Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-03-29/Interview

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  • A disappointing lack of discussion of whether the screen banner campaigns are appropriate now and for the future – particularly the obstructive full-screen campaign appeal on phones. During the latter part of 2023, the splash screen impeded using Wikipedia for random momentary queries ("What is the population of Blahtown?" or "this film seems familiar, is it a remake?", etc.). This is an experience counter to point 3 in the linked Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2024-2025/Product & Technology OKRs. It is these queries which are typically the start of a down-the-rabbit-hole process, which lead to discovering the unexpected, correcting errors, etc., so are crucial to the project. If people ("consumers" in that WMF plan) feel impeded from using Wikipedia to seek quick info, the new search engines tools can appear easier to use (with or without hallucinated info). There is a danger in Fundraising simply operating on a rote diary (Aug: pick up last year’s campaign artefacts and get the en.wiki campaign started for Dec). Is there also strategic thinking – about mobile-first, about LLM-driven querying becoming prevalent elsewhere, about whether the splash-screen fails to "make our content easier to discover and interact with" - and, if so, how to re-orient for the future? AllyD (talk) 08:42, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The budget for the WMF needs to be shrunk drastically, there is no evidence more value is provided to users or editors with them as a behemoth than as a tight lean organization. They have developed a terminal case of Big Non-Profit brain. Antrocent (♫♬) 14:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)Reply