Well - regarding permission-commons ques the current problem with mass
upload agreements is Common's regulation that ticket-templates has to be
added by OTRS volunteers themselves, except, when you are using GLAM tool,
but GLAM tool is tailored for really huge mass uploads as it requires lot
of preliminary preparations. So, there is no good path for mid-size mass
uploads - say from 10 till 100-500 files.
This is incredibly boring job to add 100 templates to 100 files. There are
some semiautomatic tools for this - but it still requires small programming
and/or direct personal assistance - with at least 2 clicks per file. So
OTRS volunteers - when they see agreements for for example100 pictures -
are avoiding this, becasue handing this means not only aswering for E-mail
but also 100 boring edits...
I was addressing the issue on OTRS e-mail list, around a year ago, but the
answer was, that this is not the problem. But in fact - whenever there is
such semi-mass-upload agreement - you can observe that OTRS volunteers are
avoiding answering them.
2015-02-04 11:46 GMT+01:00 Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com>om>:
Thanks Ryan for the clarification.
My question is: what could we ask, as a community, to the WMF, o to
chapters?
Is there some tool/task/workflow that could receive help from Wikimedia?
Maybe a new software, or some trusted agents in key position, or something
else.
What could speed up the volunteers work?
Aubrey
On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Rjd0060 <rjd0060.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
James,
I realize your tickets were already resolved but I thought I'd take a
moment to clarify the issues that cause the delays in response.
The Wikimedia Volunteer Response Team ("OTRS") relies on the generous
work
of hundreds of volunteers from all over the world
to handle hundreds of
thousands of e-mails each year.
The scope of these tickets range from vandalism reports or technical
issues
to problems with biographies of living people and
other generic edit
requests, and dozens of other categories. A large percentage of the
overall tickets received are "permissions" tickets -- e-mails used to
verify the release of content on Wikimedia sites, typically from third
parties.
Like every project that Wikimedians work on, there are various things
that
the volunteers are tasked to handle. The agents
who take on this role do
so
in addition to their existing editing activities,
often at the cost of
their own free time. Due to the trust and patience required to handle
these
public-facing aspects of Wikimedia, the pool of
available volunteers
tends
to be smaller than in other areas of the
projects. Unfortunately,
backlogs
can occasionally crop up and take a bit of time
to deal with, especially
in
the more complicated e-mails (like BLPs), that
can take up to an hour to
process. It happens on every large Wikimedia project -- where some
backlogs
never get cleared (just look at the English
Wikipedia’s articles with
unsourced statements! [1])-- so it is something I believe almost all of
us
can relate to in one way or another.
We had very good queue levels for much of 2014, but began noticing an
increase in permissions and general information tickets (specifically in
the English language) around the end of the year. Unfortunately, the end
of
the year typically shows higher than usual
response times, likely because
of volunteer free time. While OTRS agents are very dedicated, answering
tickets can be stressful at times, so it’s not typically the type of
thing
you’ll want to during holiday vacations. Pair
those longer response times
with an increase in tickets because of our hard-working Wikimedians
adding
content and submitting more permissions tickets
in their holiday free
time,
and it creates a bit of a backlog. :-)
Just as in other areas of our projects, backlogs are inevitable,
especially
in the more mundane and tougher areas. However,
our dedicated pool of
volunteers works diligently to clear these backlogs when they come up.
While, again, it’s a tough job that’s not for everyone, we always welcome
new applicants. Actually, we're continuously adding new agents. In 2014
we
added 62 new community queue accounts[2] to
handle general information
and
permissions inquiries. Additionally, our agent
retention is better - we
lost about half as many agents in 2014 as we did in 2013. But finally, if
you really want to help with the backlogs, we’re always looking for great
new team members. Feel free to throw up an application on
[[m:OTRS/Volunteering]] if you think you’d make a good agent and we’ll be
happy to review it.
Basically, OTRS is tough job that runs into backlogs just like any other
part of Wikimedia. However, we’re continuously working to add more agents
and clear those backlogs as soon as they start.
I hope this helps clarify the current issues.
Ryan // User:Rjd0060
(OTRS admin)
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_unsourced_statemen…
[2] Community queue accounts are OTRS accounts with access to queues that
answer general information inquiries about our projects, permissions
and/or
photosubmissions tickets. Other types of accounts
do not have answer
these
tickets, but instead have access to a smaller
subset of queues, such as
those related to the Foundation (e.g., donations), chapters, or advanced
rights on the projects (e.g., oversight, stewards). See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/Access_policy#Community_queues for
more information.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:52 PM, James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> OTRS does not even bother replying to the consents I send them. Thus
the
images I
have received releases for get deleted. Going forwards I am
simply
uploading to En Wikipedia. Not ideal but not sure
what the solution is.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
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