2019:Community Growth/After Flow: A new direction for improving talk pages

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Community Growth/After Flow: A new direction for improving talk pages

Szymborska · Saturday 16:00 - 16:45

Description

In the first half of 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation held a global Talk pages consultation to bring Wikimedians together to define better tools for wiki communication. Volunteers hosted discussions in 15 languages on how they use wikitext talk pages, what they struggle with, and how talk pages can be improved for both newcomers and experienced users. The goal was to come up with a new product direction that the WMF will work on later this year.

Community growth means welcoming new contributors to our project, and their ability to communicate successfully with more experienced contributors is essential. New contributors often stumble when they're trying to do simple actions, like replying and signing their message -- problems that have been solved by every other site on the internet. And as we welcome more new contributors, the experienced contributors need more sophisticated tools to manage their communication needs. In the consultation, active contributors requested improvements to archiving, searching and watchlisting discussions, while expressing a strong desire for continuity with the existing software.

This session, presented by members of the WMF Audiences and Community Engagement departments, will bring everyone up to date on what we've learned from the consultation, share a vision for the future of on-wiki communication, and invite participants to discuss some of the decisions and tradeoffs that the team will need to make, in order to meet the needs of our contributors and communities.

Relationship to the theme

By improving our software for communicating on our wikis, we can help more voices be heard more easily. This has the potential to decrease the workload of experienced contributors and to welcome new ones, making our communities more sustainable and diverse.

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

1. Communities share an understanding of the needs and challenges around improving talk pages
2. More voices are heard from more parts of the movement around the future of communication on the wikis
3. Communities understand the next steps around this effort and how to participate
4. It is clear what set of communication features the product team will initially build and test.

Session leader(s)

• Danny Horn, Wikimedia Foundation, Audiences
• Benoît Evellin, Wikimedia Foundation, Community Relations
• Peter Pelberg, Wikimedia Foundation, Editing
• A volunteer community coordinator

Contacts

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Session type

Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

• Panel with audience + Q&A session

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

• Room: any room adapted to a presentation is possible

• Audience: No prior knowledge is needed.

• Recording is possible

• Time requested: 20 minutes of presentation + 20 minutes of questions

Relationship with the organisers of the space

The organisers of the community growth space wish to provide any necessary support to presenters and participants that they may need and also wish to have an active role in shaping the content of the space to maximise the benefit of all attendees. Please let us know if you would appreciate any help, and if you consent to constructive suggestions from the organiser team that would allow the largest amount of people to share and benefit from each other's contributions.

• I would be interested in receiving help in shaping my submission: YES.
• I consent to the organisers of the space contacting me to discuss alternative ways to present my knowledge (for example, merging two proposals into a common presentation, a panel debate instead of a lightning talk, etc.), or ways to modify and improve my proposal (for example by ensuring a gender diversity on panels) : YES
• If my proposal is not selected for a presentation, I would be interested in presenting my proposal in the form of a poster in the Community Growth space: YES
• I consent to my proposal being proposed to organisers of other spaces if it would be a good cross-over topic or if it fits better into the other space's scope: YES