Talk:Wikimedia Foundation organigram

Please, discuss any further official position or officer roles at Official positions

Other structures within Wikimedia

• Project stewardship: WM-wide Stewards & Developers -- Project-level Bureaucrats -- Project-level Admins
• Project conflict resolution: Project-level Arbitration committees and mediation committees (see also Disciplinary Board, above)
• IRC Administration: IRC channel ops, IRC server-admin contacts (for setting cloaks, &c.)
• Volunteer Squads: Project-level and up (Volunteer Fire Dept [often crossing language boundaries when there is a transwiki attack], RC squad, New Pages squad, &c.)

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Discussion of the move

I moved the section above from the page as it should be about actual official positions, not just proposed ones. Angela

Note also that this was intentionally not at Meta:Org chart, which might be a reasonable distinction to make.

Look at "Other structures within Wikimedia", above. Most of those are official positions, at one level or another. Stewards and arb committees deserve a mention on this page. If you don't like the part of the bylaws that mentions the disciplinary board, perhaps it should be emended? I can't find the page where one suggests bylaws-emendations, so I commented on the wikified version's talk page. +sj+

Also, the page should cover official groups and structures, even when they don't include Named Positions -- I don't see why Ambassadors (a well-developed aspect of WP organization) or 'PR contacts previously listed on press releases' should be excluded here, for instance. +sj+ 16:42, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

But none of these other committees are official. There isn't even any reason for them to be yet. I think it's a bad idea to start trying to make the Board authorize everything that happens within the projects. Should we officially approve the en:Wikipedia:Typo team as well? The Board is not about governing the website, so people like admins or stewards do not need official approval, and listing them here implies they do. The Board has no influence over who becomes a steward, and that role is completely separate from what the Board is responsible for. Angela

Nobody wants the board to start authorizing everything that happens within the projects. This page was not created as a list of board-approved roles... perhaps that deserves a slightly different name? The Board of Trustees is not, as you note, the only element of Wikimedia. I hoped this page would describe the entire organization, including old, stable structures separate from the Board. Ideally it should indicate, as an org chart, which groups are independent and which are responsible to which other groups. +sj+ 01:21, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The last weeks I thought about creating a "Whom to ask"-page (or "Who feels responsible for..." ;-) Not all parts of wikimedia organization have to be approved by the board, but people need information whom to address for questions (about grants, sponsorship offers, IRC cloaks, new mailinglist, etc). --Elian 12:51, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm all for that. Why don't we create such a page, with some of the remainders above, and figure out later which content to include on which pages... +sj+ 21:48, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Community Authorization

Community authorization remains a powerful organizing force in WM. This page currently elides this concept, without replacing it with some similarly effective system. The page lists two "committees", but each one

• Has yet to develop its own page (since they were created by fiat and not by energetic input on meta by any of their members)
• Has yet to acquire more than its founding member (as far as the wiki is concerned), and has no committee-description save the position-description assigned by fiat to said member's Board-Authorized Position
• Exists in a vacuum on this page, with (a weeks later!) little or no related wikified or otherwise-disseminated content -- and yet occupies a defended position on a sparse page about the organization of Wikimedia's activities.

Yes we need committees and delegation and authorization and orderly distribution of responsibility; yes we need documentation and organization of progress. But if we do not work to give our committees and community groups form and direction, and instead only name officials in the hopes that they will pull off this difficult task, we will acquire the burden of bureaucracy with none of its benefits. +sj+ 01:21, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Other structures

Active informal structures meriting committees

Fund Raising

Grants, Donation drives, etc. Currently informal; grant materials are being worked on by many including Danny & Gentgeen

Interproject & Interlingual Communications

Ambassadors for different projects and different languages; oversight of interwiki linkage, cross-fertilization, sharing of overhead (policy pages, bots, account info, groups of translators).

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.

Welcoming Committee

Coordination of current users to nurture and draw in new contributors and efforts, to gather feedback on the newbie experience, and to promote awareness and tools to reduce newbie casualties.

Some of those are unrelated to the Foundation. Anthere 10:02, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

New page title

Losing the anagram. Organigram may be unusual enough to avoid immediate association with overtones from 'org chart' et al. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+

I've never understood why the page is at this title. What is wrong with "org chart" and why does having a term that has no meaning to most people make things any better? Wouldn't Wikimedia Foundation positions be better? Angela

To WMF site

Currently there is no information about officers and WMF related personnels except "current event" section. I wonder if this list could be released on the WMF site, specially its upper part. --Aphaia++ 21:35, 18 August 2005 (UTC)