Leila,

I am sorry to hear that your management have not seen fit to allow you the time to read this report since it is on a topic that is key to work that you do. But I think the underlying suggestion that Andreas or non-staff readers should identify ways in which this report has changed WMF practices is disingenuous. Surely it is the staff involved who can comment on the extent to which they expect this report to change their thinking and practices around communications. Of course it may well be, as you suggest, that the Interim Chief of Communications see it as only proper to delay any major response until her successor is in post. In either case, it would hardly be a major investment of staff time to say so.

However, there is a point that it is proper for volunteers and donors to raise. The company that produced this report is in receipt of some hundreds of thousands of dollars of WMF money – which means donors' money. If the assumptions on which they have founded their recommendations are significantly at variance with the values and practices of the community at large, then there is a disconnect that needs to be brought out into the open and addressed, otherwise there is a serious risk of that money being ineffectively spent.

"Rogol"

On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 8:24 PM, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:

Hi Andreas,

On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 3:59 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

...

I found some of the audit's recommendations troubling, and have

summarised

...

my concerns on the related talk page on Meta.[3]

​I would love to find some time to go over the audit (67 pages) and your comments/thoughts and share mine. However, given that this will require substantial amount of time, I'm wondering if you or anyone else has a good sense of areas that Wikimedia Foundation has decided to change its best practices based on the audit notes. I'm assuming that receiving recommendations for change doesn't mean that all recommendations are going to go into effect, the teams usually spend a lot of care in implementing changes considering the mission and their field knowledge of our Movement. :) If we know which parts of the report Communications team has decided to act on, then we won't spend our time on things that we already agree on. :)

I'm also wondering: Given that a Chief Communications Officer is to be hired whether it's more productive to delay spending more time on this kind of document until after this person is in office and we know more what their vision/direction is.

(and as you may know by now: I have not followed discussions on this topic before, my apologies if this is already addressed as part of the previous conversations.)

Best, Leila

​p.s. and you know this but for others: I'm in Research at Wikimedia Foundation. I'm interested in this topic as communications is key for surfacing the work I do as part of my responsibilities. I'm not talking on behalf of Wikimedia Foundation or Communications team.​ :)

...

Cheers, Andreas

[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/ permalink/1366566440057850/ [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/4a/ Wikimedia_Foundation_communications_audit_-_2014-2016.pdf [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/

Wikimedia_Foundation_

...

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On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 8:24 PM, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:

Hi Andreas,

On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 3:59 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

...

I found some of the audit's recommendations troubling, and have

summarised

...

my concerns on the related talk page on Meta.[3]

​I would love to find some time to go over the audit (67 pages) and your comments/thoughts and share mine.

As someone who has in fact read the whole 67 pages (twice now), I am happy to share my conclusions:

1) The communications audit is only of interest to people with a particular interest in Wikimedia movement communications and does not have wider significance.

2) Given that the audit was finished in September 2016 and was greeted by a marked lack of fanfare, anything that the Foundation was going to do differently as a result of the audit has probably already happened.

(It's difficult to tell from Meta whether anything has actually changed, but the report made a number of very sensible recommendations like WMF Comms working more with chapters, engaging more with non-English language audiences, and trying to avoid coverage about vandalism - hopefully those have all been picked up!)

3) If one reads any 67-page document related to the Wikimedia movement determined to find points of criticism, then it's probably possible to do so. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that the longer the document, the easier it is to find selective quotes to support an arbitrary level of outrage about its contents.

Regards,

Chris

Dear Rogol,

On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 7:18 AM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:

1: Surely the audit is of interest to those with whom the Foundation wishes to communicate, which includes the donors, who are paying for it, and the volunteers, whose work is being presented to the world at large in ways that might not always be consistent with their values and practices.

Your mileage may vary, but usually I find that the large majority of donors and volunteers have little interest in reading a document this detailed.

2: If the things that were already going to happen have already happened, then presumably somebody made them happen and those people would find it quick and easy to explain to the community what those things were (I take it from your wording that you are not one of those people). Explaining to the donors what $436K of their money bought would rarely come amiss.

Well, hopefully someone at WMF knows what happened as a result and how things have changed. There is a very brief bit of documentation for 16-17 messaging strategy still marked as a work in progress, so certainly the outcomes could be better documented on Meta.

Whether the staff concerned feel it's a good use of their time to respond in detail on Meta or on this email list, who knows. There is always a judgement call to be made about what it's helpful for staff to spend their time replying to. However, if I was in their position, looking at the nature of comments on Wikipedia Weekly, on Meta and in this thread, I would probably not be leaping to provide a full and thorough response.

2': Andreas made the point that "trying to avoid coverage" about a problem is not necessarily the best strategy. Being open about a problem may be better, and/or more consistent with community values. But that is a discussion for another location. The point of this thread is to encourage participation in that debate.

Yes, indeed, there is a legitimate question about how bullish WMF Comms ought to be about Wikipedia. Generally however I think they get it about right.

3: Quotes are by their nature "selective" since otherwise one would simply repeat the entire document, which is unlikely to be optimal. If you believe those quotes are not representative, have the courage to say so – you have read the whole document, after all.

Simply highlighting the ~1 page of arguably controversial stuff in a 67 page document is also unlikely to be optimal, because it creates a biased and misleading impression of the whole document, and gives the impression (accurately or not) that one's main interest is stirring up controversy.

Regards,

Chris

Hello Rogol,

...

Whether the staff concerned feel it's a good use of their time to respond in detail on Meta or on this email list, who knows. There is always a judgement call to be made about what it's helpful for staff to spend

their

...

time replying to. However, if I was in their position, looking at the nature of comments on Wikipedia Weekly, on Meta and in this thread, I

would

...

probably not be leaping to provide a full and thorough response.

In the interests of improving communications between staff and the community of volunteers and donors, please indicate how a request might have been framed that would have encouraged your colleagues "to provide a full and thorough response"?

Just to be clear they aren't "my colleagues" :)

However I would suggest that the following things make it less likely to be worth responding: * Many of the points the WMF could make have already been said by community members, either on Facebook or on Meta. (For instance, in the words of one Wikimedian who is normally unafraid to express his criticisms of the WMF, "Organisation has desire and strategy to maximise positive media coverage. Shock horror. Film at 11.") * Despite the issue having been raised in three different fora, the number of community members who are expressing concerns remains countable on the fingers of two hands. * Given that the criticisms are expressed as selective quotes without any appreciation of context (either from the document or the wider environment), the staff who would be inclined to respond are probably concerned that any response they gave would also be selectively quoted to misconstrue what they were saying * The whole idea that there was something wrong here started on the Wikipediocracy forums, which is a hotbed of crackpot Wikiconspiracy

Of course I wouldn't suggest any of these is an absolute counterindication for WMF staff wishing to spend their time responding to the issue, but it all adds up...

Regards,

Chris

Hi Robert,

...

Simply highlighting the ~1 page of arguably controversial stuff in a 67 page document is also unlikely to be optimal, because it creates a biased and misleading impression of the whole document, and gives the impression (accurately or not) that one's main interest is stirring up controversy.

That's very dismissive of legitimate concerns. If something is of genuine worry, how many pages should it take up before we are allowed to raise our concerns about it?

Where there's a genuine worry, I think it's much more likely to get a constructive response if the worry is expressed with understanding of the context.

"Here are my five concerns about this document" is quite a different thing to read from "Most of this document seems pretty sensible. However, are five concerns I have about it, though I think I have only spotted one of them actually happening at all"

Regards,

Chris