On 29 October 2013 16:26, Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On the one hand, the WMF often gets accused of failing to communicate
> properly and consistently with the Wikimedia community. On the other hand,
> when consistent communication is attempted though things like these
> notices, some people can get frustrated and tune out.
Since 2008 I recommend better communication from WMF towards communities as local communities feel not being informed well enough. I personally think it is very good that WMF tries to communicate, but seeing how local users more and more start to react on the banners we should consider using other ways of communication towards the local communities, otherwise the communication works against WMF.
Seeing how the local users react on all the notices they get, I think that we should limit the number of notices and use other methods. Local users expect that the banners are only used as exception.
> How would you suggest we tackle this problem? Simply not using these
> notices any more would lead to reducing our communication with the
> community, so without a better solution, we can't really disable the
> notices.
Using more notices will lead to reducing the communication as more and more users will block the CentralNotice, or even whole wikis will block all CentralNotices. (Today in the discussion the negative comments named the banner(s) as unwanted spam. I have seen how discussions in the past can get out of control with users getting more and more annoyed resulting in blocking messages for everyone, I tried to reply as damage control on the Dutch Wikipedia.)
At this moment it is difficult or impossible to have a solution ready tomorrow, but we should try to have better ways in the near future. Perhaps the best way is to have a (product?) team or something like that working on it. I am happy to help with that and give feedback. Perhaps a special team that tries to improve the communication inside the Wikimedia movement.
I see currently two ways of receiving information by communities on their wikis:
1. CentralNotice: too many notices will result in banner blindness and blocking notices as they are very disturbing often on every page.
2. Posting in central discussion/notifications page on a wiki: a lot of users will see that notice but also many users do not see them.
To me there is a gap between CentralNotice messages on one side and on the other hand the postings in central discussion/notifications page. I think we should get a way to notify every user targeted just as with the CentralNotice: if needed geo specific, translated, etc but isn't shown as big banner on every page.
In September I supported the implementation of the Notifications system (Echo) by announcing and explaining to the local community what was going to change and how it works, and even while that system has minor issues it is considered very much as a success by the community of nl-wiki.
I think a nice way to tackle the problem is by having the Notifications tool expanded with the ability to receive there notices like with the FDC.
Romaine
(tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)
