In addition to Jeroens post, I agree with him that a borderline seems to have been crossed. We never mentioned the name of any other company on the top of any page. I regret this form of advertisement, but wont cancel my contribution, like many others. The borderline between sponsorship and advertisement is razorthin, especially with virgin unite, which is viewed by some as an advertisement agency for the company.
I wonder: 1) Did the foundation decide themselves to reward virgin unite with this banner, or was this a (politely worded request) from virgin unite? 2) Have there been any donations by other companies of the same order of magnitude? 3) If so, wouldnt it be fair if we offer these other companies a banner for a day, on our own initiative? I also think of yahoo and kennisnet, who are supporting us heavily with servers and bandwidth. 4) The example of virgin unite will invite other charities and companies to also barter for a banner - or more. Did the foundation board write up for themselves any guidelines how far they want to go in the matter of sponsoring and advertisement (remember that sponsoring is just a form of advertisement) 5) Could the board please communicate all decisions which are sensitive among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent mailinglists? 6) Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
teun
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
I wonder:
- Did the foundation decide themselves to reward virgin unite with this
banner, or was this a (politely worded request) from virgin unite?
I believe it was necessitated by a contract.
- Have there been any donations by other companies of the same order of
magnitude? 3) If so, wouldnt it be fair if we offer these other companies a banner for a day, on our own initiative? I also think of yahoo and kennisnet, who are supporting us heavily with servers and bandwidth.
No. If the company does not require that we put their logo at the top of the page for the donation to be acceptable, we shouldn't. We should thank the company, but in a less divisive, controvertial way. In a way that isn't too close to advertising for some users.
- Could the board please communicate all decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
Not formally, I think.
--- Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
- Could the board please communicate all
decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all
wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
receive money?
Not formally, I think.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
5)No, just follow this list.
6)Yes
This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware of things that affect all Wikimedia communities. If you are part of another mailing list that you think would be sensitive to an issue here, you should forward the message along to that list. There is also now a summary service on meta which you could point people towards.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
At the beginning of the drive there was an announcement on this list of the fund raising drive which included many details you seem to have been unaware of. But the general idea of matching donors had been discussed here much earlier.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16 "Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest fundraising"
There have been many messages asking for people to help with fundraising. Announcing the creation of the Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to sign up (Certainly an open call). Even more general questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and after the Committee was started. Any fundraising discussions seemed to be met with questions about the audit and budget. It seems to me that the current drive began as soon as the audit was released because of a real need of money that has probably been put off because the community requested the WMF not take part in any overt fundraising until the audit documents were released.
Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be aware of all this. Anyone who wishes to be aware of these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS including links. I think most people who have subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure they stayed informed in the future. I know I did. I sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these things.
Birgitte SB
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
On 28/12/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
- Could the board please communicate all
decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all
wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
receive money?
Not formally, I think.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
5)No, just follow this list.
I was not requesting that the same post be sent to all mailing lists: of course people should look here for this kind of information. I was requesting that such sensitive agreements should be communicated to the community (via this list) in a timely fashion. Apologies if this was unclear: I didn't interpret number 5 as simply sending to all mailing lists.
6)Yes
This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware of things that affect all Wikimedia communities. If you are part of another mailing list that you think would be sensitive to an issue here, you should forward the message along to that list. There is also now a summary service on meta which you could point people towards.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
At the beginning of the drive there was an announcement on this list of the fund raising drive which included many details you seem to have been unaware of. But the general idea of matching donors had been discussed here much earlier.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16 "Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest fundraising"
There have been many messages asking for people to help with fundraising. Announcing the creation of the Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to sign up (Certainly an open call). Even more general questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and after the Committee was started. Any fundraising discussions seemed to be met with questions about the audit and budget. It seems to me that the current drive began as soon as the audit was released because of a real need of money that has probably been put off because the community requested the WMF not take part in any overt fundraising until the audit documents were released.
Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be aware of all this. Anyone who wishes to be aware of these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS including links. I think most people who have subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure they stayed informed in the future. I know I did. I sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these things.
Birgitte SB
I have been subscribed to this list for about a year and read (or skim) everything which passes through it. There has not, before a couple of days ago, been an explicit mention of the agreement with Virgin Unite.
On 29/12/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
I have been subscribed to this list for about a year and read (or skim) everything which passes through it. There has not, before a couple of days ago, been an explicit mention of the agreement with Virgin Unite.
Yeah, Virgin was first named specifically a couple of days ago. Skimming back through the list (hurrah for gmail search), Brad confirmed there were "two corporations" (then unnamed) on the 15th, though people's attention was taken by how to handle the "anonymous" chap in the sitenotice. Erik told us from the Board that matching gifts were "probable" on the 12th, and the idea was originally put out and kicked around by JamesF on November 8th.
But there was little response to these. On the 15th, no-one said "wait, we're thanking the anonymous guy in sitenotice, what are we going to do about thanking the corporations?" When the idea was originally discussed, JamesF made a comment that a logo *might* be excessive - no-one really picked up on it, though in retrospect the tone of that discussion wanted something more muted than we got.
The problem is, we're applying an ex-post-facto standard. We want to be told, well in advance, of "sensitive" decisions. But if you go back and look through the foundation-l archives, this doesn't seem that contentious - we all just let it slide when it was brought up, or didn't realise the implications of what was being talked about. Looking at it *without* the benefit of hindsight, the makeup of the sitenotice doesn't seem particularly sensitive at all. Do we want every decision the Foundation makes to be laid wide open for approval?
Yeah, we'll need to do better next time - we know this is contentious now, and I am sure that'll be reflected in the next fundraiser. But I think it's worth remembering that there were good reasons that people could simply not have realised it would be contentious, even with the community (well, foundation-l) informed of the outline of what was going on, and that if we just rely on a "well, the community need to know about things that will be contentious" the same sort of problem is likely to return and bite us, no matter how hard we try.
On 29/12/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Looking at it *without* the benefit of hindsight, the makeup of the sitenotice doesn't seem particularly sensitive at all. Do we want every decision the Foundation makes to be laid wide open for approval?
Sorry, that should have read "to be held up waiting for general approval?"
Oldak Quill wrote:
I have been subscribed to this list for about a year and read (or
skim) everything which passes through it. There has not, before a couple of days ago, been an explicit mention of the agreement with Virgin Unite.
One needs to distinguish between such arrangements in general and specific contracts. The generalities need to be publicly discussed, but the details of specific contracts that are consistent with agreed general principles may require no pre-publication in order to achieve a greater impact.
Ec
Sorry, Birgitte. It may be that this mailinglist is intended as the communication channel between the foundation and the community, but I dont think it works very well. The reactions here show most, if not all, people were taken by surprise. Which in itself shows this mailing list doesnt provide
To blame the people for not reading this mailing list is imho opinion the wrong approach.
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
Most posts here are not very interesting to the avergae wikipedian. The summary indeed , but doesnt mention Virgins name: "our anonymous donor's decision". I dont see any mention of a sitenotice before dec 20. That's about a week in advance.
Please dont misunderstand me: I dont say we shouldnt have taken the gift. I appreciate their gift, and 60K/day is a large amount. But timely communication would have prevented a lot of misunderstanding. Of course then too some people would have recated vehemently, but it would have been easier to explain.
teun
On 12/28/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
- Could the board please communicate all
decisions which are sensitive
among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
mailinglists?
I second this request.
- Has there ever been an open call to all
wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
receive money?
Not formally, I think.
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
5)No, just follow this list.
6)Yes
This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware of things that affect all Wikimedia communities. If you are part of another mailing list that you think would be sensitive to an issue here, you should forward the message along to that list. There is also now a summary service on meta which you could point people towards.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
At the beginning of the drive there was an announcement on this list of the fund raising drive which included many details you seem to have been unaware of. But the general idea of matching donors had been discussed here much earlier.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16 "Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest fundraising"
There have been many messages asking for people to help with fundraising. Announcing the creation of the Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to sign up (Certainly an open call). Even more general questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and after the Committee was started. Any fundraising discussions seemed to be met with questions about the audit and budget. It seems to me that the current drive began as soon as the audit was released because of a real need of money that has probably been put off because the community requested the WMF not take part in any overt fundraising until the audit documents were released.
Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be aware of all this. Anyone who wishes to be aware of these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS including links. I think most people who have subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure they stayed informed in the future. I know I did. I sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these things.
Birgitte SB
Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to, regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though. Principally I have find no difference between communications via sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why it came in English but not in our language?"
How? - by a bot.
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
teun
On 12/30/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to, regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though. Principally I have find no difference between communications via sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why it came in English but not in our language?"
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a solution.
Bryan
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
How? - by a bot.
