Talk:Volunteer Management

Defining volunteer in the Wikimedia context

I still have no idea what "Wikimedia Foundation volunteer" means here. Most of the people here volunteer to the Wikimedia projects, not to the Wikimedia Foundation. For all the roles you listed, a thing like "Comply with the foundation's Code of Conduct" is wildly inappropriate: the Wikimedia projects volunteers have their own self-defined code of conduct. You seem to be looking for some sort of embedding: perhaps interns are the model you have in mind? Alternatively, perhaps you're talking of Wikimedia Foundation office holders: that would include all the members of board committees, which are effectively members of a corporate body (even though they're not "officers" in the bylaws' sense); much less "simpler" staff committees like GAC. --Nemo 13:29, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with your statement "Most of the people here volunteer to the Wikimedia projects" and they are mostly editors...

I am trying to elucidate those who are doing work the foundation would have to staff if volunteers did not do it .... OTRS is a good example: the foundation needs to answer its mail/email and I presume a combination of staff and volunteers do it.

My reason for the interest is: I think some consideration towards professional volunteer management (see the references on the base page) would improve relations between staff and volunteers.... Regards, Ariconte (talk) 05:35, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Not true that OTRS communication would need staff otherwise. OTRS is often just a different way to handle processes that (with many problems) could also be forced to happen on a wiki or some other system. Again,, "volunteer" is not the point here. I think that you're trying to talk of office holders, or perhaps holders or sensitive functions, or simply of processes which need a certain assured level of service (for instance legal restrictions for checkusers, reasonable response time on OTRS). --Nemo 10:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I can make myself clearer by an example.... and possibly you can tell me what I should say to define it:

I volunteer a half day a week for Easycare Gardening ( http://www.easycaregardening.org.au/?page_id=151 ) who do gardens for the aged and infirm in our community. I and 3 other gents deliver mulch each Monday from 8:30 AM till we finish at about 1 PM.

I regard it as a job I have agreed to do! I give them about two months notice if I will be on holiday and they can count on me being there otherwise. They schedule the deliveries and we get a delivery sheet each week.... If I chose to resign, I would give them appropriate notice.

I volunteered to be a moderator of the wikimedia-l mailing list. I regard it as a job also - less physical than shovelling mulch, more stressful, and less thanks! I do it day in and day out .... I will give appropriate notice before I quit the job.

I see this as quite different to an editor who edits what they want if and when they want to..... Is that clearer?? Regards, Ariconte (talk) 01:47, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Another example -- In the design of the FDC the issue of non-performance by an FDC member was explicitly considered, see Funds_Dissemination_Committee_Advisory_Group/Meeting_2/Minutes#12._Addressing_inactivity_of_FDC_members. The FDC volunteer members 'have a job' and the board will remove them from the committee (fire them) if needed. Does that help??? Regards, Ariconte (talk) 04:25, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

It seems you're saying yes to my "processes which need a certain assured level of service" summary. Potentially including a specific amount of work hours to be provided, even. --Nemo 08:58, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

---

Maybe:

Project Volunteer: A person who contributes to a Wikimedia project as a volunteer. This is normally on a casual basis, ie; there is no requirement to continue or produce a particular outcome. Example: An editor of Wikivoyage.

Foundation volunteer: A person who accepts a defined role in assisting the Wikimedia Foundation. Example: A Funds Distribution Committee member.

Please note I changed the section head. How do these definitions feel? Regards and Thanks for the help, Ariconte (talk) 23:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

No, no, no. --Nemo 07:21, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Why, why, why? Ariconte (talk) 08:50, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

There are many ways one can subdivide volunteers:

• by work quality: - featured content creators, etc
• by role: writers, trainers, photographers, vandalfighters, gnomes,
• by tenure: how long have you been volunteering?
• by hierarchy: - userrights admins, crats ets.
• by "contract": Trustees and others make commitments and even have "fiduciary responsibilities"
• by "Icarus factor" closeness to central headquarters

Some of these are healthier than others for community development, and you can't prioritise all of them. Prioritising the wrong one would be toxic, not least because it would imply that others were less important. Someone who writes featured quality articles and cares nothing for the organisation stuff is at least as important as anyone else in the movement, making closeness to the WMF your key subdivide of volunteers would be one of the worst ways to run things. Other organisations can do things differently, when I was a volunteer going door to door asking people to give money to Greenpeace of course I regarded the ship crews as the most important people in that organisation. But we are a by nature a diffuse, federal, global organisation. WereSpielChequers (talk) 21:32, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Issues

1. Why is there an English Wikipedia page you're saying editors of other projects e.g. Wikivoyage are asked to follow?
2. The same issue goes for the line above mentioning the English Wikipedia's Five Pillars, and same for your Arbcom link.
3. MediaWiki software development is sometimes carried out by non-Wikimedia people, and your table should note this. Remember that MediaWiki is FOSS and is used by a large number of non-Wikimedia sites. Also, good luck finding a definition that covers all Wikimedia people contributing to MediaWiki/it's extensions, and then getting a count for that.
4. As for volunteer system administrators, there's only a tiny number of those. I recognise about two volunteer sysadmins on the list, maybe more depending on how you count the WMDE people? A bunch of us (Wikimedia tech people) have wished for a long time that there were more but it just doesn't seem to be happening right now.
5. This needs some clarification - are you saying every volunteer who is not a simple editor (e.g. anyone who is an OTRS agent or a mailing list moderator, etc.) is considered a 'foundation volunteer' and needs training, supervision and some new rights and responsibilities?

--Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:21, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

1 & 2: I am only trying to define the difference between a person who only edits articles and a person who works with the foundation staff on things they do. If part of this question is 'Why are you writing here?' I am writing here because I think meta is "the global community site for the Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement in general.".

3: I am aware it is FOSS. I would think it easy to count those who contribute (git commits?) and the foundation should provide this information.

4: I have been thinking about the relationship between the foundation and people I call 'foundation volunteers' since this drama last year. I am not surprised there are not many volunteers..... I think the foundation needs to improve their integration, leadership, and relationship with volunteers.

5: Basically, yes. Training if they need it, supervision (as needed) and certainly a working relationship with the relevant staff, rights and responsibilities needed to do the job.

Regards, Ariconte (talk) 23:45, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

1 & 2: I understand that you're trying to create two different groups of volunteers, and I believe that meta is indeed the place to put an article like this. I've fixed the page for you.

3: The git repository is public, you can view the commits yourself. I'm not sure why you would expect the foundation to do it. But you'll find it difficult to get useful numbers:

With the migration from SVN to Git, a lot of old commits will have @users.mediawiki.org email addresses (that don't actually exist). You'll have to manually match these to any/all newer email addresses used.

Some people contribute technically as both a volunteer and as staff/contractors (e.g., me). Or have multiple addresses for some other reason.

Also, I noticed some other numbers are off:

I don't believe the number of mailing lists whose existence is private has been made public, so you can't really get a useful figure for mailing lists.

I don't think OTRS has 35% staff accounts... Based on otrswiki:List of accounts, it seems roughly 20% of the accounts have chapter/foundation addresses. Though bare in mind there are a few accounts with no address there. Obviously, some people may have multiple accounts.

4 & 5: Okay. As a software development volunteer, and to some extent an OTRS agent, I would not be happy if the foundation wanted to interview/screen me (what would screening even involve anyway?), remove me (I don't think we've ever had someone banned from Gerrit, everyone's patches should be considered), set a job description (scope?) for me, monitor the time I spend (certainly not require more/less time!), or abide by staff-only policies.

I wonder where you think chapter staff (/volunteers?) fit in here.

I suspect that most people would be very unhappy with "Contribute as much effort and service as a paid worker, even on a short-term basis.". I don't think I need to explain that really.

Can you please clarify 'a place to work', what tools might be provided to volunteers under this article, what training might be provided (beyond the normal tutorials, help pages, etc.), and what on earth 'safety rules' is supposed to mean in our (online) context?

Do you intend to try to convince the WMF Board of Trustees to make this into a proper policy at some point?

--Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:53, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

3: I would expect the foundation to know exactly who its volunteers are so it can thank them if nothing else!

4 & 5: Most of what you are concerned about was just dumped in there as a work in progress --- from various volunteer organizations in the US, UK, and Australia. I have removed it.

Regards, Ariconte (talk) 05:33, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

We have the commit logs - a list of contributions and their authors. And people are thanked for their actual contributions rather than just being on a list. I don't think someone is maintaining a list of all people who have ever volunteered to help with software development. We do have the MediaWiki core (so not including the many MediaWiki extensions we use on Wikimedia sites) 'CREDITS' file, which (non-exhaustively) lists all longer-term developers and some other people who have also contributed. It doesn't say which people have done it purely as paid work and which people have done some (or all) of it as a volunteer, though. --Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:37, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Conflation of Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia Foundation

I see "Wikimedia" and "Wikimedia Foundation" both used here without a clear distinction, which I think makes it more difficult to reason about roles, responsibilities, and power structures. Wikimedia Foundation is one of multiple associated non-profit organizations involved in coordinating activity on the projects and within the broader Wikimedia movement. --brion (talk) 21:45, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

It was my hope to talk about volunteers that provide service to the Foundation. That is the purpose of the definitions - to separate out people who contribute to the projects. I will edit the article to remove mention of editors... Regards, Ariconte (talk) 02:49, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I think there was still some conflation, so I did some changes. I also replaced "supervision" by "support", which is in my opinion friendlier and more in line with the freedom of contributing to Wikimedia projects.--Micru (talk) 07:40, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

I think you have changed the article to focus more on the movement. My intention was and is to separate support of the movement from support of the foundation.

I have put it in the 'to hard' basket so will not be working on it. If I were to try to move it forward - I think it will need (1) serious interest from the foundation, (2) sitting down and talking it out face to face.

I hope the references I found are an aid to somebody, someday. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 09:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC)