I think we need to be clearer about who is the audience here. It seems to be directed at the customer, rather than at Wikimedians, but then some of the text is unnecessarily detailed and distracting. We have to assume that most people are not actually reading pages like this for comprehension, but just scanning it for what is relevant to them, or even just scanning through it to get to the contact address they are looking for. I think we want direct, simple sentences in the active voice, and maybe a few boldings or a bulleted to break up the text and draw out specific points.

For example, "The customer service team is a small group of volunteers who have demonstrated the ability to work on difficult and sensitive issues, and to act with appropriate discretion. This team respects requests for privacy, and as a matter of regular practice does not share personal information disclosed in email communications." could probably boiled down to "All messages will be confidential and handled with respect by our experienced volunteers."

I was going to take a stab at this myself, but my other, larger question is about where this is intended to fit in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us is already quite full, and doesn't really have space for prose text like this. Linking to a page like this one in that sea of bulleted items is unlikely to have much of an effect, though. Is this a customer service portal intended to be reached from some more specialized access point? I realize you may not have thought much about that yet, but I think the answer determines how we should write the page.

Dominic

On 9/18/11 2:33 PM, Pete Forsyth wrote:
Update, and a request:

The discussion thread John started has been very active, with I think about 30 posts from a wide variety of customer service (OTRS) volunteers.

Summary:
* Many people agree that there is an important concern about readers who find personal/traumatic content about themselves, and have reservations about contacting an unknown email support team.
* Philosophical questions have been raised about addressing this with a "women-only" support team
* There are also practical concerns about how that could be implemented

So, in consultation with several of the people on this list, I've made an alternative proposal, which would not shake the foundations of the OTRS team. Basically, that we should improve our public descriptions of Wikimedia customer service, and encourage people to *ask* for what they want -- whether it's a woman to work with them privately, or any other kind of special request. Along with a brief observation that such a request might delay action a bit due to limited volunteer resources.

Please take a look at what I've written up here, and share your thoughts:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/Customer_service

-Pete



On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 2:45 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems like we have strong consensus that a separate "customer support queue", run by and for women, would be a good idea. I certainly think so!
>
> Who here is active on OTRS? I'm on it, and on the email list, but I'm not active there. It might be best for somebody float the idea over there, see how it's received, and if there's agreement, figure out the steps to get it up and running. (I'm sure that having a small corps of female volunteers willing to staff it will be an essential element!)

I'm not very active, .. :/
I've initiated a discussion thread on the private otrs wiki, copying
your email text and linking to this thread.

http://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/Café#queue_for_verified_females

--
John Vandenberg

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap



_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap