On 25 June 2012 13:56, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Excuse me. Just about a month ago, we had a discussion about spreading
out
the times during which office hours would be hosted. Instead of increased diversity in times, it seems ALL office hours are now being scheduled during a very narrow window of time from roughly 1530 UTC to 1800 UTC. Now, I don't have a problem with *some* office hours being scheduled
then.
But I can't remember the last time an office hour was scheduled outside
of
that narrow window. So...if you wish to have diverse opinions, you need
to
engage people who aren't available during normal business hours
throughout
the Western world. At this point, office hours have essentially become
the
same group of people meeting at about the same time to discuss whatever
the
topic of the day is. Now, maybe that's the objective here, and I'm misunderstanding.
I'm glad you brought this up Risker, but to be fair, Siebrand can't speak for everyone scheduling office hours, since there is no one person who coordinates them all -- each team is responsible for their own, and some are not associated with the WMF.
Anyway, I'm willing to test out doing this at a different time that's not during North American working hours. The editor engagement experiments team is due for another office hours. How does 10:00 UTC next Monday sound?
Well, let's see - that's 7 a.m. Eastern time, and 4 a.m. Pacific, so it's certainly not North American business hours. Perhaps the bigger question is who the target audience is, and whether or not you're likely to attract it during that time.
Now, it's entirely possible that the WMF staff and those of other projects using the "usual" timeslot have decided that their target audience is the people who are available during that timeslot (I don't think Wikidata's ever had an office hours outside of the same slot, for example). However, I know that a very significant percentage of Wikimedians are not able to participate during those hours, and the effect is strongly exclusionary. In many cases, those office hours are really the only way to keep current and participate in the discussion of various projects, unless one has a direct pipeline to one or more of the project co-ordinators.
I'm the world's worst wikitable creator, and even I can see how these constant overlaps can be avoided by creating a table on Meta to map out which office hours will occur when and having rules about how many office hours can be in a given two- or three-hour period. For example, the rule could be "only 50% of office hours can start between 1600 and 1830 each month" or "no more than two office hours in a row can start between 1600 and 1830, if you're the third one then you have to choose another time", or "unless you are trying to reach a specific identified target audience, half of any project's office hours must be held outside of North American/European business hours of 0800 UTC to 2000 UTC".
There are sometimes good reasons for holding office hours consistently at a specific time, most particularly if there is a desire to draw in editors from a certain geographic area, or if that is the time that a specific language group finds most convenient. But if the subject is intended to have global effects, then there needs to be variety in the timing so that a wider range of voices can participate. If it's something primarily focused at English Wikipedia, the office hours have to be late enough for North Americans to attend outside of business hours, at least some of the time, and some thought should also be given to ensuring our ANZA editors can also be included, at least some of the time.
Now, none of this is specifically about Siebrand's office hours. It's about the fact that this consistent scheduling implies nobody's interested in hearing from those who aren't available during the San Francisco mornings.
Best,
Risker