Mailing List Archive

Bonsoir,

On 9/26/06, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> As you may know, MediaWiki:Sidebar supports defining little boxes that
> contain navigation links. de.wikipedia.org has used this to customize
> its sidebar, for example.
>
> Should we have a sidebar with the heading "Wikimedia" containing links
> to wikimediafoundation.org for things like:
> - About Wikimedia
> - Projects
> - Volunteer (info about committees, mailing lists, etc.)
> - Jobs (those we chooose to publicly advertise)
> - Chapter information
>

I think is could a good idea to improve Wikimedia visibility. But 5 links
are too much imo. If we already have a "Navigation" and a "Community"
section, another one with 5 links would relegate the search box far away.
Maybe we could add the 2 more relevant links in the "community" section ?

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile — You will be assimilated.
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On 9/26/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I think is could a good idea to improve Wikimedia visibility.


I think IT could BE a good idea etc.

Ok, I go to bed...

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
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Erik Moeller wrote:

>As you may know, MediaWiki:Sidebar supports defining little boxes that
>contain navigation links. de.wikipedia.org has used this to customize
>its sidebar, for example.
>
>Should we have a sidebar with the heading "Wikimedia" containing links
>to wikimediafoundation.org for things like:
>- About Wikimedia
>- Projects
>- Volunteer (info about committees, mailing lists, etc.)
>- Jobs (those we chooose to publicly advertise)
>- Chapter information
>
>This is partially a follow-up to my earlier mail re: sitenotice for
>chapters. I think this might be a slightly less aggressive way to
>raise awareness of chapters, sister projects, and the work of the
>Foundation in general.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>

This is a very interesting idea, and on the surface I don't have any
strong objection, other than trying to figure out how you are going to
reasonably implement this sidebar onto each and every project.

I've been involved with modifying the sidebar for en.wikibooks and
en.wikiversity, so I do have a little experience with both doing the
actual changes as well as trying to deal with gaining a concensus from a
larger community over what sorts of things ought to go into
modifications of this nature. Generally speaking, as long as the links
prove to be of substantial value and are maintained, the community
reaction to these changes has been rather positive and supportive.

I would also strongly recommend that any general "Wikimedia" sidebar
changes ought to be at the very bottom of any other sidebar items for a
particular project.

A major concern about doing this is that you had better make sure that
in this situation, especially since these links will be on practically
each and every web page served up with Wikimedia servers, that the web
pages linked in this manner are very nearly "professional" quality and
have people who are willing to keep them fresh and updated regularly.
There is nothing worse than a highly advertised link of this nature
that goes to what is essentially just a stub or something that is
horribly out of date. Both of those have been criticisms of much of
what is found on http://wikimediafoundation.org

The other major issue I see is dealing with the multi-lingual issues
that are going to inevitably rear their head for this as well. **IF**
there are related pages in the same language as the wikimedia project
that has this sidebar section being added, it would be reasonable to
include the link. Otherwise, I would strongly recommend that you simply
remove the link altogether and for most languages link only to the
"About Wikimedia" page. Do not link to the English language version of
the page as the "default" setting. Of course this is just a recommendation.

--
Robert Scott Horning



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I think this is a reasonable idea. But I would
definately like to see fully fleshed out versions of
the pages this would link to before giving a definate
opinion.

And let's try and remember all the advice from the
translators when delveloping these pages as they will
need to be heavily translated.

Birgitte SB


Birgitte SB

--- Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> As you may know, MediaWiki:Sidebar supports defining
> little boxes that
> contain navigation links. de.wikipedia.org has used
> this to customize
> its sidebar, for example.
>
> Should we have a sidebar with the heading
> "Wikimedia" containing links
> to wikimediafoundation.org for things like:
> - About Wikimedia
> - Projects
> - Volunteer (info about committees, mailing lists,
> etc.)
> - Jobs (those we chooose to publicly advertise)
> - Chapter information
>
> This is partially a follow-up to my earlier mail re:
> sitenotice for
> chapters. I think this might be a slightly less
> aggressive way to
> raise awareness of chapters, sister projects, and
> the work of the
> Foundation in general.
>
> Thoughts?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or
> opinions expressed
> in this message are solely my own and do not
> represent an official
> position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of
> Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


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Am Dienstag, 26. September 2006 21:53 schrieb Erik Moeller:
> As you may know, MediaWiki:Sidebar supports defining little boxes that
> contain navigation links. de.wikipedia.org has used this to customize
> its sidebar, for example.
>
> Should we have a sidebar with the heading "Wikimedia" containing links
> to wikimediafoundation.org for things like:
> - About Wikimedia
> - Projects
> - Volunteer (info about committees, mailing lists, etc.)
> - Jobs (those we chooose to publicly advertise)
> - Chapter information

Well I think it important to keep the interface lean. So I would not advice to
just add something like that without removing/merging/moving around something
else.

But let us compare three examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar

vs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar

I think a flaw in the en.wikipedia sidebar (without looking at any debate
about that in en.wikipedia) is that huge single group. You hardly can grasp
them with one view thematically it is just a list of links summed up
below "navigation". Well does "donations" and "contact" really fall under
site navigation? I'd say clearly no.

In de.wikipedia and Commons we have created two groups "navigation" (just for
browsing passively) and "participate" that sums up links that enable/help you
just to start participating in the one or other way (note also the unusual
place of the "upload" link) although you could probably argue in detail
whether certain links would be alternatively fit as well into "navigation"
(in fact I did copy the idea from de.wikipedia to Commons and reduced a way
larger sidebar existing in Commons previous to it).

So my recommendation for en.wikipedia only (!) would be making two groups
maybe similar in scope to the ones in de.wikipedia and Commons and moving
moving "donations" and "contact" alongside two further links out of your
above 5 examples into it.

Anyhow (it wasn't mentioned but just in case...) I'd recommend not making
something like that part of the default MediaWiki interface and letting every
community decide by themselves how the use that narrow space in the left (it
is really important to keep the numbers of links and buttons in the interface
as low as possible).

Arnomane
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On 9/26/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning@netzero.net> wrote:

> I've been involved with modifying the sidebar for en.wikibooks and
> en.wikiversity, so I do have a little experience with both doing the
> actual changes as well as trying to deal with gaining a concensus from a
> larger community over what sorts of things ought to go into
> modifications of this nature.

I think the best way forward, as per the discussion, is to first
launch a larger effort to improve the WMF site. We can then add a
sidebar to e.g. en.wp and see what the effects are; if we consider it
useful, we can add it to all wikis by Board resolution or Executive
decree, or leave it up to the communities to implement it.

Re: the WMF site, probably the easiest is to identify a set of pages
that we'd want in such a sidebar, then have an open editing &
translation period on Meta for these pages + copy the result pages to
WMF wiki. Thinking about the best way to do this, will follow up.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
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On 9/27/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane@gmx.de> wrote:
> So my recommendation for en.wikipedia only (!) would be making two groups
> maybe similar in scope to the ones in de.wikipedia and Commons and moving
> moving "donations" and "contact" alongside two further links out of your
> above 5 examples into it.

You aren't the first to think this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Sidebar_redesign

--
Sam
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On 9/27/06, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Should we have a sidebar with the heading "Wikimedia" containing links
> to wikimediafoundation.org for things like:
> - About Wikimedia
> - Projects
> - Volunteer (info about committees, mailing lists, etc.)
> - Jobs (those we chooose to publicly advertise)
> - Chapter information

I think a single link to either the About page or the main page would
be a good start. Jobs and chapter information is far too specific
information to be in the sidebar of every project, similarly
volunteering. There is occasionally some information in these areas
which needs broad attention, but the sitenotice is a better approach
for temporary notices.

A link to a list of projects, or a page describing the various
projects, might also be a good idea.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain@gmail.com
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Erik Moeller wrote:

>I think the best way forward, as per the discussion, is to first
>launch a larger effort to improve the WMF site. We can then add a
>sidebar to e.g. en.wp and see what the effects are; if we consider it
>useful, we can add it to all wikis by Board resolution or Executive
>decree, or leave it up to the communities to implement it.
>
>
Out of curiosity, how much information on the WMF site is confidential
in nature and shouldn't get out to anybody else?

One of the problems that I see with this site is the near absence of
anybody willing to keep up the content, even though I'm sure there would
be some willing and able participants who are knowledable and trusted
enough to be able to take on the task. While I don't think it should be
opened completely to anybody and everbody like wikipedia, the process to
allow additional users to gain edit access is quite bureaucratic and
could be updated to encourage more "trusted" and "active" Wikimedia
users to get involved if they want to. Nothing against the current
people who are working on it, but they tend to be board members and
other people who are very busy with other WMF tasks and don't seem to
have the time necessary to really put the polish on that is needed.

So this is an open question: How does somebody, anybody, gain access
to be able to help out in developing the WMF site?

Or another general question: Should the number of people helping out to
develop and add content to the WMF site be increased substantially?

--
Robert Scott Horning



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Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Out of curiosity, how much information on the WMF site is confidential
> in nature and shouldn't get out to anybody else?

None; wikimediafoundation.org exists for the sole purpose of listing official
public information.

It basically consists of:
* A description of the corporation
* Contact information
* Donation information
* Press releases
* Public text of passed board resolutions

Both public and private discussion occurs elsewhere; it is neither a discussion
site nor a planning site.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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On 9/28/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning@netzero.net> wrote:
> One of the problems that I see with this site is the near absence of
> anybody willing to keep up the content, even though I'm sure there would
> be some willing and able participants who are knowledable and trusted
> enough to be able to take on the task.

The WMF site doesn't work, period. That is something that seems to be
generally acknowledged. The proposals for fixing it are varied, and at
some point, we need to have a strategic discussion or meeting, define
actions, and take them. Personally, I think the functionality
regarding "stable versions" could factor rather heavily here. It's
fine if anyone can "edit" content if only a small number of trusted
people can decide what is the public-facing version of any page.

With that functionality, one question is if we need a separate wiki in
the first place, or if we could just reorganize Meta. With single
login ;-) and other over-arching integration projects, that question
itself may lose some of its significance, so it might be OK to keep it
the way it is.

I think rather than wait for functionality, it might be a good idea to
take an initiative on Meta to improve some public-facing key pages,
and import them to WMF wiki, so that we can build the kind of sidebar
I describe. I need to, for myself, take a good look at the content
that is there before I do so, but that shouldn't stop anyone else.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
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Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 9/28/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning@netzero.net> wrote:
>> One of the problems that I see with this site is the near absence of
>> anybody willing to keep up the content, even though I'm sure there would
>> be some willing and able participants who are knowledable and trusted
>> enough to be able to take on the task.
>
> The WMF site doesn't work, period. That is something that seems to be
> generally acknowledged.

What doesn't work about it?

What *should* it contain, other than a few pages of official contact information?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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On 9/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion@pobox.com> wrote:
> What doesn't work about it?

Let's start with the most obvious bit: WMF is an international
organization, and we want volunteers to contribute as many
translations as possible of key pages on the WMF wiki, no matter how
few there are of them. When you have 100 languages, 5 pages
effectively equates to 500 pages that need to be updated and kept in
sync. Besides requiring better translation tools, it requires enough
volunteers to have access in a preferably permission-free or
permission-weak model to do the work.

Now, there are of course issues with volunteer translations: Can you
trust a random guy not to say in Arabic that Wikimedia is deeply
inspired by the Quran in its mission and scope? Possibly not, but
hopefully you can at least trust someone from a chapter to validate
that information, and have a disclaimer on it when it hasn't been
checked.

Beyond key, relatively static pages, I do believe we need a single
place for official news from the Foundation, and I'm not just talking
about press releases, but also general updates on what we are doing.
It's fine if those news are prepared on Meta or wherever, but there is
a distinction between news that come from a random wiki somewhere, and
news that have been officially validated to be accurate. With regard
to translations, the current events page on WMF wiki lists exactly 3
other languages besides English. 2 of them are out of date.

The notion of using a CMS instead of a wiki has been brought up. I
don't believe that is the way to go, since it seems to me that we are
building the tools we need to build a better WMF website anyway in the
process of improving our other sites.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
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On 9/29/06, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 9/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion@pobox.com> wrote:
> > What doesn't work about it?
>
> Let's start with the most obvious bit: WMF is an international
> organization, and we want volunteers to contribute as many
> translations as possible of key pages on the WMF wiki, no matter how
> few there are of them.

It would be wounderful, but not feasable I think. Most of
international organizations limit their official language into a
number we can count by our two hands. Their regional branches issue
publifications in the regional languages, but those two - official
publification from the organisation itself and local publification
from its branch or sister organizations - are different matters.

Languages are not equally spoken on the globe. They are less equally
read and listened. Some are definitely required, others are cool if
available, but not critical if they are lacked, since speakers of
these languages could read other languages in most cases, if
necessary. As far as we are relying on volunteer based translators, I
strongly oppose to that we have "as many translations as possible of
key pages" type ideas as middle term goal (10y or so). There is no
enough incentives and from my experience, the most effective
publification & promotion of the Foundation is its projects in the
target language. Only a project reaches a critical mass, the
Foundatoin seem to have a good reason to have PR in that language. And
some projects, like German language Wikipedia community, lack such
motivations, even after it becomes the second largest project. Through
my Wikimedia experience, German has been one of the most difficult
language I can find translators.

And also, if we need to validate every content, the trustness issue
arise here; one cannot validate the content written in an unknown
language to him or her.

--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
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Aphaia wrote:

>On 9/29/06, Erik Moeller <erik@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What doesn't work about it?
>>>
>>>
>>Let's start with the most obvious bit: WMF is an international
>>organization, and we want volunteers to contribute as many
>>translations as possible of key pages on the WMF wiki, no matter how
>>few there are of them.
>>
>>
>
>It would be wounderful, but not feasable I think. Most of
>international organizations limit their official language into a
>number we can count by our two hands. Their regional branches issue
>publifications in the regional languages, but those two - official
>publification from the organisation itself and local publification
>from its branch or sister organizations - are different matters.
>
>
One aspect of Wikimedia projects is that we have linguistic resources
and individuals who are willing to translate content between many
different languages, perhaps many more than would typically be available
for most other multi-national organizations outside of perhaps ones
related to the United Nations.

That said, I would say that a reasonable metric in terms of a line to
draw and not require any further translations to more obscure languages
that are difficult to support would be the same as for new project
proposals:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy#Interest_poll

The United Nations limits their "official languages" to just six:
English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic

If you don't speak one of those languages, UN interpreters won't help
you directly. This list is very obviously politically motived by UN
politics, but still, these languages alone cover most of the world in
some way or another.

Clearly, in terms of communications between chapters and the base users
of Wikimedia projects, it is important to offer information and
organizational information in multiple languages.

Remember, less than half of all Wikimedia content is written in English,
and that percentage that is in English is increasingly becoming smaller.

--
Robert Scott Horning



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On 9/29/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning@netzero.net> wrote:
> Clearly, in terms of communications between chapters and the base users
> of Wikimedia projects, it is important to offer information and
> organizational information in multiple languages.
>
> Remember, less than half of all Wikimedia content is written in English,
> and that percentage that is in English is increasingly becoming smaller.

And please remember it is I that would be the person who would spend
the longest time to seek certain language translators including the
ones which you call "obscure". Generally most of Wikipedians & sister
project editors are not interested in the Foundation issues or
precisely more interested in the project oriented issue. I don't speak
from mere assumption but from my daily interactions and experiences.

I agree with you generally, but without concrete proposals or
suggestions, it brings vains and frustrations.

--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
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