The Engineering Community team at the Wikimedia Foundation has opened a
position for a
Technical Writer - Contract - 3 Months (+)
The description is copied below. Technical writers with a contribution
history at
mediawiki.org or other MediaWiki-based sites will be
especially considered. If you are interested, please apply using this
web form:
http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?aj=oMK5Xfwi&s=Community
Wikimedia's Engineering Community team is responsible for developing
clear documentation for MediaWiki. All of our documentation is written
collaboratively in wiki pages, involving all kinds of profiles, from WMF
professional developers to anonymous users. There are some areas of our
documentation that lack content or are outdated, while others have grown
organically and they need pruning and polishing. It is complex to
recruit volunteers for this type of work.
Scope of Work
The technical writer will report to Quim Gil, Technical Contributor
Coordinator. The main area of focus will be system architecture
documentation, though we may identify other related areas during the
course of the contract. Our main technical documentation exists on
https://www.mediawiki.org and
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org.
Ideally, this person will start immediately, and should start no later
than December 1, 2013. The technical writer will attend the MediaWiki
Architecture Summit on January 23-24 in San Francisco, where s/he will
be in charge of consolidating the meeting notes taken and polishing the
related documentation.
This is the only on-site task planned. The technical writer can be in
any location during the rest of the contract period as long as it has
good Internet connectivity. We can offer an on-site location in our
offices in San Francisco, although this contract does not include any
relocation or visa support.
Outcome and Performance Standards
This work requires familiarity with wiki syntax and collaborative
workflows. The technical writer will be improving actual pages edit by
edit, with the possibility to find other edits being published by other
contributors as well as related discussions where s/he is supposed to
engage and respond. Quim Gil and other Engineering Community team
members will monitor regularly the work and will assist with the
community dialog if needed.
The technical writer will have a backlog of areas to work on, agreed
with the EC team. There will be weekly reviews or a similar procedure to
review and sign off the tasks completed.
Qualifications:
3 years of professional experience writing technical documentation
Experience volunteering in one or more free software projects as a
documentation writer is highly valuable. (Please provide links to your
user profile and main works.)
Knowledge of PHP / JavaScript (even better when supported with pet
projects, open source contributions or certified training)
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil