Hi stevie. Long emial, sorry.
Simplest answer; Improve the OTRS software.
That would be big step, but my recent attempt to do so didn't get anywhere.
Barring that, OTRS recruitment isn't the best solution. Agents get burnt out and, as delicately as I can, some of us are terrible at customer service (I once picked up a hanging ticket where the first respondent had sent a clearly upset individual a load of wiki-jargon).
The key change is cultural. As editors we are quite self centred, with strong opinions on our mission, and often forget that we are talking about real people.
I've seen subjects or their reps appear on talk pages with concerns and for them to be basically insulted. (In fairness I have also seen editors go out of their way to help an article subject)
I was guilty if this once, an actor who had divorced some years ago felt the press had unfairly dragged him through the mire. He tried to fix the "truth", and as a result we clashed.
It took me a long while to reflect on that exchange, but I realised how much that content affects him as an individual.
Now, it seems likely that a lot of the stuff he objects to is nit picking. Things he obsesses over for some reason or another. But some of that content was essentially gossip, and who can say of a 20 year old tabloid had the Truth of it or not. Whatever, it's recorded for history now...
I still don't know what to do about that content. But I do now recognise the impact of our actions on real life.
We helped stop some US legislation for goodness sake, if that is not an example of our intellectual mindshare then I don't know what is.
So the key change that is needed is this: we need a social change where we are humble about our role and where we recognise the impact of our work on real people.
Im in the office today, so will bend your ear some more in person if you like, and if time permits.
Tom Morton
On 15 Nov 2012, at 14:16, Stevie Benton stevie.benton@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
Tom , I think that's a fair comment - but we have the problem that we can't actually employ anyone to provide that service. An an OTRS volunteer yourself, do you have any suggestions on how we can bring more people into the fold? It doesn't seem to be something we can reasonably incentivise, either. It's something of a quandary!
Stevie
On 15 November 2012 14:10, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.comwrote:
We have two customers, and one "employee" role, I think. And it should go something like (in order of importance):
Reader (Customer) Subject (Customer) Editor (Employee)
Or in other words; because the PR company represents the subject of the article, and we rank so highly on Google etc., they should reasonably expect to receive a good service from us.
Tom
On 15 November 2012 12:32, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
On 15 November 2012 12:04, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
If you look at the CIPR draft best practice guidelines (which are not of course Wikipedia policy at the moment, but are quite similar to Jimbo's "bright line" rule)
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_best_practice_guidelines_for_PR#A_Step-by...
you'll see that point 3 begins: "If there is no response ...", and
point 4
likewise begins, "If you get no response". The process also requires
people
to look through the contributions history to find and contact editors
who
worked on the article if they don't get a response on the talk page.
That *is* cumbersome, and using a central on-wiki noticeboard would
improve
customer satisfaction.
Andreas, the "customer" on Wikipedia is the reader. And forgetting that leads to a confusion of "contact Wikipedia" with "complaints service".
Readers and editors play different roles in the system. We need to keep clear the distinction. (Even if the mechanism for contacting WP could do with tweaking, we still need to be clear that the reader matters.)
Charles
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