On 03/07/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote:
But I strongly disagree that e-mail is the only way
this can be
accomplished. There are so many methods of doing mass communication to
Wikipedia users that this is a complete fallacy that e-mail is the only
solution. As far as using [[Mediawiki:sitenotice]] and having that
effectively work in all browsers, all skins, and get pressing messages
out, that is something which should be taken to Tech-l or put on the
MediaWiki-Bugzilla, with you adding your own vote to the bug if it is
already submitted. Spam is not the solution here.
The problem is, exhorting people to vote needs to:
a) be targeted to people *eligible* to vote; if undirected, it has to
i) be clear to those who are eligible that they are
ii) be clear to those who aren't that they aren't
and:
b) actually be clear why you ought to vote;
and:
c) actually get to the electorate
a) and b) together makes it very, very hard to efficiently condense a
"vote now!" message into a single sentence in the sitenotice,
regardless of whether or not that method can be coaxed into fulfilling
c).
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk