Village pump/archive2

Task Force topics

I found a list of the task forces: Emerging strategic priorities. As you can see (Call for participation) on September 14 Phase II will begin. Goldzahn 13:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Are these pages ready for translation? Emerging strategic priorities and Call for participation/Task force application Goldzahn 19:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You are welcome to translate them, but they are very much works in progress and should be updated frequently. -- Philippe 05:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Than I will wait, but there are only a few days up to September 14. Goldzahn 10:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The actual list is not necessary on September 14th, just the call for participation, which is up for translation now. :) -- Philippe 12:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposals List: a further improvement

This is an idea: on the call for proposals list, we now have proposals arranged by category and then alphabetical order. A great leap from what we had at first, but as many proposals belong to more than one category, they get to occur on the list the same number of times as the categories they belong to. This, I feel, ads to confusion, despair (wow, that's too much to read) and generally bad economy. Please consider if this might not be a further improvement: On a table, arrange proposals alphabetically in the left column, indicate the categories they fall into in the right column(s). That would allow for current rankings to be posted too (we could actually have various columns, as needed, and the table itself may be invisible).

And Philippe, I see my proposal Proposal:Divide Wikipedia in the Restricted editing category. While I do contemplate certain very specific restrictions, I feel it's far from being the defining feature of the proposal. I can't move it myself (or can I?) so I am asking you to do it, or have it done for me. I feel it would be placed much more properly in categories to do with quality, or outreach, for example. I would be very much obliged indeed. -- Thamus ^joyfulnoise 06:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

On the table request, see User:Dedalus/table indeed on the left alphabetically sorted proposals, and one column per category. The table has not been prettified yet. Good luck with adding rankings. Dedalus 10:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Navigation menu to pages in the user language

On the Dutch village pump a dutch user asked if it would be possible to change the navigation menu (at te left) to link to the pages in the user langauage, as specified in the user preferences, So for instance the first link Main Page/Hoofdpagina should link to Main Page/nl.

We tried this by creating MediaWiki:Mainpage/nl, but this did not work. On commons:Hoofdpagina and meta:Hoofdpagina it somehow does work. Reading the mediawiki mw:Manual:Interface/Sidebar I think it might need a change as described in mw:Manual:$wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg. Is that correct, and who can help? HenkvD 18:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi HenkvD, I'm going to ask around... in the meantime, if you want to file a Bugzilla bug request (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org) and cc me on it, that might also get someone who knows... -- Philippe 06:04, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel confident to do that, as I don't know if this really is the solution. Feel free to place the request and cc me in. HenkvD 09:48, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Offline Projects

Wikipedians - Do you know many offline projects exist? And what their purposes are?

So far, the Strategy Project Team has identified (mainly from killer presentations at Wikimania) 4 major offline projects: English Wikipedia 1.0 (Mark Alec Walker), One Laptop per Child (SJ), German Wikipedia 1.0, and of course, Kingston USB's being passed out by Kul with English, Spanish, and Portuguese wikipedias....

Do you know of more? Do you know what purposes they serve? What do you think of offline use? Thanks Serita 18:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• german wp:
  • Das WIKIPEDIA Lexikon (The lead section of the thousand most read articles)
  • Text-DVD plus 3 picture-DVD or only one text-DVD. I think those DVDs are the result of the openZIM project: (A free standard for Wikipedia offline content)

Proposal:Offline_Wikipedia links m:Static content group where you can find also m:Polska Wikipedia na DVD (z Helionem)/en, w:it:Wikipedia:DVD (DVD EXA; italian only, sorry). Italian DVD was quite successful (although far from perfect): we sold some 20-25.000 copies (we could do much more, yes). Nemo 08:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

My name is Joshua, and I'd like to say hello first off. Second off, my comments on offline wikis. I believe an update script should be kept with the kingston drives, therefore they can be plugged in anywhere and be updated as a personal database, as the opprotunity to do so arises. Sorta like usenet used to be, but with a removeable storage medium. Thank you. jds35901 at gmail dot com

as an addendum to the above: create an html folder with a script that will allow wiki editing, to be transmitted to the update server, creating a two way communication via kingston drives. Thank you again, Joshua.

and another addendum as I seem to be having a brainstorm, The kingston project can be combined or act in concert with, the one laptop project whereby wikipedia becomes a distributed program like SETI@HOME used to be, only furthering the resource dissemination even further and allowing the creating of a simulated network layer, solely based on the kingstons.

Collaborating on proposals

Is it allowed to edit other peoples proposals? It is pitty when original idea goes away, but on the other hand it would be nice to aggregate similar proposals to one to have a single proposal on a topic.--Kozuch 15:20, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

It is a wiki - so yes, improvements are welcome. Dedalus 14:42, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

No, they're vital! Please do not let proposals alone. :-) Nemo 14:07, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

African Wikipedians

I am looking to speak or e-mail with someone who has experience editing an African language Wikipedia to help bring more diverse perspectives as we are building the fact base. If anyone is interested or know someone who might be interested in speaking with me please contact me via my talk page Sarah476 16:41, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Spamming the talk pages - an explanation

User:Thamus pointed out something to me the other day, and it was a very good point that I wanted to bring up here. I was asked (not by Thamus) why it was that I spammed the talk pages of all the proposals with a question about the impact of them. I went on to spell out my reasons, and Thamus suggested that it might be a good idea to post them for wider viewing, and Thamus is right. So, the reasons are:

• First, at Wikimania in our presentation to the Board of Trustees, one of the things that they specifically asked was that that we include that question on all proposals. So I'm partially doing it because it was asked by the Board, but I also happen to think it's a good idea, because:
• It's a great way to get discussion about that particular question, and I'm pleased to see it happening on some proposals. I think the net result is positive.

It was then suggested that I could have added an "Impact" section to proposals. (Thanks, User:Kozuch for the questions and thoughts).

Yeah, adding an Impact section to the proposals was my first thought; I was concerned about having the template change in mid-submission though. I didn't want some to have a section that others didn't, and going back to add it to already submitted proposals might have been problematic. This seemed like the lowest-impact method, and it could be done by a bot and so not clutter recent changes.

So, there it is. Thanks, Kozuch and Thamus for the discussion and for pointing out that I should have, well, pointed out my reasoning. :-) -- Philippe 01:28, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I think this should be solved by redesigning the new proposal template more carefully. If the bots will start talking in discussion, they may end up deciding for us :) Audriusa 13:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC).

Impact template

I was going to ask why this spamming was occurring until I discovered this item. However, I have to ask, what is the purpose of the template shown below?

My observations:

• It offers nothing more to the recipient than does the spam message, which is rather blunt and unfriendly.
• It is delivered anonymously - something that should be avoided when communicating with new contributors.
• It gives the appearance of something it is not - a means to trigger a quick response dialogue.

Downsize43 11:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Need some volunteers

We're going to be launching the Call for participation early this week. We will be asking people to submit themselves or others as candidates to serve on task forces to evaluate particular areas of interest for a specific mandate. Obviously, I hope that everyone who participates here will also volunteer to do that - but I have an immediate need for people to help with handling the response to that call.

It's quite easy - we've got a defined set of criteria, and you just look at the application, evaluate whether the application meets the criteria and then it goes to a second group who will make the final task force assignments. If you're willing to help out with this process, would you kindly let me know, either here or on my talk page? Many thanks! I'm not going to need a ton of people, so if I get more volunteers than I need for this, please don't be offended if I ask to retain your name for future opportunities to take advantage of your willingness. :-) -- Philippe 01:15, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

• Dedalus 18:12, 13 September 2009 (UTC) great task!
• Count me in Delphine (notafish) 08:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
• Possibly, I'm not 100% sure but I'll put my name down as a possible. --Bodnotbod 07:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm a glass artist with time on my hands. I already applied for Task Force acceptance, so I am assuming you got enough people, but retain my email, and if you need a grunt let me know jds35901 at gmail dot com

• Az1568 19:38, 24 September 2009 (UTC) I'd be happy to help if needed.

Review the "nature" of proposals

Hi all, I've been browsing this wiki for some time and I have to say that I am amazed at the number of proposals. I am also a bit overwhelmed at the "nature" of the proposals. It seems to me we could do with some categorization about the "nature" of the proposals. My observation is that some are highly strategical, while others are tactical, others propose processes, and finally some are putting emphasis on very narrow action points. I think it might be interesting to try and qualify the proposals so as to have a better overview of what we have. I am thinking of the following "qualifications".

• Broad strategical scope: this would include proposals that are more "bird's eye view", ie. proposals that are highly strategical and which entail a global strategical vision.
• Focused strategical scope: This would include proposals that are a little more focused (ie. on one project or on one item), but still propose strategical vision.
• Broad Tactical scope: This would include proposals that propose some kind of tactical implementation as to how to tackle a broad issue. They are more "down to earth" than the previous ones, and usually propose steps to make sure an issue is resolved. They could by definition probably be considered sub-proposals of any of the proposals qualified as strategical.
• Focused tactical scope: This would include proposals which are more focused than the previous category. They usually propose processes and steps to resolve a very clear issue.
• Action points : This is the most focused category, it would include proposals that define an action, a step to be taken.

I am not sure whether this makes sense for anyone else than me, so comments are more than welcome to refine those categories.

I am also not sure if "more categorization" is the way to go, it could be that we try and add at the end of each proposal which elements come into which categories, as some proposals might be highly strategical, but their phrasing makes them look more like tactical proposals. Again, comments welcome. Delphine (notafish) 08:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. Such a categorization is feasible and would be useful, but I'm afraid that it would be seen as a judgment of the proposal: "My proposal if implemented would have very broad and wonderful effects, it's obviously a broad strategical scope!". :-/ Nemo 14:25, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking about that. But that's why we should be careful to make sure that qualification is argumented. There are proposals out there that are borderline, of course, but some are clearly operational, or strategical. And it can also be that a project in the more "actionnable" categories has some elements of strategical and vice-versa. That's why category might not be the best thing. Delphine (notafish) 21:07, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection and, in fact, support this strongly. I don't want to get us to a place, though, where we're arguing over the merits of proposals, so when there is significant disagreement, I'd rather that a proposal not be included in this scheme, unless consensus can be determined. With that said, clearly, were going to need to separate the wheat from the chaff, and this is a logical and constructive (while still being direct, specific, and non-judgmental) way to do it. -- Philippe 03:45, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the idea, but I wonder whether there's the manpower to actually categorise them anyway. I'm still finding I am the only voter on many of the proposals and we're about to go into stage #2. That really worries me. It would appear that many proposals (some of them very good ones) have hardly had anyone look at them. I believe I've looked at more than 75% of them now. I'd be hard pressed to go back over them categorising, it was hard enough work getting through that many once. Although I would be happy to categorise my favourites according to the suggestion above. --Bodnotbod 06:33, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Through the ongoing process we as movemement have received a fair amount of valuable feedback. People followed up on our call to come up with proposals. They have devoted their time, energy and effort to let us know what they think. Each proposal has its own merit, and we should process all proposals diligently and with respect for the proposer. For example, the list of proposals for new language version does learn us the organization, processes and procedures on and around meta aren't very well known. At least one task force should follow up on those proposals, thanking the proposer for their effort, showing them the way to meta, making sure the proposal ends up in the queue of requests for new languages and will be considered seriously. Analogously I would suggest for the list of proposals for new projects. Anyway, I would rather characterize these two kinds of proposals rather wheat than chaff, showing the involvement of our volunteers, and showing the creativity of imagination of how Wikimedia would look like five years from now, and learning us our processes for decision making aren't half as transparant as we would like them to be. Of course, just like Notafish do I prefer a high level of abstract strategy - that would start by looking out to our environment, rather than looking, and more importantly, trying to grasp on going change in our environment, and how our environment might look like five years from now. The last thing would be the normal thing to do for ordinary organizations. Our movement has grown to a considerable level of world domination, being a major factor in disrupting several industries. We disrupted the paper encyclopedia publishing industry. The "news industry" sees Wikipedia as a threat big enough not to ignore and try to cope by changing their behavior. Some GLAM institutions see Wikipedia as a threat to, some are fighting back, some have opened a dialogue. Part of a high level abstract strategy is watching them watching us. We have an option to lead, to do the right thing. We have the option to develop a story to tell news agencies, media, educational institutions, GLAM how to act, react, cope and deal with the existence and presence of Wikimedia five years from now. To show them the benefits for themselves in doing so. To show them the benefits for their customers in doing so. This strategy process is not a reaction to changes in the environment of our organization. This strategy process is about how we have changed our environment in the past five years and that we have to cope with the motion set forth in our environment by ourselves. Please note what I did write: it is an option we have to lead, if we want to. Do we want to lead, that is the big question. Is there an alternative? Can't we walk or move side by side, neither leading, nor following? The categorization scheme proposed by Notafish sounds to much to me like you didn't give me the answer I wanted to hear. Maybe asking different questions might give you different answers. Maybe all those hundreds of proposals is shouting feedback in our ears we don't want to hear, or don't want to listen to. Maybe the last thing is our major strategic problem. Dedalus 08:31, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I posted some thoughts on what to do next for proposals at Talk:Call for proposals#What_Next.3F --Eekim 15:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I never said I liked highly strategical proposals best. As a matter of fact, I find some "would-be higher level proposals" actually give less real strategical vision than others that might be phrased in a more action-oriented way. And I am sorry to say that overall, I hardly understand what you're trying to say with your comment. My point is not to say "this can't be taken into account in the process" and "this can", but to make sure that we understand the underlying strategical implications of some of the proposals that might seem rather "operational".

To give an example: Proposal:Hire Nikerabbit and Siebrand is one of the proposals I would put int he category Focused tactical scope or even action point, but it does tackle a very important focused strategical scope which is making sure that Wikimedia scales up to multilingualism to extend its reach.

I do not believe that categorizing or qualifying the proposals in the way I suggest is a way to shut ourselves to feedback, but on the contrary, it is a way to show that we care and that we are thankful for people who provide not only reflexion points, but also tangible solutions to real issues. Delphine (notafish) 09:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Delphine, and I think this is a great idea. --Eekim 15:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to categorize proposals not by timespan they are covering but rather by feasibility and sanity (yea I know how this sounds, feel free to find a better word). There are already lots of proposals which will certainly never be implemented, either because they are contrary to the Foundation's mission or because they are simply not feasible. We need to find a way to highlight important proposals which actually have a chance of implementation so users can discuss those and do not have to waste time going through proposals which are basically not relevant. Regards, Linktitel

I've developed my favorites page to draw attention to what I think are the best proposals. Does anyone else have a favorites page they'd like to share? It may bring attention to proposals you like but others have overlooked. --Bodnotbod 11:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

A note on what happens next

Hi folks, I wanted to update you as to our next steps, so that you are prepared and in the loop. At some point tomorrow (North American tomorrow), we'll launch the Call for participation, which will invite people to present themselves or nominate others for service on one of the volunteer task forces. This will be advertised with a global central notice to all sites, all projects. Unlike our last centralnotice, which was only visible to logged in users of the projects, this one will be visible to both logged in users and anonymous users. Experience has shown that during the time that a central notice is visible to anonymous users, we will get a spike in activity on this wiki, including some fairly high levels of vandalism. I expect to spend the better part of tomorrow preparing for that. We are deploying all the usual tools and all of us are asked to welcome new users and assume a massive amount of good faith - but should there be any problems, administrators are encouraged to protect the wiki and not allow disruptive activities. As with all Wikimedia wikis, all users are encouraged to revert vandalism on sight. Please be as welcoming as possible and assume massive amounts of good faith.

You can leave a message for administrators at the Strategic Planning:Administrator's Noticeboard, or if you should need immediate help with anything, I intend to spend a good deal of time the IRC channel for this project, which is (#wikimedia-strategy at freenode). You can access the chat by going to https://webchat.freenode.net/ and filling in a username and the channel name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a security warning. It's fine.

It's exciting to think of the great new input we'll get! -- Philippe 17:23, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, in my haste to make sure you were informed, I told you too soon. The launch has been delayed until Monday, 21 September. -- Philippe 15:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Does that mean I won't be able to fill in an (English) application form until 21st Sept? --Bodnotbod 16:54, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

That's correct. Because we're limiting the number of applications accepted, we're rolling everything out at the same time, otherwise we'd disadvantage non-English speaking contributors. -- Philippe 18:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Saves me refreshing the "application" page every couple of hours :o) --Bodnotbod 19:20, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I´ve seen volunteer.wikimedia.org. Is that the way the Appeal letter and the Task force application letter will be published? At the moment only 5 Task force application letters are translated. Is that a problem? Maybe a site notice across all Wikimedia projects would help to get a lot of translations, so that the appeal could start next week. Goldzahn 20:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

That's how it will be delivered yes. We have people actively working translations.... the letter is available in about 19 languages now, though not yet localized to that site. That's my project for tonight. :) -- Philippe 21:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Welcomes

Is there welcome bot for this wiki? I thought I saw in some discussion that there was one. But a quick look at New user pages shows that some people starting user pages over the last few days are not getting a welcome message on there talk page. FloNight 12:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

<grumble> StrategyBot is supposed to be doing that. Thanks for pointing out its adject failure. It will be appropriately disciplined, and I'll leave some welcomes. -- Philippe 12:17, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

call for proposal page

Can we get links of most edited proposal talk page link on call for proposal page Mahitgar 13:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Changes to the ReaderFeedback tool

Hi folks, With the upgrades that went out tonight, we got an upgrade to the ReaderFeedback tool, which is used for evaluating proposals. At our request, the reporting tool was changed slightly. So, for those of you who were using the old Special: pages to view results... they won't work. :) There's a new page, Special:RatedPages, which consolidates the reporting into one page, and also adds a category for "moderately rated pages" - that is, any pages where the scores put them in neither the high or low categories, but they have received more than the threshold of votes to trigger reporting (which right now is set to 15). I think this is a real step towards some more data for us, and I'm really pleased with how quickly it was rolled out. Your feedback is welcomed... -- Philippe 14:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

