Wikimedia-l October 2013

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141 participants
90 discussions

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices (Tilman Bayer)
by Romaine Wiki 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

Hi Tilman, Unfortunately it seems that many users experience the FDC as most away from their bed and saw the notice in English what triggered the users to write their annoyance down. The current load of feedback is indeed on that page, and I tried to reply as damage control to limit the number of annoyance as that often comes as result of having little or no information / explanation. Also I tried to resolve some misconceptions. I personally do understand why WMF wants to show this banner and tried in general to explain it. In the past 2 months there have been shown 7 different banners in the Netherlands and also one Sitenotice. Wiki Loves Monuments started on nl-wiki, has been communicated well about and users understand that a banner is shown for it. In November a conference (WCN) is organized, many users attend it and people understand why a banner is shown. Two days a banner was shown for an edit-a-thon, as edit-a-thons are documented and users see a direct result in Wikipedia they understand and accept that. These three campaigns are community driven banners. Yes I created those, but my role is to support the local community and try to connect between the local community and developers/tech/WMF/Wikimedia Netherlands/Wikimedia Belgium/etc. Also the Sitenotice was community driven: it was for a writing contest on Wikipedia. 4 other banners have been set up: for the fundraiser (most experienced users do already donate their time, and do not want to donate money too, but in general users understand why it is needed and accept that), for the Privacy Policy (not much nl users commented), there was earlier a banner for the FDC, and now there is a banner for FDC. FDC is for most users far away, and this time it was also in English. The community seems to experience the subject of FDC something that should not be in a banner on every page for every logged in user. Then the annoyance is bigger than the understanding and complaints come up. > I'm not opposed to the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual conference. The community that comes to the annual conference is spread over several projects. > it's probably worth asking the question if a single editathon in one > city needs to be advertised with "high" priority countrywide banners > to anonymous users. It seems that the local community has not a problem with this banner, however I personally do consider that we should not create a banner for a subject like this after having this evaluated. But the local community requested it and seems not having a problem with this banner. > The English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices > for that kind of announcement instead The English Wikipedia has been edited by many users around the world and there it sounds handy. The Dutch community is spread over several wiki's, that is why is why a Sitenotice is less used. > That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one reason for > adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page at > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar , to facilitate > coordination and discussion. This did not prevented that the Privacy Policy was set up at the same time as the banner for Wiki Loves Monuments, and there we noticed that the two banners competed with each other. We tested how much and when each banner was shown and we noticed that it appeared that the Privacy Policy banner was shown much more on the first page someone visited and actually repressed the WLM banner. Two banners at the same time causes a higher degree of banner blindness. Compared with the 8 months January - August, the past two months where overloaded while the first 8 months were almost empty. > but at least for major languages like Dutch, the intention > is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you said > yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch when it > came live yesterday. Another user on the Dutch Wikipedia who has his languages set in Dutch got the banner for FDC in English. I personally got it later in Dutch. The reason why I wrote is not to blame anyone, but to promote thinking of other ways to communicate to the local communities. More notices aren't a good idea as this will result in more users fully blocking the CentralNotice or even whole wikis who block it. On the other hand since 2008 I try to promote more communication from both the chapters and WMF towards local communities, as I notice that many users - certainly on nl-wiki - aren't informed about many things of what it would be good to be informed about. This causes a lot of not understanding why things happen resulting in annoyance. I try to follow what is going on in the Wikimedia movement and take up the role as ambassador, both in tech as with other Wikimedia subjects, towards the community to create a better understanding. My attempts are appreciated by many users and are successful to lower the annoyance level. I also try to connect and give feedback towards chapters, tech/developers, others to create mutual a better environment. (I certainly can recommend to have a local Wikipedian in every community who has this role.) As I wrote on the Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list, I see currently two existing ways of receiving information by communities on their wikis: 1. CentralNotice: too many notices will result in banner blindness and blocking notices as they are very disturbing often on every page. 2. Posting in central discussion/notifications page on a wiki: a lot of users will see that notice but also many users do not see them. To me there is a gap between CentralNotice messages on one side and on the other hand the postings in central discussion/notifications page. I think we should get a way to notify every user targeted just as with the CentralNotice: if needed geo specific, translated, etc but isn't shown as big banner on every page. In September I supported the implementation of the Notifications system (Echo) by announcing and explaining to the local community what was going to change and how it works, and even while that system has minor issues it is considered very much as a success by the community of nl-wiki. I think a nice way to tackle the problem is by having the Notifications tool expanded with the ability to receive there notices like with the FDC. Romaine (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 15:35:06 -0700 From: Tilman Bayer <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: Coordination of technology deployments across languages/projects <wikitech-ambassadors(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices Message-ID: <CAPDdKA7f0Nmps9euOCAyVZt_FdYN5_V1-D8nFeDD0xXP_GmDmg(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi Romaine, On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On the Dutch Wikipedia users have indicated that they perceive the number of Global Notices too much and the more that happens the more users will start to add code to their preferences to fully block every notice as they are so tired of them. > > The current load of negative feedback about the banners is currently coming up after the especially the FDC banners I assume that by "current load of negative feedback", you mean the comments by Grashoofd and Saschaporsche in this discussion? https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Wikimedia_Spam Thank you for resolving some misconceptions there (e.g. the assumption that these banners were shown to all Dutch Wikipedia readers - they are set to be displayed to logged-in users only); I also responded to some other points in that thread. About the FDC banners in general: The FDC - itself consisting of volunteer community members - considers it really important that the editing community gets to have a say in the process of how donation money is allocated to various Wikimedia organizations in the FDC process. See e.g. their recent blog post at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/25/call-for-community-input-funding-prop… (as mentioned there, this time the decisions are particularly difficult, as the amount requested in this round is already close to what's available for the whole year including next round's requests, $6 million). Without the work of the editing community, this money would not be available. Even if admittedly many editors are either not interested in participating in discussions on how to spend it, or do not have the time, I think it's still important to widely inform the community of this possibility. CentralNotice banners are currently the most effective way of making community members aware of this opportunity to influence the process, which happens twice a year (once a year if you only consider a particular organization/country), and is closing soon for this round. The country-specific FDC banners invite editors to comment specifically on the funding request from an organization in that country (Wikimedia Nederland in this case), which is assumed to be particularly relevant for them, as the majority of the planned spending in each proposal tends to be for activities supporting precisely this local editing community. > > Every week a new notice is considered too much. I assume that "every week" is a rhetorical expression. However, it's true that this month there have been three campaigns specific to the Dutch Wikipedia/the Netherlands. Curiously, you are omitting the fact that it was yourself who ran two of them: "WMNL-register-WCN-2013" (inviting registration for the Wikiconferentie) - run on "high" priority for both logged-in and anonymous users, for 17 days in two countries "WMNL-edit-a-thon-DenHaag" (inviting participation in an edit-a-thon) - run on "high" priority for both logged-in and anonymous users, for two days in one country In comparison, the above mentioned FDC community review invitations run on "normal" priority and only for logged-in users, i.e. get vastly less exposure than these two event invitations. And I would argue that the number of users who are able to follow the invitation to participate in an online activity (like commenting on a wiki page in case of the FDC, or uploading images in case of WLM) is much higher than the number of users who are able to travel and spend the time to attend a physical event in a particular location. I'm not opposed to the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual conference. However, if one is concerned about banner blindness and worried that users are "overloaded with CentralNotices", it's probably worth asking the question if a single editathon in one city needs to be advertised with "high" priority countrywide banners to anonymous users. The English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices for that kind of announcement instead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice ). > > I already noticed earlier that there is also some kind of banner blindness for many users: they get a banner on pages but do not look at them any more just as it are adds. > That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one reason for adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar , to facilitate coordination and discussion. It seems that this wasn't done for the above mentioned editathon banners. The current FDC banners have been announced there since October 1, and while I am taking the criticism that you are mentioning serious, I would also like to note that it is the first such criticism about them that is coming to my attention. > This time several users got a notice in English what was perceived disturbing. > All the FDC banners contain a link inviting to add missing translations (the global banner has been translated into >70 languages), but at least for major languages like Dutch, the intention is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you said yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch when it came live yesterday. > Also they experience getting banners as not interesting for Wikipedia. > > As bonus I personally and other users have experienced that clicking away a banner made the banner appear again within the hour visiting other pages. I had that at least four times on a project, on several projects. Re-appeasring after being clicked away is useless and disturbing. Yes, that should not happen. The banners rely on a cookie to store this user choice. A possible reason could be that the cookie got lost e.g. when the browser was restarted, or it might be a bug. > > Also it is annoying that I need to click the same banners away on each project I visit, many users visit Wikipedia, but also work on Commons, Wikidata, etc. > I agree, that's something worth looking into - I assume it would need additional technical work. > > I think the the CentralNotice should be redesigned or the CentralNotice will loose it effectiveness. Something is really going wrong. > > > Romaine > > (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia) > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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[Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement for WMF Chief Communications Officer
by Matthew Roth 31 Oct '13

31 Oct '13

Forwarding this announcement from the Wikimedia blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/31/wikimedia-foundation-chief-communicat… Announcing the search for the Wikimedia Foundation’s Chief Communications Officer A few weeks ago, Jay Walsh stepped down as head of Communications for the Wikimedia Foundation. I was sad to see Jay leave — for nearly six years he’s guided WMF communications activities with unerring judgement and poise. He’s been a trusted colleague and a good friend to the movement. Today, we’re announcing an international search for his replacement: a Chief Communications Officer (CCO) to lead the WMF’s small communications team. It’s a unique job. Wikipedia is super-famous and the press and general public are highly interested in us. We’re likelier to turn down press opportunities than to seek them out. Unusually for an organization representing a famous brand, we tend to speak freely, rather than aiming to restrict access to information about us, and we do it in collaboration with a decentralized global network of volunteer spokespeople. We don’t try to significantly control or shape people’s perceptions of Wikipedia because we believe brand perception emerges organically out of users’ day-to-day experiences with a product. People love Wikipedia, and so do we: that means we’ve got no reason to be overly controlling about our public image. We want a CCO who believes in the WMF vision and shares our values. He or she will manage communications at the WMF and across the projects we operate, ensuring a fast and easy flow of information in multiple languages, both internally within the Wikimedia movement and externally with the press, readers, donors and general public. The full CCO job description, including required qualifications, can be found here. To help in the recruitment process, we’ve engaged Chaloner Associates, an executive search firm specializing in communications roles. If you’re interested in the role, or want to suggest potential candidates, you can write to Amy Segelin (amy(a)chaloner.com) or Kassie Wilner ( kassie(a)chaloner.com) at Chaloner. You can also apply online here. If you’re a Wikimedia community member, please say that in your application since it’s a plus for us. Also please note we don’t discriminate on the basis of ethnic origin, nationality, religion, political perspective, sex, age, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation, and we particularly value international experience and fluency in languages in addition to English. We expect to begin interviewing candidates in December, and hope to have a new CCO in place in January. Please join me in thanking Jay for his many years of service to the Wikimedia movement, and please share this post with your networks. Thanks, Sue Gardner -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org https://blog.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices
by ENWP Pine 31 Oct '13

31 Oct '13

For English Wikipedia I also feel that the FDC banner is annoying and probably not very useful for editors or effective for requesting community input. A watchlist notice would be more proportionate but even that is a stretch because FDC is far removed from most editors' on-wiki interests. The FDC's work is important but I think requests for community input should be better targeted. Along the lines of what Nemo said, I think recruiting editors to become active in affiliates would be a better on-wiki action and an indirect way to get more comments on FDC proposals. There could also be work done to have more affiliates do peer reviews of each others' budgets. Pine > Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:37:18 +0100 > From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices (Tilman > Bayer) > Message-ID: <5270D34E.5080906(a)gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > Jane Darnell, 30/10/2013 09:30: > > I second your skepticism. Especially since most Dutch Wikipedians have no idea what WMNL is, according to a survey. > > Good point. Maybe all those who care about a chapter and its spending > are already members of the chapter so that they can participate in the > assembly which decide on it (and related online discussions)? :) > > If we want greater community review of their spending, perhaps it would > make sense to run campaigns for community members to join the chapter. > Maybe other people have different experiences, but the associations I > know of usually try to convince you to join the association ("it's cool > for X! you are important for Y!") and then they try to gradually involve > you more; I've never seen an association on a street distributing > dozens-pages books "hey! do you want to review our budget? it's great > fun! we value your input". > > Nemo > > >

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Q1 Quarterly Report from Wikimedia Norway (WMNO)
by Erlend Bjørtvedt 31 Oct '13

31 Oct '13

The quarterly report draft (non-reviewed) from Wikimedia Norway is now posted her: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round2/Wikim… Kind regards, -- *Erlend Bjørtvedt* Nestleder, Wikimedia Norge Vice chairman, Wikimedia Norway Mob: +47 - 9225 9227 http://no.wikimedia.org <http://no.wikimedia.org/wiki/About_us>

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Overloaded with CentralNotices
by Romaine Wiki 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

On the Dutch Wikipedia users have indicated that they perceive the number of Global Notices too much and the more that happens the more users will start to add code to their preferences to fully block every notice as they are so tired of them. The current load of negative feedback about the banners is currently coming up after the especially the FDC banners Every week a new notice is considered too much. I already noticed earlier that there is also some kind of banner blindness for many users: they get a banner on pages but do not look at them any more just as it are adds. This time several users got a notice in English what was perceived disturbing. Also they experience getting banners as not interesting for Wikipedia. As bonus I personally and other users have experienced that clicking away a banner made the banner appear again within the hour visiting other pages. I had that at least four times on a project, on several projects. Re-appeasring after being clicked away is useless and disturbing. Also it is annoying that I need to click the same banners away on each project I visit, many users visit Wikipedia, but also work on Commons, Wikidata, etc. I think the the CentralNotice should be redesigned or the CentralNotice will loose it effectiveness. Something is really going wrong. Romaine (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)

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WMF Audit
by Garfield Byrd 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

The Wikimedia Foundation has published its Audit and Audit FAQ for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013 on our Financial Reports page.<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports> Please contact me with any questions. Regards, Garfield -- Garfield Byrd Chief of Finance and Administration Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext 6787 415.882.0495 (fax) www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! *https://donate.wikimedia.org*

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The Wikipedia Adventure, alpha testers needed
by Jake Orlowitz 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

Hi folks! I've been working for the past 7 months on an interactive guided tour for new editors called '''The Wikipedia Adventure''', as part of a WMF Individual Engagement Grant. The game is an experiment in teaching our aspiring future editors in an educational but playful way. *This week I need some '''alpha-testers''' to kick the tires and basically try to break it. I'm interested in general impressions and suggestions of course, but I'm really looking for gnarly, unexpected browser issues, layout problems, workflow bugs, and other sundry errors that would prevent people from playing through and having a positive experience. *If you're able to spend 1-3 hours doing some quality assurance work this week, you would have: a) my sincere gratitude b), a sparkly TWA barnstar, c) special thanks in the game credits, and d) a chance to leave your mark on Wikipedia's outreach puzzle and new editor engagement efforts. *Please note that the game automatically sends edits to your own userspace and it lets you know when that will happen. If you want, you can register a new testing account just for the game, but it won't work properly unless you're logged-in by step 8 of mission 1 (when it lets you register on the fly). You can try it out at http://enwp.org/WP:TWA and leave feedback at http://enwp.org/WP:TWA/Feedback]]. Thanks much and cheers! --Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-ambassadors] Overloaded with CentralNotices
by Konstantinos Stampoulis 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

2013/10/29 Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> > > How would you suggest we tackle this problem? > Echo can be a good alternative. Imagine a new notification for every user, a "global notice" (not a talk page message) This can be sent to registered users, with its own icon, a notification message with text simillar to what it would be included in a banner, and linking to the relevant page (instead of own talk page etc). So, every user will get it only once, but he can go back to it by clicking the notifications icon. mockup: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Echo-centralnotice.png Konstantinos Stampoulis geraki(a)geraki.gr http://www.geraki.gr ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Οι παραπάνω απόψεις είναι προσωπικές και δεν εκφράζουν παρά μόνο εμένα. Το μήνυμα θεωρείται εμπιστευτικό μόνο εάν το έχω ζητήσει ρητά, διαφορετικά μπορείτε να το χρησιμοποιήσετε σε οποιαδήποτε δημόσια συζήτηση.

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Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA
by Nitika Tandon 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

Dear All, Konkani Vishwakosh is now freely available to download on Goa University's website under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. [1] As many of you know CIS-A2K has been following up with the University for the past couple of months to re-relase the encyclopedia under CC. Upon CIS-A2K' explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release to make it freely available to public and thus preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era. This is a great achievement for the CIS-A2K Programme and we are extremely thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopakumar. A special thanks goes to Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar, Frederick Noronha and Seby Fernandes for their constant support. If anyone would like to receive a copy of the Vishwakosh please send us a mail off list and we'll courier a CD your way. Thanks Nitika Tandon [1] http://library.unigoa.ac.in/?q=node [2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Konkani_…

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Wikimedia DC Annual Reports for 2012-13
by Kirill Lokshin 30 Oct '13

30 Oct '13

Hello everyone, Wikimedia DC has just published our Annual Report [1] and unaudited Annual Financial Report [2] for our 2012-13 fiscal year. Copies of the reports will be posted on Meta shortly. As always, any comments or suggestions would be very welcome. Cheers, Kirill [1] http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Annual_report_(2012–2013) [2] http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Annual_financial_report_(2012–2013) -- Kirill Lokshin Secretary | Wikimedia District of Columbia http://wikimediadc.org | @wikimediadc

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Wikimedia-l October 2013