I've been part of the strategy process these last few months and will continue to contribute to the wiki ( strategy.wikimedia.org ).
I've been talking to strategy facilitator Philippe and one of the things that's come up and is still being discussed [1] is who will be responsible for putting various ideas raised by the strategy process into practice.
I *think* it's almost inevitable that a side-effect of strat is that some volunteers will want to discuss ideas with WMF staff; it's acknowledged that the role of the WMF, of chapters and of volunteers overlap to some degree and while discussion may clarify this to some extent I think Strategy volunteers will be wanting to communicate with WMF staff more than they had done previously... I know I will.
All of which led me to look at the foundation's staff page:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff
And what I noticed was that whereas, for example, Sue Gardner and Erik Moller have wiki-linked job titles - which you can click to see their respective responsibilities - there are quite a few staff entries that do not.
It occurs to me that if every effort were made to put the role/responsibilities of ALL staff on the wiki it would really help people to address their ideas to the people most able to help.
Which brings me to a further point; the staff page has wiki-linked names which take you to a user page and its associated talk page. Is the talk page the advised way to contact a staff member directly? Or is one discouraged from attempting to contact staff directly in general? Are the mailing lists the approved way of getting through to the WMF? Or should we direct everything through Cary as Volunteer Coordinator?
I think answers to these questions will be very useful to strategy volunteers and so I'd like permission (or explicit advice not) to paste up the response on the Strategy wiki. Don't panic: I don't foresee a sudden tidal wave of stuff being thrown at WMF staff. And, anyway, they all knew there was going to be a strategy, so I guess they're prepared :o)
[1] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Task_force/Movement_Roles / http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Movement_Roles
User:Bodnotbod @ en:wp / strategy.wikimedia.org
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I *think* it's almost inevitable that a side-effect of strat is that some volunteers will want to discuss ideas with WMF staff; it's acknowledged that the role of the WMF, of chapters and of volunteers overlap to some degree and while discussion may clarify this to some extent I think Strategy volunteers will be wanting to communicate with WMF staff more than they had done previously... I know I will.
Are you talking about wanting to communicate with staff members on strategy-related topics? If so, that should probably be happening *on* strategywiki. If you contact a staff member about strategic planning in one of the ways below, I suggest you just point them to a public thread on strategywiki so more can participate/view the discussion.x
And what I noticed was that whereas, for example, Sue Gardner and Erik Moller have wiki-linked job titles - which you can click to see their respective responsibilities - there are quite a few staff entries that do not.
See the bottom of the page, where it links you to .odt files with most job descriptions[1]. Most other job descriptions can be found in the "job opening" page then the position was advertised[2].
It occurs to me that if every effort were made to put the role/responsibilities of ALL staff on the wiki it would really help people to address their ideas to the people most able to help.
See above. ;-)
Which brings me to a further point; the staff page has wiki-linked names which take you to a user page and its associated talk page.
Yep, that's their userpage where they include more personal information about themselves (e.g. link to other userpages/sites, biography).
Is the talk page the advised way to contact a staff member directly?
Not the foundationwiki one, no, because most people wouldn't be able to talk to them there. (You need an account.)
Or is one discouraged from attempting to contact staff directly in general? Are the mailing lists the approved way of getting through to the WMF? Or should we direct everything through Cary as Volunteer Coordinator?
[I don't work for the Foundation, so don't take this as an official answer. ;-)]
Personally, I don't think you should feel discouraged from contacting staff directly. Quite a few of them have accounts on others wikis (like Meta, for example) and you can talk to them on their talk pages there. Also, they all have e-mails in the form of flastname@wikimedia.org (first initial, last name), so you should feel free to e-mail them.
Mailing lists are usually best for contacting multiple people or when you want to get feedback on something, not for when you want to contact a specific staff member.
All this being said, don't feel bad if you want to run something through Cary first. He can always help you figure out who's the best person to handle your query, it might not necessarily even *be* a staff member.
I think answers to these questions will be very useful to strategy volunteers and so I'd like permission (or explicit advice not) to paste up the response on the Strategy wiki.
The mailing list archives are public, so I don't think anyone would care if you reposted what's discussed in this thread.
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Policies#Related_documents [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Category:Job_openings
On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:25 PM, Casey Brown wrote:
Personally, I don't think you should feel discouraged from contacting staff directly. Quite a few of them have accounts on others wikis (like Meta, for example) and you can talk to them on their talk pages there. Also, they all have e-mails in the form of flastname@wikimedia.org (first initial, last name), so you should feel free to e-mail them.
I would add this to Casey's very fine advice - if you're asking them something strategy related, it might be a kind gesture to copy me on it (or eekim). That way, if they ask us about it, we know what they're talking about. :)
pb
____________________ Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation
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2010/2/26 Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
All this being said, don't feel bad if you want to run something through Cary first. He can always help you figure out who's the best person to handle your query, it might not necessarily even *be* a staff member.
For my experience - even Cary has sometimes problems to figure our whom to contact in the Office for a specific inquiry - and this is not his fault but just because it is simply not well resolved inside Office, so I guess producing a single "how to" document could be a good exercise for WMF officers, as it would force them to take a look how contacting with the looks from outsider POV :-)
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
For my experience - even Cary has sometimes problems to figure our whom to contact in the Office for a specific inquiry - and this is not his fault but just because it is simply not well resolved inside Office, so I guess producing a single "how to" document could be a good exercise for WMF officers, as it would force them to take a look how contacting with the looks from outsider POV :-)
Thanks to everyone for their very useful replies, I'll file the thread away in a handy place for future reference :o)
In relation to the above; yes, I'm very conscious that the WMF is still a young organisation and, furthermore, there's a number of new recruits who are no doubt still finding their feet. It would be unfair and undesirable in a number of ways to contact them with proposals at this point.
I'm also conscious that the volunteer community is pretty vast and that the staff is very small in comparison, so I appreciate that they don't want to be *too* accessible given that most issues are best addressed by other volunteers.
User:Bodnotbod (en:wp)
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:
For my experience - even Cary has sometimes problems to figure our whom to contact in the Office for a specific inquiry - and this is not his fault but just because it is simply not well resolved inside Office, so I guess producing a single "how to" document could be a good exercise for WMF officers, as it would force them to take a look how contacting with the looks from outsider POV :-)
Yeah, some cases are borderline. We even run into issues with this on OTRS sometimes (who should we forward the ticket to?), so now there's a help page devoted to it on OTRS-wiki ("Help:Foundation").
2010/2/26 Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com:
All of which led me to look at the foundation's staff page:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff
I think answers to these questions will be very useful to strategy volunteers and so I'd like permission (or explicit advice not) to paste up the response on the Strategy wiki. Don't panic: I don't foresee a sudden tidal wave of stuff being thrown at WMF staff. And, anyway, they all knew there was going to be a strategy, so I guess they're prepared :o)
Yeah.. It is been talked long time ago that there should somewhere be a single document which says clearly who is responsible for what in Foundation Office, and maybe the second one "WMF for dummies" or "WMF how to"- explaining how to practically contact WMF officers for typical enquires. Maybe - strategy wiki is a good place to prepare a draft of such documents?
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org