Sean,
I’m just watching the need for this become more obvious in a bunch of silos – mainly unis.
If you want to look at one attempt to do a global open content thing (for courses) it’s here. http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ocwcforum/ You can view their forums, which don’t really work as they aren’t (reasonably) intuitive in getting orientated like sitepoint.com’s (where old threads are drawn to the top of page through new usage).
It’s the same for WMF projects. I collect mail for comproj, UK, and meta lists in one folder to view the conversations on a time basis. One really couldn’t say there’s much cross pollination across mail lists, except when someone like Michael makes a point of working through each of them, and replying to it’s vertical progress, often in a place where the linkage is apparent. (thanks Mike, that’s (from what I’m reading into it is) terrific. Wish I could read de, but I get the jist). IRC isn’t used a great deal as timing across time zones is a challenge for all of us (do I need to tell yu), while the idea of using virtual rooms, and leaving them “open” at times is still a bit new (not only for me, but my geriatric peers).
I’ll also point to a conversation at wikieducator about this same subject.
http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Community_building_project
The common problem is not so much a lack of info (for volunteers or any others). It’s just that it’s impossible to get orientated, find (or direct) people from various remote groups doing similar things to a place, AT AROUND the same time, and work through how to collaborate. E.g I see your attempts at getting a 2009 UK Wikimania together, as a one off conference, and wonder how many OCWC uni people are sitting in their silos, trying to figure out how Wikipedia’s global framework might link (reference) to their institutional courses, and how Wikimania might link to/complement their annual conferences. BTW. I’ve been beating bushes, http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=231#p641
Wikipedia (and others) work because there’s not a huge amount to learn in using the tool. One can learn by watching and thinking things through. You can get orienated, by language, from the bottom up, through reading one article of interest and just having a go. It needs to be the same with comms tools. Any comms tool. If it’s a meta level then we’re talking about the communications of various (specialist and project) groups. So unless this one is going to try and direct (say) 200 new user :Users/min in 100 languages then I’d suggest we have to make the groups’ conversations a bit more obvious than this. http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo Approachable is the word.
If just one email goes missing, as your last did to me, not only am I disoriented but anyone else who (later) can work their way through the horizontally challenged elists will get exhausted trying to get an idea on what might be going on in the wider wiki world, & how the timing of one project (or conference) is supposed to be relevant to (complement) another.
So No. No more guides. A forum is just something which picks a bunch of email lists and makes obvious what’s going on across them. Aggregating them means one sign On is sufficient. One user account is a way for a person to keep their threads together across projects and (should something like liquid threads be used), a conversation can find its “logical place” by being moved. There is also some OS tool work going on in Labspace which will enable a user, seeing someone else reading the same thread, with their green messenger (MSG) light on, to click, chat or conference with peers.
Enough. It’s the night before Christmas. If you view that Labspace Wikipedia thread and see the icon I used, it’s a (The Far Side) Larsen. Father Christmas has stepped on a mouse while delivering presents. Now you know why nothing stirred, “not even a mouse”. I don’t want to be guilty of the same thing. Have a good one. simon
Simon,
Thank you for your thoughts. I agree that participation in Wikimedia
still has a reasonably steep learning curve, and this is not a good
thing. However, we already have a large contributor base centered
around the means of communication we already use, that is mailing
lists and IRC channels, and thus I think that if we were to introduce
a board as you suggest it would split things and it would not end up
being used.
What would you say to better volunteer information? This is something
Sandy has been working on. A guide for Wikimeda volunteers in general,
regardless of project, is something that I think ComProj could work
on.
Sean
Perhaps some stimulations for you, what could be done... My interest is
promoting the (German) Wikiversity... Some of the materials and ideas could
be taken over by other projects, I hope.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communication_Projects_Group/Membership