My suggestion of Leonie Haimson as co-director was most certainly not
frivolous, and concern trolling on comments made in the spirit of fun
to try to sideline consideration of her is offensive.
Erik and others, what has Ting accomplished that would make him a
better Director or Co-director than a parent advocate in the education
field whose Foundation and goals have been seriously impacted by paid
advocacy editing abuses on Wikipedia?
FYI :)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 11:40 PM
Subject: Update on community advocacy & liaison work
To: All Wikimedia Foundation staff & contractors
Hi all,
As many of you know, we recently brought on board a team of community
members to support the development and rollout of mission-critical WMF
projects like VisualEditor and Flow. To-date, this work has been
coordinated by Philippe Beaudette (reporting to James Forrester for
this purpose), with the community liaisons maintaining a dotted-line
reporting relationship to him while being hired by
engineering/product. In addition, the Community Advocacy team has made
available several of its staff members to work and partner on a
day-to-day basis with the liaisons.
What we’ve learned so far includes:
- Community engagement continues to be critical for successful
development and deployment of products with a strong impact on
community interactions. Not all products have such an impact -- e.g.
improvements to the mobile reading experience or mobile apps don’t
affect the experience of content authors directly nearly as much. In
other cases (e.g. VisualEditor) the impact is huge and the
coordination and communication requirements can be very significant.
- We need to start the process as early as possible - community
engagement isn't something that can just be done at the tail end to
support a rollout. Liaison work includes on-wiki participation in
discussions; organizing roundtables, IRC sessions, feedback and
brainstorming pages, etc. The earlier, the better -- this helps
surface likely points of contention, empowering Product Managers to
better understand the high priority needs and wants from the
community, as well as the cost of a change (how difficult will it be
to make the change, and what negative side effects may it have?).
- Product Managers and Community Liaisons need to work closely
together and see each other as being on the same team. While a typical
liaison likely will support multiple projects, just like designers,
liaisons work best when they develop a deep understanding for the
needs of one or two teams and are in active partnership with the
relevant PM. The PM and Community Liaison should be collaborating on a
day-to-day basis.
- There are other classes of community-related work that need to be
appropriately resourced, but are less directly relevant to product
development. This includes: emergency and crisis management and
response, support for policy-related RFCs, training for OTRS agents,
organizing of visits of key functionaries and committees, etc.
- Learning the lessons from the existence of a Community Department,
we don't view "Community" as a function that can be owned, controlled
or managed in a single department -- each department needs to be
supported by community expertise in its day-to-day work, partnering
closely with other team members.
Consistent with that, after careful discussion, we have decided to
create a new leadership function, Director of Community Engagement
(Product), reporting to me (as VP Product) and partnering closely with
Howie and individual Product Managers. The Director of Community
Engagement (Product) will be responsible for managing community
liaisons (staff or contractors) who directly support product
development.
Once this Director is hired and on-boarded, the Community Advocacy
team currently reporting to Philippe will re-focus its energy on some
of the aforementioned non-product matters. The community liaison team
will at that point move to the new Director, and we will staff up as
needed. We will still intersect on projects such as election support
or policy implementation.
I’m not currently considering merging this group with the "Engineering
Community Team" under Sumana Harihareswara’s leadership. That team is
focused on engaging volunteer developers who contribute to MediaWiki,
and while there is some overlap, I consider the goals and workflows to
be pretty distinct. That said, I expect the two teams to work closely
together in practice, with folks like Andre Klapper (Bug Wrangler)
acting at the intersection between the two teams.
I want to thank Geoff, Philippe and the Community Advocacy team for
all their support bootstrapping the liaison team and partnering with
us on key product roll-outs, on very short notice. It’s been
absolutely invaluable. I’m also grateful for the continuation of this
partnership until we fill the new Director-level role, and for help in
the interview and on-boarding process. Finally, thanks for all the
hard work of the community liaisons on a day-to-day basis; no matter
how hot things sometimes can get, we know that we can count on you.
:-)
I expect to post the job by early January, and it will likely take us
until at least March/April to fill the position.
Please let me know if you have any questions. :-)
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
(again, please excuse cross-posting)
Hi everyone!
I posted the latest in the string of program evaluation reports on Meta
today. This week's installment is on other photo upload initiatives
(non-Wiki Loves Monuments ones):
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Other_ph…
Highlights include:
* The average photo upload initiative lasts 30 days and has 16 participants.
* A total of 50,386 images were uploaded to Commons for the six reported
events, and 3,456 (6.9%) images uploaded during these events were already
included in Wikimedia project pages.
* The average photo upload initiative generates more than 2,000 image
uploads to Commons with associated direct costs just over $0.60 USD per
image.
Questions are welcomed and encouraged ***on the talk page***.
On behalf of the Program Evaluation team,
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
+1-(415) 839-6885 x6649
Dear Community Members,
It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the Affiliations
Committee has recognized two new user groups in the movement in December.
The Wikimedia Community User Group Brasil and New England Wikimedians are
two active groups of Wikimedians on the American continents with a history
of projects and great plans for the future. You can learn more about their
work on their respective websites at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Brasil_user_grouphttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_England_Wikimedians
The resolutions are published at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions, and the
groups are in the process or have already completed the execution of the
user group agreement, the final step in the process towards recognition.
Please give a warm welcome to these groups and provide them encouragement
for their future.
Best regards,
Bence Damokos
Chair, Affiliations Committee
Hi.
Is there a community consultation period built in to the selection process
for a new Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director? If not, should there be?
In trying to figure out what the selection process may look like, I
re-reviewed some of the relevant FAQs and timelines:
* https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/90968
* https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/91132
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/7127367
As I understand the basic process, the Transition Team will ultimately
find a suitable candidate and will make a recommendation to the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. (Please correct me if this description is
mistaken... this is largely unchartered territory for Wikimedia.)
When this recommendation is made and prior to the Board voting, should the
Wikimedia community have the opportunity to weigh in on the candidate
Selection prior to final approval? If so, in what way?
These questions are not meant to suggest that the Wikimedia community and
the Transition Team have not been working together already (e.g., in
creating a connectors list, drafting interview questions, etc.).
While nobody would reasonably argue that every Wikimedia Foundation
employee be vetted by the Wikimedia community, it seems to me that this
particular position is unique given its enormous influence in shaping
Wikimedia's course. As I understand it, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees is (s)elected to ultimately make the choice of who oversees the
daily operations of the Wikimedia Foundation as Executive Director.
However, I believe that ensuring that the community is adequately
consulted is important.
Relatedly, I've asked the Executive Director Transition Team on-wiki about
the possibility of more regular status updates on its progress in some
form (mailing list posts, wiki page updates, etc.).
MZMcBride
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