[Villages] [Projectleiding] Sponsor policy change proposal

[Juerd Waalboer]

MCH Sponsor Team skribis 2022-07-11 12:55 (+0200):
>Thanks for your elaborate email. For me, the primary reason of keeping the URLs is that it’s the only current way of identifying which sponsor belongs to which village.

This, among other reasons, is why I suggested keeping the URLs, but only for sponsors.

(I'm more than happy to create a list of villages with the associated sponsors, based on the current listing, if we do decide to remove URLs from the wiki.)

>In any case, none of the above fixes are appropriate at this time, because we’re so close to the event.

This surprises me, as I found these suggestions minimally invasive.

> Your suggestion of simply hiding the URLs in the village overview sounds okay to me, if Team:Villages (CC) agrees. If they agree, I’d gladly make use of your help to do it.

I'll await their reply.

>Adding a public marker for a village saying it’s related to a sponsor contradicts the philosophy of making them equal to other visitors: the same rights, and no special treatment.

Good luck with the community fallout regarding villages with branding from commercial entities that aren't sponsors. There has already been a small wiki skirmish, with an orga member deleting a village page and another restoring it.

I would like to remind PL that this is an event that gets its labour from volunteers, and money from visitors and sponsors. Volunteers may not want to "work for" certain organizations, and this has been problematic in the past; I'm not making anything up here, the issue is entirely non-hypothetical. Sponsors typically are not fond of non-exclusive permission for using an event for branding. Most visitors are probably less picky in general, but some are already boycotting our event for perceptions surrounding sponsoring.

We can count on more lenience and flexibility from people, when the organizations that spam are actually contributing to the event (i.e. are sponsors), but I predict that it will be hard to keep everyone on board if the current increase of spam is tolerated and the trend is continued. Best to act now, when the problem is still minor.

The philosophy of making sponsors equal to other visitors was a great one, when that meant no spam. If we're keeping that philosophy, though, we should also keep the philosophy of not allowing any commercial spam on the wiki. There will always be some things that fall through the cracks, but I think the difference between https://wiki.sha2017.org/w/Villages and https://wiki.mch2022.org/Villages is striking.

>If you’d like to discuss any of this in more detail, you can reach me on +316xxx.

Given the nature of the topic, I think it's wise to keep this discussion structured and public.

> Please be mindful though that there’s a lot going on right now, and everyone is already stretched thin on other important things to do.

Do you really think I don't know that?

I am fully aware of the work load, which is why I am suggesting changes that I think are a simple investment in preventing a potential fecal storm which could result in much more work, and why I am volunteering to implement the changes.


Regards,

Juerd