[Foundation-l] Sitenotice use for Wikimania

[Michael Snow]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> As announced earlier, the Communications committee is coordinating 
>> the use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia Foundation sites. Right 
>> now, we need to call attention to Wikimania and encourage people to 
>> register, so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up a brief 
>> project-wide notice about this. We expect the notice to run for about 
>> a week.
>>
>> When this use of the site notice ends it should be blanked again 
>> (except for any separate notices to anonymous users being used for 
>> fundraising). We don't want these to be overused, so an extended 
>> silent period for the site notice should follow. After that, the next 
>> use will probably be for the fundraiser, assuming that committee is 
>> organized and a date settled on.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
> Does this mean that project admins can't use the site-wide notices for 
> internal use, such as major policy changes or bureaucrat elections?  I 
> fail to see why (provided that other admins are in agreement that the 
> notice should go up) a project like ru.wikibooks needs to get special 
> permission from the WMF in order to use this function.
>
> Yes, they shouldn't be overused, but at the same time this is 
> something that can and should be under local project control. 
> Widespread notices on mulitple sites is something that perhaps should 
> get WMF coordination, but that is another issue entirely.

I should clarify what I meant, sorry about the confusion. We're 
coordinating the use of site notices for Foundation business that 
affects all projects, and my intent was to inform people of our plans 
for such use. We are not taking away the ability of individual projects 
to use the site notice for local business that affects only that 
project. As a general matter, I don't think such uses need to receive 
clearance on a Foundation level, although I hope that if anyone 
anticipates conflicts with our planned uses, they would let us know so 
we can resolve that.

Site notices should not be overused, so I do think silent periods are 
important. However, if between this Wikimania announcement and the next 
fundraiser, a project has a major announcement that requires use of a 
site notice, I didn't intend to imply that this was prohibited.

--Michael Snow