Talk:Wikimedia Foundation/Communications

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anti-Wikipedia post going viral on Twitter

Looks like tumbleweeds here, but hopefully someone sees this. The post:

https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1966601978319904877 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/DexCD

There is a quote post in defense of Wikipedia, but it's new and hasn't got any legs yet:

https://x.com/MikeDoris/status/1966969088909140114 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/niQAD Patternbuffered (talk) 21:39, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Update from twitter OP:

"wikipedia founder spoke with me after this and convinced me much of the budget is reasonable

i remain skeptical of several subgrants but broadly view wikipedia as a massive success compared to any other decades-old nonprofit"

https://x.com/nearcyan/status/1967472219753525315

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/VyZ7g Patternbuffered (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@Patternbuffered: Hello, please note that WMF communication team has stopped to use Twitter, and here is the list of social media channels currently in use. In my opinion, these anti-Wikipedia posts are biased complaints against Wikipedia, which has often happened, and we don't need to feed the trolls. SCP-2000 12:15, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Possible media issues regarding RfC on Republican Party article

There’s most likely going to be an RfC regarding how to acknowledge far-right elements on the English GOP page. If you have any specific requests for how to conduct the RfC to minimize right wing media backlash, we’re all ears. Retr0r0cket (talk) 20:32, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Training on writing op-eds

I'm curious about ways to encourage and help more community members speak in the media when something from the community "breaks containment" and gets press, so that there are more strong and diverse voices offering insight on our processes. I'm thinking about various decisions, actions, and policies/guidelines that have received public attention, like the Sanger CBAN, WWU solidarity petition (en:WP:WWUS), LLM content guideline (en:WP:NOLLM), Archive.today decision (en:WP:ATODAY), perennial sources list, and various ArbCom decisions and AfD discussions.

A while back I took a great workshop from the Op-Ed Project, a US-based nonprofit that trains people with expertise to write and pitch op-ed pieces in newspapers. The theory is that getting your name out there as a good op-ed writer tends to lead to other kinds of helpful media exposure: journalists asking you for quotes, TV news programs asking you to speak briefly on a subject, etc.

It could be really cool and effective to conduct a program like this for community members, or to fund community members to take their workshops. Many experienced editors are excellent writers who can write quickly and persuasively - we do it all the time on articles and in talk page discussions - so my hypothesis is that this could be quite effective! I also asked at Grants talk:Start if this kind of workshop could qualify for a Rapid Funds grant if somebody wanted to take it, but I'm not sure that it'd be a good fit for the existing model. Dreamyshade (talk) 16:02, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

this is more over technical reasons than anything, but do you know how (and if) that project works for people editing while not in the us? i couldn't find much info on that (though it could just be me being bad at looking)

if this is accepted, it might be a good idea to then look into how it could be handled for editors in other locations, like ireland or the other ones, such as locating other similar projects consarn _{(talk beige) (count ribs)} 16:39, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

It's a good question; I can't find specific info on their website either. The workshops are oriented around US media, but I believe they're virtual, and I don't see a reason why they'd decline non-US participants, but somebody would have to check with them. My dream would be for the WMF to arrange one of their private virtual workshops ("For organizations and institutions looking to offer a single opportunity scheduled solely for their community", 30 people minimum, 7 hours of training), then take applications from community members to participate from any location with a press landscape that accepts op-eds or similar pieces (or interested in submitting pieces to outlets that accept them in general; doesn't have to be in their own country). Dreamyshade (talk) 17:22, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

@Dreamyshade and Consarn: Hey folks, Ed here from the WMF Media Relations team. I/we love the overall idea and we have quickly batted around some ideas on how it would work. However, we are running at capacity due to the looming Wikimania. We'll come back to this in roughly a month -- I'm setting a calendar reminder now -- after the event is over and people are back in the virtual office. Thanks, Ed WMF ^[talk] 14:41, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

better not rush the process, then consarn _{(talk beige) (count ribs)} 15:07, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

@Ed Erhart (WMF) Thanks, sounds great! After thinking about this, I wrote something using the Op-Ed Project model as an example of what this can look like. :) Dreamyshade (talk) 15:26, 15 July 2026 (UTC)