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

[Ziko van Dijk]

Dear Tom,

I couldn't agree more. And I remember that I understand Amir's blog
entries quite well, in sharp opposition to some other WMF technical
guys' blog entries...

A copy-editor with an eye for newbies, non techies, non native
speakers of English etc. would be a great idea.

Kind regards
Ziko

2012/2/18 Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org>:
> 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. Is that a workshop to
> train editors on how to do outreach? Or is it a workshop for newbies
> teaching them how to edit? Enquiring minds want to know.
>
> Later on in the same document: "We concluded an exercise on distilling
> learnings from all Indic communities and started the process of
> seeding ideas with communities."
>
> I was bold and changed "learnings" to "lessons". What is a learning?
> How does one distill a learning? And "seeding ideas with communities"?
> The idea, presumably, is the soil, into which one puts each different
> community. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
>
> This one is a howler from a subpage of the movement roles discussion:
>
> "At the same time, for Wikimedia to adopt the best of the Olympic
> movement would probably raise the bar on accountabilities for chapters
> and other organizations"
>
> Accountabilities, plural? I can understand accountability, the state
> of being accountable to another. But I have no idea what
> accountabilities are. Can you collect them like Pokémon cards? And how
> would one raise the bar on accountabilities? Would that mean some
> accountabilities can't quite reach the bar? (Also, the idea that we
> could learn anything about accountability, singular or plural, from
> the Olympics strikes me as hilarious given the extensive history of
> corruption at the IOC.)
>
> If you search on Meta, it is possible to find lots and lots of other
> documents from the Foundation filled with corporate lingo. Projects
> are 'scoped', and there is a list of 'deliverables' -- not just any
> deliverables but 'specific deliverables' -- along with 'next steps' to
> deliver, err, those deliverables while 'going forward'.
>
> I can't be the only one who reads these things and whose brain stalls
> or goes into reverse. There have been numerous things where I've had
> to ask Foundation contacts to explain things in clear and simple
> language to me. I don't think I'm particularly stupid or uninformed.
> Nor do I think that the people who write in the manner I've described
> do it consciously. But we do need to fix it. If well-educated,
> informed native English speakers struggle with learnings and
> accountabilities and so on, what about those who don't natively speak
> English? When people see sloppy, buzzword-driven language, they wonder
> if this reflects sloppy, buzzword-driven thinking, or perhaps
> obfuscation. Clear writing signals the opposite: clear thinking and
> transparency.
>
> I'm not suggesting we all need to write as if we're editing Simple
> English Wikipedia. But just cut out the buzzwords and write plainly
> and straightforwardly like the best writing on Wikipedia.
>
> What can be done about this?
>
> There seem to be two possible solutions to this problem: one involves
> hiring a dominatrix with a linguistics degree to wander the San
> Francisco office with handcuffs, a bullwhip, a number of live gerbils
> and plentiful supplies of superglue, and given free reign to enforce
> the rules in whatever way she deems fit. The other, which involves far
> fewer embarrassing carpet stains, is to empower the community to fix
> these problems. Have a nice little leaderboard on Meta, and encourage
> community members to be bold, fix up bad writing, bad grammar and
> buzzwords. Reward their efforts with barnstars and the occasional
> thank you messages on talk pages.
>
> Commit to clear writing by adopting a policy of "copyediting almost
> always welcome" for chapter wikis, Foundation documents and as close
> to everything as possible. There are volunteers in the movement who
> happily spend hour after hour copyediting on Wikipedia and Wikinews
> and Wikibooks and so on. Give them the opportunity to fix up the
> language used by the Foundation and the chapters.
>
> Remember: how can community members support and become more deeply
> involved with the work of the chapters and the Foundation if they
> can't understand what you are saying?
>
> --
> Tom Morris
> <http://tommorris.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l



-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
http://wmnederland.nl/
-----------------------------------------------------------