GLAM/Newsletter/November 2021/Contents/From the team
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Migration from Outreach to Meta: your opinion is needed
About five years it was the first moment that I know of when the idea of migrating the contents from Outreach Wiki to Meta Wiki was discussed. At a meeting in Paris a large group of GLAM projects coordinators had a meeting in what various topics have been spoken about, including the topic of migrating the contents to Meta Wiki. In the meeting there was agreement without objections, but after the meeting nothing was done with the proposal. In 2021 this topic was also spoken about in a meeting about education coordinators and since then the idea slowly developed.
In October I was asked to join a meeting in what the migration was discussed. In this meeting I indicated that I think there are three requirements so that both the GLAM and Education communities will not get the burden of having to fix the thousands of links to the Outreach pages and that we as community can stay in one place all together. In the meeting WMF agreed with the three requirements, however in the weeks after it appeared that WMF only wants to move the GLAM and Education newsletter to Meta (as they announced), and that there hasn't been any decision taken on moving the rest the contents.
The idea of moving only the GLAM newsletter to Meta, while the rest of the GLAM documentation pages stay on Outreach would cause a series of difficult technical problems and would mean that the community has to split itself in two. Not a good idea!
At the same time community members have indicated to me that they, as this is common within Wikimedia, wish to have a say in the question if the contents should be migrated. Therefore a proposal has been posted. The proposal describes the idea of the full contents being migrated to Meta under three conditions so that the change would have an as limited impact as possible on the community, but we can enjoy the benefits and improvements that Meta Wiki has to offer. For example, on Meta the visual editor is available for everyone so that editing becomes easy for new contributors and GLAM professionals.
Bad idea
It would be a bad idea to migrate, as the Outreach Wiki is specifically designed to be a friendly place for people with little to no experience with Wikimedia websites while I cannot think of a more unfriendly and unwelcoming place to receive new users than the Meta-Wiki, such a migration would be a horrendous idea. Commenting here as I can't comment there, perhaps @Slowking4: could copy this statement. --Donald Trung (talk) 08:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
- When this newsletter was set up (by me), it SHOULD have been on Meta but I was convinced to put it on Outreach which was new at the time. I’ve always thought that this wiki was a mistake - forking the community and creating duplicate processes etc. I’m very glad there is now there is the ability and motivation and assistance to move this newsletter to where the larger component of our community lives: and which has the added bonus of being able to do things like translations (which is a software system not on this wiki).
- I too was briefed on the plan to support moving the newsletter, in the same meeting with Romaine, and I understood that the GLAM [and Education] newsletters would be the first, not only, things to get moved - because they represent the vast majority of the activity on this wiki. It’s not a case of ‘never’ but of ‘a bit at a time’. Wittylama (talk) 10:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
- i copied this comment over to meta, [1] where this editor is blocked, which points to one downside, to this action. the naive idealism of build it and GLAMs will come, is proven wrong: this is an internal channel for the insiders. the smart GLAMs are off wiki away from the bitey culture. --Slowking4 (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
- Hi @Donald Trung@Slowking4,
- I happened to be visiting here after a long break just to find out this wiki will be closing/moving to META, where I too am blocked. I find this a scary proposition because there are fewer and fewer wikis willing to accept my public contributions. I wonder how many other "editors" are also finding out there is no place for them any more in the wikimedia-movement. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
- User:Donald Trung & User:Ottawahitech - since you both have not disrupted meta for six months, maybe a fresh start try might be appropriate? Reincarnations. if you had low impact, non-controversial edits to make, such as editing GLAM newsletter; best to stay away from wiki-politics since the functionaries will not change, and have been known to abuse tools. i recommend pokemon names. happy new year. --Slowking4 (talk) 15:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Slowking4, @Donald Trung: Thanks for the link, when I have a chance I'll read the whole Meta:Bans and blocks. I am, I guess, one of the few fortunate enough to not have had to resort to "socking". Even though I have been blocked on 3 separate wmf-wikis, I still consider myself to be a part of the wmf movement. However, I have come across dozens, if not more, other former wmf-users who feel they must sock in order to participate.
- IMIO the sheer number of people blocked/banned/globally locked/what have you by local admins/stewards/global sysops/wmf employees/did I miss any? is unhealthy. Some leave peacefully, but others come back with bitterness trying to disrupt the building of content. My current home is en-wikiquote where a recent spate of such edits can be evident to anyone who observes Special:Recentchanges.
- The more bitter people on the internet the more they start organizing, and the more they learn how to disrupt. We are not dealing anymore with kiddie-vandalism, it is getting much more serious when our own ranks are dwindling. Just my observation. Ottawahitech (talk) 07:22, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
- User:Donald Trung & User:Ottawahitech - since you both have not disrupted meta for six months, maybe a fresh start try might be appropriate? Reincarnations. if you had low impact, non-controversial edits to make, such as editing GLAM newsletter; best to stay away from wiki-politics since the functionaries will not change, and have been known to abuse tools. i recommend pokemon names. happy new year. --Slowking4 (talk) 15:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
- i copied this comment over to meta, [1] where this editor is blocked, which points to one downside, to this action. the naive idealism of build it and GLAMs will come, is proven wrong: this is an internal channel for the insiders. the smart GLAMs are off wiki away from the bitey culture. --Slowking4 (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2021 (UTC)