Hello all,
I have put the question in the general talk page at nl-wiki:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Feedback_van_lokale_gemeen…
Several reactions came on that:
* users experience Bugzilla as unfriendly, and rather use w wiki page for bugs.
* other users do not know where to put their questions and problems.
* users want technicians be more visible and better reachable.
* one user had been searching for a technician to help for a year long and couldn't
find one.
I try to fullfill my role as ambassador between tech and local users of Dutch projects. I
do have a bit more feeling with Bugzilla, and what I try is to translate bugs to Bugzilla.
On the Dutch Wikipedia we have a technical discussion room (
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SHEIC ), we will transform that page to one where
people can add their bugs and problems. In this way we hope to help users better to solve
problems/bugs directly (often personal preferences, already known bugs, error in template
or just the outlook of a page messed up by inserted code, etc).
I think a lot of the communication can and should be picked up by local users with enough
technical knowledge and experience to help in that local language.
Greetings - Romaine
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:03:52 +0100
From: Guillaume Paumier <gpaumier(a)wikimedia.org>
To: "Coordination of technology deployments across
languages/projects"
<wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikitech-ambassadors] Local discussions about how
to improve
communication between users and
developers
Message-ID:
<CAHLKNV2TjuwnryCqODj2oYRE6nX2H+4R+=1su2dxMxzYdHDh6Q(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Greetings,
Summary: I'm trying to get comments and ideas on how to
improve
communication between developers and Wikimedia editors, and
I'd like
to ask the help of people on this list to ask your local
communities
what they think, and post the results of those discussions
here.
Longer version:
Communication between Wikimedia contributors and "tech
people"
(primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and
other
engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years,
Wikimedia
employees have made efforts to become more transparent, but
what I'd
like to discuss today is how we can better engage in true
collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and
announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature
that's
already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide
feedback!".
It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of
the way,
from the early planning to deployment.
Some "big" tech projects sponsored by the Wikimedia
Foundation are
lucky enough to have a Community Liaison who can spend a lot
of time
discussing with editors, basically incarnating this 2-way
communication channel between users and engineering staff.
But one
person can only do so much: they have to focus on a handful
of
features, and primarily discusses with the English
Wikipedia
community. We want to be able to do this for dozens of
engineering
projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and
truly
collaborate to build new features together. Hiring hundreds
of
Community Liaisons isn't really a viable option.
There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g.
new
software features and deployments) that drive editors
insane. You
probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation
should be,
and how to get there: What can the developer community
(staff and
volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium
term, long
term?) What can users do to get there?
Instead of just postulating that "The problem is X" and "The
solution
is obviously Y", I've started an extensive consultation
process to
learn from users, to hear you, to listen to your complaints
and your
ideas on how to fix the issues. I'm hoping that this open
and
collaborative thinking process will yield better results
than a
one-sided analysis.
An preliminary consultation took place last month with
projects in
English and French. I've summarized the initial findings
and
proposals:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Fall_2012_consultat…
I'm hoping that we can now expand this consultation to more
projects
and more languages, with your help. It isn't feasible for me
to launch
a discussion on each wiki in each language, but I'm hoping
that you
can help me spread this message and start those discussions
with your
local communities.
I realize this will take some of your time, but I think it's
worth
spending a little time to discuss this now in order to make
big
improvements later on how we communicate with each other.
I'm available to answer comments, concerns and questions.
Many thanks for your help!
--
Guillaume Paumier
Technical Communications Manager ? Wikimedia Foundation
https://donate.wikimedia.org