I create a wikipedia-specific email account so I can subscribe and post to wikimedia-l. I collaborate with Pine for "What's Making You Happy This Week?" emails and the On The Bright Side Signpost features.
I started User:Clovermoss/Mobile editing. The feedback I provided there involved hundreds of hours worth of observations and testing and communication with WMF staff. I was inspired by WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. I knew that there was a whole department in the WMF dedicated to mobile editing so I figured I might as well try to give them feedback. I remember being surprised that many basic editing features were impossible in the app (the ability to use your watchlist in iOS only became available in 2023). I think the biggest change that could be made to support mobile editors who use the app is to create functionality for Visual Editor.
I attended WikiConference North America (WCNA) in Toronto. I was excited to meet other Wikipedians in-person for the first time. I met Selena Deckelmann for the first time here. I also met Marshall Miller. My experiences attending this conference directly inspired Wikipedia:Editor reflections.
I continued to provide mobile editing feedback. I attended the inaugural Office Hours for the app.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-09-04/Serendipity– This piece summarizes my experience attending Wikimania. I tried to learn more about how affiliates functioned. I was a voice in the room for community editors often left with the clean-up of poor quality educational assignments.
I came across this mobile fundraising experiment and did my best to draw attention to it. I was concerned about the ethical implications of gamifying the app and misleading donors into thinking they were directly supporting volunteers who contribute content.
I presented a session regarding mobile editing at WCNA.
I create m:2025 WMF Board reform petition and spend about 40 hours talking to other editors about what upsets them about the Board
I give a short lightning talk at WCNA about the Board (recording here, starts at 22:25) and participate in the Board of Trustees session.
I had a one-on-one conversation with Maryana Iskander.
I attend another Board of Trustees session over Zoom, official notes are here. I was the one raising concerns about how the dissolution of the Community Affairs Committee might be perceived, as well as how information only seems to appear in certain channels.
My personal notes have some details that are not recorded there. The Community Affairs Committee is being dissolved out of the desire for a "leaner board" and because a community-specific space is not required when considering the needs of the community is supposedly part of everything the Board does. Two people assigned will become liaisons for affiliates and the community. There was a comment made about how great it is that the board has these open conversations in the first place because other non-profit organizations do not let people talk to their board. This was in response to me saying that many people did not feel heard. There was a comment about how these conversations are supposedly well-publicized but very few people are interested in participating but also how more participation wouldn't nessecarily be a good thing. Somebody mentioned being concerned about how to make people feel engaged without having them feel like they're being spammed.
Communication with the WMF was frequently discussed as an issue. There were frustrations regarding a lack of transparency on enwiki itself, individual employees not really having negotiation power and feeling uncomfortable due to concerns about civility and repercussions to their career if they voice disagreement as a volunteer themselves, a sense that the WMF does not really care about the wishes of the community, concerns that there is a "growth at all costs" mentality, that fundraising campaigns are misleading, vast amounts of time and resources are being placed into projects that are not widely welcomed by the community, and that financial transparency on a program-level is not available beyond scattered information about grants. Specific examples of frustration that were cited included the Knowledge Equity Fund, lack of support for Commons' UploadWizard, lack of support for features missing on the app and mobile web, lack of support for long-standing issues with Visual Editor, and declining to fulfill changes requested by an RfC regarding referral links that would help protect editor's privacy. There was also concern that an emphasis on providing new features and increasing reader engagement makes us seem more like a freemium app than Wikipedia. I don't think these features are nessecarily a bad idea on their own merits some of the time, but the app is lacking a lot of basic editor functionality.
Concerns about how the board operates were even stronger than the WMF as a whole. Conversations with the trustees not being recorded affect trust in accountability.
I watched this unfold with Framgate 6 years ago and now again with the BoT elections, but I think it's fairly consistent every time there is a WMF "controversy", you see the same recurring themes: The WMF makes a decision behind closed doors without consultation. They announce the decision late or not at all before implementation. When the community pushes back, they act like they're the ones being blindsided. They claim confidentiality and make general statements without addressing the community's core concerns. They say they are listening and request questions and feedback from the community, to which they have no intention of responding. They sometimes go as far as to issue a non-apology without accountability or any specific commitments. They claim to want to be more responsive and transparent, but it's just part of the charade. This is their strategy of crisis management: waiting it out, saying as little as possible, making empty promises, taking no direct action, and sequestering the last hardliners in some farce of a listening committee, where their complaints can be ignored more directly. That's the step we're all on now, by the way. The only thing that scared them before was irreplacable veteran wikipedians hanging it up and walking away.–Rutebega
Hiring someone with a strong community background to keep in the loop about everything. They can provide feedback in early stages because they'll notice red flags that would obviously upset people. I think WMF staff choose this job because they like the values of the movement and don't want what they're working on to not be helpful.
A person in this job should talk to any WMF employee who would want to do so, in addition to being an active presence in the communities. Having a personal point of contact would also help people feel engaged when they want to without feeling like they have to be in order to prevent disasters. It'd also give their feelings a place to go.
A person in this job could demystify certain processes for the community as a whole and make them feel like actual work is being done since there's a more easily accessible paper trail for it on their own wiki. Being in a position to get answers in some capacity instead of a bunch of people trying to follow breadcrumbs to a trail on their own and wonder what's going on would likely be welcomed. That person could help make the maze less of a maze.
Donation buckets for donors if they wish to direct their donation in a specific direction, such as technology or outreach or content. Other non-profit organizations offer this. I think it'd resolve some long-standing concerns about how fundraising is conducted.
