Wikibooks talk:Wikibooks Gazette

Just a thought: perhaps the Gazette should also include recaps of discussions on IRC and textbook-l? -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Decent thought. On wikimedia channels, it is generally forbidden to publish logs of discussions, so I doubt we can use direct copy+paste excerpts. On another note, the next issue could certainly contain reminders about the IRC channel and the mailing list, including a link to sign up for the mailing lists. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I didn't mean transcriptions, just a summary of what's discussed in general terms. For example, we could sum up last night's discussion as "the good and the bad of many specific policies vs. a few very broad policies".
 * I just think it's a good idea, since we really do discuss a lot of policy there, and not everyone's on IRC. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * We're not going to be able to provide summaries of every discussion that we have on email or IRC or even on the phone. I think it's a much better use of space to tell people to come on to IRC and participate in those discussions. Also, I think the actual decisions reached on policy are more important then the discussions leading to those decisions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There's an IRC channel and mailing list? Can I get some quick directions? Harriska2 18:03, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh, what do ya know, doing a search on IRC gave me the answer: /join #wikibooks Harriska2 18:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Question on scope of the newsletter's audience
I was just curious about something. You said that 60 people received the newsletter. This seemed a little low to me, so it made me curious. What were the criteria for sending the newsletter to people? Because I think that the criteria for being an "established contributor" and thus receiving the newsletter may have been too stringent, i.e. the information contained in it could have been just as useful to people who made 20 contributions in the last month as it was to those who made 100. It was mentioned that the purpose is to reach out to people who are active in contributions but not in the community, but how active do we want people to be in contributing before we encourage them to become part of the community? Mattb112885 15:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You are right about this. The problem was getting a list of "active" WB folk.  A number of us put together the list and inevitably we will have missed some people who would have benefited.  However do bear in mind that many accounts are created and never used (or only once or twice for a specific purpose).  I guess the "criteria" was effectively that we noticed them or they noticed the page.  Do you have ideas for getting to more (& relevant) folk - if so it would be great to hear - I'm sure another bot run would be no problem?
 * I guess also was it any use to you?! Regards -- Herby  talk thyme 16:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is that we are literally having 100 or more new user accounts created per day around here, and most of these accounts are never used, or (as herby has already mentioned) are only used once or twice with no intent to return. The number "60" may sound surprisingly low, but if you do follow the RC lists and you do look at the people who are actually contributing, I think you would be hard pressed to even find 60 people who are contributing. Some of the people who were on that list are known wikibookians, but aren't even active here anymore. To be on this list, somebody must either have noticed the user being active (i've added people that I've seen on the RC list), or that person must have been involved enough to actually find that page and add their names out to it. I am not going to support blindly sending out that newsletter to every account, or even every account that was created recently. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * After fundraising season is over, maybe we should put it on the sitenotice for a week or two. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Excellent Idea!! Question, is there any other such notice that we could use besides MediaWiki:Sitenotice to send that information out to all wikibookians? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Um, sidebar? -- SB_Johnny | talk 18:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * (after edit conflict) I don't expect you to send it out to every account, as I agree that a lot of accounts go unused, are abandoned after some time, and so on. If you were doing it by hand, then that would explain the numbers. I do think that it would probably be best to do it based on number of recent contributions (if this is possible), though I would not want to venture a guess as to what limit we would want to use, maybe 5? Is there some sort of bot out there that can give you such a list? I think it would probably be useful for other purposes as well, does wikipedia have a newsletter like this? Maybe we could ask the people there what they do, since they have a lot more active contributors and therefore probably have a bot set up (unless they just send it to everyone) Other than that, putting it on sitenotice seems like a really good idea to me as well. And yes the newsletter was useful to me, I hadn't noticed the bulletin board before, and it's always nice to get a message in your talk page anyways. Mattb112885 18:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The sidebar is more for links, and less for paragraphs of information. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the feedback Matt - take a look around, it's great to have people involved. As to changing the sitenotice - excellent idea - cheers -- Herby talk thyme 18:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * reset

Next steps?
Reflecting on the above - maybe
 * 1) Add to the welcome template a "sign up here" for the Gazette?
 * 2) However could some clever person make a user friendly sign up box - not sure the page would be easily understandable to a newbie?
 * 3) How often will it go out - while I am not after a regular time frame the idea that it would be less than every 1/2 months would probably mean it was going off the boil?
 * 4) Start some outline ideas Wikibooks Gazette 2 if that was the naming idea tho I see some thoughts at the bottom of the first one

-- Herby talk thyme 07:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * 1 Sounds good to me.
 * 2 Maybe we could have all of them just sign a blank page or something, put a message on the top that says "sign your name with four tildas (~) on this page if you would like to receive the Wikibooks gazette" or something like that, is there any need to really have a sign-up "box"? (I'm not sure, is this the only reliable way to pass information into the bot?)
 * 3 I don't know how I feel about that, maybe a regular time frame would be better just to prevent the need to decide something like "Such and such policy decision is important enough that we need to make a new newsletter to tell people about it but this isn't". Then again, such a decision would have to be made anyways as to what to include when the time came around to make a new one. I think maybe we should have a maximum time between issues (like, say, a month, or a half a month if you think a month is too long) but if something that is deemed important enough comes along, we can put an issue out before then to inform people of it. That way, we can still remind/pester people once a month or so to get their votes out on important topics, but still have the flexibility to print on new debates and such. Then again new things might crop up often enough that such a plan would not be necessary or beneficial, I think the people who have been here longer would know better than I how often new things come up that it would help to print.
 * 4 Do you mean the graphical design or the actual contents of the newsletter? Mattb112885 18:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Your 2 - not my speciality, hopefully others better at it will pass
 * Your 3 - I think I agree with you - on the basis of need - however if they are too far apart/too frequent we will loose people
 * Your 4 - again not a strong point (graphics) BUT we could introduce fold to the new logo? Not sure when it becomes active? I was after more content/changes to tone etc if required? -- Herby  talk thyme 20:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the tone's OK but am not sure about the content itself. I know this issue was the first and was therefore made very general on purpose. Just for the sake of argument, rather than saying general stuff like 'make sure you put the bulletin board on watch', I think it'd be better to state some of the important things that're being discussed, and then simply refer them to those pages for further details and to debate those topics. I think a while ago, someone on the staff lounge brought up the point that it's often kind of confusing to track what's going on because it's on a whole bunch of different pages, and things tend to get lost in the woodwork somewhat. This newsletter could help to coordinate all of that, to say, oh yeah we have this lively debate going on on the vfd page concerning the validity of video game textbooks, or something like that. Other than that, not sure what you mean by introducing a fold to the new logo, I have seen some candidates for the new logo (honestly I'm not really sure what's wrong with the one we have but a redesign is always nice once in a while), do you mean you want to kind of make a blown up version of it and put the newsletter text inside it? Something like that could maybe work, but I haven't really seen anything like it on wiki sites so I'm not sure if it would work (and I don't have the technical knowhow to try and do something like that). Mattb112885 04:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Firstly oops! FF2's spell checker only helps some of my blunders - try "folk" instead of "fold", could make reading it easier!  I guess I was just suggesting it as a "header" so that people were made aware of it?


 * As far as your point about content is concerned I am completely with you. To encourage at least some dedicated editors of individual topics to look at WB:VFDs and WB:RFAs for example would certainly be an aim of mine.  Really quite a select bunch are involved in most of the voting on both pages (no disrespect to them at all) - can almost be a case of "you can close it because everyone has had their say" - widening democracy a little would (IMO) be good.  Equally (tho a little less my thing) current policy voting should include as much of the community as possible (if you missed it anywhere that was the idea of the Gazette to work on "community") -- Herby  talk thyme 13:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * As to the frequency issue, I firmly believe that we shouldnt be sending out newsletters when we don't have news to tell. I dont think it needs to be sent with any regulariy, and I would prefer to send it too infrequently as opposed to too infrequently. We don't want people to dread the day the newsletter comes because it takes up so much space in their user talk page.
 * On another note, I think that every issue should contain some basic reminders: watch the bulletin board, participage in RFA and VFD, and ask questions at the staff lounge. Beyond that, we have about 2 or 3 solid paragraphs for actual news that we can report.
 * The text at the bottom of the page are my quick notes for the next newsletter. The first section can be archived in whatever manner we've decided to archive these things. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * (reset) I do think it would get annoying if we sent the newsletter out too often, you have a point there. If I understand you correctly, your stance is that there is no need for us to define "often enough", I'm not sure if I agree with that but with the amount of changes that are happening in wikibooks right now I think that there'll be plenty of news to keep the newsletter active anyways so the argument is moot. I also agree that the reminders are useful (especially for those who have not yet received a copy of the newsletter before), I was just saying I think they should be just that, quick reminders, not the focus of the newsletter. Another thing to consider is is the actual writing of the newsletter going to be a community project (i.e. if someone has something they want to bring up could they add it to the newsletter itself)? This may or may not be a good idea, depending on what the goals are, I mean if it's made into a community endeavor we may have more news but also will probably have a more bloated newsletter. Thoughts? Finally, I looked at the suggestions for next issue, looks good to me, are there any particular conversations in the staff lounge / vfd / rfa that you'd like to bring up in the newsletter? Mattb112885 15:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I know I get impatient at times (!) but I'm offline until tomorrow now but I will get back on this one then. However my understanding is that we all can and should edit if we have something to say (as with all things Wiki).  Maybe there is a semi static header & footer but harvesting staff lounge/RfA/VfD for current issues makes much sense.  Maybe aiming for the next one mid/end Jan?  I'll arc the old one tomorrow maybe.
 * A concern of mine tho is ensuring that we do catch as many active folk as possible - I'd hate people to feel left out (the opposite of what we are trying to achieve), equally spamming unused accounts would be counter productive. Cheers -- Herby  talk thyme 17:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You both bring up good points, Herby and Matt. First off, as this is a wiki, I do believe that we should write the newletter as a community (that doesnt mean everybody adds whatever they want, but that we have to agree or mostly agree on the content). Second, the primary place for listing news should always be the bulletin board. People should add their news to the bulletin board, and a distilled version of that should become the newsletter (with the addition of some static reminders to watch the bulletin board, etc). As for frequency, I still believe that we should send it when we have enough news to tell, and not send it otherwise. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Something to look at...
Our German colleagues are doing something like this: de:Wikibooks:Rundschau. Worth a look... sorry, I won't be translating for you :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 21:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Next issuance?
Is the second issue going to be delivered soon? --Iamunknown 20:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I think alot of people lost interest in this project, at least for now. I am still interested in sending out a newsletter, and I certainly have the software to do it without much effort at all. Let me look at the current text of it, and see if it is all still worth sending. Maybe we could send it out sometime early next week? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm interested in it too... I think we've had an unfortunate distraction this past month which has dampened the spirits of some of our more active people (including myself). The end result is that there's less progress to report than we'd like, and the progress that has been made might not be so nice to include in the Gazette. -- SB_Johnny | talk 21:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Abandoned?
Would project members like to comment? Is it time to retire this? --Swift (talk) 05:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. --Swift (talk) 08:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC)