Tech:Communication

It’s important to keep the community at large in the loop regarding issues on the technical side of things.

This page aims to document our communication channels, and outline a general strategy regarding communication.

Communication channels#

• Discord. Over on Discord there’s special channels for communicating important announcements. such as #announcements, which is also mirrored on other Discord servers.
• Hund. Your standard status page. Available at mirahezestatus.net, and additionally has multiple types of subscriptions.
• Tech:Noticeboard. A page hosting on-wiki announcements by the Technology team.
• Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Social media.
• On-wiki sitenotices. Sitenotices that are shown on either wikis meeting a specific condition (“targeted”), such as having an extension enabled, or shown everywhere (“global”). Managed at mw-config/Sitenotice.php on GitHub.
• Less importantly, Phorge. While it can be argued comments and tasks there are not for the community at-large, some may use these for the latest “announcements”, especially in tasks related to farm-wide issues. Just something to keep in mind.

Strategy#

We should aim to:

• Use the appropriate channels depending on the issue;
• Keep the messaging in all the channels in-sync, and;
• Offer updates as the situation evolves.

This is a deceptively-complex issue, therefore, this should ideally be the responsibility of a Community Liaison, who participates in the (sometimes private) conversations regarding issues (such as security issues which are not discussed in the open), and both understands the technical jargon used in the Technology team and is able to translate it for the community at wide to understand.

Ideally, communication should happen once everyone relevant on the Technology team has discussed the issue, to ensure everyone has a consistent messaging.

Appropriate channels#

Not all channels are made the same. Some, like on-wiki sitenotices, are very intrusive. You should keep it appropriate.

For example, while sitenotices are intrusive, you ensure that everyone on a Miraheze wiki at that time knows what’s going on. Therefore, these are better reserved for farm-wide issues in the case of global sitenotices, or for extensions disabled due to security issues, in the case of targeted sitenotices.

Go to Source →