Using this forum in the context of events

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That’s a great suggestion! Do you have any ideas for how it might be used for Wikimania or the Summit?

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If I may venture an idea: each of Wikimania session related to Strategy can have a corresponding thread in the Forum, allowing participants to continue discussion that migh be time-limited during the session.

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True. This would be obvious start, but I can imagine people also using threads to prepare proposals (content pitch or invite to construct some together) for sessions and also fork newly developed ideas-topics that have span from and have urgencies beyond sessions (like localized versions of general/global actions)…mind you all of this is beyond 2 months and minimum I will make my minimum bold to highlight what would be sufficient.

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This discussion is very interesting and people might want to share their ideas beyond the general discussion about What goals should be set to consider this forum successful? This is why now it’s in a stand-alone topic.

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This is where I think a functional MS Forum-Metawiki connection would serve us best: the pitches could be prepared on Meta, while the discussion could be happening both on its Meta talkpage or here, on a thread. That way, it could serve both ways; this could also happen for conferences, as session pages are normally on Meta.

I hope that the various sessions of upcoming Wikimania could be an experiment ground for this; I imagine that this may need a separate agreement with the organizing team. The Wikimedia Summit could also try this if it the experiment went well at Wikimania (maybe separate thread for separate provisions of the Draft Global Charter?)

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If you have or need non Wikimedians for a session it might be useful even to center around Discourse and not MediaWiki system while developing concept and grouping altogether…

Yes and no…dependes if you want to grant (at least some) people bottom-up priviledge to create (limited number of) forum topics in designated context, so they can bootstrap their initiatives…than agreements would only be needed if full top-down commitment of the event exists to utilize it, but considering the current timeline, this might be tricky with uncertain (official) adoption.

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A post was split to a new topic: Hobeto ixten badugu Wikipedia

In addition, we can also have realtime chat threads during the course of the conference; both on individual session threads and a general thread for the event.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Test the Discourse Chat beta plugin in this forum

Have started this one for this weekend’s WikiNusantara national conference:

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@Kiril_Simeonovski given that CEE and Central Asia are such a dense garden of languages, do you think that this forum and it’s automating translation Features could be helpful in connection to events in your region?

@Qgil-WMF we were already discussing last year to resurect WM SPACES for CEE HUB.
I think we wanted to investigate in detail how quality of automatic language translation deteriorates with smaller language groups.

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Feel free to test the forum as much as you need! Testing of pairs of smaller languages is very welcome indeed.

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Sure - however IMHO it needed to be in more organized and resourced way for CEE HUB *(if to become ‘official’), that would include small project of finding people with skills and interests, assuring alocated time, onboarding and engaging communities, tracking success-failures…drawing not only conclusions, but also points for future actions.

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For Wikimania it is surely too late for anything official. Still, we could follow the sessions being approved and invite the speakers to use the forum to warm up their sessions, gather interest, and collaborate. Also to have a place to continue the conversation after the event.

I hope so. One of the main problems that we have faced in the CEE region in the last couple of years is the language barrier which prevents people from the communities of Russia who do not have good command in English to take an active part in region-wide discussions and events. However, things have improved after introducing language interpretation at the past two Wikimedia CEE Meetings, as well as some other online events.

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Is there an option for unofficial Wikimania and other events?

I can imagine individuals enthusiastic over Discord using it before official adoption, but … for not to be locked in with chicken-and-egg situation…it should be possible to apply for an individual user status that grants you permission to start limited number of new discussions and likely for their sub-threads? This could be a separate section per event or one with all WM events?
+…is it an option for individuals that would build up significant content and userbase here for events beyond summer* to continue using this instance of Discourse at least until end of October? *(like Wikimedia Summit in September or October CEE Meeting and QueeringWikipedia conf.)

Uważam, że korzystanie z Discourse może być przydatne do rozmów po sesji lub do zadawania pytań prowadzącym przed ich sesją. Prowadzący prezentacje mogliby również umieścić na Discourse skróty swoich sesji, żeby społeczność mogła się z nimi zapoznać w większej liczbie języków!

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The admins of this forum would love to work with event organizers and event participants, officially or unofficially. :slight_smile:

Technically there are different ways to approach this. One way could be to have an Events category with subcategories for each event. This is clear from an event perspective but it might clash with the organization of the forum by recommendations. If a Wikimania discussion is very useful for Topics For Impact, it would be a pity not to have it in that category, where other users specifically interested in this recommendation (and perhaps not in the event itself) will find it. Also, categories of events may be rather empty especially at the beginning, or ghost places during 10 months between events.

Another approach could be to have a main topic for an events i.e. “Wikimania 2022” a #wikimania tag, and use the topic and the tag to spin off or track other Wikimania related discussions about any of the recommendations.

There are probably other sensible combinations.

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OK - will talk to two events coordinators I am involved with to consider this, but both are in Autmn and some commitment that forum should still (at least somewhat) operate by the end of 2022 (even if just for us) should exist, not to have fast close down like WM Spaces. If, when and how can this commitment be made? (I know running a service is not super co$tly financially for WMF, but there are other aspects)

If software and setup is flexible enough with generating and forwarding URLs (that will not die but redirect in case of refactoring) I would think both are useful to practice for different scenarios and even switch between them, but then just clean up later if some categories and topics did not get used at all. No?