FloNight

Feel free to contact me on this talk page to talk about strategic planning. But for the fastest reply leave a message on my Wikipedia English talk page or contact me by email.

Next Steps

	Next steps!
	It's time to answer some questions! Would you check out the list of questions that were submitted by the community and others and try to answer some? -- Philippe 01:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		for welcoming anonymous users, thanking them for their contribution, and inviting them to follow the task force, which sets exactly the right tone. -- Philippe 23:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

:-)

Sydney

• Yes, thank you very much! 99.231.248.190 00:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello

Hi, thanks for the welcome. Look forward to working with you. --Bodnotbod 01:01, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Weekly report

Hi,

According to the template our Weekly Reports are due at noon on Mondays. I've spoken to Philippe about it, though, and he says "when we're ready" is OK. Personally, I think it would be good for us to have the discipline of keeping to a deadline. I've set up the recommended template here. Philippe says we can alter the template if we like. I suggested we might add a brief summary of what each of us as individuals has done and that way Philippe or whoever checks our report can give us feedback if any of us is going off at a tangent or could be using our time more productively. I think it would also help us as a task force to know what each other is doing. But I leave all that for your decision as facilitator. --Bodnotbod 22:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I saw that you set up the first weekly report page :-). Let's finish getting our initial organization in place and then make the report. Now that everyone has checked in and are starting to give their initial views, we can make decisions about what we want to accomplish for the next week. I'll put something on the talk page asking everyone to state their ideas and some time frames for proceeding. FloNight 01:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Me and bodnotbod are a little eager :) Hopefully the rest of the group will check in soon. (They probably just need a little guidance before they ramp up their input.) Randomran 03:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Missing members

Hello. I notice we have two task force members that haven't made a contribution for over a week now:

• Special:Contributions/Jcravens42
• Special:Contributions/henna

I know that Jcravens had only intended to put in an hour a week but Henna had committed to 10 hours a week. I wonder whether you, as facilitator, might like to get in touch with either of them to see whether they're intending to get more involved this week? I think we could use the extra input. --Bodnotbod 12:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Liquid Threads Issue

Hi FloNight

I think we may have a problem with Liquid Threads in that I am unable to reply to your response (not the first time I have had issues with LT either, and partly why I was so sympathetic to JaapB at the top of the page). It tries to open the edit box then the edit box disappears. I will try again later but if unsuccessful I will bug it. Sjc 20:47, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

(Later) I've bugged it, the problem appears to be with (at least) IE7. This problem does not occur with Firefox or is (at least) less evident. Sjc

OK. Thanks for letting me know. Not being able to respond to comments is a big problem. :-( FloNight 11:16, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• Just as a heads up, LiquidThreads is also frequently not refreshing my browser (any of them, IE7, Firefox, Opera) in a timely or reliable fashion. Moreover, it does not appear to update the history or refresh the history for some time, and I wonder if there is some hidden latency issue here. I will /bug this. Sjc 19:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

There were loads of concerns express about LT during the IRC office hours yesterday. User:Werdna is working them. Putting the bug in is a good idea. FloNight 19:20, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Focusing on the questions

Hi FloNight--thanks for your leadership with the community health task force. As I was scrolling through the page, it struck me that Liquid Threads has in many ways been more harmful than helpful. It's a bit buggy, and we also lost our organization around the key questions.

What would you think about stripping Liquid Threats from the page (preserving as much content) and reordering everything around the key questions? My hope is that we can order all of the great brainstorming/surveys/data around a specific set of issues.

--JohnF 00:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I definitely see what you mean. I'll look at the threads to see how to reorganize the content using the traditional style of posting. FloNight 11:21, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Weekly Report 02

Hi, our Weekly Report 02 was due in yesterday. Are you able to look over it and make your final pass and sign it off? Randomran and I have contributed to it. I would also like to give Philippe a shout once it's completed as there are some points I would like him to take action on. --Bodnotbod 18:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Dispute Resolution Research

Hey FloNight, two weeks ago you mentioned that there was a study of dispute patterns over time, particularly at ArbCom. I was hoping you may have found something. Or, if it's a public study, then maybe you would know where to look? Let me know. Randomran 15:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I found the study. I need to get it into a form that I can link to on site. I'll do that today. FloNight 15:58, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Exciting! I hope it casts just a little bit of light on the problem. Hopefully a lot. Randomran 16:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It is an interesting study, but I'm not sure it has the answers to your concerns. FloNight 16:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I haven't gotten my hopes up too high :) I'm used to dead ends by now. Randomran 16:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[1] I linked to it. You'll have to down load it to read it. FloNight 16:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! You're right that it doesn't give us a lot of detail about how dispute patterns have changed over time. But there are still some interesting facts about how and why ArbCom was created. There is also some very sound economic theory. Definitely worth digging up. Randomran 17:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Meeting time

List your preferred day and time to meet for an interim status check on progress of the Community health task force work.

• I generally work on here Monday to Thursday and should be around from 1400 UTC and can be available up til 0200 UTC the following day (ie a couple of hours after midnight). Anything in that zone should be OK. --Bodnotbod 14:03, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• I'm pretty flexible. But I would probably prefer ... 0400 UTC? Guess that's not going to work. Haha. I guess it depends on how long we would like to meet. Randomran 15:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• I really can't put a time on it, I'm catching up when I can but I am being stretched in a number of directions at the moment. My net access is subject to the vagaries of the wifi network in my hotel which is at best intermittent. Sjc 19:52, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

This week didn't work out since I was out of town for Thanksgiving and could not guarantee that I would be available at a set time on Wed or Thursday (the two best days for others this week.) So, let's do it next Wednesday. Bodnotbod and Randomran, work out a time when both of you can be there. I can be available anytime that day as long as I know ahead of time. Then we will announce it and hope for the best that others can make it.

Do we want to have it on site on site or in IRC? Either works for me. If we do it in IRC then we will post the logs on site. FloNight 16:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

• Wednesday might be a little nuts. Thursday, at 2200 or 2300 UTC? Could people do that? Otherwise, I'll see what I can do. Randomran 17:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Tuesday, Wed, or Thursday work for me, but since the Strategic Planning meetings are usually on Tues. (iirc) then I though Wed was better. Thurs wll be fine. Everyone is invited to attend, the more the merrier. But I wanted to get you three to attend if at all possible because you all have done the most work so far. FloNight 23:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Shall we say Wednesday 22:00 UTC then? --Bodnotbod 23:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Above, Randomran says that he prefers Thursday. Would Thursday work for you? FloNight 00:58, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

• Hey guys. This week is nuts and I'm a little behind. I will try to be there for 2200, but it may be closer to 2230 when all is said and done. I hope that's okay. Randomran 21:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• If I can keep my eyelids propped open I should be good for this tonight. I got a wifi-max receiver and my bandwidth problems seem to have largely abated. Sjc 21:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• BTW this is going to be in the #wikimedia-strategy channel I presume? Sjc 21:35, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm around now. Are my time zone calculations right? I haven't used IRC in ages, so I'd appreciate someone pointing me to a web-based client. I'll be checking back soon. Randomran 22:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the additions...

...to the editor rewards and awards page. I had no idea there were so many contests. It makes me think that those structures could be expanded rather than attempting to come up with something entirely new. They seem like a viable way of finding a project's best contributors; it would be nice if the WMF would support a few contests by sending a letter to the winners. --Bodnotbod 15:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome :-)

I agree that there are already loads of good ideas that can be expanded on. I think that the Foundation could be more active in driving these type of efforts in order to make them work better.

There also are numerous Wikiprojects mostly topic based. Some of these are very well organized and staffed. I would like to figure out ways to make the less active more successful.

I think it will be better to build on what already exists whenever possible. FloNight 15:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

tools

Hey... hope things are going well. I noticed you found a tool that tracks users' edits over time. Do you know of a tool that does the same thing for articles? I wanted to look at some activity patterns for our analysis. Randomran 14:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that there may be some. I'll look and see what I can find. FloNight 16:04, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

• Jackpot. I'm going to dig around and see what trends I can find on the more administrative types of pages. Let me know if you think of anything else. Randomran 21:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

• • The tool seems to have a limit of the past 50,000 edits. It's run by Aka. Not sure how to go about lifting that limit. I think it would be interesting to analyze the history of edits at AN/I. Randomran 22:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably easiest to just ask Aka to create a version of the tool without that limit. -- Philippe 22:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Care to use some of that "I'm a facilitator from WMF" magic? :) I don't particularly want to wade back into Wikipedia, and I think you would get more enthusiasm from Aka than little old me. Randomran 00:00, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I get magic with this job? I had no idea. :-) But either way, I wrote Aka and pointed him/her here. :) -- Philippe 00:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

;-) FloNight 01:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks magic man! :) Randomran 02:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but lifting the limit is not possible. Generating the page would take too long and would use too many ressources. But I created a static version of the requested page: http://vs.aka-online.de/WP_AN_I.html If you need another page, please let me know (E-mail or de:user talk:aka). -- Aka 17:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Aka, thank you for your prompt reply. :-) Randomran, do you want him to do any other pages? FloNight♥♥♥ 17:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! There's a lot of interesting pages worth analyzing, but there's only one I need help with:

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests has more than 50,000 edits, going back earlier than 2005.

