Hi Quim,

Is this a legitimate WMF website? 

It is a pre-launch site going through a community review and maintained by the Movement Strategy and Governance team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

It seems to have been launched, at least by your email?

Trying to trace where this website is
being hosted doesn't go very far - the domain seems have its DNS at
gandi.net <http://gandi.net>, with the registration via pir.org
<http://pir.org>, and its contact info is at
afilias.info <http://afilias.info>? Compare to wikimedia.org
<http://wikimedia.org> that at least says "Registrant
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.". 

Yes, this is being discussed at one of the questions of the community review: What do you think about the proposed name and domain? https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-proposed-n... https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-proposed-name-and-domain/53

This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.

There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org <http://wikimediafoundation.org>? 

See this pinned topic:

User privacy considerations in this forum https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo... https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-forum/55

So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

It's also very much not a mediawiki installation?

It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org https://discourse.org is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.

That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per https://www.discourse.org/pricing.

Please, just use a wiki.

Thanks, Mike

There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org <http://wikimediafoundation.org>?

See this pinned topic:

User privacy considerations in this forum

https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo... https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-forum/55

So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

You didn't answer this.

On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.net mailto:email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.

Participation is also welcome here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal

Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." . I thought that's what MediaWiki was?

 > It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org
<https://discourse.org> <https://discourse.org <https://discourse.org>>
 > is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
https://www.discourse.org/pricing <https://www.discourse.org/pricing>.

This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is free software.

So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?

Thanks, Mike

Hi again,

The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal#Why_a_Movement_Strategy_Forum, a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully agreement.

Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.

We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and fun are naturally expected.

Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards "social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.

This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation, better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.

Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is perfectly possible. One of the questions https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/are-there-other-channels-that-you-would-prefer-to-use-in-addition-to-or-instead-of-this-forum-for-movement-strategy-updates-and-feedback-why/54 of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find the best solutions.

I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.

Florence asks:

Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it starts

being hosted by WMF) ?

Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that people don't have to log in again every day.

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:

...

See this pinned topic:

User privacy considerations in this forum

https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo... < https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo...

...

So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

You didn't answer this.

Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:

We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the

Movement Strategy Forum.

They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we

provide here information

about privacy for users of this platform.

Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new website.

We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum being reviewed is only logical.

All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page <http://We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the Movement Strategy Forum. They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we provide here information about privacy for users of this platform.> also welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a structure to comment on the same questions.

Since 2018 (!!) there's an Extension that allows translation using the Google Translate API (the same Discourse is using). https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Google_Translator

You can test it here, for example: https://karaoke.kjams.com/wiki/System_Requirements

It took me literally 5 minutes to figure out that this exists. So, the one and only feature where Discourse may be better positioned than Meta to discuss about Wikimedia, can also be done perfectly with this extension.

Thanks

Galder ________________________________ From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 12:01 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review

Let's see the "features" Discourse have and MediaWiki don't:

* Anyone can join with their Wikimedia account. No registration is required. * This is a feature we already have.

* Multilingual conversations are possible thanks to automatic translation in more than 100 languages. * How are they doing that? Discourse is open source, isn't it? Could this feature be experimentally included at Meta? Are they using the Google Translate API? * * Newcomers are welcomed with an interactive tutorial and badges for achievements. * This can be done in Meta. Even developing a system of easy tutorials and gamification would be a great add-on for most wikis. So, if this is something really important, we SHOULD be doing for ourselves, and not letting MediaWiki abandonware. * * Notifications can be adjusted to follow or mute topics, categories, and tags. * This can be done with Flow.

* Conversations can use easy text formatting, expanded links, images, and emojis. * We can do this on wiki. Even the emojis thing.

* Complex conversations can be summarized by their participants, also split or merged. * We can do this on wiki. We have been doing this for ages.

* Posts can be flagged anonymously for moderation. Community moderators ensure that the Universal Code of Conduct is observed. * We can do this on wiki. Also, the Community moderators ensuring that the UCoC is observed should be working on how to do that on... check notes... Meta.

* All features are available on mobile and desktop browsers. * Also on wiki. If something is missing on mobile, then, we should invest all the necessary to get it. Not doing that only makes our platform more obsolete. * * Congratulate newcomers each time they publish a post. * This is a feature already available at Wiki. We can also congratulate by hand if wanted.

Is Discourse better? I don't know. Abandoning our own software because we have found that others are doing things better? A total error.

I have said this before, but we have plenty of money. We are swimming in a giant money pool. Our software is obsolete, and every move we make away of it, makes it even more obsolete, despite having the money to solve it.

Thanks

Galder

________________________________ From: Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 11:09 AM To: Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review

Hi again,

The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statementhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal#Why_a_Movement_Strategy_Forum, a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully agreement.

Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.

We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and fun are naturally expected.

Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards "social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.

This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation, better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.

Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is perfectly possible. One of the questionshttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/are-there-other-channels-that-you-would-prefer-to-use-in-addition-to-or-instead-of-this-forum-for-movement-strategy-updates-and-feedback-why/54 of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find the best solutions.

I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.

Florence asks:

Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it starts being hosted by WMF) ?

Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that people don't have to log in again every day.

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.netmailto:email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

See this pinned topic:

User privacy considerations in this forum

https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo... https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-forum/55

So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

You didn't answer this.

Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:

We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the Movement Strategy Forum. They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we provide here information about privacy for users of this platform.

Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new website.

We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum being reviewed is only logical.

All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk pagehttp://We%20are%20still%20working%20on%20the%20Privacy%20Policy%20and%20the%20Terms%20of%20Use%20of%20the%20Movement%20Strategy%20Forum.%20They%20will%20be%20completed%20during%20the%20community%20review.%20In%20the%20meantime,%20we%20provide%20here%20information%20about%20privacy%20for%20users%20of%20this%20platform. also welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a structure to comment on the same questions.

-- Quim Gil (he/him) Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:52 PM Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:

Even if you don't want mediawiki for various reasons, you can set it up in Wikimedia Cloud. We already hosted Discourse there for years.

Cloud is 1) not exactly an improvement https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Cloud_Services_Terms_of_use#If_my_tools_collect_Private_Information... in terms of privacy, 2) a drag on human resources as it will take significant time of an employee or community member (who is likely unskilled at operating Discourse) to keep the site running. If it seems likely that the forum will be around for long, it might be worth moving it to internal hosting (which will be a lot more expensive in relative terms but still not really significant compared to the Wikimedia movement's resources, I imagine). In the short term, just buying hosting while we see how well the new thing works out is a very reasonable approach. Our community's hostility to experiments is one of the biggest obstacles to adaptation and addressing long-present problems (such as using discussion technology that was considered pretty good forty years ago).

Even if you can't host in WMCS for other reasons, you still can have internationalized discussions in mediawiki. The Desktop improvements team does this in mediawiki.org (For example https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Fourth_proto...) and while not as great as auto-translate, it works.

No it doesn't, which is why you almost never see multilingual discussions on meta. It "works" in the same sense that two pieces of stick work as a lighter: it can be used for the same purpose with sufficient effort, but that effort is so high that almost no one will use it in practice.

Language barrier is a problem but so is privacy, there is a reason we host

everything onsite. For example, I don't know the details of how it uses Google Translate but it is possible we end up sending some data to Google that are either not anonymized or can be de-anonymized easily. Not to mention the cloud provider hosting the website having access to everything and so on. And not to mention auto-translate is not perfect and can cause all sorts of problems in communication.

While that's a good point and something to consider if we keep Discourse around, the current reality is that discussions mostly happen on Facebook, Telegram and Discord, all of which are worse in terms of privacy than a Discourse site hosted by a contracted organization. These discussions remind me of the trolley problem a bit - is it really preferable to let five times more people get run over, just because that way we can wash our hands afterwards and say we didn't officially approve of either option?

Hey all,

I find myself mostly in agreement with Gergő. A reluctance to experiment is a problem in this movement which prevents meaningful change. The current state of MediaWiki is such that having discussions on it is very painful. We can do better.

However, there've been quite a few different experiments with using Discourse as an alternative to on-wiki discussions over the years. What I'm left wondering is, what do we expect to learn from this experiment with Discourse that we didn't learn from the last ones?

Additionally, as an experiment, I think it lacks clear, objective measures of what would cause the experiment to be branded as either successful or unsuccessful. These should be defined in advance, along with a plan for how to measure them, or confirmation bias will means we'll all come away from this thinking that our pre-conceived notions were proven correct, and we'll have achieved nothing.

In fact, after I wrote the above, I realised that the exact question of success metrics was proposed for community input on the talk page for the new forum https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal. I get that we like community consultations and all that, but defining a problem, launching a potential solution, then asking the very people participating in the experiment what they think the experiment's success measures should be, strikes me as more of an abandonment of responsibility than a consultation, as well as invalidating the experiment.

Dan

On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 at 17:43, Gergő Tisza gtisza@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:52 PM Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:

...

Even if you don't want mediawiki for various reasons, you can set it up in Wikimedia Cloud. We already hosted Discourse there for years.

Cloud is 1) not exactly an improvement https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Cloud_Services_Terms_of_use#If_my_tools_collect_Private_Information... in terms of privacy, 2) a drag on human resources as it will take significant time of an employee or community member (who is likely unskilled at operating Discourse) to keep the site running. If it seems likely that the forum will be around for long, it might be worth moving it to internal hosting (which will be a lot more expensive in relative terms but still not really significant compared to the Wikimedia movement's resources, I imagine). In the short term, just buying hosting while we see how well the new thing works out is a very reasonable approach. Our community's hostility to experiments is one of the biggest obstacles to adaptation and addressing long-present problems (such as using discussion technology that was considered pretty good forty years ago).

...

Even if you can't host in WMCS for other reasons, you still can have internationalized discussions in mediawiki. The Desktop improvements team does this in mediawiki.org (For example https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Fourth_proto...) and while not as great as auto-translate, it works.

No it doesn't, which is why you almost never see multilingual discussions on meta. It "works" in the same sense that two pieces of stick work as a lighter: it can be used for the same purpose with sufficient effort, but that effort is so high that almost no one will use it in practice.

Language barrier is a problem but so is privacy, there is a reason we host

...

everything onsite. For example, I don't know the details of how it uses Google Translate but it is possible we end up sending some data to Google that are either not anonymized or can be de-anonymized easily. Not to mention the cloud provider hosting the website having access to everything and so on. And not to mention auto-translate is not perfect and can cause all sorts of problems in communication.

While that's a good point and something to consider if we keep Discourse around, the current reality is that discussions mostly happen on Facebook, Telegram and Discord, all of which are worse in terms of privacy than a Discourse site hosted by a contracted organization. These discussions remind me of the trolley problem a bit - is it really preferable to let five times more people get run over, just because that way we can wash our hands afterwards and say we didn't officially approve of either option? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

So I just received this:

Thank you all again for submitting your candidatures for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee are excited to inform you about the first community engagement opportunity of this 2022 Board election process.

The Affiliate Representatives will be submitting questions for candidates to answer. The process will use the new Movement Strategy Forum https://forum.movement-strategy.org/, based on the open-source platform Discourse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software). The great thing about Discourse is replies can be automatically translated by users into their preferred languages. We will send you each an email invitation to join a private category once the time to answer questions begins (June 18). Each candidate will use their Wikimedia account to log in, there is no need to create a new account and password.

So by opposing this off-wiki forum, I've probably excluded myself from going any further in this election.

Thanks, Mike

On 31/5/22 23:35:52, Mike Peel wrote:

...

There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to      wikimediafoundation.org http://wikimediafoundation.org?

See this pinned topic:

User privacy considerations in this forum

https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-fo... https://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/user-privacy-considerations-in-this-forum/55

So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

You didn't answer this.

On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:

...

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.net mailto:email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.

Participation is also welcome here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Forum/Proposal

Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." . I thought that's what MediaWiki was?

...

> It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org     https://discourse.org <https://discourse.org https://discourse.org>      > is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.     That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per     https://www.discourse.org/pricing https://www.discourse.org/pricing.

This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is free software.

So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?

Thanks, Mike

On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:

For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the answers in the forum on their behalf.

Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the forum.

This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.

It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't even be used for this, though.

More context. This election process also includes an option for voters to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70. Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they don't want to.

So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?

These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.

There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.

This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.

Thanks, Mike

Let's take the main argument here seriously for a moment: the Wikimedia movement needs a better platform for inclusive, public, multi-language, long-term discussion. We'll especially need this if we expect the Global Council to succeed and live up to our hopes for participation and transparency. MediaWiki and our existing community spaces are very good at many things but this isn't quite one of them, yet.

As a person who sees software development happen up close, I fully support the idea that a large wagon full of money could carry us a long way towards these goals, and we already have the right people, skills, and shared values to get us there. However, we still have two main alternatives: find a software package "off the shelf", or cook one up in-house. Ideally, we can do exactly what Quim has proposed: start with a system known to work, and benefit from it right now, but at the same time, slowly but deliberately take steps towards integrating the best parts of that system into our own software.

It should be clear that any choice of development process will take *years* and that we can't afford to do nothing while we wait?

I'd like to work with the kitchen metaphor begun above. We could say that MediaWiki started as a small but effective home for a few people to cook together. Maybe there was no oven so the types of meals that could be made were somewhat limited. We found a filing cabinet on the street and a padlock for it, because auditing and curating the recipes was a big concern. Happily, we didn't try to build our own filling cabinet. This cabinet sits in the corner of the kitchen along with a desk for two people where we have all our meetings (talk pages). The desk drawer includes blank paper and several black pencils, so it's a really nice environment for writing new recipes together, as long as you're okay with feeling a little cramped sharing this desk and you don't mind the cooking smells. And bring your own color pencils if you want to decorate your recipe or get otherwise fancy. Now, the lack of an oven is really starting to become a problem. By this time we realize that the village likes our food and we'll need to bake a lot of bread, if we bake one loaf. There's already a communal oven down the road but we decide to build a beautiful brick oven in the neighbor's back yard, like one we've seen in a book. Great, but we've never done this before and we don't have any insulation or mortar. The first three attempts sort of collapse and even once we get it right ten years later, by that time we already need a much bigger oven and—now we realize that we need a meeting space for one hundred people. We have the money to knock down walls and build a meeting room, but we've also never done this before, there will need to be extra bathrooms, wheelchair access, ventilation, break-out space, good connections to public transportation... Meanwhile, do we hold meetings in the perfectly functional city college campus that happens to be a few blocks away (ie., is also an open-source project), or do we insist that everything must happen in our building, so we continue with ten people barely fitting into the sweaty kitchen and having nightly arguments about what color to paint the theoretical meeting room?

Regards, [[mw:User:Adamw]]

Hi, thank you for this conversation. It is especially important to hear more opinions from more people. If you are willing but still hesitating to add your perspective, please go ahead and comment here or in the channel you prefer.

I will comment on the forum related points later today, but in the meantime I just wanted to say ..

On Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:42 AM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:

Just to change the subject for a short minute:

This thread about the forum is dense enough already. Given that this is a mailing list, please consider "changing the subject" indeed 🙂 and discussing the elections in a separate thread.

This is a Board of Trustees election. It is supposed to be managed by the Elections Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee, a Board-appointed committee of community members. Their mandate was reviewed and updated within the past month by Board resolution. (Yes, I know this used to be the "affiliate-selected" round, but now that it is an election, things have changed.)

Is there a reason why every single communication I have seen about this election has been authored by staff members, none of whom are listed as staff support for the committee? Did the Elections Committee carry out a consultation with the community to make this significant change in the manner in which candidate questions will be handled, as is indicated by their charter?

There's a reason why these elections have never been managed by WMF staff

• I think anyone could see the conflict of interest if they were to do so -

and the Elections Committee or a committee selected by affiliates has handled these matters to date. I'd like to know why this does not seem to be the case in this election.

You may now wish to return to your previous discussions about where to talk about this election. Please excuse my interruption. /s

Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

Hi Risker,

Thank you for raising this. Yes, there are communication pieces sent by the Movement Strategy and Governance team on behalf or with the support of the Elections Committee. As you know, the Elections Committee is composed of volunteers. The time demand of planning and overseeing the election can be quite a lot, as you know from your own past service. To help the Elections Committee members focus on other matters, the Movement Strategy and Governance team helps distribute our communication pieces. They also bring up issues or concerns from the community so we might discuss them.

The Elections Committee is involved with reviewing documents, the concerns of the community, and planning the Board election. The Movement Strategy and Governance team just helps us achieve those plans.

I hope this provides you with more information.

Regards,

Katie Chair of the Elections Committee

Hi,

First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on this https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights/Report/Front_door). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.

It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum. Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.

Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.

*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'. *

*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *

Best, Ciell

Op zo 12 jun. 2022 11:34 schreef Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:

Hi Mike,

Yes, on-wiki replies are fine and the organizers of the election will contact you to clarify the details.

We will find a fix to the problem of the content license on the forum. Thank you for pointing this out.

About features, this is what the election organizers want to try out:

• Let affiliates propose and select their questions by themselves. This is

why we are providing a private space for affiliate representatives to propose questions and vote for them.

• Give all candidates three days to writel their replies before they can

be read by anyone. This allows all candidates to organize their time to respond, not taxing as much those who have less free time or less flexible schedules. This is why we give access to candidates to this private space at the same time, when the questions are ready, and then make this space public at the date announced.

• Give everyone more time to read the candidates' answers in their

preferred languages, using automatic translation. We want to reduce the gap that non-English speakers have to endure when texts are only available in English, and when translations take extra days to arrive, if they arrive for their language at all. This is another reason to use the forum.

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:09 PM Mike Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:

...

On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:

...

For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post

the

...

answers in the forum on their behalf.

Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the forum.

...

This is the only point of the election process where this forum is

being

...

used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.

It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't even be used for this, though.

...

More context. This election process also includes an option for voters to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was

used

...

in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were

+70.

...

Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they don't want to.

So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?

...

These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.

There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.

This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.

Thanks, Mike

---

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Dear all

I quite agree with Galder here. We should focus on making our own spaces more inclusive and easier to use rather than jumping to various external providers for this and that. Let's not forget that existing volunteers and staff also have to learn to use the new platform. The other issue is the continued splitting of content and esp. volunteers have to find extra time to check those other platforms to stay in touch with the movement.

Be well and healthy

Matej

On Sunday, June 12, 2022, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:

Ceill, I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement, please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.

Best, Galder

---

*From:* Ciell Wikipedia ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com *Sent:* Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org *Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review

Hi,

First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on this https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights/Report/Front_door). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.

It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum. Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.

Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.

*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'. *

*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *

Best, Ciell

Dear All,

I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion currently runs in a good direction.

I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything.

We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not getting better, they are getting worse.

It might be a matter of funding, may be a radically new interface could be build on Meta to replace the existing one. But I am afraid this is more a matter of attitude. Discussions were happening on IRC, then most of them migrated to Facebook , then to Discord or Telegram, but nobody ever considered discussing things on Meta.

Obviously there are a lot of boundary conditions, I fully buy the argument that discussion should happen in the space owned by the WMF (though a lot of discussions are happening right now on spaces not owned by the WMF, and partially just because they are not owned by the WMF), licensed appropriately etc. But saying we should go to Meta to discuss there and shooting off all attempts of doing something else is a dead end.

(I must say I did not even log in to the Movement Stategy Forum and I am not registered there, I am not prepared to endorse or criticize it, and I do not have any specific suggestions for improvement. I did participate in Space when it was up, and I recognize all the problems which were there, though).

Best Yaroslav

On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:09 AM F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

Bon dia a tothom/Hi everyone,

It's really difficult not to agree with Galder here. Happy to still read these persistent colleagues with key arguments.

The same people that committed the big mistakes and failure with Wikimedia Space (that should have never existed and that even combined discussions with Facebook groups as a "revolution" of communication) is now trying to tell us that they "learnt from those mistakes" and that they have full commitment in finishing this new forum. I still look back at this graph of 2019 https://diff.wikimedia.org/2019/06/25/introducing-wikimedia-space-a-platform-for-movement-news-and-conversations/ and wonder how things can rapidly age that badly and with worse leadership.

Imho this is quite informative of the lack of sustained chain of command (not community-need driven anymore). And the worst part of it, this is coming from the same people that is parallelly trying to blame those volunteers who strongly disagree with very legit discourses on the constant externalization of features and the lack of renewed wiki tech. I've read so far too many fallacies ("this platform must be good because we are 67 staff people behind", etc) instead of a critical recognition that our default, wiki one is obsolete and must be urgently supported with staff and resources.

There is no way to justify new forums in other interfaces rather than the aim or the apathy of the WMF to disengage actively involved wikipedians in favor of more empty infrastructures (that benefits the institution rather the direct interaction within the knowledge projects). Truly sad, especially when some of us feel obliged to explain this to kind donors that truly believe that their 5$ are going to fund Wikipedia's servers and functionalities as they are mostly told in the funding banners.

Xavier Dengra ------- Original Message ------- El dilluns, 13 de juny 2022 a les 10:19 AM, Matej Grochal < matej.grochal@wikimedia.sk> va escriure:

Dear all

I quite agree with Galder here. We should focus on making our own spaces more inclusive and easier to use rather than jumping to various external providers for this and that. Let's not forget that existing volunteers and staff also have to learn to use the new platform. The other issue is the continued splitting of content and esp. volunteers have to find extra time to check those other platforms to stay in touch with the movement.

Be well and healthy

Matej

On Sunday, June 12, 2022, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga galder158@hotmail.com wrote:

...

Ceill, I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement, please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.

Best, Galder

---

*From:* Ciell Wikipedia ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com *Sent:* Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM *To:* Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org *Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review Hi,

First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on this https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights/Report/Front_door). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.

It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum. Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.

Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.

*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'. *

*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *

Best, Ciell

---

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Thanks Nathan, I want to raise a point here. You say that "That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy." and I must disagree. If Quim's (or whoever, this is not a complaint against Quim, of course) scope is managing the movement strategy process and he thinks that we need better tools for doing that, and those tools are out of his and the team's scope, then the problem is in the management. Who should Quim or his team reach out to ask for investment on those tools? Who is accountable for the decision? Is there someone in this process who should take the decision to invest in better discussion tools for MediaWiki (not only Meta)? If there's someone, and is not the team who has decided to abandon Meta, then that person should tell us why they decided not to invest money on making MediaWiki a better software for discussion. It there's no one, then we should ask why such kind of decisions can be taken without any accountability.

I'm going to give an example. Imagine that my kitchen is broken and I can't prepare my meals there. I have budget to solve it, but instead of that I decide that eating every day in a restaurant will be easier than paying someone to fix my kitchen. Indeed, I will eat good quality food every day, and I don't need to clean the kitchen after using it. As long as I have money, I can do this every day. But my kitchen is still broken, and it would be wise to fix it. Maybe I need to eat out for a week or so, but not solving something I need while I have money to do that, is not the wisest decision I can take.

That said, yes, sure, Meta is not the best place to make a discussion. Commons is not the best place to upload a photo. But it's WMF's responsibility to solve that, that's why millions of people are donating every year. Not to pay a team who is deciding to abandon MediaWiki because other platforms are doing better.

Sincerely,

Galder ________________________________ From: Nathan nawrich@gmail.com Sent: Monday, June 13, 2022 2:51 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review

On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 6:05 AM Yaroslav Blanter <ymbalt@gmail.commailto:ymbalt@gmail.com> wrote: Dear All,

I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion currently runs in a good direction.

I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything.

We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not getting better, they are getting worse.

These are great points, thank you Yaroslav. The tone of this discussion is painful to read; angry and argumentative, even rude. But that's likely a function of your last point - things are not getting better, they are getting worse. Yes, Meta is an ugly and dysfunctional place to hold a discussion with many people. That reality leads WMF teams to search for alternatives that work better to achieve specific, discrete goals. That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy.

Complaints are better directed at the ED and board - why, after all this time, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on [something] and raising hundreds more, does MediaWiki feel frozen in 2008? Why are discussions so often held on other platforms? If this is a desirable outcome (e.g. a decision has been made that WMF can't replicate the ease of use and modernity of other platforms, which are continually innovating, and we made a decision not to chase Discord and IG and TikTok etc.) then maybe that's ok - if it is articulated somewhere that people can see when they are frustrated with why everything can't take place "on-wiki."

Wait, wait... what?

With a Movement Strategy landing place that is newcomer friendly and multilingual, we can also tackle a historical problem of the Movement Strategy process: outreach to volunteers in all the wiki projects. We can also invite our partners in the ecosystem of free knowledge and offer them cozy and well-equipped rooms to work together.

So, this is not a forum, but a "landing place"? How did it change from a forum to discuss the strategy to a "landing place". And why is the "landing place" outside of the ecosystem that is discussed? Why is not Meta the landing place anymore. Is there or have there been any rejected plan to implement Meta as a landing place? And if not, why hasn't it been discussed if this was one of the outcomes from most of the discussions done in the (now called ) Wikimedia Summit in Berlin (you can check the minutes).

The second part is quite strange: isn't it MediaWiki multilingual? You can translate things; you can even use the ContentTranslation (and soon the great SectionTranslation). We have technology for automatic translation of paragraphs into lots of languages (more than those at Google Translate) and we can even use our own community to make those translation forever, and not automatic. Where was it decided that "multilingual" equals "Google" and where can I read how much does it cost to adapt our own tools to our own ecosystem to make "multilingual" discussion happen?

I also read with perplexity that an external forum is giving volunteers in all the wiki projects a place for outreach. This may be a good salesperson point when trying to sell a product, but this has been done with Meta (and other projects) without any integration problem. Is something that is built in the core of our technology. If there's something missing there: why hasn't it been solved in the last 5 years of discussion? Did we notice now that we can have an external system to out(???)reach our own volunteers? I can't continue reading this without a real sense of strangeness.

And the last sentence is the best part: inviting partners to discuss about my home, in another home that is better equipped. We surely will drive our partners in the free knowledge ecosystem to donate more time, resources and even money to Discourse, that is what we are showing. This message is proposing exactly to drive out of our ecosystem to those that we need more, telling them that our place is not worthy. How did the Communications Team allow something like this? Or didn't they know? Furthermore, this idea is contradicting with the Wikimedia Strategy itself. The Wikimedia Movement 2018-2020 strategy says (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20):

By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.

And then we can read these extracts from the the Improve User Experience section (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommen...):

Improving the experience of usershttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Glossary#User_Experience on our platforms will allow more people to join projects, access information, and contribute. This is a shared responsibility between developers, designers, and communitieshttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Glossary#Community and requires collective action throughout the Wikimedia ecosystem. (...) * Spaces that allow finding peers with specific interests, roles, and objectives along with communication channels to interact, collaborate and mentorhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Glossary#Mentorship each other. (...) * Tools to connect cross-project and cross-language functionalities to provide an enhanced experience of the knowledge contained in the Wikimedia ecosystem for a particular interest, informational need, or inquiry.

We can also read the recommendations at Ensure Equity in Decision-Making (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommen...):

* Maintaining safe collaborative environments.

How is that in 2022 (2 years after this discussion was closed and 5 years after it started) we are doing just the opposite of what the Movement decided to do? How is that we spent years of discussion, volunteer's time and resources discussing something and the forum to continue discussing about it goes against all of the decided?

Sincerely, it would be great to discuss these things seriously, because we are already volunteering here, no one needs to buy another hair-growing formula.

Hoping that we can talk about what we need, and not what we have, Galder

________________________________ From: Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 4:17 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review

Hi,

I wanted to bring you a bit of Movement Strategy Forum flair, in case you haven't tasted it yet.

Oby_Ezeilo saidhttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/do-you-think-this-forum-can-be-useful-to-welcome-and-retain-new-contributors-to-movement-strategy/51/17:

I prefer this

1. You can communicate in your Language 2. There are quick responses from members 3. There is cross knowledge sharing from every angle 4. Nke a bụ ebe mmụta pụrụ iche

(Automatic translation from Igbo: This is a special place)

Andy_Inácio saidhttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/do-you-think-this-forum-can-improve-movement-strategy-discussions-and-collaboration/50/22:

I agree with other opinions stating Meta should remain the central place of gathering. But I must say: This forum feels so much more welcoming to newcomers. I speak for myself.

So from where I stand, if Meta is hard enough, here the participation can be significantly easier. The interface walk us through it. (snip) Plus, when the established alternatives so far are Telegram and similar, closed channels, I believe forums are much more useful to the goal.

Long live this forum! [:partying_face:]

***

Beyond the messages, you can sense the feelings of the persons sharing them. Movement Strategy implementation can only succeed if people feel safe, feel connected, and feel productive. We need a community of Movement Strategy implementors that is inviting to new ideas and experimentation, to success, and to failures met with encouragement and pride.

For cross-project collaboration we have Meta, we have social media, and we have events. It is not enough, and it is not working. What is to be done?

## Meta continues to be an official Movement Strategy channel

I want to clarify that we have no plans to abandon Meta. Movement Strategy relies on Meta for documentation, announcements, and calls to action. There isn't much discussion or collaboration happening there. This is where the Forum, a tool designed specifically for discussion and collaboration, can play an important role. We will continue doing the same work on Meta, and we plan to complement this work with the Forum.

With a Movement Strategy landing place that is newcomer friendly and multilingual, we can also tackle a historical problem of the Movement Strategy process: outreach to volunteers in all the wiki projects. We can also invite our partners in the ecosystem of free knowledge and offer them cozy and well-equipped rooms to work together.

Those preferring to contribute to the Movement Strategy implementation on Meta will continue finding us there too, and all the documentation will continue to be published and maintained there.

Ciell made some interesting points:

On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 6:04 PM Ciell Wikipedia <ciell.wikipedia@gmail.commailto:ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on thishttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_communications_insights/Report/Front_door). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.

Just to be clear, this is not what the Movement Strategy Forum is trying to accomplish.

It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum. Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.

If someone asks a question about Commons processeshttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/vrts-templates/152 in the forum, a good answer is to point them where to ask on Commons. At most, we can encourage them to convert the question into an idea connected to any of the MS recommendations. But still for that it would be useful to share that idea on Commons. This is what we did, and I think it is correct. The forum doesn't aim to become a Q&A place for all things Wikimedia.

Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.

Yes, we plan to produce data about this community review period of two months. We are already producing weekly reportshttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/forum-weekly-report/387 and we welcome feedback about which data would be interesting to catch. There is also a community review discussion about Goalshttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/what-goals-should-be-set-to-consider-this-forum-successful/52 (that I will mention again when responding to Deskana).

Some thoughts about people we have not heard from before:

* 3,5 weeks ago nobody had heard about this forum. We are doing targeted outreach step by step. Comparing participants between a 2-month community review period and 5 years of Movement Strategy discussions is useful, when put into perspective. * Even people falling in love with something need some time to adopt it. Among those who see something new as positive, many will wait to see how it goes before adopting it. 2 months is a good period to gather feedback. One year is a more reasonable period to assess adoption and impact. * People also need interesting topics to join, stick around and participate. We'll see how interesting is the MS agenda in these two months. The MCDC process looks promising as a project open to many conversations where diversity of participants and good coverage of multiple projects, languages and backgrounds is especially welcome. * Movement Strategy participation is in general lower than it was years ago. Seeing in the forum old participants coming back would be a success. * Among current and past participants, many don't share common places and, in practice, don't join common conversations except perhaps for the Global Conversations. Seeing known participants discussing together in a common space would also be a success.

About how many channels a Wikimedian can watch yes, this is absolutely true. One interesting feature about the forum is that users can watch / mute the categories, tags or topics that they care / not care about. Another nice feature is that users get an automatic digest with popular topics after not logging during 7 days (the periodicity can be changed).

NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'. Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.

There is a discussion about supporting automatic translation of languages not supported by Googlehttps://forum.movement-strategy.org/t/supporting-automatic-translations-of-languages-existing-on-wiki-but-not-supported-by-google-translate/281. If anyone finds more languages that should be covered, please let us know. Currently the plugin only accepts on engine at a time. If it is agreed that this is an important feature, then we can check what would it take to improve the plugin to accept more engines.

Sorry, this email is already too long. I'll review the rest of the thread and reply another day.

-- Quim Gil (he/him) Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF