Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Election Volunteers/Communication Tools
| 2021 Election Volunteers |
|---|
| Call for Volunteers |
| Main Page |
| Sign Up Here |
| Checklist |
| Resources/Guides |
| Facilitation Team |
Do you want to promote the Board elections in your community?
Want to know more about reaching out?
What tools are around and what can you use them for?
Images for Messages
Images always make messages more interesting. The Facilitation Team suggests these Elegant Circle icons.
Here are some of the Facilitation Team's favorites:
Outreach tools for announcements
The most basic and essential communication task is making people aware of the elections, the candidates and the opportunity to vote. Distributing the announcements concerning the election so is extremely important.
And it is easy! Facilitators will provide you with templates for the announcement. Translate them in your respective language(s), modify their tone for your community and distribute them to your channels - that’s the importance of your work as an Election Volunteer.
Which channels are good to announce? There are plenty:
Social media
Wikimedians are present on social media platforms all around the globe. Best known platforms are:
- Telegram
and many more … Just check out which are especially popular in your community. Some of them are groups for local communities or special interest user groups - great places to spread news. Some of them are individual accounts, run by community members or affiliates - ask them if they are willing to support the elections by putting out your message.
Mailing lists
Mailing lists have been of enormous importance to the movement in the beginning, but their use has decreased drastically over the last few years. Some groups in the movement still stick to them though - check if there are some in your community too and post the announcement there.
Noticeboards
If there is a noticeboard around in your community - place the events connected to the elections on it. It is always helpful to keep people aware of the exact timeline of all the things going on.
Posts to talk pages
Posting on talk pages in projects is a very efficient way to keep people updated - along with it you keep passers-by informed too. Depending on the respective community, posting on talk pages might be a sensitive thing though, if informal user groups, projects and portals or user talk pages. Please ensure that such messages are welcome in the community. We highly recommend not to mass-mail postings!
Editorial tools
If you would like to discuss a matter in length to go deeper about the elections, maybe one of these formats is right for your community?
Signpost-like sources
Some projects have a special page resembling a journalistic medium, like the English Signpost or the German Kurier. Opinion pieces, reports from the project or the Movement, that’s what it is made of. If your project has such a page already, it might be useful to put a piece therein. If it has not, but you think it might be welcomed - maybe you would like to give it a start?
Blog posts
There are many blogs throughout the movement. Some of them are privately run by community members, some are run by affiliates - how about asking them if you might write a piece for them? There is even a blog by the Wikimedia Foundation (“Diff”), where you are very welcome to publish your insights. It is open to all volunteers and accessible in many languages - if you would like to know more about it: https://diff.wikimedia.org/about/ - or just get in touch with the facilitators.
Short Videos
To create videos is a good way to visualize information and present it in an easy accessible and friendly manner. The efforts are high though - in case you are interested in video material, the facilitation team prepares some videos - how about translating these videos into your own language? In case you are interested in that, please get in touch with a facilitator.
Outreach tools to talk and discuss
Village pumps
Almost all projects have such a page - a place for the community to gather, chat, discuss questions and make one another aware of new developments. They have different names and designs throughout Wikimedia - we are sure you know best where it is in your local community… Many people take part, even more read it. It is a great way to keep your community aware of things going on during the elections and to discuss questions with them.
Video conversations
Video conversations (like Google Meet or Zoom) are a great opportunity to reach out to anyone interested in a topic. It can be easily started and gives everyone an opportunity to take part, to ask questions and discuss things right away. And it is accessible from any place, as long as there is a stable internet connection. Consider to talk to community members that way, if you need some help just ask your facilitator.
Meetups
Meeting in-person is a classic in the movement. Due to the pandemic the opportunity to meet regrettably is very limited these days. As the situation slowly gets better, there might be some opportunities to meet. During a meetup, you might have an opportunity to discuss and talk about the elections, answer any questions and encourage people to be a part of this - voters and candidates alike.
Outreach by Notice tools
Notice tools are powerful and efficient as they are visible to many community members of a project with one stroke. Their use is sometimes felt to be annoying and impersonal though, so they should be handled with some care. Furthermore, their use is in some ways restricted and they might feel complex to handle.
SiteNotice
SiteNotice is able to place a message on top of any pages in a certain WikiProject for all visitors. It can be fine-tuned in many different ways. More information: Manual:Interface/Sitenotice
WatchlistNotice
WatchlistNotice is placing a message on top of the watchlist of logged-in users.
More information: Wikipedia:Watchlist_notices
GeoNotice
GeoNotice is basically the same as WatchlistNotice, but it’s appearance is restricted to certain geographic areas in a project. This special notice tool is only available in the English and the Arabic Wikipedias. In case this feature is required elsewhere, CentralNotice can be configured as a replacement.
More information: Wikipedia:Geonotice
MassMessage
MassMessage is a tool that allows users to send messages to a defined list of pages of any amount of wikiprojects.
More information: MassMessage