The following was posted to the Group Contact noticeboard on Meta. You can view it at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard#3_month_review . If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them on the talk page ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard ). Cross-posting of this email to other project lists is also encouraged.
It has been just over 3 months since the new group contact team was announced. Since then, we've been busy working on a number of projects; most of which are “behind the scenes”. It is important to keep a certain level of transparency to show that we are actually accomplishing things.
The role of the group contacts is to liaise with freenode's staff to ensure a good relationship with those that provide out IRC services, to help with the smooth running of IRC by encouraging good practices on the part of channel operators, to deal with channels left without operators, and to assign cloaks. They try to avoid getting involved in the running of individual channels.
We are available on IRC in the channel #wikimedia-ops and via e-mail: irc-contacts@lists.wikimedia.org for most issues, irc-contacts-owner@lists.wikimedia.org for matters in which you would prefer channel contacts not to see your posting, as this goes to only the GCs.
Our nicks are dungodung, kibble, Rjd0060 and seanw. Our commitments
* Regular setting of cloaks * Increased level of activity * Communicate regularly with channel contacts
What we've done
* Created an internal mailing list to facilitate discussion amongst the group and channel contacts * Surveyed all channels in our namespaces and recorded basic information * Personally contacted all owners of primary channels in order to open a line of communication * Manually set cloaks (since the end of July) while we wait for a new cloak request system to be developed * Established requirements for and began setting mediawiki cloaks * Held a meeting to gain community feedback (see log / minutes) * Appointed a channel contact for the central Wikimedia channel operator channel (#wikimedia-ops) * Lots of housekeeping with access lists (see log of public actions)
What you can do
* Please tell us if you find users abusing the Wikimedia name by causing trouble in other channels while wearing our cloaks. We are willing and able to deal with these users but can't hope to watch every channel on freenode. * Come to our IRC meetings and bring up issues so we are aware and have more minds working on problems. * Check the noticeboard for happenings. * If you help manage IRC, join #wikimedia-ops and contribute to discussions there. * Do not hesitate to get in touch with us by e-mail or IRC if you ever have feedback, suggestions or concerns. We will, at the very least least, point you to the correct person.
Moving forward
* We plan to continue our higher level of activity. * Cloaks will also continue to be set on a regular basis and in a timely fashion. * A new cloak request system is in the process of being developed. * We plan to hold IRC community meetings on a regular basis, with the next one scheduled for sometime in November (watch IRC/Group Contacts/Meetings for further updates). * We will continue to communicate with and rely on the channel contacts to inform us if there are any issues within their channels. * We're here for support if needed at any time.
-- For the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts, Ryan (User:Rjd0060)