[Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

Sun Jun 20 02:33:56 UTC 2010

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Noein <pronoein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Moreover, I think attracting readers is very different from attracting
> editors. I don't see how it would be positive to convince people to edit
> articles with superficial reasons in mind.
>

I'm glad to see that you were being saterical before.  I thought you had
more sense than that.

Attracting consumers is a much more complicated issue than attracting
editors.  Editors seem to find their niche or go away.

Attracting readers takes a constant vigilance over how Wikimedia projects
are portrayed in media, pop culture, and casual conversations.  There is a
fine balance there.  The readers part dabbles with the interaction of
editors.  We want readers to fix typos, clean up things, and monkey about.
To make them into editors, they have to have A) the interest B) a positive
experience and C) the desire.  Desire is different from interest, because
that is the compulsion to stick around and I consider this to be the most
important part.

However, if we can gain at least interest, that is half of the battle even
though there are three parts.  It is important that we, as the ones with
desire, foster the environment to invite the casual reader into at least
understanding what we're doing.  We all know about the popular
misconceptions are about Wikimedia projects, and we are bound to educate and
relate to the reader if we want to cause the tipping point of creating an
environment that is open, welcoming, but also importantly goal-oriented.
This ties into the congruant thread, but I'm avoiding cross-posting.

In other words, editors find their own interests and where they fit in.  If
we are going to encourage *reader* participation, that requires active
encouragement from the community to develop a sense of trust.  It's true
that you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.  That also applies
to print and online sources and what your neighbor tells you the other
neighbor did.  We have the capacity to actively correct ourselves and each
other, which is a medium more powerful than most realize.

It's up to us.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan