---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jan Eissfeldt <jeissfeldt@wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, May 10, 2017 at 10:18 AM

Moin,

I did toy with the question over the weekend as well and while I didn't build a template, four ways with potentially useful points have emerged that could be informative if one thinks about the local wikis discussion approaches individually:

1) Big wikis with a lot of feedback: If one expects a lot of local traffic, it is probably wise to clone the six-page-structure Nick and Karen have established on Meta. Be mindful that Tracks C and D are scheduled (sort of) to provide further insights during the cycle, as noted on the actual theme pages, so there might be more content coming your community might be interested in later on (which could be a good tool to use to re-start debates that have slowed down, depending on what that C/D stuff looks like). Feedback-heavy communities like the German Wikipedia might be served well by this approach.

2) Wikis with one strategy page: If one has a local page called "/Wikimedia 2030", "/Strategy", or something else not tied to specific cycles but worked well for you during cycle 1, it could make a lot of sense to re-use that page by simply 

• moving the cycle 1 content into an expandable box on the bottom, 
• putting the cycle 2 themes and questions onto the page and
  
• link the research (or link to Meta where the research can be found)

Like the C/D insights, the research can also be brought up as useful in dialogues, of course, but that seems me to depend quite a bit on local discussion culture. Re-using the page also preserves links, watchlist placements volunteers might have set previously, etc. It is also the reason why Nick did not remove the generic landing pages listed on Participate while updating the page for cycle 2.

3) General discussion page-section approach: If one has used a section on the local village pump during cycle 1 and that worked well, there probably is no reason not to do so again during cycle 2 - although I would recommend to put the translated themes at least onto a local landing page (and potentially transclude that page onto the village pump section) while posting the questions directly into the village pump.

4) Offwiki communities: If the local community mainly or entirely discusses its stuff off-wiki and has done so with strategy during cycle 1 fairly well, there seems to be a sound case to respect those habits and surface the cycle 2 content online. Based on cycle 1 experiences, language communities like Chinese, Hindi, and Japanese certainly fall into that category. There is value in updating those Wikipedia language versions brief local landing pages for cycle 2 but for the off-wiki main discussions can probably be informed in most cases by links to the respective translated versions on Meta too (which saves some updating time on Track C/D content). 

Best,

Jan