Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:02:29 +0200 From: Thomas Goldammer thogol@googlemail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission Message-ID: <CAL0e-KVCetcaaKNQuiSwX5ckBnxqw=9_6vhkdj988yPz3wDwEA@mail.gmail.com
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You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept up-to-date.
You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean). I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for you to do. Thanks.
I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response.
I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes).
Regards, Craig Franklin
It was not meant passive-aggressive. ;) I know that his suggestion is a good one and I wanted to push him to just do it on Meta. Sorry if you misunderstood that. ^^
Th.
I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response.
I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes).
Regards, Craig Franklin
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Craig Franklin craig@halo-17.net wrote:
I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response.
I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes).
Regards, Craig Franklin
This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions?
I don't have a strong opinion on this particular request -- I spent years as a corporate ombudsman and so I understand the concerns about privacy and confidentiality, but the request seems reasonable. However, if Thomas feels that it's not as important as other tasks that he has been given to do, what's the expectation -- that he should post an explanation, but is not obliged to do the task?
I suppose this is a special case of a general question: presumably WMF employees have two masters -- the decisions of the board, which should trickle down into directives to each group and employee, and prevailing consensus in the communities, which may occasionally conflict with those directives, or which may lead to vocal minority dissent. I have seen a couple of examples of this in practice but I don't have a clear idea of how those conflicts ought to be resolved.
Mike
2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchrist@gmail.com:
This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions?
Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process.
Th.
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
Could the interested people, as was asked, draw up a few "report guidelines" on meta as to what they would like to see, and could the commission can take just a bit of its time to see what's feasible/reasonable and what is not (as per Mike's proposal), and agree to issue a report at given intervals so that the black box is maybe not so black?
It seems that something along the lines of X cases, Y accepted, Z rejected (reason for them being rejected if possible), solved succesfully/not solved and time to solve a case (date it came in, date it was solved) would probably answer most of the concerns expressed here. If you know you have to do it in advance, then the task should be bearable. Let's look forward, and not dwell on what we didn't think about before.
Cheers,
Delphine
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Goldammer thogol@googlemail.com wrote:
2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchrist@gmail.com:
This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions?
Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process.
Th.
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Please have a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission#Processing.2FReporting
I hope this is sort of satisfying for now? I will not do that for the 2011 term. Already this one cost me more than two hours and it is only from 1st of February to now. :) If you do the maths you end up at ~20 cases for the 2011 term (5 cases in 3 months = 20 in a year). I think there were some more than that but not many more. Also included on that page is the outline of our processing that I gave earlier.
Th.
2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com:
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
Could the interested people, as was asked, draw up a few "report guidelines" on meta as to what they would like to see, and could the commission can take just a bit of its time to see what's feasible/reasonable and what is not (as per Mike's proposal), and agree to issue a report at given intervals so that the black box is maybe not so black?
It seems that something along the lines of X cases, Y accepted, Z rejected (reason for them being rejected if possible), solved succesfully/not solved and time to solve a case (date it came in, date it was solved) would probably answer most of the concerns expressed here. If you know you have to do it in advance, then the task should be bearable. Let's look forward, and not dwell on what we didn't think about before.
Cheers,
Delphine
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Goldammer thogol@googlemail.com wrote:
2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchrist@gmail.com:
This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions?
Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process.
Th.
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2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com:
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received...
On 23 April 2012 12:41, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com:
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received...
I don't think your correlation is correct. Simply because they have not maintained a list of case dispositions (not required or expected to this point, and more particularly very difficult to do when there's no confidential place for them to retain it) does not mean that they have failed to do the job properly.
I note the plan to create accesses to CRMs for "community" uses in Q3 of the draft Engineering annual plan. I'd encourage the Ombudsman Committee to ask that they be put at the front of the line for access to this software.
Risker/Anne
Risker, 23/04/2012 18:50:
I don't think your correlation is correct. Simply because they have not maintained a list of case dispositions (not required or expected to this point, and more particularly very difficult to do when there's no confidential place for them to retain it) does not mean that they have failed to do the job properly.
Well, personally I find it difficult to manahe such a number of requests in a collaborative way without a shared todo list. As Thogo said, the commission is looking for a way to self-organize in a more efficient way as the requests are scaling up compared to the past.
I note the plan to create accesses to CRMs for "community" uses in Q3 of the draft Engineering annual plan. I'd encourage the Ombudsman Committee to ask that they be put at the front of the line for access to this software.
I'm not sure we need new software, probably some suggestions by similar bodies would be enough (ArbComs, committees of all sorts, chapters' boards... we have lots of them). However, you're right that https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals is very important and deserves more attention.
Nemo
On 23 April 2012 17:50, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received...
I don't think your correlation is correct. Simply because they have not maintained a list of case dispositions (not required or expected to this point, and more particularly very difficult to do when there's no confidential place for them to retain it) does not mean that they have failed to do the job properly.
How can you make sure you don't forget any cases if you don't keep a record of them?
On 23 April 2012 18:56, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 23 April 2012 17:50, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received...
I don't think your correlation is correct. Simply because they have not maintained a list of case dispositions (not required or expected to this point, and more particularly very difficult to do when there's no confidential place for them to retain it) does not mean that they have failed to do the job properly.
How can you make sure you don't forget any cases if you don't keep a record of them?
I'm confused. It's trivially obvious that you can keep a record of what you're working on at a given time without keeping a centralised overview record based on time periods. In what way is this not clear?
In my experience, the Ombudsmen do excellent work, but I think some (additional) community reporting is probably a good thing. To echo the suggestion ^^^^ up-thread, why don't we take this to meta for discussion about what we want to see from them (and what's reasonable, of course!)?
J.
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com:
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received...
Knowing _what_ cases they have received is entirely different from keeping track of _how many_ they have received. I assume they could very easily ascertain if a given complaint is a duplicate of an already solved case, but would have to do some work to count up the previous cases.
Best regards, Bence
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Just for the record: the reason I asked for the number of emails is not because of an exact number: but for people to understand how much of a workload it is (and appreciate it!). For that number I only care about the order of magnitude in the end - the important numbers are indeed the number of cases etc.
Thank you very much Thomas Goldammer for your effort of providing this data. I appreciate your help in answering the questions.
Lodewijk
El 23 de abril de 2012 15:46, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.comescribió:
Top posting.
This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken.
Could the interested people, as was asked, draw up a few "report guidelines" on meta as to what they would like to see, and could the commission can take just a bit of its time to see what's feasible/reasonable and what is not (as per Mike's proposal), and agree to issue a report at given intervals so that the black box is maybe not so black?
It seems that something along the lines of X cases, Y accepted, Z rejected (reason for them being rejected if possible), solved succesfully/not solved and time to solve a case (date it came in, date it was solved) would probably answer most of the concerns expressed here. If you know you have to do it in advance, then the task should be bearable. Let's look forward, and not dwell on what we didn't think about before.
Cheers,
Delphine
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Goldammer thogol@googlemail.com wrote:
2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchrist@gmail.com:
This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions?
Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process.
Th.
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