Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-01-07/Op-ed

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Blame the watchlist and set up a Diaspora pod for Wikimedians, please

Thanks for the analysis which I think is mostly correct. I think the solution to the Meta dilemma lies in the fact that it's just another wiki. You need to visit Meta in order to learn what's going on there. There is no common watchlist for all Wikimedia projects. This is why most Wikipedians visiting the watchlist on their home wiki only do not realise proceedings on Meta. Also, you have to follow recent changes because new pages are constantly being created on Meta. So a watchlist doesn't really help you with that. Neither does sending out pointers to Meta on mailinglists because only a few Wikipedians have subscribed to them.

I think the solution nowadays lies in a combination of a social network and Meta. It is good to have a public working wiki for co-operating, but for communicating within a group outside your home wiki it would be best to set up a Diaspora pod for Wikimedians. Would be much better than using the commercial networks for that because we can do it ourselves.--Aschmidt (talk) 13:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd be interested in a Wikimedian Diaspora pod. I stopped using Diaspora months ago because it was a dead end socially, but if we can get a critical mass of Wikimedians who want to try it out together, there's potential for making something useful. Social networking within the broad Wikimedia community is still an unmet need, which we do (poorly) to some extent through Facebook and such, but which suffers from the fuzzy boundaries between our identities as Wikimedians and our social lives outside the projects. Do I post this bit of insider baseball, even though most of my friends would have no idea what I'm talking about? In a dedicated Wikimedian social network, the answer would be yes.--ragesoss (talk) 15:29, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone actually use Diaspora? Someone told me recently that even the authors of Diaspora don't use Diaspora anymore. Any project that is failing to eat their own dogfood seems doomed to utter failure. —Tom Morris (talk) 23:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Which site are you talking about? Google turns up nothing about it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Diaspora (software); https://www.joindiaspora.com --MZMcBride (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

In answer to Tom Morris, Diaspora's founders stopped developing it to do some more traditional start-up-y stuff. But they actually had gotten it to (in my opinion) a quite nice, usable place: a federated, open-source social network that duplicates most of the key features of Facebook (with an interface that's a little more like Google+). It never reached anywhere near critical mass in terms of active users (at least, within a few degrees of separation of people I'm interested in) but for a use case like this--connecting a well-defined community that is not already strongly networked on Facebook--I think it's got a lot of potential.--ragesoss (talk) 02:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

You say "mandarin" twice in three sentences. Just sayin'. — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 19:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Great piece, well done. And yes, a Wikimedia-wide unified watchlist would go a long way to fixing this and related problems. Given the money WMF has knocking about, it's sad they can't make this happen :(. Additionally or alternatively, a merge with Commons would also make sense - one big umbrella wiki for cross-wiki stuff, with different sections for different purposes. Rd232 ^talk 22:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Although it won't yet offer cross-wiki support in its upcoming first release, Echo might eventually bring us closer to the long-awaited global watchlist (which, from what I hear, is not an easy technical problem at all). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

A global watchlist would be wonderful. As for the Diaspora idea, please don't ask me to create an account on another social networking site. If you want to send me to yet another web site, it's just not going to happen, even if I have good intentions to participate. To a large extent that just moves the problem of not cecking Meta to another website. I have enough pages to check, and I'm sure I'm not the only Wikimedian who feels that way. LadyofShalott 22:19, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Authorship

Who actually wrote this? I haven't had time to fully digest the piece, but it doesn't sound like Sj's writing to me. The page history is unfortunately useless.

These complaints have come up previously (cf. WP:IGNOREMETA). --MZMcBride (talk) 16:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Collapsed resolved issue: appears to have been a misunderstanding.
I would assume that the words "By Jan eissfeldt" at the top of the article give you the authorship. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC) Don't be a jackass. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC) Meta Wiki: Where the admins are thin-skinned and cannot take a bit of good-natured ribbing. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Guy: ha! mzm: good eye, corrected. I was sent a draft of this for comments (off wiki, pity). These aren't my opinions or views- I believe I was asked as a representative of an opposing school of thought; I suggested ways that some of the criticism might be worded more constructively. I also offered to coauthor a future series on meta and related issues which would cover related topics and highlight different large or longterm projects there. But this piece was not coauthored: I had no input into its thesis, reasoning, or title, and do not support them. I do recognize that they are not unique to Jan this essay, and need to be addressed, as others have expressed them before. (cf. Rd232's comments below and on Meta)

I think the work of the Meta community is essential and useful and considerate, and has become richer in the past year. And I think it has been a safe space for creative and unusual thought and essays, since its founding. I am sometimes surprised that others do not see it so. It has preserved some of the original wiki nature that we should all revisit regularly. Perhaps I should write a counterpoint op-ed and send it to Jan for comment :)

PS. Happy 2013 to all - I wrote this from my mobile phone... Thanks to any devs who have made the process a mite easier and apols for any typos. – SJ + 23:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies if I came off as rude. In hindsight, it was quite obviously a legitimate question (thank you for the correction, Sj!) and your reply to it didn't indicate sarcasm, so I thought you were rudely pointing me to the byline. I don't think Meta-Wiki admins have particularly thin skin and I always enjoy a good ribbing. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm truly sorry but think we established which mails caused the confusion on this point pre-christmas. I took on board your argumentative point made below, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 08:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the essay and update. These are all topics worth addressing; as Meta becomes more actively used, they pend with more force. And this is a fine starting point for further discussion <ribs MZM and Jan, one with each elbow> – SJ + 16:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

"A (meta-)wiki community is somewhat dysfunctional; film at 11."

Given the existence of m:Help:Unified login (oh look, a link to Meta-Wiki!), I think some of these problems are overblown. I'm biased, of course, being an admin at Meta-Wiki, but I don't see a clear statement of a problem (which innovative ideas exactly are being stifled?) or a clear list of proposed solutions here, which I think is really unfortunate (the piece seems to end with the suggestion to keep using Meta-Wiki, after trying to establish that Meta-Wiki is horribly broken).

Is Meta-Wiki perfect? Absolutely not. But I don't quite see how it's stifling innovative ideas. The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community have limited (finite) resources. The Wikimedia Foundation, for its part, has begun putting in place systems such as the m:Funds Dissemination Committee in an effort to better support worthwhile ideas that further Wikimedia's wmf:mission. I'm (still) surprised to see Sj's name attached to this piece when he's been an active member of the Board, overseeing a number of positive developments (including the m:Sister Projects Committee and the m:FDC) that run counter to many of the arguments made in this piece.

I've personally strongly advocated for the Wikimedia Foundation to use a public and global space (Meta-Wiki) for its work. I don't see how trying to frame that as a Bad Thing is reasonable, fair, or healthy. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:32, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I might get your point wrong but I hardly feel represented fairly by your take of the piece. It states very clearly that Meta is indispensable ("the only place"), why it is indispensable ("need for multilingual communities to engage much more freely on a common website" etc.), why no other potential contender can provide the same services under review ("none of these channels provides anything like a space for cross-community dialogues"), and why more people should care: otherwise you may encounter one day a popular edit-counter is no longer working (the German Toolserver debate example). The Sister Projects Committee (which is linked) provides the list (here) you are looking for and the text sets out what the problem is, i.e. a meaningful feedback mechanism - the very committee - to deal with new project ideas that don't come along with a million dollar funding (Wikidata) or already established structures (Wikivoyage) is not yet operational.