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
teun
On 12/30/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to, regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though. Principally I have find no difference between communications via sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why it came in English but not in our language?"
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
You might be right. I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go hunting around to find where information has been published, has disadvantages too.
One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
teun
On 12/30/06, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote:
If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a solution.
Bryan
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
How? - by a bot.
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
teun
On 12/30/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to, regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though. Principally I have find no difference between communications via sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why it came in English but not in our language?"
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Perhaps we would be better to post a link here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
With a very short english message: "Last week's summary of foundation-l is now available. Please translate."
Then if ever someone does transalate the message that could be used in the future. Also perhaps we will round up new trnastors for the summary itself this way. I think it is important that this be done by volunteers and not bots. That way if people start asking questions someone will be wathing to try and work things out. Also if some people complain that the message is spamming a person can quickly apologize and remove that wiki from the list of places getting messages.
I don't like just posting "sensitive" messages because it is hard to tell what any one wiki will find sensitive. Not all wiki's are complaining about the sitenotice. Although the LSS is not perfect I think it is the best option for "pushing" information.
Birgitte SB
--- Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
You might be right. I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go hunting around to find where information has been published, has disadvantages too.
One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
teun
On 12/30/06, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote:
If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in
english, I can see
the maillist flooded by messages concerning
"anglosaxism", "language
pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think
that would be a
solution.
Bryan
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com
wrote:
How? - by a bot.
On the english wiki, I am a member of the
Military history
WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which
appears every monbth or two
months. All members are notified on their talk
page. By a bot. Surely,
if a project can manage this, the core of
wikimedia can mange this? I
admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I
see no alternative to
English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible
results. At least at
start, there wont be volunteers able to
translate it. You are right
that the next complaint will be that the message
is in english. When
we have taken this step, and the complaint
comes, we can invite them
to translate it.
One of the problems with the current
communication is that we rely a
lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is
posted somewhere, and
it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these
places frequently and
read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover
these places. It is
up to the wikipedians to go to these places
frequently. It is up to
the wikipedians to read them It is up to the
wikipedians to act on it.
This holds true for communication from the
foundation. This is true
for information from the local chapters. This is
true for information
from commons, such as deletions. It is true for
policy changes on
commons.
There is no information brought to the door. I
think it might be time
to change all this. We might start about
thinking delivering selected
information to the people on their talk pages.
information in the
village pumps.
I dont say we should communicate everything to
everyone, but we may
start thinking about such a change in our
communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside
world based on "push".
When the english wiki reaches it n-th million
article, whap, out goes
a press release. The same for commons: when the
1 million images
milestone was reached. We dont wait till the
media visit our sites to
discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line
internally.
teun
On 12/30/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans
teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages
into every village pump, simply in
english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work
in other places. If we
care the entire community, it is not the way
we are going to,
regretfully I admit that is roughly what we
are doing though.
Principally I have find no difference between
communications via
sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non
Indo-European language
projects, I have seen some (important to some
extent) messages posted
in English and left without comment. In this
way the possiblity of
translation doesn't depend on its importance
but genuinly availability
of volunteering translators. The next possible
complaint would be "why
it came in English but not in our language?"
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Birgitte SB wrote:
Perhaps we would be better to post a link here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
With a very short english message: "Last week's summary of foundation-l is now available. Please translate."
...
I don't like just posting "sensitive" messages because it is hard to tell what any one wiki will find sensitive. Not all wiki's are complaining about the sitenotice. Although the LSS is not perfect I think it is the best option for "pushing" information.
The Foundation list summary looks good.
The success of a communications strategy depends not only on the information being posted, but on people taking the time and responsibility to read it. One of the reasons for this reading failure is the sheer volume of messages that are issued. So, at least rating the significance of the messages would be important. A Board statement about a newly adopted policy would have a very high rating. Yet another person's complaint about being blocked would have a very low one. Putting numerical ratings on each message would help those with limited time to choose which ones to read first.
If the information has been there and easily accessible for a reasonable time there is no valid excuse for not being informed.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Birgitte SB wrote:
Perhaps we would be better to post a link here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
With a very short english message: "Last week's summary of foundation-l is now available. Please translate."
...
I don't like just posting "sensitive" messages
because
it is hard to tell what any one wiki will find sensitive. Not all wiki's are complaining about
the
sitenotice. Although the LSS is not perfect I
think
it is the best option for "pushing" information.
The Foundation list summary looks good.
