Why doesn't Wikipedia add sharing features to its site?

There's two questions here: why doesn't Wikipedia have social sharing features and what effect would it have if it did? Okay, first one is easy: Wikipedia doesn't have social sharing features because it tries to be neutral towards commercial social networking sites and so on. Let's say Wikipedia decided to add links to post articles on Twitter and Facebook. Suddenly up pops Reddit and Digg and MySpace asking why they didn't get included. Where does it stop? You'll end up with something like this: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2573-when-your-make-sharing-easy8221 There are also problems with potential tracking code. Wikipedia doesn't use any third-party analytics services like Google because of privacy concerns. The British National Health Service has already been told off (see http://mmt.me.uk/blog/2010/11/21/nhs-and-tracking/) for using Facebook 'Like' links on their site and potentially allowing Facebook and Google to track users. This is of special concern to a site like NHS Direct or Wikipedia where people should be able to expect to look up medical conditions, sexuality-related topics and other things which should have a fundamental level of personal privacy attached to them. I think for these reasons, if a 'share this' type function were proposed, it would be fairly likely that the Wikipedia community would reject it. That's not to say that other Wikimedia projects don't use them: I know that English Wikinews uses sharing links for a few social networks including Twitter and Facebook. As for what benefit would exist if they added them? Sure, some benefit would exist in terms of traffic and possibly in terms of the number of editors. But look at Twitter's search results for Wikipedia anyway: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=wikipedia - There's thousands of people tweeting about Wikipedia a day already. They are doing it by, you know, copying and pasting the article link into the input box. People seem to manage this just fine: I don't think I've ever used a 'Share this' link because I know how to copy-and-paste and I know that copy-and-pasting is far more predictable and less likely to result in spammy bullshit going out on my Twitter account than using a link.

Firstly, thanks for the A2A. I am far from being an expert over such matters and honestly, I am not sure if there is a way to solve the ideological complications between The Wikimedia Foundation and Facebook (…, Twitter etc.) if such a thing has to take place. It would be interesting to see if Mr has anything to say about this. The privacy policy seems to be the issue. has made it very clear here, Whenever you see a "like this" or "tweet this" button, you are looking at a page/site that has sold your browsing habits to Facebook or Twitter. Still, I will try to answer this as a netizen and a recurring user of Wikipedia. Now this is an interesting thought really and one, which I am pretty sure about, has at some point or other run through the minds of many a web users. Pros Many sites these days have the “share on FB, Twitter… etc.” option nowadays and it is helpful at times. In fact, and this is a personal opinion, this feature has to a large extent helped in keeping such sites a bit more interesting and interactive at times. Let me give some examples, If anyone cares to scroll through their FB feed anymore they will find that it is mostly dominated by memes, pictures etc.(which is irritating at times but it provides some bored people something to do and crack a laugh about!). Many pages which have been set up exclusively for sharing such content have followers running into 5ks and more. For a sports buff like me or anyone with specific interests find it easy to share content right from our favorite website on our wall, friends’ wall or our page rather than going through trivialities such as copying the links and posting them, which more often than not most will do without. Providing the average Web user the ability to do the same with Wikipedia is an idea which I would like to see implemented, as it will provide the online crowd on such social networking websites something better to do rather than just sit and fool around at “Ye to aisa hona chahiye, waise to wo bhi hota hai…” jokes and sharing inspirational status and quotes, and the cherry on the cake, those ‘wonderful’ memes(some of which are actually very funny) all day long! Cons All the pros are fine but they should not come at the cost of the user’s privacy, surely not at the cost of their privacy! Plus people who really care about any article in general will take the pains to share them the good old fashioned way(CtrlC + CtrlV anyone?). And I don’t see it happening in the near future anyway because it is not a matter of such great importance that both the sides will sit down and do something about it. The social networking sites are doing well, and Wikipedia won’t be “selling our browsing habits” anytime. And the most important point according to me is that people might search stuff on Wikipedia which is personal and have a sense of discomfort about them, that is different from what they expect from social networking websites. They won't want the 'weird site' for some medical condition popping up about which they had searched on Wikipedia. Google is enough for that!(No offence)   Conclusion I think I can live without the feature for now.

I would like such a feature (even better, share/like features for individual sections of articles). However, I think the Wikimedia Foundation does not wish to do this since it would run against their privacy policy (basically, it would give Facebook information about who is visiting specific pages on Wikipedia, because loading the share button would involve a call to Facebook's servers that would be linked with the user's Facebook login).

You can add http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TheDJ/Sharebox to give you these options. Having sharing options by default is a perennial proposal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Share_pages_on_Facebook.2C_Twitter_etc.

Wikipedia doesn't need social. In essence, it is the online encyclopedia. Every one knows about them. And everyone trusts them to be the ultimate source for information. Furthermore, most searches for general information result in a wikipedia link within the first 5 links. Just because you can do social doesn't mean you always should or need to. Research sites don't really need to share particular pages. I mean, isn't the point that they should have a page on every conceivable topic out there. What research sites need to be successful is to make themselves the known authority. They do that more through SEO and by having trusted quality content then by embedding social sharing links. Users who find something interesting they want to share will share it anyway. The mechanism to do so doesn't need to be on every page.

I believe it would have to depend on how much value is reflected in the tweet driving traffic to Wikipedia. Can the tweet be interesting enough to drive users to an encyclopedic site? Are users looking to Twitter and Facebook for some basic knowledge on a subject? From my perspective, in response to my last question, I don't believe so. Wikipedia is considered an informational site, not a current event or hot item of interest site.