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Quim Gil
31 May
2022
31 May
'22
9:38 p.m.
Hello everyone,
This is an invitation to all Movement Strategy participants and Wikimedians
in general to try out a new platform for truly multilingual collaboration:
Movement Strategy Forum -
We have started a community review
period of two months. If the community feedback is positive, the Forum will
launch in August 2022 before Wikimania. If not, we will follow the feedback
received, changing the proposal or closing it.
We opened the Forum on May 24 with targeted outreach, hoping that the new
site features would work. 😅 A week later, the Wikimedia login has been
used by +200 users, the automatic translation is allowing speakers of
different languages to discuss together, and we are ready to welcome more
reviewers, testers, and other curious minds.
We have just released the first weekly report
. Looking
forward to reading your first impressions in the next one!
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
Attachments:
attachment.htm
(text/html — 1.5 KB)
Show replies by date
Mike Peel
31 May
31 May
9:55 p.m.
Hi,
Is this a legitimate WMF website? Trying to trace where this website is
being hosted doesn't go very far - the domain seems have its DNS at
gandi.net, with the registration via pir.org, and its contact info is at
afilias.info? Compare to wikimedia.org that at least says "Registrant
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.". There is no on-site privacy
policy, it just links to wikimediafoundation.org? It's also very much
not a mediawiki installation?
Thanks,
Mike
On 31/5/22 22:38:11, Quim Gil wrote:
...
Hello everyone,
This is an invitation to all Movement Strategy participants and
Wikimedians in general to try out a new platform for truly multilingual
collaboration:
Movement Strategy Forum -
We have started a community review
period of two months. If the community feedback is positive, the Forum
will launch in August 2022 before Wikimania. If not, we will follow the
feedback received, changing the proposal or closing it.
We opened the Forum on May 24 with targeted outreach, hoping that the
new site features would work. 😅 A week later, the Wikimedia login has
been used by +200 users, the automatic translation is allowing speakers
of different languages to discuss together, and we are ready to welcome
more reviewers, testers, and other curious minds.
We have just released the first weekly report
. Looking
forward to reading your first impressions in the next one!
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Quim Gil
10:04 p.m.
Hi Mike,
On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 11:55 PM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
Hi,
Is this a legitimate WMF website?
It is a pre-launch site going through a community review and maintained by
the Movement Strategy and Governance team at the Wikimedia Foundation.
...
Trying to trace where this website is
being hosted doesn't go very far - the domain seems have its DNS at
gandi.net, with the registration via pir.org, and its contact info is at
afilias.info? Compare to wikimedia.org that at least says "Registrant
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.".
Yes, this is being discussed at one of the questions of the community
review:
What do you think about the proposed name and domain?
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org?
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
...
It's also very much not a mediawiki installation?
It's a Discourse instance.
is an open-source platform
specializing in community conversations.
...
Thanks,
Mike
On 31/5/22 22:38:11, Quim Gil wrote:
...
Hello everyone,
This is an invitation to all Movement Strategy participants and
Wikimedians in general to try out a new platform for truly multilingual
collaboration:
Movement Strategy Forum -
We have started a community review
...
period of two months. If the community feedback is positive, the Forum
will launch in August 2022 before Wikimania. If not, we will follow the
feedback received, changing the proposal or closing it.
We opened the Forum on May 24 with targeted outreach, hoping that the
new site features would work. 😅 A week later, the Wikimedia login has
been used by +200 users, the automatic translation is allowing speakers
of different languages to discuss together, and we are ready to welcome
more reviewers, testers, and other curious minds.
We have just released the first weekly report
. Looking
...
forward to reading your first impressions in the next one!
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
...
Public archives at
...
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Mike Peel
10:17 p.m.
Hi Quim,
...
Is this a legitimate WMF website?
It is a pre-launch site going through a community review and maintained
by the Movement Strategy and Governance team at the Wikimedia Foundation.
It seems to have been launched, at least by your email?
...
Trying to trace where this website is
being hosted doesn't go very far - the domain seems have its DNS at
gandi.net
afilias.info
Organization: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.".
Yes, this is being discussed at one of the questions of the community
review:
What do you think about the proposed name and domain?
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
...
It's also very much not a mediawiki installation?
It's a Discourse instance.
is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
Please, just use a wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
Quim Gil
10:25 p.m.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
Participation is also welcome here:
...
It's a Discourse instance.
...
is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse
maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is free
software.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Mike Peel
10:35 p.m.
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:
...
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
Participation is also welcome here:
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on
Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." .
I thought that's what MediaWiki was?
...
> It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org
> is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse
maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is free
software.
So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would
normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?
Thanks,
Mike
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
1 Jun
1 Jun
7:10 a.m.
It would be great to have a place where we can discuss and create projects together. Only if we had something like Meta...
By the way, I have added the proposal to discuss this ON WIKI where the discussion should be happening: on wiki.
________________________________
From: Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 12:35 AM
To: Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:
...
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
Participation is also welcome here:
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on
Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." .
I thought that's what MediaWiki was?
...
> It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org
> is an open-source platform specializing in community conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse
maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is free
software.
So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would
normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?
Thanks,
Mike
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
attachment
attachment.htm
Quim Gil
9:09 a.m.
Hi again,
The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement
a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of
questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully
agreement.
Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The
discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The
intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that
are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is
real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex
discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.
We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one
strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better
alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy
implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice
excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to
everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done
in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and
fun are naturally expected.
Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia
cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards
"social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still
growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this
one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.
This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to
host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement
Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools
people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none
of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation,
better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and
a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available
today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.
Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is perfectly
possible. One of the questions
of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would
work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia
volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find
the best solutions.
I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's
comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.
Florence asks:
...
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it starts
being hosted by WMF) ?
Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in
to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the
session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that
people don't have to log in again every day.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
...
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
...
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:
...
We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the
Movement Strategy Forum.
...
They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we
provide here information
...
about privacy for users of this platform.
...
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website.
We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum
that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum
being reviewed is only logical.
All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page <
are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the
Movement Strategy Forum. They will be completed during the community
review. In the meantime, we provide here information about privacy for
users of this platform.> also welcomes people to contribute their feedback
there too, providing a structure to comment on the same questions.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
10:01 a.m.
Let's see the "features" Discourse have and MediaWiki don't:
* Anyone can join with their Wikimedia account. No registration is required.
* This is a feature we already have.
* Multilingual conversations are possible thanks to automatic translation in more than 100 languages.
* How are they doing that? Discourse is open source, isn't it? Could this feature be experimentally included at Meta? Are they using the Google Translate API?
* Newcomers are welcomed with an interactive tutorial and badges for achievements.
* This can be done in Meta. Even developing a system of easy tutorials and gamification would be a great add-on for most wikis. So, if this is something really important, we SHOULD be doing for ourselves, and not letting MediaWiki abandonware.
* Notifications can be adjusted to follow or mute topics, categories, and tags.
* This can be done with Flow.
* Conversations can use easy text formatting, expanded links, images, and emojis.
* We can do this on wiki. Even the emojis thing.
* Complex conversations can be summarized by their participants, also split or merged.
* We can do this on wiki. We have been doing this for ages.
* Posts can be flagged anonymously for moderation. Community moderators ensure that the Universal Code of Conduct is observed.
* We can do this on wiki. Also, the Community moderators ensuring that the UCoC is observed should be working on how to do that on... check notes... Meta.
* All features are available on mobile and desktop browsers.
* Also on wiki. If something is missing on mobile, then, we should invest all the necessary to get it. Not doing that only makes our platform more obsolete.
* Congratulate newcomers each time they publish a post.
* This is a feature already available at Wiki. We can also congratulate by hand if wanted.
Is Discourse better? I don't know. Abandoning our own software because we have found that others are doing things better? A total error.
I have said this before, but we have plenty of money. We are swimming in a giant money pool. Our software is obsolete, and every move we make away of it, makes it even more obsolete, despite having the money to solve it.
Thanks
Galder
________________________________
From: Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 11:09 AM
To: Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Hi again,
The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement
, a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully agreement.
Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.
We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and fun are naturally expected.
Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards "social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.
This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation, better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.
Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is perfectly possible. One of the questions
of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find the best solutions.
I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.
Florence asks:
...
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it starts being hosted by WMF) ?
Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that people don't have to log in again every day.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
...
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:
...
We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the Movement Strategy Forum.
They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we provide here information
about privacy for users of this platform.
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website.
We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum being reviewed is only logical.
All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page
also welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a structure to comment on the same questions.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
10:20 a.m.
Since 2018 (!!) there's an Extension that allows translation using the Google Translate API (the same Discourse is using).
You can test it here, for example:
It took me literally 5 minutes to figure out that this exists. So, the one and only feature where Discourse may be better positioned than Meta to discuss about Wikimedia, can also be done perfectly with this extension.
Thanks
Galder
________________________________
From: Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 12:01 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Let's see the "features" Discourse have and MediaWiki don't:
* Anyone can join with their Wikimedia account. No registration is required.
* This is a feature we already have.
* Multilingual conversations are possible thanks to automatic translation in more than 100 languages.
* How are they doing that? Discourse is open source, isn't it? Could this feature be experimentally included at Meta? Are they using the Google Translate API?
* Newcomers are welcomed with an interactive tutorial and badges for achievements.
* This can be done in Meta. Even developing a system of easy tutorials and gamification would be a great add-on for most wikis. So, if this is something really important, we SHOULD be doing for ourselves, and not letting MediaWiki abandonware.
* Notifications can be adjusted to follow or mute topics, categories, and tags.
* This can be done with Flow.
* Conversations can use easy text formatting, expanded links, images, and emojis.
* We can do this on wiki. Even the emojis thing.
* Complex conversations can be summarized by their participants, also split or merged.
* We can do this on wiki. We have been doing this for ages.
* Posts can be flagged anonymously for moderation. Community moderators ensure that the Universal Code of Conduct is observed.
* We can do this on wiki. Also, the Community moderators ensuring that the UCoC is observed should be working on how to do that on... check notes... Meta.
* All features are available on mobile and desktop browsers.
* Also on wiki. If something is missing on mobile, then, we should invest all the necessary to get it. Not doing that only makes our platform more obsolete.
* Congratulate newcomers each time they publish a post.
* This is a feature already available at Wiki. We can also congratulate by hand if wanted.
Is Discourse better? I don't know. Abandoning our own software because we have found that others are doing things better? A total error.
I have said this before, but we have plenty of money. We are swimming in a giant money pool. Our software is obsolete, and every move we make away of it, makes it even more obsolete, despite having the money to solve it.
Thanks
Galder
________________________________
From: Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 11:09 AM
To: Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
Cc: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Hi again,
The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement
, a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully agreement.
Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.
We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and fun are naturally expected.
Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards "social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.
This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation, better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.
Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is perfectly possible. One of the questions
of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find the best solutions.
I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.
Florence asks:
...
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it starts being hosted by WMF) ?
Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that people don't have to log in again every day.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
...
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:
...
We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the Movement Strategy Forum.
They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we provide here information
about privacy for users of this platform.
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website.
We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum being reviewed is only logical.
All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page
also welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a structure to comment on the same questions.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Amir Sarabadani
10:51 a.m.
Even if you don't want mediawiki for various reasons, you can set it up in
Wikimedia Cloud. We already hosted Discourse there for years.
Even if you can't host in WMCS for other reasons, you still can have
internationalized discussions in mediawiki. The Desktop improvements team
does this in mediawiki.org (For example
and while not as great as auto-translate, it works.
Language barrier is a problem but so is privacy, there is a reason we host
everything onsite. For example, I don't know the details of how it uses
Google Translate but it is possible we end up sending some data to Google
that are either not anonymized or can be de-anonymized easily. Not to
mention the cloud provider hosting the website having access to everything
and so on. And not to mention auto-translate is not perfect and can cause
all sorts of problems in communication.
Best
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:21 PM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder158@hotmail.com> wrote:
...
Since 2018 (!!) there's an Extension that allows translation using the
Google Translate API (the same Discourse is using).
You can test it here, for example:
It took me literally 5 minutes to figure out that this exists. So, the one
and only feature where Discourse may be better positioned than Meta to
discuss about Wikimedia, can also be done perfectly with this extension.
Thanks
Galder
*From:* Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 1, 2022 12:01 PM
*To:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Let's see the "features" Discourse have and MediaWiki don't:
Anyone can join with their Wikimedia account. No registration is
required.
This is a feature we already have.
Multilingual conversations are possible thanks to automatic
translation in more than 100 languages.
How are they doing that? Discourse is open source, isn't it? Could
this feature be experimentally included at Meta? Are they using the Google
Translate API?
Newcomers are welcomed with an interactive tutorial and badges for
achievements.
This can be done in Meta. Even developing a system of easy tutorials
and gamification would be a great add-on for most wikis. So, if this is
something really important, we SHOULD be doing for ourselves, and not
letting MediaWiki abandonware.
Notifications can be adjusted to follow or mute topics, categories,
and tags.
This can be done with Flow.
Conversations can use easy text formatting, expanded links, images,
and emojis.
We can do this on wiki. Even the emojis thing.
Complex conversations can be summarized by their participants, also
split or merged.
We can do this on wiki. We have been doing this for ages.
Posts can be flagged anonymously for moderation. Community
moderators ensure that the Universal Code of Conduct is observed.
We can do this on wiki. Also, the Community moderators ensuring that
the UCoC is observed should be working on how to do that on... check
notes... Meta.
All features are available on mobile and desktop browsers.
Also on wiki. If something is missing on mobile, then, we should
invest all the necessary to get it. Not doing that only makes our platform
more obsolete.
Congratulate newcomers each time they publish a post.
This is a feature already available at Wiki. We can also
congratulate by hand if wanted.
Is Discourse better? I don't know. Abandoning our own software because we
have found that others are doing things better? A total error.
I have said this before, but we have plenty of money. We are swimming in a
giant money pool. Our software is obsolete, and every move we make away of
it, makes it even more obsolete, despite having the money to solve it.
Thanks
Galder
*From:* Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 1, 2022 11:09 AM
*To:* Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
*Cc:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Hi again,
The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement
a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of
questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully
agreement.
Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The
discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The
intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that
are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is
real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex
discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.
We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one
strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better
alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy
implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice
excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to
everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done
in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and
fun are naturally expected.
Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia
cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards
"social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still
growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this
one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.
This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to
host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement
Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools
people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none
of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation,
better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and
a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available
today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.
Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is
perfectly possible. One of the questions
of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would
work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia
volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find
the best solutions.
I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's
comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.
Florence asks:
...
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it
starts being hosted by WMF) ?
Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in
to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the
session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that
people don't have to log in again every day.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
...
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:
...
We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the
Movement Strategy Forum.
...
They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we
provide here information
...
about privacy for users of this platform.
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website.
We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum
that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum
being reviewed is only logical.
All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page also
welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a
structure to comment on the same questions.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
Amir (he/him)
attachment
attachment.htm
Gergő Tisza
4:42 p.m.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:52 PM Amir Sarabadani
ladsgroup@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Even if you don't want mediawiki for various reasons, you can set it up in
Wikimedia Cloud. We already hosted Discourse there for years.
Cloud is 1) not exactly an improvement
in terms of privacy, 2) a drag on human resources as it will take
significant time of an employee or community member (who is likely
unskilled at operating Discourse) to keep the site running. If it seems
likely that the forum will be around for long, it might be worth moving it
to internal hosting (which will be a lot more expensive in relative terms
but still not really significant compared to the Wikimedia movement's
resources, I imagine). In the short term, just buying hosting while we see
how well the new thing works out is a very reasonable approach. Our
community's hostility to experiments is one of the biggest obstacles to
adaptation and addressing long-present problems (such as using discussion
technology that was considered pretty good forty years ago).
...
Even if you can't host in WMCS for other reasons, you still can have
internationalized discussions in mediawiki. The Desktop improvements team
does this in mediawiki.org (For example
and while not as great as auto-translate, it works.
No it doesn't, which is why you almost never see multilingual discussions
on meta. It "works" in the same sense that two pieces of stick work as a
lighter: it can be used for the same purpose with sufficient effort, but
that effort is so high that almost no one will use it in practice.
Language barrier is a problem but so is privacy, there is a reason we host
...
everything onsite. For example, I don't know the details of how it uses
Google Translate but it is possible we end up sending some data to Google
that are either not anonymized or can be de-anonymized easily. Not to
mention the cloud provider hosting the website having access to everything
and so on. And not to mention auto-translate is not perfect and can cause
all sorts of problems in communication.
While that's a good point and something to consider if we keep Discourse
around, the current reality is that discussions mostly happen on Facebook,
Telegram and Discord, all of which are worse in terms of privacy than a
Discourse site hosted by a contracted organization. These discussions
remind me of the trolley problem a bit - is it really preferable to let
five times more people get run over, just because that way we can wash our
hands afterwards and say we didn't officially approve of either option?
attachment
attachment.htm
Samuel Klein
12 Jun
12 Jun
3:17 p.m.
Hi Tgr :) Of course you've been involved in Discourse administration as
much as anyone.
...
Our community's hostility to experiments is one of the biggest obstacles
to adaptation and addressing long-present problems
That seems unfair. Please reconsider. (your opinion carries a lot of
weight and can be self-actualizing!)
There is certainly a wariness of fragmenting experiments that don't have
the promise of bringing new ideas back into our core tools and sites. It's
great to borrow from & integrate w other projects, and the integration
needs to happen. We need enough gravitational attraction in the core to tie
things together.
If we had a strong persistent vision for how to support multilingual
discourse on our projects, and someone leading its design was warmly
engaged here, pointing out how this contributes to the ongoing work, most
of the stated concerns would go away.
One-click translation is important. Talk page sections (and flow) should
have it. There are solvable details.
Automatic link-expansion can be handy. Talk pages should have it as an
option. There are solvable details.
The ability to sort a list by voting is important. (People do this
laboriously on wikis all the time!) We should have an in-band solution.
TASD.
Let's practice fast clear templates for experiments:
1. Social templates for saying 'we want this', proposing simplest workable
experiments
2. Clarity of maintainers and decision making. Who (in each area) can say
'we *plan* to have this', update roadmaps or plans of record, allocate
time, iterate onp experiments?
3. Technical templates for trying new tools in a way that informs and
improves our core, and is persistently reusable. (We have tried many
discourse instances. What is the recommended way to synchronize it with a
wiki?)
4. Giving shout-outs to existing work. Underrated + uplifting. We have
community scripts or feature requests that have tried to add most of these
features to MediaWiki itself. Naming them and their outcomes can highlight
what we still have to learn from new implementations.
SJ
(PS. I like this experiment & it motivates MW improvements. But for those
who might not immediately think of what we /lose/ by moving a q&a to a
forum, off the top of my head:
~ unified recent changes
~ unified notifications
~ nestable threading
~ coherent archiving
~ easy wiki-linking and backlinks
~ easy transclusion onto other pages
~ the abstraction of talk pages (or other annotation)
~ translation flow for non-automated translation
🌍🌏🌎🌑
attachment
attachment.htm
Dan Garry (Deskana)
13 Jun
13 Jun
9:02 p.m.
Hey all,
I find myself mostly in agreement with Gergő. A reluctance to experiment is
a problem in this movement which prevents meaningful change. The current
state of MediaWiki is such that having discussions on it is very painful.
We can do better.
However, there've been quite a few different experiments with using
Discourse as an alternative to on-wiki discussions over the years. What I'm
left wondering is, what do we expect to learn from this experiment with
Discourse that we didn't learn from the last ones?
Additionally, as an experiment, I think it lacks clear, objective measures
of what would cause the experiment to be branded as either successful or
unsuccessful. These should be defined in advance, along with a plan for how
to measure them, or confirmation bias will means we'll all come away from
this thinking that our pre-conceived notions were proven correct, and we'll
have achieved nothing.
In fact, after I wrote the above, I realised that the exact question of
success metrics was proposed for community input on the talk page for the
new forum
. I
get that we like community consultations and all that, but defining a
problem, launching a potential solution, then asking the very people
participating in the experiment what they think the experiment's success
measures should be, strikes me as more of an abandonment of responsibility
than a consultation, as well as invalidating the experiment.
Dan
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 at 17:43, Gergő Tisza
gtisza@gmail.com
wrote:
...
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:52 PM Amir Sarabadani
ladsgroup@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Even if you don't want mediawiki for various reasons, you can set it up
in Wikimedia Cloud. We already hosted Discourse there for years.
Cloud is 1) not exactly an improvement
in terms of privacy, 2) a drag on human resources as it will take
significant time of an employee or community member (who is likely
unskilled at operating Discourse) to keep the site running. If it seems
likely that the forum will be around for long, it might be worth moving it
to internal hosting (which will be a lot more expensive in relative terms
but still not really significant compared to the Wikimedia movement's
resources, I imagine). In the short term, just buying hosting while we see
how well the new thing works out is a very reasonable approach. Our
community's hostility to experiments is one of the biggest obstacles to
adaptation and addressing long-present problems (such as using discussion
technology that was considered pretty good forty years ago).
...
Even if you can't host in WMCS for other reasons, you still can have
internationalized discussions in mediawiki. The Desktop improvements team
does this in mediawiki.org (For example
and while not as great as auto-translate, it works.
No it doesn't, which is why you almost never see multilingual discussions
on meta. It "works" in the same sense that two pieces of stick work as a
lighter: it can be used for the same purpose with sufficient effort, but
that effort is so high that almost no one will use it in practice.
Language barrier is a problem but so is privacy, there is a reason we host
...
everything onsite. For example, I don't know the details of how it uses
Google Translate but it is possible we end up sending some data to Google
that are either not anonymized or can be de-anonymized easily. Not to
mention the cloud provider hosting the website having access to everything
and so on. And not to mention auto-translate is not perfect and can cause
all sorts of problems in communication.
While that's a good point and something to consider if we keep Discourse
around, the current reality is that discussions mostly happen on Facebook,
Telegram and Discord, all of which are worse in terms of privacy than a
Discourse site hosted by a contracted organization. These discussions
remind me of the trolley problem a bit - is it really preferable to let
five times more people get run over, just because that way we can wash our
hands afterwards and say we didn't officially approve of either option?
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
attachment
attachment.htm
Mohammed Bachounda
1 Jun
1 Jun
11 a.m.
Hi Quim,
Thank you for this initiative, I would like to add feedbacks hoping that
they will be useful for the improvement of this site
*Primo *: The reactivity: it is very good. The updates of the pages are
very fast in the whole world and the navigation in the forum is very easy
and fluid.
*Secondo*: the visual identity is basic and correct. but we need time to
assimilate the different codifications but in general the idea of the forum
remains a smart solution.
*Tertio *: Hope to see translated
- Tile of the forum
- Tiles of topics or threads
- And why not multiple automatic translations of different messages. for
example :
Option 1: All threads in one unique language depending on our interface
language.
Option 2: Each message of the thread can be displayed in the language we
want to see and that we have selected in our personal configuration options.
Thanks
achounda
Le mer. 1 juin 2022 à 11:21, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder158@hotmail.com> a écrit :
...
Since 2018 (!!) there's an Extension that allows translation using the
Google Translate API (the same Discourse is using).
You can test it here, for example:
It took me literally 5 minutes to figure out that this exists. So, the one
and only feature where Discourse may be better positioned than Meta to
discuss about Wikimedia, can also be done perfectly with this extension.
Thanks
Galder
*From:* Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 1, 2022 12:01 PM
*To:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Let's see the "features" Discourse have and MediaWiki don't:
Anyone can join with their Wikimedia account. No registration is
required.
This is a feature we already have.
Multilingual conversations are possible thanks to automatic
translation in more than 100 languages.
How are they doing that? Discourse is open source, isn't it? Could
this feature be experimentally included at Meta? Are they using the Google
Translate API?
Newcomers are welcomed with an interactive tutorial and badges for
achievements.
This can be done in Meta. Even developing a system of easy tutorials
and gamification would be a great add-on for most wikis. So, if this is
something really important, we SHOULD be doing for ourselves, and not
letting MediaWiki abandonware.
Notifications can be adjusted to follow or mute topics, categories,
and tags.
This can be done with Flow.
Conversations can use easy text formatting, expanded links, images,
and emojis.
We can do this on wiki. Even the emojis thing.
Complex conversations can be summarized by their participants, also
split or merged.
We can do this on wiki. We have been doing this for ages.
Posts can be flagged anonymously for moderation. Community
moderators ensure that the Universal Code of Conduct is observed.
We can do this on wiki. Also, the Community moderators ensuring that
the UCoC is observed should be working on how to do that on... check
notes... Meta.
All features are available on mobile and desktop browsers.
Also on wiki. If something is missing on mobile, then, we should
invest all the necessary to get it. Not doing that only makes our platform
more obsolete.
Congratulate newcomers each time they publish a post.
This is a feature already available at Wiki. We can also
congratulate by hand if wanted.
Is Discourse better? I don't know. Abandoning our own software because we
have found that others are doing things better? A total error.
I have said this before, but we have plenty of money. We are swimming in a
giant money pool. Our software is obsolete, and every move we make away of
it, makes it even more obsolete, despite having the money to solve it.
Thanks
Galder
*From:* Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 1, 2022 11:09 AM
*To:* Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
*Cc:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Hi again,
The proposal for a new forum comes with a problem statement
a list of main features aimed to address this problem, and a set of
questions to help everyone find points of tangible discussion and hopefully
agreement.
Today, "use a wiki" or "we have Meta" alone doesn't solve the problem. The
discrimination suffered by volunteers not fluent in English is real. The
intimidation and alienation felt by many volunteers and many groups that
are underrepresented in our movement or marginalized in our societies is
real. And simply, the difficulty to have multiple simultaneous complex
discussions in a structured and enjoyable way is very real.
We are not claiming that this forum can solve all these problems in one
strike. However, we firmly believe that this forum presents a better
alternative here and now for everyone interested in the Movement Strategy
implementation. Clearly a better alternative for those who are in practice
excluded or gone from traditional on-wiki conversations. But also to
everyone else (expert wiki editors included) who wants to get things done
in a context where diversity, equity, inclusion, efficient use of time, and
fun are naturally expected.
Many people have responded to this problem with their feet. Wikimedia
cross-project connections and conversations have been trending towards
"social media" platforms for years. Today they are all scattered and still
growing. And well, many years before social media, mailing lists like this
one were created "off-wiki" for a reason.
This forum proposes the creation of a platform fully functional today, to
host the conversations and collaboration needed to implement the Movement
Strategy. We can offer a platform as easy to use as the popular tools
people are using daily to connect and discuss. We can offer features none
of these commercial platforms offer today like automatic translation,
better organization of complex conversations, better search and memory, and
a much better alignment with the Wikimedia values. All this is available
today, one Wikimedia login click away. For you to review.
Keeping Meta updated including possibilities for participation is
perfectly possible. One of the questions
of the community review asks about how the support of other channels would
work in practice. If you appreciate Meta-Wiki as much as, say, Wikimedia
volunteers who don't speak English, please contribute your ideas to find
the best solutions.
I hope this expresses our general motivation to get out of everyone's
comfort zone (ours included) and propose this forum.
Florence asks:
...
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it
starts being hosted by WMF) ?
Wikimedia login is in effect already now, and it's the only way to log in
to the forum. After logging in the first time, the browser keeps the
session for a period of time (that can be configured by the admins) so that
people don't have to log in again every day.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:36 AM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
...
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
Sorry, I had responded with a link. This is what the link says:
...
We are still working on the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use of the
Movement Strategy Forum.
...
They will be completed during the community review. In the meantime, we
provide here information
...
about privacy for users of this platform.
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website.
We are asking volunteers to review a proposed new forum. We have a forum
that people can use to inform their reviews. Sending people to the forum
being reviewed is only logical.
All wiki pages have a talk page, and the proposal's talk page also
welcomes people to contribute their feedback there too, providing a
structure to comment on the same questions.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
attachment
attachment.htm
Mike Peel
11 Jun
11 Jun
12:32 a.m.
So I just received this:
...
Thank you all again for submitting your candidatures for the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. The Board Selection Task Force and the
Elections Committee are excited to inform you about the first community
engagement opportunity of this 2022 Board election process.
The Affiliate Representatives will be submitting questions for
candidates to answer. The process will use the new Movement Strategy
Forum
, based on the open-source
platform Discourse
The great thing about Discourse is replies can be automatically
translated by users into their preferred languages. We will send you
each an email invitation to join a private category once the time to
answer questions begins (June 18). Each candidate will use their
Wikimedia account to log in, there is no need to create a new account
and password.
So by opposing this off-wiki forum, I've probably excluded myself from
going any further in this election.
Thanks,
Mike
On 31/5/22 23:35:52, Mike Peel wrote:
...
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:
...
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
Participation is also welcome here:
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on
Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." .
I thought that's what MediaWiki was?
...
> It's a Discourse instance.
> is an open-source platform specializing in community
conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse
maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is
free software.
So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would
normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?
Thanks,
Mike
Quim Gil
4:10 a.m.
On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 2:33 AM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
So I just received this:
...
Thank you all again for submitting your candidatures for the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. The Board Selection Task Force and the
Elections Committee are excited to inform you about the first community
engagement opportunity of this 2022 Board election process.
The Affiliate Representatives will be submitting questions for
candidates to answer. The process will use the new Movement Strategy
Forum
, based on the open-source
platform Discourse <
The great thing about Discourse is replies can be automatically
translated by users into their preferred languages. We will send you
each an email invitation to join a private category once the time to
answer questions begins (June 18). Each candidate will use their
Wikimedia account to log in, there is no need to create a new account
and password.
For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the
answers in the forum on their behalf.
...
So by opposing this off-wiki forum, I've probably excluded myself from
going any further in this election.
This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being
used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at the
same time, automatically translated to the preference to each reader.
Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate doesn't want
to use the forum, they don't have to.
More context. This election process also includes an option for voters to
use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used in
the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive feedback.
None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70. Here too the
candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they don't want to.
These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to users
that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
...
Thanks,
Mike
On 31/5/22 23:35:52, Mike Peel wrote:
...
...
There is no on-site privacy policy, it just links to
wikimediafoundation.org
See this pinned topic:
User privacy considerations in this forum
...
...
So this does not follow the WMF's privacy policy at:
You didn't answer this.
On 31/5/22 23:25:04, Quim Gil wrote:
...
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:17 AM Mike Peel
> wrote:
This is not a community review - this is an off-wiki discussion.
Participation is also welcome here:
Every single link under "Community review questions" goes to your new
website. You state that "The Movement Strategy Forum is based on
Discourse, a powerful open-source platform for community discussions." .
I thought that's what MediaWiki was?
...
> It's a Discourse instance. https://discourse.org
conversations.
That's $100/month for a standard subscription. per
This is for those who want to have their site hosted by the Discourse
maintainers, which is an option we have taken for now. Discourse is
free software.
So WMF is paying Discourse to hold community discussions that would
normally be held on MediaWiki? Huh?
Thanks,
Mike
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
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Mike Peel
9:09 p.m.
On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:
...
For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the
answers in the forum on their behalf.
Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to
reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during
Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify
copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the
forum.
...
This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being
used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at
the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each
reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate
doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.
It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't
even be used for this, though.
...
More context. This election process also includes an option for voters
to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used
in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive
feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70.
Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they
don't want to.
So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?
...
These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to
users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as
has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.
This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
12 Jun
12 Jun
8:24 a.m.
attachment
attachment.htm
Adam Wight
14 Jun
14 Jun
4:07 a.m.
Let's take the main argument here seriously for a moment: the Wikimedia
movement needs a better platform for inclusive, public, multi-language,
long-term discussion. We'll especially need this if we expect the Global
Council to succeed and live up to our hopes for participation and
transparency. MediaWiki and our existing community spaces are very good at
many things but this isn't quite one of them, yet.
As a person who sees software development happen up close, I fully support
the idea that a large wagon full of money could carry us a long way towards
these goals, and we already have the right people, skills, and shared
values to get us there. However, we still have two main alternatives: find
a software package "off the shelf", or cook one up in-house. Ideally, we
can do exactly what Quim has proposed: start with a system known to work,
and benefit from it right now, but at the same time, slowly but
deliberately take steps towards integrating the best parts of that system
into our own software.
It should be clear that any choice of development process will take *years*
and that we can't afford to do nothing while we wait?
I'd like to work with the kitchen metaphor begun above. We could say that
MediaWiki started as a small but effective home for a few people to cook
together. Maybe there was no oven so the types of meals that could be made
were somewhat limited. We found a filing cabinet on the street and a
padlock for it, because auditing and curating the recipes was a big
concern. Happily, we didn't try to build our own filling cabinet. This
cabinet sits in the corner of the kitchen along with a desk for two people
where we have all our meetings (talk pages). The desk drawer includes
blank paper and several black pencils, so it's a really nice environment
for writing new recipes together, as long as you're okay with feeling a
little cramped sharing this desk and you don't mind the cooking smells.
And bring your own color pencils if you want to decorate your recipe or get
otherwise fancy. Now, the lack of an oven is really starting to become a
problem. By this time we realize that the village likes our food and we'll
need to bake a lot of bread, if we bake one loaf. There's already a
communal oven down the road but we decide to build a beautiful brick oven
in the neighbor's back yard, like one we've seen in a book. Great, but
we've never done this before and we don't have any insulation or mortar.
The first three attempts sort of collapse and even once we get it right ten
years later, by that time we already need a much bigger oven and—now we
realize that we need a meeting space for one hundred people. We have the
money to knock down walls and build a meeting room, but we've also never
done this before, there will need to be extra bathrooms, wheelchair access,
ventilation, break-out space, good connections to public transportation...
Meanwhile, do we hold meetings in the perfectly functional city college
campus that happens to be a few blocks away (ie., is also an open-source
project), or do we insist that everything must happen in our building, so
we continue with ten people barely fitting into the sweaty kitchen and
having nightly arguments about what color to paint the theoretical meeting
room?
Regards,
[[mw:User:Adamw]]
...
attachment
attachment.htm
Risker
4:41 a.m.
Just to change the subject for a short minute:
This is a Board of Trustees election. It is supposed to be managed by
the Elections
Committee
a Board-appointed committee of community members. Their mandate was
reviewed and updated within the past month by Board resolution. (Yes, I
know this used to be the "affiliate-selected" round, but now that it is an
election, things have changed.)
Is there a reason why every single communication I have seen about this
election has been authored by staff members, none of whom are listed as
staff support for the committee? Did the Elections Committee carry out a
consultation with the community to make this significant change in the
manner in which candidate questions will be handled, as is indicated by
their charter?
There's a reason why these elections have never been managed by WMF staff -
I think anyone could see the conflict of interest if they were to do so -
and the Elections Committee or a committee selected by affiliates has
handled these matters to date. I'd like to know why this does not seem to
be the case in this election.
You may now wish to return to your previous discussions about where to talk
about this election. Please excuse my interruption. /s
Risker/Anne
attachment
attachment.htm
Quim Gil
5:45 a.m.
Hi, thank you for this conversation. It is especially important to hear
more opinions from more people. If you are willing but still hesitating to
add your perspective, please go ahead and comment here or in the channel
you prefer.
I will comment on the forum related points later today, but in the meantime
I just wanted to say ..
On Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:42 AM Risker
risker.wp@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Just to change the subject for a short minute:
This thread about the forum is dense enough already. Given that this is a
mailing list, please consider "changing the subject" indeed 🙂 and
discussing the elections in a separate thread.
...
This is a Board of Trustees election. It is supposed to be managed by the Elections
Committee
a Board-appointed committee of community members. Their mandate was
reviewed and updated within the past month by Board resolution. (Yes, I
know this used to be the "affiliate-selected" round, but now that it is an
election, things have changed.)
Is there a reason why every single communication I have seen about this
election has been authored by staff members, none of whom are listed as
staff support for the committee? Did the Elections Committee carry out a
consultation with the community to make this significant change in the
manner in which candidate questions will be handled, as is indicated by
their charter?
There's a reason why these elections have never been managed by WMF staff
I think anyone could see the conflict of interest if they were to do so -
and the Elections Committee or a committee selected by affiliates has
handled these matters to date. I'd like to know why this does not seem to
be the case in this election.
You may now wish to return to your previous discussions about where to
talk about this election. Please excuse my interruption. /s
Risker/Anne
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attachment
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Maggie Dennis
15 Jun
15 Jun
7:52 p.m.
New subject: Foundation support of election committee [was: Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review]
Hi, Risker.
Thanks for bringing this up. :) Pulling it out to separate it from the
other topic. You asked for clarification on the role of staff in this
election related to the role of the EC.
The Elections Committee and the Board Selection Task Force have been
involved in all parts of the election planning and implementation process.
They are the decision-makers. The Movement Strategy and Governance team are
supporting them for communication pieces and administrative processes
(setting up SecurePoll, organizing meetings, publishing on Meta-wiki). We
offer similar support to several other committees–volunteer time is
precious, and elections can be a big demand on time. I wonder if it would
help if staff signed off with “on behalf of” to clarify when they are a
conduit versus when they are acting as leads on work; happy to explore that.
Best regards,
Maggie
On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 12:42 AM Risker
risker.wp@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Just to change the subject for a short minute:
This is a Board of Trustees election. It is supposed to be managed by the Elections
Committee
a Board-appointed committee of community members. Their mandate was
reviewed and updated within the past month by Board resolution. (Yes, I
know this used to be the "affiliate-selected" round, but now that it is an
election, things have changed.)
Is there a reason why every single communication I have seen about this
election has been authored by staff members, none of whom are listed as
staff support for the committee? Did the Elections Committee carry out a
consultation with the community to make this significant change in the
manner in which candidate questions will be handled, as is indicated by
their charter?
There's a reason why these elections have never been managed by WMF staff
I think anyone could see the conflict of interest if they were to do so -
and the Elections Committee or a committee selected by affiliates has
handled these matters to date. I'd like to know why this does not seem to
be the case in this election.
You may now wish to return to your previous discussions about where to
talk about this election. Please excuse my interruption. /s
Risker/Anne
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
attachment
attachment.htm
ktc＠ktchan.info
8:24 p.m.
New subject: Foundation support of election committee [was: Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review]
Hi Risker,
Thank you for raising this. Yes, there are communication pieces sent by the Movement Strategy and Governance team on behalf or with the support of the Elections Committee. As you know, the Elections Committee is composed of volunteers. The time demand of planning and overseeing the election can be quite a lot, as you know from your own past service. To help the Elections Committee members focus on other matters, the Movement Strategy and Governance team helps distribute our communication pieces. They also bring up issues or concerns from the community so we might discuss them.
The Elections Committee is involved with reviewing documents, the concerns of the community, and planning the Board election. The Movement Strategy and Governance team just helps us achieve those plans.
I hope this provides you with more information.
Regards,
Katie
Chair of the Elections Committee
Quim Gil
12 Jun
12 Jun
9:33 a.m.
Hi Mike,
Yes, on-wiki replies are fine and the organizers of the election will
contact you to clarify the details.
We will find a fix to the problem of the content license on the forum.
Thank you for pointing this out.
About features, this is what the election organizers want to try out:
* Let affiliates propose and select their questions by themselves. This is
why we are providing a private space for affiliate representatives to
propose questions and vote for them.
* Give all candidates three days to writel their replies before they can be
read by anyone. This allows all candidates to organize their time to
respond, not taxing as much those who have less free time or less flexible
schedules. This is why we give access to candidates to this private space
at the same time, when the questions are ready, and then make this space
public at the date announced.
* Give everyone more time to read the candidates' answers in their
preferred languages, using automatic translation. We want to reduce the gap
that non-English speakers have to endure when texts are only available in
English, and when translations take extra days to arrive, if they arrive
for their language at all. This is another reason to use the forum.
On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:09 PM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:
...
For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the
answers in the forum on their behalf.
Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to
reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during
Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify
copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the
forum.
...
This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being
used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at
the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each
reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate
doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.
It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't
even be used for this, though.
...
More context. This election process also includes an option for voters
to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used
in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive
feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70.
Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they
don't want to.
So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?
...
These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to
users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as
has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.
This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
attachment
attachment.htm
Ciell Wikipedia
4:03 p.m.
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying
to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's
movement communications insights on this
).
I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to
the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and
input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in
service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take
a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons
and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one
had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No,
there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'.
While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful
for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell,
none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was
effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT
agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have
the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country
or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and
secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that
will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to
Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get
to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy
that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the
other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch
several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to
bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the
forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many
channels a Wikimedian can watch.
*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my
example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible
problem with 'coherent archiving'. *
*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have
projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an
option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *
Best,
Ciell
Op zo 12 jun. 2022 11:34 schreef Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
...
Hi Mike,
Yes, on-wiki replies are fine and the organizers of the election will
contact you to clarify the details.
We will find a fix to the problem of the content license on the forum.
Thank you for pointing this out.
About features, this is what the election organizers want to try out:
Let affiliates propose and select their questions by themselves. This is
why we are providing a private space for affiliate representatives to
propose questions and vote for them.
Give all candidates three days to writel their replies before they can
be read by anyone. This allows all candidates to organize their time to
respond, not taxing as much those who have less free time or less flexible
schedules. This is why we give access to candidates to this private space
at the same time, when the questions are ready, and then make this space
public at the date announced.
Give everyone more time to read the candidates' answers in their
preferred languages, using automatic translation. We want to reduce the gap
that non-English speakers have to endure when texts are only available in
English, and when translations take extra days to arrive, if they arrive
for their language at all. This is another reason to use the forum.
On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:09 PM Mike Peel
email@mikepeel.net
wrote:
...
On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:
...
For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post
the
...
answers in the forum on their behalf.
Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to
reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during
Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify
copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the
forum.
...
This is the only point of the election process where this forum is
being
...
used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at
the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each
reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate
doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.
It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't
even be used for this, though.
...
More context. This election process also includes an option for voters
to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was
used
...
in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive
feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were
+70.
...
Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they
don't want to.
So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?
...
These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to
users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as
has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.
This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
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attachment
attachment.htm
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
7:05 p.m.
Ceill,
I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement, please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.
Best,
Galder
________________________________
From: Ciell Wikipedia
ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on this
). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.
NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'.
Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.
Best,
Ciell
Op zo 12 jun. 2022 11:34 schreef Quim Gil
>:
Hi Mike,
Yes, on-wiki replies are fine and the organizers of the election will contact you to clarify the details.
We will find a fix to the problem of the content license on the forum. Thank you for pointing this out.
About features, this is what the election organizers want to try out:
* Let affiliates propose and select their questions by themselves. This is why we are providing a private space for affiliate representatives to propose questions and vote for them.
* Give all candidates three days to writel their replies before they can be read by anyone. This allows all candidates to organize their time to respond, not taxing as much those who have less free time or less flexible schedules. This is why we give access to candidates to this private space at the same time, when the questions are ready, and then make this space public at the date announced.
* Give everyone more time to read the candidates' answers in their preferred languages, using automatic translation. We want to reduce the gap that non-English speakers have to endure when texts are only available in English, and when translations take extra days to arrive, if they arrive for their language at all. This is another reason to use the forum.
On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:09 PM Mike Peel
> wrote:
On 11/6/22 05:10:51, Quim Gil wrote:
...
For context, the same email gives an option to candidates to answer the
questions via email. In this case, the election organizers will post the
answers in the forum on their behalf.
Answering by email isn't a great solution. I'm hoping to be able to
reply on-wiki, which is the normal way of answering questions during
Wikimedia elections. However, since the forum doesn't seem to specify
copyright, I don't think CC-BY-SA responses on-wiki can be shared on the
forum.
...
This is the only point of the election process where this forum is being
used. It allows affiliates to propose and prioritize their questions
quickly, and it allows to open the candidate replies to the public at
the same time, automatically translated to the preference to each
reader. Candidates can reply via email if they prefer. If a candidate
doesn't want to use the forum, they don't have to.
It's good to hear that it won't be used more than that. It shouldn't
even be used for this, though.
...
More context. This election process also includes an option for voters
to use a voting advice tool that is off-wiki as well. This tool was used
in the last MCDC election and received wide support and positive
feedback. None of the candidates had any objections, and there were +70.
Here too the candidates don't have to use this tool directly if they
don't want to.
So because no-one objected before, my objections are clearly unreasonable?
...
These specialized tools are easy to use and they provide a benefit to
users that right now we cannot replicate with wiki pages alone.
There is nothing on these forums that can't be replicated on-wiki, as
has been thoroughly demonstrated in this thread.
This is Wikimedia. Please keep things on-wiki.
Thanks,
Mike
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
, guidelines at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
attachment
attachment.htm
Matej Grochal
13 Jun
13 Jun
8:19 a.m.
Dear all
I quite agree with Galder here. We should focus on making our own spaces
more inclusive and easier to use rather than jumping to various external
providers for this and that. Let's not forget that existing volunteers and
staff also have to learn to use the new platform. The other issue is the
continued splitting of content and esp. volunteers have to find extra time
to check those other platforms to stay in touch with the movement.
Be well and healthy
Matej
On Sunday, June 12, 2022, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
wrote:
...
Ceill,
I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to
find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with
another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is
the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement,
please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.
Best,
Galder
*From:* Ciell Wikipedia
ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com
*Sent:* Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM
*To:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are
trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last
year's movement communications insights on this
).
I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to
the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and
input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in
service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take
a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons
and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one
had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No,
there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'.
While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful
for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell,
none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was
effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT
agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have
the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country
or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and
secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that
will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to
Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll
get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement
Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of
the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to
watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team
to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the
forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many
channels a Wikimedian can watch.
*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my
example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible
problem with 'coherent archiving'. *
*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have
projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an
option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *
Best,
Ciell
attachment
attachment.htm
F. Xavier Dengra i Grau
9:08 a.m.
Bon dia a tothom/Hi everyone,
It's really difficult not to agree with Galder here. Happy to still read these persistent colleagues with key arguments.
The same people that committed the big mistakes and failure with Wikimedia Space (that should have never existed and that even combined discussions with Facebook groups as a "revolution" of communication) is now trying to tell us that they "learnt from those mistakes" and that they have full commitment in finishing this new forum. I still look back at [this graph of 2019](
) and wonder how things can rapidly age that badly and with worse leadership.
Imho this is quite informative of the lack of sustained chain of command (not community-need driven anymore). And the worst part of it, this is coming from the same people that is parallelly trying to blame those volunteers who strongly disagree with very legit discourses on the constant externalization of features and the lack of renewed wiki tech. I've read so far too many fallacies ("this platform must be good because we are 67 staff people behind", etc) instead of a critical recognition that our default, wiki one is obsolete and must be urgently supported with staff and resources.
There is no way to justify new forums in other interfaces rather than the aim or the apathy of the WMF to disengage actively involved wikipedians in favor of more empty infrastructures (that benefits the institution rather the direct interaction within the knowledge projects). Truly sad, especially when some of us feel obliged to explain this to kind donors that truly believe that their 5$ are going to fund Wikipedia's servers and functionalities as they are mostly told in the funding banners.
Xavier Dengra
------- Original Message -------
El dilluns, 13 de juny 2022 a les 10:19 AM, Matej Grochal
matej.grochal@wikimedia.sk
va escriure:
...
Dear all
I quite agree with Galder here. We should focus on making our own spaces more inclusive and easier to use rather than jumping to various external providers for this and that. Let's not forget that existing volunteers and staff also have to learn to use the new platform. The other issue is the continued splitting of content and esp. volunteers have to find extra time to check those other platforms to stay in touch with the movement.
Be well and healthy
Matej
On Sunday, June 12, 2022, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
wrote:
...
Ceill,
I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement, please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.
Best,
Galder
From: Ciell Wikipedia
ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask ([last year's movement communications insights on this](
)). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.
NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'.
Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.
Best,
Ciell
attachment
attachment.htm
Yaroslav Blanter
10:04 a.m.
Dear All,
I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion
currently runs in a good direction.
I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion
platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements
posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment
on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the
recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to
leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done
inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only
happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at
best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything.
We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was
around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not
getting better, they are getting worse.
It might be a matter of funding, may be a radically new interface could be
build on Meta to replace the existing one. But I am afraid this is more a
matter of attitude. Discussions were happening on IRC, then most of them
migrated to Facebook , then to Discord or Telegram, but nobody ever
considered discussing things on Meta.
Obviously there are a lot of boundary conditions, I fully buy the argument
that discussion should happen in the space owned by the WMF (though a lot
of discussions are happening right now on spaces not owned by the WMF, and
partially just because they are not owned by the WMF), licensed
appropriately etc. But saying we should go to Meta to discuss there and
shooting off all attempts of doing something else is a dead end.
(I must say I did not even log in to the Movement Stategy Forum and I am
not registered there, I am not prepared to endorse or criticize it, and I
do not have any specific suggestions for improvement. I did participate in
Space when it was up, and I recognize all the problems which were there,
though).
Best
Yaroslav
On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 11:09 AM F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
...
Bon dia a tothom/Hi everyone,
It's really difficult not to agree with Galder here. Happy to still read
these persistent colleagues with key arguments.
The same people that committed the big mistakes and failure with Wikimedia
Space (that should have never existed and that even combined discussions
with Facebook groups as a "revolution" of communication) is now trying to
tell us that they "learnt from those mistakes" and that they have full
commitment in finishing this new forum. I still look back at this graph
of 2019
and wonder how things can rapidly age that badly and with worse leadership.
Imho this is quite informative of the lack of sustained chain of command
(not community-need driven anymore). And the worst part of it, this is
coming from the same people that is parallelly trying to blame those
volunteers who strongly disagree with very legit discourses on the constant
externalization of features and the lack of renewed wiki tech. I've read so
far too many fallacies ("this platform must be good because we are 67 staff
people behind", etc) instead of a critical recognition that our default,
wiki one is obsolete and must be urgently supported with staff and
resources.
There is no way to justify new forums in other interfaces rather than the
aim or the apathy of the WMF to disengage actively involved wikipedians in
favor of more empty infrastructures (that benefits the institution rather
the direct interaction within the knowledge projects). Truly sad,
especially when some of us feel obliged to explain this to kind donors that
truly believe that their 5$ are going to fund Wikipedia's servers and
functionalities as they are mostly told in the funding banners.
Xavier Dengra
------- Original Message -------
El dilluns, 13 de juny 2022 a les 10:19 AM, Matej Grochal <
matej.grochal@wikimedia.sk> va escriure:
Dear all
I quite agree with Galder here. We should focus on making our own spaces
more inclusive and easier to use rather than jumping to various external
providers for this and that. Let's not forget that existing volunteers and
staff also have to learn to use the new platform. The other issue is the
continued splitting of content and esp. volunteers have to find extra time
to check those other platforms to stay in touch with the movement.
Be well and healthy
Matej
On Sunday, June 12, 2022, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
galder158@hotmail.com
wrote:
...
Ceill,
I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to
find answers to questions. Having the front door in another building, with
another technology, and once they are in we say them that our building is
the other one, the one that is falling down (but don't visit the basement,
please, is full of money) is the worst of the strategies.
Best,
Galder
*From:* Ciell Wikipedia
ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com
*Sent:* Sunday, June 12, 2022 6:03 PM
*To:* Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum
community review
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are
trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last
year's movement communications insights on this
).
I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to
the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and
input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in
service in comparison to Meta.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to
take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about
Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but
no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of
'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on
Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not
helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could
tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user
was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT
agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have
the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country
or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and
secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that
will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to
Commons or VRT after all.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll
get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement
Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of
the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to
watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team
to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the
forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many
channels a Wikimedian can watch.
*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my
example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible
problem with 'coherent archiving'. *
*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have
projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an
option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already. *
Best,
Ciell
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
at:
and
Public archives at
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
attachment
attachment.htm
Nathan
12:51 p.m.
On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 6:05 AM Yaroslav Blanter
ymbalt@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Dear All,
I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion
currently runs in a good direction.
I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion
platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements
posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment
on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the
recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to
leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done
inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only
happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at
best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything.
We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was
around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not
getting better, they are getting worse.
These are great points, thank you Yaroslav. The tone of this discussion is
painful to read; angry and argumentative, even rude. But that's likely a
function of your last point - things are not getting better, they are
getting worse. Yes, Meta is an ugly and dysfunctional place to hold a
discussion with many people. That reality leads WMF teams to search for
alternatives that work better to achieve specific, discrete goals. That's a
reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the
movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development
strategy.
Complaints are better directed at the ED and board - why, after all this
time, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on [something] and
raising hundreds more, does MediaWiki feel frozen in 2008? Why are
discussions so often held on other platforms? If this is a desirable
outcome (e.g. a decision has been made that WMF can't replicate the ease of
use and modernity of other platforms, which are continually innovating, and
we made a decision not to chase Discord and IG and TikTok etc.) then maybe
that's ok - if it is articulated somewhere that people can see when they
are frustrated with why everything can't take place "on-wiki."
attachment
attachment.htm
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
2:57 p.m.
Thanks Nathan,
I want to raise a point here. You say that "That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy." and I must disagree. If Quim's (or whoever, this is not a complaint against Quim, of course) scope is managing the movement strategy process and he thinks that we need better tools for doing that, and those tools are out of his and the team's scope, then the problem is in the management. Who should Quim or his team reach out to ask for investment on those tools? Who is accountable for the decision? Is there someone in this process who should take the decision to invest in better discussion tools for MediaWiki (not only Meta)? If there's someone, and is not the team who has decided to abandon Meta, then that person should tell us why they decided not to invest money on making MediaWiki a better software for discussion. It there's no one, then we should ask why such kind of decisions can be taken without any accountability.
I'm going to give an example. Imagine that my kitchen is broken and I can't prepare my meals there. I have budget to solve it, but instead of that I decide that eating every day in a restaurant will be easier than paying someone to fix my kitchen. Indeed, I will eat good quality food every day, and I don't need to clean the kitchen after using it. As long as I have money, I can do this every day. But my kitchen is still broken, and it would be wise to fix it. Maybe I need to eat out for a week or so, but not solving something I need while I have money to do that, is not the wisest decision I can take.
That said, yes, sure, Meta is not the best place to make a discussion. Commons is not the best place to upload a photo. But it's WMF's responsibility to solve that, that's why millions of people are donating every year. Not to pay a team who is deciding to abandon MediaWiki because other platforms are doing better.
Sincerely,
Galder
________________________________
From: Nathan
nawrich@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2022 2:51 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 6:05 AM Yaroslav Blanter
> wrote:
Dear All,
I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion currently runs in a good direction.
I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything.
We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not getting better, they are getting worse.
These are great points, thank you Yaroslav. The tone of this discussion is painful to read; angry and argumentative, even rude. But that's likely a function of your last point - things are not getting better, they are getting worse. Yes, Meta is an ugly and dysfunctional place to hold a discussion with many people. That reality leads WMF teams to search for alternatives that work better to achieve specific, discrete goals. That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy.
Complaints are better directed at the ED and board - why, after all this time, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on [something] and raising hundreds more, does MediaWiki feel frozen in 2008? Why are discussions so often held on other platforms? If this is a desirable outcome (e.g. a decision has been made that WMF can't replicate the ease of use and modernity of other platforms, which are continually innovating, and we made a decision not to chase Discord and IG and TikTok etc.) then maybe that's ok - if it is articulated somewhere that people can see when they are frustrated with why everything can't take place "on-wiki."
attachment
attachment.htm
Quim Gil
15 Jun
15 Jun
2:17 p.m.
Hi,
I wanted to bring you a bit of Movement Strategy Forum flair, in case you
haven't tasted it yet.
Oby_Ezeilo said
*I prefer this*
1. *You can communicate in your Language*
2. *There are quick responses from members*
3. *There is cross knowledge sharing from every angle*
4. *Nke a bụ ebe mmụta pụrụ iche*
(Automatic translation from Igbo: *This is a special place*)
Andy_Inácio said
*I agree with other opinions stating Meta should remain the central place
of gathering. But I must say: This forum feels so much more welcoming to
newcomers. I speak for myself.*
*So from where I stand, if Meta is hard enough, here the participation can
be significantly easier. The interface walk us through it. (snip) Plus,
when the established alternatives so far are Telegram and similar, closed
channels, I believe forums are much more useful to the goal.*
*Long live this forum! [image: :partying_face:]*
***
Beyond the messages, you can sense the feelings of the persons sharing
them. Movement Strategy implementation can only succeed if people feel
safe, feel connected, and feel productive. We need a community of Movement
Strategy implementors that is inviting to new ideas and experimentation, to
success, and to failures met with encouragement and pride.
For cross-project collaboration we have Meta, we have social media, and we
have events. It is not enough, and it is not working. What is to be done?
## Meta continues to be an official Movement Strategy channel
I want to clarify that we have no plans to abandon Meta. Movement Strategy
relies on Meta for documentation, announcements, and calls to action. There
isn't much discussion or collaboration happening there. This is where the
Forum, a tool designed specifically for discussion and collaboration, can
play an important role. We will continue doing the same work on Meta, and
we plan to complement this work with the Forum.
With a Movement Strategy landing place that is newcomer friendly and
multilingual, we can also tackle a historical problem of the Movement
Strategy process: outreach to volunteers in all the wiki projects. We can
also invite our partners in the ecosystem of free knowledge and offer them
cozy and well-equipped rooms to work together.
Those preferring to contribute to the Movement Strategy implementation on
Meta will continue finding us there too, and all the documentation will
continue to be published and maintained there.
Ciell made some interesting points:
On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 6:04 PM Ciell Wikipedia
ciell.wikipedia@gmail.com
wrote:
...
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are
trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last
year's movement communications insights on this
).
I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to
the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and
input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in
service in comparison to Meta.
Just to be clear, this is not what the Movement Strategy Forum is trying to
accomplish.
...
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take
a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons
and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one
had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No,
there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'.
While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful
for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell,
none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was
effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT
agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have
the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country
or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and
secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that
will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to
Commons or VRT after all.
If someone asks a question about Commons processes
in the forum, a
good answer is to point them where to ask on Commons. At most, we can
encourage them to convert the question into an idea connected to any of the
MS recommendations. But still for that it would be useful to share that
idea on Commons. This is what we did, and I think it is correct. The forum
doesn't aim to become a Q&A place for all things Wikimedia.
...
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll
get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement
Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of
the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to
watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team
to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the
forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many
channels a Wikimedian can watch.
Yes, we plan to produce data about this community review period of two
months. We are already producing weekly reports
and we
welcome feedback about which data would be interesting to catch. There is
also a community review discussion about Goals
(that I will mention again when responding to Deskana).
Some thoughts about people we have not heard from before:
- 3,5 weeks ago nobody had heard about this forum. We are doing targeted
outreach step by step. Comparing participants between a 2-month community
review period and 5 years of Movement Strategy discussions is useful, when
put into perspective.
- Even people falling in love with something need some time to adopt it.
Among those who see something new as positive, many will wait to see how it
goes before adopting it. 2 months is a good period to gather feedback. One
year is a more reasonable period to assess adoption and impact.
- People also need interesting topics to join, stick around and
participate. We'll see how interesting is the MS agenda in these two
months. The MCDC process looks promising as a project open to many
conversations where diversity of participants and good coverage of multiple
projects, languages and backgrounds is especially welcome.
- Movement Strategy participation is in general lower than it was years
ago. Seeing in the forum old participants coming back would be a success.
- Among current and past participants, many don't share common places
and, in practice, don't join common conversations except perhaps for the
Global Conversations. Seeing known participants discussing together in a
common space would also be a success.
About how many channels a Wikimedian can watch yes, this is absolutely
true. One interesting feature about the forum is that users can watch /
mute the categories, tags or topics that they care / not care about.
Another nice feature is that users get an automatic digest with popular
topics after not logging during 7 days (the periodicity can be changed).
...
*NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my
example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible
problem with 'coherent archiving'. *
*Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have
projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an
option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.*
There is a discussion about supporting automatic translation of languages
not supported by Google
If anyone finds more languages that should be covered, please let us know.
Currently the plugin only accepts on engine at a time. If it is agreed that
this is an important feature, then we can check what would it take to
improve the plugin to accept more engines.
Sorry, this email is already too long. I'll review the rest of the thread
and reply another day.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
7:15 p.m.
Wait, wait... what?
With a Movement Strategy landing place that is newcomer friendly and multilingual, we can also tackle a historical problem of the Movement Strategy process: outreach to volunteers in all the wiki projects. We can also invite our partners in the ecosystem of free knowledge and offer them cozy and well-equipped rooms to work together.
So, this is not a forum, but a "landing place"? How did it change from a forum to discuss the strategy to a "landing place". And why is the "landing place" outside of the ecosystem that is discussed? Why is not Meta the landing place anymore. Is there or have there been any rejected plan to implement Meta as a landing place? And if not, why hasn't it been discussed if this was one of the outcomes from most of the discussions done in the (now called ) Wikimedia Summit in Berlin (you can check the minutes).
The second part is quite strange: isn't it MediaWiki multilingual? You can translate things; you can even use the ContentTranslation (and soon the great SectionTranslation). We have technology for automatic translation of paragraphs into lots of languages (more than those at Google Translate) and we can even use our own community to make those translation forever, and not automatic. Where was it decided that "multilingual" equals "Google" and where can I read how much does it cost to adapt our own tools to our own ecosystem to make "multilingual" discussion happen?
I also read with perplexity that an external forum is giving volunteers in all the wiki projects a place for outreach. This may be a good salesperson point when trying to sell a product, but this has been done with Meta (and other projects) without any integration problem. Is something that is built in the core of our technology. If there's something missing there: why hasn't it been solved in the last 5 years of discussion? Did we notice now that we can have an external system to out(???)reach our own volunteers? I can't continue reading this without a real sense of strangeness.
And the last sentence is the best part: inviting partners to discuss about my home, in another home that is better equipped. We surely will drive our partners in the free knowledge ecosystem to donate more time, resources and even money to Discourse, that is what we are showing. This message is proposing exactly to drive out of our ecosystem to those that we need more, telling them that our place is not worthy. How did the Communications Team allow something like this? Or didn't they know? Furthermore, this idea is contradicting with the Wikimedia Strategy itself. The Wikimedia Movement 2018-2020 strategy says (
):
By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.
And then we can read these extracts from the the Improve User Experience section (
):
Improving the experience of users
on our platforms will allow more people to join projects, access information, and contribute. This is a shared responsibility between developers, designers, and communities
and requires collective action throughout the Wikimedia ecosystem.
(...) * Spaces that allow finding peers with specific interests, roles, and objectives along with communication channels to interact, collaborate and mentor
each other.
(...) * Tools to connect cross-project and cross-language functionalities to provide an enhanced experience of the knowledge contained in the Wikimedia ecosystem for a particular interest, informational need, or inquiry.
We can also read the recommendations at Ensure Equity in Decision-Making (
):
* Maintaining safe collaborative environments.
How is that in 2022 (2 years after this discussion was closed and 5 years after it started) we are doing just the opposite of what the Movement decided to do? How is that we spent years of discussion, volunteer's time and resources discussing something and the forum to continue discussing about it goes against all of the decided?
Sincerely, it would be great to discuss these things seriously, because we are already volunteering here, no one needs to buy another hair-growing formula.
Hoping that we can talk about what we need, and not what we have,
Galder
________________________________
From: Quim Gil
qgil@wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 4:17 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review
Hi,
I wanted to bring you a bit of Movement Strategy Forum flair, in case you haven't tasted it yet.
Oby_Ezeilo said
I prefer this
1. You can communicate in your Language
2. There are quick responses from members
3. There is cross knowledge sharing from every angle
4. Nke a bụ ebe mmụta pụrụ iche
(Automatic translation from Igbo: This is a special place)
Andy_Inácio said
I agree with other opinions stating Meta should remain the central place of gathering. But I must say: This forum feels so much more welcoming to newcomers. I speak for myself.
So from where I stand, if Meta is hard enough, here the participation can be significantly easier. The interface walk us through it. (snip) Plus, when the established alternatives so far are Telegram and similar, closed channels, I believe forums are much more useful to the goal.
Long live this forum! [:partying_face:]
***
Beyond the messages, you can sense the feelings of the persons sharing them. Movement Strategy implementation can only succeed if people feel safe, feel connected, and feel productive. We need a community of Movement Strategy implementors that is inviting to new ideas and experimentation, to success, and to failures met with encouragement and pride.
For cross-project collaboration we have Meta, we have social media, and we have events. It is not enough, and it is not working. What is to be done?
## Meta continues to be an official Movement Strategy channel
I want to clarify that we have no plans to abandon Meta. Movement Strategy relies on Meta for documentation, announcements, and calls to action. There isn't much discussion or collaboration happening there. This is where the Forum, a tool designed specifically for discussion and collaboration, can play an important role. We will continue doing the same work on Meta, and we plan to complement this work with the Forum.
With a Movement Strategy landing place that is newcomer friendly and multilingual, we can also tackle a historical problem of the Movement Strategy process: outreach to volunteers in all the wiki projects. We can also invite our partners in the ecosystem of free knowledge and offer them cozy and well-equipped rooms to work together.
Those preferring to contribute to the Movement Strategy implementation on Meta will continue finding us there too, and all the documentation will continue to be published and maintained there.
Ciell made some interesting points:
On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 6:04 PM Ciell Wikipedia
> wrote:
Hi,
First: I am a big fan of having 'one front door' for people that are trying to find answers to questions they do not know where to ask (last year's movement communications insights on this
). I think a forum, actively moderated by people helping and pointing users to the right places, would be a huge improvement for community questions and input. Especially the one-click translation service is imho a big plus in service in comparison to Meta.
Just to be clear, this is not what the Movement Strategy Forum is trying to accomplish.
It does however worry me that when I joined the forum last weekend to take a peek, I stumbled on a thread with a very specific question about Commons and giving permission via VRT. The thread had multiple replies, but no one had a real substantial answer. Well, replies were along the lines of 'No, there is no template for this' and 'This should be discussed on Commons'. While the answers were somewhat correct, they were obviously not helpful for the person asking this specific question and, as far as I could tell, none of the respondents were a member of our VRT teams. So this user was effectively not helped by posting the question on the forum.
Even more so, because the question on the forum was not noticed by VRT agents (most of us working on the permissions queues and Commons will have the /Noticeboard on Commons on our watch list and can be pinged if country or language specific knowledge or advise is needed for a question), and secondly it will be more difficult for the people working from our end that will have to follow up if the person does decide to bring the question to Commons or VRT after all.
If someone asks a question about Commons processes
in the forum, a good answer is to point them where to ask on Commons. At most, we can encourage them to convert the question into an idea connected to any of the MS recommendations. But still for that it would be useful to share that idea on Commons. This is what we did, and I think it is correct. The forum doesn't aim to become a Q&A place for all things Wikimedia.
Besides that, with my MCDC hat on, I hope after this trial period we'll get to see the data on how many people interacted about the Movement Strategy that we have not heard from in the previous 5 years through any of the other platforms that are in use to gather feedback. Already trying to watch several channels with Strategy discussions, I count on the MSG team to bring back these numbers and a summary of what is being discussed on the forum back to Meta. Even in a virtual world there is a limit on how many channels a Wikimedian can watch.
Yes, we plan to produce data about this community review period of two months. We are already producing weekly reports
and we welcome feedback about which data would be interesting to catch. There is also a community review discussion about Goals
(that I will mention again when responding to Deskana).
Some thoughts about people we have not heard from before:
* 3,5 weeks ago nobody had heard about this forum. We are doing targeted outreach step by step. Comparing participants between a 2-month community review period and 5 years of Movement Strategy discussions is useful, when put into perspective.
* Even people falling in love with something need some time to adopt it. Among those who see something new as positive, many will wait to see how it goes before adopting it. 2 months is a good period to gather feedback. One year is a more reasonable period to assess adoption and impact.
* People also need interesting topics to join, stick around and participate. We'll see how interesting is the MS agenda in these two months. The MCDC process looks promising as a project open to many conversations where diversity of participants and good coverage of multiple projects, languages and backgrounds is especially welcome.
* Movement Strategy participation is in general lower than it was years ago. Seeing in the forum old participants coming back would be a success.
* Among current and past participants, many don't share common places and, in practice, don't join common conversations except perhaps for the Global Conversations. Seeing known participants discussing together in a common space would also be a success.
About how many channels a Wikimedian can watch yes, this is absolutely true. One interesting feature about the forum is that users can watch / mute the categories, tags or topics that they care / not care about. Another nice feature is that users get an automatic digest with popular topics after not logging during 7 days (the periodicity can be changed).
NB: I see Sj's response crossed mine while I was writing, but let my example underline the issue of 'no unified notifications' and a possible problem with 'coherent archiving'.
Please also be aware G-translate does not know all languages we have projects in, some of which are however supported by Yandex that is an option to choose for the Wikipedia article translation tool already.
There is a discussion about supporting automatic translation of languages not supported by Google
. If anyone finds more languages that should be covered, please let us know. Currently the plugin only accepts on engine at a time. If it is agreed that this is an important feature, then we can check what would it take to improve the plugin to accept more engines.
Sorry, this email is already too long. I'll review the rest of the thread and reply another day.
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
attachment
attachment.htm
steven.mantz.nyc＠gmail.com
14 Jun
14 Jun
2:28 p.m.
I agree with Quim Gil's replies on thiss. I see many positive benefits to the forum websiote that uses Discourse. By the way, I have been editing Wikipedia for over fifteen years.
By the way I am mentioning my number of years, only to note my own connection with the community; longevity of editng certailnly does not make my opinion any more or less important than anyone else's opinion here; I'm saying that based on my own direct personal experience, since I have often learned a lot from editors who are more knowledgable than me. I just wanted to note that as one tangential thought and as a genral observation.
Anyway, I appreciate all the insights and input offered in this discussion. thanks!
Sm8900
Florence Devouard
1 Jun
1 Jun
8:25 a.m.
Hi Quim
Will there be any notion of Single Login in the future (when/if it
starts being hosted by WMF) ?
Florence
Le 31/05/2022 à 23:38, Quim Gil a écrit :
...
Hello everyone,
This is an invitation to all Movement Strategy participants and
Wikimedians in general to try out a new platform for truly
multilingual collaboration:
Movement Strategy Forum -
We have started a community review
period of two months. If the community feedback is positive, the Forum
will launch in August 2022 before Wikimania. If not, we will follow
the feedback received, changing the proposal or closing it.
We opened the Forum on May 24 with targeted outreach, hoping that the
new site features would work. 😅 A week later, the Wikimedia login has
been used by +200 users, the automatic translation is allowing
speakers of different languages to discuss together, and we are ready
to welcome more reviewers, testers, and other curious minds.
We have just released the first weekly report
. Looking
forward to reading your first impressions in the next one!
--
Quim Gil (he/him)
Director of Movement Strategy & Governance @ Wikimedia Foundation
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35 comments
19 participants
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participants
(19)
Adam Wight
Amir Sarabadani
Ciell Wikipedia
Dan Garry (Deskana)
F. Xavier Dengra i Grau
Florence Devouard
Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
Gergő Tisza
ktc＠ktchan.info
Maggie Dennis
Matej Grochal
Mike Peel
Mohammed Bachounda
Nathan
Quim Gil
Risker
Samuel Klein
steven.mantz.nyc＠gmail.com
Yaroslav Blanter