Greetings,
Summary: I'm trying to get comments and ideas on how to improve communication between developers and Wikimedia editors, and I'd like to ask the help of people on this list to ask your local communities what they think, and post the results of those discussions here.
Longer version:
Communication between Wikimedia contributors and "tech people" (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and other engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years, Wikimedia employees have made efforts to become more transparent, but what I'd like to discuss today is how we can better engage in true collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature that's already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide feedback!". It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of the way, from the early planning to deployment.
Some "big" tech projects sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation are lucky enough to have a Community Liaison who can spend a lot of time discussing with editors, basically incarnating this 2-way communication channel between users and engineering staff. But one person can only do so much: they have to focus on a handful of features, and primarily discusses with the English Wikipedia community. We want to be able to do this for dozens of engineering projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and truly collaborate to build new features together. Hiring hundreds of Community Liaisons isn't really a viable option.
There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g. new software features and deployments) that drive editors insane. You probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation should be, and how to get there: What can the developer community (staff and volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium term, long term?) What can users do to get there?
Instead of just postulating that "The problem is X" and "The solution is obviously Y", I've started an extensive consultation process to learn from users, to hear you, to listen to your complaints and your ideas on how to fix the issues. I'm hoping that this open and collaborative thinking process will yield better results than a one-sided analysis.
An preliminary consultation took place last month with projects in English and French. I've summarized the initial findings and proposals: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Fall_2012_consultati...
I'm hoping that we can now expand this consultation to more projects and more languages, with your help. It isn't feasible for me to launch a discussion on each wiki in each language, but I'm hoping that you can help me spread this message and start those discussions with your local communities.
I realize this will take some of your time, but I think it's worth spending a little time to discuss this now in order to make big improvements later on how we communicate with each other.
I'm available to answer comments, concerns and questions.
Many thanks for your help!
Guillaume - how do we contribute to this consultation? Deryck
On 8 December 2012 00:03, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Greetings,
Summary: I'm trying to get comments and ideas on how to improve communication between developers and Wikimedia editors, and I'd like to ask the help of people on this list to ask your local communities what they think, and post the results of those discussions here.
Longer version:
Communication between Wikimedia contributors and "tech people" (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and other engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years, Wikimedia employees have made efforts to become more transparent, but what I'd like to discuss today is how we can better engage in true collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature that's already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide feedback!". It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of the way, from the early planning to deployment.
Some "big" tech projects sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation are lucky enough to have a Community Liaison who can spend a lot of time discussing with editors, basically incarnating this 2-way communication channel between users and engineering staff. But one person can only do so much: they have to focus on a handful of features, and primarily discusses with the English Wikipedia community. We want to be able to do this for dozens of engineering projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and truly collaborate to build new features together. Hiring hundreds of Community Liaisons isn't really a viable option.
There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g. new software features and deployments) that drive editors insane. You probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation should be, and how to get there: What can the developer community (staff and volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium term, long term?) What can users do to get there?
Instead of just postulating that "The problem is X" and "The solution is obviously Y", I've started an extensive consultation process to learn from users, to hear you, to listen to your complaints and your ideas on how to fix the issues. I'm hoping that this open and collaborative thinking process will yield better results than a one-sided analysis.
An preliminary consultation took place last month with projects in English and French. I've summarized the initial findings and proposals:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Fall_2012_consultati...
I'm hoping that we can now expand this consultation to more projects and more languages, with your help. It isn't feasible for me to launch a discussion on each wiki in each language, but I'm hoping that you can help me spread this message and start those discussions with your local communities.
I realize this will take some of your time, but I think it's worth spending a little time to discuss this now in order to make big improvements later on how we communicate with each other.
I'm available to answer comments, concerns and questions.
Many thanks for your help!
-- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org
Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list Wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
Hi Deryck,
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Deryck Chan deryckchan@wikimedia.hk wrote:
Guillaume - how do we contribute to this consultation? Deryck
Thanks for your interest. What I had in mind was: by starting a discussion on your local community discussion page (the equivalent of the "Village pump" on the English Wikipedia), and then by sharing the results of that discussion here on this list.
But I'm happy to accommodate other methods of contribution that I haven't thought of.
On Friday, December 7, 2012, Guillaume Paumier wrote:
Thanks for your interest. What I had in mind was: by starting a discussion on your local community discussion page (the equivalent of the "Village pump" on the English Wikipedia), and then by sharing the results of that discussion here on this list.
But I'm happy to accommodate other methods of contribution that I haven't thought of.
I'm sure you know this Guillaume but for the benefit of others, we have a page on Meta-Wiki which has a list of the village pumps/community discussion pages on a large number of our wikis: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Distribution_list/Global_message_delivery
Thehelpfulone
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Thehelpfulone thehelpfulonewiki@gmail.com wrote:
I'm sure you know this Guillaume but for the benefit of others, we have a page on Meta-Wiki which has a list of the village pumps/community discussion pages on a large number of our wikis: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Distribution_list/Global_message_delivery
Yes; it's a really useful tool, and I've used it in the past for announcements. In this specific case, I'd prefer if local discussions were started by members of each community, rather than by an announcement bot. Thank you for sharing it, though, as it may be useful for people on this list to find the proper place!
On Friday, December 7, 2012, Guillaume Paumier wrote:
Thanks for your interest. What I had in mind was: by starting a discussion on your local community discussion page (the equivalent of the "Village pump" on the English Wikipedia), and then by sharing the results of that discussion here on this list.
But I'm happy to accommodate other methods of contribution that I haven't thought of.
I'm sure you know this Guillaume but for the benefit of others, we have a page on Meta-Wiki which has a list of the village pumps/community discussion pages on a large number of our wikis: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Distribution_list/Global_message_delivery
Thehelpfulone
On Fri, 7 Dec 2012 17:55:16 +0100, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Deryck,
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Deryck Chan deryckchan@wikimedia.hk wrote:
Guillaume - how do we contribute to this consultation? Deryck
Thanks for your interest. What I had in mind was: by starting a discussion on your local community discussion page (the equivalent of the "Village pump" on the English Wikipedia), and then by sharing the results of that discussion here on this list.
But I'm happy to accommodate other methods of contribution that I haven't thought of.
I think that it is a really nice idea Guillom, and I know that English Wikisource has been trying to feed what we see as relevant content through our users. I was going to set something up locally, but I think that all the Wikisources should be collectively reviewing this sort of material and sending as a whole community feedback. As an example when we eventually get music notation extension completed [BIG HINT! AND THAT WOULD BE FANTASTIC, bug 33193] and/or available for testing; or we have changes to ProofreadPage etc., we also have the creation of context relevant pages. This also puts emphasis and control back on to the communities, but it means that we have an available PUSH space.
If something like this was created, I would hope that if there were technical questions or first level response was not able to resolve and issue that their would be the potential availability of the technically literate to answer questions there if poked. There has been occasions where it has been more like pulling teeth to get some attention.
FWIW I am going to forward your email to the WIKISOURCE-L list and continue this discussion for our sister wikis.
Regards.
wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org