Talk:Official positions

Previous discussions on the matter at Talk:Official position history

please, do not hesitate to paste here a previous discussion if you feel it needs to be. Anthere 12:42, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm hesitating, I'm hesitating! I think my list of special interest groups, and other parallel proposals, belong in any discussion of official positions. I will move it to its own page on meta... +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 19:02, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See also Talk:Wikimedia Foundation organigram for the current organigram.

Refactoring

I'm happy to help with the refactoring of this page. However, I'd like to know first if JeLuF, Midom, Soufron and Brion have accepted their appointments, as none of them have responded to Jimmy's original post.--Eloquence 18:47, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Brion has now responded. I'm still not sure about the others.--Eloquence

JeLuF did not accept the title. Midom, Brion and Elian did. I don't know about Soufron yet. Angela 18:33, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am glad to accept.Soufron

Other positions

Legal Advisors

Evaluating copyright, IP, and incorporation law in various countries. Advising is needed for Wikimedia as a whole, for subprojects like WikiReaders, and for local chapters.

Public Relations

Responding to inquiries; generating press releases; attending media events. Local press contacts exist for France (via Anthere), Germany (via elian), and China (Fuzheado). See also Terry Foote, above.

Further definition, expansion

• The CTO is underdefined, especially wrt the other two technical roles. Perhaps add: "Roadmaps, release schedules, network and software-dependency diagrams" or something like it? +sj | Translate the Quarto |+
  • Hmm, now I've got an incredible urge to make software-dependency diagrams... --brion 07:59, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• This page should expand to include such niche positions as "official copyright contact" (jwales), "official positions A-F for ISO 9001 compatibility", etc. [positions for every external interface we need to be able to handle]

President

Isn't the most important official position the office of the President? As I understood it, this office was created at the initial Board meeting, with Jimmy selected to fill that office. The definition might be, "The Foundation President is authorized by the Board to act in an executive capacity to direct the operations of the Foundation."

This office is not mentioned on the organigram page, either. TimShell 17:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a result of the confusion between official positions and legally recognised officers of an organisation. This page is a list of people recognised as doing work in a particular area and not a reflection of who is an officer of the Foundation. The role of president seems more likely to fall into the latter group, on which we have no page. Angela 18:05, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Rethinking the rôle of Research Officer

There has been discussion about reforming the position of Research Officer, currently, well, dormant. Certainly, I think that the rôle should be resurrected, but with a rather different spin - I see the rôle as less of an executive one, and more of an enabling one. For this reason, I think it should really be called something like "Research Co-ordinator" or "Research Co-ordination Officer", because "Research Officer" gives the wrong impression both to the holder, and to those that they deal with — that it's about leading rather than shepherding, about ordering people about instead of listening and helping them to flourish, about being an executive officer instead of a contact point.

In terms of development, the RC/CRO manages the WRN - asking people to join, helping them to talk to others, and generally helping research to grow. As part of this, there is a need for substantial liaison with the developers and sysadmins (new features - how could they most efficiently be implemented?, etc.), but also with the various project and language communities at large ("what features do you want?", etc.) and the various other groups with steering interests (and the Board, of course).

In terms of sociological study (user surveys, peer review efforts, analysing methods of group-work, etc.), I think that the RC/CRO has a similar rôle - co-ordination of academic and otherwise research into our content and methods. This is both for their benefit (obviously ;-)) and ours - we will (hopefully) gain a better understanding of exactly what we're doing, and how our community works (and doesn't).

I'm not sure that I can neaten this up into a nice formal description, however... Thoughts?

James F. (talk) 08:54, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I endorse this view, and congratulations on your new rôle, James ;-). Cormaggio ^@ 08:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I also endorse this view James. By the way, I am refactoring WMF website, where I will put Cormaggio text soon (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Anthere/home#From_the_projects). Feel free to write a little something to explain what your views of the job is, and the directions you expect to help the group to explore. Anthere

IMHO it is important that you distinguish clearly between two activities:

1. "R&D within and for the use of Wikipedia/Wikimedia".
2. "Research on Wikipedia and related topics"

The first one should be directed, and be carried out on the basis of permanent mutual exchange between those who are engaging in R&D activities and those having a stake in strategic decisions (the board and eventaully the community at large).

The second should be left to the scientific community outsinde wikipedia. In my view, the role of the Wikipedia R&D Officer as to the second point should be limited to:

• gathering and formulating questions of interest to Wikipedia/Wikimedia
• doing reviews of the scientific literature on Wikipedia-related topics and presenting them to the community (so they can feed into the R&D activities at Wikipedia/Wikimedia).

As part of second point questions concerning Wiki-Governance, institutionalising volunteer communities, etc. have to be addressed (among other questions) - in my point of view these cannot be addressed seriously from within a hierarchical structure at Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and possibly not even by active Wikipedia-users alone. To get valid results, you would need to operate from a certain distance.--krol:k 10:01, 14 October 2005 (UTC)