Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (
last year's
movement communications insights on this). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho
a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial
answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as
I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific
knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that
are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit
on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.
NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'.
Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.
Best,
Ciell
Hi Mike,
Yes, on-wiki replies are fine and the organizers of the election will contact you to clarify the details.
We will find a fix to the problem of the content license on the forum. Thank you for pointing this out.
About features, this is what the election organizers want to try out:
* Let affiliates propose and select their questions by themselves. This is why we are providing a private space for affiliate representatives to propose questions and vote for them.
* Give all candidates three days to writel their replies before they can be read by anyone. This allows all candidates to organize their time to respond, not taxing as much those who have less free time or less flexible schedules. This is why
we give access to candidates to this private space at the same time, when the questions are ready, and then make this space public at the date announced.
* Give everyone more time to read the candidates' answers in their preferred languages, using automatic translation. We want to reduce the gap that non-English speakers have to endure when texts are only available in English, and when translations
take extra days to arrive, if they arrive for their language at all. This is another reason to use the forum.
On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:
> For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
> questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the
> answers in the forum on their behalf.
Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to
reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during
Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify
copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the
forum.
> This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being
> used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
> quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at
> the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each
> reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate
> doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.
It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't
even be used for this, though.
> More context. This election process also includes an option for voters
> to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used
> in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive
> feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70.
> Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they
> don't want to.
So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?
> These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to
> users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as
has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.
This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
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