[03:22:43] Newsletter 71: How to make functions more popular? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-05-05 [06:38:03] I think more important than having all these materials around it, is to have a few real examples. On Wikipedia, people usually do not start reading policy pages and tutorials, they see an existing article and mimic that. (re @wmtelegram_bot: Newsletter 71: How to make functions more popular? https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-0...) [07:16:49] are functions really that hard for people to grasp? I would describe them as being like recipes for the computer - a set of steps for doing something that you can follow again later and (hopefully!) get the same result, and a library of functions is like a recipe book. the bit that seems like it would be less obvious to me is (from a less technical perspective) why would I want a recipe book for the computer (i.e. what cool [07:24:28] and I agree with jan - actual examples are way more engaging than explanations. if someone sees something cool in action, they're more likely to want to do it themselves too [11:58:43] thanks for also asking about examples [22:15:42] Is Ori Livneh on Telegram? T307820 [22:18:10] Yes, fully agree on the examples. I would expect us to have a lot of examples linked right from the Main Page. But what I wonder is: are the examples sufficient to make people come back and search for a function that they haven't seen before? [22:18:20] Wikipedia didn't only grow because people saw individual articles and then come back for those articles, but because they understood "oh, it has these articles, and since it is an encyclopedia, it should also have these other articles, let's take a look" [22:18:28] I am wondering how to get that second effect. [22:18:39] But fully agreed on having examples! [22:19:31] What makes you think that this effect won't happen by itself? (re @wmtelegram_bot: Wikipedia didn't only grow because people saw individual articles and then come back for those articles, but because...) [22:21:37] Experience in the past with my work on the Semantic Web, SMW, or Wikidata: people love and grok examples, and come back to those, but most of them don't understand the space of opportunities the examples indicate. [22:22:30] Some do, and they drive the whole vision forward and explore the space of possibilities, but it would be a more sustainable growth if we had a wider number of people understanding the larger space. [22:26:43] @mahir256: he is on irc, @atdt