The success of a communications strategy depends not only on the information being posted, but on people taking the time and responsibility to read it. One of the reasons for this reading failure is the sheer volume of messages that are issued. So, at least rating the significance of the messages would be important. A Board statement about a newly adopted policy would have a very high rating. Yet another person's complaint about being blocked would have a very low one. Putting numerical ratings on each message would help those with limited time to choose which ones to read first.
If the information has been there and easily accessible for a reasonable time there is no valid excuse for not being informed.
Ec
_
I am not sure rating is necessary. The key messages worth reading in a thread have links from the summary to their archived location. I would think everyone should have time to read the basic summary and if a particular thread is something they care about the should read the message(s) that are linked to. And if they REALLY care they can read through that section of the archive completely. Of course the archived messages is always in english which is a problem for those reading translations of the summary. But that would still be a problem even if they were rated.
Birgitte SB
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Birgitte SB wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The success of a communications strategy depends not only on the information being posted, but on people taking the time and responsibility to read it. One of the reasons for this reading failure is the sheer volume of messages that are issued. So, at least rating the significance of the messages would be important. A Board statement about a newly adopted policy would have a very high rating. Yet another person's complaint about being blocked would have a very low one. Putting numerical ratings on each message would help those with limited time to choose which ones to read first.
If the information has been there and easily accessible for a reasonable time there is no valid excuse for not being informed.
Ec
I am not sure rating is necessary. The key messages worth reading in a thread have links from the summary to their archived location. I would think everyone should have time to read the basic summary and if a particular thread is something they care about the should read the message(s) that are linked to. And if they REALLY care they can read through that section of the archive completely. Of course the archived messages is always in english which is a problem for those reading translations of the summary. But that would still be a problem even if they were rated.
Fair enough, but the ratings could also give an idea to potential translators about which should be translated first.
Ec
Hoi, Everyone who is with the Wikimedia Foundation a little bit longer *knows* about the foundation mailing list, about Meta. Certainly for people like yourself and Jeroenvrp there is no such thing as "being confronted" with whatever. It is your choice to be informed. The Foundation and its board represent the communities as best as they can. The board consists of volunteers it is not feasible to have you, when you are not interested enough to read the mailing lists, force fed what you do not want to read. It is also not fair to complain about how the need for continually bigger needs for money are met without providing alternatives, credible alternatives.
The forced posting in English on "Village Pumps" is stupid; people are not going to read it. If they are interested to read things, they can subscribe to the several mailing lists that are in existence. Even then you will find that it is not enough because some communities expect that their POV, published on their mailing list, their "Village Pump" is to be accepted.
Truly, if there is to be subscribe/unsubscribe let it be by the persons who have a real interest. The people who are not interested will not read anyway and will still claim the right to complain.
Thanks, GerardM
Teun Spaans schreef:
You might be right. I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go hunting around to find where information has been published, has disadvantages too.
One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
teun
On 12/30/06, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.com wrote:
If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a solution.
Bryan
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
How? - by a bot.
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
teun
On 12/30/06, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to, regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though. Principally I have find no difference between communications via sitenotice and ones via VP.
On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why it came in English but not in our language?"
-- KIZU Naoko Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
- Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
Teun Spaans wrote:
You might be right. I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go hunting around to find where information has been published, has disadvantages too.
One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
Posting these notices in English may not be optimal, but I think the chance of getting timely translations is much better when you give the material to a pool of potential (but perhaps undiscovered) translators. Things are likely to go more slowly when you have only one person to whom you can give the work. It also seems more wiki-like to distribute the task to a group of workers.
Ec
Teun Spaans wrote:
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Although recently I have been only lurking on this WikiProject, I must speak positively of these newsletters. Whether they will succeed in getting us lurkers to contribute is pure guesswork, but it will improve the possibility. Keep up the good work.
Do any other WikiProjects have such newsletters?
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
Sometimes the only answer to such complaints is, "This is a volunteer project; what are you doing to improve it?"
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
It took a while to realize that your push/pull analogy was taken from the language of addressing computer stacks. :-)
If a person goes to a page frequently but unsuccessfully to see if there are any additions he soon becomes discouraged and stops looking there.
The stacks need sorting. Stacks operate on a Last In First Out (LIFO) basis. If everything is put into one big stack the oldest entries wil soon be lost regardless of their importance. We need more conveniently sized stacks. Some of these are made available by default, others, such as study group nesletters, require a positive effort to subscribe. These lists could be added to the top of one's watchlist with a flag to show that there have been new additions to the list.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
Perhaps, but that needs to be done selectively to avoid overwhelming them.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
Worth considering.
