millosh at gmail
Dec 17, 2008, 3:25 AM
Post #2 of 4
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On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 6:35 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki[at]gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, Milos, I wouldn't worry about the lists going dead -- there was
> lots of activity this month so far :)
>
> Summaries:
> * Foundation-l:
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2008_December_1-15
> * Wiki-en-l:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/wikiEN-l-archives/2008_12_1-15
> * and special bonus Wikinews-l, by Anonymous101:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/Wikinews-l-archives/2008-11
I think now that we started to go to mature phase: participants are writing
longer emails (size of emails is bigger for November 2008, even number of
emails for November 2007 was bigger) and a lot of participants are active.
However, we are relatively poor in getting new participants (I don't think
that there will be 8 new participants for December). So, we should think
about this problem. Foundation-l is at the top of participation chain and
less new members here means that something is wrong at the field (projects).
I think that it is very important that more people take care about meta
issues, like you are doing with summaries. (BTW, Michael, it would be good
to include a link to Phoebe's summaries into the foundation-l description
page.) At some stages of complexity systems need persons who are taking care
about them. Otherwise, they will tend to have some kind of "natural
development", which means that they may fluctuate until they are stabilized
at some stage; but, also, it may mean that they may collapse.
Note, also, that Wikimedia community is unique because of the type and size
of its mailing lists. It is a very different issue to have a number of huge
lists on which it is discussed about purely technical issues ("we need that"
-> "it is possible" -> "it may be fixed in this way" -> "it is fixed" [or
so]), than to have a number of huge lists with relatively free discourse.
The first stage of regulating one list is introducing moderator(s). AFAIK,
the second stage is not known. I've heard some analysis which claims that
the upper limit of one mailing list is around 50 active participants. Since
middle 2006 we have constantly two times more participants, sometimes three
times more. That means that we are inside of the unexplored field and that
we have a problem per se.
It is possible that our intuitive actions (your, mine; some others', too)
made some positive results. But, we are far from knowing that. Maybe it is
because Obama became president of US or because of bombings in Mumbai. Maybe
we reached the bottom because of the financial crisis and our activity
raised again when the situation was stabilized (yes, DJI index shows
stagnation for the last ~two months, not decrease).
Some time ago I was talking with one my friend (introduced in social
statistics issues) about statistics of Wikimedian community. The conclusion
was that our community is too complex to have any kind of linear conclusion
based on some numbers. The best which we can get form analysis of number is
to look into the past and conclude some obvious facts about raising and
falling of activity. It is comparable to the information "economy of the
West raised after the victory in the Cold War"; in our case: "our activity
raised around the first Wikimania". So, conclusions are "for the new raise
of economy the West has to make victory in another Cold War" and "we need to
make one more first Wikimania", respectively.
Because all of those, I think that it is really necessary to have a group of
people who is taking care about meta issues. It may be a volunteer group, it
may be a payed group inside of Wikimedia, it may be a groop of schoolars
with whom WMF made a deal to analyze our activities.
== Statistics up to December 17, 2008, ~11:00 UTC ==
;Email count:
<pre>
year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Oct Nov Dec
2004 xxx xxx xxx 64 532 506 474 242 462
650 276 282
2005 630 760 642 574 690 438 396 684 488
758 1074 672
2006 514 506 860 588 910 1666 1262 1670 2180
1206 1116 2530
2007 1138 624 665 1042 798 407 1163 471 791
1072 1030 1260
2008 1497 688 1679 1675 1131 942 609 501 699
559 870 490
</pre>
;New participants:
<pre>
year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Oct Nov Dec
2004 xxx xxx xxx 13 31 25 14 6 22
9 8 9
2005 17 21 10 8 9 9 8 18 15
10 15 16
2006 21 12 18 16 18 20 15 28 25
17 20 28
2007 19 26 13 21 22 18 18 19 14
15 21 19
2008 23 11 24 15 12 11 7 8 12
4 15 4
</pre>
;Active participants:
<pre>
year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Oct Nov Dec
2004 xxx xxx xxx 13 39 48 40 29 48
45 40 40
2005 58 61 56 56 57 57 52 73 67
67 74 73
2006 71 69 75 78 85 100 73 114 117
100 108 131
2007 120 112 103 132 126 110 142 105 121
135 131 156
2008 158 115 164 130 132 124 125 112 123
91 119 111
</pre>
;Emails size:
<pre>
year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2004 xxx xxx xxx 121475 1104754 1053462 967130
485494 719985 1097434 564584 539745
2005 1249081 1380845 1074325 953014 1347131 860264 857746
1296746 969160 1525844 2426353 1369238
2006 1042910 985712 1903912 1655576 1928528 3816811 2879586
3570674 4147155 2128520 2385879 5398523
2007 2563519 1333895 1462309 2244803 1745971 955367 2470301
968443 1741702 2224105 2129518 2422959
2008 3618057 1514498 4042573 4485905 2360334 2033119 1152809
1078196 1390021 1363943 2191516 1064296
</pre>
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