We set up a page in 2011 for coordinating IRC meetings and used to have #wikimedia-uk-board for the community to be able to raise discussion directly with Trustees, so questions could be raised live during our meetings and there could be discussion about chapter affairs away from the main channel. See https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Community_IRC_meetings, there was some discussion about choosing the best communication channels for the chapter that you can probably find in the board minutes for that time; the issues are no different today. The transient nature of IRC, and it's public openness, is a benefit for some users, while the persistence of posts to Facebook groups along with privacy and closed groups is preferred by others.
The most successful past use of the wikimedia-uk channel was when it was used as live support for edit-a-thons. It was an excellent way to offer advice for remote contributors, including on-project sysop support without having to permanently publish questions on-wiki, and was something we could point to as evidence of not expecting volunteers to travel across the country for events.
You may want to update the wiki page for online meetings. I or another IRC op can add it back to the channel notice if it starts to get maintained or another page does.
Keep in mind that similar to this email list, the IRC channel is for the UK community of Wikimedians, rather than only for Chapter matters and events. It's worth also noting that it may take a day for someone to notice a question or comment on IRC, so be prepared for significantly asynchronous chat and it's worth staying logged in for days at a time if you expect to have a discussion.
Thanks, Fae
On 22 August 2016 at 18:04, John Lubbock john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
So I plan to start using the IRC channel freenode/wikimedia-uk to post some announcements and see what kind of engagement there is there. Everybody's welcome to join. I'll have it open during office hours.
John
On 20 August 2016 at 23:03, Rex X rexx@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
Gosh, I'd didn't realise how difficult preference voting was on twitter. I had to log on as 6 different IPs to vote for my third preference once, my second preference twice, and my first preference three times.
-- Rexx
On 20 August 2016 at 20:08 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
On 19/08/16 19:53, John Lubbock wrote:
. So I've put a poll on Twitter https://twitter.com/wikimediauk/status/766703544275767297 with some options for communications channels. I couldn't put more than four options, so I chose Facebook, the Water Cooler, Slack and the Mailing List.
It is clear that one choice is already out in front!
:-)
Facebook is a very poor medium. Never heard of Slack.
How about Discourse?
"Civilized Discussion"
Gordo
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk