Are there other channels that you would prefer to use in addition to or instead of this forum for Movement Strategy updates and feedback? Why?

Significant updates should be given in the usual channels. Local community discussion pages, primarily. People should not be expected to check back here, because for nearly every user this is going to be a single-purpose platform.

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بدأت، فعلًا، بالشعور بالراحة هنا، أعتقد إن كان إهتمام كافٍ بها فسيمكن الاستغناء تدريجيًا عن المنصات الأخرى أو على الأقل تُقسم الأعباء

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This idea sounds reasonable in theory. The question is what does it mean in practice. There are hundreds of communities, and they have very different “usual channels”.

One approach is to agree on which communities we should commit to keep informed, and the criteria to decide this.

Let’s look at the Board election 2021 turnout by wiki (click “Expand” in the table). We can take this is a recent example of massive participation by volunteers who care about Wikimedia beyond editing and beyond their wiki. Approximate numbers:

  • 440 wikis with at least 1 eligible voter
  • 180 with at least 5
  • 128 with at least 10
  • 78 with at least 25
  • 58 with at least 50
  • 44 with at least 100
  • 35 with at least 200
  • 30 with at least 250
  • 22 with at least 500
  • 14 with at least 1000

Where to draw the line?

A parallel approach is to agree on specific channels “supported” on different platforms outside of this forum. There are on-wiki media like The Signpost or Kurier, and then there are community channels on Telegram, Facebook, Discord, Twitter, WhatsApp… Depending on the communities, some channels are more relevant than others, and Village Pumps quickly become ghost towns as you leave the big wikis and get into the smaller ones.

And another parallel approach is to think on technical solutions to allow communities and individuals to take the information they want. We could use a moderated tag i.e. “important” (yeah, silly name) to identify topics especially relevant outside this forum and then…

  • People could sign up here, watch that topic (so they get email notifications) and ignore the rest, not even thinking of coming back regularly.
  • Tags can generate RSS feeds (see for instance this one for Sub-Saharan Africa), and from there it would be technically possible to pull these feeds on-wiki and on social media.
  • There are possibilities for tighter integration with specific platforms like Slack, Telegram. Discord…
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Wikis become ghost towns when you leave the big projects and get into the smaller ones…just in general. In some cases unless you start venturing into private discussion channels, which isn’t really an option here. These are also channels that can shift places and platforms frequently.

There are dozens of processes annually which involve informing every project, and they leave messages on the project’s village pump. MassMessage usages are cheap (unless they’re overdone, like with some community surveys in the past), and I don’t think that any attempt to inform the movement about this without using at least the usual, expected channels would be legitimate. I don’t like the idea of deciding which communities, which I will pointedly reword to “which parts of the movement”, you want to inform.

I definitely agree that there are other approaches, but which I believe should be used in connection with existing typical methods of informing communities. Messages in larger Discord and Telegram groups, Meta-Wiki, perhaps short-term CentralNotices during specifically important times, Diff posts (hoping for a future proliferation of Diff reading in editing communities), perhaps trying to get an article with The Signpost, affiliate communications, etc.

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My comments about which communities we should commit to keeping informed needs to be read in the context of translations. MassMessaging all the Village Pumps is cheap, sending a message in their language to everyone is not. This is why a tradeoff is needed when committing to inform community channels. Which languages should we (as maintainers of this forum) commit to keep informed in their language?

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(Reposting a related comment shared on Meta, for visibility and also for easier translation if needed. Depending on the activity, we may or may not be able to post every single comment, but we will try to bring here at least those opening new discussions.)

I prefer to use this wiki, the objective of meta-wiki is concentrate content and discussions that are not related to one single wiki. Wiki pages are not only for documentation, they can be used as a forum too. In my opinion what we need is organize better the wiki pages, I was looking for a wiki page to discuss about the implementation of the recommendation “evaluate, iterate and adapt” some time ago and I didn’t find it, maybe we are not discussing about the recommendations in meta-wiki just because we are not finding pages to do that. Danilo.mac talk 19:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

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Generalmente me siento cómodo leyendo mensajes en Telegram. Pienso que el uso de un banner general a través de los múltiples proyectos podría ser útil para avisos de gran importancia.

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This wiki. Theklan (talk) 10:04, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

(Copied from Meta)

This wiki #3. I do not plan to use or even experiment the other platform at all, specially after the WM Space debacle. Improve what we already have, instead of dispersing the effort, patience and time of volunteers by multiple new platforms. - Darwin Ahoy! 10:09, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

(Copied from Meta)

فعلًا، أمر مُحزن، ومُثبط، لسنا كلنا نتقن الإنجليزية وأكواد الميتا

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The first post contains a summary of the discussion so far. The top post is editable, and anyone can contribute to improving it. We will try to update it on a weekly basis in conjunction with the community review weekly reports.

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Please consider to retire Telegram support for general 2030 Wikimedia Strategy beyond urgency of LIVE events that need informal and fast exchanges - it is after all a chat platform *(maybe on steroids and popular) not ment to be used for sustained and persistent multi-topical discussions of big groups.

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For Telegram (and long etc) there is a chance to resolve it with automatic notifications that each channel could fine-tune as they prefer. See Test automatic updates from this forum to Telegram, Discord, Slack, etc

I agree with the idea of not relying on these proprietary / commercial / chat channels for “official discussion”, and call everyone here instead.

@Zblace is right in proposing retiring Telegram as a discussion platform. Aside from other already listed downsides, the most serious is the issue of security and privacy. Telegram encrypts messages only while in transit from a device to the platform’s servers. Once there, the data is decrypted and can be seen by Telegram (and potentially other third parties).

  • My personal opinion is that the Forum has already demonstrated its ability to bring linguistically diverse communities under one roof. Therefore, it has effectively contributed to solving at least two of the key problems of under-represented communities - the language barrier and fragmentation of discussions.
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I’m with you in theory, though I’d suggest we use carrots rather than sticks when it comes to moving folks away from Telegram. That is, any lengthy or official announcements can still be noted in the Telegram channel, but point to a post here, in this forum, where folks can see it in multiple languages.

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Although it is not exactly the same, see Create automatic feed of Diff posts.

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About sending links to Telegram channels, we have a first test running:

It is also worth noting that we have started experimenting with the connection of Meta and Forum discussions with [DRAFT] Minimum Criteria for Hub Pilots (it’s an experimentation and learning process)

A post was split to a new topic: Possibility to send private messages to other users

A post was split to a new topic: Telegram questions

(From my reply on Meta. Not sure I need to do this manually, but didn’t see it here automatically by the time I posted.)

In my experience, Meta is often viewed as its own community (or lack thereof :stuck_out_tongue: ) and project. In practical use it’s not the central organizing space. There are many spaces being used for various groups, communities, regions, interests. Some entirely outside of Wikimedia Foundation supported spaces (like Discord!). As a movement as large and diverse as ours we can not ever have just one. This forum is project and language agnostic, is topic-focused, and is easier for new folks. I see this like I see my work with Diff. It is part of a dynamic ecosystem with many opportunities for folks to jump in and learn more. We can build “campaigns” around what we’re trying to discuss or work on to leverage these systems and spaces. I wouldn’t suggest someone just create a page on Meta as much as I wouldn’t suggest someone just post a blog on Diff and call it done. This forum is not a replacement for, but an addition too our toolset to work with communities.

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