In practice what we (Wikimedians) see from WMF communications programmes is widely spread announcements and sometimes an anonymous survey, again widely spread. This is literally not 'communication', it is 'broadcasting'.
For communication to be meaningful, your message must not only be sent to the right stakeholders, but it is essential for the communication to be two-way. This is why I find it especially frustrating to see generic posts from the WMF sent by bots with no named person being the contact point. At least with most emails sent to email lists, these are from a named person and community members can respond to it, often with later replies from a WMF employee. Fae On 20 Mar 2017 09:51, "Peter Southwood" <peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote: Might it be useful to analyse the community before trying to get communication out of them? Then efforts can be directed to be more representative of the various parts. OK, I understand that to analyse them it needs some communication. But that is a specific and directed communication. Work out what might be useful to know and ask everyone. Put a survey link on talk page for logged in users, and a banner for IP users. We get this anyway for fundraising. Before going full scale, test the survey on a small group, to find out what is wrong with it, fix the worst problems, and be sure to allow comments and feedback. Cheers, Peter -----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lodewijk Sent: Monday, 20 March 2017 11:04 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communicating plans and consultations Hi Pine, it's always easier of course to tell other people what they have to change, which is why I'm asking the opposite question too :) What can we change, on our end, to make communications easier for the WMF, for community members that want to reach out, for chapters and other affiliates. All these are having a hard time to get useful input from the community. There seem very few generally accepted approaches to that: - using some mailing list, or some kind of forum that serves a part of the community you think would be most relevant (such as this mailing list, the wikitech mailing list etc). - Going all out and doing a full scale consultation/RfC with banners and everything. Gives you lots of comments. - Doing a broad and translated approach through village pumps etc - gives you a broad reach over languages, but within those languages still reaches a specific part of the community. Those methods are typically either very expensive, or not very effective. And I'm only talking about getting input here, not even about 'informing' everyone. So what can we, as a community, change to facilitate better exchange of ideas, experiences and provide input? Best Lodewijk PS: I apologize to the people who read this kind of email for the n'th time, it's not the first time I talk about this, I guess :) 2017-03-20 7:40 GMT+01:00 Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com>: > Attempting to summon Chris Schilling over here from the other thread. (: > > I think that some kind of analysis about optimal use of consultations > and surveys would be beneficial, and I'd welcome seeing something like > that in the next Annual Plan. Perhaps there might even be a > consultation or survey about consultations or surveys, which I know > sounds ironic but may be helpful in figuring out how much is too much > or too little, timing, locations, etc. > > Information management is a big deal. We have watchlists, email, > social media channels, Echo, and lots of other tools, but even so -- > or perhaps because -- there are so many channels, it's easy to drown. > I imagine that holds true for both staff and community members, and > I'd welcome some initiatives to improve the situation. Perhaps someone > will have some ideas that they can submit to IdeaLab. > > Pine > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. 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