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

[Robert Horning]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
> Problem is, we can't disenfranchise the users who don't use village  
> pump, IRC, or mailing lists. Email is the only way. Hell, we've  
> already established that certain users can't see the on-wiki site  
> notices.
>
> -Dan
>
>   
That is a problem for en.wikipedia to work out on their own.  But 
abusing private and personal communication channels to dilute their 
effectiveness with common mass mailings is not the way to accomplish 
this goal.  Mass communications is a huge problem for en.wikipedia, 
particularly when something needs to be made known to the body of 
Wikipedians as a whole.

But I strongly disagree that e-mail is the only way this can be 
accomplished.  There are so many methods of doing mass communication to 
Wikipedia users that this is a complete fallacy that e-mail is the only 
solution.  As far as using [[Mediawiki:sitenotice]] and having that 
effectively work in all browsers, all skins, and get pressing messages 
out, that is something which should be taken to Tech-l or put on the 
MediaWiki-Bugzilla, with you adding your own vote to the bug if it is 
already submitted.  Spam is not the solution here.

-- Robert Horning