Talk:Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 movement brand project: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:11, 8 September 2020

Revision as of 01:23, 1 October 2020

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:Unfortunately, the Foundation has a historical pattern of severely biased surveys&summaries reaching a desired (and fraudulent) result. To cite one example, the [[Collaboration/Flow_satisfaction_survey/Report|Flow Survey]] claimed that there was almost as much support for Flow as opposition against Flow, and issued a recommendation to continue development and to pursue expanded deployment. In reality opposition to Flow was more like 90%. The ultimate outcome should be noted. In direct response to the fraudulent survey results I organized community consensus to successfully <u>terminate</u> any further development or deployment. (As you can see noted in the information-box at the top of the survey page.)

:If the branding team misleads the Board into supporting this fiasco, it will only result in the community (again) firing and replacing the Board and rolling back that decision, as the community did to overrule the Board's malfeasance in the Superprotect incident. [[User:Alsee|Alsee]] ([[User talk:Alsee|talk]]) 06:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

== Moving Forwards ==

The current Board of Directors [[Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/September 2020 - Update|has issued an update]], and a [[foundation:Resolution:Pause_of_Brand_Development_Work|resolution]] changing the nature of the work on branding until March 1, 2021. While it suspends discussion of the branding proper until March 1, for now it tasks community members, affiliate leaders, staff, and trustees with developing a new process for how brand discussions should occur when they resume.

I think the most important change that can be made to this project will be to develop the brand in collaboration with the community. The main problem with branding so far has been the way that it has taken place in a series of discrete steps, each months apart, and with the sense that prior feedback has not fed into the branding process. The community has been pretty consistent in telling the Foundation that usurping the Wikipedia name was a non-starter, and rather than accept that feedback early and spend our time researching names that complied with the Movement Branding Guidelines, a lot of effort was spent trying to deny an outcome that was clear before the project began. Let's not do that again, and instead get suggestions for branding from the community, and iterate rapidly on those suggestions.

Specifically, this should mean an end to things like branding events, hour long youtube streams, and so on. I sort of think that the Board's suggestion that this take place at in-person events is a recipe for continued failure, and one of the causes of the current problems - in-person events like that tend to limit the audience to those that can attend, people who might have a very different perspective than the community as a whole. What's more, events increase the time it takes for feedback to be delivered and addressed from hours to months, meaning the project had time to waste effort on unproductive directions, effort that human nature makes it hard to discard.

One of the most interesting things in the process is that our traditional methods of gaining and determining consensus - informal on-wiki discussion, followed by formal discussions like RfCs if necessary, have proven very successful. The problems with the current process were made apparent through these processes, and the warnings that were given that this project was moving in a direction unsupported by community consensus proved accurate. My hope is that we can reverse this mistake in the next iteration of branding - engage the community early and often, and be responsive to concerns. It might seem less efficient, but without community buy-in, we'll have spent a year on branding without results. I'd caution strongly against trying to come up with another bespoke consensus process for branding, as, in the words of the Brand Project Team:

<blockquote>

Our “non typical” process was seen as less legitimate. Moving away from RfCs and contests has been viewed unfavorably. We did not properly explain the reasoning behind some of our choices, so by the time we did, they were perceived as against the values of the Wikimedia and wiki way.

</blockquote>

I don't think it's a simply a matter of how the process is perceived - it was less legitimate, as it involved denying community consensus rather than working to establish community consensus. I think it's quite possible that the Wikimedia branding should be improved - I don't think the current branding makes sense for anything but commons. At the same time, trying to reuse Wikipedia is a non-starter, as it is the one name that can be confused with 'Wikipedia' more easily than 'Wikimedia' can be. We've had suggestions for brand changes [[Talk:Brand_Network#Brand_Architecture_for_all_wiki-projects|that weren't addressed]]. A community contest suggested the Wikipedia puzzle globe logo - which evolved into the world class logo we have today. Why not spend the time to find another one? [[User:TomDotGov|TomDotGov]] ([[User talk:TomDotGov|talk]]) 01:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)