Dear fellow Wikimedians,
On the 7th of April, a joint statement was published by Wikimedia groups,
ally organization, and individual Wikimedians expressing concern over the
humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine. The statement calls on "all
Wikimedia groups, affiliates, allies, and volunteers to unite in solidarity
with humanity and demand an immediate and lasting ceasefire to halt the
tragic loss of life and destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage."
Additionally, the signatories call upon the WMF to "prioritize the
impartial dissemination of information and accurate, real-time
documentation of the current human-caused humanitarian disaster and erasure
of cultural heritage" and to "take proactive measures to ensure the safety
of volunteers, communities, partners and knowledge and memory institutions
from Palestine contributing to the dissemination of knowledge."
Since the initial release, several additional groups and individuals have
signed on to the statement, and others are kindly urged to do the same.
The statement can be found and signed here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Joint_Statement_on_Palestine
Peace and justice for all,
Farah
📢 Calling all Wikimedians! 🌍
As Rwanda solemnly marks the 30th commemoration of the *1994 genocide
against the Tutsi*, we must unite against misinformation, hate speech, and
genocide denial.
Our mission as Wikimedians is to uphold truth, accuracy, and empathy in
sharing knowledge. Let's stand together to combat these harmful narratives
that seek to distort history and perpetuate division.
Join Wikimedia Rwanda <https://wikimedia.rw/> in our collective effort to:
1. Combat Misinformation: Contribute to Wikipedia articles with accurate,
verified information about the genocide and its aftermath. Fact-check and
reference sources diligently to ensure the integrity of the content.
2. Counter Hate Speech Monitor Wikipedia pages and other Wikimedia
platforms for any instances of hate speech. Take swift action to remove or
revise such content, promoting dialogue and understanding instead.
3. Challenge Genocide Denial: Engage in respectful discourse to challenge
and correct any denial or distortion of the genocide. Provide reliable
sources and verifiable evidence to reaffirm the truth of this tragic
chapter in history.
Together, let's use our platform to honor the memory of the victims,
support survivors, and contribute to a world where truth, reconciliation,
and understanding prevail.
Join us in making a difference. Together, we can combat misinformation,
hate speech, and genocide denial.
#WikimediaAgainstMisinfo
#Rwanda30
#NeverAgain
#Kwibuka30
*Ndahiro Derrick Alter*
*Gender & Development practitioner *
*Founder & Executive Director*
*Wikimedia Rwanda <https://wikimedia.rw/>/Open Source Knowledge Rwanda*
*''Reshaping Rwanda's Narrative''.*
*Mobile:(+250) 789 162 <%2B250%20782%20701%20830>892 |*
* Town Center Building, 4th Floor, Nyarugenge, Kigali city,Rwanda
<https://maps.app.goo.gl/m68DuTyiv4KZj5xR6>*
*website: https://wikimedia.rw/ <https://wikimedia.rw/>*
This message will be translated into other languages on Meta-wiki
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You can help with more languages
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Hi all,
In my most recent email
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
in late February, I shared themes from an initiative called Talking: 2024
in which Foundation leadership, staff, and Trustees spoke with many of you
in conversations intended to shape our planning process. Earlier today, the
Wikimedia Foundation published the draft Annual Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2024-2025>
for the upcoming 2024-2025 fiscal year.
This year’s Annual Plan comes at a time of growing uncertainty, volatility
and complexity for the world and for the Wikimedia movement. Globally, the
role of trusted information online is increasingly important and more under
threat than ever before. Organizations and online platforms must navigate a
changing internet that is more polarized and fragmented. New ways of
searching for information, including chat-based search, are gaining
traction. The ease of creating AI machine-generated content creates both
opportunity and risk for Wikimedia’s role as a human-led, tech-enabled
knowledge system, as well as for Wikimedia’s financial model.
A few observations about this year’s draft Annual Plan:
-
2030 Strategy: As we face into these headwinds, the Foundation’s annual
and multi-year planning continues to be guided by the movement’s 2030
Strategic Direction. Changes in the world around us make this direction
more relevant than ever. A call to become the essential infrastructure of
the ecosystem of free knowledge is more than just an inspirational
statement – it is a mandate to continually assess the sustainability of our
projects and organizations in response to the shifting landscape around us.
-
Multi-year to multigenerational planning: And we must plan even further
ahead. Looking beyond 2030 is vital to our mission, which requires the
Foundation to help “make and keep useful information … available on the
internet free of charge, in perpetuity.” The shift from a link-based
search architecture – which has served our projects and financial model
well up to this point – to a chat-based search architecture is in its
early days but is likely here to stay. We believe this is part of a
generational shift in how people create and consume information online.
What emerges is a strategic paradox: Wikimedia projects are becoming more
vital to the knowledge infrastructure of the internet while
simultaneously becoming less visible to internet users. To ensure the
success of the Wikimedia projects into the future, we must consider a
multigenerational approach across key areas of future planning.
-
Trends: As we did last year, the Foundation started planning by asking,
“What does the world need from us and the Wikimedia projects now?” We
conducted research into external trends that are impacting our work,
including a larger focus on immediate, bite-sized information; increasing
presence of incentives, financial and otherwise, to attract contributors to
some platforms; legal and regulatory threats, including platform
regulations that can be weaponized against us and our contributors, as well
as opportunities to positively advance the public interest; and issues of
content veracity and the effect of AI on the information ecosystem.
-
Technology support: This year’s plan also remains focused on the
central importance of technology, given the Foundation’s role as platform
provider for volunteers and readers around the world. The Foundation’s
Product & Technology department shared their objectives last month before
the full plan was ready, to signal how their priorities for the coming year
are developing and invite feedback and questions. At a high level, our work
for the coming year is focused on improving user experience on Wikimedia
projects, providing the ongoing maintenance needed to support a top 10
global website and making future-focused investments to meet a changing
internet.
-
Consistent goals, iterative work: The four overarching goals of this
year’s plan also remain consistent with last year’s (Infrastructure,
Equity, Safety & Integrity, and Effectiveness), while the work and
deliverables within each goal iterate on the progress made in the current
year. Together, the four goals are a blueprint to improve the
technology that makes Wikimedia projects possible, support and enable our
global communities, protect our values, and do so effectively and
efficiently over the coming year.
-
Finances and budget: The plan also includes details about the
Foundation’s financial model and our budget. The Foundation’s budget
reflects ongoing trade-offs, as we see a slowing rate of new revenue
growth. To meet this new reality, the Foundation has slowed its growth
significantly over the past two years and made reductions in staffing and
expenses last year. Since 2022, funding to other movement entities has
outpaced the Foundation's growth rate, which remains the case for this
year’s plan.
Finally, this draft plan arrives during community conversations about a
proposed Movement Charter, which will undergo a community vote in June
2024. In alignment with the principles of subsidiarity
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Subsidiarity_&…>
and efficiency
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Principles#Efficiency>,
the Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to sharing and transferring
responsibilities that other Wikimedia organizations are better equipped to
own.
The Foundation has benefited from regular and direct engagement with the
Movement Charter Drafting Committee (MCDC), and conversations with many
stakeholders worldwide to inform and shape its perspectives on future
responsibilities
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Movement_Charter&oldid=26…>.
The Board of Trustees and leadership also discussed different scenarios,
including with the MCDC, to assess the readiness of the Foundation to make
changes to the status quo from now – and independently of the ratification
results. We are already preparing these functions to be overseen jointly
with volunteers as sustained change takes time, and to do it well,
structural changes will need to begin with careful deliberation from now:
-
Participatory resource allocation: In 2020, we created the Regional
Funds Committees <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Committees> to
advise the Foundation on regional resource allocation and make funding
decisions about community grants. This year, we will ask the committees to
partner with the Foundation to advise on regional allocations, bringing us
closer to participatory resource allocation and ensuring greater equity in
grants decision making.
-
A pilot Product and Technology Advisory Council: This concept builds on
the existing Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology Committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Product_and_Technology…>
and follows the Technology Council's movement strategy initiative. This
year, we will try out a pilot to review and advise the Wikimedia
Foundation's Product and technology work.
-
Improved Affiliate Strategy: In the previous year, the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustee liaisons worked with the Affiliations
Committee, affiliates, and Foundation staff to improve the Wikimedia
Foundation Affiliate Strategy
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Affiliates_Strategy/Re…>.
This year, we will take forward the learnings and answer some key questions
from the process.
The narrative long-form draft Annual Plan is a lengthy 23,000 words to
ensure that it can serve as a comprehensive overview and also source
material for other presentations and shorter summaries. We invite your
input and questions over the coming weeks in whatever form you prefer:
on-wiki on Meta, project village pumps, and by joining virtual community
calls hosted by communities worldwide.
Thank you,
Maryana
Maryana Iskander
Wikimedia Foundation CEO
Dear all,
over the last few weeks there have been many ongoing conversations about
the current state of funds distribution in the Wikiverse and what a process
built on subsidiarity and a more open planning phase could look like. The
CEE Hub has been having discussions with the Wikimedia Foundation involving
Steering Committee members and staff of the CEE Hub concerning this topic -
for transparency reasons we have published a possible version of how
regional networks and affiliates could/should be involved in funds
distribution and budget planning.[1]
Depending on the final version of the Movement Charter, parameters or
responsible entities might change within our suggestion, but the basic
principles of information flow from the bottom to the top of decision
making, and a more collaborative and open approach to budget planning,
would remain unchanged.
We hope this document can help further a conversation about the future
roles, relationships and representation that we want to share in Wikimedia.
Best regards,
Philip
-------
[1]:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Hub/Funds_Distribution_Vision
Hi everyone,
We invite your contributions to the Wiki Workshop Hall, a new track as part
of Wiki Workshop 2024 <https://wikiworkshop.org/> which will take place
virtually as a standalone event on June 20, 2024 (tentatively 12:00-19:00
UTC).
The Hall will be a novel space for Wikimedia researchers and Wikimedia
movement members to connect with each other. Through this new track, we aim
to provide a dedicated space for learning, exchange of ideas, the spark of
curiosity, and community building.
We welcome proposals that align with the interactive and collaborative
spirit of the Wiki Workshop Hall and look forward to a wide variety of
content: experiences and learnings, knowledge pieces, how-tos, open
questions, pain points, etc. During the Hall, a breakout room will be set
up for each accepted proposal, so that Wiki Workshop attendees can move
between rooms to interact with their hosts.
*Learn more about the Wiki Workshop Hall at *
*https://wikiworkshop.org/2024/call-for-hall*
<https://wikiworkshop.org/2024/call-for-hall.html>* and submit your
contributions by **April 29, 2024 (23:59 AoE)*
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20240430T115900&p…>
*. *
If you have questions about the workshop or about Wiki Workshop Hall,
please email wikiworkshop(a)googlegroups.com with a [Wiki Workshop Hall] tag
in the subject of your email or comment on this post.
Looking forward to seeing many of you in this year's edition.
The Wiki Workshop Hall chairs,
Pablo Aragón, Wikimedia Foundation
Kinneret Gordon, Wikimedia Foundation
Hello!
We are happy to announce that there is now a free and publicly accessible
course on the learning platform, WikiLearn, on how to upload and edit files
on Wikimedia Commons using OpenRefine: *OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons:
the basics*
<https://learn.wiki/courses/course-v1:Wikimedia-Foundation+WMF_GLAM001+2023/…>
.
OpenRefine <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OpenRefine> is a free
data-wrangling tool that can be used to process, manipulate, and clean
tabular (spreadsheet) data and connect it with knowledge bases, including
Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.
This online course is available at any time, for free. Anyone with a
Wikimedia account can enroll with the click of a button. It can be followed
at your own pace, with computer-graded exercises. A certificate is awarded
at the end to those who complete the course.
The training is suitable for Wikimedians, Wikimedia affiliate staff, and
partners (e.g. GLAM staff and Wikimedians in Residence). Accomplishing the
course should take an average of 6 to 8 hours.
This course was developed as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's training
and sustainability grant to OpenRefine
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OpenRefine/Training_2023-24>.
It is currently available in English and can be easily translated into
other languages (more about the translation process here
<https://studio.learn.wiki/meta_translations/discover_courses/> and here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tutorial_on_how_to_translate_course…>).
Translations for this course in French, Spanish, and Portuguese are being
worked on and will be available very soon.
Please, feel free to share this course with people you think might be
interested in learning more about OpenRefine or Wikimedia Commons, who are
part of your network, in groups, social media, or any other places.
Thank you!
Best,
Giovanna & Sandra
Giovanna Fontenelle (she/her)
Program Officer, Culture and Heritage
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear Pete and The Cunctator,
Surely, Twitter is getting worse by the day, and, surely, Elon is not the best practices person in the world. And, indeed, the WMF has lots of things to tackle and worry about. Nevertheless, the WMF has a Communications Team and the Communications Team has a Social Media department, and the Social Media department's job is to handle social media. So, even if these shouldn't be our main concern, is something we may talk about.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 2:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Twitter has a poor recent record on protecting its users from government interference and privacy invasion, an area in which the Wikimedia community and the WMF have typically taken a keen interest.
In 2015, Wikimedia's then-general counsel took pride in the WMF's perfect score on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) rating system for ethical response to government interference, a series that ran under the title "Who Has Your Back?"
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2015/06/29/whos-got-your-back/
As far as I can tell, the EFF hasn't run these ratings since 2019. In that year they focused on the issue of censorship (the specifics of the ratings varied in different year. They didn't consider Wikimedia that year, but Twitter got 3 stars out of a possible 6, putting it behind such companies as YouTube, Medium, the Google Play Store, and the Apple Store.
Now, in 2023, Twitter has apparently ceased self-reporting relevant data altogether to the Lumen group, which is connected to Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. But according to the report linked below, it has not refused even one government request for data since Elon Musk took over in 2022. It previously refused about 50% of requests.
One example that may resonate for Wikimedians:
"Under previous ownership, Twitter actively resisted requests from many of these same regimes. For two weeks in 2014, the platform was banned from Turkey, in part due to its refusal to globally block a post accusing a former government official of corruption. (The executive who led that charge was Vijaya Gadde, one of the first executives fired after Musk took over.)"
https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-orders/?ref=nobsb…
Twitter's choice to stop submitting data to Lumen as of April 15, 2023: https://twitter.com/shreyatewari96/status/1651865580629114880
I prefer to see the WMF follow the leadership of such organizations as the (USA-based) National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and officially de-emphasize Twitter as a means for public communication.
Wikimedia already has one of the top websites in the world; it is better to stand up for important shared values than to overlook this mismanagement of a highly popular website.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 5:27 AM The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com<mailto:cunctator@gmail.com>> wrote:
I honestly think the WMF has better things to do than worry about engagement on what is clearly a grossly mismanaged website.
On Tue, May 2, 2023, 3:53 AM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Dear Justice,
Yes, it works that way, because we are not measuring the total engagement (where @Wikipedia wins @euwikipedia bat not @viquipedia) but the engagement rate per tweet, which is balanced with the number of followers.
Another topic is that the take-over by Elon Musk is affecting our engagement, but this should also be taken in account by the Social media team. In fact, there should be a discussion following up here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Twitter_verification_chec….
Since the changes on the algorithm affects everyone, the @Wikipedia team should be interested in learning about successful stories and how other social media handles continue having engagement while the one that should be leading is losing engagement every month.
Finally, I don't think that any discussion is "settled" if there's no answer. For the moment, the answer to the proposal of working together is silence.
Thanks
Galder
________________________________
From: Justice Okai-Allotey <owulakpakpo(a)gmail.com<mailto:owulakpakpo@gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 9:47 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Hi Galder,
Twitter has consistently seen a downward trend since the take over by Elon Musk. A lot of people are not using that platform like they did in the past.
And I thought this conversations was settled when WMF brought their social media strategy and engagement plan. But it looks like you keep bringing it up.
Again you don't expect accounts with less following to have same engagements with accounts with higher following it doesn't work that way.
Organizations define their own metrics and so success may mean different things to different organizations.
Regards,
Justice.
On Tue, 2 May 2023 at 07:41, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Dear all,
The impact of @wikipedia continues going down on Twitter. There's no strategy to turn this trend and the team seems happy with the numbers .https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Organic_social_media_strategy_update.
For context, the "Engagement Rate per Tweet" (this is the metric that the Communications Team proposed as a benchmark) felt to 0.011% (benchmark average is 0.035% and 0.05% for non-profits). Compare it with 0.27% of the Basque Wikipedia or the Catalan Wikipedia accounts (both have the same impact factor), or the 0.23% of the French Wikipedia account. We are talking about strategies with x25 impact.
Some months ago, some users made an offer to collaborate in making the social media communication strategy better, but there's no answer from the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm still waiting for an aswer to the offer.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2023 11:36 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Dear all,
I write to send a small update on this. In a message about the methodology followed to measure success (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#Re:_Twitter_engagement_qu…), Laura Dickinson posted this: "According to its 2022 report<https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/>, the median Twitter engagement rate for brands across all industries is 0.037%; for nonprofits specifically, it is 0.054% [our engagement] over the last 28 day period is 2.7%."
I have measured the engagement with that methodology (https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/social-media-industry-benchmark-report/#title-…) for @Wikipedia in January (Likes+RT+Comments / Number of followers) and the result is: 0.012%, three times lower than the industry standard and 4.5 lower than for non-profits. For context, Basque Wikipedia had 0.055%, Catalan Viquipedia 0.060% and Indonesian Wikipedia an astonishing 2.79%. (You can check the numbers here: https://www.rivaliq.com/free-social-media-analytics/twitter-head-to-head)
There's an open question about the strategy followed and a sincere proposal of opening this account to a shared volunteers/WMF administration.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Àlex Hinojo <alexhinojo(a)gmail.com<mailto:alexhinojo@gmail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2023 7:42 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
+1
On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 07:13, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net<mailto:peter.southwood@telkomsa.net>> wrote:
A Wikipedia account should be under the control of Wikipedians, following the editorial policy for Wikipedia, but they could let WMF do the technical work if such exists. WMF can and should run Wikimedia accounts. WMF running a Wikipedia account could be misrepresentation.
Cheers,
Peter
From: Andreas Kolbe [mailto:jayen466@gmail.com<mailto:jayen466@gmail.com>]
Sent: 19 January 2023 02:46
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Dear all,
The obvious question surely is: Why not let volunteers (co-)run the Wikipedia Twitter account?
A number of Wikipedia language versions (French, Catalan, Portuguese, Basque, Waray, etc.) seem to have volunteer-managed Twitter accounts that are doing fine. If volunteers are good enough to write the encyclopedia and curate the main page of each language version, aren't they good enough to write (or suggest) the occasional tweet?
Andreas
On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 11:20 PM F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>> wrote:
Hi/Bona nit,
This last tweet from @Wikipedia is a good example of what some of us have been mentioning in this list during the past days:
https://twitter.com/wikipedia/status/1615756186640334848?s=46&t=7wB7VI4gwIS…
Despite the fact that many Wikipedias have already had this new skin deployed since months ago as voluntary testers, not a single mention on their huge contribution was explained on Twitter (neither back then nor today…). We need to go to the 8th tweet of today's publication to read something like "The new features, which start rolling out on English Wikipedia today, were built in collaboration with Wikipedia volunteers worldwide."
If this is the situation in which the main account is monopolized only to the English version and its news/articles, why not specifying it as "English Wikipedia" in the profile and in the main link?
Days pass by and we keep sharing to this list proofs, data and justified arguments (even collagues offering themselves and willing to trace a joint planning!), but still not a word or single thought from the Comms department. Disappointing, I am sad to say.
Kind regards/Salutacions
Xavier Dengra
El ds, 14 gen., 2023 a 09:52, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> va escriure:
Egun on Boodarwun/Gnangarra,
You are righth in one thing: it is very difficult to prove a point only from one puntual statistic. That's why I have been tracking statistics for a long time, because patterns are here the most important thing. Neverthless, there is only one way to know if the point me and some other users in this thread are rising is valid: experimenting. @Wikipedia should try something: tweeting 6-7 times a day, with varied topics, "on this day" like tweets, varying timezones and even curiosities about how Wikipedia works (https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1614045362985082881 2 million impressions in 9 hours). Then, after -let's say- one month, if the results (engagement, followers, retention) are better, it would be quite obvious that there's a point changing the social media strategy. If not, if engagement is the same, no obvious uprise in followers or RTs is visible, the current strategy could be validated.
Me, personally, I'm ready to help the Communications Team with this task, proposing intercultural items that could be tweeted and promoted. If they want help, they know where to go for it. Again, I think that following the same pattern is a bad communication strategy (as we can see by our own eyes) and trying something new could be better. Is up to the communications team to aknowledge this and give a try.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Gnangarra <gnangarra(a)gmail.com<mailto:gnangarra@gmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2023 6:00 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Kaya Galder
The assumption that despite there being a wider audience the interests of those audience members is exactly the same, if that was true why have multiple channels. What I am saying is that in different communities that doesnt and will never hold true. Using statistics to compare the two is the issue and then complaining about different audience responses to the same event being caused by those posting to the channel. Its not the channel operators, it's the underlying expectation that all audiences are the same and react exactly the same way every time even as the audience is increasing by many orders of magnitude.
Boodarwun
On Sat, 14 Jan 2023 at 02:06, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote:
@Gnangarra: I would doubt on the idea that Pelé is not relevant to the English audience, as it was the most visited article by far that day (https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/topviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=a…), and the second most visited next day, just after the less known Andrew Tate. Also, the account is not ENGLISH Wikipedia. Is called Wikipedia, so it should take into account, even if it tweets only about English Wikipedia (as pointed by @Xavier Dengra) a global audience. Because, again, the goal is "By 2030, Wikimedia is to become the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet.". Not only for US centered people, but by a global audience. Even with that in mind, Pelé was the most visited article in English Wikipedia.
@Yaroslav: Basque Wikipedia is not one of the few accounts tweeting about Pelé, and in perspective, there are more Basque tweeting accounts per speaker, than there are for other larger languages. We are not competing with major news outlets; we are competing to be "the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet". Wikipedia is doing well on that: nearly 2,5 million visits in two days for the article about Pelé only in English. I think that there may be very few web services having 2,5 million visits for a page about Pelé in two days, if there's any. Also, next day the most visited article was about Andrew Tate. So, you are right: we are not a news outlet, but we are visited according to the news. Any strategy that doesn't have this in mind, will fail.
You also ask how many tweets a day would be enough. I don't have an answer for this. I would like the communications team to come with one, but they don't seem either to have one. I don't think that tweeting every hour is better, but I'll explain why one tweet per day is a bad strategy, based only in what we know about the Twitter algorithm:
* The Twitter algorithm tends to show a tweet to followers and others more often if it gets more engagements (RTs, likes, comments...). So, maximizing engagements seems a something positive if we want to reach to new people.
* It also shows an account more often if the user interacts with it. If someone likes, RTs or comments a tweet, it seems that this account will be shown again soon. That's why you see more often tweets from your friends than others. And that's why ideological bubbles are created.
* If people are engaged with a tweet, it will be shown more regularly after a tweet by other people you follow once you scroll down. This is why if you open a tweet by a far-right politician, you will see below other tweets by far-right sided politicians and the opposite for left, libertarian, green or vegans. It shows you similar content, based on people's interaction.
So, tweeting more doesn't maximize engagement (if you tweet every minute, you will lose it), but tweeting less minimizes engagement. If you only tweet once a day, and you don't get too much attention, your next tweet will be less important for the algorithm, and so on. The only valid strategy is one that gets people engaged to your tweet, so you get more impressions, and this drives more interactions, and this drives more followers. Because, at the end of the day, we want to be "the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet".
I don't know how much is the ideal thing. In Basque Wikipedia our strategy is to publish 5-6 tweets every day, and then also interact with people talking about Wikipedia or speaking about articles they have created (like @viquipedia does, with great success). Our topics from the 5-6 daily tweets now (2023) are like this: every morning (yes, most of our followers live in the same time-zone) a biography of someone who was born/died on this day; then, something that happened 100 years ago. At noon, an artwork. If the artwork is depicting something interesting, a second tweet linked to that explaining the artwork itself. Two tweets in the afternoon: the first one, optional, about something related to Wikipedia itself (Statistics, projects, some user who has created something cool...) and then science/technology in a broad sense. At evening, we like to tweet something related to current events, if this is interesting. We have a shared doc with the daily tweets and we program them some days in advance. Also, we use MOA to have them copied to Mastodon.
I don't know, again, if this is the optimal. I know that is better than one-per-day, because data is obviously better. Engagements, followers and interactions are better this way, as I have proved above.
Best,
Galder
________________________________
From: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2023 3:37 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau <xavier.dengra(a)protonmail.com<mailto:xavier.dengra@protonmail.com>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Hi/Bon dia
Yaroslav: Also, you say one tweet per day is too little, how may do you think is normal? If I personally see an account which tweets more than say 10 per day (not counting threads) I start thinking may be it is a spam generator.
Since 4 years ago we updated the social media methodology for the Catalan Wikipedia Twitter account (approx 4.5M native speakers, 10M audience), we boosted from 15.3K to 45.4K speakers, now being the 4th most followed language of Wikipedia.
Our method in a nutshell: we have up to 23 knowledge themes that we oblige ourselves to post at least once every week. The number of our daily tweets vary from 6 to 10 only in content (i.e., articles). This depends on, ofc, whether it's a working day vs a weekend or other time aspects (peak hours). Plus the interactions (RT+kudos) with our wikipedians that share their new articles tagging us, which has been a massive way to appreciate their task and to visibilize to others the task of being a volunteer in Wikipedia. In fact, the latter has been especially critical to bring us huge additional views and to renew a few of our new, most active editing community (especially young users!).
If our account, managed by volunteers, can conduct this organized work for a small-medium size language, why should we accept that a whole staffed team from the WMF, firstly, rejects to provide engagement data on our common, biggest handle? And secondly, why should we give up on them preparing a strategy to improve its scope and objectives?
Regarding the last question, I'd like to add a last thought: never ever in the 4 years that I've been upfront in the handles in my language, the @Wikipedia account has given a simple, courtesy RT of any knowledge content (articles) from the Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Basque, Catalan, Galician, French, Suda or Portuguese (etc.) existing handles. That should be a key aspect in our debate.
Because if @Wikipedia is mostly used as the “central account” for the project, then it should also be very careful 1) to not always post in English and give some room to interact with the other language handles, 2) to stop centering their tweets on English-speaking culture, and 3) to post without clear range of topics to stay balanced. Oppositely, if it is decided that @Wikipedia is only the English-language handle, then it may change its profile name to "English Wikipedia" and not continue as the reference speaker either for the WMF nor for significant news or events.
Best/Salutacions,
Xavier Dengra
------- Original Message -------
On divendres, 13 de gener 2023 a les 14:56, Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt(a)gmail.com<mailto:ymbalt@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Galder,
on the other hand.. Basque Wikipedia is one of very few accounts twitting on the Pele death in Basque, whereas a lot was twitted in English. I do not think English Wikipedia twitter can compete with major news outlets, they operate on a completely different scale.The low-hanging fruit would be twitting DYKs, FAs, GAs, or may be some other randomly picked stuff. Also, you say one tweet per day is too little, how may do you think is normal? If I personally see an account which tweets more than say 10 per day (not counting threads) I start thinking may be it is a spam generator.
Best
Yaroslav
On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 2:26 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Some months have gone since I started this topic in this list, and still, we can't know how much engagement we have at Wikipedia, because data is not available. Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk, things are changing, there are more accounts in Mastodon daily, but still Twitter matters. I have been looking at the Twitter activity in the last days for @Wikipedia and I'm still very worried about the (lack of) strategy followed here. A full team, with staff members, which only produces one tweet per day, a lonely message in the vastness of the ocean, and gets really poor engagement numbers.
A couple of weeks ago Pelé, one of the greatest football players of all time, died. (English) Wikipedia Twitter account needed 7 days to tweet about it, even if the article was changed in a few minutes after the death (https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1611363972174778368). The tweet had 13.729 impressions (now we can know the number of impressions), 14 RTs and 129 likes. Wikipedia account has nearly 644.000 followers. If we divide these two numbers, we get a rate of 2,13% of impressions per follower.
The same day Pelé died, Basque Wikipedia made a tweet. Not a week after, just when it was news (https://twitter.com/euwikipedia/status/1608541274491211776). The tweet had 964 impressions, 3 RTs and 2 likes. Basque Wikipedia account has 7,956 followers. This is a rate of 12,11% of impressions per follower. x5.68 times larger, relatively than (English) Wikipedia Twitter account.
(English) Wikipedia Twitter account has nearly 81 times more followers than the Basque one. English Wikipedia is more visible, because it has a (now golden) verified account symbol, so tweets are more often promoted. English has 1.500 million speakers around the world. Basque has fewer than one million. English Wikipedia should have around 1.000 more followers than Basque Wikipedia. English Wikipedia article about Pelé had 2,5 million pageviews in the two days after his death. Basque had 250 pageviews. This is 10.000 times more pageviews.
@Wikipedia has 644.000 followers, and @euwikipedia has nearly 8.000. Audience of English Wikipedia is 10.000 times larger for the same event. Why Wikipedia is not 10.000 times larger? Why doesn't Wikipedia account have 80 million followers? YouTube's Twitter account has 78 million followers. "By 2030, Wikimedia is to become the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet.". How could we if Youtube's account has 100x more followers than we have? How can think that we are in a good shape if our tweets are only seen by less than 2% of our followers?
I hope that 2023 comes with a change. A change to open these accounts, have a fresh way of thinking on social media ,and building engagement, both with momentum, not losing opportunities, and promoting good content.
Sincerely
Galder
________________________________
From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <galder158(a)hotmail.com<mailto:galder158@hotmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 3:21 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
Dear all,
Some weeks ago, we had a discussion here about the different approaches we have for the @wikipedia account at Twitter. We don't know yet how many interactions does the account has, but as I said in the discussion, we try to find ways to measure our work at @euwikipedia. Today I want to share with you that this account was ranked last week as the most influential social-movements account in Basque language (https://umap.eus/ranking/gizartea) and the 10th most influential account in all categories (https://umap.eus/ranking/orokorra). This is a good metric we use to know if we are doing fine or not.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk<mailto:andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>>
Sent: Friday, August 5, 2022 8:50 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: @Wikipedia losing opportunities in Twitter
On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 at 18:48, Lauren Dickinson <ldickinson(a)wikimedia.org<mailto:ldickinson@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
> Also, Andy, we will follow up this week regarding your questions
> about the @WiktionaryUsers and @Wiktionary accounts.
Three working weeks have passed since the above was written; I've seen
no such follow-up. Have I missed something?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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