"The first priority of the Wikimedia Foundation is to improve the early
experiences of new users," said Michael Jahn, an employee of Wikimedia
Germany, at the conference in Nuremberg. Because with the new colleagues
on the project encounters problems. While many users still come to the
Wikipedia, but they grow again relatively quickly from the project. With
experiments such as a new reward system wants Wikimedia improve the
working atmosphere, but so far without tangible progress.
The second major priority is the establishment of a new Wikipedia editor
that it will allow authors without knowledge of the MediaWiki syntax
comfortable making changes to the articles of Wikipedia. "If we really
want it, we could multiply the number of users in the community. But I
do not think we really want it," said Kurt Jansson in Nuremberg. The
conditions today are not good enough: "Who can you expect of the editor
today," said the founding chairman of Wikimedia Germany.
The WYSIWYG editor will be announced over five years, although again,
but has not yet been implemented. Meanwhile, a first version of the new
editor for the end of 2011 has been announced in the new Editor
Wikipedia is expected to be established next year. The Chairman of
Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, Ting Chen confessed to the
failures of the U.S. WikiCon Foundation. "Only since 2008, we have
really driven the development," Chen said. Although now nearly 100
employees worked for the Wikimedia Foundation, these are still far too
few for the task at hand. The Foundation had targeted set 60 developers,
but until now could only occupy half of the posts. In addition, the
developers had to contend with a strong headwind from the Wikimedia
community, if they developed new features.
Meanwhile Wikimedia tried a better picture of the problems of Wikipedia
to get. Thus attempts to explore the Wikimedia Foundation, a
multidisciplinary research program of the composition and motivation of
the community and the impact of rules such as the anonymous Wikipedia
edit. With a systematic study of the satisfaction of the Wikipedia
authors Medienwisenschaftler Manuel Merz is currently trying to gain
insights into the motivation of German-and English-language Wikipedia
communities. For this purpose he sent a questionnaire to users after
they had saved their first edit on Wikipedia.
Initial evaluations of the 2100 responses confirm the low proportion of
women: only nine percent of respondents were female. While
administrators have settled despite an accumulation of routine
activities in their thankless role it sees for the unannounced authors
another way: "New users feel less welcome in the Wikipedia," said Merz.
Sun Newcomers are often confronted with the fact that their first
tentative steps encyclopedic be deleted quickly. Precise causes and
strategies for improving the working environment Merz will work out in
the coming months.
Time and again the theme of open access Wikipedia and the use of
pseudonyms. On the WikiCon suggested Wikipedians Jurgen Engel, promote
the use of the clear name in Wikipedia. In an evaluation of 1000
Wikipedia accounts, he found only 75 users who use their real name as
author name. It was unnecessary in most cases, to hide behind
pseudonyms. "There are few reports of adverse events," said Engel. Would
also increase the use of real name's reputation among scientists as to
which one was trying to help.
The audience the initiative but was met with little support. For example
wool many Wikipedians do not widely known exactly what and when they
work in the online Enyzklopädie. Waiver of pseudonyms will hardly
improve the manners. Here's meeting as regularly scheduled Wikipedia
Stammtische importantly. "Whether I get to know one Wikipedians for the
parent table in a clear name or user name is, I do not care is important
to me that I can look him in the eye," said one participant.
Successful proving to another initiative. Under the motto Wiki Wikimedia
loves monument calls to to upload images of European landmarks on the
multimedia platform, "Wikimedia Commons". After less than two weeks for
the action is for the currently advertised on all Wikimedia sites have
been uploaded more than 36,000 images of historical buildings and
natural monuments, of which more than 6000 from Germany. The promotion
runs until the end of September. The best images will be rewarded with
prizes such as a gyroplane flight or photographic equipment.
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