There is an on-going discussion on the Foundation mailing list. Feel free to review the clarifications that PB has posted.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan < parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:

Just one question. What does this new Department mean to the Ordinary Wikipedian? --

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.comwrote:

...

This is for your information.

Sincerely,

Anirudh Bhati

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Geoff Brigham gbrigham@wikimedia.org Date: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:19 AM Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette To: wikimediaannounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new department called the “Legal and Community Advocacy Department.” This new alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and community advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation. For details, please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement.

As part of this reorganization, I’m pleased to announce that Philippe Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy. We will start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation period with it to brainstorm how to build the department. We anticipate that it will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new department at full speed.

The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to discuss the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department. Details for the IRC chat can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours.

Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation

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-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll Plaza. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG

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On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.ghoda@gmail.com wrote:

Just one question. What does this new Department mean to the Ordinary Wikipedian?

It doesn't really mean anything for the ordinary Wikipedian. The ordinary Wikipedian doesn't even need to know the Wikimedia Foundation exists or about any of its staff members.

For the ordinary Wikipedian who is a bit more involved in "meta-organization" like you probably are, it just means that Philippe, Maggie, and other members of this "Advocacy Department" are your points of contact if you need anything from the Wikimedia Foundation. You can ask them questions, give them feedback that you don't know who else to give to, etc. Their roles have already existed, and these staff members have already been in place, what's happening now is just an organizational reshuffle that puts them into their own department.