On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 7:58 AM, church.of.emacs.ml < church.of.emacs.ml@googlemail.com> wrote:
On 08/14/2011 11:41 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
I support the idea of language contact persons, or ambassadors, but their appointment shouldn't be as rigidly regulated as the appointment of administrators.
I agree, instead of only two responsible persons there should be a group of people who are A) in intense communication with each other, B) post WMF/foundation-l news on their wiki, C) summarize and post to WMF/foundation-l what's bothering the local community (also positive feedback).
If they are volunteers, you can't force them to post monthly reports on foundation-l (encourage them instead) or demand too much of them. And you shouldn't put them through an elaborate voting process, since anyone can help and afaik not much harm has been done in that area.
There are already ambassadors, originally for the monobook->vector switch, but not much has happened since then. The mailing list is inactive: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
The ideas of wiki ambassadors (general, not restricted to usability or technical matters) should be revived. I think it worked okay for the usability initiative with much room for improvement.
Regards, Tobias
I love this idea, and of reviving the Wikipedia ambassadors/embassies idea. One good focus point for reviving them might be to create a language report the way Ziko suggests -- another idea I love.
Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on small projects that may have never had them before?
best, phoebe