on ENWP. As long as the primary producers remain volunteers, and remain editorially independent, we should have enough control over the content. The knowledge we provide is free but requires attribution, so as long as Siri and Cortana provide that attribution, they are welcome to disseminate the knowledge we provide. This is implicit in the licence we publish under, and if Siri and Cortana pass the message on in compliance with the licence, I see no problem. Some will read, others will listen. Audio is a perfectly valid way to spread the knowledge. Providing some technical facilities to help with audio is generally a good thing, though some articles may be less suited than others to this route. A great deal depends on what type of decisions they are stakeholders in. This should be clarified. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:48, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I have a problem referring to the people who use our content -- to simply read, or to dice & crunch into their own content, or something in between -- as "consumers". Not only does that word evoke a commercial & impersonal mindset, it excludes these people with emphasis from how these projects work. There ought to be a better term. -- Llywrch (talk) 22:53, 4 September 2019 (UTC)