Hi, I received a complaint today from someone who received a geonotice regarding the Perth events. Aside from the fact that the geonotice contains a glaring error, it's raising questions about privacy on Wikipedia. The last thing we need people to think is that we're some sort of Big Brother establishment spying on people. As the person raising the issue with me stated, "I have a login for privacy. How the hell does it know that I'm in Australia/Perth??"
Could some consideration be given to appropriateness and consultation when putting these things at the top of every person's watchlist in a given region? For example, I'm genuinely surprised that the WikiProject Western Australia talk page was not consulted before placing a notice to all Western Australian users. As the person running the Joondalup event I knew nothing about this - I'm quite capable of doing publicity for that event myself, and I'm concerned that people think that I am behind this!! While this particular issue affects WA and so the people here are noticing it, I have been aware for some time of the tendency within WMAu (and opposed it when I saw it) to just jump straight to geonotice for any and every event - apart from decreasing the effectiveness if one trains people to ignore it, it could also have strategic negatives, considering we are looking to support the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic plan and need to convince new people that we're not evil, basically. A rethink on promotion is needed. kindest regards Andrew Owens
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