Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Mark]

On 8/7/13 4:22 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

Yaroslav M. Blanter, 07/08/2013 13:27:

Not commenting on the topic of the thread, is there any data around to
show that the English Wikipedia is mainly written by North Americans
(aka residents of the US and Canada)? Seems to me that it is likely to
be the case but not 100% obvious.


Nathan said a bias, not "mainly written", but yes: 


40 % USA, 17 % UK (to be taken with a grain of salt).


If you adjust by population, somewhat interestingly, the U.S. has the 
lowest per-capita editing rate among anglophone countries. But it ends 
up at the top in absolute edits because of the large size of its population.


Here are the per-capita editing ratios compared to the U.S., based on 
the numbers above:


1. UK: 2.1x times as many edits per capita
2. New Zealand: 1.8x
3. Australia: 1.5x
4. Canada: 1.4x
5. USA: 1.0x [baseline]

-Mark


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Jane Darnell]

Ah, I believe these are editor's edit-measurements based on "IP
address", which is something quite different from "base of operation".
I tend to edit pages geo-located in the US when I visit those places,
and I imagine many others not based in the US do the same. The same
holds for all other countries as well.

2013/8/7, Federico Leva (Nemo) :
> Yaroslav M. Blanter, 07/08/2013 13:27:
>> Not commenting on the topic of the thread, is there any data around to
>> show that the English Wikipedia is mainly written by North Americans
>> (aka residents of the US and Canada)? Seems to me that it is likely to
>> be the case but not 100% obvious.
>
> Nathan said a bias, not "mainly written", but yes:
> 
> 40 % USA, 17 % UK (to be taken with a grain of salt).
>
> Nemo
>
> ___
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> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Yaroslav M. Blanter, 07/08/2013 13:27:

Not commenting on the topic of the thread, is there any data around to
show that the English Wikipedia is mainly written by North Americans
(aka residents of the US and Canada)? Seems to me that it is likely to
be the case but not 100% obvious.


Nathan said a bias, not "mainly written", but yes: 


40 % USA, 17 % UK (to be taken with a grain of salt).

Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Laura Hale]

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

>
>>
> Not commenting on the topic of the thread, is there any data around to
> show that the English Wikipedia is mainly written by North Americans (aka
> residents of the US and Canada)? Seems to me that it is likely to be the
> case but not 100% obvious.
>
>
The answer would be best answered topically. I have data that shows
Australian content tends to be maintained by Australians.  When you start
looking at some things on the very specific gradient, other nationalistic
editing patterns appear.  During the London Olympics and Paralympics, there
was a large number of UK editors contributing to articles about ALL London
Olympic and Paralympic sports.  Boccia articles I have found are often
updated by Poles.  Equestrian has a large number of British contributors.

Sincerely,
Laura Hale


-- 
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 06.08.2013 20:03, Nathan wrote:


I'll take on faith that anti-Americanism doesn't explain why you jump
to this conclusion when there are many that make more sense, but how
do you explain then the fact that the English Wikipedia (which,
presumably, has a similar North American bias) is having a very
similar reaction as the Dutch?


Not commenting on the topic of the thread, is there any data around to 
show that the English Wikipedia is mainly written by North Americans 
(aka residents of the US and Canada)? Seems to me that it is likely to 
be the case but not 100% obvious.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Nathan]

You argued that a North American bias, or differences between American
culture and that of Europe and elsewhere, might be part of the problem
in why the VE is getting a backlash on projects for European
languages.

I'll take on faith that anti-Americanism doesn't explain why you jump
to this conclusion when there are many that make more sense, but how
do you explain then the fact that the English Wikipedia (which,
presumably, has a similar North American bias) is having a very
similar reaction as the Dutch?

I just think this resort to "it must be cultural differences between
Americans and those of us from the Continent" is an intellectual cop
out, a way of blaming without finding actual root causes or
contributing to a constructive solution. Systemic biases do exist, and
culture clashes do occur, but we should not jump to them as an
explanation without exploring other factors.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Romaine Wiki]

Hello Nathan, 

I have no anti-Americanism, I only notice some differences in the culture how 
communities from different continents work and to me that is natural. The only 
thing I say is that an organisation for a worldwide movement should reflect 
more that diversity. Not only in people, but only in ways of thinking. 
Before you wrote this mail I already knew where they were from, but people 
easily take over the culture of the organisation they work for.

There is a big protest and much critic on three major Wikipedias on how WMF 
handles the development and roll out of the VE, and as this seems to be not the 
first time the way of acting is worse, I try and would like to find out why 
this happens. Too often people from local communities do get the feeling they 
are not listened to by WMF, and I think that is terrible for an organisation 
that is there to support those people. I am certainly not surprised that less 
people participate in elections for board and so, people are demotivated on 
several ways.

If you have a better explanation please tell us, as it is good to name the 
problems and try to find solutions for it.


> and you should retract it so that others will
> continue to take your feedback seriously.

You make wrong conclusions out of the words I said, in a way you twist it so it 
doesn't match any more they way it was intended. (And you should know that I 
like the VE very much.)
How can you ask to retract it if you do not take it seriously already? You 
twist my words, you gave it a meaning which it originally did not had, that is 
what you consider as taking someones feedback seriously? No thank you. 

The past week I have been working on the localisation for Wiki Loves Monuments, 
and with that I see the differences between countries and between language 
areas. I like those differences, I try to respect them and try to take them 
into account. They have all the same goal in creating an encyclopaedia, but are 
all a bit different as no culture, language or country is the same. They all 
have a different history and way of looking. I think the best known situation 
where this appeared was the image filter, but there are many more smaller 
situations that differences are playing. For example on the Dutch Wikipedia 
there are every year discussions on how nl-wiki differs from other Wikipedias 
like en-wiki, and I see that happen on more Wikipedias. 

Sorry Nathan, I am disappointed that this reaction is the only thing you take 
out of my reply. Maybe my expectations are too high, I really thought serious 
feedback is appreciated, it is not me who experience this, but many others as 
well. What I would like to see and what I strive for is a better cooperation 
between WMF and communities.


Romaine

 
 --
 
 Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:11:06 -0400
 From: Nathan 
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for
 community
     engagement
 
 On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Romaine Wiki 
 wrote:
 > In my opinion the liaisons failed very much with the
 VE, as they act like a car salesman who gives much the
 impression that communication is only in one direction: the
 community. They said they send our feedback to WMF but we
 haven't seen any results at all from that. After a month
 still all feedback was untouched, nothing was changed on all
 subjects we have given feedback on. Even critical bugs. I
 sure believe that the liaisons do their work, and that the
 problem lies in WMF itself, but still the liaisons became
 very much annoying. It is like they got a training to talk
 everything right or minimize the serious critic. I really
 hate such behaviour, to me and the rest of the community it
 is a signal that we aren't taken seriously. I consider the
 liaison involvement as a failure, certainly not recommended
 to repeat that in future this way.
 >
 > Besides that, with previous software changes we have
 had technical ambassadors who maintained mostly the feedback
 between developers and the communities and that worked well
 so far I can see. I seriously do not understand why they
 ignored them with the VE and instead hired liaisons which
 behaved more like staff of WMF with the agenda that they
 must sell the car, than neutral people who are involved in
 the local community. That is not the way how communities
 should be approached.
 >
 > Perhaps the gap between communities and WMF, already
 there in 2007, still hasn't become much closer since. I
 think the problem lies in the idea that the WMF is thinking
 top-down, while the communities work bottom-up (they do the
 actual daily work at the end). Also I notice for years that
 there is also a gap between North America and the rest of
 the world in culture, or at least certainly between North
 America and Europe. Both are part of the western culture,
 but still the way Americans deal with things 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Roan Kattouw]

Nathan  writes:
> I think your anti-Americanism is misplaced. Let's look at some of the
> key people involved in the VisualEditor project. Erik is German, James
> F is British, Roan Kattouw is Dutch, Timo Tijhof is Dutch. If you were
> to skim the list of the engineering staff, they are extremely diverse,
> with many remote employees throughout Europe and a number of relocated
> Europeans (and others) working in San Francisco.

Fun fact: VisualEditor is a minority-American, majority-remote operation.

WMF's VisualEditor engineering team consists of:
* Trevor Parscal (SF office; from the US)
* Myself (SF office; from the Netherlands)
* Rob Moen (SF office; from the US)
* Timo Tijhof (remote from the Netherlands)
* Ed Sanders (remote from the UK)
* David Chen (remote from the UK)

Wikia's VisualEditor engineering team:
* Inez Korczyński (Wikia SF office; from Poland) 
* Christian Williams (Wikia SF office; from the US)

The Parsoid engineering team:
* Gabriel Wicke (SF office; from Germany)
* Subbu Sastry (remote from the US; originally from India)
* C. Scott Ananian (remote from the US)
* Marc Ordinas i Llopis (remote from Spain)

Google Summer of Code students mentored by the VisualEditor team:
* Moriel Schottlender (remote from the US; originally from Israel)
* Jiabao Wu (remote from Australia)
* Tongbo Sui (remote from China)

In various product and community liaison/advocacy roles, we have:
* James Forrester (SF office; from the UK)
* Philippe Beaudette (SF office; from the US)
* Maggie Dennis (remote from the US)
* Oliver Keyes (remote from the UK)
* Guillaume Paumier (remote from France)
* Jan Eissfeldt (remote from Germany)
* Keegan Peterzell (remote from the US)
* Erica Litrente (remote from Italy)
* Patrick Earley (remote from Canada)
* Sherry Snyder (remote from the US)

(I attempted to list people in the order they joined each team. Things are
moving fast, so I may have missed people; if I did, I apologize.)

Total # of people: 25 (not all of whom are full-time or work on VisualEditor
full-time)
# originally from the US: 8 (32%)
# living in the US: 14 (56%)
# working from the SF office: 8 (32%)



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

* Nathan wrote:
>I think your anti-Americanism is misplaced. Let's look at some of the
>key people involved in the VisualEditor project. Erik is German, James
>F is British, Roan Kattouw is Dutch, Timo Tijhof is Dutch. If you were
>to skim the list of the engineering staff, they are extremely diverse,
>with many remote employees throughout Europe and a number of relocated
>Europeans (and others) working in San Francisco. So I think your
>implication that the VE is some element of arrogant American
>imperialism is false, and you should retract it so that others will
>continue to take your feedback seriously.

As I understand it, "anti-american" is a term people use to demonstrate
that they should be considered the polar opposite of "anti-american",
whatever that may mean. I do not recall having seen the term used to add
new information to a discussion. I do not see where the grandparent made
claims regarding the nationality of engineers working on Visual Editor,
or arrogant imperialism; I rather see an interpretation of the situation
that is well-founded and unsurprising.
-- 
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/ 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Nathan]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Romaine Wiki  wrote:
> In my opinion the liaisons failed very much with the VE, as they act like a 
> car salesman who gives much the impression that communication is only in one 
> direction: the community. They said they send our feedback to WMF but we 
> haven't seen any results at all from that. After a month still all feedback 
> was untouched, nothing was changed on all subjects we have given feedback on. 
> Even critical bugs. I sure believe that the liaisons do their work, and that 
> the problem lies in WMF itself, but still the liaisons became very much 
> annoying. It is like they got a training to talk everything right or minimize 
> the serious critic. I really hate such behaviour, to me and the rest of the 
> community it is a signal that we aren't taken seriously. I consider the 
> liaison involvement as a failure, certainly not recommended to repeat that in 
> future this way.
>
> Besides that, with previous software changes we have had technical 
> ambassadors who maintained mostly the feedback between developers and the 
> communities and that worked well so far I can see. I seriously do not 
> understand why they ignored them with the VE and instead hired liaisons which 
> behaved more like staff of WMF with the agenda that they must sell the car, 
> than neutral people who are involved in the local community. That is not the 
> way how communities should be approached.
>
> Perhaps the gap between communities and WMF, already there in 2007, still 
> hasn't become much closer since. I think the problem lies in the idea that 
> the WMF is thinking top-down, while the communities work bottom-up (they do 
> the actual daily work at the end). Also I notice for years that there is also 
> a gap between North America and the rest of the world in culture, or at least 
> certainly between North America and Europe. Both are part of the western 
> culture, but still the way Americans deal with things is not the way 
> Europeans would deal with. WMF seems to be too much America based and doesn't 
> internal reflect enough the worldwide movement the whole Wikimedia community 
> is. As I see a clear gap in culture between North America (including WMF 
> style) and Europe, I guess such gap is also there between North America and 
> other parts of the world, but I do not have a clear view on those areas.
>
> Romaine

I think your anti-Americanism is misplaced. Let's look at some of the
key people involved in the VisualEditor project. Erik is German, James
F is British, Roan Kattouw is Dutch, Timo Tijhof is Dutch. If you were
to skim the list of the engineering staff, they are extremely diverse,
with many remote employees throughout Europe and a number of relocated
Europeans (and others) working in San Francisco. So I think your
implication that the VE is some element of arrogant American
imperialism is false, and you should retract it so that others will
continue to take your feedback seriously.

~Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Anders Wennersten]

With many, many years of experience from delivering software to internal 
users,  I have a reflection on this issue, without getting into the case 
of Visual Editor.


Compared with what I am used to, the designers at WMF are both competent 
and good in their responsiveness from users (that still could be 
improved though).  But what I am missing compared with likewise 
enterprises is a reference group/steering committee.  It is customary 
that such exist and it is they who follow up plans, progress, delivery 
and support. Now when the software development is being organized in a 
dedicated department, would it also be appropriate at the same time to 
set up such a group?


Anders


Nathan skrev 2013-07-23 15:32:

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Craig Franklin
 wrote:


As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the developers
or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think
that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and has
caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided if
it had been planned for in advance.  Does the Foundation have formal
communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community
buy-in?  If not, then you probably should.  Obviously more testing and
specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this
case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the product
shipped on time.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin


I alluded to this same issue in my earlier reply and thought this
deserved its own thread. We all know that it has happened many times -
a change, policy or other initiative emanates from the Foundation or a
member of its staff, and various community groups respond negatively.
The response is ignored or not properly addressed in a timely manner,
and it snowballs into something much larger.

The WMF staff often seem to be caught flat-footed when this happens,
and only after an unnecessary degree of escalation within the
community do they engage fully (in what I think of as "crisis mode"
communications, usually from Erik, Sue or another WMF senior leader).

So if it hasn't already, perhaps the WMF should consider making a
robust plan for active communications a part of every significant
initiative and rollout process. This should mean regular and
coordinated posts to mailing lists, blog posts, and community centers
on affected products - and a special effort should be made to discover
complaints and provide specific, regular and detailed feedback in
response. And I don't mean only product development; this ought to
apply equally to the full spectrum of WMF interaction with the
movement, from MediaWiki development to adjustments to the FDC process
to Board resolutions and so on. All teams, from engineering to product
to fundraising to community liaisons, should be evaluated and held
responsible for the quality of their movement communications.

Perhaps that is unusual for a software house, and thus not the normal
mental go-to or skillset for WMF staff used to working with a
different type of customer. But I think it is acutely evident that
this type of rapid, serious engagement would pay major dividends for
the WMF in terms of its relationship with the various editing
communities and the Wikimedia movement.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Romaine Wiki]

In my opinion the liaisons failed very much with the VE, as they act like a car 
salesman who gives much the impression that communication is only in one 
direction: the community. They said they send our feedback to WMF but we 
haven't seen any results at all from that. After a month still all feedback was 
untouched, nothing was changed on all subjects we have given feedback on. Even 
critical bugs. I sure believe that the liaisons do their work, and that the 
problem lies in WMF itself, but still the liaisons became very much annoying. 
It is like they got a training to talk everything right or minimize the serious 
critic. I really hate such behaviour, to me and the rest of the community it is 
a signal that we aren't taken seriously. I consider the liaison involvement as 
a failure, certainly not recommended to repeat that in future this way.

Besides that, with previous software changes we have had technical ambassadors 
who maintained mostly the feedback between developers and the communities and 
that worked well so far I can see. I seriously do not understand why they 
ignored them with the VE and instead hired liaisons which behaved more like 
staff of WMF with the agenda that they must sell the car, than neutral people 
who are involved in the local community. That is not the way how communities 
should be approached. 

Perhaps the gap between communities and WMF, already there in 2007, still 
hasn't become much closer since. I think the problem lies in the idea that the 
WMF is thinking top-down, while the communities work bottom-up (they do the 
actual daily work at the end). Also I notice for years that there is also a gap 
between North America and the rest of the world in culture, or at least 
certainly between North America and Europe. Both are part of the western 
culture, but still the way Americans deal with things is not the way Europeans 
would deal with. WMF seems to be too much America based and doesn't internal 
reflect enough the worldwide movement the whole Wikimedia community is. As I 
see a clear gap in culture between North America (including WMF style) and 
Europe, I guess such gap is also there between North America and other parts of 
the world, but I do not have a clear view on those areas.

Romaine



Katherine Casey fluffernutter.wiki at gmail.com
Tue Jul 23 14:03:50 UTC 2013

(...)

> *Or, to tl;dr this whole thing*: Liaisons could be SO MUCH MORE USEFUL than
> they are right now, and that would go a long way toward improving these PR
> disasters. But that would require the cooperation of every aspect of the
> Foundation's staff.
> 
> -Fluffernutter


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Peter Southwood]

How do you propose to get people to actally read the notices?
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: "Nathan" 
To: ; "Wikimedia Mailing List" 


Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 3:32 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement



On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Craig Franklin
 wrote:



As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the 
developers

or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think
that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and 
has
caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided 
if

it had been planned for in advance.  Does the Foundation have formal
communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community
buy-in?  If not, then you probably should.  Obviously more testing and
specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this
case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the 
product

shipped on time.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin



I alluded to this same issue in my earlier reply and thought this
deserved its own thread. We all know that it has happened many times -
a change, policy or other initiative emanates from the Foundation or a
member of its staff, and various community groups respond negatively.
The response is ignored or not properly addressed in a timely manner,
and it snowballs into something much larger.

The WMF staff often seem to be caught flat-footed when this happens,
and only after an unnecessary degree of escalation within the
community do they engage fully (in what I think of as "crisis mode"
communications, usually from Erik, Sue or another WMF senior leader).

So if it hasn't already, perhaps the WMF should consider making a
robust plan for active communications a part of every significant
initiative and rollout process. This should mean regular and
coordinated posts to mailing lists, blog posts, and community centers
on affected products - and a special effort should be made to discover
complaints and provide specific, regular and detailed feedback in
response. And I don't mean only product development; this ought to
apply equally to the full spectrum of WMF interaction with the
movement, from MediaWiki development to adjustments to the FDC process
to Board resolutions and so on. All teams, from engineering to product
to fundraising to community liaisons, should be evaluated and held
responsible for the quality of their movement communications.

Perhaps that is unusual for a software house, and thus not the normal
mental go-to or skillset for WMF staff used to working with a
different type of customer. But I think it is acutely evident that
this type of rapid, serious engagement would pay major dividends for
the WMF in terms of its relationship with the various editing
communities and the Wikimedia movement.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Katherine Casey]

I think the Foundation is trying to make steps toward increased
communication with its constituent communities with its blitz of hiring
Community Liaisons. And that's a good idea, and liaisons can do a lot of
good. But I don't think that program is running at 100% effectiveness yet,
and back-end developers and staffers are depending entirely on liaisons to
do their communicating, with the result that liaisons are stretched thin
(one person covering multiple language wikis, another person covering every
single issue on a gigantic wiki, a bunch of language wikis having no active
liaison at all, etc) and overly stressed. Combine that with liaisons being
sourced from the community a lot of the time, and we end up with overly
stressed users who are used to speaking their minds being put in a position
where they feel responsible for not only making sure entire communities,
every single person, understand that software is coming, but also for
explaining every tiny feature of that software and convincing entire
communities to accept those things even if the things are objectively
flawed or even just plain ol' bad, and for taking every ounce of abuse the
community wants to heap upon the devs who aren't doing the talking, and
doing all those things in a way that doesn't offend the community members
they're supposed to be communicating with. It would be a difficult job for
a team full of professional tech-writer communicators, and it's pretty much
an impossible one for one or two part-time workers who mostly aren't
professional technical writers or mediators. The result is communities are
up in arms, liaisons are fighting onwiki battles instead of communicating
neutrally, and no one trusts anyone to actually communicate anything.

