2012/8/24 Ryan Lane <rlane32(a)gmail.com>om>:
Your idea is a
great one, except... I was going to say "you can't see
the forest for the trees", but actually it's the other way around. I
think you're too focused on the big picture (communicating with the
community) to see that smaller steps can help a great deal.
I haven't seen any small step solution that improves the situation,
though. Unless there's two way communication then it's the WMF telling
people "here's what we're going to do" without any way for them to
give us proper feedback. We can't possibly host discussions with all
of our communities, and it's really unfair to only select the biggest
ones.
That's exactly what I'm trying to point out to you: the WMF telling
people "here's what we're going to do" *on their home wiki* IS a huge
improvement. Specifically, on ro.wp, instead of 4-5 people seeing
these messages, 50+ people would see the messages on the Village Pump.
That's a ten-fold increase in coverage with very little effort.
Sure, it's great to have lots of peopled
involved in the discussion
leading to a big change, but it's not bad at all to have some people
involved in the decision making, but _everybody_ in the loop about the
decision taken. Think of it as law-making: some people gather, discuss
and take a decision, which is then made public for all interested
parties before it comes into force.
I really feel that the blog is the best place for announcements like
this.
How many people read the blog? How many people combined read the
village pumps of the 10 biggest wikipedias?
There's a number of decent ways to notify the
community of
changes. The blog is likely the easiest route for that.
No, it isn't. The blog simply does not have enough reach and very
likely will never have enough reach no matter what you do to make it
popular. I could find tens of other reasons why it's not the best
method, but I'll stick to just one: bog posts are at least 2-3 times
longer than messages on village pumps. This means 3 times more time to
translate.
I think the author of the original article said it best: "Agreement
aside, we're seeing a disconnect right now between what the Foundation
is spending resources on and the issues faced by the community." If we
can't agree on the problem, we will have a very hard time finding
solutions.
Strainu