[Foundation-l] Strategy n WMF Staff

[Casey Brown]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at 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 at 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

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023