Talk:Community Relations

Please welcome Chris Koerner to the Wikimedia Foundation

I am pleased to announce that Chris Koerner has joined the Wikimedia Foundation as Community Liaison on the Technical Collaboration team. His main responsibility is to support community engagement activities for projects led by the Discovery team.

m:User:CKoerner (WMF)

Chris started his approach to the Wikimedia movement as administrator of a third party MediaWiki’s. He will be working remotely from Saint Louis, MO (USA). Here is an introduction in his own words:

"I've been a MediaWiki fan since 2011, having used it inside a large healthcare organization to share knowledge among co-workers. From there I fell into the the larger Wikimedia rabbit hole and haven't looked back. I'm active in the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, a user group of third-party MediaWiki administrators, developers, and users who advocate for using MediaWiki. I also edit from time to time on the English Wikipedia.

I've always loved technology and people. There's nothing like the feeling of sitting next to someone as they discover how they can use a bit of technology to solve a need. I've worked in desktop support, web development, marketing, and healthcare IT throughout my career. All along the way I've valued communication and transparency and love to encourage others to get involved.

I'm an enthusiast photographer, a person who enjoys board and video games, and a total nerd who rides a motorcycle. Meaning, the bike looks cool, but not me."

Please join me in welcoming Chris! --Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Grants:Friendly space expectations

What do we need to do to say that this policy (or a similar one) applies to pages on Meta related to our work, especially (but not solely) talk pages? Link it at the top of the page like Grants:PEG? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it's never advisable to force people to behave in ways they didn't agree to. Grants people can do so because they buy people's agreement with money. :) For the rest of the community, better follow standard policies. Nemo 21:27, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't care about the smiley: I write a message about demanding respect for my and my colleagues'work and that's the comment you come up with? You sure want to amend that. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I suggest that what you need to do, is to gain consensus. The consensus-building process for a code of conduct in technical spaces has been proceeding at mw:Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft for a long time now, as you know, having contributed there yourself within the past few weeks. That discussion was taken up largely by your colleagues on the WMF staff, who seem to have found the task sufficiently hard that they needed to hire consultants to help them. Demanding instant action is unlikely to produce the results you want. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:34, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF): Collaborating in a respectful and friendly environment is a basic requirement. I agree that it needs to be a priority in the spaces where our team works. I don't think we can literally apply that policy for the Grants namespace to a set of pages here, and I'd rather focus our efforts in the Code of Conduct for technical spaces before trying to open this discussion in Meta. What we can do as a team is to agree on our principles of collaboration and our expected behavior, and to take action in cases of unacceptable behavior.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 09:48, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Why can't you apply the policy? That's exactly what community tech and grantmaking both managed to do; I would suggest reaching out to them for guidance if you are unsure on how to best deploy it. Ironholds (talk) 18:09, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Several reasons, I would say. Firstly, Grants:Friendly space expectations is specifically written for the Grants namespace. Secondly, a single individual has no authority to impose a policy without consensus. Thirdly, it undercuts the process of consensus building in progress at mw:Talk:Code of Conduct/Draft. Perhaps it would help to know why this policy is needed so urgently? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:25, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Come work with us

Hi everyone: the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Developer Advocate to join our Technical Collaboration team. S/he will lead our strategy and efforts to engage volunteer developers in Wikimedia software projects and to grow the Wikimedia technical community. You can read the full job description, and apply, on Greenhouse. Or, you can let somebody else know about this opening! Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Introducing Srishti Sethi, our new Developer Advocate

The Technical Collaboration team is very happy to introduce you to Srishti Sethi, our new Developer Advocate. Srishti will lead our efforts to engage volunteer developers in Wikimedia software projects and to grow the Wikimedia technical community. In her first assignments, she will help promote Community Wishlist projects, the Wikimedia Developer Summit, and Wikimedia’s participation in Google Code-in. Srishti just relocated from Boston to San Francisco, and she will work at the Wikimedia Foundation office.

Srishti originally hails from Rajasthan, India. She recently finished her Masters in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, where she was exploring how online platforms for learning could be made more peer-led, engaging, participatory and accessible to diverse populations. At the Media Lab, Srishti contributed to the design, development, and research of -Unhangout, a platform for running large-scale un-conference style events online.

Before joining MIT, she was working as a software developer with a startup organization in India. As an undergrad, she was involved with the open source community GNOME and its educational project GCompris.

In her spare time, Srishti likes to play ping-pong, do long bike trips, take photographs and make masala chai for friends. :)

Please join us in welcoming Srishti!--Qgil-WMF (talk) 06:56, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Yay User:SSethi (WMF)! Glad you're finally here. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:34, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

CLs are hiring!

Hey everyone, apologies for the cross-posting, we're just too excited!

We're looking for a new member for our team [0], who'll dive right away in the promising Structured Data project. [1] Is our future colleague hiding among the tech ambassadors, translators, GLAM people, community members we usually work with? We look forward to finding out soon. So please, check the full job description [2], apply, or tell anyone who you think may be a good fit. For any questions, please contact me personally (not here). Thanks! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:04, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

• [0] Community_Liaisons
• [1] c:Commons:Structured_data
• [2] Greenhouse

CLs' session at Wikimania 2017

Details at "Challenge Accepted - What Community Liaisons do, challenges we face, and how you can help". See you there? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Welcoming Sandra Fauconnier, our new Structured Data community liaison

The Technical Collaboration team is very happy to welcome Sandra Fauconnier, our new community liaison focusing on the Structured Data program. Sandra will support the collaboration between the communities (Commons, Wikidata, GLAM…)  and the product development teams involved at the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany. The plan is to improve Wikimedia Commons allowing users to better view, translate, search, edit, curate and use media files. To achieve that, the Commons backend will be migrated to Wikibase, the same technology used for Wikidata. Many other features and pieces are part of this plan. In the near future, as the first prototypes and tests start to emerge, Sandra will also drive the engagement with new individual content contributors, existing and new GLAM organizations, and developers interested in exploring the possibilities of the new platform. 

Sandra is anything but new to the Wikimedia movement. She did her first edits as User:Spinster on English Wikipedia in 2003. After a hiatus (starting a family) she also became an active Commons editor, was a board member and volunteer for Wikimedia Nederland, and she has been enthusiastically contributing to Wikidata for a few years now. 

Sandra has an Master of Arts in art history and has worked on a variety of internet and video projects in the Dutch cultural sector. She was also a Wikipedian in Residence twice. In her free time, when she’s not editing Wikidata or another Wikimedia project, she likes to explore cities, cycle around the Dutch countryside, look at weird contemporary art or tend to her balcony garden. 

In her own words: “Hi all… I’m excited (and slightly frightened, haha) to start working on this epic project, that I have personally been anticipating eagerly for a very long time. I’m looking forward to hear about your wishes, dreams, fears, wild and great ideas - and to make the newly updated Commons as awesome as we can, together.” 

Sandra works remotely from Rotterdam, Netherlands. She reports to Quim Gil and keeps a dotted line with Alex Stinson to assure good coordination with the GLAM strategy. Sandra will attend Wikimania and its Hackathon in Montreal, and she is looking forward to chatting with many of you there, or else on other occasions — online and/or offline. You can address her in English, Flemish, Dutch or slow French, and she’ll manage to grasp the basic meaning of what you say when you talk to her in German, Spanish or Italian. Qgil-WMF (talk) 11:49, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

• I'm twice as glad that I already met her in Vienna then. :) --Nemo 19:46, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

• Welcome Sandra! :) --Marco Chemello (BEIC) (talk) 08:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

• Welcome and best of luck. —M@sssly^✉ 10:12, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Page is outdated

It lacks annual plan for current year, and there is no quarterly check in since Oct-Dec 2018, which was added in October 2018 and which linked to the wrong page (I am correcting it now). DuncanHill (talk) 00:04, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Use of first-person

This page is currently written in the first-person. I am concerned that this might discourage people (who aren't part of the group) from editing this page, something which is clearly needed, given how out-of-date this page is getting. Any objections to changing the page to be written in the third-person? --Yair rand (talk) 19:35, 18 March 2020 (UTC)