(branching this into a new thread as it gets quite off topic)
Pine: Why do you think the solution lies with the Wikimedia Foundation?
Lodewijk
2017-03-18 22:52 GMT+01:00 Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
My point is more or less the same one that you're making. Communications (too much and too little) and information overload are both challenges. I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet solution, but I hope that WMF will invest effort into addressing this set of problems during the next Annual Plan. Some of this is WMF-specific, but some of it also relates to how we've organized ourselves in the community through organic growth and over time we've developed so many channels that one wonders if we would benefit from some consolidation and pruning.
Pine
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 2:15 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You mean, "how to deal with people who complain they weren't consulted then turn around and complain they were excessively consulted"? At this point, the appropriate thing would be to put forward a plausible solution rather than complain they did the thing you claimed they hadn't sufficiently done.
- d.
On 18 March 2017 at 20:39, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Chris,
That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and (2)
have
hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the
other
hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many
announcements,
surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This
is
part of a larger set of communications and "information overload"
problems
that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next
Annual
Plan.
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As I said, some of this is WMF-specific. For example, WMF could coordinate its requests for surveys and consultations so that they happen on a predictable monthly basis instead of sending what feels like 10+ notifications every month for separate consultations and surveys, with some of those being repeat requests (personally I think a ceiling of 2 requests per consultation/survey would be appropriate). I'm in favor of consultations, but there can be too much of a good thing. Information overload is as much of a problem as lack of communication.
I don't have a solution to this package of problems, but I think it would be worth researching and trying to refine information flows for greater efficiency and effectiveness, and to make more effective use of everyone's time. I imagine that large organizations (e.g. IBM) have people whose jobs are focused on improving information workflows within their organization, and I think that WMF and the community could benefit from that kind of approach to communications and information management.
Pine
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 3:00 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
(branching this into a new thread as it gets quite off topic)
Pine: Why do you think the solution lies with the Wikimedia Foundation?
Lodewijk
2017-03-18 22:52 GMT+01:00 Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
My point is more or less the same one that you're making. Communications (too much and too little) and information overload are both challenges. I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet solution, but I hope that WMF will invest effort into addressing this set of problems during the
next
Annual Plan. Some of this is WMF-specific, but some of it also relates to how we've organized ourselves in the community through organic growth and over time we've developed so many channels that one wonders if we would benefit from some consolidation and pruning.
Pine
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 2:15 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You mean, "how to deal with people who complain they weren't consulted then turn around and complain they were excessively consulted"? At this point, the appropriate thing would be to put forward a plausible solution rather than complain they did the thing you claimed they hadn't sufficiently done.
- d.
On 18 March 2017 at 20:39, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Chris,
That last paragraph assumes that people (1) know where to look and
(2)
have
hours to spend watching countless channels for announcements. On the
other
hand, there's also a problem of burying people in so many
announcements,
surveys, and consultations that people start to tune it all out. This
is
part of a larger set of communications and "information overload"
problems
that I'm hoping that WMF will address, particularly during its next
Annual
Plan.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 3:22 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
As I said, some of this is WMF-specific. For example, WMF could coordinate its requests for surveys and consultations so that they happen on a predictable monthly basis instead of sending what feels like 10+ notifications every month for separate consultations and surveys
You might be looking for https://meta.wikimedia. org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Calendar In any case, it seems a bit tendentious to raise this in the context of the Code of the Coduct, which (as it has been told ad nauseam) was a volunteer initiative, organized mostly with resources available to volunteers. Feel free though to discuss your preferences on notification frequency with the people who complained all along that insufficient effort is being made to get the community to participate. There is a Hungarian saying about a rabbit and a hat, of which these conversations somewhat remind me: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4bd293/til_that_hungary_held...
Gergő Tisza wrote:
In any case, it seems a bit tendentious to raise this in the context of the Code of the Coduct, which (as it has been told ad nauseam) was a volunteer initiative, organized mostly with resources available to volunteers.
The subject-space and talk pages have literally hundreds of edits by user names marked with "WMF". Describing this effort as a volunteer initiative is at least misleading, given this context.
http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=www.mediawiki&pag... ode+of+Conduct
http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl?lang=www.mediawiki&pag... alk:Code+of+Conduct
MZMcBride
Gergo, perhaps my point got lost since it was a tangent from the TCoC discussion. I was intending to address the topic of communication and information management in general. This topic came up during the course of the TCoC thread, and I was responding to that. Lodewijk was right to branch the discussion.
Pine
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 4:19 PM, Gergő Tisza gtisza@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 3:22 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
As I said, some of this is WMF-specific. For example, WMF could
coordinate
its requests for surveys and consultations so that they happen on a predictable monthly basis instead of sending what feels like 10+ notifications every month for separate consultations and surveys
You might be looking for https://meta.wikimedia. org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Calendar In any case, it seems a bit tendentious to raise this in the context of the Code of the Coduct, which (as it has been told ad nauseam) was a volunteer initiative, organized mostly with resources available to volunteers. Feel free though to discuss your preferences on notification frequency with the people who complained all along that insufficient effort is being made to get the community to participate. There is a Hungarian saying about a rabbit and a hat, of which these conversations somewhat remind me: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4bd293/ til_that_hungary_held_a_contest_to_name_a_danube/d18f4k9/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine
Hi Pine,
it's always easier of course to tell other people what they have to change, which is why I'm asking the opposite question too :) What can we change, on our end, to make communications easier for the WMF, for community members that want to reach out, for chapters and other affiliates. All these are having a hard time to get useful input from the community.
There seem very few generally accepted approaches to that: - using some mailing list, or some kind of forum that serves a part of the community you think would be most relevant (such as this mailing list, the wikitech mailing list etc). - Going all out and doing a full scale consultation/RfC with banners and everything. Gives you lots of comments. - Doing a broad and translated approach through village pumps etc - gives you a broad reach over languages, but within those languages still reaches a specific part of the community.
Those methods are typically either very expensive, or not very effective. And I'm only talking about getting input here, not even about 'informing' everyone.
So what can we, as a community, change to facilitate better exchange of ideas, experiences and provide input?
Best Lodewijk
PS: I apologize to the people who read this kind of email for the n'th time, it's not the first time I talk about this, I guess :)
2017-03-20 7:40 GMT+01:00 Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Might it be useful to analyse the community before trying to get communication out of them? Then efforts can be directed to be more representative of the various parts. OK, I understand that to analyse them it needs some communication. But that is a specific and directed communication. Work out what might be useful to know and ask everyone. Put a survey link on talk page for logged in users, and a banner for IP users. We get this anyway for fundraising. Before going full scale, test the survey on a small group, to find out what is wrong with it, fix the worst problems, and be sure to allow comments and feedback. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lodewijk Sent: Monday, 20 March 2017 11:04 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communicating plans and consultations
Hi Pine,
it's always easier of course to tell other people what they have to change, which is why I'm asking the opposite question too :) What can we change, on our end, to make communications easier for the WMF, for community members that want to reach out, for chapters and other affiliates. All these are having a hard time to get useful input from the community.
There seem very few generally accepted approaches to that: - using some mailing list, or some kind of forum that serves a part of the community you think would be most relevant (such as this mailing list, the wikitech mailing list etc). - Going all out and doing a full scale consultation/RfC with banners and everything. Gives you lots of comments. - Doing a broad and translated approach through village pumps etc - gives you a broad reach over languages, but within those languages still reaches a specific part of the community.
Those methods are typically either very expensive, or not very effective. And I'm only talking about getting input here, not even about 'informing' everyone.
So what can we, as a community, change to facilitate better exchange of ideas, experiences and provide input?
Best Lodewijk
PS: I apologize to the people who read this kind of email for the n'th time, it's not the first time I talk about this, I guess :)
2017-03-20 7:40 GMT+01:00 Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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2017-03-20 11:04 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:
Hi Pine,
it's always easier of course to tell other people what they have to change, which is why I'm asking the opposite question too :) What can we change, on our end, to make communications easier for the WMF, for community members that want to reach out, for chapters and other affiliates. All these are having a hard time to get useful input from the community.
Strictly for technical communication, there is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration_Guidance which I have not seen mentioned here. When I last read it in detail, there were some sound ideas expressed there. Since then, the quantity of text has grown, but I see this is still a draft, so presumably one could still influence the outcome by commenting in the talk pages of the sections.
One of the ideas I have mentioned there, in the context of changes which require community involvement was to encourage communities to subscribe their village pump to the tech news. Tech news come on a predictable schedule and include 95% of the important changes (with the percentage set to increase after the Guidance is approved).
Strainu
There seem very few generally accepted approaches to that:
- using some mailing list, or some kind of forum that serves a part of the
community you think would be most relevant (such as this mailing list, the wikitech mailing list etc).
- Going all out and doing a full scale consultation/RfC with banners and
everything. Gives you lots of comments.
- Doing a broad and translated approach through village pumps etc - gives
you a broad reach over languages, but within those languages still reaches a specific part of the community.
