Jimmy Wales wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of
these numbers of angry
phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
week, or ten a day?
The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public
must be on the order of 50 per day. The phone is constantly ringing,
say, every 10 minutes or so. 6 per hour.
That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate
estimate.
What is *their* tone normally like? Is it
primarily "uh, there seems
to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
step"?
They vary widely. Some are just inquiries. Some are looooong
explanations of some trivial point. Some are extremely upset. Some say
that there is an error. Some say libel. Some are sane. Some are raving
lunatics. Some are in tears.
How much time does it take to deal with a single
one of these queries,
in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or
whatever?
It varies depending on the call.
Incidently...
Wikipedia is not only in english. And complaints or requests for
information also exist in other languages, thought not as numerous than
in english of course. I'll speak only of the french case then.
My phone number is on the net, along with Nicolas Weeger's one (the
president of the french chapter). It is necessary for proposals and
mostly press requests (when a hot topic goes on the net, phone calls
from press can be up to 5-10 people a day roughly).
In the past few weeks, I have observed an increasing number of phone
calls (I think because of traffic increase). Last week, it was roughly
about 10 phone calls per day.
Aside from days with a hot press topic, I would divide this 10 phone
calls on average as
5 phone calls are from people who believe they are calling another
office. They typed "red cross" on the net, found wikipedia article on
the red cross. They think they are at the red cross. They follow the
contact link. They find a phone number and they ask you for information
on the situation in Africa, or how to get publishing rights for a famous
author, or a seat for tonight in their favorite restaurant.
TODO : explain to them that no, this is not the office of president Bush
or their next sportwear shop, but Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
When you are in bad luck, they insult you for not giving you the address
they are looking for.
TODO : stay calm and remember you are trying to give free access to
information to everyone in the world. You may not remember the post
office number though.
1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister
in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is
when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.
1 phone call is from the press. Sometimes, they want YOU (neat !).
Sometimes they want Jimbo (I give Florida office). Sometimes they want a
spanish person (I succeeded to get interviewed instead last time though
:-)). Sometimes they want the Technical Director...
TODO : look franctically for the press interview partners page on
internal to get the *right* number. Or go to irc speedily (I recognise
Danny's speedy visits to irc as well to fix an issue :-))
1 phone call is someone looking for a job. Usually, the call comes from
Nigeria. The line quality is very bad. They are nice, but generally sticky.
1 phone call is a business proposition.
TODO : whilst you now feel like screaming, todo is to listen and tell
them to write to board AT
wikimedia.org. At least, they usually call at
decent hours...
1 phone call is a complainer.
My current most active one is actually a person from a sect. He started
calling me during Christmas holidays. Last phone call was 3 days ago.
One day, he called 5 times.
The most peculiar characteristic about these ones is that they seem to
be very careful to call you at 2 in the morning, on week-ends or when
you just succeeded to put the baby to sleep.
TODO : good question... I am still wondering :-)
-------
Now, the unfortunate fact is that, in reality, my home is not an office.
The phone number is my personal phone number.
At 2am, I usually sleep.
And I am not paid to answer phone calls from lunatics :-)
Recently, I have removed my phone number from various places.
So, we have a long term issue, because I do not think phone calls will
go down. Quite the opposite. And some of them (press, complaints,
business proposals) are important to answer.
Note that many others choose to write to our email ticketing system on
OTRS. Today, they are 150 emails pending in the board AT
wikimedia.org
queue. I go there every day to at least identify the *most* urgent
requests... and let all others pending. But each time some one is
complaining, it is necessary to distinguish what is reasonable complaint
to what is pure raving... it takes time...
So yes, when those requests are pilling up, I suppose we are acting
rather quickly on wiki. Without explaining in length why we do this :-)
We hope those who know relay the information of *why* we remove an
article or delete a picture.
Ant