[Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 40, Issue 9

[Robert Horning]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
> I don't see the difference between a voter drive on en.wp, and the  
> other projects having direct action drives on them stating "GO VOTE!"  
> and having similar campaigns.
>
> Why is this actually an issue? The email apparently does not say  
> "Vote for XYZ and not  ABC". It just says go vote.
>
> Why do you feel this is A) noteworthy, and B) anything we should be  
> concerned about?
>
> -Dan Rosenthal
>   

An issue here is if you already have some sort of relationship with the 
individual that you are exchanging e-mails and user talk page notes 
with, and which ones you havn't.  If you are sending a quick reminder to 
a bunch of people in a Wikiproject that you have all worked on a common 
set of articles and already have a relationship with, I don't see the 
problem.  But if you have never had any other sort of exchange with 
these individuals in the past and a message of this sort is your very 
first communication, I would call that spam.

Heck, I would call "welcome messages" a sort of spam, but something that 
generally is beneficial to the project.  Perhaps the only type that 
should be permitted.  And it does provide a point of contact with the 
commnity as well.  Because of the "spam-like" nature of the welcome 
messages, I usually try to add a personal touch as well when I write 
them and add these sort of messages myself on projects where I'm 
active.  Usually commenting about the kinds of edits that new user has 
been involved with and to let them know there are people and not some 
'bot that has been spamming these messages out.

If your desire is to spread the message to a larger community in 
general, there are other tools such as the village pump, mailing lists, 
IRC, and other sorts of communications media that can be used to get the 
message out regarding this sort of activity.  And nearly every active 
Wikimedia project has multiple communications methods like these and 
more (like the Signpost and even blogs) that can used for sending mass 
communications where the people reading those forii know in advanced 
that they are mass communication media regarding these projects.

Tools like user talk pages and personal e-mail links are additional, 
usually emergency communication channels.  As an admin on a couple of 
projects, I usually get some sort of regular communication on nearly a 
daily basis... more so when I'm especially active.  These sort of 
communication channels are critical to remain free of cruft and mass 
communicatoin, at least for me.  When I have time to read the mass 
communication channels, I take that time and do so.  Just as I am here.  
But I don't put a priority on responding here.

I'm not going to sugar coat that there is a problem with the Village 
Pump on en.wikipedia, if only because it is a fire hose torrent of 
opinions and information pouring through having discussions quite often 
disappear before I get a chance to even read them.  That is also one of 
the reasons, BTW, that I don't claim Wikipedia as my primary project, as 
the sheer number of people involved is in many ways overwhelming.

-- Robert Horning