4 ms·

The Wikipedia Twitter page has a lot of followers, but engagement is very low, and most of the tweets are random topics. What advantages does a mastodon feed p

The Wikipedia Twitter page has a lot of followers, but engagement is very low, and most of the tweets are random topics. What advantages does a mastodon feed provide? In my opinion, if Wikipedia is seeking more social media engagement, they should focus on the big platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.

Kye 3y ago
The same reason the EU does, among many other organizations and companies. It's a backup and alternative, not too much work to run if it's only for people on the inside, and cross-posting is as simple as checking a box in a growing number of social media management tools.
nunobrito 3y ago
That's the easy route. The reason why those platforms are avoided is mostly because of the Wikimedia/wikipedia commitment to promote open source and privacy respecting platforms. Arguably none of those are world-famous with a positive note for those attributes.
WolfeReader 3y ago
Each of those platforms you mentioned is corporate-controlled. The "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is probably more interested in engaging with open-source, non-centralized tech when possible.
rsynnott 3y ago
As you say, they have a Twitter. Twitter could, at this point, vanish up its own arse at any moment. It was largely unusable for about three days recently. It remains pretty broken for non-logged-in people. Backup plans are hardly surprising. Frankly, anyone who uses Twitter for anything more than entertainment should be looking at backup plans at this stage.
- CSSer 3y ago
  It's even really sad to see that there's a lot of embedded Twitter content around the web that has been either breaking or disappearing for one reason or another too.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    At least the default Twitter embed codes have the plaintext in there
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Ssssh. He probably hasn't noticed yet; don't point it out.
dragontamer 3y ago
> What advantages does a mastodon feed provide? Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which requires a log in these days. ----------- Lets reverse the discussion. What does Twitter offer Wikipedia that Mastodon does not? Since Wikipedia's engagement is largely readers / followers with very little comments, the read-only experience is king, is it not? Mastodon therefore offers a better reading experience, as it doesn't have advertisements, it isn't going to randomly go down (stability of Mastodon has improved a lot while the stability of Twitter is declining), running your own Mastodon instance allows for any size posts (no need for Wikipedia to pay Twitter Blue to get 2000-character posts. Wikipedia can just configure Mastodon to allow 2000 or 20,000-character posts), etc. etc. Why should Wikipedia stick to 250-character posts on a website that can't be read by anonymous users that will shove ads into your face in between posts? > YouTube Does Wikipedia even have substantial video content to share on Youtube? > Instagram I guess you mean Threads, which is the closest analog to Mastodon and Twitter. I haven't used Threads though so I'll defer to other posters. > Facebook Way too closed and insular. Facebook is focused on smaller groups and smaller social networks. Its like the "login" problem for Twitter but a hundred-times worse.
- orwin 3y ago
  > Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which requires a log in these days. Now it allows you to read the linked tweet, but not the response/thread, so it's basically useless for stuff that interested me still on Twitter (and tbh, Nitter was 10 times better than Twitter UI for stuff that interest me)
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  >What does Twitter offer Wikipedia that Mastodon does not? Though it may not seem like it to the highly-technical terminally-online, twitter is still very much the Schelling point[1] for social media communication. People, by default, will look for communications from (and attempt to get the attention of) large entities on twitter (especially during events like the main website going down). This is a huge deal that needs to be accounted for when listing what the platform "has to offer". (Of course, the way things are going, this may change in the future. This is by no means a bad move by the WMF. The future is uncertain, though, and it's just worth being realistic about the value twitter still holds in the present.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

Kye 3y ago

The same reason the EU does, among many other organizations and companies. It's a backup and alternative, not too much work to run if it's only for people on the inside, and cross-posting is as simple as checking a box in a growing number of social media management tools.

nunobrito 3y ago

That's the easy route. The reason why those platforms are avoided is mostly because of the Wikimedia/wikipedia commitment to promote open source and privacy respecting platforms. Arguably none of those are world-famous with a positive note for those attributes.

WolfeReader 3y ago

Each of those platforms you mentioned is corporate-controlled. The "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is probably more interested in engaging with open-source, non-centralized tech when possible.

rsynnott 3y ago

As you say, they have a Twitter. Twitter could, at this point, vanish up its own arse at any moment. It was largely unusable for about three days recently. It remains pretty broken for non-logged-in people. Backup plans are hardly surprising. Frankly, anyone who uses Twitter for anything more than entertainment should be looking at backup plans at this stage.

CSSer 3y ago
It's even really sad to see that there's a lot of embedded Twitter content around the web that has been either breaking or disappearing for one reason or another too.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  At least the default Twitter embed codes have the plaintext in there
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Ssssh. He probably hasn't noticed yet; don't point it out.

dragontamer 3y ago

> What advantages does a mastodon feed provide? Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which requires a log in these days. ----------- Lets reverse the discussion. What does Twitter offer Wikipedia that Mastodon does not? Since Wikipedia's engagement is largely readers / followers with very little comments, the read-only experience is king, is it not? Mastodon therefore offers a better reading experience, as it doesn't have advertisements, it isn't going to randomly go down (stability of Mastodon has improved a lot while the stability of Twitter is declining), running your own Mastodon instance allows for any size posts (no need for Wikipedia to pay Twitter Blue to get 2000-character posts. Wikipedia can just configure Mastodon to allow 2000 or 20,000-character posts), etc. etc. Why should Wikipedia stick to 250-character posts on a website that can't be read by anonymous users that will shove ads into your face in between posts? > YouTube Does Wikipedia even have substantial video content to share on Youtube? > Instagram I guess you mean Threads, which is the closest analog to Mastodon and Twitter. I haven't used Threads though so I'll defer to other posters. > Facebook Way too closed and insular. Facebook is focused on smaller groups and smaller social networks. Its like the "login" problem for Twitter but a hundred-times worse.

orwin 3y ago
> Allowing anonymous users to read posts, vs Twitter which requires a log in these days. Now it allows you to read the linked tweet, but not the response/thread, so it's basically useless for stuff that interested me still on Twitter (and tbh, Nitter was 10 times better than Twitter UI for stuff that interest me)
LordDragonfang 3y ago
>What does Twitter offer Wikipedia that Mastodon does not? Though it may not seem like it to the highly-technical terminally-online, twitter is still very much the Schelling point[1] for social media communication. People, by default, will look for communications from (and attempt to get the attention of) large entities on twitter (especially during events like the main website going down). This is a huge deal that needs to be accounted for when listing what the platform "has to offer". (Of course, the way things are going, this may change in the future. This is by no means a bad move by the WMF. The future is uncertain, though, and it's just worth being realistic about the value twitter still holds in the present.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)