Talk:CentralNotice/Calendar

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Archive. Some old discussions happened on CentralNotice/Log (and talk). Please also comment the proposed CentralNotice banner guidelines.

Contents

Concurrent notices [edit]

We now have 4 banners running, up to 3 in Egypt or 2 in the USA. I've set the Stewards' notice weigth to 100, so that it's shown 1/3 (1/2) of the time and not 1/12 (1/8). Given that there are two of those and they're pretty long, it might make sense to reduce the two Cairo University banners to 50 (100 in total). Nemo 10:42, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I've switched the steward banner back down to 25 for now. It was like that since we worked with the Election Committee so that they could get 25% on enWiki with the SOPA banner at 75%. For most countries and non English projects the steward banner will be at 100%. The other banners aren't really my purview though I'd say that a bit lower numbers doesn't really bother me for this particular banner since most steward candidates are going to be moving around the site enough to still see the banner many times. Jalexander 11:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
It might always have been 25 but it doesn't mean much if you don't know whether other banners will exist or not and have 25, 50 or 100. :-) Anyway, I personally don't care about having more stewards from en.wiki, I was just confused because the decision you've reported wasn't documented anywhere. Things will be different when it comes to vote, but SOPA banner will be over at that time I guess. Nemo 11:57, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
If it's ok, I'd rather leave the Cairo University banners as-is for now. We are hoping to get the required number of signups really soon, and many of them will perhaps happen this weekend. I'm happy to dial them back after that if that works. Thanks! Akhanna 12:16, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Arabic version of SOPA blackout warning notice [edit]

The Arabic text for the SOPA blackout warning notice (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=enwp_SOPA_GLOBAL_warning_edits&wpUserLanguage=all) has no relation whatsoever to SOPA. It is a request for Wikipedia Ambassadors. This should not be displayed to visitors.  --Lambiam 22:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I have deleted that content for now. Probably happened because stuff was copied over from the Cairo University banners currently running in the middle east. In any case, the banner wasn't live on ar.wiki, so we are good. Thanks! Akhanna 03:17, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania program [edit]

We're going to run these banners for logged in and anon on March 8-18. The banners serve the dual purpose of advertising the call for participation and more generally, the dates & location of Wikimania. Depending on how it goes, we can change it to logged in only or maybe geotargeted anon + logged in users in a few days. Cheers. Aude (talk) 04:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for using a quite "standard" (i.e. best practice) banner for this. :-) Nemo 08:31, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi Aude - Ten days, sitewide, seems fairly extensive for this purpose (not even inviting people to come, but inviting them to submit a presentation!). Might I suggest that they go to logged in only? I think ten days, sitewide, reaching nearly 125,000,000 people conservatively, is like using a cannon to kill a fly. However, I join Nemo in thanking you for the standard size (smallish) banner. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 04:42, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
We can change it to logged-in only probably tomorrow or Monday (+ maybe anon geotargeted to our region). 1-2 days of anon is more than enough :) On the otherhand, if you'd like to help us with finding sponsorships, that would be great. That's the area where we need the most reach and a few days of banner can help, possibly as a side-effect. Aude (talk) 05:09, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, we've tweaked the banners to be:

  • logged-in only for the program
  • geolocated (US + Canada) anon for "Wikimania 2012 is July 12-15 in Washington, D.C." This generically covers program, registration, etc. for anyone interested.

For future banners (possibly registration in April or May), we'd like them to be further geolocated which I think can be done with picking US + Canada (+ a little JavaScript, using the geoiplookup thing). Cheers. Aude (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

POTY 2011 [edit]

Would be someone so kind and tell me what has to be done to get banners for POTY running? There are also some on testwiki but each time I try to modify a campaign there, I get a server-error, while the extension seems to work. Thanks in advance. -- Rillke (talk) 08:01, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Last year POTY2010's notices were:
--miya (talk) 09:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Hi there. The error on the testwiki is something to do with 1.20wmf4, I will report this to the devs to let them know about it. Can you give me some dates as to when you would like the Central Notice to be put up (the Calendar entry is vague) - copying the banners will be nice and easy, and it looks like a nice banner that Mono's made (the one that goes on the bottom of the page). The Helpful One 13:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The bug is already on bugzilla:37170. I just wanted to say that I can't test them properly. -- Rillke (talk) 14:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I never liked these banners so two days will be enough for round 1, I think.
Voting for Round 1 started on about 2012-05-26 22:00 [UTC] (Saturday) and will not end before 2012-06-04 23:59 [UTC] (Monday)
Voting for Round 2 will start about 1 week after voting for Round 1 was closed and will run at least one week.
The start of Round 2 depends on whether Kalan's vote checking tool works properly. -- Rillke (talk) 14:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

If help with HTML or JavaScript should be required, I would be glad to help. -- Rillke (talk) 14:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

If the bug was fixed, please make the banners put up even today if possible. Thanks in advance.--miya (talk) 16:41, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The sample of the banner is here: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?banner=Banner1 but if it had any problem, more simple version is also preferable - better than nothing. Thanks.--miya (talk) 07:41, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I Oppose Oppose using CentralNotice for this. I think a watchlist notice or something less prominent would be better. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Why it was done all the years before? I have the feeling someone wants to torpedo our efforts. First Mono has quit without any notice, the questions on QUA are not answered and the promised voting extension was not written, and now this. That, indeed, makes me angry. But of course you could set up watchlist notes in >100 wikis; this would be appreciated. I am now trying to use GlobalMessageDelivery. Cheers -- Rillke (talk) 10:23, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure why it was done in past years. I'm not sure it's totally relevant.
I don't want to torpedo anyone's efforts (and I don't think anyone else wants to either). However, it's June and you're talking about a 2011 contest. That's already on the edge of silliness. I think mass-broadcasting this contest in June makes Wikimedia look stupid and disorganized. And even if it were December 2011 (when this contest should have been held), I'm not sure this particular contest is important enough to broadcast to every user in every language on every project. It's a silly "pick the best" contest, not a Board election or something of actual significance. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:53, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it is (a silly "pick the best" contest). Do you like Facebook? Lots of people like it; I don't. There are also silly like buttons. Verbose feedback is often substantially better.
On the other hand it's an acknowledgement to photographers who donate their work and their time to the public. And that's the reason why I say it's worth having this one time in the year.
About looking disorganized, would you say Wikimedia is properly organized? I just remember the rotate-mess. -- Rillke (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
MZMcBride, would you mind to send this message? -- Rillke (talk) 11:32, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Sending now. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:56, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. -- Rillke (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Request [edit]

Hey, I requested a central notice on the calendar, but nothing seems to happen. Who should I approach for this? MADe (talk) 11:38, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello, the calendar is not a request page, did you read the CentralNotice guidelines? Nobody complained so you can assume people are fine with your "slot". You could ask help to those who are going to also take care of the other WLM banners (who are probably sysops here on Meta), or you can post a request on WM:RFH. It's more likely to succeed if you provide text and code for your banner. Thanks, Nemo 12:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Nemo, I did not really understand the CN-guidelines, so thanks for your help MADe (talk) 15:45, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Objection to using CentralNotice by the WMF for the readers survey [edit]

I want to draw attention to the fact that for the last few weeks a heated discussion has been held between several chapters and the WMF employee who is in charge of the survey. The sides have not reached agreement on the question that will be asked in the survey (the chapters asking to remove one question, the previous problematic results of which that Sue Gardener mentioned in the past and has even presented on stage - in Wikimania) So I would like to avoid the use of CentralNotice by the WMF for this purpose.

As we don’t have any rule, community or board decision as to who has full control and use of the CentralNotice to the WMF for messages, and as their request to run this survey is not a core part of the WMF which is essential to their activity (not like legal issues, fundraising, tech issues etc.) I don’t think they have the final decision whether to use the CentralNotice. Note that according to CenteralNotice Usage guidelines Banners need to "Be consensus-driven and respect our principles."

As the issue has been discussed for weeks, without reaching a consensus, I would like to solve the problem in the way most of the Wiki projects resolve disputes between two sides – voting. Voting if we run the survey in the way the foundation is demanding, or by the way the chapters asking to.

I'm just clarifying, everyone wants this survey to run, but from some unknown reason the WMF is insisting to have one question, which everyone agrees in the past is problematic, and from the readers voting we can understand little from the results, beside damaging the reputation of the chapters. The Chapters asked the WMF to remove this question and to have another survey that will also focus on this issue in the future, but they seem to oppose that, and the one man show that was taking part on mailing lists and meta seems to have the last word against community opinion. This does not seem like a real democracy to me. --Itzike (talk) 21:39, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I dont understand why the WMF insists on keeping the question in the survey, and I can understand the fear that the data will be misused again, but its just a fear. Putting a halt on the survey via CentralNotice is not a good solution. That throws WMF project management of the survey project into chaos, which ultimately wastes donor money. Better to let the WMF run this survey, and refocus on a) analysis of the results, especially by getting raw data out of the WMF, and b) design a better survey that asks the questions the community wants included. There will be opportunity post-survey to ensure that the deductions made by this survey are appropriate. John Vandenberg (talk) 05:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if this is a serious request even deserving of a response. Besides all the points about ownership, and the chain of control that brought this tool to Meta under partial community control, most of which I'm sure you aren't very aware of. WMF employees and contractors wrote this tool. WMF can very easily copy or move this to the foundation wiki without any control. It currently still resides here, it is certainly not going to become a bargaining chip in every minor disagreement for chapters, or anyone else, over something as ridiculous as a single question on a survey. It would be a joke to even consider future community centralnotice usage against a single question in a survey that may or may not affect chapters.

You will be hard pressed to find any support for this. I'm not sure which community you would be appealing to. Most community members from Meta aren't aware of this, let alone en.wp, and to assume they would side by you, is well...a giant leap to say the least. As a local admin here, I would ask that you please don't bring these minor quibbles, and political posturings to affect regular operations and things you have no claim over to begin with. Theo10011 (talk) 23:03, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

WMNL survey [edit]

I see that WMNL is planning a survey on 3 - 19 December. This is right in the middle of the fundraiser, which brings a few different disadvantages:

  • People see a lot of banners already, so they will experience likely banner blindness.
  • Because of the same banner overload people are probably less willing to actually do what is asked in the banner (spend time on a survey).
  • If you want comparable results, and you want to run a second iteration, that will have to happen in the same time of the year.
  • While only a small effect (only logged in users), it might have an impact on the fundraiser results in the Netherlands.

I'm not sure if there are very strong arguments to use this month (except that it looks nicer if it is done still in 2012), I didn't see any in the linked announcement. But if there are not very strong arguments, I would suggest to postpone the survey for a month or two, and run it in February 2013. Thanks for reconsidering the timeline!

I also didn't see a call for input to the community (this is the set of questions we'd like to send out) or a call for translation (English, Frysian?). If postponed, you might have an opportunity for that, too (maybe people have useful input - no guarantees). Effeietsanders (talk) 14:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Isn't the Dutch fundraiser scheduled for April next year under the latest plans?--Bence (talk) 15:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

That was my idea as well (that there would be no fundraiser in Nl in December). Zack Exley wrote in a recent message to Wikimedia-l that the end of year campaign would run only in 5 countries (US, CA, GB, AU & NZ). That's not to say that I won't take you other comments on board! --SRientjes (talk) 15:48, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I also noticed this announcement after my question here - I didn't see that email yet. However, I guess the chances are reasonable that the time schedule might be returned to what we're used to for next years, so for repeat surveys it would still be tricky. So my preference would still be end of January / begin February, (also less interference with holidays) but it is less strong of a point than when you assume the Fundraiser will definitely be in December. Effeietsanders (talk) 00:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the POTY contest [edit]

Hi all, I'll address this in advance - the Commons Picture of the Year committee is planning to use CentralNotice to advertise two rounds for about two weeks. There will be two bursts for logged-in editors only and will be shown on all projects in appropriate languages. POTY is a great event and helps showcase the quality of Commons to Wikimedians and the world and results in more uploads/featured picture nominations.

Last year, CentralNotice was not used because of objections from Meta participants over timing. This year, the contest will be much earlier (January, not June). CentralNotice was used the year before last and the participation was more than doubled, without our recently introduced enhanced voting system. The banners will be non-intrusive and we are looking forward to improving our participation signficantly.  ℳono  04:00, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

WMNL new year's reception: some technical problems [edit]

Not sure whom to discuss this with, but the current banner for the WMNL New Year's reception (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=nieuwjaarsborrel) has a technical problem. The 'Hide' button doesn't hide the banner but takes you to the linked page (the cross does work as expected, though). Because of this, an admin on the Dutch language Wikipedia has now explicitly hidden this banner for everyone there. Since I do not have any experience with this, I wonder if anyone who does have some skill with this could take a brief look at how to fix this. I also have the impression that the banner is being perceived by the community as being very large, but I'll first take that up with the sponsor, User:Spinster. Paul B (talk) 17:37, 6 January 2013 (UTC) (WMNL board member, but speaking only on behalf of myself here).

Update: it seems that we have had sufficient response from the Dutch Wikipedia anyway, so there's no hurry here. We'll probably leave it like this. Paul B (talk) 17:43, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for this, I've fixed the hide button so it should hide the banner correctly as expected. Thehelpfulone 17:44, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Cool, thanks :) Well, your username says it all. Paul B (talk) 23:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
According to CentralNotice/Usage guidelines there has to be "some sort of consensus" before non-standard banners are enabled (even if there wasn't a guideline on that, it should still be common sense, right?). There has not been any discussion prior to putting up this banner at the projects which are the most affected by this banner (nlwiki, nlbooks, nlwikt, etc.). MrBlueSky (talk) 02:02, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Banners [edit]

What size is good for a graphic banner style central notice? Is it best to make it a single banner image or is it fine to put multiple elements, images and wiki text, within a div or table? I'm trying to come up with something here for the January 15 Wikivoyage launch announcement central notice. We could really use help! Never done this before. --Rogerhc (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Help needed at Talk:Wikivoyage_2013/CentralNotice#Banner. Time is short--this is scheduled to go live January 15-17 and we need experienced admin help. Thanks! --Rogerhc (talk) 18:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Offered some thoughts and can help out if needed Jalexander (talk) 18:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

"Belarusian Wikipedias Day in Warsaw, Poland" banner for Belarusian Wikipedias [edit]

Hi, I'd like to run a banner for bewiki and be-x-oldwiki visitors (projects scope) from Poland and Belarus (geo scope). There is a workshop planned on February 16. What should I do so the banner appears ASAP? Community consensus reached (be-x-old, be). I've already prototyped the CentralNotice banner template in my local MediaWiki installation. Wizardist (talk) 20:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Philippines recruitment for two weeks [edit]

[1]: it's weird enough to send people to the account creation form, which 1) wrongly implies one must register to contribute, 2) hides the explanation page w:en:Wikipedia:Tambayan_Philippines/Get_started making everything most confusing. Most importantly, however, two weeks of anonymous banners for a WikiProject sounds very extreme. Was this discussed at least with the general en.wiki community (which is not the only wiki affected though)? They'll soon get crazy if any WikiProject can get two-weeks über-huge banners. --Nemo 11:19, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the project plan was announced in the village pump on EnWp ahead of time, as it is the only wiki showing the banners. --Haithams (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • We have a similar request for a Canada project just now.[2] --Nemo 23:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Contribution month in Canada [edit]

Does it look good on this calendar? It should be added by tomorrow per Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#CentralNotice_by_tomorrow_please.3F. πr2 (t • c) 16:58, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

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