Said that, you may have been distracted by the first paragraph, which sums up what "many people have argued" before the "the only place"-reply (especially combined with the fact that the piece was originally scheduled for the last edition and therefore the editor-in-chief uploaded it today). I was very keen (Sj wasn't) to deal with the ordinary "get rid of Meta"-tamtam early on to make room to actually look at the new tasks, and the strings and problems attached to them, of the project. I'm sorry, if that didn't work out that way in your case; its not a "horribly broken"-diagnosis but aims at purposefully making people wonder, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for clarifying. I believe I did misinterpret the piece and I'm concerned that others might as well. If the piece had actually said "Meta-Wiki is indispensable," I think that would have been clearer. :-) The headline of the piece ("Meta, where innovative ideas die") also seems to cast a much grimmer tone than the reply you've written here. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

• I think we all know that Meta is utterly useless. No one uses it and yet, it attempts to make binding decisions for all the other projects. Luckily, they usually don't get passed, but when they do and attempt to become binding, the Wikipedia projects appropriately rebel. This is often because the group that is passing such things is a small group of Meta admins that think they should hold all the power. Silverseren^C 22:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I did last year propose a model whereby major global policy decisions have to be approved locally by a certain proportion of projects and a certain proportion of all users in order to be approved. Makes more sense than Meta in its current form, anyway. Rd232 ^talk 22:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting overview (and from my own perspective as member of the WMF Communications team, for the shout-out for the blog and the Wikimedia Highlights). I'd like to add a few elements to the picture:

• Regarding "the need for efficient translation support", I think the article could well have mentioned that Meta-wiki has been maturing a lot as a translation platform over the last two years, with the deployment of the Translate Extension in 2011, and the introduction of the related TranslationNotification extension in mid-2012. The translation interface is still a bit unappealing, but the WMF language team is making progress on this as well. - This doesn't yet solve the problem of true multilingual discussion, but it goes a long way towards informing non-English speaking Wikimedians better (obligatory ad: Please consider signing up for translation notifications if you want to help with that).
• (To add to the examples - FDC, grants, etc - for the Foundation's use of Meta as a much more open platform that what a normal nonprofit might employ: ) We have moved our "communications calendar" of planned blog posts from the nonpublic Office wiki (Intranet) to Meta.
• Likewise in mid-2012, we moved the drafting process for the blog largely out of our Wordpress installation into the open on Meta, to increase participation and transparency.
• In 2011, the WMF Research Committee started the Research Hub in a new dedicated Research: namespace on Meta.
• Regarding Meta's Not my wiki problem: As mentioned above, there is hope that Echo could eventually help to improve that; at least with respect to the difficulty of staying updated on relevant new developments there if one does not already visit the wiki frequently for other reasons (see also the Wikimania talk I gave with MZ about "movement broadcasting").

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tilman. Thank you for these details. It's good that Meta is already tackling some of these issues.

More active use by chapters and the wmf has helped, including public drafting of personal essays or proposals. Working on the blog there has filled a gap left since wikizine stopped drafting its issues. And minutes from any off-wiki event or meetings are posted there as well; though that is not new.

Yes, Echo will help; but its the cross-wiki messaging that is really needed. Also needed: a better-publicized central list of active meta-discussions, and better lightweight techniques for pushing announcements and updates [using the global sitebanner is too much. a similar banner that only pushes to every project's community portal/messageboard would be perfect]. – SJ + 16:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

• (disclosure:I am the original author of WP:IGNOREMETA and am pretty much hated by the community on that site) I think the title sums it up nicely. There is of course some very important cross-wiki coordination that goes on there, but outside of that it is basically. dead end with a culture that does not seem interested in ever seeing anything through to a conclusion. I also found the system for requesting translation of proposals incomprehensible. When I asked for help understanding it I was insulted by an administrator for daring to ask for help. The steward areas of meta are vital and essential, but its broader community is in serious need of reform in its approach to outsiders, It is supposed to be there to help and serve the other WMF projects, but it rarely if ever accomplishes anything toward that end. Indeed I and many others have found it to be a very closed community that is openly hostile towards outsiders not well versed in its internal politics. I realize that same criticism has been leveled at en.wp and that we have experienced similar problems here, but the small size of the community and the blatant disregard for shocking misbehavior by their own admins there seems to me to intensify the problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)