Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Reports/Summary of Movement Conversations 2020

Missing aeas

Thanks for a good summary. I am missing, though, a section of areas that ought to be in the strategy but are missing. I got the impression that it was intended to be such a section in this summary.Yger (talk) 19:51, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Phew, thanks Yger. The third paragraph of 'what was said' presents a summary of key areas surfaced that were missing or need to be made more explicit. For further reading, you can find much more detail under 'what's missing' under the 'general comments' of the detailed table. If missed something, please let us know. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that. But I still think (as I gave feedback on earlier) that the strategy is missing text related to what our ambitions should be related to partners and partnering.Yger (talk) 07:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Yger, I have added it to both the spreadsheet and our internal documents. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 13:26, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Very low participation in en.wiki, data, and commons

I see that summary of English community feedback displays very low amount of participants. How does the total of 12 participants constitute the community as a whole? Does the total amount accurately reflect the (silent) feedback of the en.wiki community? George Ho (talk) 01:03, 3 March 2020 (UTC); see below, 16:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@CJackel (WMF): I re-counted the users involved in en.wiki discussion. I see four non-WMF users commenting and two WMF staff. Actually, one of the WMF was just announcing an off-wiki meeting, leading to only five total directly involved. The page mentions eight in en.wiki; where were the other two (or three) people a summary subpage mentioned? George Ho (talk) 16:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Double counting

Somewhat as response to the above, and somewhat as discrete point, I'm a little concerned about double counting. En-wiki was always less likely to have major on-wiki discussion as it was easier (by no means easy, given the language complexity) to discuss it on meta. However, in cases where editors participated in both their local version (provided as an aggregated total on meta) and on meta directly, the possibility of double-counting occurs.

This obviously isn't unreasonable of anyone who did have a local project discussion (it would be odd to avoid it just because you were talking on meta as well), but because of the use of aggregated reporting, it does mean that when weight is ascribed to both, editors being counted (or, since it's not a vote but more of a general perception, perhaps "assessed") twice. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:57, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello Nosebagbear, the same applies to German. A lot of users have been contributing in English and German on Meta and additionally on the germanophone Wikipedia. I only speak for myself when I say that the content of the comments were great and the exact number is not that relevant. Also, I think the approach of generally looking on the content and not the numbers is a good one, especially since I personally don't see any possibility to be much more precise and certainly can not exclude sock puppets. In any case, the tendency of the numbers is correct and I hope you can just use them as helpful approximation. Thanks again for your feedback and best regards --CJackel (WMF) (talk) 14:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Nosebagbear, hi George Ho, for the top 10 movement strategy talk pages on Meta in English, including the main landing page, we had more than 120 unique usernames contribute to the discussions with 1200 edits. I would say that the majority of people visiting from en.WP, Commons and Wikidata engaged on Meta. We are not assigning any weight to be honest, rather the richness of input, overlapping and repeating feedback, and the wide spectrum of input to help finalize the recommendations. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Premature

This is, ultimately, premature. These are not plans, they're high-level statements of intent. Those can be useful, but they are not the final version. They're the starting point. The final version is a detailed implementation summary, stating exactly what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, how much it is expected to cost, and ideally, why you want to do it. That should be what is ultimately up for acceptance or rejection by the community. These weren't even close to done baking yet. Come ask us once you have specifics. Seraphimblade (talk) 20:52, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: I think (I'm writing that in my personal capacity) this is the intended essence of preparing the recommendations. These are indeed high-level (= strategic) statements of intent (= recommendations). A detailed implementation summary will be prepared in the phase of implementation, which will begin later this year, when the recommendations are adopted. We are not discussing the implementation by the very design of these discussions. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

SGrabarczuk (WMF), thanks for the clarification. What are the plans to put that up for acceptance or rejection by the community once done? Seraphimblade (talk) 00:40, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

You mean the recommendations, or the implementation? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I mean the implementations, SGrabarczuk (WMF). Seraphimblade (talk) 00:58, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no one knows the answer. The implementation will be conducted by a different team, which doesn't exist yet, in accordance with a plan that doesn't exist at the moment either. The situation should be clarified gradually by early April (Wikimedia Summit), maybe June (official deadline for the transition of mandate between the teams) or maybe even later. The strategic process is iterative, adaptive, and it's really hard to tell how exactly it will look like in a few months. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

So, no one even knew what they were moving toward? That's...I don't even know what words I can get away with putting it to, but it is the type of foolishness most of us saw it for. You were all pushing something you didn't even have a clue what the end result and implementation would be? That's the epitome of the worst, most laughable "project management" bits I've ever seen. You develop an implementation plan, not just a "roadmap". Try once to drive along based upon a "roadmap" with all your windows painted over, and then tell me how important it is to see the actual road. You should have had a clear idea where you're actually going and how you're going to get there. And chuck this whole thing. Seraphimblade (talk) 01:19, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, the strategy is being developed. If we (please try to define "we", btw) had had a plan at the beginning, what would all these working groups, scoping documents, rounds of discussions, collective involvement, and information distillation have been for? :) SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:55, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Szymon, the "different" teams consist in some same members of the previous teams, aren't they? Do those members have same ideas or what? How are the teams "different" from previous teams if the same members participate in a "different" team? George Ho (talk) 00:13, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Moreover, were those same members recycling their same ideas in the name of combining the ideas into one idea, or what? George Ho (talk) 00:15, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

George, "different team" means that there's going to be a reset. There will be a new scope, new priorities, new timelines, new roles, including new leadership. Just compare this page with this one and its subpages. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Well.... I was referring to the Working Group. I guess I should read further then. George Ho (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

"Some numbers…" section

Can the relevance of the pageviews statistics and page edits be explained? If not, what's the relevance of those numbers? Also, why not establish factors of the numbers, like amount of similar users viewing the same page(s), geographical regions, etc? George Ho (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

For me, numbers are good to know if, how and where people can be reached. For example, the number of page views of the German landing page on Meta is significantly lower than of the germanophone Wikipedia, although I always linked both sites. From this, I draw the conclusion that the activation on Wikipedia is at least as useful as on Meta. (Certainly other people draw different conclusions from the numbers). Many greetings --CJackel (WMF) (talk) 11:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I've been thinking, CJackel: What aren't logged-out and logged-in users categorized? Also, have there been on-wiki feedback from logged-out users? George Ho (talk) 19:35, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I can not answer the first question (also in deWP logged-out users are generally welcomed and mostly considered as equals with exception of rfa and rfc) but we had comments (that can not be considered as outstandingly substantial) from 3 ranges (5 IPs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ), so not many in comparison to 78 users that were logged in. Regards --CJackel (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment in "Areas of debate"

"Devoting resources to building new communication systems to replace wikis instead of training and onboarding for our wiki-based projects interferes with recruiting editors to work on the projects."

User:EllenCT I moved your comment from the summary page to here in the talk page. Feel free to clarify what you meant :)

--DRanville (WMF) (talk) 11:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@DRanville (WMF): when we spend time and resources building alternatives to wikis, that detracts from onboarding new project editors. Was that summarized in a different part? I noticed it had been on the table, so maybe the same discussions were occurring in different locations? EllenCT (talk) 16:39, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@EllenCT: It has indeed been a discussion in various communities: if I remember well, similar opinions have been shared in Spanish/Catalan, and French. There were also opinions in favor of developing new platforms that would be more practical for the intended use (eg. hosting MOOCs or tutorials) because people who are not yet onboarded can be afraid of wikis. But both options are not completely incompatible: different platforms can be used for different purposes. Anyway, if your point is already in the table, then it's captured and will be taken into account. And I believe the precise discussion about what kind of platform will be used for what will rather be a matter for the implementation phase - which will start in a few weeks, and to which you'll be welcome to contribute :) --DRanville (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@DRanville (WMF): is there any reason to leave things from the table out of this textual summary? EllenCT (talk) 17:02, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@EllenCT: The table is meant to capture every single idea, while this summary is more of an overview, that mentions most prominent points and remains synthetic and pretty short. --DRanville (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

API pricing

If we charged for the API on a sliding scale, would that address the problems raised with a paid API? EllenCT (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

It could be an answer to some of the feedback, but overall, it's a bit more complicated than that. Some communities, as in Meta, German and Portoguese said it's against the Movement values to place any part of projects "behind a pay wall", thus rejecting the premium API entirely. The French community feared it might risk the projects independence. Others, like Wikimedia and Libraries, provided more detailed input, perceiving that applying a premium API, even to extremely large clients, will lead to very undesired consequences as in driving such organization to use web scrapping or other methods to replace the Wikimedia API altogether, eventually driving them away and enduring more loss in resources than gain --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC).

@Abbad (WMF): if we charged entities for access to the API in proportion to their corporate gross recipts, what problems would remain? EllenCT (talk) 12:26, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

@EllenCT: Per my understanding of the comments I referenced above, two problems would remain: 1. complete opposition of charging for API access in principle, and 2. fear that such corporations may resort to web scrapping or other methods to dispose of the need for Wikimedia API altogether --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2020 (UTC).