A major leap forward. The list doesn't show the rating per page. The list is ordered in ascending order. I'll try to make a sortable table with content tag categories per proposal plus columns for priority, impact, feasibility and desirability in categories 'poor', 'moderate' and 'high'. Probably Thamus would love to see that. Dedalus 15:46, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

From my own reading I've seen so few proposals with even 5 votes that 15 seems a high benchmark indeed. Do we have any data (or even a sense) of the extent to which people are using their 'favorites' page? I'm still deeply concerned that rather than proposals standing out because of their own merit they're the ones that a) appear near the top of the 'call for proposals' page or b) have incredibly engaging titles. As someone who had a damn good try to get through the entire list I well understand that very few people are not going to suffer from proposal overload before reaching the majority of them. --Bodnotbod 16:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

If we get much further along, I'll probably ask to have the threshold reduced - but I'm hoping that the lack of proposals appearing on those pages will serve as an incentive to rate.... -- Philippe 17:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, here we go ... selected all who have a (not poor) rating on Priority, Impact and Feasibility, showing rank on these aspects. Please note that only 54 received more than 14 votes on at least one aspect. Desirability hasn't crossed the treshold yet. The table doesn't show Keep the servers running. That proposal is rated high on all aspects (except desirability): Dedalus 18:14, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal	Priority	Impact	Feasibility
.WIKI. and .WK. top level domains	1	9	5
Graveyard	5	15	15
Visualization methods	6	17	2
Filtering out vandalism in edit history	9	12	17
Change Wikipedia Notability Guidelines	10	21	8
Universal login eligibility by default	11	3	23
Universal User Page	12	10	19
Wikischolarships	13	18	10
Peer review by academic institutions	14	24	1
Board transparency	16	14	18
WYSIWYG default editor	18	25	14
Inline SVG preference	19	8	21
Offline Wikipedia	23	31	13
Expert review	25	29	6
A central wiki for interlanguage links	26	28	20
Easier Editing	27	33	7
A "be bold" campaign	28	20	22
Multilingual Wiktionary	29	30	11

Thanks Dedalus, that's extremely interesting. Would you be able to repost it so that it has another three columns that give, after the number of votes, the score received for each category? As it stands this table gives us an idea of those drawing traffic but it could be because they're either really bad or really good. --Bodnotbod 23:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Special:RatedPages doesn't show score. It does show a list ordered by rating=score. I numbered the proposals in such a list, with 1 the proposal on top of the list which has the lowest rating, 2 for the proposal appearing second having lowest but one rating, and so on (so the numbers in the table above are ranks, not votes). The proposal Keep the servers running tops them all. All proposals in the table or not poor: they are all rated moderate priority, moderate impact and moderate feasibility. And yes only proposals with high traffic are shown, that are proposals with more than 14 votes. But again, the numbers in the table aren't the number of votes, but ranks. Dedalus 07:33, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

curl read for half the Proposals the ratings, which I subsequently semi-automatically compiled into user:dedalus/firsthalf table with the average rating on all 4 aspects and showing the number of votes cast. Dedalus 20:12, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, dude, where's my toolbar?

For those of you who were using and have grown dependent on the new beta toolbar.... Brion disabled it today due to a regression on IE...

From the techblog:

Due to compatibility problems on Internet Explorer after yesterday’s code update, I’ve temporarily disabled the Usability Initiative’s beta advanced toolbar. If you’ve had it enabled, you’ll just get the regular old edit toolbar until we re-enable it.

Hopefully we should have this resolved within a day or so, and it’ll be back on for all our happy testers!

– brion

-- I've asked if we could have it back, since we didn't seem to be having problems, but re-enabling it will almost certainly be low priority compared to fixing it...

Updated: Brion says it works fine... until it doesn't. And then it hangs browsers. Since that is definitely "user impact" it'll stay off for the next day or so.

-- Philippe 21:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Help translate "Random proposals"

Please help translate the navigation menu option "Random proposals" on my sandbox. HenkvD 12:34, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Can't create new proposal

Tried to create a proposal with the title "Globalize Reliable Sources" and received the Bad title message. Did i screwed up somewhere or the deadline is passed?

Thanks --KrebMarkt 19:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Good luck with editing Proposal:Globalize Reliable Sources (the deadline hasn't passed). Dedalus 20:08, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'm done with the first draft off it feel free to give your inputs. --KrebMarkt 21:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. Dedalus 21:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Kompass 2020 - Wikimedia Deutschland's strategy planning process

I would like to give notice of Wikimedia Deutschland's strategic planning process, which is going on at the same time. You will find information at m:Kompass_2020 (it's brandnew and only in german so far).

To make the process identifiable and memorable we choose the over-all-title "Kompass 2020". It stands for the long-term-intent and the direction-giving-aim.

Some short information about the process:

• Wikimedia Germany's board determined 6 stakeholder-groups to focus on.
• The board set up a vision (up to 10 years) containing 12 single statements.
• The next step was to establish 5 ressorts within the board and find board-members to fill them.
• The ressorts worked to prepare related strategic key goals (4-5 years) and discussed them at the last board-meeting (about a week ago) with all board members. So we fixed in sum 41 strategic key goals and started yesterday to publish and discuss them openely on meta or our mailinglist with everyone who is interested.
• Planning-Teams composed of staff and interested stakeholders will start their work soon to determine operational goals (1-2 years) which follow the strategic goals and meet needs and expectations.
• At the next board meeting in November the board will deal about the outcome of a) the discussions about the key goals and b) the planning teams.
• The next months will be used to work on necessary infrastructure and to complete the whole plan.
• The annual meeting next in spring 2010 will be the place to deliver the plan, discuss and finalize it.

More information about the process and the timeline at m:Kompass_2020/Entstehung.

Why am I telling about that? I'm sure that for both strategy planning processes exchange can be very useful. We have the chance to change our view from the big international movement thinking to chapter's goals, which of course are related, and the other way back. Perhaps we are able to proof if we are working on feasible goals and realise how approaches effect one another. I will try to keep you informed, please let me know what you think about it. Lyzzy 15:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This is really fantastic. Thanks, Lyzzy, for sharing it. I'll watch it with interest. -- Philippe 15:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Guiding paper

Serita has begun work on the guiding paper for this process - I'm sure she can tell you more about what it is, but I wanted to point out that it's linked from the main page, and is here. Please note that as with everything else, this is an incremental editing process, so your feedback is greatly desired. -- Philippe 16:44, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Is that the "guiding paper" mentioned at Emerging strategic priorities#Task Force Mandate and Process#Phase_I:_Level-setting? Goldzahn 17:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

That's the one :) -- Philippe 17:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Please use a consisten name. Why is it called State of the nation instead of Guiding paper as mentioned on the Main page and the pages mentioned above? HenkvD 17:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks... am still working out what to call this... It won't be guiding paper or state of the nation... Will resolve today. Thanks Serita 18:19, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Whatever we do, we can set up redirects. :) -- Philippe 18:37, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This smells bad

In my experience, whenever people tend to use terms like the one used on this site, it means a vast amount of waste is going on. This whole project raises several 'red flags' for me. First is the fact that it seems to come from top-down rather than bottom up. There is nothing in the Board of Trustees resolutions about starting a project like this, and it certainly did not come from the community. By process of elimination, it must have come from the small executive paid staff of the Foundation. Another issue is the addition of two names to the paid staff, Eugene Eric Kim and Philippe Beaudette, on the Wikimedia Foundation website. These people have vague titles, no information as to their duties, do not appear on the organization chart, and were not brought on using the usual open process for hiring new staff for the Foundation. There is also no information regarding the cost of this whole project, but I suspect it is high. While the aims of this project are noble, these areas of concern, taken together, make me very concerned about the whole thing. It looks and smells way too much like many money wasting projects done by for-profit corporations that end up with lots of harmful 'programs' and benefit no one except the external consulting companies. In particular, I think the following things should be done: • Clearly describe Kim and Beaudette's duties on the Wikimedia Foundation website as well as who they are accountable to. • State the cost of this whole project so the community can decide if it is worth it. • In general, run this more like the Wikimedia Usability Initiative, which is doing great work and has none of the bad smell this has. Mr. Quickling 22:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Process/Background links to the April 2009 board resolution that started this whole process. Philippe is paid staff; I'm a contractor. I report directly to Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Foundation, and Philippe reports to me. Both of us came on board through an open hiring process that was widely advertised on the Foundation website in May 2009. I will publish a budget for the project in a few weeks; I'm ironing out a few details now.

In the meantime, I hate to think the project smells, and I'll do my part to clear the air. :-) I hope you'll do your best to Assume Good Faith about my role and intention as well. This is about the future of Wikimedia, and we hope that everyone who cares will come together to help shape it. --Eekim 22:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

And, FYI, these are the original job postings (and job descriptions) for which Philippe and Eugene applied, along with many other candidates:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Facilitator_%28Strategic_Plan%29

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Project_Manager_%28Strategic_Plan%29

Please give the project a chance and specifically check out some of the great proposals that have been submitted already in a completely bottom-up fashion (a good way to find the best ones is to check out the Favorites pages that several users have built).--Eloquence 04:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello! I am new here but was drawn to join and post (which i assume is done with an edit) by "wikimedia's" corporate marketing efforts. You contacted me with this marketing effort! Seeing the "This smells bad" section made me feel like this was the place for it.

