(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 ) 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.
Sure, but please with more care and option to fully opt out.
Current WMF practices of posting almost everything to almost every channel (and then with corrections) ((and with reminders)) in recent campaigns are just about the worse waste of volunteer attention #whichHasLIMITS@CKoerner_WMF Thank you for understanding.
Sure, as staff we need to be careful. When I say "campaign’ I think about being smart about who you’re trying to reach, and trying to talk to those folks where they are and in a meaningful way. So instead of sending a mass message to all 300+ Village Pumps and dropping a few links into Telegram groups, you figure out where the folks you are trying to reach are already gathering (talk pages? social media? local meetups?) and try to engage in a deeper way.
this topic is totally and highly relevant. I have opened a new thread to suggest some new general resources that perhaps we could explore to start to address this somewhat, in incremental steps.
one thing that I would like to suggest or propose, is a navbox for use at Wikipedia, which would be centered on the current decade, and provide a comprehensive set of link for discussions, decision processes, new procedural draft processes, etc. which are happening now.
if we entitle the navbox as “WMF processes for 2020s,” or something similar, then that provides some initial way to start to clear away some of the thickets and some of the fog clouds, and start to provide a clear, organized, comprehensible way to let the community know about various and general processes which are happening now, and which we would like highlight to them, for their input.
I would like to suggest that folks please visit the thread below to offer any comments or feedback they may have, if they are so inclined. but just to recap., I agree entirely with the importance of the topics being suggested and discussed here on this thread. thanks!
The relationship between the Forum and Meta needs to be clarified. Users preferring the use of Meta should be able to follow and participate in the Movement Strategy implementation. We have started to experiment with this Forum community review, also with the Pilot Criteria for Hubs. Feedback is welcome!
Good that we understand each other,
but this still happens more often than not :-/
As for…
With all due respect I have heard this formulation at least 20 times by different WMF folx at different events, formulated in the same way, to the point that I fear it is a slide from power point presentation that circulates in your intranet to be repeated as mantra, but has no actual connection to lived experience. The worse interpretation of that IMHO is when I hear it as an argument to go post announcements in Facebook, Discord and other commercial channels, but not into any of the open/free/libre platforms *(we might be the last significant media community claiming freedom to consider Fediverse).
Anyway - ‘meeting communities’ is complex topic and I will not re-open it here.
I favoir using this forum, namely, the DISCOURSE app, as a regular channel for discussiong sharing ideas, offering updates, ins short any and all deliberations required by the community.
in closing, one small note; please remember that the word “discourse” is an actual vocabulary word which itself means “discussion”!! this is not true of the name of other apps and platforms, i.e. “Telegram,” “Meta,” “Village Pump,” etc. so one small technical note or point of order, might be that when we refer to Discourse, let’s either be sure to call it “the app Discourse”! or alternately, maybe we can refer to this site as the “Forums,” but I’m not certain whether everyone else already knows what that means, or what it refers to. thanks!
Perennial proposal: build a new silo to unite the old silos
Alas this never works.
Silo X will not unite the disparate wiki + IRC + email + FB + Discord + TG + WhatsApp + Insta discussions. Instead let’s aim for a small number of lovingly-integrated pieces, with enthusiastic maintainers. –SJtalk 14:56, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
One thing several colleagues have asked me is whether there is a way to “announce something once and have it syndicated to all the relevant channels”. Being the designated mass messenger and distribution coordinator on the Movement Strategy and Governance team, I certainly share the desire!
I could see MS Forum being that starting place, since there is already bots built to interface with it. To syndicate content to wikis would require allowing the Discourse RSS feed to be called by wiki projects that wish to opt-in. Then, an automatic feed of the most recent announcements that have been made here can be displayed (maybe an #announcement tag?).
I guess the drawback would be that it won’t generate an edit on the target wiki, and I’m not sure then if there would be a way to “watchlist” the feed for new content.
I can see on phabricator that @CKoerner_WMF has a similar feed set up for Diff posts on Meta. Chris do you have anything to share about that process? Has it done what you hoped? Is what I’m talking about possible? Did I correctly describe the benefits and drawbacks?
IMHO syndicated (category) blocks (like .rss feeds in blocks in WordPress) need not to have separate rendered page, let alone items in any other wiki, but just display as links to here.
Technical work I can imagine should be on generating RSS with all topics in all languages and checking if that works well enough *(+ having fallback that .rss displays also in EN which should be checked also by fellow humans :-p )…no? Categories of different types of announcements need most care *(and editorial overview), but if the block view is not enough than some custom work needs to be done beyond just rendering titles.
Yes, I also feel that this is a major goal and a major priority. Not only that, but if and when we do create a technical feed for communication and updates, we should make sure to make it very very easy for editors and members of the community to find it very very easily.
One suggestion I would like to strongly recommend is to create a navbox that provides the links to some pages that provide the steps to sign up to receive any such updates, and makes it very easy for anyone to understand the basic steps to do so.
As per the page below, at Meta, I am accepting the invitation to comment here. my simple answer to the question above, is actually; no, there are not other channels or platforms that I would like to use. this for me is the optimal platform for use. I would like to see this platform promoted proactively to the general community.
In short, and after everything that has been discussed and tried, the summary could be:
Meta-Wiki keeps being the canonical place for MS documentation.
The Forum is not a substitute for this, but copying some MS information here contributes to the awareness of MS, the availability of this content in more languages through automatic translations, and also encourages more people (and especially newcomers) to participate.
Meta-Wiki keeps being a channel where we invite people to discuss. Any invitation to provide feedback or discuss must include Meta-Wiki. Feedback received through Talk pages must continue to be addressed.
The current MS channels in Telegram continue to exist. The MSG team will continue posting announcements selectively. We might continue exploring automatized ways of doing this as long as the results are good. We will continue monitoring these channels for feedback and discussion.
However, it probably makes sense for the MSG team not to promote discussion there proactively. Also, we might propose closing channels if they become inactive, promoting alternative venues in the Forum instead.
We all need to discuss how to improve the communications about MS with the Wikimedia movement at large, and especially with the wiki projects. This belongs to a larger discussion about involving editors and other volunteers locally active in the MS. These volunteers can be found in hundreds of different channels using many languages, in a combination of Village Pumps and social media platforms. The MSG team is already communicating regularly with many of these communities and we need to agree on ways to improve this coverage. This Forum is a helpful complement but not a substitute for all these channels. The goal is not to centralize all MS conversations here by bringing everyone here, but to improve the connections between this Forum and the channels used by all Wikimedians potentially interested in participating in the MS.
The solution probably consists of a combination of human work by ambassador-like roles (by volunteers and paid staff from affiliates and the Foundation) and tools to automatically distribute Forum updates and notifications to Wikimedia and social media users.
This summary was typed quickly. Feedback welcome, so that we can improve the summary of this post and include it in the #forum-community-review report.
Perhaps another thing to note was the success of the forum in providing a lightweight private space for ad hoc groups to organize their discussions including an easy way to show support for a given suggestion. (Thinking here of the Affiliate question period)
I agree. But I would also highlight the ability of the MS forums to actually expedite discussion topics that are somewhat more heavyweight in nature, namely by providing threads which are semi-permanent, and which therefore allow a topic to remain active over weeks or months, or alternatively to become somewhat dormant, but then to regain active status if someone wants to provide new data or a new update.
I know it is vacation times in WMF, but if there is anyone still enthusiastic to do something new in 2022, please consider on establishing Fediverse accounts. Wikimedians have (individually, but also some affiliates and user groups) done this in past month or before.
I’m with you on that @Zblace . also I would like to see the MS forums remain active on a consistent basis. so I am glad you are offering some new ideas here.
) 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.