Mailing List Archive

I want to add a funny story. When I used to live in Iran, I couldn't join
any of Wikimedia telegram groups (including three or four wikimedia
hackathons when I was participating in them) because my phone number had
country code of Iran (duh) and Telegram banned users being able to join
large groups for the whole country of Iran on the grounds that lots of
spammers are from Iran which is true. I don't know if it's still the case
or not but this is one of privileges people have and might not notice it
(not to mention the racist behavior of Telegram).

If I can shamelessly promote my project, you can use Wikimedia Chat
instead: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chat (
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2020/09/18/introducing-wikimedia-chat/)

Best

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 12:09 PM Željko Bla?e <zblace@mi2.hr> wrote:

> On 10/22/20, Kaarel Vaidla <kvaidla@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > How to participate
> ...
> > * Join our Telegram group [2].
>
> It would be amazing if we could embody the values of movement strategy
> whenever we can. Using only Telegram group as recommendation is NOT*.
>
> In general please consider not to endorse commercial and closed source
> software as primary communication channel. It is also bad in terms of
> usability and intensity/velocity of exchanges in conditions and
> context of massive cross-zone/cross-cultural event organizing. Likely
> to be a cute looking mess and info bottleneck. I already have multiple
> Wikimedia Telegram groups that hard to follow and take more personal
> energy then they should at these times of pandemic. Please re-consider
> this!
>
> My arguments are presented on the Telegram group itself and your meta
> page
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Transition/Global_Conversations#Use_of_Telegram_for_working_official_communication_for_events_-_pls_NO
>
>
> In Solidarity and with Care
> ~Zblace
>
> *As a queer person without western privileges I can recommend its
> limited use due to phone number privacy and I do also use it myself
> but it should be neither only nor first option.
>
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>


--
Amir (he/him)

Dear Željko, Amir and Ilario,

Thank you so much for raising this point, which is well aligned with the
spirit of the movement strategy in general and participant user experience
in particular.

With the transition support team we are thoughtful regarding the tools and
platforms we use to ensure access to the conversations and at the same time
support participants to stay on top of different content streams. We
understand that *how* we have the discussions in the transition from
recommendations to implementation is in some cases as important as the
content of the discussions. As a result, we take the feedback provided on
the how part seriously.

The choice of Telegram chat was made based on the feedback and request from
a number of people engaged in the movement strategy conversations. It is a
balancing act of meeting the people where they are (Telegram being one of
the most popular instant connecting tools in the movement, somewhat
depending on the region), providing a space where we can support more
informal and free-flowing conversations (that our wiki discussion pages
cannot really provide) and at the same time trying to build structure in
the conversations and ensuring people do not get lost in the stream of
information.
We prioritized the factor of meeting the people where they are and have
chosen Telegram based on that. Based on the feedback received, we will look
into integrating multiple channels to increase access options (as Ilario
suggests) and also look into added value of Wikimedia chat (there is a
discussion about this in our Telegram channel). We will discuss it with the
team, get back to interested community members if we have questions and
then adapt our approach accordingly.

Thank you again for proactive approach in trying to make the movement
strategy conversations experience better! I truly love the passion of
Wikimedians about such things.

Take care and have a great end of the week!
Kaarel

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 1:35 PM Ilario valdelli <valdelli@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 23/10/2020 11:43, Željko Bla?e wrote:
> > On 10/22/20, Kaarel Vaidla <kvaidla@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >> How to participate
> > ...
> >> * Join our Telegram group [2].
> > It would be amazing if we could embody the values of movement strategy
> > whenever we can. Using only Telegram group as recommendation is NOT*.
> >
> Thank you for that, anyways there is also to consider the freedom of
> choice that, beside everything, is a freedom.
>
> Anyways some communities experimented the possibility to integrate open
> source chat (i.e, an IRC channel) and a Telegram channel to have
> messages on both sides.
>
> In this case the freedom of choice is kept "free" and there is no
> obstacles to use one or another solution because at the end the goal is
> the participation.
>
> Kind regards
>
> --
>
> Ilario Valdelli
> Wikimedia CH
> Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
> Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
> Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
> Wikipedia: Ilario
> Skype: valdelli
> Tel: +41764821371
> http://www.wikimedia.ch
>
>
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>


--

Kaarel Vaidla (he/him)

Movement Strategy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/2030>

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>