Forum Weekly Report

Just a minor comment about the format of this topic—since each weekly update is an accumulation of statistics from the full timeline of the forum, it contains a lot of redundant information for which the historical comparison isn’t very useful. For example, “What goals should be set to consider this forum successful?” is summarized three times with slightly different but overlapping content. It’s a bit confusing and exhausting to try reading through the entire topic. I would recommend overwriting a single top-post with all of the information consolidated in one place, and if there are important details about the evolution of sentiment for example, then break that out in prose (ie., “sentiment was positive at first, then became …”).

thanks for this update. i think that at some point, we should open some thread to jointly discuss or strategize some methods and some ways to present this forum to the meta community, in a persuasive manner, to truly advocate for the full acceptance and recognition of this forum, as a resource of genuine value to the community.

for now, I am holding off on creating a new thread for that purpose. either someone else can set up a new thread now if they wish; or alternately, I may set up a new thread for this topic myself, if noone else does so in the near future.

Great suggestion, @Adamw! I’ll try it out for tomorrow’s report.

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Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

Last week (June 14-20), the most intense activity in the forum happened in a private space for affiliate representatives, who proposed and voted on Affiliate questions selected for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022. You can check the results on a new category dedicated to Elections. Other people involved in committees and events are exploring possibilities to experiment with private spaces in the forum.

This forum is almost one month old. The #forum-commmunity-review is almost half-way. There have been many discussions, and it starts to be the time to converge on a plan.

  • Proposal: MS Forum moderation and administration - There was a suggestion to remove the requirement for candidates to not be sanctioned in any project, given that these sanctions might be controversial sometimes. The suggestion has been accepted and the requirement has been removed.

Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

We are halfway through this community review ending on July 24! Last week was calmer in the forum. The Movement Strategy and Governance team had our first face-to-face meeting ever and we were quite away from the keyboard. Many people participated in the Hubs events and we are curious to see whether follow-up conversations will continue here.

New users keep joining. Some small communities are showing their interest in the forum by voting for the support of their language in the forum interface. One new experimental use of the forum is to have Board election candidates answer affiliate questions so that these answers are automatically readable in many languages.

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Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

If you’re in the northern hemisphere, summer - and summer holidays - are upon us! Activities on the Forum are leveling out.

The most significant update relates to the discussion around the proposed name and domain: The Wikimedia Site Reliability Engineering team prefers not to use the wikimedia.org domain for any new service (MediaWiki or not) that is not directly under their supervision. For third party services especially, the use of any other domain is usually a better option, or the only one.

We’re happy to continue the discussion and hear ideas on the topic itself - join us!

@NPhan_WMF , thank you for your helpful statistics and data above.

as you can see, there is a noticeable leveling-off in forum activity. I would like to try to explore posssible ways or possible ideas to improve or increase engagement with the community in general, and to enhance the usefulness of this forum, and its engagement with the community in general.

in connection with that,we should try to look at

  • (a) what kind of topics would benefit the community if discussed here;

  • (b) any methods we might use to make this forum more visible and prominent to the community, in order to allow community members to find it;

  • (c) any resources or new topics we can offer, or any refinements, or any new processes that we might introduce, which might give community members an easier way to find this forum, and also reach wider segments of the community, in order to: (a) induce them and motivate them to want to actively use this forum, and (b) induce them to actually feel there is some benefit to reading the ideas expressed by others here.,

if possible, I hope to try to explore these areas, and develop some ideas, in the weeks ahead. Thanks

if I may, I would like to tactfully suggest that the thread that you linked to above is not an ideal or optimal place to discuss ways to enahnce the usefulness of this forum to the community at large, as a general topic. yes, that thread’s topic has some sigificance and validity; however, it relates only to one specific topic; namely the best ways to find a good formulation for the domain name for these forums.

if we wish to truly develop these forums as a resource, then i would like to suggest that we should look for ways to approach that goal in a much more broad-based and wide-ranging manner.I hope you don’t mind my suggestion. I appreciate all of your amazing work and efforts. thanks.

Hi @Sm8900 , I don’t mind at all – when I noted that, it was in reference to specifically the domain discussions; that’s why I linked it out to that specific thread :slight_smile:

@NPhan_WMF , I think that perhaps it might be somewhat valid for me to ask, based upon the data above, what is thge current outlook, approach, general feeling, etc within the Wikimedia Foundation in regards to helping to foster this forum, or to help it to become a useful and viable community resource., what exactly is the goal here?? I am truly open to any answer on this. If the WMF has not currently made an intrinsic decision to necessarily proceed with this forum, then that is fine. However, I thought the whole point of the weekly data, was to help those of us who do seek to foster and promote this forum as a real resource for the community.

I truly appreciate all of your amazing work and efforts. Thanks.

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I appreciate any help, input, feedback or replies. thanks.

Great questions, @Sm8900.

My objective for posting these update is to provide the community with transparency and visibility into how things are going on the Forum; some of this data is not accessible to non-admins.

As for the Foundation’s stance regarding this Forum: it is my understanding at this time is that as long as this Forum adds value to the global discussions of Movement Strategy among communities, then we are supported in keeping it going. If there are “red flags” that the community raises that we cannot address or reconcile - primarily around privacy and safety issues - then we should pause until we can fix them. If participation languishes or diminishes, then we will also re-evaluate the Forum’s usefulness. However, if it continues to be a place where people can collaborate across regions and languages - even if it’s not everyone - and advance the Movement Strategy together, then we have a good basis for the Foundation’s continued support.

Before the end of the community review (probably some time next week), my colleague @RMaung_WMF will share a proposal for evaluating the success of the Forum based on some measurable outcomes. She’ll be sharing it in this topic and we welcome feedback and suggestions/ideas in response to her post.

Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

We are nearing the end of the community review period for the Forum - please continue to offer your feedback and thoughts on these review prompts. In particular, feedback is welcomed for the theory of change and evaluation plan for the MS Forum.

I’d like to highlight certain updates that might be of interest to you:

  • The report from the Hubs global conversations in June was published. Learn more and offer your comments here.
  • The Technical Decision Making Forum is seeking community representatives. Learn more and express your interest here.
  • There was a change in MCDC membership this month. Learn more and share comments here.
  • The Human Rights Impact Assessment was published recently. Learn more and share feedback here.
  • The 7th issue of the MSG Newsletter was published. You can find the previous three issues here.
  • Engage with some of the podcasts discussing Movement Strategy on the Forum. Check out the list here.
  • Learn about some of the Movement Strategy Implementation Grants here, and join us in congratulating the grantees!
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Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

Apologies for the delay this week - no excuses.

The community review period (May 24 - July 24) has just wrapped up; thank you to everyone for participating - for asking questions, offering suggestions, giving us your feedback (both positive and constructive)! And just because the review period has closed doesn’t mean you can’t continue giving us feedback and suggestions for improvement – we will always welcome those as we seek to co-create, co-own and collaborate with all Movement actors on the Forum!

Our team is working to pull together a report of the community review period to summarize the feedback and learnings during these two months. We are aiming to share it here in early August for your comments.

In the meantime, check out what’s happening around the Forum:

  • There’s an interesting conversation about Wikischool happening within the Central Asia and Central/Eastern Europe region here – check it out! (One of the goals of the Forum is to collaborate across regional and linguistic silos, allowing all Movement actors to learn about the cool activities happening from their peers, and this is a great example of that!)
  • The Movement Strategy initiative Meta pages are being updated or in some cases, created! We’ll be rolling them out, initiative by initiative, on the Forum and we invite you to give us feedback (there are prompts to guide you), ask us questions, or discuss the initiative on their respective topics.
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the number of new users will go way up for the next report. you’re welcome. :slight_smile:

I have posted a link to our forums, with an open invitation to others to come here and participate, at the page below. I will keep you posted if anything interesting may arise. thanks for all your efforts.

Admin page on English wikipedia

Check the first post for updated forum statistics.

Happy August, everyone!

Here are some reminders from the Forum:

Also, a note: with the end of the community review period, these weekly reports will now become monthly progress reports, which means in early September, I will share a report on how August went, and so on.

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I’ll be glad to see this week’s weekly report. at least 5 or 6 people seem to have clicked my invites to join this forum. I’ll be glad to get some data on the results. thanks!

that’s twelve new users in a single week. not bad! you can thank yours truly, Sm8900. :slight_smile: