Talk:Communications committee/Archive/2006

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Draft procedures

Anyone interested in participating on the committee should contact <chairperson? do we need a chair?>. If they receive the support of <75%? quorum requirement?> of the committee, they may be added as members. New members are admitted on a provisional basis, subject to ratification by the Board of Trustees.

Other official actions or committee resolutions within the scope of its responsibilities may be approved by a vote of <the majority? quorum requirement?> of the committee.

The text above is just a skeleton of potential decision-making procedures for the committee. While the committee remains small, we're operating largely by consensus. As it expands, there may be a core committee of representatives from each subcommittee, and such formalities may become more necessary. --Michael Snow 06:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
As I have done many interviews already with the press for wikipedia I would be interested in the press committee. Waerth 12:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
support for waerth. oscar 00:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I think waerth might have a lot of additional value as well. Effeietsanders 00:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)Effeietsanders 11:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Letterhead business cards

There is already a set of letterheads and business cards approved as part of the Wikimedia:Wikimedia visual identity guidelines. The design is available on internal. notafish }<';> 15:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

qualification?

A simple question; each member of commitee should a/o is expected to have access to IRC? If it is necessary, it will be useful to write it down explicitely. --Aphaia 10:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

No, it is not necessary (though it is helpful). Those who do not use IRC or cannot make it to meetings add their input on the mailing list. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 18:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

press release

In case a press release is planned for release, could I be informed before its release so that I can know there was a press release when journalists call ? (I did not say I wanted to approve the release, just to be informed :-)). Thanks Anthere 10:06, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

New members

Three new members were broadly approved at the last meeting : Aphaia and Sabine Cretella (for promotion & translation) and PZFUN for internal communication. Sj 10:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Upcoming releases

Wikimania

Cf. TRW Home

for translation and distribution


Policy & site changes

for drafting


Scope

Some ideas re: committee scope; please comment:

Draft 1

Some ideas re: committee scope; please comment:

  • Coordinating communications with the press, including press releases, interviews, and inquiries.
  • Supporting communication between the WMF and project communities.
  • Organizing and coordinating publicity and outreach.
  • Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public.
  • Maintaining a Wikimedia style guide
  • Reporting on core Wikimedia statistics


Line 1 and line 3 seem to be closely related. You do not mentiona any communications other than press releases/announcements/inquiries/interviews with entities outside Wikimedia; where does OTRS, phone, fundraising letters, publicity campaigns, and other forms of direct and indirect communication fall within this scope? What does "promoting the clear representation of Wikimedia projects and content" mean? It may answer my first question, but I do not believe I understand it. - Amgine / talk meta 06:35, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Now they're closer together. Is this new list more clear? Sj 08:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I was unclear; I think they may usefully be collapsed into a single statement. Perhaps: "Coordinating communications with the press, including press releases, interviews, and inquiries." I've edited the scope statements, but am still extremly unclear of the final statement. I simply do not know what you are trying to say there. Some the html comment elements are really part of the Legal, others are covered by other elements of the scope statement. What does "promoting" mean in this use? Is there simpler, more direct language which could be used instead? - Amgine / talk meta 23:25, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've edited the list, collapsing the two media-related statements and removing the unclear 5th statement. Those elements of the commented text which you had in the source which fell within the sphere of communications, as opposed to legal, are also covered by the second statement (communication between WMF, project communities) and third statement (publicity and outreach). I added coordinating to the third statement as it is clear many projects/languages are already engaged in their own publicity and outreach programs, which we would like to support and help to coordinate with other programs, languages, and projects. - Amgine / talk meta 01:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I added a point devoted to a style guide; and one on reporting on information gaps. I don't know who should be responsible for identifying missing information (statistical, policy-related, other), but it could well fir this committee.
I'm not sure it is actually possible to enforce a style guide. Information gaps is interesting; almost more a task of the CRO, but it's certainly something worth discussing. - Amgine / talk meta 06:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
After talking it over with Sj, we've reached a compromise on text for the scope. If anyone has any additional ideas, please look over this Draft 1. - Amgine / talk meta 22:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Draft 2

General restating; following the same general points as above, but with more parallelism... However, note that Amgine and I are mainly revising Draft 1 above. Sj

  • Organizing outreach to the media : Developing and distributing press releases and announcements
  • Organizing responses to media requests and publications: Coordinating press inquiries & interviews with suitable press contacts; responding to publications.
  • Promoting outreach to the public : publicity, promotion at events, campus outreach.
  • Monitoring responses to public requests and impressions: From Refdesk and village-pump posts to info-en@ requests to comments and suggestions in the media & on third-party sites.
  • Promoting consistent style and description : for each project separately and across the Foundation (statistics, goals, names & terms, icons)
  • Promoting communication between the WMF and project communities.
  • Helping identify needed information : statistics, demographics, missing policies
Clarified (responding to amgine's last comment in the previous section). Sj 20:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, no, I don't support this massive re-write, and I haven't time to address it this close to the meeting time. I'm opposed to this scope statement at this time. - Amgine / talk meta 00:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

French press contact.

