On 05/14/2014 05:38 PM, Terry Chay wrote:
Hello everyone,
It's a testament to either how awesome our people are… or just how notorious I am for not announcing things promptly that I noticed this sitting in my Google Docs the other day with the note from the VisualEditor Team: "terry, we and Alex think this is now good for you to post, if you're OK with it."
I'm including the letter as is. Please note the date at the end.
…
Hello all,
It is with great pleasure that I’m announcing that Alex Monk[0] has joined the Wikimedia Foundation as a contractor in Features Engineering.
Alex has been a great, wide-ranging and hugely supporting volunteer developer for 2 years on MediaWiki core and several extensions, including LiquidThreads and Echo, helping us get rid of outdated extensions once and for all, and fixing general site issues.
Alex will be working with the VisualEditor[3] team to help better integrate the editor into MediaWiki, and create and improve the editing tools, as well as fixes and support for MediaWiki core and other extensions as needed.
Alex is currently a student in England, and will be working with us part-time whilst he continues his studies. In his spare time, Alex was recently part of a team at his college competing in this year’s Student Robotics[4] competition, and also enjoys playing online computer games.
We’re delighted that he’s agreed to join us, with his first official day Monday, 10 March.
Please join me in an only-slightly-belated welcome of Alex to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Take care, Terry
[4]: [[w:en:Student Robotics]]
…
Even if the staff tries to cover up for me, they now know that I'll somehow conspire to forget to do so until two months later. :-D
Please join us in a very-belated welcome of Alex to the Wikimedia Foundation!
Take care,
terry
terry chay 최태리 Director of Features Engineering Wikimedia Foundation “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.”
p: +1 (415) 839-6885 x6832 m: +1 (408) 480-8902 e: tchay@wikimedia.org i: http://terrychay.com/ w: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tychay aim: terrychay
I have for years appreciated Alex Monk and been grateful to have him as part of our community. He's sensible, calm, thorough, and straightforward without being mean, and a good person to bounce ideas around with. This announcement caused me to look up the chronology of his MediaWiki contributions:
Early 2012: first email in my email archives & #mediawiki chatlogs mentioning, to, or from Alex (Krenair) October 2012: Alex becomes an Echo maintainer December 2012: first discussion of Alex becoming a core maintainer Feb 2013: Alex becomes a maintainer of MediaWiki core January 2014: Alex comes to Architecture Summit and a bunch of us get to meet him for the first time :)
If there are any new MediaWiki hackers out there who think Krenair is one of the "old hands" because he's an expert: well, he was once a newbie like you, and you can become an expert like him. And he's not a bad role model to follow. :) I'm glad Engineering Community Team could do our bit to help nurture him: now, over to you, Terry. :)