Ec
Several. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Signpost. At least, those are all the ones we've seen... there's probably more out there.
Titoxd. -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 7:51 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: [Foundation-l] Push/Pull communications (es Advertisement)
Teun Spaans wrote:
On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely, if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
Although recently I have been only lurking on this WikiProject, I must speak positively of these newsletters. Whether they will succeed in getting us lurkers to contribute is pure guesswork, but it will improve the possibility. Keep up the good work.
Do any other WikiProjects have such newsletters?
Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them to translate it.
Sometimes the only answer to such complaints is, "This is a volunteer project; what are you doing to improve it?"
One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it. This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true for information from the local chapters. This is true for information from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on commons.
It took a while to realize that your push/pull analogy was taken from the language of addressing computer stacks. :-)
If a person goes to a page frequently but unsuccessfully to see if there are any additions he soon becomes discouraged and stops looking there.
The stacks need sorting. Stacks operate on a Last In First Out (LIFO) basis. If everything is put into one big stack the oldest entries wil soon be lost regardless of their importance. We need more conveniently sized stacks. Some of these are made available by default, others, such as study group nesletters, require a positive effort to subscribe. These lists could be added to the top of one's watchlist with a flag to show that there have been new additions to the list.
There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected information to the people on their talk pages. information in the village pumps.
Perhaps, but that needs to be done selectively to avoid overwhelming them.
I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push". When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to discover it, we go out and tell them. It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
Worth considering.
Ec
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2006/12/29, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
My local community is not at all hostile to messages in English on our Village pumps. Such animals drop in every now and then, and not seldom everone will change their language to English to continue discuss the matter - shutting Swedish speakers who do not speak English well out completely from the discussion. We seldom care about this. It is one of our cultural features, I guess.
I would prefer that the bot posted a short message including a link to the major text elsewhere - on Meta, on wikimediafoundation.org, in the mailing list archive or whatever. Actually, I think such an info-bot would be a good idea. If one wants to draw attention to the mailing list as a discussion forum, linking to discussions in mailing list archives is probably a good idea.
/habj
Posting such a link sounds like a very good idea to me - it might raise less irritation than a complete message in english.
teun
On 12/31/06, habj sweetadelaide@gmail.com wrote:
2006/12/29, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com:
Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in english, would be a solution.
My local community is not at all hostile to messages in English on our Village pumps. Such animals drop in every now and then, and not seldom everone will change their language to English to continue discuss the matter - shutting Swedish speakers who do not speak English well out completely from the discussion. We seldom care about this. It is one of our cultural features, I guess.
I would prefer that the bot posted a short message including a link to the major text elsewhere - on Meta, on wikimediafoundation.org, in the mailing list archive or whatever. Actually, I think such an info-bot would be a good idea. If one wants to draw attention to the mailing list as a discussion forum, linking to discussions in mailing list archives is probably a good idea.
/habj _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
Does continuously saying "our traffic level is stupidly high and costs a fortune / everyone at our web ranking has an actual budget and income stream / we're operating on a shoestring / we're desperately in need of cash" count?
- d.
No. Did I really have to say that? ;-)
On 12/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/12/06, Teun Spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
Does continuously saying "our traffic level is stupidly high and costs a fortune / everyone at our web ranking has an actual budget and income stream / we're operating on a shoestring / we're desperately in need of cash" count?
- d.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Teun Spaans wrote:
In addition to Jeroens post, I agree with him that a borderline seems to have been crossed. We never mentioned the name of any other company on the top of any page. I regret this form of advertisement, but wont cancel my contribution, like many others. The borderline between sponsorship and advertisement is razorthin, especially with virgin unite, which is viewed by some as an advertisement agency for the company.
I wonder:
- Has there ever been an open call to all wikipedians to provide
suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to receive money?
The difficulty here is for people who may understand their personal finances reasonable well to extrapolate their understanding of finances to the situation faced by a multinational non-profit with no model to go by.
A small local organization can function very well on bake sales, but that form of fundraising does not scale well at all. Requests about this sort of thing tend to be met with silence. People who think about servers by reference to the large hard drives in their own computers find it difficult to grasp the need for hundreds of servers. This kind of debate is not new; it reflects the kind of research that C. Northcote Parkinson put into the development of his law.
Ec
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