Meta, where innovative ideas die

The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk.

...and why the place is indispensable nonetheless.

Meta is the wiki that has coordinated a wide range of cross-project Wikimedia activities, such as the activities of stewards, the archiving of chapter reports, and WMF trustee elections. The project has long been an out-of-the-way corner for technocratic working groups, unaccountable mandarins, and in-house bureaucratic proceedings. Largely ignored by the editing communities of projects such as Wikipedia and organizations that serve them, Meta has evolved into a huge and relatively disorganized repository, where the few archivists running it also happen to be the main authors of some of its key documents. While Meta is well-designed for supporting the librarians and mandarins who stride along its corridors, visitors tend to find the site impenetrable—or so many people have argued over the past decade. This impenetrability runs counter to Meta's increasingly central role in the Wikimedia movement.

Meta was created back in 2001 to outsource "meta" discussions on how to organize matters beyond the needs of English Wikipedia articles; however, the new project quickly took on multilingual responsibilities, particularly the translation tasks associated with the annual fundraisers, and transwiki administrative issues from steward services to global spam prevention to privacy investigation and conflict mediation. Nowadays, "Meta" refers to at least two largely distinct systems: one deals with the work of stewards and the small-wiki monitoring team (SWMT); the other is for other issues related to "meta debates".

In its linguistic diversity (matched only by Commons, where languages coexist but there is rarely the need for the same intensity of discourse) Meta is the only place where a volunteer expert taskforce can be instantly created to address complex cross-wiki problems.

Meta is currently ill-suited to provide a transwiki public sphere where disparate editing communities can discuss shared problems on equal terms and to engage with supportive organizations. It is not a deliberative space in which editors of content projects can easily navigate and participate. For newcomers and occasional visitors, there is an almost total absence of orientation, the working cycles are largely unpredictable, and there are mountains of cryptically written files and confusing, ill-documented proceedings. For the project's small community, it is increasingly difficult to manage processes that have enormous implications for the movement. Attempts to establish new instruments like a global ArbCom and a global ban policy haven't succeeded so far.

This situation has arisen from both the Meta's original function in relation to the English Wikipedia, and as a series of rational optimizations of individual working habits. The use of English by default in an environment in which there is little translation is a matter of continual complaint. The process has counterparts in the ways Wikipedia projects have organized their self-governing structures and help pages in favor of seasoned rather than new editors.

The Meta approach, however, has hit the wall. While stewards and the SWMT continue to provide support for editing communities, the site's medium- and long-term processes are struggling. This problem, while perceived on Meta for a long time, has not been widely recognized on other Wikimedia projects for years. Meta's dysfunctionalities have become a significant issue in 2012, because the WMF has made Meta the platform for expanding its grant-making programs and policy reviews such as reforming the terms of use. These issues are examples of the need for multilingual communities to engage much more freely on a common website.

Meta, chronically short of volunteers, is now trying to adapt to the challenges of hosting sophisticated grant-making schemes. Among these challenges is the need for efficient translation support for both applications and their discussion. Furthermore, editors have made their case(s) in debating global policy reforms in languages other than English. Another prominent example was the debate on the Toolserver, where ironically, decisions affecting its largest client—the English Wikipedia—were prepared, discussed, and decided primarily in German.

The WMF has promoted less exclusive Meta committee models, such as by setting up an open GAC recruitment process; the foundation has also established charters for key committees. Bodies in charge of approving new content projects and supportive organizations were given new basic frameworks, and a volunteer committee, the FDC, was established to review entities' programs and finances. For the first time, chapters opened their own WMF trustee-selection process for community questions in 2012.

The project has played important roles in managing the lead-up to Wikimedia's most important launches of 2012: Wikidata and Wikivoyage; but these were exceptional cases, supported by significant funding, and with unique historical origins, respectively. However, this contrasts with the scenario faced by volunteers who seek feedback for innovative ideas, who are still left out in the cold in the current Meta environment. A committee with the aim of redressing this has been under organization since April 2012. While everybody acknowledged that WMF projects cannot be run just with a server in an office in Florida, as used to be the case, Meta still relies on IRC and a jungle of vaguely defined mailing lists for its off-wiki meetings—bygone messengers for ever-increasing numbers of community members introduced to the internet in a Facebookish age.

The resulting problems have partly been fixed by diversifying the community news media over the past two years. The WMF has put resources in its own professional blog to inform the public, and created the Wikimedia highlights. Special interest newsletters for topics such as GLAM (February 2011), research (April 2011), education (February 2012), and Wikidata (August 2012) have been established. The Signpost widened its scope to include more significant coverage of the movement beyond the English Wikipedia. The German Wikipedia's community tabloid, the Kurier, was complemented by a chapter-supported newsletter, the Wikimedia Woche, at the peak of the image filter controversies (September 2011), and the French community created Regards sur l'actualité de la Wikimedia ("Current Wikimedia events") in July of the same year. But none of these channels provides anything like a space for cross-community dialogues.

Divergent communications realities make the task of creating a coherent Wikimedia movement more difficult to achieve. If the movement is to acknowledge shifting community needs and patterns of communication, we need to and can open Meta's gates.

In this issue

7 January 2013 (all comments)

Op-ed

WikiProject report

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Blame the watchlist and set up a Diaspora pod for Wikimedians, please

Thanks for the analysis which I think is mostly correct. I think the solution to the Meta dilemma lies in the fact that it's just another wiki. You need to visit Meta in order to learn what's going on there. There is no common watchlist for all Wikimedia projects. This is why most Wikipedians visiting the watchlist on their home wiki only do not realise proceedings on Meta. Also, you have to follow recent changes because new pages are constantly being created on Meta. So a watchlist doesn't really help you with that. Neither does sending out pointers to Meta on mailinglists because only a few Wikipedians have subscribed to them.

I think the solution nowadays lies in a combination of a social network and Meta. It is good to have a public working wiki for co-operating, but for communicating within a group outside your home wiki it would be best to set up a Diaspora pod for Wikimedians. Would be much better than using the commercial networks for that because we can do it ourselves.--Aschmidt (talk) 13:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be interested in a Wikimedian Diaspora pod. I stopped using Diaspora months ago because it was a dead end socially, but if we can get a critical mass of Wikimedians who want to try it out together, there's potential for making something useful. Social networking within the broad Wikimedia community is still an unmet need, which we do (poorly) to some extent through Facebook and such, but which suffers from the fuzzy boundaries between our identities as Wikimedians and our social lives outside the projects. Do I post this bit of insider baseball, even though most of my friends would have no idea what I'm talking about? In a dedicated Wikimedian social network, the answer would be yes.--ragesoss (talk) 15:29, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone actually use Diaspora? Someone told me recently that even the authors of Diaspora don't use Diaspora anymore. Any project that is failing to eat their own dogfood seems doomed to utter failure. —Tom Morris (talk) 23:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which site are you talking about? Google turns up nothing about it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Diaspora (software); https://www.joindiaspora.com --MZMcBride (talk) 07:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In answer to Tom Morris, Diaspora's founders stopped developing it to do some more traditional start-up-y stuff. But they actually had gotten it to (in my opinion) a quite nice, usable place: a federated, open-source social network that duplicates most of the key features of Facebook (with an interface that's a little more like Google+). It never reached anywhere near critical mass in terms of active users (at least, within a few degrees of separation of people I'm interested in) but for a use case like this--connecting a well-defined community that is not already strongly networked on Facebook--I think it's got a lot of potential.--ragesoss (talk) 02:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You say "mandarin" twice in three sentences. Just sayin'. — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 19:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great piece, well done. And yes, a Wikimedia-wide unified watchlist would go a long way to fixing this and related problems. Given the money WMF has knocking about, it's sad they can't make this happen :(. Additionally or alternatively, a merge with Commons would also make sense - one big umbrella wiki for cross-wiki stuff, with different sections for different purposes. Rd232 ^talk 22:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although it won't yet offer cross-wiki support in its upcoming first release, Echo might eventually bring us closer to the long-awaited global watchlist (which, from what I hear, is not an easy technical problem at all). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A global watchlist would be wonderful. As for the Diaspora idea, please don't ask me to create an account on another social networking site. If you want to send me to yet another web site, it's just not going to happen, even if I have good intentions to participate. To a large extent that just moves the problem of not cecking Meta to another website. I have enough pages to check, and I'm sure I'm not the only Wikimedian who feels that way. LadyofShalott 22:19, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Authorship

Who actually wrote this? I haven't had time to fully digest the piece, but it doesn't sound like Sj's writing to me. The page history is unfortunately useless.

These complaints have come up previously (cf. WP:IGNOREMETA). --MZMcBride (talk) 16:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC) [reply]

Collapsed resolved issue: appears to have been a misunderstanding.
~~I would assume that the words "By Jan eissfeldt" at the top of the article give you the authorship. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC)~~[reply] Don't be a jackass. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply] ~~Meta Wiki: Where the admins are thin-skinned and cannot take a bit of good-natured ribbing. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)~~[reply]

Collapsed resolved issue: appears to have been a misunderstanding.

~~I would assume that the words "By Jan eissfeldt" at the top of the article give you the authorship. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC)~~[reply]

Don't be a jackass. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~Meta Wiki: Where the admins are thin-skinned and cannot take a bit of good-natured ribbing. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)~~[reply]

Guy: ha! mzm: good eye, corrected. I was sent a draft of this for comments (off wiki, pity). These aren't my opinions or views- I believe I was asked as a representative of an opposing school of thought; I suggested ways that some of the criticism might be worded more constructively. I also offered to coauthor a future series on meta and related issues which would cover related topics and highlight different large or longterm projects there. But this piece was not coauthored: I had no input into its thesis, reasoning, or title, and do not support them. I do recognize that they are not unique to ~~Jan~~ this essay, and need to be addressed, as others have expressed them before. (cf. Rd232's comments below and on Meta)

I think the work of the Meta community is essential and useful and considerate, and has become richer in the past year. And I think it has been a safe space for creative and unusual thought and essays, since its founding. I am sometimes surprised that others do not see it so. It has preserved some of the original wiki nature that we should all revisit regularly. Perhaps I should write a counterpoint op-ed and send it to Jan for comment :)

PS. Happy 2013 to all - I wrote this from my mobile phone... Thanks to any devs who have made the process a mite easier and apols for any typos. – SJ + 23:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if I came off as rude. In hindsight, it was quite obviously a legitimate question (thank you for the correction, Sj!) and your reply to it didn't indicate sarcasm, so I thought you were rudely pointing me to the byline. I don't think Meta-Wiki admins have particularly thin skin and I always enjoy a good ribbing. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm truly sorry but think we established which mails caused the confusion on this point pre-christmas. I took on board your argumentative point made below, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 08:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the essay and update. These are all topics worth addressing; as Meta becomes more actively used, they pend with more force. And this is a fine starting point for further discussion <ribs MZM and Jan, one with each elbow> – SJ + 16:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"A (meta-)wiki community is somewhat dysfunctional; film at 11."

Given the existence of m:Help:Unified login (oh look, a link to Meta-Wiki!), I think some of these problems are overblown. I'm biased, of course, being an admin at Meta-Wiki, but I don't see a clear statement of a problem (which innovative ideas exactly are being stifled?) or a clear list of proposed solutions here, which I think is really unfortunate (the piece seems to end with the suggestion to keep using Meta-Wiki, after trying to establish that Meta-Wiki is horribly broken).

Is Meta-Wiki perfect? Absolutely not. But I don't quite see how it's stifling innovative ideas. The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community have limited (finite) resources. The Wikimedia Foundation, for its part, has begun putting in place systems such as the m:Funds Dissemination Committee in an effort to better support worthwhile ideas that further Wikimedia's wmf:mission. I'm (still) surprised to see Sj's name attached to this piece when he's been an active member of the Board, overseeing a number of positive developments (including the m:Sister Projects Committee and the m:FDC) that run counter to many of the arguments made in this piece.

I've personally strongly advocated for the Wikimedia Foundation to use a public and global space (Meta-Wiki) for its work. I don't see how trying to frame that as a Bad Thing is reasonable, fair, or healthy. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:32, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I might get your point wrong but I hardly feel represented fairly by your take of the piece. It states very clearly that Meta is indispensable ("the only place"), why it is indispensable ("need for multilingual communities to engage much more freely on a common website" etc.), why no other potential contender can provide the same services under review ("none of these channels provides anything like a space for cross-community dialogues"), and why more people should care: otherwise you may encounter one day a popular edit-counter is no longer working (the German Toolserver debate example). The Sister Projects Committee (which is linked) provides the list (here) you are looking for and the text sets out what the problem is, i.e. a meaningful feedback mechanism - the very committee - to deal with new project ideas that don't come along with a million dollar funding (Wikidata) or already established structures (Wikivoyage) is not yet operational.

Said that, you may have been distracted by the first paragraph, which sums up what "many people have argued" before the "the only place"-reply (especially combined with the fact that the piece was originally scheduled for the last edition and therefore the editor-in-chief uploaded it today). I was very keen (Sj wasn't) to deal with the ordinary "get rid of Meta"-tamtam early on to make room to actually look at the new tasks, and the strings and problems attached to them, of the project. I'm sorry, if that didn't work out that way in your case; its not a "horribly broken"-diagnosis but aims at purposefully making people wonder, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for clarifying. I believe I did misinterpret the piece and I'm concerned that others might as well. If the piece had actually said "Meta-Wiki is indispensable," I think that would have been clearer. :-) The headline of the piece ("Meta, where innovative ideas die") also seems to cast a much grimmer tone than the reply you've written here. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think we all know that Meta is utterly useless. No one uses it and yet, it attempts to make binding decisions for all the other projects. Luckily, they usually don't get passed, but when they do and attempt to become binding, the Wikipedia projects appropriately rebel. This is often because the group that is passing such things is a small group of Meta admins that think they should hold all the power. Silverseren^C 22:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I did last year propose a model whereby major global policy decisions have to be approved locally by a certain proportion of projects and a certain proportion of all users in order to be approved. Makes more sense than Meta in its current form, anyway. Rd232 ^talk 22:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the interesting overview (and from my own perspective as member of the WMF Communications team, for the shout-out for the blog and the Wikimedia Highlights). I'd like to add a few elements to the picture:

Regarding "the need for efficient translation support", I think the article could well have mentioned that Meta-wiki has been maturing a lot as a translation platform over the last two years, with the deployment of the Translate Extension in 2011, and the introduction of the related TranslationNotification extension in mid-2012. The translation interface is still a bit unappealing, but the WMF language team is making progress on this as well. - This doesn't yet solve the problem of true multilingual discussion, but it goes a long way towards informing non-English speaking Wikimedians better (obligatory ad: Please consider signing up for translation notifications if you want to help with that).
(To add to the examples - FDC, grants, etc - for the Foundation's use of Meta as a much more open platform that what a normal nonprofit might employ: ) We have moved our "communications calendar" of planned blog posts from the nonpublic Office wiki (Intranet) to Meta.
Likewise in mid-2012, we moved the drafting process for the blog largely out of our Wordpress installation into the open on Meta, to increase participation and transparency.
In 2011, the WMF Research Committee started the Research Hub in a new dedicated Research: namespace on Meta.
Regarding Meta's Not my wiki problem: As mentioned above, there is hope that Echo could eventually help to improve that; at least with respect to the difficulty of staying updated on relevant new developments there if one does not already visit the wiki frequently for other reasons (see also the Wikimania talk I gave with MZ about "movement broadcasting").

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tilman. Thank you for these details. It's good that Meta is already tackling some of these issues.

More active use by chapters and the wmf has helped, including public drafting of personal essays or proposals. Working on the blog there has filled a gap left since wikizine stopped drafting its issues. And minutes from any off-wiki event or meetings are posted there as well; though that is not new.

Yes, Echo will help; but its the cross-wiki messaging that is really needed. Also needed: a better-publicized central list of active meta-discussions, and better lightweight techniques for pushing announcements and updates [using the global sitebanner is too much. a similar banner that only pushes to every project's community portal/messageboard would be perfect]. – SJ + 16:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(disclosure:I am the original author of WP:IGNOREMETA and am pretty much hated by the community on that site) I think the title sums it up nicely. There is of course some very important cross-wiki coordination that goes on there, but outside of that it is basically. dead end with a culture that does not seem interested in ever seeing anything through to a conclusion. I also found the system for requesting translation of proposals incomprehensible. When I asked for help understanding it I was insulted by an administrator for daring to ask for help. The steward areas of meta are vital and essential, but its broader community is in serious need of reform in its approach to outsiders, It is supposed to be there to help and serve the other WMF projects, but it rarely if ever accomplishes anything toward that end. Indeed I and many others have found it to be a very closed community that is openly hostile towards outsiders not well versed in its internal politics. I realize that same criticism has been leveled at en.wp and that we have experienced similar problems here, but the small size of the community and the blatant disregard for shocking misbehavior by their own admins there seems to me to intensify the problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]