Hi,
in a recent discussion[0] on foundation-l about the increasing use of
CentralNotice as a way of informing users, Erik proposed to have a
"Community Broadcast Tool" (CBT), which would allow users to better
control which information they receive.[1] Basically, the idea is to use
tags/streams/categories like "fundraising", "community events",
"strategic updates", etc. which users can individually Opt-Out to for
all Wikimedia projects. The goal is to write an extension with those
capabilities and get it up and running on Wikimedia. It might feature a
completely new way of informing users or build on the existing extension
CentralNotice and use banners.
Since the Wikimedia Foundation currently isn't working on such a
tool[2], I'm evaluating whether Wikimedia Germany could fund development
of a CBT via its community project budget[3]. I'm drafting a
corresponding proposal right now. A recent survey on German Wikipedia
found that a vast majority of users find the current use of banners
bothersome and support the development of a technical tool to solve this
problem.
However, there are still some very basic technical / organizational / HR
questions open:
0. Is there already a similar tool available or in development?
1. How much work will it be to develop such an extension? (Translate:
How much will this cost? ;)) Need only a very rough estimate at this point.
2. Development by a (small/large?) team or an individual?
3. Contractor vs. hiring staff? (Since it's mostly non-recurring work, I
favor hiring a contractor. But once the software has been written, it
has to be maintained by someone, so that's an issue)
This project proposal is at a very early stage, so please excuse its
unsophisticatedness.
If you have any questions, answers to my questions, comments or want to
join me in my effort to make banners not suck for the community, please
go ahead! :)
Kind regards,
Tobias
User:Church of emacs
[0]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-May/thread.html#65558
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-May/065648.html
[2]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-May/065801.html
[3]
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community-Projektbudget –
sorry, only in German. Basically, it's 200k€ set aside for large
community projects (>5k€ each). There is also a budget for <5k€ projects.