Better META management and info sustainability

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One of the reasons why this forum is appealing (to some of us) is also because META is in a such mess that it is most useful to people who spend a lot of their time there.

It is hard to visually judge what is valid, what is deprecated, what is duplicated, and what has been drafted but abandoned. Unless you dig through the history of edits, recognize accounts and people with agency, and patterns of activity that look actionable - it can be fully misleading in many ways.

META recently ‘celebrated’ 20 years and only in the dedicated online program discussion (single zoom session) did I learn things that help me contextualize some of the info and knowledge there. Please consider posting suggestions for Better META management and info sustainability.

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#1 Clear STATUS and obvious visual information of PROJECTS and RESOURCES

One of the most problematic aspects (especially for novice) is that there is no uniform way to see what is the Status of Projects and Resources in quick and obvious way for non-insiders.
Even projects that are initiated and developed by WMF, that were mainatined and used (sometimes translated by volunteers in multiple languages) are left abandond without status notice. It would be good if similar situation does not repeat here in near future and I wonder what can be done to prevent it, as well as to start fixing META?

@Zblace is making an excellent point above. one of the best practical answers to that is to make a navbox that would be fully designed to enable users to get a fully thorough understanding and update for new items occurring there.

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The Manage Internal Knowledge recommendation is pretty much about improving Meta:

Establish a knowledge-base system with access to all Movement learning assets.

  • Design the knowledge-base to be user-friendly, participatory, functional, multilingual, and searchable to store all the internal knowledge resources of the Movement so contributors can be aware of what exists and where to find it.
  • Encourage the creation of metadata for every piece of internal knowledge to support its findability through search tools.

although in the spirit of not trying to be too specific and leaving the details to the implementation phase it doesn’t specify what the knowledge base should be, but I can’t really imagine any other approach making sense.

Status would be one example of information that should be first-class metadata, and not a labyrinth of templates.

I agree strongly with the concerns expressed above. as part of my own efforts to think about and develop some ideas to help in this area, I have created the thread below to offer some ideas for discussion. I would welcome any feedback, comments, ideas, or input there. thanks.

Isn’t the “metadata” we currently have, basically, a category? Are you thinking of something else that serves this purpose within the Meta platform?

Thank you for starting this. I have heard this a lot, and I’ve been experimenting with possible improvements (e.g. Movement Strategy Updates). It would also really help to hear what this would like for you in practice.

One way I’ve been trying to make these things visible is by creating an {{archived}} template to use at the top of pages like this, which leads to the more up-to-date content. Does it serve the purpose? Do you have more in mind?

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We don’t currently have real metadata support. Structured data on Commons is an example of how that could look like (although Commons doesn’t really do anything interesting with it currently, other than search).

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ok. please click the link below to view one draft I am working on for a possible navbox at wikipedia. the purpose of this navbox would be to provide a community resource, which could enable editors to find useful links in a single convenient place, to get info, updates, and an overview of various governance processes that are currently in progress. please click this link if you get a chance. I welcome and invite any feedback.

right now, this is only an incomplete initial draft; however I wanted to still submit this just to illustrate one concept that I am trying to highlight for raising community awareness.

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In all honesty I think this needs to be larger effort and IMHO should be much more radical.

(I am biased due to my training in visual&media arts and as someone who used and worked with c2, TWiki, DokuWiki, MoinMoin, TikiWiki and few others… super critical to what/how is (not) being done with MediaWiki)

UI/UX imagination is limited to very few metaphores that were only useful when starting encyclopedic publication on web.

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Thank you! This gives me a better idea of the structure that you have in mind. It seems to be focused on the Wikipedia editing community. I’d like to hear the results once you roll it out, and also if you’ve other plans to complement it in orienting people from en wp to the correct corners in Meta!

If I understand correctly, you’re referring to more substantial UX issues than a single template or two (maybe a replacement for templates themselves?). But if you have any ideas that you’d like me to experiment with, I’d be glad to take them in.

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In terms of how this is currently done on Meta and for the Foundation, we have two main outlets:

The former is better with long consultations and projects, the latter with individual meetings and events. I’ll also point to: Movement communications insights/Report/Front door - Meta which is something that is currently being worked on.

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thanks for these links. as I just posted on a new thread, the Wikimania conference is due to occur in August 2022, and I did not hear of it until just now, so this seems like one important topic to be disseminated. thanks.

EDIT:

here is a link to my new thread on this topic./ @RAdimer-WMF , you are welcome to comment there if you wish. thanks.

Was in the middle of replying when your edit posted, I love how Discourse did that live. I’ll finish up my response there!

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Okay, now we are getting there. here is a link to the main navbox that I have been working on as a draft.

This draft will let you see the basic format and structure. I am still compiling the actual content, but now you can get a much better idea of how the data, links, resources, etc, would be formatted and laid out for a truly structured way to view all links, resources, and data.

  • Draft of Navbox for resources, groups, events and governance processes at Meta site:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sm8900/index/drafts/navboxes/wiki_info#navbox_code

As we progress through the upcoming review which is scheduled for July 24, I would like to express my agreement to the points raised in the initial post in this thread.

I heartily endorse the retention and development of this forum site, i.e. the Movement Strategy forums, as a valued resource for the entire wiki community. and I heartily, commend, salute, applaud and admire all of the hard-working WMF staff who have helped to keep this forum active as a resource.

I hope to see this forum retained as an active resource, developed further, and utilized actively by the entire community. looking forward to further insights and discussions here!!!