Talk:Wikimedia monthly activities meetings

Google hangout link

Hi, what is the google hangout link? Thanks, --Ezalvarenga (talk) 16:36, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

This was solved. --Ezalvarenga (talk) 18:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

How is EasyRTC?

http://tawk.com is a free open source EasyRTC web conferencing application. I have no idea what it has in terms of echo cancellation (something called "Creative Labs AXX 200", whatever that is, on a server is supposed to be good for echo cancellation with it) or recording, or screen-sharing or slides, or encryption, but it works okay; just to let you know. 210.13.83.18 05:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion: change title formats

All -- I'd like to suggest that we change the format of the titles of each month's page. (I'm happy to do the work, but thought I'd put this up for comment first since it would affect a couple dozen pages.)

Right now the format is like this:

• Metrics and activities meetings/2014-05-01

I would like to change it to this:

• May 2014 WMF Metrics and Activities meeting

I'm thinking of a few different principles:

• I have created a category tree that eliminates the need to use a slash to create a "sub-page"
• A title that is easier to read is just "nice" to readers (especially non-native English speakers)
• Including "WMF" or "Wikimedia Foundation" in the title eliminates a point of possible confusion as the movement grows
• Including the day of the month makes it difficult to guess the title (for instance, when trying to link here from another wiki) -- and the day of the month is included on the page, so no information is lost

Any objections, or alternative formats? -Pete F (talk) 22:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

This violates the MSB-first rule, which means they would completely fail to sort properly, and stop using sub-pages, which would mean they are much harder to narrow down. In other words, yes, this is a terrible change. :-) Metrics and activities meetings/2014-05-01 -> WMF Metrics and Activities meetings/2014-05 would be OK, though. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the categorization work, but I agree with James that the subpage format is still useful for keeping things sorted, I don't see a reason to abandon it.

I see the point about using months instead of daily dates (Dario and I renamed a lot of old research newsletter issues for that very reason a while ago); it's just a bit unfortunate that - at least originally - the scope of each meeting is meant to be the metrics and activities from the preceding month. I.e. what would be called the May 2014 meeting in the proposed scheme is actually about April 2014. Admittedly this inconsistency has already been enshrined in the nav bar [1] and now in the categories on Commons, I just wish there was a way around it.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me we are in agreement on the important aspects of my suggestion (@Jdforrester (WMF): I hope it doesn't give you too much of a headache to agree with a "terrible" idea ;)

Jdforrester, since it's undesirable to change a naming scheme more often than necessary, it seems worth talking through the details. So I'll elaborate on my reasons below.

@Tbayer (WMF):, thanks for pointing to that precedent. I was thinking about this issue too, and I agree that there's no obvious/perfect solution. But I don't think it's a really big problem: any reader who is confused will figure it out readily enough while looking at the page, and your nice navigation bar makes it easy to get from one month to the next. If you think it would be more appropriate to name (for instance) the May 1 meeting "WMF M&A meeting for April 2014", I wouldn't oppose. I don't think it makes a lot of difference one way or the other.

About sub-pages: I see these, in almost every case (user sub-pages being a clear exception) as an anachronism that was (historically) made obsolete by the creation of the category system. Two major drawbacks:

• A sub-page can only exist under one parent page, while a category can exist under an arbitrary number
• The sub-page system requires the page title to conform to a convention that is not "plain English" (or whatever language)

Furthermore, when we perpetuate their use, we give new wiki contributors the idea that naming a page in this scheme is sufficient for organizing content on a wiki. I haven't seen the office wiki for a long time, but when I was at WMF, this problem was rampant there; pages almost never contained categories, and it was almost impossible to guess at the title of a page by simply using the wording that naturally applied.

A couple years ago, I organized the Wikimania category tree here on Meta, and eliminated most of the sub-pages. It seems to me that things have gone smoothly since: from my survey of the more recent Wikimania pages, new bid pages, judging criteria pages, etc. have generally been put into the appropriate categories (a practice which had been widely disregarded prior to my organizing efforts).

So, I do think it would be good to remove the clutter of the sub-page format, now that there are more useful categories available (and also considering that the parent page contains a nice navigation box).

If you disagree -- can you imagine a non-trivial scenario in which somebody benefits from the sub-page structure? -Pete F (talk) 20:21, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of "English", month names are very much language dependent in a way that month numbers are not. One advantage of "2014-05-01" is that people who don't speak any English can usually figure out that it's a date, and which date it is, whereas "May 2014" might be opaque to them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. -Pete F (talk) 02:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pete F, the notion that subpages are an anachronism seems to be a very personal opinion that is hard to reconcile with the community consensus about their use, as documented e.g. on en:Wikipedia:Subpages. Maybe there is some confusion with their use in the article namespace, which was indeed abolished about a decade ago on the English Wikipedia - but for other namespaces, the same community later specifically requested to enable subpages based on a vote that went overwhelmingly against your opinion.

And while reasonable people can surely prefer categories over subpages or vice versa depending on the situation, it seems a bit silly to dispute that subpages can have any benefit at all. To be a good sport and answer your challenge question, one obvious benefit for the reader is that "at the top of each subpage or sub-subpage, you can find a backlink (a.k.a. breadcrumb) to the higher levels of the page," to quote from en:Wikipedia:Subpages. Another benefit I can think of off the top of my head is the availability of the {{SUBPAGENAME}} magic word, which e.g. could give us an easy way to pre-generate the link to the metrics meeting video (so I don't have to insert it manually as I am doing now every month), once we have settled on a naming scheme. (E.g. on Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2014-04-03, {{SUBPAGENAME}} results in "2014-04-04".) Do you know of a way to do that with categories?

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 04:08, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF):, thanks for linking those past discussions. I agree there is generally merit in using them in the namespaces enabled on enwp, and am glad to know these were discussed extensively. The discussion you linked was specifically about enabling it in the Category talk: and Help talk: namespaces, and I can see the merit to using them heavily in those speces.

I did start a page here on meta to capture the pros and cons, but I haven't had the time to finish it to my satisfaction. Still, it may be worth a look in its present state, and if you have additions or changes I hope you will jump in: Should we use sub-pages? It seems to me that neither of the benefits I identified on that page offer any benefit on the Metrics Meetings pages, that the cluttering effect of the breadcrumbs is a bigger "con" than any "pro." #1 addresses your point about breadcrumbs: we already have clear links to the parent page in the header, so the breadcrumbs are redundant.

However, I had not considered your point about SUBPAGENAME. It seems to me this is something that could be better addressed in other ways -- I still think that titles that don't have code-like slashes in them, and avoiding breadcrumbs that serve no meaningful purpose, is preferable.

But I'm not going to press the point any more. I hope you read this through and give it some thought, but if you don't agree, that's OK with me. I'm going to use the naming convention that we all agree is somewhat of an improvement, and move on. Sound good? -Pete F (talk) 01:58, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, with a hat-tip to @Jdforrester (WMF): for the name, this "terrible idea" with strong consensus has now been mostly implemented. I managed to created a bunch of double redirects though, which I'm trying to figure out how to easily resolve. Any suggestions welcome...but hopefully I'll have sorted it out before any of you see this. -Pete F (talk) 02:37, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: What you meant to say was "the mass rename has been done, with consensus for calling this 'WMF Metrics and activities meetings/2014-05' rather than 'May 2014 WMF Metrics and activities meetings' respected" :-). Please be clearer in future, rather than forcing everyone to check on what you'd actually done. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF):, it's a wiki. Sometimes people do stuff without taking the time to explain in detail; I'm sorry my communication isn't up to your standards. For my own part, I'd request you exercise some discretion with language like "terrible idea". From where I sit it creates an unnecessarily toxic environment. My suggestion was meant to improve things, not to make them more terrible. -Pete F (talk) 17:57, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: As anyone who reads the page can see, I actually said that using English language months was linguistically imperialistic and broke all our long-established community conventions, and hence was a "terrible change. :-)". The smiley is important. I'd request that you don't escalate helpful advice and suggestions – especially those with emoticons to telegraph that they shouldn't be taken too seriously – into confrontational, antagonistic blame-fests. But then, what do I know? :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Clearly we have differing expectations around the way work is done here. But since we have similar expectations about the substance of the work, can't we just take satisfaction in that? I'd like to end this meta-discussion if that's OK with you. -Pete F (talk) 18:18, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF) and Jdforrester (WMF): I have been working to eliminate redirects etc. per this decision. But I ran into a conundrum for the present month: pursuant to Tilman's first comment above, for the first time (that I've noticed) we have a situation where the meeting for the month discussed (July 2014) will be held in that month (as opposed to that month +1). Do you guys have a suggestion how to handle this? This had not occurred to me as a possibility.

Two possibilities come to mind:

• Name this one WMF Metrics and activities meetings/2014-08 even though it's not technically accurate, because it fits the pattern we're trying to establish; or
• Change the entire naming convention (here and on Commons) so that the title of the page reflects the month under discussion as opposed to the date of the meeting.

I'm inclined to think the 2nd option is the better one for the long term, but it's a lot of work! I'm fine with doing it, though, if that's deemed the best path forward. What do you guys think? -Pete F (talk) 23:39, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: I don't mind, but I'd mildly suggest option 1 of the two. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Works for me, thanks. -Pete F (talk) 05:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Merging tables within this page

@Tbayer (WMF):, I merged two sections of this page that were performing similar functions: (1) the table of links to past meeting pages here on Meta, and (2) the table of links to related media files on Commons. I hope this is to your liking; there are of course other ways this kind of merge could work, so if you have a preferred format please feel free to implement it, or if you prefer, describe what changes you'd like to see. I'd be happy to tweak this to your specs if you like. -Pete F (talk) 15:47, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Files

Are files from the meetings no longer shared? commons:Category:Wikimedia Foundation Metrics and Activities Meetings, 2015 seems discontinued. --Nemo 10:33, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

As can be seen from the individual meeting pages (e.g. WMF Metrics and activities meetings/2015-07), both the video recording and the slides are still being uploaded to Commons each month. Your confusion appears to have been caused by the IMHO overly complicated categorization system for these files on Commons that some people set up earlier and which is now no longer being maintained - as far as I can see, c:Category:Presentation slides from the WMF Metrics and Activities Meetings and c:Category:Video recordings from the WMF Metrics and Activities Meetings contain all the respective files from 2015. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 12:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

No, they don't (example). I had indeed noticed the separate category, but I had also noticed it's incomplete. Moreover, it's very hard to tell ancient files from recent ones.

Deprecating monthly categories is fine, but the "real" categories should be actually used and the situation should be clearly communicated on the category description. Optionally, I'd recommend to split the category by year or sort it by date. --Nemo 16:21, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I still wonder where the slides end up since 2016. Nemo 05:12, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Gender gap topics

It seems to me that there is no searchable archive of topics being discussed by this group. It so happens that me and Max are writing a paper about measuring gender gap on Wikipedia (Research:Wikipedia Gender Inequality Index, [2]) and we just got a revise and resubmit from an academic paper where the reviewers asks us for the following: "The former set of index such as GDI, GEM, etc. has selected existing indicators such as "women's shares of parliamentary seats", "female and male labour force participation rates", etc. to capture various dimensions of gender equality and human development. The latter set of statistics and metrics work should at least mention the Wikimedia Foundation's Metrics and activities meeting." If anyone could suggests which presentations/videos of the group would be of relevance for us, it would be much appreciated. (And if anyone replies here, please ping me, and major kudos if you leave a message for me on en:User_talk:Piotrus). --Piotrus (talk) 03:19, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

The reviewer seems confused, there is no "group" by that name. Perhaps some researcher/group who presented at the WMF research showcase was intended? Or they meant the 2012 survey, which might at some point have been presented in video form somewhere. Or Research:Gender micro-survey. Nemo 18:29, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Links and license

The YouTube videos should:

• Display the CC BY-SA license, rather than the "Standard YouTube License"
• Link back to the page on Meta, so those who find them via YouTube have a path to learning more context

The most recent video does neither. I haven't looked to see whether other recent videos do or don't. Who's the best WMF person to ask about this? Mdennis (WMF)? -Pete F (talk) 18:40, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I notice that on Google Hangouts and mw:Google Hangout meetings there is no information on licensing, perhaps that should be corrected. Nemo 09:36, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I imagine that would be a Comms issue, Pete F. I'll ping and see. No idea what the licensing is on Google Hangouts. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Mdennis (WMF). This was discussed with rather exhaustively in relation to the Metrics meetings in particular in 2014, with strong assurances from top execs that works of WMF employees were CC BY-SA. I don't know why that would be any different for Google Hangouts/YouTube than for anything else? In this case in particular, the video has also been uploaded to Commons, explicitly under a free license. So wouldn't it just be a matter of properly tagging something that has already been freely released? Even if there's some annoying technicality (e.g., YouTube/Hangouts' interface supports the wrong numbered version of CC BY-SA), it should be possible to mention the license manually in the description. -Pete F (talk) 18:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

All WMF employees a contractors sign a contract where it's clear that what they produce in such circumstances is cc-by-sa, so it's safe to upload stuff to Commons and use commons:Template:WMF-staff-upload. However, files should be correctly marked in YouTube as well and rules should be clear for everyone attending, not just those who signed a contract. Nemo 18:25, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Mdennis (WMF): It's actually not handled by Comms, but by Office IT (since recently; I used to do it before that), specifically Brendan - I've pinged him off-wiki as well.

YouTube does not offer CC BY-SA as a licensing option (only CC BY), which is why I developed this format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy307xn99-c - i.e. link to the Commons version and state informally that is under CC BY-SA, with the licensing details laid out on the Commons file description page.

I too would love to see more WMF Hangout recordings placed explicitly under a free license, but I'm not sure we can slap a blanket CC BY-SA on all of them, for example because not all slide decks (say by guest speakers) might be under a CC license or because it might be too much work attributing them properly - an issue that Pete has placed great importance on in the past.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I have updated previous Metrics YouTube recordings description pages to include the licensing information, the link back to the Meta-wiki page about the particular meeting, and the link to the Commons upload. Additionally, I have changed the YouTube videos to a Creative Commons Attribution License. I will format all future WMF Metrics YouTube videos in this way. --Brendan 23:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@BCampbell (WMF): Thanks for the quick fix!

@Tbayer (WMF): Thanks for the context and moving this forward. To be clear --and I don't know why this keeps getting lost in the shuffle (even though two high-level/longtime staff I've talked to have acknowledged this point, others seem to continually miss it) -- just because I work to keep Commons' files in line with policies (along with numerous Commons editors), does not mean the passion for accurate licensing originates with me; the "great importance" comes from the Commons community and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. Regarding copyright-protected slides and so forth, it's perfectly possible for them to exist within an otherwise freely licensed work. (Otherwise English Wikipedia, with its non-free content policy for images and its numerous quotations, could not exist.) A Creative Commons staffer addressed this explicitly within the last year or two, I can look for the quote. Such use needs to fall within commons:COM:De minimis or fair use (though the latter is not permitted on Commons). -Pete F (talk) 01:18, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Traffic reporting

I set up Traffic reporting. Does anyone know of any similar effort to describe to non-technical people how they might get access to Wikimedia traffic reports that they can use? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:41, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I would suggest asking this of someone in WMF Analytics, or asking on the Analytics mailing list. --Pine^✉ 05:55, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Please be more specific in meeting announcements

@JRenteria (WMF): I have a request. Instead of generic descriptions of "Community update", "Feature", "Research", and "Research & Product", would you please announce in advance the specific topics that will be covered under those headings? Please include those announcements both on the Meta page and in emails to Wikimedia-l and Wikitech-l. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 05:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Timing of presentations, technical difficulties, and slide transitions

@GVarnum-WMF: I have noticed that some meetings have been considerably shorter than 1 hour, while others like today's have run over 1 hour. Also, sometimes there are technical difficulties, or unclear communications about desired slide transitions.

I suggest that everyone who plans to present at a meeting should be required to do a rehearsal of their presentation with the person who will click through their slides to check the length of the presentation, clarify slide transitions, and attempt to work through technical difficulties before the live meeting.

Also, I suggest that if a meeting would otherwise end unusually early, then after WikiLove the remaining time could be used for open Q&A on any Wikimedia topic. --Pine^✉ 20:08, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Change of time

Honestly, the time is unfriendly to us in the Far East (ESEAP Region). Can we meet half way and move it 1-2 hours early? That will be 11pm to 12am in UTC+8. Exec8 (talk) 23:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

IRC

This page links to webchat.freenode.net as a way to access the IRC channel, but when I attempt to use that, I get a "Cannot send to nick/channel" error whenever I attempt to post anything. Anyone know what's up with that? --Yair rand (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

End of the run

The Comms team will no longer be organizing these meetings. See this announcement. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

(Warning: The above link is to the WMF's "Space". Here's an equivalent link, unfortunately only on the mailing list: [3].)

I'm disappointed. I didn't really like the format of these meetings, especially since IRC access stopped being available without logging in, but this was one of the last systems left by which the WMF attempted to communicate anything. The higher-ups haven't done office hours in years, every team and department in the WMF stopped posting monthly reports and then stopped posting quarterly check-ins, and there are fewer and fewer staff who are active or accessible on-wiki. It's a problem. --Yair rand (talk) 20:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand: As mentioned during the meeting, the quarterly check-ins will be returning soon. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 13:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@GVarnum-WMF: Excellent! That's great news. Are they going to be posted at the regular Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/Quarterly check-ins? --Yair rand (talk) 16:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand: I am not aware of the specifics - but I am aware they are coming soon. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

On "interest in the meeting has remained steady, but is has not grown, and there has been a decrease of interest in presenting", can you clarify why you were expecting a growth in audience/consumption of the material? (The last discussion I remember on what people needed is Talk:Wikimedia Foundation reports#Draft structure for the new WMF quarterly reports (feedback welcome).) Nemo 05:08, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: We have seen growth in other areas, and the majority of the audience for this meeting was staff. As we switched to discussing more community oriented topics, there was hope the audience of community members may increase. That did not occur, and community members seemed instead to be using other places like Space and the blog at a much higher rate. For example, one blog post gets far more readers than this meeting gets viewers. The non-staff audience size made it very hard to justify continuing with this approach, especially as a department focused on wider audiences. Teams which are working on smaller audiences did not feel this model would work well for them either. As people are mentioning, they want to hear from the Foundation. This method did not appear to do that for enough community members to consider it a successful method of doing so, and we would rather try methods that reach more people and help more people feel connected to the Foundation. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 13:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll also echo the folks seeing the end of this with some sadness, as there is no immediate drop-in replacement. I know there was mention of more efficient alternatives from specific departments and projects for "5-10 minute" videos to fill in the community, and I hope they will come to fruition. But as others have mentioned, the community can feel quite far from the WMF staffers without this type of video interaction. The monthly meetings used to go through staff additions/changes but stopped doing this a while back. The staff page is no longer on-wiki, so we cannot inspect the edit history to track who is coming and going. Staff departures from the Foundation are often unannounced and mysterious. So while the end of this monthly meeting is perhaps done with a reasonable rationale, its removal does add to the distance the community feels from the goings-on of the Foundation and one of the few human connections we had. -- Fuzheado (talk) 22:08, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Fuzheado: I agree that we should help people feel more connected to the Foundation, which is why we have decided to focus on efforts that reach more people (and in more languages) than this meeting appears to have ever reached. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 13:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)