In a different thread, Sue Gardner wrote:
- Thanks Milos for advocating on behalf of a permanent Research Analyst! I want this too.
An aside : many researchers in the community (of readers, if not editors) are interested in research of almost any type associated with WP/WMF data, and would love to do research of interest to the projects. If we organize some sort of regular recognition for excellent research done on/about WM projects, and improve access to the sorts of data that research groups lust after, this will help tap into the latent university interest [which comes with its own sustained staff and funding, new pools of people to give talks at different sorts of conferences and events, &c]. This does require work - despite the theoretical transparency and accessibility of project data, publish few good papers to date. [Rut, how many fellow students of yours are getting wiki PhD's?]
- I don't particularly want to routinely include "working with volunteer committees" in job descriptions though.
Obviously working with volunteers is a huge part of nearly everybody's job (the CFOO and accountant probably do this the least, which is role-appropriate), but I don't want to proscribe committee work specifically as the best or only way to do that. I think each staff person needs to figure out for their area of responsibility how their work
+1. It seems to me there's a deeper sense, having nothing to do with conscious job descriptions, in which staff roles may be expected to facilitate the work of the community/volunteers... but this is a different discussion.
For comparison, it would be nice to see the community identify more people who can help 'work with Foundation projects', bridging the gap between the Foundation & Board, third party projects supporting Wikipedia, and the community. The Foundation exists largely to enable and support ongoing community work, yet many active community members/groups who could benefit from this never learn how to. Every discussion about how to find and engage already-active editors (active /somewhere/) in a new topic that will impact them is a reminder of this gap.
SJ