Submissions/Wikipedia used to be cool

From Wikimania 2011 • Haifa, Israel


This is an open submission for Wikimania 2011.

Review no.

102

Title of the submission

Wikipedia used to be cool

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Christophe Henner

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

Schiste - christophe.henner@gmail.com

Country of origin

France

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Wikimedia France

Personal homepage or blog

http://schiste.net

Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)


For now several months, the community is discussing how we could attract more contributors? Wikimedia Foundation is hiring employees to survey the community and get a better grasp of who is contributing, etc.

All in all, we're spending more and more time, energy and money on this issue because we're not growing as fast as we used to 4 years ago. But what if we were going the wrong way ? 4 years ago Wikipedia was cool. Wikipedia was a rebel, the website freeing knowledge. The website anyone edits. Now, Facebook is cool, Twitter is cool, Wikileaks is cool but Wikipedia is part of the landscape. Now Wikipedia is a "grown-up" and we're serious now... not rebels anymore. And perhaps we should not try to fight that, but embrace it.

We're experiencing our midlife crisis, loving what we've become but missing our early days and trying to conciliate both

This session will be the opportunity to get a new point of view on the contributors growth issue.

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

People and Community

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes, though I'll be sad.

Slides or further information (optional)


Interested attendees

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  1. Vibhijain 11:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC) Agree[reply]
  2. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 11:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Amir E. Aharoni