[Foundation-l] IRC Group Contacts

Wed May 16 15:57:28 UTC 2007

So after some serious beavering, my memo box and cloak request list
have all been checked through. The backlog is officially cleared, as
soon as my memo box clears itself (deletion runs are run by freenode
services periodically, not immeadiately on deletion by the user). I've
memo'ed all those who need to resubmit.

A few notes:
*Cloaks that aren't set on master nicks may not work. This is when you
link your alt nick to your master nick the wrong way round. Always
remember to /ns link from the alt nick, not the master. In future I've
realised I need to not issue cloaks to alt nicks as this will cause
confusion. If you are affected (i.e. your cloak only works on an alt
nick and not a master, or you haven't got it at this point and have no
explanatory memo), please e-mail me quoting your nick(s) and I'll see
what I can do.
*wikimedia/ cloaks need the verification process to be done using
meta. If you use another wiki and ask for wikimedia/, I'll give the
appropriate wiki cloak rather than just rejecting it, as I think this
is more helpful for everyone.
*Cloaks are project/username not project/nickname or any other
variation - the idea is that a cloak proves you are the same user on
the project. You can decide to capitalise the project, or lowercase
everything but otherwise it should match your username with spaces
replaced with hyphens, e.g. my non-staff one is wikimedia/sean-whitton
while my nick is seanw.

Thanks for bringing this up those who did, as it also gave me a chance
to explain myself. From this point, things should be back to normal.

Sean

On 16/05/07, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> Okay, right, I think it's time for some explanation from me about
> what, quite rightly, prompted you to make this suggestion. I think I
> need to clarify a few things and apologise.
>
> I have got a pretty efficient system going with the script on the
> toolserver that gathers requests and checks them for validity. It has
> improved things vastly and my thanks pour over to GeorgeMoney for
> helping me to code it. I enforce pretty stringent cloak requirements
> in terms of requiring e-mail addresses and alt nicks etc., and this
> means that before I was getting huge numbers of invalid requests. Now,
> only about one in every ten is a request I have to refuse for whatever
> reason.
>
> However, this all went wrong a few weeks ago and this meant that a
> large number of people are waiting in vain, and this is what I intend
> to apologise for. When I changed my username I got my toolserver
> username changed from xyrael to swhitton but didn't realise the
> database credentials hadn't been moved properly by the admin who
> renamed the account (my fault for not checking, not theirs for doing
> it wrongly), This meant that a load of requests that were memo'ed and
> talk paged correctly are not in the database and so I can't really do
> them. Yes, I could try and piece together the different parts myself,
> but I don't think this is very efficient, and it wouldn't always work.
>
> Instead, I am going to be asking all those I have partial requests for
> to re-do their requests from the top, which is rather unfortunate, but
> I think it's probably going to be faster overall.
>
> ***PLEASE DO NOT JUST GO AND DO THIS YET*** (indeed, this is the
> reason I didn't post to the list before to avoid a deluge of requests
> with a system in a bit of a mess)
>
> I will send memos out to those I have memos but no database, and those
> in the database with no memo should get something similar. When you
> get a memo, that should tell you do redo your request.
>
> If this plan works then the system will become efficient again and I
> will get back to rattling through cloaks at the speed you have kindly
> praised me for in this thread :)
>
> I would also like to address the issue with the other side of
> group-contacting which is managing channels as an oversight.
> Essentially, James and I try and be pretty laid-back and prefer
> channel owners and ops with access already to deal with things because
> they know more about specific channels than us: I go to a specific
> person for #wikipedia issues, for example. This is nothing new and has
> long been the case that we try and let things handle themselves the
> vast majority of the time.
>
> On the other hand there are cases where things can't be dealt for
> technical and social reasons and in such a situation please don't be
> afraid to to e-mail me, or if appropriate drop me a talk page message.
> I'm always happy to help and because I'm also a freenode staffer I'm
> always willing to dispense general IRC advice, outside of my contact
> role: I try to be a helpful person!
>
> So, to summarise: once the cloak request system is fixed then things
> will probably move a lot faster, and then all concerns presented here
> will be lifted. Isn't it nice when things work?
>
> Sean
> Your friendly IRC group contact
>
> On 16/05/07, Casey Brown <cbrown1023 at comcast.net> wrote:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Group_Contacts
> >
> > This is not a concern about the quality of the contacts' work, which is
> > fantastic, but rather the fact that we have only two people in this role and
> > their availability is sometimes limited.  We currently only have two
> > contacts, but sometimes their other Wikimedia and real-life commitments
> > create delays.
> >
> > We also have to look at the nature of the job itself and the size of our IRC
> > network.  The job entails setting up cloaks and coordinating the Wikimedia
> > Foundation and its users with the Freenode staff.  Handing out cloaks itself
> > is a rather labor-intensive process and there are many that need to be done.
> > Sean is rather inactive and while he always replies, it is sometimes days
> > later.
> >
> > For a group as large as Wikimedia, I believe we need at least 4 or 5 active
> > contacts.  The Foundation and the community need to figure whether or not we
> > do need more contacts and, if so, who we want these users to be.
> >
> > Casey Brown
> > Cbrown1023
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> —Sean Whitton (seanw)
> <sean at silentflame.com>
> http://seanwhitton.com/
>

-- 
—Sean Whitton (seanw)
<sean at silentflame.com>
http://seanwhitton.com/