[Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices (Tilman Bayer)

Wed Oct 30 02:57:31 UTC 2013

Hi Tilman,

Unfortunately it seems that many users experience the FDC as most away from their bed and saw the notice in English what triggered the users to write their annoyance down. The current load of feedback is indeed on that page, and I tried to reply as damage control to limit the number of annoyance as that often comes as result of having little or no information / explanation. Also I tried to resolve some misconceptions. I personally do understand why WMF wants to show this banner and tried in general to explain it. 

In the past 2 months there have been shown 7 different banners in the Netherlands and also one Sitenotice. Wiki Loves Monuments started on nl-wiki, has been communicated well about and users understand that a banner is shown for it. In November a conference (WCN) is organized, many users attend it and people understand why a banner is shown. Two days a banner was shown for an edit-a-thon, as edit-a-thons are documented and users see a direct result in Wikipedia they understand and accept that. These three campaigns are community driven banners. Yes I created those, but my role is to support the local community and try to connect between the local community and developers/tech/WMF/Wikimedia Netherlands/Wikimedia Belgium/etc. Also the Sitenotice was community driven: it was for a writing contest on Wikipedia.

4 other banners have been set up: for the fundraiser (most experienced users do already donate their time, and do not want to donate money too, but in general users understand why it is needed and accept that), for the Privacy Policy (not much nl users commented), there was earlier a banner for the FDC, and now there is a banner for FDC. FDC is for most users far away, and this time it was also in English. The community seems to experience the subject of FDC something that should not be in a banner on every page for every logged in user. Then the annoyance is bigger than the understanding and complaints come up.

> I'm not opposed to the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual conference.

The community that comes to the annual conference is spread over several projects.

> it's probably worth asking the question if a single editathon in one
> city needs to be advertised with "high" priority countrywide banners
> to anonymous users.

It seems that the local community has not a problem with this banner, however I personally do consider that we should not create a banner for a subject like this after having this evaluated. But the local community requested it and seems not having a problem with this banner.

> The English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices
> for that kind of announcement instead

The English Wikipedia has been edited by many users around the world and there it sounds handy. The Dutch community is spread over several wiki's, that is why is why a Sitenotice is less used.

> That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one reason for
> adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar , to facilitate
> coordination and discussion.

This did not prevented that the Privacy Policy was set up at the same time as the banner for Wiki Loves Monuments, and there we noticed that the two banners competed with each other. We tested how much and when each banner was shown and we noticed that it appeared that the Privacy Policy banner was shown much more on the first page someone visited and actually repressed the WLM banner. Two banners at the same time causes a higher degree of banner blindness.

Compared with the 8 months January - August, the past two months where overloaded while the first 8 months were almost empty.

> but at least for major languages like Dutch, the intention
> is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you said
> yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch when it
> came live yesterday.

Another user on the Dutch Wikipedia who has his languages set in Dutch got the banner for FDC in English. I personally got it later in Dutch.

The reason why I wrote is not to blame anyone, but to promote thinking of other ways to communicate to the local communities. More notices aren't a good idea as this will result in more users fully blocking the CentralNotice or even whole wikis who block it. On the other hand since 2008 I try to promote more communication from both the chapters and WMF towards local communities, as I notice that many users - certainly on nl-wiki - aren't informed about many things of what it would be good to be informed about. This causes a lot of not understanding why things happen resulting in annoyance. I try to follow what is going on in the Wikimedia movement and take up the role as ambassador, both in tech as with other Wikimedia subjects, towards the community to create a better understanding. My attempts are appreciated by many users and are successful to lower the annoyance level. I also try to connect and give feedback towards chapters, tech/developers, others
 to create mutual a better environment. (I certainly can recommend to have a local Wikipedian in every community who has this role.) 

As I wrote on the Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list, I see currently two existing ways of receiving information by communities on their wikis:
1. CentralNotice: too many notices will result in banner blindness and blocking notices as they are very disturbing often on every page.
2. Posting in central discussion/notifications page on a wiki: a lot of users will see that notice but also many users do not see them.

To me there is a gap between CentralNotice messages on one side and on the other hand the postings in central discussion/notifications page. I think we should get a way to notify every user targeted just as with the CentralNotice: if needed geo specific, translated, etc but isn't shown as big banner on every page.

In September I supported the implementation of the Notifications system (Echo) by announcing and explaining to the local community what was going to change and how it works, and even while that system has minor issues it is considered very much as a success by the community of nl-wiki. 

I think a nice way to tackle the problem is by having the Notifications tool expanded with the ability to receive there notices like with the FDC.

 Romaine

 (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)

 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 15:35:06 -0700
 From: Tilman Bayer <tbayer at wikimedia.org>
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
 Cc: Coordination of technology deployments across
 languages/projects
     <wikitech-ambassadors at lists.wikimedia.org>
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Overloaded with CentralNotices
 Message-ID:
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 Hi Romaine,

 On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 8:49 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki at yahoo.com>
 wrote:
 > On the Dutch Wikipedia users have indicated that they
 perceive the number of Global Notices too much and the more
 that happens the more users will start to add code to their
 preferences to fully block every notice as they are so tired
 of them.
 >
 > The current load of negative feedback about the banners
 is currently coming up after the especially the FDC banners

 I assume that by "current load of negative feedback", you
 mean the
 comments by Grashoofd and Saschaporsche in this discussion?
 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:De_kroeg#Wikimedia_Spam
 Thank you for resolving some misconceptions there (e.g. the
 assumption
 that these banners were shown to all Dutch Wikipedia
 readers  - they
 are set to be displayed to logged-in users only); I also
 responded to
 some other points in that thread.

 About the FDC banners in general:

 The FDC - itself consisting of volunteer community members -
 considers
 it really important that the editing community gets to have
 a say in
 the process of how donation money is allocated to various
 Wikimedia
 organizations in the FDC process. See e.g. their recent blog
 post at
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/10/25/call-for-community-input-funding-proposals-11-wikimedia-organisations/
 (as mentioned there, this time the decisions are
 particularly
 difficult, as the amount requested in this round is already
 close to
 what's available for the whole year including next round's
 requests,
 $6 million). Without the work of the editing community, this
 money
 would not be available. Even if admittedly many editors are
 either not
 interested in participating in discussions on how to spend
 it, or do
 not have the time, I think it's still important to widely
 inform the
 community of this possibility.

 CentralNotice banners are currently the most effective way
 of making
 community members aware of this opportunity to influence the
 process,
 which happens twice a year (once a year if you only consider
 a
 particular organization/country), and is closing soon for
 this round.
 The country-specific FDC banners invite editors to comment
 specifically on the funding request from an organization in
 that
 country (Wikimedia Nederland in this case), which is assumed
 to be
 particularly relevant for them, as the majority of the
 planned
 spending in each proposal tends to be for activities
 supporting
 precisely this local editing community.

 >
 > Every week a new notice is considered too much.

 I assume that "every week" is a rhetorical expression.
 However, it's
 true that this month there have been three campaigns
 specific to the
 Dutch Wikipedia/the Netherlands.  Curiously, you are
 omitting the fact
 that it was yourself who ran two of them:

 "WMNL-register-WCN-2013" (inviting registration for the
 Wikiconferentie) - run on "high" priority for both logged-in
 and
 anonymous users, for 17 days in two countries

 "WMNL-edit-a-thon-DenHaag"  (inviting participation in
 an edit-a-thon)
  - run on "high" priority for both logged-in and anonymous
 users, for
 two days in one country

 In comparison, the above mentioned FDC community review
 invitations
 run on "normal" priority and only for logged-in users, i.e.
 get vastly
 less exposure than these two event invitations. And I would
 argue that
 the number of users who are able to follow the invitation
 to
 participate in an online activity (like commenting on a wiki
 page in
 case of the FDC, or uploading images in case of WLM) is much
 higher
 than the number of users who are able to travel and spend
 the time to
 attend a physical event in a particular location. I'm not
 opposed to
 the use of CentralNotice to promote a nationwide annual
 conference.
 However, if one is concerned about banner blindness and
 worried that
 users are "overloaded with CentralNotices", it's probably
 worth asking
 the question if a single editathon in one city needs to be
 advertised
 with "high" priority countrywide banners to anonymous users.
 The
 English Wikipedia tends to use geotargeted watchlist notices
 for that
 kind of announcement instead
 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Geonotice ).

 >
 > I already noticed earlier that there is also some kind
 of banner blindness for many users: they get a banner on
 pages but do not look at them any more just as it are adds.
 >
 That's indeed something to be concerned about, and it's one
 reason for
 adding upcoming banner campaigns to the public planning page
 at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/Calendar
 , to facilitate
 coordination and discussion. It seems that this wasn't done
 for the
 above mentioned editathon banners. The current FDC banners
 have been
 announced there since October 1, and while I am taking the
 criticism
 that you are mentioning serious, I would also like to note
 that it is
 the first such criticism about them that is coming to my
 attention.

 > This time several users got a notice in English what
 was perceived disturbing.
 >
 All the FDC banners contain a link inviting to add missing
 translations (the global banner has been translated into
 >70
 languages), but at least for major languages like Dutch, the
 intention
 is indeed to get them translated before they go live. As you
 said
 yourself on the De Kroeg, this banner was available in Dutch
 when it
 came live yesterday.

 > Also they experience getting banners as not interesting
 for Wikipedia.
 >
 > As bonus I personally and other users have experienced
 that clicking away a banner made the banner appear again
 within the hour visiting other pages. I had that at least
 four times on a project, on several projects. Re-appeasring
 after being clicked away is useless and disturbing.

 Yes, that should not happen. The banners rely on a cookie to
 store
 this user choice. A possible reason could be that the cookie
 got lost
 e.g. when the browser was restarted, or it might be a bug.

 >
 > Also it is annoying that I need to click the same
 banners away on each project I visit, many users visit
 Wikipedia, but also work on Commons, Wikidata, etc.
 >
 I agree, that's something worth looking into - I assume it
 would need
 additional technical work.
 >
 > I think the the CentralNotice should be redesigned or
 the CentralNotice will loose it effectiveness. Something is
 really going wrong.
 >
 >
 > Romaine
 >
 > (tech ambassador for nl Wikipedia)
 >
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 > Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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 -- 
 Tilman Bayer
 Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
 Wikimedia Foundation
 IRC (Freenode): HaeB