[Wikipedia-l] Communication catalysts

[Sj]

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:59:32 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We will try to do better in the future, to listen more and longer. But I
> must warn you of one point. Jimbo, Angela and I are all three already
> streching our time limits. If you all want us to listen better, you will
> have to help us by providing better insight, summaries and such... and

One thing which I would very much like to see, is a group trusted to
act as ombudsmen or secretaries, who stay on top of these issues of
communication.  These are not tangential issues which matter only to
those who are complaining right now, they are central to scaling our
community.

Many of the people most likely to be involved with important decisions
have a hundred things to worry about, to draft, and to discuss.  There
should be a single
sink into which they (and community members) can toss updates and
announcements, confident that from there, such tidbits will be
collated and distributed to every appropriate community channel.
 * "I just created page <foo>on meta that everyone should know about," 
 * "I created a meetup list on my user-talk page, and posted to
wikipedia-l about it,"
 * "Jimbo just sent a notice about global problem <fee> to foundation-l," 
 * "The Board just agreed that <fi> and said as much on the AC Talk page,"
 * "There's a big debate about page-capitalization going on at page <fo>"
 * "This group of users says nobody is paying attention to their
troubles with <fum>"

Currently, I feel that one has to read three+ mailing lists, watch new
pages and RC on meta, and keep up with a sizeable watchlist on one's
local wiki, to stay abreast of developments, or even to show up in
time to have a say in certain important discussions.

+sj+   
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