I'm hoping that one advancement which will help both WMF and the community
will be the Newsletter extension. I'm hoping that will help cut down on the
number of broadcast emails and centralnotice banners.
I'd like to see all WMF notifications for consultations and surveys
scheduled for a single day each month, and have once-monthly reminder for
the same. That should cut down on the deluge of notifications.
Agreed that WMF does a lot of broadcasting, and could spend more time
investing in thoughtful conversations instead of mass-produced surveys and
consultations. I'd like to see monthly IRC office hours for C-levels and
WMF Board members.
I like Peter's idea of surveys including requests for feedback about the
design of the surveys.
On the community end, I think what can be done may be wiki-specific. I'm
most familiar with ENWP's wide range of project talk pages, and there are
so many of them that watching all of them is unrealistic. That's just for a
single project; many of us spread ourselves among multiple projects. When I
wrote the *Signpost *Discussion Report back in the days when the *Signpost *was
often a weekly publication, I made it be a summary of active RfCs in
project-wide topics. If we could automate some kind of aggregation tool for
creating summaries of active discussions and VP posts like was done in the
Discussion Report, I think that would help with increasing efficiency. But
that would be difficult to automate. Government organizations pay staff
members and contractors to do that kind of work. I wouldn't want WMF to be
summarizing community discussions for the community, but if funding can be
found for that kind of communications support and if affiliates are willing
to supervise it, I think that might be helpful.
(As a side note, I think that the *Signpost *and other community
newsletters can be highly valuable, but getting people to volunteer to
write them on a weekly basis is a problem. If I had the money to feel
comfortable doing so and if legal liability issues could be worked out, I'd
personally sponsor some funding for a small number of people to work
on the *Signpost
*-- including the Discussion Report -- as a part-time job.)
Pine
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 3:46 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
Thanks Fae.
Aside from what the initiator of the communication can do (in this case,
the WMF/affiliates), what could the community do to make their life easier?
It sounds to me like you're answering that with 'nothing'. Fair enough,
thanks for the response. Anyone has some ideas what might be improvements
on the community side of the communications?
Best,
Lodewijk
2017-03-20 11:35 GMT+01:00 Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>om>:
I did, it's not my job to teach
Communications theory to the WMF or all
affiliates by writing 50 words in an email. There are plenty of books for
that. Most define what Communication is, and how to measure its success,
perfectly well.
Fae
On 20 Mar 2017 10:24, "Gerard Meijssen" <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hoi,
Would you be so kind and answer the question Lodewijk asked. We are all
aware that things are not perfect but what is it that can be done to
improve it?
Thanks,
GerardM
On 20 March 2017 at 10:58, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> In practice what we (Wikimedians) see from WMF communications
programmes
is
widely spread announcements and sometimes an
anonymous survey, again
widely
> spread. This is literally not 'communication', it is
'broadcasting'.
>
> For communication to be meaningful, your message must not only be sent
to
the right
stakeholders, but it is essential for the communication to be
two-way. This is why I find it especially frustrating to see generic
posts
from the WMF sent by bots with no named person
being the contact point.
At
> least with most emails sent to email lists, these are from a named
person
> and community members can respond to it,
often with later replies from
a
WMF
employee.
Fae
On 20 Mar 2017 09:51, "Peter Southwood" <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
wrote:
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(a)gmail.com>om>:
> 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
> > _______________________________________________
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