(on en:wp, but cc'ing foundation-l because en:wp is a major source of
such headaches)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_problem/Factual_e…
Basically, it says "go to help desk, and maybe send us an email."
Note the careful wording of the line about legal problems. I'm trying
to tread a fine line here between encouraging people to contact us the
right way about real problems, and not encouraging cranks and
nuisances.
OTRS volunteers: is that the right address and subject line in case of
a substantial legal concern? Please edit as appropriate!
If this looks workable to people, we'd like to publicise this
(slightly) as a place to get concerns dealt with, so companies feel
they have somewhere to approach that won't get them bad press in 100
newspapers around the world (as happened to Microsoft). Per Geni's
excellent suggestion, we can recruit new en:wp admins to help with the
queue :-)
- d.
Hello,
Welcoming new users is a common community activity across many
Wikimedia wikis. The idea is usually to do at least some of the
following: give the user key links to core policies, an explanation of
syntax/technical help, make them feel part of the community, and give
them links to places to ask further questions.
Different projects can have different needs. For example, some
non-English projects give links (in English) to Embassy or Babel
pages, where they can ask questions in English rather than the
language of the project. Also, non-Wikipedia projects can perhaps
expect that most of their new users will be familiar with Wikipedia
first, and therefore tailor their welcome messages with the
expectation that the user already is familiar with the technical
aspects, and emphasise the difference in policies between their
project and Wikipedia.
Personalising the sign-up process is often not a priority for
projects, because only admins can edit MediaWiki pages, it is not easy
to locate which page should be changed to update which message, and it
tends to have been a long time since admins signed up/were new, so
they forget if it was a bad experience or what it was like.
I am involved with the welcoming efforts on Commons, where we have a
bot that places a {{welcome}} message on all newly registered users
who have made at least one edit or upload. We invite users to give
feedback on the message, which you can read here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Welcome_log
There was some concern people wouldn't like the impersonal method of
being welcomed by a bot, but one person even commented that it made
them feel part of the community! Some people said they would like to
appear automatically on the talk page without them even making edits).
The Commons welcome message is quite dense, but the links are useful
enough that an 'oldbie' could still find it very handy to keep around.
It has an emphasis on image-management-specific tools such as user's
Gallery, Commons Helper (transferring images from Wikipedia etc) and
how to get your own mistakes deleted. It also has 33 translations,
which is pretty fantastic.
Anyway, via this feedback, I recently became aware of Hungarian
Wikipedia's MediaWiki:Welcomecreation (this is the message that says
'you have successfully registered your account' -- your first contact
with the new user, in effect). See their changes:
http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AWelcomecreation&diff=…
I thought it was quite fantastic, and updated Commons' Welcomecreation
message in a similar fashion.
I also started looking at the MediaWiki:Welcomecreation and
Template:Welcome (or equiv.) messages for other wikis. You can see my
summry here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/welcome
(and you can complete some more if you feel like it, especially
mention if your project has a 'welcoming committee' equivalent)
It is quite interesting what different projects choose to emphasise.
ZH.wp, wikt (Chinese) explicitly highlight the GFDL. IT.wp has a red
warning against violating copyrights. PL.wp, wikt (Polish) both have
explicit links to IRC channels, so I guess it is an important tool for
them. JA.wp (Japanese) doesn't appear to have a template:Welcome (at
least it is not interwiki linked on the English one...surely they have
one???).
So this is just a bit of a message, to admins of various projects who
care about the impression that new users get, to have a look at these
pages on your project and see how they compare.
Here are my 'best ofs' so far:
MediaWiki:Welcomecreation:
FR.wp: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
HU.wp: http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
Template:Welcome (or equiv.):
PL.wp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szablon:Witaj2 nice screenshots to
explain things
EN.wikt: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:pediawelcome A little
combative, but does well to emphasise the differences between wp and
wikt
NL.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sjabloon:Welkom Nice sidebar with
links to explanations of Wikipedia jargon (remember the jargon,
people???!)
ES.wp: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantilla:Bienvenido_usuario
Visually, the most impressive one.
ZH.wp: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%8E Pretty
and minimalist (possibly too minimalist, and thus easy to ignore,
though).
