Hi
Having read through these long posts, I thought I would introduce myself for
those who do not know me, and tell you a little bit about what I do.
My name is Danny Wool. I am 42 years old. I am one of two and a half
employees of the Foundation--the others are Brion, who deals with hardware and
software issues, and Monica, an intern, who assists me in the office. In past
incarnations of my career, I have worked as a writer (I have a book coming out in
a few months) and as staff in a New York City Museum. I have considerable
experience in the not for profit sector.
I am also active in various Wikipedia projects, and have been for a rather
long time. Officially, my user ID is in the 500's though I made anon edits
before getting an ID. I have about 30,000 edits in the Wikipedia namespace. I
have also been involved in some of the high profile Wikipedia policy cases,
including helping to lift a life ban against one user, who is now contributing
rather amicably to Wikipedia. I can usually be found in mIRC on #wikimedia,
and I occasionally pop in to #wikipedia where my moniker is usally dannyisme. I
also contribute to several other languages, some more than others, and to
some of the other projects as well, most recently to Wikisource.
Officially I work five days a week, though I am usually in the office at
some point or another seven days a week. On a standard weekday, I arrive in the
office at 8 am and leave sometime after 6. Of that, at least one-third of my
time is spent answering phone calls, between six and ten an hour. People who
are involved in OTRS (the system by which the Foundation responds to email
complaints) will have some idea of the kind of phone calls I receive. It is
really a mixed bag, and some of them are quite funny. They include people trying
to contact celebrities (no, I do not have Vana White's home phone number), to
people mistaking us for various companies (no, we cannot supply a new
carburetor for your Ford Pinto in Swaziland), to people asking for advice (no, I do
not know how you can get the coyotes out of your backyard), to "eccentrics"
(no, I do not know what God meant when he spoke to you this morning)--all of
these are real phone calls--to press (lots and lots and lots of those).
There are two additional types of call that I get. One type is from people
concerned about their articles. In these cases, I will attempt to assist the
person myself, or ideally, to find someone on IRC who can assist them, though
there are also times when I am forced to tell people that we cannot help them.
Sometimes, they get upset. This happened most recently on Friday when a PR
firm called to insist that we allow them to put up press releases about their
clients as protected wikipedia articles. I said no. They said yes. Etc. Often
there are very happy results, as happened with a prominent television
commentator, who is now an ally of Wikipedia--I will not give names, but it was
worth the half hour I spent with him on the phone. This kind of phone call
happened all the more frequently when the Senate story was brewing.
Finally, there are the legal phone calls. These come in two varieties.
People I can speak with, understand their problem, and resolve it, and people that
I cannot help. Of the latter kind, one good indicator is when people call
and say "What is your fax number." I ask them why and they tell me that they are
sending us a fax. I tell them I would like to know who they are before they
send us a fax, and they tell me that they do not want to say who they are. I
then tell them that I cannot give them our fax number. That is when they
identify themselves as a lawyer and they are suing us. As instructed by our own
lawyers, I tell them that our fax number can be obtained from our website--we
are not obligated to make it easy for people to sue us. The discussion
begins.
Above my desk is a Roy Liechtenstein picture of a woman crying with a
caption that reads "I should have called my lawyer." The Wikimedia Foundation has
outstanding legal counsel, and my job is the first level of triage. In most
cases, I will call or email our attorney and provide him with as much
information as I can, including name, phone number, contact info, etc. He then
responds accordingly, sometimes with instructions for me as to what should happen
next.
So, why all the detail? Because this is exactly what happened in several
instances. In fact, this happens about twice a day minimum. It is a credit to
our attorney that we do not use WP:OFFICE more frequently, and he should be
congratulated for this.
Anyways, this is a long email. I just wanted to introduce myself--I do lots
of other things besides--and give you some idea of how the legal triage works
from the office. I also want to thank a lot of amazing Wikipedians who step
in to handle these problems quietly and discreetly, and especially all of the
people who spend hours on OTRS, answering the endless queries by email, just
as I am doing by phone. If I were to name them all, this email would be twice
as long. I really believe that it is because of them that Wikipedia is such
a huge success.
Danny
[[User:Danny]]