MS Forum: Community Review Report

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Questions & Responses

What do you think about the proposed name and domain?

[Forum thread]

Sentiment: The discussion reflects general agreement to move from the current domain to an alternative containing “Wikimedia”. The reason expressed by the supporters of this change is that the domain must reflect an official Wikimedia site. On the other hand, many users do not seem to be bothered by the current domain name, now that the MS Forum is filled with Wikimedia participants and content. *.wikimedia.org options have been discouraged by the Wikimedia Site Reliability Engineering team as long as this forum is hosted on a third-party server. We are still in the brainstorming phase. No alternative names to “Movement Strategy Forum” have been proposed.

Alternative names:

  • (none so far)

Alternative domains:

Options discarded because “*.wikimedia.org” alternatives are not allowed:

Summary of Neutral Opinion/s:

  • Using a [wikimedia.org] domain involves a security trade-off that should be analyzed by our security experts.

Summary of Critical Opinions:

  • The domain should include “wikimedia” to show it is a trustable and official site where the usual privacy and safety/anti-harassment promises of the movement apply.
  • “MS Forum” sounds like an antiquated Microsoft product,
    while .org TLD sounds like it is formalized as an NGO.
  • .org is misleading because it identifies an organization, and “Movement Strategy” is not one.

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?

[Forum thread]

This discussion was very detailed and these were the main points:

  • Meta-Wiki keeps being the canonical place for MS documentation.
    • The MS Forum is not a substitute for documentation on Meta-Wiki, but copying some information on the forum has some advantages. It will help to create awareness of information, which would be otherwise missed on Meta. It makes the information available in more languages through automatic translations. It also encourages more people (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 Movement Strategy channels in Telegram will continue to exist. The MSG team will continue posting announcements selectively. The team might continue exploring automatized ways of doing this as long as the results are good. The channels will be monitored for feedback and discussion.
    • However, it probably makes sense for the MSG team to not promote discussion on Telegram proactively. Also, the team might propose to close Telegram channels if they become inactive and recommend the MS Forum as an alternative instead.
  • We need to discuss ways to improve communications about Movement Strategy with the Wikimedia movement at-large, especially with the wiki projects. This requires a larger discussion involving editors and other volunteers locally active in the MS. These multilingual volunteers are visible on hundreds of different channels such as the project Village Pumps and social media platforms. The MSG team communicates with many of these communities regularly, and we need to agree on improving this coverage. The MS Forum is a helpful complement but not a substitute for all these channels. The goal is not to centralize all MS conversations on the forum, but to improve the connection between the MS Forum and the channels used by all Wikimedians potentially interested in participating.
    • 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 MS Forum updates to Wikimedia and social media users.

Channels discussed during the community review: