Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
I'd say it's simpler than any of that. Wikimedia Foundation need to synchronise the formal launch of projects with press announcements and availability of press contacts. I don't care whether that's done on GMT, EST, PST, BST, CET, MMA, BDSM, MI5 or any other timezone. What's important is we don't formally launch a new project with a big stonking banner on Wikipedia (hint: people do see those) and not have any press release or blog post up… journalists will be confused, bloggers will be confused, ordinary citizens of the Internet will be confused. In fact, pretty much the only people who won't be confused will be people who have spent time keeping track of Wikimedia policy and governance stuff. Which is a pretty small group. And they won't even be able to say to the confused friends, bloggers, journalists etc. Oh, here's a blog post from the Foundation which explains it because there isn't a blog post or press release to point them to. Not having press releases or blog posts out when a project is formally launched is about as big a failure of basic public relations/press handling as you can get. If a PR professional working for a commercial organisation failed to make material available for the press upon launch of a new product, that'd be grounds to rapidly dropkick them from the building. (I mean, it's not like the Foundation are formally launching new sister projects every other week like in the old days…) Any plans to make sure things like this don't happen in the future? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ On Wednesday, 16 January 2013 at 05:52, Peter Southwood wrote: There are two immediately obvious possibilities for this. 1 GMT/Universal time, which would be relatively unsurprising to most, as it is traditionally the zero offset timezone. 2 +12 so that New Zealand and other extreme east timezone users would see something when the time arrives. A more complex option would be to link to the user's timezone and release when that reaches the relevant time. This may not be feasible or even particularly useful. Linking to a time zone which is tomorrow for half the world would be counterproductive, better early than late. I would recommend GMT as least surprise option. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
Hi Tom, I do agree that it is helpful to coordinate the release time and the banner time a bit better. However, that was not the point I was trying to make. This specific release was tied to the birthday of Wikipedia. However, the release never got published on January 15 in significant parts of the world. News papers could at the best pick it up for January 16. Which makes it less likely they run something based on our release, since the word was going around anyway that Wikiversity was going to launch on Wikipedia's birthday. The same goes for Wiki Loves Monuments, which was focused on for example September 1 (launch) and October 1 (results). We didn't find a perfect solution yet though, and input on how to manage that properly is always welcome. If it is an announcement that is less tied to a specific/symbolic day, this is of course all less important. Best, Lodewijk 2013/1/16 Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org I'd say it's simpler than any of that. Wikimedia Foundation need to synchronise the formal launch of projects with press announcements and availability of press contacts. I don't care whether that's done on GMT, EST, PST, BST, CET, MMA, BDSM, MI5 or any other timezone. What's important is we don't formally launch a new project with a big stonking banner on Wikipedia (hint: people do see those) and not have any press release or blog post up… journalists will be confused, bloggers will be confused, ordinary citizens of the Internet will be confused. In fact, pretty much the only people who won't be confused will be people who have spent time keeping track of Wikimedia policy and governance stuff. Which is a pretty small group. And they won't even be able to say to the confused friends, bloggers, journalists etc. Oh, here's a blog post from the Foundation which explains it because there isn't a blog post or press release to point them to. Not having press releases or blog posts out when a project is formally launched is about as big a failure of basic public relations/press handling as you can get. If a PR professional working for a commercial organisation failed to make material available for the press upon launch of a new product, that'd be grounds to rapidly dropkick them from the building. (I mean, it's not like the Foundation are formally launching new sister projects every other week like in the old days…) Any plans to make sure things like this don't happen in the future? -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ On Wednesday, 16 January 2013 at 05:52, Peter Southwood wrote: There are two immediately obvious possibilities for this. 1 GMT/Universal time, which would be relatively unsurprising to most, as it is traditionally the zero offset timezone. 2 +12 so that New Zealand and other extreme east timezone users would see something when the time arrives. A more complex option would be to link to the user's timezone and release when that reaches the relevant time. This may not be feasible or even particularly useful. Linking to a time zone which is tomorrow for half the world would be counterproductive, better early than late. I would recommend GMT as least surprise option. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:06 AM, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: I'd say it's simpler than any of that. Wikimedia Foundation need to synchronise the formal launch of projects with press announcements and availability of press contacts. I don't care whether that's done on GMT, EST, PST, BST, CET, MMA, BDSM, MI5 or any other timezone. What's important is we don't formally launch a new project with a big stonking banner on Wikipedia (hint: people do see those) and not have any press release or blog post up… journalists will be confused, bloggers will be confused, ordinary citizens of the Internet will be confused. In fact, pretty much the only people who won't be confused will be people who have spent time keeping track of Wikimedia policy and governance stuff. Which is a pretty small group. And they won't even be able to say to the confused friends, bloggers, journalists etc. Oh, here's a blog post from the Foundation which explains it because there isn't a blog post or press release to point them to. Not having press releases or blog posts out when a project is formally launched is about as big a failure of basic public relations/press handling as you can get. If a PR professional working for a commercial organisation failed to make material available for the press upon launch of a new product, that'd be grounds to rapidly dropkick them from the building. (I mean, it's not like the Foundation are formally launching new sister projects every other week like in the old days…) Any plans to make sure things like this don't happen in the future? Wow, drop-kicked from the building. Big failure of public relations as you can get. I'm amused that this thread commenced with a reflection about the need to distribute press releases at the appropriate global time window and has rolled into this. I've been at this for five years and this is the first time I've seen so much attention paid to the manner we communicate with the world. Let me be clear on one thing first - the scheduling of a central notice announcing Wikivoyage to the world happened independently of any scheduled timing of the distribution of a press release or a blog post. Presumably the central notice kicked in at midnight UTC. I can't really bring myself to have a discussion about the correct time to release news in a way that it best serves the global media audience, but I will say that the Foundation is still run by human beings, not software. We sent out the press release as early as we reasonably could on Tuesday from our offices. We use a hacked version of mailman to distribute our press releases - we have been from the beginning. It is not fancy, it's a big group of email addresses and a list that sends one-way only - out - to over 2K subscribers. There is no way to schedule a release in advance, nor will we ever set the system up to send out a release without a real person at the switch. The news and plans about the scheduled announcement was shared with communications contacts via comcom-l, and anyone was welcomed and encouraged to adapt/localize the release and spread the news in their region. That is our primary means of international media outreach. It's a lot like our movement in general - we distribute the opportunity to carry out communications work and localize the story to regional audiences. Indeed the timing of the launch of a press release is a significant topic - Lodewijk is right to point that out. We favor our media contacts on the west coast by sending out a release at around 8AM Pacific Time. I might add we immediately do a disservice to the majority of media contacts in the North American audience by getting them the news 3hrs later. We don't intend to support any media audience over another, except given that we send out our press release in English, we unfortunately favor outlets that work in English. Someday we might have the substantial resources to work around that fact, but at this point my strong preference (and I think it's safe to say the preference of Wikimedia communications contacts around the world) is to share this responsibility for spreading the news with a network of Wikimedians. Ideally we would have also had the blog post synced up to be online immediately at the same time as the release. I apologize that this couldn't be the case, but please also understand that the moment you distribute news to over 2K reporters, your phone tends to ring. You get a few emails. We're load-balancing a huge amount of inbound contact, and let me remind you that we're a hard-working non-profit. The comms team has 4 staff, 3 of whom are focused on media relations, two of whom are primarily focused on media relations. It's true this is the first time in a long time that we've announced a new project - the first in my five years at WMF. We knew it would be a major source of news, and like all of our announcements we did our best to work out the details in advance and to prepare for a huge
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
* Jay Walsh wrote: I'm amused that this thread commenced with a reflection about the need to distribute press releases at the appropriate global time window and has rolled into this. I've been at this for five years and this is the first time I've seen so much attention paid to the manner we communicate with the world. Putting an extremely large and annoying banner on top of every Wikipedia article is difficult to ignore for many people. -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjo...@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:06 AM, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Ideally we would have also had the blog post synced up to be online immediately at the same time as the release. The blog post went up at the same time as the release, 8 am PST, the time we had planned to lift the embargo. -Matthew Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org https://donate.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:06 AM, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Ideally we would have also had the blog post synced up to be online immediately at the same time as the release. The blog post went up at the same time as the release, 8 am PST, the time we had planned to lift the embargo.Sorry Matthew - I should have confirmed that point with you. And to clarify: * Jay Walsh wrote: I'm amused that this thread commenced with a reflection about the need to distribute press releases at the appropriate global time window and has rolled into this. I've been at this for five years and this is the first time I've seen so much attention paid to the manner we communicate with the world. Putting an extremely large and annoying banner on top of every Wikipedia article is difficult to ignore for many people. I should have pointed out above that I was referring with the way Communications at WMF communicates with the world. Really the use of central notice is a separate aspect of the communication of this project, and one that was led independently, outside of the Foundation. Which honestly is a good thing - I appreciate that our community has the ability to develop and direct a message to millions of people, and that for the vast majority of situations (whether it's WMF or a volunteer, chapter etc) we are really respectful of people's attention, the project values etc when issuing a message on central notice etc. And I will also confirm that, yes, it would be totally ideal to have all ducks in a row (press, blog, social media, central notice) so that true communications strategy can unfold. Stuff like this is always going to be slightly imperfect - but honestly, this is what I like about our overall approach to corporate communications (that is, the kind of communications a group does on behalf of a specific org, institution, business) - that we are not in complete control like a corporation would be. I try to do our absolute maximum to be open, transparent, professional, and responsive when it comes to communications, but I'm glad we're not air-tight and straight-laced and message-managed. Our movement is really at the fringe when it comes to open and direct communication with our audience. That's what makes being a part of the movement really fascinating. -- Jay Walsh Senior Director, Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease?
There are two immediately obvious possibilities for this. 1GMT/Universal time, which would be relatively unsurprising to most, as it is traditionally the zero offset timezone. 2+12 so that New Zealand and other extreme east timezone users would see something when the time arrives. A more complex option would be to link to the user's timezone and release when that reaches the relevant time. This may not be feasible or even particularly useful. Linking to a time zone which is tomorrow for half the world would be counterproductive, better early than late. I would recommend GMT as least surprise option. Cheers, Peter - Original Message - From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 11:07 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage launch: why no blog post or pressrelease? Hi, maybe it would be good to consider at some point in the near future the timing of press releases, embargoes etc - keeping our international climate in mind. Unfortunately SF is quite at the far edge of timezone-land, and when we want to announce something on a certain date, that can indeed be confusing this way. We faced the same problems at Wiki Loves Monuments (where we mostly used European timezones, as the vast majority of the countries was in that), and some good thoughts about the general issue would definitely be welcome. Maybe not today though. Best, Lodewijk 2013/1/15 Matthew Roth mr...@wikimedia.org Drat, my apologies. I forwarded to Wikimedia-l and neglected to send here. Busy morning :/ -Matthew On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org wrote: Matthew distributed the release and the blog post this morning (around 0900 PT), it should have made its way to this list as well: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_launches_Wikivoyage https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/15/wikimedia-foundation-launches-wikivoyage-a-free-worldwide-travel-guide-that-anyone-can-edit/ Also, happy birthday, Wikipedia! And welcome to our new friends at Wikivoyage :) On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 6:37 AM, Stevie Benton stevie.ben...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Hi Tom et al, There is indeed a release - but it is embargoed until 1600 GMT / 0800 PST... It's uploaded to the WMUK blog in readiness to go live at the appointed hour. I am absolutely certain that the Foundation are equally prepared. Hope this is helpful, Stevie On 15 January 2013 14:35, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote: Some friends asked me today about the Wikivoyage launch, and the reasoning behind it. I hopped over to https://blog.wikimedia.org/ and found... nothing. Then I went to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room and also found... nothing. Any reason why the Foundation hasn't published anything about the official launch of Wikivoyage? It'd be quite useful to be able to point my enquiring friends to oh, this is what the Foundation are saying about it, but apparently the Foundation aren't saying anything about it. -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Stevie Benton Communications Organiser Wikimedia UK +44 (0) 20 7065 0993 / +44 (0) 7803 505 173 @StevieBenton Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Jay Walsh Senior Director, Communications WikimediaFoundation.org blog.wikimedia.org +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Matthew Roth Global Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635 www.wikimediafoundation.org *https://donate.wikimedia.org* ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l
