Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019/Programme/Submissions/Connecting communities in Wikimedia Space

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Title of the submission

Connecting communities in Wikimedia Space

Type of submission (lecture, panel, workshop, lightning talk, roundtable, poster)

Workshop preferred

Author(s) of the submission

Elena Lappen (Presented by Chris Koerner)

Username(s)

ELappen (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Affiliation

Wikimedia Foundation

Topic(s)

Community Engagement, Diversity, Communications.

Abstract (up to 100 words)

Wikimedia Space is a platform for movement organizers, affiliates, contributors, partners, and the Foundation to share news, questions, and conversations. It is single place for collaboration, comprising Blog and Discuss hubs. It centralizes conversations across regions and languages and is a moderated safe space to welcome people from every background. It is multilingual and easy to use, and contains innovative tools that break down the barriers for entry to our movement. This presentation will provide a demo of Wikimedia Space features and explain how your community can use it to have more productive, organized and fruitful conversations.

How will this session be beneficial for the communities in the region of Central and Eastern Europe?

This session will offer solutions for some of the long-standing questions facing movement organizers in growing regions like Central and Eastern Europe. It will provide insight into how movement organizers can learn about what's working for other communities, and effectively share what's working in their communities. It will also describe how Wikimedia Space can help to consolidate communities' many communication channels and organize conversations for easy searching and following of topics. Finally, it will introduce participants to the movement-wide map and calendar.

Special requirements
Slides or further information
Documentation

Interested attendees[edit]

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Notes[edit]

  • Wikimedia Space is:
    • This is a brief introduction to what Space is
    • a single platform for blog and discussion sections
    • you can share successes and fails
    • it is a prototype
    • multilingual: could be translated
    • it is running on opensource platform Discourse for Forum
    • It has a code of conduct and active moderation, community members can participate as they can participate
    • You can contact mods, admins anonymously
  • Maybe you've asked... (lots of questions)
    • How can I learn about what's working for other communities?
    • How can I consolidate my project's communication channels?
  • Stories and conversations
    • Blog is on Wordpress, we can write articles in any language, there are categories (open for discussion) we can also tag articles for the project or for language,.
    • You can read about the whole movement but also about specifics.
    • There is a central space to put things.
    • Anyone can log in with Wikimedia credentials, multilingual, with various discussions on the side
    • There is an editorial board where anyone can participate, meets every two weeks. This might be a new idea to have an editorial board but it is not here to define what you can or cannot write it is to have a hand and to make sure things are in scope.
    • Links to interesting stories are NOT? good? Or are? Announcements or requests for feedback.
    • There is a commitment from the Foundation to give announcements through here.
    • Out of scope: an opinion piece, the editorial board is very light. So far the content has been very diverse. (examples of diversity)
    • Submitting a draft is very easy, there is a Submit News button.
    • Blog and Discuss are connected with blogs having discussion pages. Include the wider audience that can directly ask the author
    • Discuss is handled by Elena it is a forum, predefined categories and on the right side, we have the latest news.
    • You can add posts and tags and organize information.
    • Favourite features: calendar of Wikimedia events around the world (!) even with date and location and all that, could be online or could be offline. Could be a regional or a very local meetup? This is a central space to encourage people who are new or unaware of events. There is now also a map for the calendar. Like astronauts, you get an overview.
    • There are also closed groups because it is safer for some things to do things closed. the movement does not want to lose information from people who do close groups somewhere else.
    • You can make it super close where you do not see the names or closed where you do. You can become a moderator and give people access.
    • Space.wmflabs.org click on the Join button.
    • You can get notifications, you can comment you can, etc.
  • Q: any idea how we can intertwine it with the other projects?
    • A: we have identified three focus integration points we want to work on. This fall should start. These are on-wiki presence, being able to show a feed of space content on a wiki page, show tags with the use of a query. Have an updated feed. The second one is Space notifications to show up in your MediaWiki notifications. The third option: have search results on space show up on wiki as sister results.
  • Q: do you have a plan for better support of mobile platforms?
    • A: mobile support is a big part of this, both platforms are mobile responsive, if there are bugs - do let us know, this is a prototype. There is a discourse mobile app for Android/iOS it does give you notifications. Mobile device is big of what we are trying to do. "It is definitely a priority"
  • Q: What is the development plan and the next steps and where feedback can be left?
    • A: Feedback can be left in Space. Go to Space and category: ABout Wikimedia Space. For plans, they have defined success criteria to be filled before they go into production. discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/success-criteria-for-? There are progress reports and metrics that are published in Space? There are some criteria
  • Q: proposal, success is based on the number of people talking and being there. Would it be possible to release the presentation so that we can translate and present the presetnation. Are there leaflets?
    • A: definitely. Slides are already on Commons but could add different formats. We do not have handouts though, only stickers. A colleague and he travel to events. Chris can also come to talk about things virtually or at events.
  • Q: a lot of apps and communication places, can we check what works, what should be turned off? (fix)
    • A: we are trying to centralize, there are no hard decisions made, there is a discussion on space about this, mailing lists.
  • Q: Space could be used as a mailing list.