Those methods are typically either very expensive, or not very effective. And I'm only talking about getting input here, not even about 'informing' everyone.
So what can we, as a community, change to facilitate better exchange of ideas, experiences and provide input?
Best Lodewijk
PS: I apologize to the people who read this kind of email for the n'th time, it's not the first time I talk about this, I guess :)
2017-03-20 7:40 GMT+01:00 Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com:
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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All surveys should have a feedback option at the end, That lets people comment on what was right or more often what was wrong with the survey. There is almost always something wrong with the questions and options for answers, which is annoying and frustrating as you know that the results will be distorted and there is no way of letting the surveyors know what the problems are. A lot of feedback will be a load of rubbish too, but there will usually be something to learn from it. This also combines survey and consultation to some extent. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W Sent: Monday, 20 March 2017 8:40 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List; Chris Schilling Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communicating plans and consultations
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hey Pine,
Had to laugh a little bit about a consultation about consultations, but I understand the rationale for it. Your point is well taken that information management is important to think about when there is much going on.
I think the community notification calendar https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Calendar that Gergő has mentioned above is a good place to start thinking about improvements of managing information. Anecdotally, some of the issues I have seen and heard about are:
* having to follow mailing lists that are too active (like this one), * having to follow too many disparate mailing lists, * getting pinged too many times from user talk page messages sent through Special:MassMessage. * Too many consultations focused on overlapping audiences
A centralized calendar can help mitigate some of these issues. In general, the calendar has been used for planning and scheduling purposes, but I like the idea of making it more usable to for folks wanting to know what consultations are happening. Lodewijk recently suggested to me that some filters and other descriptors (e.g. country, projects targeted) will be needed to help users see what is relevant to them. Building those components is one technical challenge, and would be making sure the calendar gets used by the relevant consultation audience is another. We would need to think about how to inform people about the calendar without also falling back to doing more announcements on the usual channels a la "Hey, this new consultation is on the calendar."
One issue I don't have a good answer for right now is how we can solve the problem of having too many announcement channels while also being confident that when a consultation is announced (by anyone) in some set of approved channels, can they expect to get sufficient and representative participation? That might be something we can figure out in a survey about consultations generally as you've suggested.
- Chris
Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF) Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 1:40 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comments. Would you and Edward be willing to meet with me (and anyone else who might be interested, such as Lodewijk as well as someone from WMF Communications) to discuss the current situation and brainstorm ideas about how to improve it? We could set up a meeting off-list. Anyone else who wants to participate would be welcome to email me/us privately to be included in the meeting. After we meet we can come back to this list with our notes from the meeting and suggestions for future actions, possibly including a survey and/or consultation about mass communications and information management.
In terms of scheduling, the earliest that I can realistically schedule a meeting is in April, so we might be looking at May or June for the timeframe in which we might come back to this list with notes about future directions.
Thanks,
Pine
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 1:58 PM, Chris "Jethro" Schilling < cschilling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey Pine,
Had to laugh a little bit about a consultation about consultations, but I understand the rationale for it. Your point is well taken that information management is important to think about when there is much going on.
I think the community notification calendar https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/Calendar that Gergő has mentioned above is a good place to start thinking about improvements of managing information. Anecdotally, some of the issues I have seen and heard about are:
- having to follow mailing lists that are too active (like this one),
- having to follow too many disparate mailing lists,
- getting pinged too many times from user talk page messages sent through
Special:MassMessage.
- Too many consultations focused on overlapping audiences
A centralized calendar can help mitigate some of these issues. In general, the calendar has been used for planning and scheduling purposes, but I like the idea of making it more usable to for folks wanting to know what consultations are happening. Lodewijk recently suggested to me that some filters and other descriptors (e.g. country, projects targeted) will be needed to help users see what is relevant to them. Building those components is one technical challenge, and would be making sure the calendar gets used by the relevant consultation audience is another. We would need to think about how to inform people about the calendar without also falling back to doing more announcements on the usual channels a la "Hey, this new consultation is on the calendar."
One issue I don't have a good answer for right now is how we can solve the problem of having too many announcement channels while also being confident that when a consultation is announced (by anyone) in some set of approved channels, can they expect to get sufficient and representative participation? That might be something we can figure out in a survey about consultations generally as you've suggested.
- Chris
Chris "Jethro" Schilling I JethroBT (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:I_JethroBT_(WMF) Community Organizer, Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 1:40 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (:
I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much or too little, timing, locations, etc.
Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab.
Pine
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org