That's the only one I need help with. The others are less than 50,000, so I think I'm okay:

• We can factor in the other ArbCom pages, which have divided up some of the activity since 2009.
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Amendment
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Active sanctions
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Declined requests (This is an index. Should we include it? We probably won't need to.)
• Looking at other dispute resolution...
  • Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts is very interesting.
  • The other forms of dispute resolution are more infrequent, and depend on the style of the conflict... so I'm not sure they're worth analyzing

Can you think of any others? Randomran 20:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

User conduct RFCs, and Mediation Committee, and Mediation Cabal are some other official and semi-official places where dispute resolution occurs on English Wikipedia. More people use these than Arbitration since Arbitration is suppose to be the last step in dispute resolution. FloNight♥♥♥ 20:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I've found three with more than 50,000 that I need help with:

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

I'll look into those other avenues... but in my limited experience, I'm not sure they get used in all cases, even though they should be. Randomran 20:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh no! Missed the meeting!

Hi, sorry. I missed the meeting. Is there a log of the IRC chat. I had written myself a note to attend. Damn. So sorry. Please respond here as to the log and I'll keep an eye on this page. Very sorry. Stupid of me. --Bodnotbod 08:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it's OK, I think I've found the chat log. --Bodnotbod 08:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Grin

I'm a thief. I admit it. -- Philippe 21:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

;-) FloNight♥♥♥ 21:15, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Decision table

I put together a little table for us to fiddle with. We may as well work on it as a group, and try to throw up some numbers. There will probably be some debate, but hopefully there will be enough consensus that we can can out the obvious ones that aren't too useful, and focus in on a hand full for our last 5-6 weeks of work. The idea being is we'd eventually be down to four by mid January.

Area of Recommendation	Priority	Impact	Feasibility	Desirability	Total
Rewards	00	00	00	00	00
Social Networking	00	00	00	00	00
Usability/Tutorials	00	00	00	00	00
Decision Processes	00	00	00	00	00
Organizational Structure	00	00	00	00	00
Policy	00	00	00	00	00
Goals and Target-Setting	00	00	00	00	00
Research and Measures	00	00	00	00	00
Help and Documentation	00	00	00	00	00
Ponies	02	01	02	04	09

Since this stuff is confusing, I can make some tweaks if you want some help. I thought this might be a useful framework for a discussion. Randomran 02:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure. We need a way to evaluate the recommendations and this works. We can see if any one else wants us to look at it using additional evaluation tools, too. One thing that occurred to me is that some of the proposals/recommendations could fall under several areas. This muddies up the process in some ways. But looking at the recommendations in this way is doable, I think. FloNight♥♥♥ 17:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I figure these are the broad areas of recommendation that have come up. I'm sure there is some overlap. There may even be more areas to focus on. Before we start evaluating these 9 areas, we may want to list them, and ask people if they see any other broad areas worth focusing on. Then we can get to narrowing down the recommendations most worthwhile. Randomran 20:22, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work, Random. I definitely support using the table. Couple of questions; I guess you won't host it here on this talk page? I have nothing against that, but it does seem like something that would be better placed on our task force page. Secondly, I wonder how we're going to populate it with figures? The proposal pages have their own voting modules built on, but this is not true of the recommendations pages. Perhaps they're easy to add, though, I don't know. Otherwise I guess we'll just have to note down our individual votes somewhere and do the maths from there? --Bodnotbod 14:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I posted it here just as an example. Whenever FloNight thinks we're ready, we should migrate it to the TF and get to work on it. I think that we can work out the numbers through the wiki process with a solid week of discussion. My hope is that some of them will be obviously of "low value", and we'd scrap them. Some would be of obvious high value, and we'd want to get to work on them. The challenge would be that we would disagree about the value of a few of them... so we'd have to discuss, and even work on a preliminary proposal until we had a better idea of how to value it. But this exercise should let us shorten the list down to at least 6, if not less. Randomran 15:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Jolly good. Another... erm, not "concern" as such, but where I could use some guidance; I put together those pages for editor awards and rewards, social features and tutorials, which all match up to a heading on the table, so each of those has some semblance of a central place people can go to research and then discuss them. Can anyone point me towards any kind of venues I can visit to find out Strategy on "organizational structure" and "decision processes"? Or does it all tend to be scattered about? --Bodnotbod 18:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It's really scattered.

• Organizational Structure was something that came out of discussing Governance. FloNight thought that governance was useful to discuss admins, moderators, and bureaucrats. But she thought that even "lower level" roles were useful, like job assignments, and specializations. It made a lot of sense to me, hence thinking more about organizational structure/roles than just governance. (E.g.: lower-level roles such as this one, or a discussion such as this one)
• Decision making is a drum I've been beating. But I've had some good conversations with a lot of different people. Right now we've done a good job of identifying problems with consensus-building (Wikipedia is much larger now, and people have stronger views, and people exploit the consensus-building process to hold back progress). This thread is useful. So is this one. This thread does a good job of identifying the root problem with our current decision-making / consensus processes. It came up at the Quality Task force too, so I chimed in.

I actually think these are two of the most important things we can work on. But at this point, I have more data about problems than I have ideas for solutions. Randomran 19:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Randomran, go ahead and move it off my talk page to a group page. Either to the task force talk page, or to it's own page with a link to the page and a description added to the task force talk page. FloNight♥♥♥ 12:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

• I'm sending out a mass message: Randomran 01:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• • Sending out a mass message to check in at: Task force/Community Health/Recommendation evaluation

• • We don't need to pin down our recommendations until mid-January. But we've had a lot of discussions about possible recommendations to focus on. Our hope is to narrow down the larger list to some recommendations that we feel have the most potential.

• • Check in at the discussion page over there. Randomran 01:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

beep :)

I figure you're busy. (Something about the holidays causes every work place to ramp up at some point in December.) But as soon as you have a minute, it would be really helpful to have your insights at Task force/Community Health/Recommendation evaluation. A few of us have suggested three recommendations that are not worth pursuing (compared to other areas that could have more impact). We could use your input in that thread, so we can find a way to tighten our focus in the last month of work.

(And if you think the list is incomplete, and there is an area that we missed, feel free to point it out in this other thread. I'm hoping we've covered the best ones in the current list, though.)

I've been following along and will comment today. The only problem that I see is that looking at policy was a mandate given to our task force so we need to consider that aspect before we decide to pass on addressing it. FloNight♥♥♥ 12:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Definitely understand that part of our mandate. Sue Gardner, the executive director, had some interesting thoughts which I quoted at Policy and community health. She thought that tackling policy directly would be a bad idea, but had some ideas that we could focus on enabling the community to make better policy decisions. I think that might be encompassed in improving our organizational structure and/or improving our decision making processes. But let's take this discussion over there. Randomran 16:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Social networking: the stuff we spoke about last night

Hello. I've had a go at drafting something on the ideas we discussed last night. You can view it here: [2]. If you have any comments, please leave them on the discussion page of the recommendation; we may as well try to keep any discussion centralised. Hope you're well, --Bodnotbod 15:22, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Next steps (again)

Hi FloNight,

Thanks for all of your contributions to the strategy wiki to date! The strategic planning process wouldn't be where it is today without all of your help. Your early and frequent support was invaluable, and I want you to know how much of a difference that you made. I hope you'll continue to work towards finishing the plan...

We're about to move into the third and final phase of the process, and in many ways, this will be the most challenging. I'm hoping you will continue to be an active presence in shaping the movement's five year strategic plan.

Here are some concrete suggestions as to how you can help moving forward:

• Add your name to Strategic Planning:Hosts. This just formalizes what I think has been true all along; that you care about this process, and that you're doing what you can to help it along moving forward.
• Help organize and improve this wiki! Starting next week (January 18, 2010), we're going to be encouraging many more people to come participate, and we want to make sure this wiki is as presentable as possible. A comprehensive list of things to do is at Strategic Planning:To-do list.
• Invite people to participate! Encourage volunteers to discuss Task force/Recommendations.
• Finally, we need to clearly describe what this final phase is going to look like. In particular, we could use feedback and discussion on Strategic Planning:Decision-Making.

Let me know what you think! Many, many thanks! ~Philippe 01:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

We've had a good few months to discuss the Task Force recommendations, and it's important that we start converging on goals. If you could jump in on the most recent thread, that would be great. Thanks! --Eekim 18:52, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I am very happy that you have taken positively to my suggestion

User FloNight I am very happy that you have taken positively to my suggestion about community health. A healthy community understanding is a great start to improving the community. Spread the wikilove! mcjakeqcool Mcjakeqcool 11:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No general concenus? When there is any give us a bell asap. Mcjakeqcool 11:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Still no general concenus? When you get any give us a bell asap. mcjakeqcool Mcjakeqcool 09:58, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I am glad to announce that I have had some general concenus. Mcjakeqcool Mcjakeqcool 19:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)