Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-10-29/From the editor

From the editor

From the editor

By Ral315

This week, we're soliciting questions for yet another interview, this time with Wikimedia Foundation Chair Florence Devouard (Anthere). We'll be conducting the interview by e-mail; you can post your questions on this article's talk page. Please submit questions as soon as possible; I'll be sending her the questions on Friday or Saturday.

The interview with Wikimedia's Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber will be posted soon; Brion has not yet responded to the questions. Meanwhile, you can suggest future interview subjects here; I'd like to continue doing one or two interviews a month.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315

In this issue

29 October 2007 (all comments)

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Questions for Anthere (Florence Devouard) here.

• What is your reaction to the reports that English Wikipedia's growth is slowing down? Renata 17:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I have no specific reaction. The english wikipedia has reached a point in growth where there are less new articles created everyday, but much work being done to improve the quality of the content. This is far less measurable, but it does not make it less important. It is a natural stage in the process. Anthere (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• What were some of your hopes and inspirations when you started and what aspects have brought you great joy from the work? Benjiboi 06:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Maybe the second version of my user page can help [1]. The main joy comes from the being connected to so many people all over the world.

• What do you see as Wikipedia's biggest obstacle to overcome in the next two years, and what ideas do you have to help overcome that? Dr. Cash 06:10, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • As for the english Wikipedia, the biggest obstacle will be quality, but even more importantly being perceived as content of high quality. It seems our current efforts are not really recognised or understood. We have to work on this. Other Wikipedias may have other challenges... Globally, I'd say that the biggest challenge of the website itself will be to stay sustainable, without having to accept stuff such as advertisement or becoming enslaved to a private company or government. Main idea is that we get recognised truely as a charity and Wikipedia as a global public good. The board and staff are working on that perception and recognition. But the community is in charge of working on content itself :-) Anthere (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Note that there's also an interview with Devouard on Wikinews at n:Wikinews interviews Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Thunderhead1 01:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

• What are your feelings on the reenabling of anonymous page creation here? Is the openness worth the extra work deleting the extra vanity, attack and nonsense pages that will inevitably be a result of this? MER-C 09:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I support reenabling the anonymous page creation, but I'll be perfectly happy if the community decides to stick with the current solution. You guys know best. Anthere (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• What do you actually do for Wikimedia? Neil ☎ 12:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I tried to answer that question in the signpost interview. If it is not sufficient, drop me a word on my talk page, and I'll write down a "one week in the life of a chair". I think we need to clarify what each person or person on the board and staff role is. Anthere (talk)

• Lately, I have seen some (some very experienced) editors removing such things as trivia, spoiler warnings and general content whose notability was previously not contended. It seems they think that by removing such content, they will make Wikipedia more professional, acceptable and reputable. In the outside world, however, it seems that general sentiment is against these changes (see comments at [2]) - suggesting that Wikipedia users (the general public) actually like to find trivia and obscure things there. So I wonder what is your opinion about this. Do you also see such growing divide between users and editors (or maybe even between editors)? Can it be harmful? What can be done about it? Who do you think should ultimately decide the future of Wikipedia - its users, or its editors? Samohyl Jan 19:20, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, I read the slashdot article a few weeks ago... , by heart, I tend to be an inclusionnist... and in the past, I would have say "keep that stuff". On the other hand, recently, I noticed that my position was more and more leaning on the side of "removing trivia" because too many people tends to confuse us with a phone book or a myspace type of website. The problem as I see it is not so much the presence of trivia, that the need we all have to identify what is truely important from the big blob of information available. I wonder if the solution might not be to rather let the opportunity to find trivia (as asked by readership), but with a better way to identify what is not trivia (as defined by the editors). Somehow, we need to find a way to "see" in a glance what is truely significant, from what is not. Anthere (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• In your recent post about coming Board priorities, you mentioned at the end about the need to keep maintaining a friendly and open social atmosphere. Do you think there is a point beyond which being friendly doesn't scale, i.e. is it inevitable that within a project of a certain size, people will regularly have bad experiences? --pfctdayelise (talk) 05:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I fear people will always have bad experiences and some people more likeso than others. Still, I think some behaviors observed on wikipedia have been plain non acceptable and at some point, a strong position should be made on this. Practically speaking, it may mean that if an admin is repeatedely rude to others, or agressive, then we may need to go beyond just telling him that it is not nice, but go as far as excluding him for a while or removing sysop access, or tagging him as a "problematic editor", or forbidding him to edit certain topics etc... Does that need new rules ? I do not know. Other propositions were made to have editors approve a code of conduct before editing. Fine, but then, what do we do if they do not respect that code ? So, it all comes in the end on "daring to speak up against abuse". Perhaps we should be less inclusive and consider that editing wikipedia is not a right, it is a privilege.

• Do you think the method of WMF<-->community communication (ie, foundation-l, more or less) will or should change in the near future? At the moment there are very few layers between editors and WMF - anyone can join foundation-l and make whatever comments they like (helpful or otherwise) virtually directly to the Board. Is foundation-l de facto representing "Wikimedia community consensus"? Is the idea of a "Wikicouncil" (where editors would communicate with project representatives, who then communicate with WMF) dead or just dormant? (On one hand I think it is amazing that WMF is so open, but other times I think it is very inefficient and possibly only really includes those who have the time and patience to put up with lots of irrelevant stuff too.) --pfctdayelise (talk) 05:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I can not count the number of time I tried to call for good will to set up the wikicouncil. But it seems to get no where :-( I still think that it is a good idea, but maybe are we not yet ready for this. It may be that the solution for now is still to try to rely on very flexible committees. I hesitate to push further the wikicouncil, because it may cause us to get stuck in a very administrative-boring-stuck kind of situation, which we would have troubles to make evolve if required.
  • The situation on foundation-l is more than borderline. It is no more a place where we can nicely and constructively discuss, but I am not sure we can kick out buggers. For now, the solution to me would be to further expand the internal community (internal-l) so as to have a place where we can discuss efficiently.
  • Last, you know that Sue is planning to hire several people to take care of certain activity departments. Such as outreach or fundraising. I think we should wait till these people are here to think about how to get the new structure evolve. There are two main organigram possible. Either WMF board + Wikicouncil + Staff + Community. With Wikicouncil being the link between WMF and community (be it at staff or board level). Or we end up with a collection of committees, headed by staff members, made of community members+staff, and losely connected through an internal list. I would tend to prefer the second choice. Second choice is less democratic, requires more effort from a community member to join the WMF activities, but is also much more flexible and non-hierarchical. The last point would be the board and how the board is populated. A wikicouncil would reduce the risk of having someone elected to the board per his notability, and favor already informed and helpful members.
  • Jeee, I am not sure I am clear at all here pfctdayelise :-) Maybe we need to expend this discussion somewhere... Anthere (talk) 08:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
    

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