Mailing List Archive

What should the notice say?

On 6/17/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> As announced earlier, the Communications committee is coordinating the
> use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia Foundation sites. Right now,
> we need to call attention to Wikimania and encourage people to register,
> so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up a brief project-wide
> notice about this. We expect the notice to run for about a week.
>
> When this use of the site notice ends it should be blanked again (except
> for any separate notices to anonymous users being used for fundraising).
> We don't want these to be overused, so an extended silent period for the
> site notice should follow. After that, the next use will probably be for
> the fundraiser, assuming that committee is organized and a date settled
> on.
>
> --Michael Snow
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Michael Snow wrote:

>As announced earlier, the Communications committee is coordinating the
>use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia Foundation sites. Right now,
>we need to call attention to Wikimania and encourage people to register,
>so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up a brief project-wide
>notice about this. We expect the notice to run for about a week.
>
>When this use of the site notice ends it should be blanked again (except
>for any separate notices to anonymous users being used for fundraising).
>We don't want these to be overused, so an extended silent period for the
>site notice should follow. After that, the next use will probably be for
>the fundraiser, assuming that committee is organized and a date settled on.
>
>--Michael Snow
>
>
Does this mean that project admins can't use the site-wide notices for
internal use, such as major policy changes or bureaucrat elections? I
fail to see why (provided that other admins are in agreement that the
notice should go up) a project like ru.wikibooks needs to get special
permission from the WMF in order to use this function.

Yes, they shouldn't be overused, but at the same time this is something
that can and should be under local project control.

Widespread notices on mulitple sites is something that perhaps should
get WMF coordination, but that is another issue entirely.

--
Robert Scott Horning



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--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning@netzero.net>
wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
> >As announced earlier, the Communications committee
> is coordinating the
> >use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia
> Foundation sites. Right now,
> >we need to call attention to Wikimania and
> encourage people to register,
> >so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up
> a brief project-wide
> >notice about this. We expect the notice to run for
> about a week.
> >
> >When this use of the site notice ends it should be
> blanked again (except
> >for any separate notices to anonymous users being
> used for fundraising).
> >We don't want these to be overused, so an extended
> silent period for the
> >site notice should follow. After that, the next use
> will probably be for
> >the fundraiser, assuming that committee is
> organized and a date settled on.
> >
> >--Michael Snow
> >
> >
> Does this mean that project admins can't use the
> site-wide notices for
> internal use, such as major policy changes or
> bureaucrat elections? I
> fail to see why (provided that other admins are in
> agreement that the
> notice should go up) a project like ru.wikibooks
> needs to get special
> permission from the WMF in order to use this
> function.


I know Wikisource has done this for various messages
of short duration. Any admin can edit the Site notice
for the subdomain without needing specail permission.
It is not really a global notice technically speaking.
The history at en.WS shows despite the Fund drive
officially ending Jan 5, the progress bar remained on
the site notice till a local admin removed it on Jan
12. Since then it has been used to advertise a few
important votes and alert people of multi-step bot
maintaince activity that they might have "corrected"
if unaware. I would like to know if there is a real
overuse of this feature anywhere or just a
hypothectical concern. Not that concern is a bad
thing, we should certainly discuss some best practices
with regards to using this.

Birgitte SB



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Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> As announced earlier, the Communications committee is coordinating
>> the use of the site-wide notices on Wikimedia Foundation sites. Right
>> now, we need to call attention to Wikimania and encourage people to
>> register, so starting sometime tomorrow we will be putting up a brief
>> project-wide notice about this. We expect the notice to run for about
>> a week.
>>
>> When this use of the site notice ends it should be blanked again
>> (except for any separate notices to anonymous users being used for
>> fundraising). We don't want these to be overused, so an extended
>> silent period for the site notice should follow. After that, the next
>> use will probably be for the fundraiser, assuming that committee is
>> organized and a date settled on.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
> Does this mean that project admins can't use the site-wide notices for
> internal use, such as major policy changes or bureaucrat elections? I
> fail to see why (provided that other admins are in agreement that the
> notice should go up) a project like ru.wikibooks needs to get special
> permission from the WMF in order to use this function.
>
> Yes, they shouldn't be overused, but at the same time this is
> something that can and should be under local project control.
> Widespread notices on mulitple sites is something that perhaps should
> get WMF coordination, but that is another issue entirely.

I should clarify what I meant, sorry about the confusion. We're
coordinating the use of site notices for Foundation business that
affects all projects, and my intent was to inform people of our plans
for such use. We are not taking away the ability of individual projects
to use the site notice for local business that affects only that
project. As a general matter, I don't think such uses need to receive
clearance on a Foundation level, although I hope that if anyone
anticipates conflicts with our planned uses, they would let us know so
we can resolve that.

Site notices should not be overused, so I do think silent periods are
important. However, if between this Wikimania announcement and the next
fundraiser, a project has a major announcement that requires use of a
site notice, I didn't intend to imply that this was prohibited.

--Michael Snow
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On 6/19/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia@earthlink.net> wrote:
> As a general matter, I don't think such uses need to receive
> clearance on a Foundation level, although I hope that if anyone
> anticipates conflicts with our planned uses, they would let us know so
> we can resolve that.

If I recall correctly, at the previous occasion of this January, the
global sitenotice which had come in English at that time didn't affect
the wiki which has locally used their own sitenotice at that time (Now
I'm thinking jawikinews). Is my remembrance wrong? Or there will be no
similar conflict any more?

> Site notices should not be overused, so I do think silent periods are
> important.

Some projects including En Wikinews or Ja, continue to utilise
sitenotice less or more one year, but on both projects I haven't heard
a major dispute about that. (They serve visitors only a few of links
to some pages and not so heavily remarkable).


--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
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On Sat, 17 Jun 2006, James Hare wrote:

> What should the notice say?

Something like this, only in a variety of languages.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/June_notice

Now up on a number of Wikimedia sites; with a few large ones left to be
targeted (trying not to unilaterally change the sitenotice without the
help of a local admin on the larger projects).

Some wikipedias are trying a sitenotice implementation that only shows up
for *logged-in* users; just as others have suggested in the past having
fundraiser messages primarily targeted at non-logged-in users. all
something to consider in working out what general policies should be for
various flavours of site notice.

SJ
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