[Foundation-l] Site notices, bots, fundraising, etc.

[Michael Snow]

The Communications committee is working on coordinating the use of 
sitewide notices for Wikimedia projects. This is needed for the upcoming 
fundraiser, as well as other potential announcements relevant to all 
projects, such as Wikimania or technical issues like single login.

It's anticipated that we will use a bot to help update these messages, 
which due to the nature of the pages being edited will need to have 
universal sysop privileges. Rest assured that we won't be using it for 
other sysop functions. Naturally, with all of these messages we will 
need help with translation, ideally before they are distributed but also 
after if necessary. Please let your projects know in case they have any 
questions.

Incidentally, I know the idea of a Fundraising committee is still just 
getting off the ground, but could we get an idea of when we would have a 
fundraiser, and for how long? In order for the site notices to be 
effective, we have to maintain some downtime between uses, and we need 
to be able to plan the other uses as much as possible.

--Michael Snow
Chair, Wikimedia Communications Committee