Guillaume - how do we contribute to this consultation? Deryck On 8 December 2012 00:03, Guillaume Paumier <[email protected]> wrote:
> Greetings, > > Summary: I'm trying to get comments and ideas on how to improve > communication between developers and Wikimedia editors, and I'd like > to ask the help of people on this list to ask your local communities > what they think, and post the results of those discussions here. > > Longer version: > > Communication between Wikimedia contributors and "tech people" > (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and other > engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years, Wikimedia > employees have made efforts to become more transparent, but what I'd > like to discuss today is how we can better engage in true > collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and > announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature that's > already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide feedback!". > It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of the way, > from the early planning to deployment. > > Some "big" tech projects sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation are > lucky enough to have a Community Liaison who can spend a lot of time > discussing with editors, basically incarnating this 2-way > communication channel between users and engineering staff. But one > person can only do so much: they have to focus on a handful of > features, and primarily discusses with the English Wikipedia > community. We want to be able to do this for dozens of engineering > projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and truly > collaborate to build new features together. Hiring hundreds of > Community Liaisons isn't really a viable option. > > There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g. new > software features and deployments) that drive editors insane. You > probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation should be, > and how to get there: What can the developer community (staff and > volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium term, long > term?) What can users do to get there? > > Instead of just postulating that "The problem is X" and "The solution > is obviously Y", I've started an extensive consultation process to > learn from users, to hear you, to listen to your complaints and your > ideas on how to fix the issues. I'm hoping that this open and > collaborative thinking process will yield better results than a > one-sided analysis. > > An preliminary consultation took place last month with projects in > English and French. I've summarized the initial findings and > proposals: > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_communications/Fall_2012_consultation#Phase_2:_Summary_and_wider_outreach > > I'm hoping that we can now expand this consultation to more projects > and more languages, with your help. It isn't feasible for me to launch > a discussion on each wiki in each language, but I'm hoping that you > can help me spread this message and start those discussions with your > local communities. > > I realize this will take some of your time, but I think it's worth > spending a little time to discuss this now in order to make big > improvements later on how we communicate with each other. > > I'm available to answer comments, concerns and questions. > > Many thanks for your help! > > -- > Guillaume Paumier > Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation > https://donate.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-ambassadors mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors >
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