On 8/13/07, Kat Walsh kat@mindspillage.org wrote:
As for SUL, as far as I am aware there hasn't been anything major to announce in a long time. "Yep. Decision still on, work still ongoing," isn't something that merits a press release.
It's not about a press release so much as it is about informing users about what is going on. There's actually been quite a bit of planning regarding the communication needs for a full roll-out. A number of people worked on this a couple of years ago: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_specifications (very outdated now)
For many different reasons, the project fell behind schedule and then fell entirely _off_ any schedule. I'm glad that progress is now being made, and this forces us to seriously think about what the communication needs are.
With a partial initial roll-out, the need to communicate is a bit simpler. I think it's fine to advertise the feature in stages, though I hope we can make the transition permanent within a reasonable timeframe.
Simply put, I suggest the following: 1) announce on a few mailing lists for initial public testing 2) announce in sitenotice and on special:userlogin for official opt-in migration 3) e-mail all remaining users at some point to inform about end of transition period.
Of course at least 2) and 3) require translation, but most of that should be relatively straightforward through the MediaWiki: namespace.