User:DRanville (WMF)/Rapports Mensuels/Septembre

This page gathers observations and suggestions from the french-speaking community about strategy thematic areas of the Wikimedia 2030 process. This list is a summary of discussions that happened in late Septembre and in October 2019, and that I was informed of as strategy liaison for the french community.

Diversity

• About WG Diversity's vision of interconnected wiki-projects :
  • When thinking about platforms interconnection, we should think about our natural free knowledge partners like Wikiversity (rather than wikihow), OSM, Framasoft, Vikidia, OpenEdition, OpenFoodFacts...
  • WP articles should display obvious links towards sister projects (and other projects outside WMF like OpenFoodFacts when relevant), being clear about what can be found there (maybe by allowing hover preview across wiki-projects).
• For a new language, Wikipedia might not be the best project. Wiktionary, Wikiversity or Wikisource might be better suited if there is documentation to work from.
• Make it clearer how to create new wiki-projects (incubator for new languages, procedure of proposal for new projects)
  • eg. Contributor to WikiDébats (WikiDebates) who would like to include it in WMF set of projects.

Product and technology

• WM France should partner with Framasoft to develop technical tools like vocal communication, planning tools, format conversion to wikicode from markdown or from open office ; and share improvements with the movement.
• Improve the contributor's experience: create a portal displaying all opportunities for contribution (various actions), leading to the different projects. Eg. 'review manuscripts', 'share pictures', 'write encyclopedic articles', etc.
• WP articles should display obvious links towards sister projects (and other projects outside WMF like OpenFoodFacts when relevant), being clear about what can be found there (maybe by allowing hover preview across wiki-projects).
• Provide more technical support for small wikis and sister projects (eg. Wikisource)
  • Take sister projects into account when implementing new features on Media-Wiki (sometimes we suffer from undesired bugs resulting from this)
  • Even just one dedicated employee could make a huge difference in helping with small software developments.
• Follow up with communities about accepted Community Wishlist proposals to make sure the feature works well
  • Wikisource Community once had a wish accepted, but it was implemented without warning and bugs are still not fixed.

Partnerships

• Partner with OpenEditions to publish Wikiversity-based books or WikiJournal articles.
• Partner with Vikidia to address young audiences and teachers when presenting wiki-projects in salons or organizing workshops.
• Examine whether contribution could be considered civil service (« service civique » in France).
• Wiktionary should partner with smaller or specialized associations or committees who have rich glossaries.
  • eg. French Wiktionary partnered with the Comité de cartographie français, who had its glossary on a small website that they didn't manage to technically maintain.
  • Wiktionary has the potential to transform the dictionary field just like WP transformed the encyclopedic field.

Community Health

• Trust & Safety (or other professional structures dedicated to on-wiki community health) should intervene and study cases, even when « communities have not exhausted all available options to mitigate the situation », because communities are volunteers, not trained about harassment issues and not legally responsible for dealing with anything.
  • At least, there should be a legal contact or structure that can inform users about on-wiki or IRL procedures and legal rights (eg. in France report harassment to police or even press charges).

Note : Feedback from a user who has been harassed (case confirmed by T&S).

• Liaison work should be developped, as it is crucial to facilitate relationships between groups and foster new ideas.
  • There could be one liaison per wiki-project (eg. one for WP, one for Wiktionary, etc.) to ensure communication between various language versions and capacity building through sharing skills and technical improvements, leading to projects growth.
  • We also need liaisons with Chapters or User Groups, whose only task would be to reach out to communities (otherwise it's always the last thing on the list and employees run out of time)
• Physical gatherings should try to better include people who are already contributing online
• The WMF should communicate more with community, but in a comprehensible way, not using manager's jargon.

Capacity Building

• Create a portal addressed to people who want to help with free knowledge, which would described existing initiatives and actions, and the skills that you learn doing them (ie. draw inspiration from « I want to volunteer »-like portals, eg. https://www.tousunistoussolidaires.fr/)

Additional Feedback

• "Please look into Phase 1 material. Not much has changed since 2017."