[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing 2 Community Fellows

[Florence Devouard]

I can not help (I am optimistic with lot's of faith :))

Does the fellowship status implies that the WMF pays for health or 
retirement benefits (as it would for a staff member) or does the fellow 
receive a lump sum and manages by himself to pay for taxes and benefits 
depending on the country he lives in (as would a contractor) ?

Does the fellowship status implies that, should the fellow get in 
trouble, he would be considered "staff" (in terms of liability) or is he 
on his own ? (which in my terms would be "if as staff", he is covered by 
WMF insurance versus "if as contractor", he has to pay insurance by 
himself).


Florence

On 5/17/12 5:32 PM, Siko Bouterse wrote:
> It is my great pleasure to introduce two new Community Fellows in the
> Wikimedia Fellows Program: Tanvir Rahman and Steven Zhang.
>
> Tanvir Rahman is a Wikimedian who serves the movement locally and
> globally, both on- and off-wiki. Tanvir has been an active editor of
> Bengali Wikipedia since 2009, he holds administrator rights on
> multiple projects and he was elected a steward in 2011. He also
> volunteers on the Small Wiki Monitoring Team, the Countervandalism
> Network, as an OTRS agent, and is a translator for translatewiki.
> Tanvir helped found Wikimedia Bangladesh and organizes local outreach
> activities to raise awareness for Wikimedia and bring new editors to
> the projects.
>
> In his fellowship project, Tanvir will be experimenting with on-wiki
> strategies to encourage and grow the editing community on small
> language versions of Wikipedia, with specific focus on the Bengali
> Wikipedia. Smaller projects have different needs and challenges than
> the large language communities and may require different approaches to
> engage with editors. By focusing on a community like Bengali
> Wikipedia, which has about 50 active editors per month and sees 10 new
> editors per month, Tanvir hopes to learn more about the basic editing
> infrastructure needed to encourage new editors in new or small-scale
> projects.
>
> Steven Zhang is a Wikipedian with a passion for resolving on-wiki
> disputes and helping others do the same. He has been contributing to
> the English Wikipedia since 2008 and has been particularly active in
> dispute resolution forums, including the Wikipedia Mediation Cabal.
> Steven is studying a Certificate IV in Mediation at Open Colleges, and
> over the past year he has made it his mission as a volunteer to
> recruit more editors to join dispute resolution efforts. In 2011, he
> helped create the dispute resolution notice board, an entry point for
> mediating disputes on the English Wikipedia. Steven has noted that
> there aren’t enough active participants to resolve all of the disputes
> that arise on Wikipedia each day, and he believes that dispute
> resolution processes could be streamlined to make them more accessible
> and efficient to all editors who need them.
>
> For his fellowship project, Steven will be analyzing community
> feedback and dispute resolution activity in order to build a deeper
> understanding of what is effective and what needs improvement in the
> current systems. He will also be developing a guide for new editors
> who want to get involved in resolving on-wiki disputes.
>
> Steven and Tanvir will be documenting their work on-wiki and on the
> Foundation blog. You can learn more about their projects and how to
> get involved by visiting:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Fellows
>
> Welcome, Tanvir and Steven!
>