Hi all,
I hope this email finds you well.
We are going to open a position in the Research team [1] at the
Wikimedia Foundation and given the nature of the role (focused on the
research community building aspect of our work), I'd like to offer a
period of two weeks (until 2021-02-21) to hear your ideas about how to
improve specific aspects of the opening. If you would like to provide
optional feedback, please read on. Otherwise, you can safely stop
here.
==Background==
Over the past year or so, it has become evident to me that delivering
towards Section 4 of the Foundations whitepaper [2] the Research team
wrote in 2019 requires a dedicated individual in our team to focus on
this direction. We're going to open a position in our team for this
reason.
==Why are you asking for my input?==
We normally don't ask for the input from the community on the
specifics of the job descriptions. I'm making an exception in this
case because of the nature of the work for this particular position.
==Roles and responsibilities==
These are the roles and responsibilities I currently envision to ask
of the person who joins us in this capacity:
* Developing, maintaining, and executing a research capacity and
outreach strategy in collaboration with the Head of Research and
rooted in the priority areas identified (Section 4 of the whitepaper
on the Foundations)
* Maintaining, revamping and expanding the already existing research
community programs including the Formal Collaboration program [3], the
Research Internship program, and the Research Fellow program.
* Organizing events such as the public Monthly Office Hours [4],
Monthly Research Showcases [5], and the annual Wiki Workshop [6] in
collaboration with the rest of the team
* Serving as the liaison and facilitating engagement between the
existing Wikimedia research community and the Wikimedia Research team
* Actively working to expand the existing Wikimedia research community
to include more regions of the world and more diverse disciplines
* Understanding and triaging the needs of the Wikimedia research
communities and advocating for resources internally to meet them
* Communicating and promoting the Research team’s work to external and
diverse audiences
* Discussing, documenting and communicating the process and results of
your work publicly
==Who can provide input?==
Everyone on this list should feel welcome to. Given the nature of the
position and the focus on research community building, I expect to
hear the bulk of the feedback from those of you already active in the
research community, as organizers or researchers.
==What feedback am I seeking?==
Please focus your feedback on the "Roles and responsibilities"
section. Have I missed a responsibility? Is there a lack of clarity
around one or more of the ones already listed? ...
==What happens to your feedback?==
I commit to read all constructive feedback I receive by 2021-02-21 and
take them into account in updating the responsibility section of the
job description that we will post. I want to be clear that I may not
be able to implement particular feedback. My commitment is to
seriously consider them.
==What happens in parallel to this opportunity for providing feedback?==
For the sake of full transparency: I will start the process of
finalizing the job description with our Talent and Culture department,
including finalizing the title, experiences we will need for the role,
and the responsibilities. I will not completely finalize the job
description until the feedback period is over, however, so that I can
make the adjustments needed.
==Where can you provide feedback?==
You have 2 venues for doing so. On this email thread or in-person in
one of the two time-slots below:
February 11, 21:30-22:00 PST, link to connect:
https://meet.google.com/wrt-zypn-bxs
February 17, 8:00-8:30 PST, link to connect:
https://meet.google.com/igz-xboq-mwx
==What if you have questions?==
Feel free to join me in one of the two office hours posted above or
get in touch on this thread, on or off-thread.
==Will there be a reminder for this?==
No. If you are interested in engaging, please take a note on your end.
I am not planning to send reminders. :)
If you have made this far, thank you! :) I'm looking forward to
hearing from you. I also want to share that I'm excited that we are
given the opportunity to bring a dedicated resource in our team to
focus on the community aspect of our work. There is a lot to be done
for you all already in the Wikimedia research community and towards
those who are not part of this community today but they can be. :)
Best,
Leila
[1]
https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foundations_-_Wikimedia_Research_2030.…
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Formal_collaborations
[4]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours
[5]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase
[6]
https://wikiworkshop.org/
--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation