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If editors don't get better tools, they'll stop editing. Then the content for basic users will not be worth reading. Source: continuously edited since 2007, an

by jcrben 7y ago

If editors don't get better tools, they'll stop editing. Then the content for basic users will not be worth reading. Source: continuously edited since 2007, and continue in large part due to improved tools.

s1artibartfast 7y ago
Just Curious: In what way is the continual improvement of tools a motivation to keep editing? Do you think that $40 million is a reasonable cost for those improvements?
- jcrben 7y ago
  If you edit using Visual Editor and compare that to the old wiki markup, you will understand. Visual Editor much faster esp. with automatic citation templates. My time is valuable (more than when I started as a poor college student) and my tolerance for bad UX has declined as technology in general has improved. And that's just one tool which has improved. There's an annual community wishlist survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_20... And yes, it's reasonable. I work in tech as a software engineer and it's not as cheap as people think.
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Thanks for responding!
  - dkersten 7y ago
    Yes software development is a lot more expensive than people think, but 40 million is an order of magnitude more than the combined funding of all but one (and my current, which I only started this week) of my employers over the past ten years. If spent wisely, 40 million can develop a sizeable amount of software. But you’re right, plenty more companies burn through that without much to show for so in comparison WMF aren’t doing too bad, I guess. It still sounds somewhat excessive to me though.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Software development is very expensive if you're struggling with a lot of technical debt, and Wikipedia is a nearly 20 year old project at this point, with plenty of 'debt' of their own to deal with. Their software (MediaWiki) is still PHP-based, and for the longest time they were running on MySQL.

by jcrben 7y ago

s1artibartfast 7y ago

Just Curious: In what way is the continual improvement of tools a motivation to keep editing? Do you think that $40 million is a reasonable cost for those improvements?

jcrben 7y ago
If you edit using Visual Editor and compare that to the old wiki markup, you will understand. Visual Editor much faster esp. with automatic citation templates. My time is valuable (more than when I started as a poor college student) and my tolerance for bad UX has declined as technology in general has improved. And that's just one tool which has improved. There's an annual community wishlist survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_20... And yes, it's reasonable. I work in tech as a software engineer and it's not as cheap as people think.
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  Thanks for responding!
- dkersten 7y ago
  Yes software development is a lot more expensive than people think, but 40 million is an order of magnitude more than the combined funding of all but one (and my current, which I only started this week) of my employers over the past ten years. If spent wisely, 40 million can develop a sizeable amount of software. But you’re right, plenty more companies burn through that without much to show for so in comparison WMF aren’t doing too bad, I guess. It still sounds somewhat excessive to me though.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Software development is very expensive if you're struggling with a lot of technical debt, and Wikipedia is a nearly 20 year old project at this point, with plenty of 'debt' of their own to deal with. Their software (MediaWiki) is still PHP-based, and for the longest time they were running on MySQL.