Talk:Roundtables/Roundtable 1

Final Notes

Hello, Roundtable participants!

What did you think of our Engagement Roundtable on June 22nd? What worked for you? What didn't work so well? How can we improve it next time? What was your favorite idea?

Please share your insights here, to help plan our next steps. Thanks again for joining our roundtable! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 07:23, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

What worked

How did the roundtable work for you? What did you like most?

• Physical Props. Different groups used different materials. Whether sketching on a whiteboard, or using multicolored stickynotes and cards. Quiddity 20:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

• For some reason, small groups and a white board still seems to be the best way to brainstorm, in spite of all of the technology at our disposal. In all working meetings, I find the small group activities to be highly engaging and very fruitful. Throw people into groups and amazing stuff happens. Don't hesitate to give difficult assignments. LaMona (talk) 16:12, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• The mix of user-experience-types worked quite well. Wiki-Newcomers used many non-technical keywords and descriptions, which helped expand the concept-space of things to consider. Regular editors (from a variety of projects/languages) brought specialized knowledge and workflows from within their areas of familiarity/expertise. Power-users and staff-facilitators helped explain/bridge/map the abstract suggestions into concise summaries, and helped explain stumbling points or unfamiliar workflows in clear&rapid ways (with the speed and empathy that vocal-intonation and facial-expression bring to communication). Quiddity (talk) 20:24, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• Having staff facilitators for each of the small groups seemed to help keep the discussion on track (e.g. "how is the talk functionality working/not working in this situation?", rather than "real vandals would not possibly react this way at this point, and we don't like them.") Dvortygirl (talk) 06:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

• The fact that the entire event was so well structured. My worry about such events is that they often seem to go off track and not serve their intended purpose. The effort put in by the staff made it such a great learning experience for (I think) everyone present. SPat (talk) 01:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

• Variety of experience levels, ages, and genders. Lots of different folks made for a dynamic exchange. Ocaasi (talk) 23:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

• Several things worked well for me. I know my hearing impairment issue did pose challenges at my end, but the visuals from the screen and white boards were wonderful! This was the right number of people. The old saying "Too many cooks spoil the soup" could apply to a Roundtable with a large number of participants as opposed to one that is "just right." Everyone had time to express themselves. I'd written up notes on points that I hoped to discuss. I was delighted that others expressed some of these ideas before I even spoke. The consensus on how to make Wikipedia a more user-friendly and satisfying experience came through strongly. I felt that those of us who have been slow to edit articles were encouraged to keep trying. I have been on Wikipedia more in the last week and a half than ever before and am enjoying it immensely. Using Visual Editor is also an education unto itself. I can see where the "old school" method of editing is helpful, because I'm starting to catch my editing mistakes more easily. I look forward to understanding how Echo and Flow can be used in the future to increase efficiency. I don't like wasting time, so anything that can improve functioning on Wikipedia is welcome. As for the organization of this Roundtable, Fabrice did a fantastic job of keeping the schedule running smoothly, and participants also respected this schedule. Thank you, Wikimedia Staffers, for giving up your weekend to help contribute to this event. Last, but not least, thank you for being so kind to Dexter, our Boston Terrier.ChesPal (talk)

What didn't work

How can we improve the next roundtable?

• Throwing complete newcomers into the deep-end of a complex idea that they had no frame for. Explaining things using analogy (eg. facebooklike) would've tainted their responses, and made the devs facepalm. Participants need a minimal familiarity with the topics they're going to discuss, at least for complex proposals. Quiddity 20:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

• As one of the newcomers, I have trouble relating to "talk" pages as ... well, a place to talk. But the exercises actually taught me how "talk" works (to some extent). A future roundtable should focus less on a single aspect of WP and more on a desired workflow. I don't feel like we got beyond the talk pages to thinking about what would be better. Of course, "better" isn't necessarily "do-able."LaMona (talk) 16:09, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• When dividing into groups, it might be helpful for some groups (or all?) to have pre-determined topics. I feel like a good chunk of the time was spent figuring out what workflow to talk about. If each station has a workflow picked out, people will go to the workflow they're most curious/passionate/knowledgeable about. --KrystleChung (talk) 17:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• An optional assignment to complete before the roundtable? Perhaps related to workflows. For example, I made a handful of edits hoping to get notifications and didn't get any, which itself was interesting. People could then discuss the insights they drew from completing the exercise. --KrystleChung (talk) 17:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• I know the roundtables are fundamentally about getting ideas on how to improve Mediawiki and so on, but I think it would be useful to allow some unstructured time to get to know others in attendance. Sometimes great ideas come out of offline and "off-the-record" conversations, too. Dvortygirl (talk) 17:56, 29 June 2013‎ (UTC)

• Editors were instructed to document existing workflows. This led naturally to thoughts about how something should function rather than how it does. I think an equal emphasis should be placed on brainstorming these ideal/desired workflows, something that occurred in most groups but wasn't explicitly encouraged. Ocaasi (talk) 23:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Your favorite idea

What was your favorite idea from our roundtable? What did you learn from it?

To help answer that question, you may want to visit the Roundtables project page for more info, or check out some of the photos or videos. Thanks again!

• I really like the idea of having one central talk/notification system across wikis and across languages. My primary WMF participation is in en.wiktionary, and I don't often see it promptly if I get a message somewhere else. While I like the principle of a single user page, I really prefer to customize to language and project. Wikipedians probably don't care what my favorite Wiktionary topics are, and I want someone coming in from es.* to see my page in Spanish and not have to wade through the English to get there. Dvortygirl (talk) 06:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

• The very notion of workflows. The potential to unify so many fragmented processes, into new semi-streamlined (but still adaptable) entities, that won't ever implicitly result in different outcomes (and therefor the community won't object, except to the "change" aspect), but will definitely result in easier and more efficient participation. Eg. PageDeletion + Delsort + Interestgraphs + RFCRequests-style signup + hashtags = everyone who wants to, can be notified of any desired quantity of relevant discussions. --Quiddity (talk) 06:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

• I'm hoping Flow and other community tools will help me engage the community at large on a more regular basis than I do now. SPat (talk) 01:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Categorize

Hello! Please categorize this page as needed. If there are (going to be) more roundtables, maybe you should create a category for them. PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:05, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I tried to clean up the categories a bit. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 16:28, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

File:Roundtable-Slides-June-2013-1.jpg

I'm a bit confused. Who's Mary? PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Clarification: at one point, it says "Jane", and at another it says "Mary". Is it referring to the same person? PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Downloading the slides all at once

I'm not a Flickr geek, so is there a "quick and dirty" way to download the slides? They are wonderful!!ChesPal (talk)

I'm guessing you mean all the photos from the day? I'm not sure if there's a way to download whole albums from flickr easily, but @Fabrice Florin (WMF): You might be able to answer this, and the thread above.

Or, if you meant the Slides that the Fabrice showed us at the start, they're in a PDF that is downloadable or viewable at File:Roundtable_1_Slides.pdf. :) Quiddity (talk) 08:03, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

FYI, {{ping}} doesn't do anything here yet (Echo is not yet installed here) PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Doh! Thanks for the reminder :) Quiddity (talk) 02:33, 14 July 2013 (UTC)