Community Relations/Community collaboration in product development/Tech ambassadors and translators

Wikimedia Foundation’s community liaisons want to continue improving the collaboration between WMF software development teams and our communities. We want to include more and more diverse people to work together in friendly environments. For this goal, tech ambassadors and tech translators play a crucial role. How can we support them (you) better?

Chatting about tech ambassadors and translators at Wikimania Montreal.
Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T176475 resolved

We would like to strengthen the roles of tech ambassadors and tech translators. Make these roles more visible to new potential volunteers, more enjoyable to contribute to, and more recognized across the Wikimedia movement.

For this reason, we are calling current and prospective contributors to help us define not only a solid definition of the roles, but also related metrics that we can adopt as part of our Key Performance Indicators. We will also explore pain points and opportunities for improvement in the workflow of these roles. This activity has already started with a review of Tech News as a way to effectively disseminate technical information, and will continue with a review of other major product newsletters, among other things.

We shared a draft of role definitions and KPIs.

The dedicated feedback period went from Tuesday, August 8th to the 22nd.

You still have the opportunity to share further thoughts in the 2 "mega-threads" on the talk page: this is pretty much an ongoing conversation. Even if we have taken the decision to only start tracking the number of active tech ambassadors, we're always open to discussing these and related topics with the community. We've had an in-person chat on the topic at Wikimania Montreal, and we collected notes if you would like to read them.

If you're already onboard with being more involved, testing new features, giving or gathering feedback on more complicated issues, and generally being your community's hero, just sign up in our tables (linked below). We are looking forward to seeing where this will lead all of us!

Tech Ambassadors edit

Role definition edit

Currently active tech ambassadors:

  1. are recognizable - they are listed as tech ambassador for a given community in a public table;
  2. are proactive - they post tech-related information in their project's community spaces, making sure the message is well understood;
  3. are supportive - they help get information from their community to MediaWiki.org and Phabricator, contributing to a faster resolution of local issues;
  4. are reachable - they respond when contacted by Community Liaisons (or others) about tech stuff.

Adopted KPI for 2017/18 fiscal year by the Community Liaisons team edit

Tech Translators (DRAFT) edit

Suggested role definition edit

Currently active tech translators:

  1. are recognizable - they are listed as translators, specifically for tech matters, for a given language in a public table;
  2. are proactive - they take care of both routine and new translations work, such as Tech News, the Editing or the Collaboration newsletters, communications related to new software and features;
  3. are supportive - they help get information from their community to MediaWiki.org and Phabricator, contributing to diminishing pains in communications from both sides;
  4. are reachable - they respond when contacted by Community Liaisons (or others) telling them about the availability of new or "emergency" content to work on.

Suggested KPI (to be considered in the future) edit

  • 75% of content in 75% of issues of Tech News in 100% of the targeted languages.

Further reading edit