Wikipedia was (and is) a beautiful creation. But why can't the creators have a success like Wikipedia and then humbly step back to serve its genius, as have so many volunteers? Why must you try to turn it in to a corporate modeled opportunity to advance a career, a persona? From where I sit, the bad smell is that of ego and careerism.

So as you go in circles, trying to figure out what is wrong or going wrong or may go wrong with Wikipedia, consider that the answer is, most likely, YOU! Jolieg 10:59, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Template for localized links

Hi!!!

What do you think of creating a template that allow the users to use the following sintax when creating links to the localized versions of the project pages?

{{Localized link|Target Page}}

When the template would be inserted in a "Page/Language code" id should check if the "Target Page/Language code" exists and if this is the case, create a link to it; if not, just link to the fallback language (for example, the original English page) and ad a "(en)" besides the link.

It seems to be possible to do, but I don't know if it is desirable...

This would be useful for localized pages which have links to non localized pages, because then we wouldn't need to be updating the links after the creation of each page...

Any thoughts? Helder 00:39, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, but don't you need a local description too? HenkvD 17:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I created a Template:Localized link with 2 parameters: 1-Target page 2-Local description. I added this for test on Template:Main pages navigation/nl. HenkvD 12:05, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for where Wikimedia money should go:

Towards software development & servers. ie: Categories is a mess - Fix it. "Strategic planning" = not so useful. Bensaccount 03:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

You know, it's a wiki. :-) -- Philippe 22:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Really? I thought it was a cat. Bensaccount 18:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This guy is correct - three quaters of this "strategy" site"s proposals are little feature requests half of which already are in bugzilla but no-one cared about them. --Kozuch 20:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

This is something we hear rather frequently, and I guess we need to add it to an FAQ somewhere. In strategic planning, one of the things that you do not do is tell people what you want to hear, because even when you get input you don't expect, there are lessons to be learned from it. In this case, what we're hearing is that, for instance, some of our existing processes are insufficient for the tasks or people don't know where to request particular features. That is a strategic lesson learned from a tactical proposal. -- Philippe 19:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Well that explains why it wasn't using the sandbox properly. Still doesn't improve the software though. Bensaccount 03:43, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

something is broken

If you look at Template:Languages/Call for participation/Appeal letter you will find, that only 40 languages are shown, but actually there are more than 40. I found, that the same is at the main page. There is somewhere a mistake. Goldzahn 16:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem is Template:Languages. By the way, that template shouldn´t be editable Goldzahn 16:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Goldzahn. Looks like we might have overwhelmed the template. I'm looking into that today. -- Philippe 18:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. I added 20 extra parematers. Is that enough? HenkvD 18:17, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, HenkvD! that should be enough for a while. -- Philippe 18:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Blogs and stuff

If you see any blog posts floating around about this process, would you please add them to the Writings page? It's nice to have a historical record. Thanks! -- Philippe 22:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Comprehensibility

Some of these proposals don't actually make sense to me and I would like to suggest adding a Comprehensibility tag ranging from I fully understand what is being suggested here to I don't understand this. WereSpielChequers 23:55, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

If the proposal is just utterly incomprehensible, use the {{cleanup}} template instead... we look at those often and try to encourage the author to clarify. I'm loathe to add another criteria for rating. I think we could use feasibility for this, although I know it's not a perfect fit... -- Philippe 00:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

”Watch Switch"

For pages in Japanese, I want changes from "監視" and "監視停止" which someone translated from "watch" and "unwatch" to "ウォッチリストに追加" and "ウォッチリストから削除" respectively. I am afraid "監視" and "監視停止" are terms for pages in Chinese.--Bletilla 10:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC) (a minor edit--Bletilla 10:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC))

This is done on translatewiki, not locally, see betawiki:Special:Translate (specifically: [1], [2]). Cbrown1023 talk 20:21, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Future-driven wikipedia

It's common for humans to forget about the future, even when specifically dealing with it. That's why there were NO future-related proposals or ideas on this wiki (I searched for "future" and checked most of the results to make sure they are not actually related to the future). So I thought about it (I am actually a futurologist in my offline work) and wrote the Proposal:Future-driven Wikipedia. Please check it out and comment both on the proposal itself and on the relevance of the future to Wikipedia (not just of Wikipedia to the future). Paranoid 11:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

translatewiki

Messages for most Wikimedia projects are translated at translatewiki. Currently translatewiki isn't used for this wiki. Someone mentioned to me that could be a strategic soft signal how (MediaWiki) message will get translated in the future. Dedalus 11:25, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

