[Foundation-l] IRC Group Contacts 3-month review

[Rjd0060]

The following was posted to the Group Contact noticeboard on Meta.
You can view it at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard#3_month_review
.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them on
the talk page (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:IRC/Group_Contacts/Noticeboard ).
Cross-posting of this email to other project lists is also encouraged.

It has been just over 3 months since the new group contact team was
announced. Since then, we've been busy working on a number of
projects; most of which are “behind the scenes”. It is important to
keep a certain level of transparency to show that we are actually
accomplishing things.

The role of the group contacts is to liaise with freenode's staff to
ensure a good relationship with those that provide out IRC services,
to help with the smooth running of IRC by encouraging good practices
on the part of channel operators, to deal with channels left without
operators, and to assign cloaks. They try to avoid getting involved in
the running of individual channels.

We are available on IRC in the channel #wikimedia-ops and via e-mail:
irc-contacts at lists.wikimedia.org for most issues,
irc-contacts-owner at lists.wikimedia.org for matters in which you would
prefer channel contacts not to see your posting, as this goes to only
the GCs.

Our nicks are dungodung, kibble, Rjd0060 and seanw.
Our commitments

    * Regular setting of cloaks
    * Increased level of activity
    * Communicate regularly with channel contacts

What we've done

    * Created an internal mailing list to facilitate discussion
amongst the group and channel contacts
    * Surveyed all channels in our namespaces and recorded basic information
    * Personally contacted all owners of primary channels in order to
open a line of communication
    * Manually set cloaks (since the end of July) while we wait for a
new cloak request system to be developed
    * Established requirements for and began setting mediawiki cloaks
    * Held a meeting to gain community feedback (see log / minutes)
    * Appointed a channel contact for the central Wikimedia channel
operator channel (#wikimedia-ops)
    * Lots of housekeeping with access lists (see log of public actions)

What you can do

    * Please tell us if you find users abusing the Wikimedia name by
causing trouble in other channels while wearing our cloaks. We are
willing and able to deal with these users but can't hope to watch
every channel on freenode.
    * Come to our IRC meetings and bring up issues so we are aware and
have more minds working on problems.
    * Check the noticeboard for happenings.
    * If you help manage IRC, join #wikimedia-ops and contribute to
discussions there.
    * Do not hesitate to get in touch with us by e-mail or IRC if you
ever have feedback, suggestions or concerns. We will, at the very
least least, point you to the correct person.

Moving forward

    * We plan to continue our higher level of activity.
    * Cloaks will also continue to be set on a regular basis and in a
timely fashion.
    * A new cloak request system is in the process of being developed.
    * We plan to hold IRC community meetings on a regular basis, with
the next one scheduled for sometime in November (watch IRC/Group
Contacts/Meetings for further updates).
    * We will continue to communicate with and rely on the channel
contacts to inform us if there are any issues within their channels.
    * We're here for support if needed at any time.

--
For the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts,
Ryan (User:Rjd0060)