[Foundation-l] Contractors and other non-permanent staff

[Daniel Phelps]

Thanks MZMcBride for your note -- I absolutely sympathize with anyone who's trying to keep up to speed on everything going on at Wikimedia. We're all trying to strike a good balance in terms of what's useful, relevant, interesting, and I hope we are generally getting it fairly close to correct.

As a general rule we only announce new staff and those contractors who are expected to interact significantly with the community.  We don't announce all PT and short-term people, because we don't think it makes sense to do that.

Whenever anyone has a question that is not answered by a general announcement there are many options available for interaction with folks like Philippe and Cary and Guillaume etc. on IRC and by e-mail, and you should feel free to ask questions whenever you like.  If someone doesn't have direct access to other staff I can always be contacted directly if there is a question about personnel.

Best,
-Daniel Phelps
Human Resources


On Jun 1, 2010, at 5:26 PM, MZMcBride wrote:

> Hi --
> 
> I just noticed a wikimedia.org e-mail address that I didn't recognize; I
> assume it belongs to a new contractor. It reminded me that the announcement
> process for contractors (and other non-permanent staff) is still
> non-existent.
> 
> The last time I asked about this, I was told that I should be picking up
> clues from the way people sign blog posts and gathering other pieces of
> information (like e-mail address changes) in order to figure out who's
> working on what. I don't think this is acceptable.
> 
> Is it possible to have some sort of standardized announcement process and
> tracking system of Wikimedia's contractors? They're not tracked at the
> Wikimedia Foundation's Staff page[1] and I don't know of any public place
> where they're announced. Specifically, it would be nice to know who's been
> hired, what they're working on, etc.
> 
> It's possible that there are announcements being made and I've simply been
> missing them, but that would be surprising to me and would indicate a
> problem of a different nature.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> MZMcBride
> 
> [1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff
> 
>