Hello people. I just wanted to make myself known to you, as I'm from today the new press contact for Wikimédia France, and I believe we'll be working together a few (!) times in the future. Solensean22:38, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Three broad issues

"foundation --> community" communication:

  1. Communicating legal and editorial issues
    • legal
    • editorial
    • balancing goals
    • &c.
  2. Communicating checks & balances
    • correcting misimpressions
    • conveying special circumstances
  3. Communicating implicit policy and precedents
    • potential precedents
    • interpretation of same

Minutes

Maybe I'm blind, but is there a link somewhere to the minutes of the committee meetings, or at least some place to see how the points in the agenda were dealt with? Confusing Manifestation 00:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Does the content page not include this, too your satisfaction? -- Zanimum 19:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Hostile Village Voice article

I added this item to w:Wikipedia:Press coverage#May:

  • Julian Dibbell (May 2006). "Turf Wars: Wikipedia spars with a splinter site for truth". [1] w:Village Voice.
Dibbell berates "the Wikipedian hive-mind" for the treatment of the w:Wikitruth article. In his piece, posted online on May 2, he doesn't disclose that the AfD ended on April 20 with a decision to keep the Wikitruth article. (In the printed Village Voice: issue of May 3-9, 2006, page 26.)

I've now followed up with an emailed Letter to the Editor of the Voice:

Julian Dibbell, in "Turf Wars: Wikipedia spars with a splinter site for truth" [May 3-9], berates "the Wikipedian hive-mind" for the proposal to delete the Wikipedia article about Wikitruth, a hostile site. With two mouse clicks, Dibbell could have discovered that the matter had been resolved on April 20, with a decision to keep the information about Wikitruth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wikitruth)

Dibbell insinuates that Wikipedia "can't make room for a critical look at its own practices". With a few more mouse clicks, he could have found that Wikipedia already has a 5,000-word article on "Criticism of Wikipedia" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia), plus a different 5,000-word article that's just direct quotations from outside critics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criticisms), plus a 2,500-word article presenting criticisms from users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great). Furthermore, if there's a criticism that should be added, or an existing one that should be stated more forcefully, Dibbell (or anyone else) can go to the page and edit it.

Perhaps you paladins of openness would like to open your website to similar public criticisms of the Voice's practices. If so, you can easily do so with the MediaWiki software. It's available free of charge.

The Committee is free to incorporate any of that into an official response. Jim Lane 04:37, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Guardian false accusation of inaccuracy

In an article on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a commentator in the Guardian makes the following false comment concerning the Wikipedia article "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel" [2][3]:

"By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the controversy gets the NYT wrong, claiming falsely that Ethan Bronner 'concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map.'"

In fact, Bronner did so conclude, as cited in Wikipedia and not cited in the Guardian:

"So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so." [4]

A secondary issue is that this article has been posted on the Talk page as an "external media citing Wikipedia as a source," when it is actually not that at all but a false accusation of inaccuracy. --Traveller 18:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Attention

"Wikipedia, for instance, gives its editors points for making edits to entries. But one result of that is said to be editors making potentially unnecessary minor changes to articles to drive their ratings."
We don't give editors "points"; edit counting, which is discouraged, is different. I've sent a letter, but more would be nice. JesseW 19:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
<shrug> Edit counting is directly related to the ability of an editor to become an admin on en.wikipedia. While we may discourage it, in some communities edit counting is clearly a status characteristic even though it is gamed continuously and is mostly irrlevant to a user's value as a volunteer. - Amgine / talk meta 19:26, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
As you wish; it did seem more like something that should be handled by individual editors, rather than the Foundation level, but I thought it should be mentioned. And a "status characteristic" is quite different than a "point system", like they have a Yahoo Answers. But truly, the main difference is that on Wikipedia it is officially discouraged, not that it doesn't happen. JesseW 19:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jesse; that's a misleading statement. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Confirmation of permission

en:Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission states that the e-mail process is handled by the PR department which redirects here. I can't find a mention of it on any of these pages - is it still the case? Thanks --Cherry blossom tree 17:17, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Copyright permissions are often handled through e-mail (OTRS,) or through other communications with the Wikimedia Foundation. OTRS is a part of the Communications Committee.
If you are attempting to give copyright permissions to the Wikimedia Foundation, I suggest you send this information to permissions AT wikimedia.org as this address is managed by people most involved in this topic.
If you are attempting to get copyright permissions from the Wikimedia Foundation, I suggest you send your request to info-en AT wikimedia.org. - Amgine / m | n 07:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't clear there - I'm familiar with the process but just wanted to check that it was being handled by this committee and the en: page was correct. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 11:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
"permission(-xx) queue" staff on OTRS handles those requests. You may know who they are on OTRS page. If you would like to have a concise answer, it is "the part of OTRS team who can read the mails coming to permissions AT wikimedia.org". --Aphaia 11:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

How does a Wikipedian verifies (or asks for verification) that some image was really released under a free licensing by forwarding a message to permisisions at wikimedia dot org?

I mean, if I see an image on Wikipedia where the uploader says "it's public domain, because I asked the copyright holder to release that. The email was forward to permissions at wikimedia dot org"... how can I be sure the uploader hasn't (for instance) asked for a Wikipedia-only permission? Thanks, --200.214.44.134 22:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)