It is no signal at all. It's simply a matter of my lack of knowledge about translatewiki at the time we started this. Since then, Gerard has spent a great deal of time and energy on educating me. -- Philippe 19:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

presentation

Hello, I have just read the letter from Jimmy Wales and Michael Snow and i'd like to tell you that i have filled the form to propose my contribution. The fact is, nevertheless, that i am new in using computers and internet, so I didn't manage to leave the link for my user page. The only thing i did is to mention that my username on Wikipedia-France is Francis Martin. You can find the link, if you please, on the Oracle's pages where I often write. I hope that tou will have a good evening. Francis Martin

Thanks, Francis. :-) -- Philippe 19:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal(s)

Hi, is there already any proposals about, or does it make sense to propose, the following topics :

• Task force to help to develop small projects (like African projects for example) ?
• Improve communication to experts/specialists in order to attract them to Wikipedia projects ?
• Teach a formation, or introduce how to contribute to Wikimedia projects, to a large public by doing conferences/formation, etc. ?

Guérin Nicolas ^(messages) 20:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I see your questions haven't been answered yet.

1. The page Emerging strategic priorities does read proposals about small projects, under ESP 2, especially the second section.
2. ESP 3 should cover your question about improving communication to experts and specialists. On Call for proposals are included some proposals that might interest you, such as Proposal:Legitimizing a Scholarly Collaborative.
3. I haven't seen a proposal yet that covers your third issue, but I'm pretty sure that you could add a proposal yourself and it will be reviewed. - Art Unbound 19:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

You could absolutely add a proposal yourself... the call for proposals will remain open for some time now; no end date has been defined. -- Philippe 19:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, i will have a look this week-end. Hope it will not be too late. Guérin Nicolas ^(messages) 20:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Hiding signature icon from this page's editing toolbar

and from other non-talk pages that are intended for discussion is not very clever.--Kozuch 20:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Those features are actually not specific to this wiki - it's part of the new toolbar being deployed sitewide, but I'll let Naoko and the usability team know. :) -- Philippe 21:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Signature icon is visible to all pages except article pages. The usability team addressed the issue of missing signature icon for discussions outside discussion pages such as Village Pump. Please see Pump of English Wikipedia for example. If the page is set-up as special pages, the signature icon is visible. Shuhari 22:19, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Big red "Volunteer" button

Hi all ! two questions

1. In french, the current sitenotice leads to the Letter from Michael Snow and Jimmy Wales the letter ends with a big red button become a volunteer. how do I translate that page ?
2. I'm a member of Wikimedia France and I wonder wether Can Wikimedia France access the data filled by volunteers so that we can reach them

Ofol 21:47, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

The letter page is translated, I believe... just select french from the drop down list at the top. As to the data filled out by volunteers, I'll talk to Eugene and we'll see what we can find out for you. :) -- Philippe 22:21, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Eekim probably has to read wmf:Privacy policy and find out if dissimination of private information would be allowed in this case. Dedalus 10:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, thats' one of the steps that we're taking. -- Philippe 19:04, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

basically, if you click on a button, "I want to volunteer with Wikimedia" and specify that you live in france and speak french. Is it a breach of privacy to get the answer you requested in a language you can read ? As far as i understand, Wikimedia France is precisely here to get people who "want to volunteer with Wikimedia" together. Ditto for other chapters. Or did I miss something ? Ofol 23:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am not a lawyer, so I can't tell you whether it's a breach of the privacy policy with any certainty. :) Wikimedia France is an entirely separate organization from Wikimedia, though, so it's possible that data submitted to Wikimedia, through that form, is private and can't be released. I simply don't know. That's why we're asking around internally. But know this: we are committed to helping all chapters, within the bounds of the privacy policy and our legal agreements. So, we're actively working to try to figure something out. -- Philippe 03:47, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I am not a lawyer, but I can tell you that this data is not to be passed around. If we find "applications" that could potentially interest chapters, then we could maybe think about asking the people whether they know about this or that chapter, but I don't think we cna just pass on the information around like that. As for "answers", there are people who speak French in the people who review the applications Delphine (notafish) 11:46, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

On a more bothering note, people should NOT have to choose their language to review the application form in the language they speak, it should be automatic, I don't understand why it's not :/ Delphine (notafish) 11:46, 25 September 2009 (UTC)