Proposal regarding norms for meeting/deadline announcements - Wikimedia-l

Rehman Abubakr

16 Oct 16 Oct

10:18 a.m.

New subject: Proposal regarding norms for meeting/deadline announcements

Hello Pine, Since we're on the topic of mailing list norms, may I also suggest that we please do not copy the entire mailing list for any one-to-one well wishes as well? Example: "Congrats" messages to various topics like project completed, new affiliate, edit count, or whatsoever. Certain times, more than half of my mailbox are simply a pile-up of one-to-one congratulatory messages that really doesn't concern 99% of the readers. Maybe those can be sent direct/off-list? Sorry to somewhat change the topic. But I feel this needs to be said somewhere, and it might as well be here. :) Yours truly, User:Rehman ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> Sent: 16 October 2018 02:19 To: Wikimedia Mailing List; wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal regarding norms for meeting/deadline announcements Hi Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l, Keeping in mind the large numbers of subscribers on some Wikimedia email lists, the endless valuable uses for the time of knowledgeable volunteer Wikimedians, the significant financial costs for the time of many of the staff and contractors on these mailing lists, and how packed calendars can be, I propose that we implement a few social norms/guidelines for Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l in particular. 1. When planning to have a one-time public meeting, announce it at least 14 days in advance to give everyone who might like to participate that much lead time to clear space on their calendars. Rarely is a one-time public meeting so urgent that it cannot wait 14 days from the day that it is announced. 2. Send a maximum of one reminder email regarding a one-time public meeting, and also send a maximum of one reminder email regarding events with deadlines such as Wikimania scholarship submissions or conference presentation proposals. More than one reminder about a meeting or deadline is excessive. 3. If extending a deadline, send only an announcement of the extension with no additional reminder. 4. Send only one email to announce a recurring weekly meeting, with no additional reminders. Meetings which recur less often, such as biweekly or monthly, may continue to be announced with one additional reminder. At this time these are proposals only. Comments are welcome. If the comments become extensive then I may request that we move the conversation to Meta. Thank you, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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Paulo Santos Perneta

22 Oct 22 Oct

11:18 p.m.

Point 3.1.3 of RFC 1855 (Netiquette Guidelines), 1995 [1] : "- Send mail when an answer to a question is for one person only. Remember that News has global distribution and the whole world probably is NOT interested in a personal response. However, don't hesitate to post when something will be of general interest to the Newsgroup participants." Just replace "News" with Mailing List, and "mail" with personal mail, as this was crafted for long gone Usenet. But it's the same thing. Also of interest, and in the same line, is the "Me Too" advice just above this one. :) [1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt Paulo Rehman Abubakr <rehman.wikimedia(a)live.com> escreveu no dia terça, 16/10/2018 à(s) 03:19:

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Hello Pine, Since we're on the topic of mailing list norms, may I also suggest that we please do not copy the entire mailing list for any one-to-one well wishes as well? Example: "Congrats" messages to various topics like project completed, new affiliate, edit count, or whatsoever. Certain times, more than half of my mailbox are simply a pile-up of one-to-one congratulatory messages that really doesn't concern 99% of the readers. Maybe those can be sent direct/off-list? Sorry to somewhat change the topic. But I feel this needs to be said somewhere, and it might as well be here. :) Yours truly, User:Rehman ________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> Sent: 16 October 2018 02:19 To: Wikimedia Mailing List; wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal regarding norms for meeting/deadline announcements Hi Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l, Keeping in mind the large numbers of subscribers on some Wikimedia email lists, the endless valuable uses for the time of knowledgeable volunteer Wikimedians, the significant financial costs for the time of many of the staff and contractors on these mailing lists, and how packed calendars can be, I propose that we implement a few social norms/guidelines for Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l in particular. 1. When planning to have a one-time public meeting, announce it at least 14 days in advance to give everyone who might like to participate that much lead time to clear space on their calendars. Rarely is a one-time public meeting so urgent that it cannot wait 14 days from the day that it is announced. 2. Send a maximum of one reminder email regarding a one-time public meeting, and also send a maximum of one reminder email regarding events with deadlines such as Wikimania scholarship submissions or conference presentation proposals. More than one reminder about a meeting or deadline is excessive. 3. If extending a deadline, send only an announcement of the extension with no additional reminder. 4. Send only one email to announce a recurring weekly meeting, with no additional reminders. Meetings which recur less often, such as biweekly or monthly, may continue to be announced with one additional reminder. At this time these are proposals only. Comments are welcome. If the comments become extensive then I may request that we move the conversation to Meta. Thank you, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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Pine W

20 Oct 20 Oct

12:29 p.m.

I've heard little support for new norms regarding reminders and announcements of deadlines on Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l, so I withdraw my proposal. I may revisit this subject in the future. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )

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Pine W

11:26 a.m.

Hi Lodewijk, I want to encourage people to feel comfortable with posting in-scope and civil emails to WMF mailing lists, but my personal opinion is that the number of reminders is sometimes excessive and the related costs are non-trivial. My view is that excessive reminders about meetings have recently been especially afflicting Wikitech-l, but have also taken place on Wikimedia-l periodically. If we multiply the quantity of seconds that the average person spends clicking or scanning through a reminder email by (1) the number of recipients and (2) the average hourly value of recipients' time, I don't know what the total costs (in money and time) would be but I think that they would be non-trivial. I think that I'm being reasonable in requesting that people make announcements about most one-time meetings 14 days in advance. However, I seem to be a minority of one. And speaking of time management, my guess is that there are hundreds or thousands of other busy people on these mailing lists who might not appreciate my continuing to press this subject, so I'm moving on. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 11:34 PM effe iets anders <effeietsanders(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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Hi Pine, I would also suggest not to get overly bureaucratic with this :) If the public meeting you refer to requires a large attendance, the 14 days makes sense for example - but I cannot recall many meetings of that style. Rather, most meetings are either scheduled taking the availability of participants in mind, or it is to get input (where it is more important to have a bunch of people show up, than to have everyone participate). Whether more than one reminder is excessive, is imho quite subjective. I appreciate most reminders, especially if they stick to the same thread. On a side note: are there any weekly meetings being announced on this list? Again, it highly depends on the topic, and whether the reminder may also contain more information. My point? Don't worry about it so much :) Be flexible with this, and go with the flow. People can figure this out quite well if they use their common sense without added bureaucracy. Lodewijk

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Leila Zia

24 Oct 24 Oct

12:07 a.m.

I did one pass over the emails in the past two months and I don't see excessive (the way I understand the word) reminders and announcements except perhaps for Research Showcase. ;) If that is the only event that is triggering this conversation, the solution is easy: You can just tell me your feedback and I'll take it back to the team and we can most probably update the workflow on our end. (I have a sense that one email about that event to wikimedia-l is enough and reminders are not needed.) If the conversation is about more than one event, yeah, perhaps we should discuss more. I like the idea of a separate announcement list but I'm also concerned about making ourselves too thin across many channels. Maybe we can have a norm that every announcement to wikimedia-l should have an [announcement] tag in the subject for people to easily filter out. I personally don't mind the intensity of announcements as the Mute button in my email client works effectively (as long as, as Lodewijk said, people don't start new threads.:) And while we're on the subject of emails: As a member of this list, what concerns me is the lack of diversity of voices in many instances and conversations. I would love to learn how we can change this and if one or more of you are up for helping prepare a survey to run on the list to learn more, please let me know. (This will be with my volunteer hat on. and I want to clarify that this needs to be coordinated with the list moderators.) Best, Leila -- Leila Zia Senior Research Scientist, Lead Wikimedia Foundation On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 4:30 AM Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 00:34, effe iets anders <effeietsanders(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Pine, I would also suggest not to get overly bureaucratic with this :) If the public meeting you refer to requires a large attendance, the 14 days makes sense for example - but I cannot recall many meetings of that style. Rather, most meetings are either scheduled taking the availability of participants in mind, or it is to get input (where it is more important to have a bunch of people show up, than to have everyone participate). Whether more than one reminder is excessive, is imho quite subjective. I appreciate most reminders, especially if they stick to the same thread. On a side note: are there any weekly meetings being announced on this list? Again, it highly depends on the topic, and whether the reminder may also contain more information. My point? Don't worry about it so much :) Be flexible with this, and go with the flow. People can figure this out quite well if they use their common sense without added bureaucracy. Lodewijk On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 1:50 PM Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l, Keeping in mind the large numbers of subscribers on some Wikimedia email lists, the endless valuable uses for the time of knowledgeable volunteer Wikimedians, the significant financial costs for the time of many of the staff and contractors on these mailing lists, and how packed calendars can be, I propose that we implement a few social norms/guidelines for Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l in particular. 1. When planning to have a one-time public meeting, announce it at least 14 days in advance to give everyone who might like to participate that much lead time to clear space on their calendars. Rarely is a one-time public meeting so urgent that it cannot wait 14 days from the day that it is announced. 2. Send a maximum of one reminder email regarding a one-time public meeting, and also send a maximum of one reminder email regarding events with deadlines such as Wikimania scholarship submissions or conference presentation proposals. More than one reminder about a meeting or deadline is excessive. 3. If extending a deadline, send only an announcement of the extension with no additional reminder. 4. Send only one email to announce a recurring weekly meeting, with no additional reminders. Meetings which recur less often, such as biweekly or monthly, may continue to be announced with one additional reminder. At this time these are proposals only. Comments are welcome. If the comments become extensive then I may request that we move the conversation to Meta. Thank you, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Completely agree that this is a real problem, and that solving it is a positive change rather than a "bureaucratic" one. As a reminder for everyone who reads this list, it is defined as:[1] Wikimedia Mailing List Discussion list for the Wikimedia community and the larger network of organizations (Wikimedia Foundation, chapter organizations, affiliates, partners) supporting its work. Let's agree to draw the common-sense distinction between having a *discussion* and one-way *broadcasting* announcements, PR statements and thankspam. This list is not intended for any of the latter, and filling subscriber's inboxes with announcements rather than interesting contemporary discussion is damaging this list and reduces its subscriber base. This is probably a significant part of why subscription and community engagement has been seriously dropping off over the last few years. I propose that we create a movement wide announcements list (wikimedia-announcements) that is intended for broadcasting, rather than discussion, and this list can be kept for discussion. If people feel they need to send three announcements/reminders/changes for the same meeting, then that can be okay on the announcements list, and should be called out as misuse, or even hijacking, for this discussion list. A simple change, and for those that wish to follow announcements, makes it easy for them to be automatically filtered. Links 1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l Thanks, Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

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