A more full-featured engagement strategy, actively involving a) more
staffers than just liaisons and b) more liaisons, might go farther toward
bringing project communities on board with the WMF's goals. Every project
team at the WMF should have a liaison, and every liaison should work as
part of a team so they're not expected to be on 24/7 until they burn out.
Every liaison should be trained in communicating effectively and in
handling and directing criticism. A liaison who is not communicating
effectively with the community they're assigned to is worse than no liaison
at all, because the community assumes the failure of communication is
deliberate on the WMF's part. At the same time, every dev or manager who
expects a liaison to do the talking for them should be making sure that
they're listening to their liaison and being responsive to concerns the
liaisons raise that are coming from the community. Devs and managers should
understand that liaisons are only as effective as the responses they get
from devs and community, and that "it's this person's job to listen to you
and nod and then tell you how it's going to be" is not a substitute for "we
are actually adapting our approach/software in response to your concerns."
There is *no substitute at all* for hearing from someone who's actually
driving the software changes when it comes to answering specific questions
about the software or where it's going, because the more intermediaries the
message goes through, the higher the chances that it will become
unintentionally garbled or muted.

*Or, to tl;dr this whole thing*: Liaisons could be SO MUCH MORE USEFUL than
they are right now, and that would go a long way toward improving these PR
disasters. But that would require the cooperation of every aspect of the
Foundation's staff.

-Fluffernutter


On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Nathan  wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Craig Franklin
>  wrote:
>
> >
> > As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the
> developers
> > or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think
> > that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and
> has
> > caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided
> if
> > it had been planned for in advance.  Does the Foundation have formal
> > communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community
> > buy-in?  If not, then you probably should.  Obviously more testing and
> > specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this
> > case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the
> product
> > shipped on time.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Craig Franklin
>
>
> I alluded to this same issue in my earlier reply and thought this
> deserved its own thread. We all know that it has happened many times -
> a change, policy or other initiative emanates from the Foundation or a
> member of its staff, and various community groups respond negatively.
> The response is ignored or not properly addressed in a timely manner,
> and it snowballs into something much larger.
>
> The WMF staff often seem to be caught flat-footed when this happens,
> and only after an unnecessary degree of escalation within the
> co

[Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Nathan]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Craig Franklin
 wrote:

>
> As is usually the case, I'm not saying this to have a go at the developers
> or anyone else involved (who are obviously doing their best), but I think
> that some of the communication on this topic has been a bit clumsy and has
> caused a lot of unnecessary angst that could probably have been avoided if
> it had been planned for in advance.  Does the Foundation have formal
> communication plans for things like this that focus on gaining community
> buy-in?  If not, then you probably should.  Obviously more testing and
> specifically more user acceptance testing would have been helpful in this
> case, although I understand the political pressures in getting the product
> shipped on time.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig Franklin


I alluded to this same issue in my earlier reply and thought this
deserved its own thread. We all know that it has happened many times -
a change, policy or other initiative emanates from the Foundation or a
member of its staff, and various community groups respond negatively.
The response is ignored or not properly addressed in a timely manner,
and it snowballs into something much larger.

The WMF staff often seem to be caught flat-footed when this happens,
and only after an unnecessary degree of escalation within the
community do they engage fully (in what I think of as "crisis mode"
communications, usually from Erik, Sue or another WMF senior leader).

So if it hasn't already, perhaps the WMF should consider making a
robust plan for active communications a part of every significant
initiative and rollout process. This should mean regular and
coordinated posts to mailing lists, blog posts, and community centers
on affected products - and a special effort should be made to discover
complaints and provide specific, regular and detailed feedback in
response. And I don't mean only product development; this ought to
apply equally to the full spectrum of WMF interaction with the
movement, from MediaWiki development to adjustments to the FDC process
to Board resolutions and so on. All teams, from engineering to product
to fundraising to community liaisons, should be evaluated and held
responsible for the quality of their movement communications.

Perhaps that is unusual for a software house, and thus not the normal
mental go-to or skillset for WMF staff used to working with a
different type of customer. But I think it is acutely evident that
this type of rapid, serious engagement would pay major dividends for
the WMF in terms of its relationship with the various editing
communities and the Wikimedia movement.

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