User:Samwalton9/Share

Draft RfC for adding Share icons to popular social media sites on Wikipedia articles.

Misc. notes:

• 10-40% of news sites' tweets came from social media buttons - [1]
• "Facebook integration already exists in MediaWiki, and is used on Wikia" - should look into this
• User:TheDJ/sharebox.js used AddThis, which had tracking concerns as third party. Native solution preferable.
• Wikimediafoundation.org has a social bookmarks template.
• Wikinews has Social_bookmarks too.
• Signpost has the kind of implementation we would want (example, on the right). This generates this kind of link, which is simply a URL: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?t=Main_Page&u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMain_Page
• WMF research showed that people in non-Western countries often don't know what Wikipedia is - but they likely use social media. A good way to reach them.
• Such sharing isn't just for broad sharing to all friends; also encourages individuals sharing with other individuals, potential for recruiting topic experts.
• Previous discussions very much filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt rather than arguments based in fact.

Primary arguments against from previous discussions

• Sharing links can somehow track users.
  • Firstly, no, they can't - they would just be pre-loaded URLs.
  • Some variations of sharing/liking buttons can do this - but this proposal would be simple for pre-loaded shares, not like or tweet tracking buttons.
  • They could track in the sense that they know which articles were linked on the site but they know that anyway, and ultimately who cares.
• Users can just copy and paste onto social media sites.
  • Sure, users who know how that works could, but many don't, and even for readers who can copy and paste, the process is made more convenient; i.e. this isn't a real argument against.
• Users posting on Facebook etc. reduces our credibility
  • This makes no sense - users can and should use Wikipedia for whatever purpose they desire, wherever they desire. That's sort of the whole point.
• Seeing how many likes a page has wouldn't be desirable
  • This doesn't have to be a feature - the share buttons don't have to be the kind that also contains that data.
• We have no reason to / Why should we / What's the point
  • Our entire mission is to share knowledge with the world - making that easier can only be a good thing. "A share button is for sharing content, and that is a Wikimedia goal."
  • Ultimately this is a reader-facing change; this is not designed to change the experience for editors. Many voters in previous discussions saw this as something that was somehow supposed to benefit the Wikipedia editing community. Possible (increased viewership -> increased number of editors), but totally not the primary objective.
  • We're asked for this on a regular basis so there's evidently a desire for it amongst our readers.
• We would encourage vandalism/spam
  • If we're really concerned about attracting more vandalism the more we allow people to link to Wikipedia then the logical conclusion is that we stop any external links to Wikipedia from anywhere working. Our aim should be more access and more views, not less.
  • Also no evidence that sharing on social media would attract more of the 'wrong kind' of people than the 'right kind'.
• I don't want to see them
  • We would have an opt-out preference for Wikipedia accounts, and it wouldn't be enabled by default for existing accounts.
• Wikipedia is not a social networking site
  • Nothing about this proposal changes that - we would be allowing users to share our content elsewhere, not encouraging them to turn Wikipedia itself into anything different. Nothing about this proposal changes how users interact on Wikipedia.
  • NOTSOCIALNETWORK doesn't say anything about linking to social media accounts; it says you shouldn't use Wikipedia itself as a social network.
• The one valid (in my eyes) concern is that we would need to choose which social media outlets to include. I'm sure we can come up with some metric to use, that will be updatable as trends inevitably change.

RfC main points

1. Readers often request to have social media sharing buttons.
2. We should help readers share our content as widely and easily as possible - sharing this free knowledge is our mission.
3. These buttons would be of the pre-loaded URL form, rather than the trackable widget form
4. Other Wikis, including Wikinews, have these already. Signpost already has these too.
5. This is a perennial proposal, and previous opposition has focused on NOTSOCIALNETWORK, the view that attracting more readers/editors from social media is a bad thing, and that there is generally no point. Also concerns about which sites to include.
6. A section on my personal (i.e. not part of the main RfC so as to remain neutral) rebuttals to the previous opposition arguments (see previous section)