Hi,
There's currently a proposal on the English Wikipedia about creating a "Developer's noticeboard" so that people can stay informed about technical announcements outside of the noisy Village Pump/Technical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Develop...
The main argument (as I understand it) is that existing venues (like the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list, currently used for this purpose) don't meet the needs of users who want to be notified on their wiki, in their watchlist.
Rather than creating yet another (enwiki-only) venue for technical announcements, I'd prefer to find a way to use the current venues, and augment them to mitigate their limitations.
What I currently have in mind is a bot subscribed to the wikitech-ambassadors list, that would post every first message of a thread to the talk page of people who have signed up (like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassa... ) or to a noticeboard (that would then be mostly automated).
The bot would create a new section, using the email's subject line as the section title, and its body as the message. It would ideally link back to the gmane archive for that thread, so that users can read follow-up messages there. Messages could be trimmed if they're too long. The system could possibly also be used for other mailing lists later.
My intuition is that this wouldn't be exceptionally hard to implement, but I'd like a more informed opinion. Does anyone have experience with a similar tool? Would someone be interested in giving it a try?
In the longer term, the Notifications system will hopefully end up solving the issue in a better way, but if a quick bot hack can be a good interim alternative, I think it's worth a shot.
-- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation https://donate.wikimedia.org
<quote name="Guillaume Paumier" date="2013-05-09" time="15:19:51 +0200">
What I currently have in mind is a bot subscribed to the wikitech-ambassadors list, that would post every first message of a thread to the talk page of people who have signed up (like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassa... ) or to a noticeboard (that would then be mostly automated).
I like this idea as it makes less work for me, theoretically ;-) (versus the theoretical option of me needing to also post to the proposed noticeboard).
But, it still doesn't address one of my concerns (and it isn't your fault), from my comment on the proposal:
I hoped those on -ambassadors could do much of the actual dissemination on the various 'pedias/projects because having someone local to the wiki, both in language and in expertise, is better at communicating what the real issues/changes will be for that community specifically, whereas I have to be fairly general for the exact opposite reasons (I'm English-only and not an expert in all the projects' methods/standards).
I think the only way to address that is to have those on -ambassadors translate/localize (in more than just which language is being used) and post it on their local project's VPT (or equivalent).
How the noticeboard proposal will affect me personally (vis a vis the weekly deployment highlights email): A) send the raw info to wikitech B) send a generalized version to -ambassadors C) send a ENWP-specific version to this noticeboard
Versus what I do now/would do with your proposal: A) send the raw info to wikitech B) send a generalized version to -ambassadors
Just my thinking on the issue as a whole,
Greg
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Greg Grossmeier greg@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think the only way to address that is to have those on -ambassadors translate/localize (in more than just which language is being used) and post it on their local project's VPT (or equivalent).
I completely agree, and theoretically, that's how the ambassadors list is intended to work. But in practice, my impression is that only some of the subscribers relay the information to their local wiki.
Perhaps using email subjects starting with "Please relay: <foo>" would be a first step, but I don't expect it to be enough. I'm open to suggestions about how to increase that ratio :)
-- Guillaume Paumier
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Perhaps using email subjects starting with "Please relay: <foo>" would be a first step, but I don't expect it to be enough. I'm open to suggestions about how to increase that ratio :)
Another possibility would be (if we set up that mailing-list-to-wiki bot) to test whether people who get the message on their talk page relay it more than people who get it via email.
(My intuition would be yes, because they're already in the "wiki" activity and not in the "email" one, but perhaps I'm just projecting my own personal processes here.)
-- Guillaume Paumier
This might be something that would be better suited for Echo rather than talk page notifications.
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.orgwrote:
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
Perhaps using email subjects starting with "Please relay: <foo>" would be a first step, but I don't expect it to be enough. I'm open to suggestions about how to increase that ratio :)
Another possibility would be (if we set up that mailing-list-to-wiki bot) to test whether people who get the message on their talk page relay it more than people who get it via email.
(My intuition would be yes, because they're already in the "wiki" activity and not in the "email" one, but perhaps I'm just projecting my own personal processes here.)
-- Guillaume Paumier
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi,
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Arthur Richards arichards@wikimedia.org wrote:
This might be something that would be better suited for Echo rather than talk page notifications.
I agree; the problem is that such notifications are currently not planned in Echo/Notifications.
Quoting from my post on WP:VP/T: "It seems to me that this noticeboard would be yet another suboptimal workaround to a proper channel for topical notifications. Echo/Notifications was once presented as the solution to this problem, but "public announcements" are currently listed as "out of scope" < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo#Scope >. I don't know what the timeline is (if any) for the support of topical public announcements in Echo."
And earlier in this thread:
In the longer term, the Notifications system will hopefully end up solving the issue in a better way, but if a quick bot hack can be a good interim alternative, I think it's worth a shot.
This is a cool idea.
On 05/09/2013 06:19 AM, Guillaume Paumier wrote:
What I currently have in mind is a bot subscribed to the wikitech-ambassadors list, that would post every first message of a thread to the talk page of people who have signed up (like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassa... ) or to a noticeboard (that would then be mostly automated).
Let's abstract this a bit more:
A bot subscribed to a mailing list that * posts the subject and body of a new thread in a wiki page. * posts notifications to users subscribed to the bot.
Echo seems to be ripe enough to go for it instead of the old system of populating User Talk pages.
The bot would create a new section, using the email's subject line as the section title, and its body as the message. It would ideally link back to the gmane archive for that thread, so that users can read follow-up messages there. Messages could be trimmed if they're too long. The system could possibly also be used for other mailing lists later.
And a way to archive old posts?
We could also use such bot for posting wikitech-announce updates at mediawiki.org.
PS: I hope this idea doesn't die after a few days, but if it starts fading out let's slap it at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects
I can certainly understand the frustration of developers, staff and volunteer, in trying to find a good way to communicate with the very diverse communities about changes. The number of volunteer testers is small (and often tending toward the technically highly literate), the potential number of venues is very large and multi-lingual, and it is often difficult to sort out "dinosaur" responses to change from those that are valid concerns.
I don't have any perfect answers here, but whatever decision is made, I'd urge that the following be considered when communicating about changes, particularly anything that is noticeable to an editor without any technical knowledge:
- "Communication" implies that there is an opportunity for the recipient to respond, whether with questions, suggestions, or concerns. Whatever process is selected should accommodate that. - Any notifications about change, particularly to the UI or to content handling, should clearly explain what is new, what will be removed, why the decision was made to make the change, how the change will affect accessibility (e.g., screen readers) and usability, and who to contact with questions/suggestions/concerns. Any opt-out processes should also be clearly indicated. - When making changes and communicating about them, always be clear who the customer is, and remember to keep focus on that. The "customer" may be readers, unregistered users, registered users, a key organizational process (e.g., accessibility, security), a project, or some other entity. Where possible, involve the customer in the public discussion about the change. - Remember that the majority of "visible" changes will affect people (readers and users) who have very limited technical knowledge; write in plain language without jargon. Get someone with limited techie vocabulary and understanding to copy edit your communication.
These are useful, and fairly standard, communication processes. Here's hoping that a good solution can be found, for everyone's sake.
Risker/Anne
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Guillaume Paumier gpaumier@wikimedia.org wrote:
What I currently have in mind is a bot subscribed to the wikitech-ambassadors list, that would post every first message of a thread to the talk page of people who have signed up (like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassa... ) or to a noticeboard (that would then be mostly automated).
The bot would create a new section, using the email's subject line as the section title, and its body as the message. It would ideally link back to the gmane archive for that thread, so that users can read follow-up messages there. Messages could be trimmed if they're too long. The system could possibly also be used for other mailing lists later.
My intuition is that this wouldn't be exceptionally hard to implement, but I'd like a more informed opinion.
The hard parts of such a system involve making sure the email really came from the mailing list (rather than someone spoofing a message to the bot's email), detecting the first message of a thread (witness how gmail starts a new "thread" whenever the subject line changes, or conversely how other systems don't deal well with people who start a new thread by replying to a random message in an old thread), and possibly converting HTML email to wikitext. None of which is prohibitively difficult to get to a good-enough state. Then the bot actually making the post to the wiki page is trivial.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org