Signpost Tutorial Series: Communicating Off the wiki
Wikipedia provides talk pages for users to communicate with each other within Wikipedia. But a great deal of communication between Wikipedians takes place outside of Wikipedia -- this is the subject of this entry in the Signpost Tutorial Series. Enjoy...
IRC
The most common method of communication off-wiki is the IRC channels. They are not officially sanctioned by the Wikimedia foundation, but the fact that they can be used for both group chat and individual chat makes them a very valuable tool in communicating. Some of the most used channels are:
- #wikipedia-en Most common channel used by editors.
- #wikipedia-en-admins See Wikipedia:IRC channels/wikipedia-en-admins
- #wikipedia-en-help This channel checks the Category:Wikipedians looking for help and Wikipedia:Help desk to see what users need help. A good place to look for users who need help.
- #wikipedia-en-unblock - Looks for users who have {{unblock}} on their talk page, open to all, mostly used by admins.
An important thing to remember while on the IRC channels is that anything decided on them must be backed with on-wiki info. Most people don't like to see a controversial decision made with the phrase "per discussion on IRC."
If you have an emergency that needs an admin that can't be solved through normal processes, (i.e. WP:AIV, WP:RFPP ect.) you can ping admins by typing "!admin". Do this only when absolutely necessary, because you don't want to make all the admins on IRC mad at you.
Mailing Lists
The Mailing lists are the only Foundation sponsored and approved methods of communicating with others. These act like normal mailing lists that can be received in digest or per post form. These are received via email and can be replied to just like any other email, which will be sent to everyone who is on the list. The mailing lists that are most important are:
- WikiEN-l for email discussion of the English Wikipedia
- Foundation-l for announcements, cross-project matters and Wikimedia Foundation issues
- Wikipedia-l for issues specific to Wikipedia (and not sister projects such as Wiktionary) but affecting editions of Wikipedia in more than one language
WikBack
The WikBack is a new forum created in late December by User:UninvitedCompany. It is a relatively new method of communication that has achieved a level of success in creating a new platform for communicating with other Wikipedians. Accounts are manually approved so that they are proven to be connected to the Wikipedia username that they claim. It operates like any online forum, and many prominent Wikipedians have posted there, including Arbitrators and Jimbo Wales himself. Standard forum rules apply there, and discussion is focused on Wikipedia.
Other ways
When visiting a users user page, there will be a link in the left hand toolbox to email this user. This allows for private conversations between two users.
Many influential current and former Wikipedians have their own blogs where they comment on.