What do you think about promotion Wiki in global media by send info about two millions Wikipedia articles? It (2M) will be perhaps first half of July or end of June. IMHO this promotion will be good before Wikimania 2005.
Przykuta
Przykuta wrote:
What do you think about promotion Wiki in global media by send info about two millions Wikipedia articles? It (2M) will be perhaps first half of July or end of June. IMHO this promotion will be good before Wikimania 2005.
Our last milestone-related press release (en 500K) received virtually no attention. Most major newspapers and magazines have already run stories on us, it's not like we need to tell them we exist. Why not save the press releases for when we actually have news?
-- Tim Starling
Our last milestone-related press release (en 500K) received virtually no attention. Most major newspapers and magazines have already run stories on us, it's not like we need to tell them we exist. Why not save the press releases for when we actually have news?
No, the last milestone-related press release was the Commons reaching 100,000 uploads, which, despite not being sent out to many places (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/100K/log-en), did see some press coverage, mostly in Germany (http://news.google.com/news?hl=de&q=wikimedia)
Also, as Przykuta notes, the milestone will be shortly before Wikimania, so the release need not focus only on the milestone, but include details of the conference, since we should know by then who most of the speakers are, meaning we will have something other than a new milestone to announce.
Angela.
Most major newspapers and magazines have already run stories
on us, it's not like we need to tell them we exist.
That right, but I think rather not about en:wiki, but about other Wikipedias. In Poland for example we need to awake newspapers before Wikimania. For others - ukrainian, hungarian, vietnamese... info about 2M IMHO propably will allow more new wikipedians that info about Wikimania. So, one event + second event... and sleeping will be awaken :)
Przykuta
Nod
Przykuta is absolutely right. Big milestones do not have much effects on very large languages right now, but they are a rare opportunity for other languages with still little media attention.
I would also remind that we should (could) very possibly have a new fundraising drive soon... and it might be a good idea to reflect in which order to do the three events * fundraising * 2M * wikimania
Ant
Przykuta a écrit:
Most major newspapers and magazines have already run stories
on us, it's not like we need to tell them we exist.
That right, but I think rather not about en:wiki, but about other Wikipedias. In Poland for example we need to awake newspapers before Wikimania. For others - ukrainian, hungarian, vietnamese... info about 2M IMHO propably will allow more new wikipedians that info about Wikimania. So, one event + second event... and sleeping will be awaken :)
Przykuta
On 5/31/05, Anthere [email protected] wrote:
I would also remind that we should (could) very possibly have a new fundraising drive soon... and it might be a good idea to reflect in which order to do the three events
I'd like the fundraising to be before the end of June so it's part of this quarter's budget. The elections begin on the 27th, so to avoid needing two messages in the sitenotice, it would be best to have the fundraising drive finish before then. Assuming it will last 2 weeks, we'd need to start it by the 12th. Does this seem too short notice, or is that going to be a possible?
Angela.
Przykuta:
What do you think about promotion Wiki in global media by send info about two millions Wikipedia articles? It (2M) will be perhaps first half of July or end of June. IMHO this promotion will be good before Wikimania 2005.
Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that, but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia milestone. The next Wikipedia-specific press release, in my opinion, should be about peer review, perhaps when we put the validation tool in operation.
Best,
Erik
Erik Moeller ([email protected]) [050601 00:20]:
Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that, but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia milestone. The next Wikipedia-specific press release, in my opinion, should be about peer review, perhaps when we put the validation tool in operation.
Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...
- d.
David:
Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...
I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could clearly point out the nature of the experiment.
Best,
Erik
Erik Moeller ([email protected]) [050601 06:27]:
David:
Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...
I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could clearly point out the nature of the experiment.
I'd rather wait until we're at least past the experimental phase. But perhaps I'm being overly cautious ... others' opinions?
(It'd certainly give the feature one hell of a beta test ;-)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Erik Moeller ([email protected]) [050601 06:27]:
I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could clearly point out the nature of the experiment.
I'd rather wait until we're at least past the experimental phase. But perhaps I'm being overly cautious ... others' opinions?
Well, if "we're not going to use the ratings for anything anyway" why not? ;)
(It'd certainly give the feature one hell of a beta test ;-)
Wiki*edia _is_ one big fat beta test. C'mon world, load test our servers! :P
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 08:51 +1000, David Gerard wrote:
I'd rather wait until we're at least past the experimental phase. But perhaps I'm being overly cautious ... others' opinions?
(It'd certainly give the feature one hell of a beta test ;-)
As currently implemented, article validation is not meaningful in light of non-dated transclusions. I would't advertise it until that hole is plugged.
Nod
But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta).
Wikipedias are at different stages of development. 2M global article can help smaller languages get a press announcement. I am not sure they would dare send a "quality survey" if their project is 11 254 articles. Journalists are more likely to have a great laugh :-)
Ant
Erik Moeller a écrit:
David:
Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...
I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could clearly point out the nature of the experiment.
Best,
Erik
Anthere ([email protected]) [050601 14:24]:
But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta). Wikipedias are at different stages of development. 2M global article can help smaller languages get a press announcement. I am not sure they would dare send a "quality survey" if their project is 11 254 articles. Journalists are more likely to have a great laugh :-)
Mmm. It's of great interest on en: and (I think) de: (particularly in regards to their quality campaign). Has anyone on fr: noticed?
- d.
Erik Moeller wrote:
Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that, but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia milestone.
I think the opposite in this case. The press will care about 2 million. They will not care about Wikimania. Using 2 million as the hook to get attention to Wikimania makes sense.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that, but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia milestone.
I think the opposite in this case. The press will care about 2 million. They will not care about Wikimania. Using 2 million as the hook to get attention to Wikimania makes sense.
Perhaps it makes sense to distinguish different types of media. Heise.de, Slashdot.org, Kuro5hin.org, CNET and other media outlets who have in the past frequently reported about Wikimedia events are different from, say, the New York Times or USA Today.
Kuro5hin and heise.de both reported about the 100K Commons uploads. However, in both cases, there were many reader comments of the type "Yet Another Wikimedia Number" (YAWN). I think that for a "2 million articles" press release, the reaction might be similar, especially because Wikimedia Commons is a new project most people haven't heard of, while all of these outlets have repeatedly reported about Wikipedia itself. On the other hand, I expect that all of them might find Wikimania interesting.
More simply put, if you're a geek, you don't need to hear this number, so geeky news sources might be less inclined to report it. A traditional newspaper like the NYT, however, might see a major milestone like this as a good opportunity to report about Wikipedia again (and hence Wikimania). The only problem I see with these mega-milestones is that the numbers are just getting too large. :-) When you say "The German edition of Wikipedia has surpassed Brockhaus" or "The English edition has surpassed Britannica", you give people a perspective. When you say "All editions together have surpassed 2 million articles", it's not a number people can do anything with, or imagine the significance of. In fact, for many people who have never used WP, the immediate reaction will be an incredulous "But how many of them are any good?"
That is to say, I think that when a Wikipedia language has surpassed all existing encyclopedias in quantity, the focus of our media work should shift to quality: number of reviewed articles, results of quality comparisons, and so on. As for the combined press release at 2M, as noted above, I believe that using different media strategies for different outlets might be a good idea: focus on the major milestone for the traditional ones and on the exciting conference for the techy/geeky ones.
Best,
Erik