[Foundation-l] Communicating effectively: Wikimedia needs clear language now

[Oliver Keyes]

On 18 February 2012 22:33, Tilman Bayer <tbayer at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi Tom,
>
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
> > Since Wikipedia started in 2001, great effort has been put into
> > ensuring that it is readable, clear and understandable by visitors.
> > Good Wikipedia writing is clear, concise, comprehensive and
> > consistent. Excellent Wikipedia writing is, according to English
> > Wikipedia's featured article criteria, "engaging, even brilliant, and
> > of a professional standard". Wikipedia editors work hard to remove
> > buzzwords, unnecessary jargon, peacock terms, marketing-speak, weasel
> > words and other similar clutter from their work.
> >
> > And it's not just Wikipedia: all of the Wikimedia projects aspire to
> > write clearly, neutrally and factually. English Wikinews says simply:
> > "Write to be easily understood, to make reading easier."
> >
> > Sadly, documents and communication from the Foundation, from chapters,
> > from board members and so on often fall far short of these sentiments.
> >
> > There are certain places where it is to be expected that communication
> > won't necessarily be clear: I wouldn't expect a non-programmer to be
> > able to understand some of the discussions on Bugzilla or
> > mediawiki.org, but the Foundation's monthly report is something
> > editors should be able to understand.
> >
> > From January 2012, under Global development's list of department
> highlights...
> >
> > "India program: Six outreach workshops in January in partnership with
> > the community as part of an effort to increase outreach and improve
> > conversion to editing"
> >
> > An outreach workshop... to increase outreach.
> The style may be less than elegant, but isn't it entirely sensible
> that if you undertake a larger effort to increase outreach, you carry
> out, well, outreach workshops alongside other things?--
>

It's perfectly sensible; I believe what tom means is that if you're
undertaking a larger effort to increase outreach, it is fairly clear what
the workshops that are part of that effort are aiming to achieve. It could
have been phrased as "Six workshops were held in January in partnership
with the community as part of..."

Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation