Thanks for highlighting the issues of access from different countries.
Being in the UK, I would never have used Telegram apart from Wikimedia
demands, as hardly anyone uses it here. Popularity, accessibility,
reliability, are highly variable for the different channel
technologies we use. These are also extremely good reasons not to jump
to one method, but to ensure our larger events support multiple
channels including our oldest or old fashioned like IRC and email.
Running editathons with a live dashboard or mash-up of IRC, a twitter
hashtag or FB messenger has worked reasonably well to engage remote
participants and to supplement videoconferencing. It's also essential
to encourage folks planning to participate to *test* their access,
preferably by supporting a dry-run session. One thing we can count on
is webcams and mics to fail, wifi access to become spotty, or for
websites to crash and that's when old methods suddenly look like good
options.
I guess we can agree a solid recommendation is to aim to support two
or three channels when the group gets above 4 or 5 participants, even
if some, like IRC, are considered back-ups.
P.S. as a community we should seek to keep testing out open-source
alternates, folx get comfortable with what they know works on their
machines but most of us are happy to support experimenting with
alternatives, it does not hurt to keep on suggesting them.
Fae
On Fri, 23 Oct 2020 at 11:22, Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I want to add a funny story. When I used to live in Iran, I couldn't join any of
Wikimedia telegram groups (including three or four wikimedia hackathons when I was
participating in them) because my phone number had country code of Iran (duh) and Telegram
banned users being able to join large groups for the whole country of Iran on the grounds
that lots of spammers are from Iran which is true. I don't know if it's still the
case or not but this is one of privileges people have and might not notice it (not to
mention the racist behavior of Telegram).
If I can shamelessly promote my project, you can use Wikimedia Chat instead:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chat
(
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2020/09/18/introducing-wikimedia-chat/)
Best
On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 12:09 PM Željko Blaće <zblace(a)mi2.hr> wrote:
On 10/22/20, Kaarel Vaidla <kvaidla(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
How to participate
...
* Join our Telegram group [2].
It would be amazing if we could embody the values of movement strategy
whenever we can. Using only Telegram group as recommendation is NOT*.
In general please consider not to endorse commercial and closed source
software as primary communication channel. It is also bad in terms of
usability and intensity/velocity of exchanges in conditions and
context of massive cross-zone/cross-cultural event organizing. Likely
to be a cute looking mess and info bottleneck. I already have multiple
Wikimedia Telegram groups that hard to follow and take more personal
energy then they should at these times of pandemic. Please re-consider
this!
My arguments are presented on the Telegram group itself and your meta
page
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Tr…
In Solidarity and with Care
~Zblace
*As a queer person without western privileges I can recommend its
limited use due to phone number privacy and I do also use it myself
but it should be neither only nor first option.
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