Hi Tilman,
Unfortunately it seems that many users experience the FDC as most away from their bed and saw the notice in English what triggered the users to write their annoyance down. The current load of feedback is indeed on that page, and I tried to reply as damage control to limit the number of annoyance as that often comes as result of having little or no information / explanation. Also I tried to resolve some misconceptions. I personally do understand why WMF wants to show this banner and tried in general to explain it.
In the past 2 months there have been shown 7 different banners in the Netherlands and also one Sitenotice. Wiki Loves Monuments started on nl-wiki, has been communicated well about and users understand that a banner is shown for it. In November a conference (WCN) is organized, many users attend it and people understand why a banner is shown. Two days a banner was shown for an edit-a-thon, as edit-a-thons are documented and users see a direct result in Wikipedia they understand and accept that. These three campaigns are community driven banners. Yes I created those, but my role is to support the local community and try to connect between the local community and developers/tech/WMF/Wikimedia Netherlands/Wikimedia Belgium/etc. Also the Sitenotice was community driven: it was for a writing contest on Wikipedia.
4 other banners have been set up: for the fundraiser (most experienced users do already donate their time, and do not want to donate money too, but in general users understand why it is needed and accept that), for the Privacy Policy (not much nl users commented), there was earlier a banner for the FDC, and now there is a banner for FDC. FDC is for most users far away, and this time it was also in English. The community seems to experience the subject of FDC something that should not be in a banner on every page for every logged in user. Then the annoyance is bigger than the understanding and complaints come up.
> I'm not opposed to the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual conference.
The community that comes to the annual conference is spread over several projects.
> it's probably worth asking the question if a single editathon in one
> city needs to be advertised with "high" priority countrywide banners
> to anonymous users.
It seems that the local community has not a problem with this banner, however I personally do consider that we should not create a banner for a subject like this after having this evaluated. But the local community requested it and seems not having a problem with this banner.
> The English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices
> for that kind of announcement instead
The English Wikipedia has been edited by many users around the world and there it sounds handy. The Dutch community is spread over several wiki's, that is why is why a Sitenotice is less used.
> That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one reason for
> adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar , to facilitate
> coordination and discussion.
This did not prevented that the Privacy Policy was set up at the same time as the banner for Wiki Loves Monuments, and there we noticed that the two banners competed with each other. We tested how much and when each banner was shown and we noticed that it appeared that the Privacy Policy banner was shown much more on the first page someone visited and actually repressed the WLM banner. Two banners at the same time causes a higher degree of banner blindness.
Compared with the 8 months January - August, the past two months where overloaded while the first 8 months were almost empty.
> but at least for major languages like Dutch, the intention
> is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you said
> yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch when it
> came live yesterday.
Another user on the Dutch Wikipedia who has his languages set in Dutch got the banner for FDC in English. I personally got it later in Dutch.
The reason why I wrote is not to blame anyone, but to promote thinking of other ways to communicate to the local communities. More notices aren't a good idea as this will result in more users fully blocking the CentralNotice or even whole wikis who block it. On the other hand since 2008 I try to promote more communication from both the chapters and WMF towards local communities, as I notice that many users - certainly on nl-wiki - aren't informed about many things of what it would be good to be informed about. This causes a lot of not understanding why things happen resulting in annoyance. I try to follow what is going on in the Wikimedia movement and take up the role as ambassador, both in tech as with other Wikimedia subjects, towards the community to create a better understanding. My attempts are appreciated by many users and are successful to lower the annoyance level. I also try to connect and give feedback towards chapters, tech/developers, others
to create mutual a better environment. (I certainly can recommend to have a local Wikipedian in every community who has this role.)
As I wrote on the Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list, I see currently two existing ways of receiving information by communities on their wikis:
1. CentralNotice: too many notices will result in banner blindness and blocking notices as they are very disturbing often on every page.
2. Posting in central discussion/notifications page on a wiki: a lot of users will see that notice but also many users do not see them.
To me there is a gap between CentralNotice messages on one side and on the other hand the postings in central discussion/notifications page. I think we should get a way to notify every user targeted just as with the CentralNotice: if needed geo specific, translated, etc but isn't shown as big banner on every page.
In September I supported the implementation of the Notifications system (Echo) by announcing and explaining to the local community what was going to change and how it works, and even while that system has minor issues it is considered very much as a success by the community of nl-wiki.
I think a nice way to tackle the problem is by having the Notifications tool expanded with the ability to receive there notices like with the FDC.
Romaine
(tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 15:35:06 -0700
From: Tilman Bayer <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Coordination of technology deployments across
languages/projects
<wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices
Message-ID:
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Hi Romaine,
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki(a)yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On the Dutch Wikipedia users have indicated that they
perceive the number of Global Notices too much and the more
that happens the more users will start to add code to their
preferences to fully block every notice as they are so tired
of them.
>
> The current load of negative feedback about the banners
is currently coming up after the especially the FDC banners
I assume that by "current load of negative feedback", you
mean the
comments by Grashoofd and Saschaporsche in this discussion?
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Wikimedia_Spam
Thank you for resolving some misconceptions there (e.g. the
assumption
that these banners were shown to all Dutch Wikipedia
readers - they
are set to be displayed to logged-in users only); I also
responded to
some other points in that thread.
About the FDC banners in general:
The FDC - itself consisting of volunteer community members -
considers
it really important that the editing community gets to have
a say in
the process of how donation money is allocated to various
Wikimedia
organizations in the FDC process. See e.g. their recent blog
post at
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/25/call-for-community-input-funding-prop…
(as mentioned there, this time the decisions are
particularly
difficult, as the amount requested in this round is already
close to
what's available for the whole year including next round's
requests,
$6 million). Without the work of the editing community, this
money
would not be available. Even if admittedly many editors are
either not
interested in participating in discussions on how to spend
it, or do
not have the time, I think it's still important to widely
inform the
community of this possibility.
CentralNotice banners are currently the most effective way
of making
community members aware of this opportunity to influence the
process,
which happens twice a year (once a year if you only consider
a
particular organization/country), and is closing soon for
this round.
The country-specific FDC banners invite editors to comment
specifically on the funding request from an organization in
that
country (Wikimedia Nederland in this case), which is assumed
to be
particularly relevant for them, as the majority of the
planned
spending in each proposal tends to be for activities
supporting
precisely this local editing community.
>
> Every week a new notice is considered too much.
I assume that "every week" is a rhetorical expression.
However, it's
true that this month there have been three campaigns
specific to the
Dutch Wikipedia/the Netherlands. Curiously, you are
omitting the fact
that it was yourself who ran two of them:
"WMNL-register-WCN-2013" (inviting registration for the
Wikiconferentie) - run on "high" priority for both logged-in
and
anonymous users, for 17 days in two countries
"WMNL-edit-a-thon-DenHaag" (inviting participation in
an edit-a-thon)
- run on "high" priority for both logged-in and anonymous
users, for
two days in one country
In comparison, the above mentioned FDC community review
invitations
run on "normal" priority and only for logged-in users, i.e.
get vastly
less exposure than these two event invitations. And I would
argue that
the number of users who are able to follow the invitation
to
participate in an online activity (like commenting on a wiki
page in
case of the FDC, or uploading images in case of WLM) is much
higher
than the number of users who are able to travel and spend
the time to
attend a physical event in a particular location. I'm not
opposed to
the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual
conference.
However, if one is concerned about banner blindness and
worried that
users are "overloaded with CentralNotices", it's probably
worth asking
the question if a single editathon in one city needs to be
advertised
with "high" priority countrywide banners to anonymous users.
The
English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices
for that
kind of announcement instead
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice ).
>
> I already noticed earlier that there is also some kind
of banner blindness for many users: they get a banner on
pages but do not look at them any more just as it are adds.
>
That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one
reason for
adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page
at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar
, to facilitate
coordination and discussion. It seems that this wasn't done
for the
above mentioned editathon banners. The current FDC banners
have been
announced there since October 1, and while I am taking the
criticism
that you are mentioning serious, I would also like to note
that it is
the first such criticism about them that is coming to my
attention.
> This time several users got a notice in English what
was perceived disturbing.
>
All the FDC banners contain a link inviting to add missing
translations (the global banner has been translated into
>70
languages), but at least for major languages like Dutch, the
intention
is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you
said
yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch
when it
came live yesterday.
> Also they experience getting banners as not interesting
for Wikipedia.
>
> As bonus I personally and other users have experienced
that clicking away a banner made the banner appear again
within the hour visiting other pages. I had that at least
four times on a project, on several projects. Re-appeasring
after being clicked away is useless and disturbing.
Yes, that should not happen. The banners rely on a cookie to
store
this user choice. A possible reason could be that the cookie
got lost
e.g. when the browser was restarted, or it might be a bug.
>
> Also it is annoying that I need to click the same
banners away on each project I visit, many users visit
Wikipedia, but also work on Commons, Wikidata, etc.
>
I agree, that's something worth looking into - I assume it
would need
additional technical work.
>
> I think the the CentralNotice should be redesigned or
the CentralNotice will loose it effectiveness. Something is
really going wrong.
>
>
> Romaine
>
> (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)
>
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Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Forwarding this announcement from the Wikimedia blog:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/31/wikimedia-foundation-chief-communicat…
Announcing the search for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Chief Communications
Officer
A few weeks ago, Jay Walsh stepped down as head of Communications for the
Wikimedia Foundation. I was sad to see Jay leave — for nearly six years
he’s guided WMF communications activities with unerring judgement and
poise. He’s been a trusted colleague and a good friend to the movement.
Today, we’re announcing an international search for his replacement: a
Chief Communications Officer (CCO) to lead the WMF’s small communications
team.
It’s a unique job. Wikipedia is super-famous and the press and general
public are highly interested in us. We’re likelier to turn down press
opportunities than to seek them out. Unusually for an organization
representing a famous brand, we tend to speak freely, rather than aiming to
restrict access to information about us, and we do it in collaboration with
a decentralized global network of volunteer spokespeople. We don’t try to
significantly control or shape people’s perceptions of Wikipedia because we
believe brand perception emerges organically out of users’ day-to-day
experiences with a product. People love Wikipedia, and so do we: that means
we’ve got no reason to be overly controlling about our public image.
We want a CCO who believes in the WMF vision and shares our values. He or
she will manage communications at the WMF and across the projects we
operate, ensuring a fast and easy flow of information in multiple
languages, both internally within the Wikimedia movement and externally
with the press, readers, donors and general public. The full CCO job
description, including required qualifications, can be found here.
To help in the recruitment process, we’ve engaged Chaloner Associates, an
executive search firm specializing in communications roles. If you’re
interested in the role, or want to suggest potential candidates, you can
write to Amy Segelin (amy(a)chaloner.com) or Kassie Wilner (
kassie(a)chaloner.com) at Chaloner. You can also apply online here. If you’re
a Wikimedia community member, please say that in your application since
it’s a plus for us. Also please note we don’t discriminate on the basis of
ethnic origin, nationality, religion, political perspective, sex, age,
disability, gender identity or sexual orientation, and we particularly
value international experience and fluency in languages in addition to
English.
We expect to begin interviewing candidates in December, and hope to have a
new CCO in place in January.
Please join me in thanking Jay for his many years of service to the
Wikimedia movement, and please share this post with your networks.
Thanks,
Sue Gardner
--
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.orghttps://blog.wikimedia.org
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For English Wikipedia I also feel that the FDC banner is annoying and probably not very useful for editors or effective for requesting community input. A watchlist notice would be more proportionate but even that is a stretch because FDC is far removed from most editors' on-wiki interests. The FDC's work is important but I think requests for community input should be better targeted. Along the lines of what Nemo said, I think recruiting editors to become active in affiliates would be a better on-wiki action and an indirect way to get more comments on FDC proposals. There could also be work done to have more affiliates do peer reviews of each others' budgets.
Pine
> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:37:18 +0100
> From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices (Tilman
> Bayer)
> Message-ID: <5270D34E.5080906(a)gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Jane Darnell, 30/10/2013 09:30:
> > I second your skepticism. Especially since most Dutch Wikipedians have no idea what WMNL is, according to a survey.
>
> Good point. Maybe all those who care about a chapter and its spending
> are already members of the chapter so that they can participate in the
> assembly which decide on it (and related online discussions)? :)
>
> If we want greater community review of their spending, perhaps it would
> make sense to run campaigns for community members to join the chapter.
> Maybe other people have different experiences, but the associations I
> know of usually try to convince you to join the association ("it's cool
> for X! you are important for Y!") and then they try to gradually involve
> you more; I've never seen an association on a street distributing
> dozens-pages books "hey! do you want to review our budget? it's great
> fun! we value your input".
>
> Nemo
>
>
>
On the Dutch Wikipedia users have indicated that they perceive the number of Global Notices too much and the more that happens the more users will start to add code to their preferences to fully block every notice as they are so tired of them.
The current load of negative feedback about the banners is currently coming up after the especially the FDC banners
Every week a new notice is considered too much.
I already noticed earlier that there is also some kind of banner blindness for many users: they get a banner on pages but do not look at them any more just as it are adds.
This time several users got a notice in English what was perceived disturbing.
Also they experience getting banners as not interesting for Wikipedia.
As bonus I personally and other users have experienced that clicking away a banner made the banner appear again within the hour visiting other pages. I had that at least four times on a project, on several projects. Re-appeasring after being clicked away is useless and disturbing.
Also it is annoying that I need to click the same banners away on each project I visit, many users visit Wikipedia, but also work on Commons, Wikidata, etc.
I think the the CentralNotice should be redesigned or the CentralNotice will loose it effectiveness. Something is really going wrong.
Romaine
(tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its Audit and Audit FAQ for the
fiscal year ending June 30, 2013 on our Financial Reports
page.<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports>
Please contact me with any questions.
Regards,
Garfield
--
Garfield Byrd
Chief of Finance and Administration
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext 6787
415.882.0495 (fax)
www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*https://donate.wikimedia.org*
Hi folks! I've been working for the past 7 months on an interactive guided
tour for new editors called '''The Wikipedia Adventure''', as part of a WMF
Individual Engagement Grant. The game is an experiment in teaching our
aspiring future editors in an educational but playful way.
*This week I need some '''alpha-testers''' to kick the tires and basically
try to break it. I'm interested in general impressions and suggestions of
course, but I'm really looking for gnarly, unexpected browser issues,
layout problems, workflow bugs, and other sundry errors that would prevent
people from playing through and having a positive experience.
*If you're able to spend 1-3 hours doing some quality assurance work this
week, you would have: a) my sincere gratitude b), a sparkly TWA barnstar,
c) special thanks in the game credits, and d) a chance to leave your mark
on Wikipedia's outreach puzzle and new editor engagement efforts.
*Please note that the game automatically sends edits to your own userspace
and it lets you know when that will happen. If you want, you can register
a new testing account just for the game, but it won't work properly unless
you're logged-in by step 8 of mission 1 (when it lets you register on the
fly).
You can try it out at http://enwp.org/WP:TWA and leave feedback at
http://enwp.org/WP:TWA/Feedback]].
Thanks much and cheers!
--Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)
2013/10/29 Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org>
>
> How would you suggest we tackle this problem?
>
Echo can be a good alternative.
Imagine a new notification for every user, a "global notice" (not a talk
page message)
This can be sent to registered users, with its own icon, a notification
message with text simillar to what it would be included in a banner, and
linking to the relevant page (instead of own talk page etc).
So, every user will get it only once, but he can go back to it by clicking
the notifications icon.
mockup: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Echo-centralnotice.png
Konstantinos Stampoulis
geraki(a)geraki.gr
http://www.geraki.gr
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μπορείτε να το χρησιμοποιήσετε σε οποιαδήποτε δημόσια συζήτηση.
Dear All,
Konkani Vishwakosh is now freely available to download on Goa University's website under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. [1]
As many of you know CIS-A2K has been following up with the University for the past couple of months to re-relase the encyclopedia under CC. Upon CIS-A2K' explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.
This is a great achievement for the CIS-A2K Programme and we are extremely thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopakumar. A special thanks goes to Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick Noronha and Seby Fernandes for their constant support.
If anyone would like to receive a copy of the Vishwakosh please send us a mail off list and we'll courier a CD your way.
Thanks
Nitika Tandon
[1] http://library.unigoa.ac.in/?q=node
[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Konkani_…