What are the hallmarks of bad welcome messages? (in my opinion--)
Too much dense text. Too much information. (Do they need to know how
many articles there are or when the project was founded? No.) Too many
links. (Consider: is it really vital that the user go read the article
on 'Wikipedia'? Probably not, so probably don't link it.) Irrelevant
links. (EN.wp links to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_development as 'How to
write a great article'. It's actually part of a series called 'The
path to a Featured Article'. Rather ambitious for a n00b who you
simultaneously presume doesn't even know how to sign their posts on
talk pages. Do all new users need a guide on inserting images into
articles? FR.wp thinks so, but I doubt it.)
What are the most common newbie errors you see people making? Remember
back, what was the frustrating gem that you spent hours searching to
find and wished someone had told you earlier? Are your users coming
from Wikipedia -- are you wasting precious screen real estate telling
them things they already know? Consider writing messages that cater to
separate audiences if appropriate.
Anyway that's all, I hope some people feel inspired to update their
welcome messages, and if you know of a project that has a particularly
nice welcome message I'd love to see it.
cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
On 2/6/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/6/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>
wrote:
> > In other words, no, we may not use the logo on
Wikipedia.
> >
>
> On en it would be allowed in [[wikipedia]] and
> perhaps [[wikimedia foundation]].
Geni,
I must say, I admire your intellectual consistency, if
nothing else. By extension, all Wikimedia logos
should also be deleted from Commons since they are
unfree. If the community decided to rebel and delete
all of WMF's dreadfully unfree logos, I'm sure it
would make for some entertaining wikidrama and would
certainly address the immediate problem.
However, since the logos exist to help foster brand
identity and benefit the project, I think a better
solution is to set appropriate usage guidelines and
allow them to be used by users within the various
Wikimedia sites. I don't think it is either hard or
burdensome to regard "Copyright by Wikimedia" as an
exception to Wikipedia's fair use criteria, and for
the most part that has been the going practice since
forever.
Unfortunately, since the WMF does own the logos, a
certain amount of asking permission does seem to make
sense, but this thread seems to reveal that the
boundaries for what is or is not permitted are largely
unresolved at this time.
-Robert Rohde
____________________________________________________________________________________
Have a burning question?
Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know.
Hello,
It seems to me that it would be useful to have a mailing list separate
from foundation-l that is intended just for Embassy Ambassadors and
the small number of users from each project that are interested in
co-ordinating things with cross-project relevance. foundation-l is too
high traffic and almost all messages are in long, dense English. An
Ambassadors mailing list would only be for announcement-type messages
with links to more info. No politics stuff. It could be very useful
e.g. at fundraiser time. (While comparing welcome messages I have
noticed some projects still have fundraiser notices up...yes...)
Thoughts?
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise
*Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin*
5 February, 2007
*Call for Help*
- school promotion tour and volunteer recruitment
- translation
- someone who is conversant with PayPal and PHP
Summary:
- KJ will spend 50% of her work time at Wikia as a dedicated volunteer
for Wikimania 2007.
- The obligations and rights of volunteers.
- The translation plan for Wikimania 2007.
KJ will spend 50% of her work time on Wikimania 2007
At 26 Jan., Jimmy Wales
announce<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027257.html>through
Wikimedia
Foundation Mailing
List<http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>that
KJ <http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KaurJmeb> will be spending 50% of her
work time at Wikia <http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia> over the next 6 months
as a dedicated volunteer for Wikimania 2007. KJ will be one of the main
organizers of Wikimania 2007 and is responsible for Wikimania sponsorship.
KJ is responsible for preparing sponsor proposals and will be spending time
visiting the sponsors to discuss their proposals.
The obligations and rights of volunteers
The Taipei Team announce the obligations and rights of volunteers:
- Online Service
- Work: website content, translation, WikiReader.
- Obligation: service for 10-40 hours a month.
- Rights:
1. Volunteer training course.
2. If 50 hours sevice is completed, the volunteers can
attend Wikimania for free.
- On-site service: and other services on site.
- Work: reception, venue decoration, equipment management
- Obligation: at least 16 service hours
- Rights:
1. Volunteer training course.
2. If 16 hours sevice is completed, the volunteers can
attend Wikimania for free.
- Both
1. If 70 hours sevice is completed, the volunteers can apply a
volunteer certificate in Chinese or English.
2. If 70 hours sevice is completed, the volunteers can apply
letters of recommendation for work or school.
The translation plan
The translation plan for Wikimania
2007<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Translation/Plan>is
announced. Please go to Talk
Page<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_talk:Translation/Plan>to
discuss.
Distribution of this Bulletin and feedback
Everyone is welcome to reproduce and distribute this bulletin to their
websites, mailing lists, BBS, blogs, and so on, but please kindly include the
Bulletin's original
location<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20070205>on
the official Wikimania 2007 website in your distribution.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave them at...
- http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Team_Bulletin/20070205
- Wikimania-l mailing
list<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l>
As decided last august, we set up an advisory group according to
resolution http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Advisory_board
You'll find the entire list here:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board
Welcome to
Angela Beesley (eh !)
Ward Cunningham
Heather Ford
Melissa Hagemann
Danny Hillis
Mitch Kapor
Joris Komen
Rebecca MacKinnon
Wayne Mackintosh
Benjamin Mako Hill
Erin McKean
Trevor Nielson
Achal Prabhala
Jay Rosen
Clay Shirky
Peter Suber
Raoul Weiler
Ethan Zuckerman
who have agreed to give a bit of their time and expertise, to help us
navigate in the difficult waters of collaborative software, free
licensing, free speech, education for all, governance, sustainability
models...
We really appreciate.
How did we chose these people ? Either because they were already
frequently in touch with us, or because we thought their experience
could help. "We" is both the board and the community, as the board also
contacted some of the people whose names showed up when I asked help on
this list.
Is that list closed ? Of course not. Please feel free to discuss further
additions that could be necessary in the future.
Florence Devouard
As just announced, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have any executive director any more, until an ED is found (hopefully within 3-4 months). This raises some questions of organisation.
To foster efficiency and channel communications, the board has agreed that the following staff members or contractants shall be reporting to the following people.
For all office/administrative issues, staff (Barbara, Danny...) will report to Carolyn
Carolyn (operations) will report to Florence
Sandy (communication) will report to Florence
Brad (legal) will report to Florence
Danny (non administrative tasks, eg grants, special projects etc...) will report to Erik
Brion/Mark/Tim (tech) will report to Jan-Bart
Delphine (chapters) will report to Oscar
Due to their background, Oscar and Michael (are and) will be very involved in financial and audit considerations.
Jimbo is more focused on public relations and licenses discussions.
Kat is spending time on various legal-related, licenses discussions and is in charge of an assignment not yet made public :-) (ahah! cabal!)
Florence Devouard
Chair of Wikimedia Foundation
Links
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027477.html (Announcement concerning the ED search firm)
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027269.html (explanation of the differences between CEO, COO and Board)
*http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027478.html (Brad moving to GC job)
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027268.html (Announcement of Carolyn becoming COO)
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026515.html (4 wishes for year 2007... including reorganisation and financial considerations)
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027171.html (Welcome to Sandy)
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027455.html (Welcome to chapter coordinator)
After eight months in the position of interim Executive Director, Brad
Patrick will be resuming his other role as General Counsel exclusively.
Due to the volume of work and need to move forward with a permanent
solution for the ED role, the Board is focusing on retaining an
executive search firm to conduct the search for a new ED.
In the coming weeks, the Board will be working directly
with staff on priority issues (see next announcement on the matter).
Brad has done a great deal to help the Foundation move forward in such
areas as governance, technology and contracting, audit, hiring, and many
other things. With the conclusion of the fundraiser and the immediate
financial future of the Foundation secure, now is the time to look ahead
to the selection of a new Executive Director to manage the operations of
the Foundation. This will enable Brad to focus on developing the role of
General Counsel, and addressing a backlog of complex legal questions the
Foundation faces moving forward.
Florence Devouard
Wikimedia Foundation Chair
Links
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027477.html Announcement concerning the selected firm
* http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/027269.html (explanation of the differences between CEO, COO and Board)
I found a working email address in the end and the founder responded
to say it was a temporary logo and that the real one is being worked
on and will be installed before the release of the site.
Angela