Volunteer Response Team/Call for administrators

The Wikimedia Volunteer Response Team (also referred to as ‘OTRS’, which is the name of the software used for the process) is the front-line customer service system for readers, community members, and those interested in Wikimedia and its projects. Receiving thousands of tickets per month in over 40 different languages, our team of hundreds of dedicated volunteers spend countless hours responding to e-mail inquiries.

Responsible for the management of these agents and the system in general is a small team of Volunteer Response Team Leaders (or ‘OTRS administrators’).

What we’re looking for

The OTRS administration team is considering an expansion by potentially adding 1-2 new administrators.

What the job entails

The OTRS administrators are responsible for the overall maintenance and operation of the OTRS software, wiki and other tools. Some regular tasks of an OTRS administrator include (but are not limited to):

• Supporting agents in their day-to-day work
• Processing, evaluating, and discussing new applications to join the OTRS team
• Creating and managing agent accounts
• Creating and managing new queues, e-mail addresses, and boilerplate messages
• Creating and expanding user documentation and informational materials on OTRS wiki
• Providing other assistance to the agents as needed, such as with escalated trouble tickets or helping orient new respondents
• Monitoring queue activity levels to ensure tickets are handled in a timely manner
• Monitoring and controlling spam across the system
• Ensuring that policies and protocols are being followed by all agents and dealing with any problems that may arise
• Coordinating with various Wikimedia groups like committees, chapters, foundation employees, or checkuser/oversight teams who have or request OTRS queues or accounts

Qualifications

• Past or current OTRS agent strongly preferred, but not required
• Enough time and dedication to devote to the role, especially while learning the ropes at the beginning
• Understanding of the Wikimedia movement and its projects and the types of questions typically posed by those who write in
• Understanding of copyright issues and licensing is very important, given the number of permissions tickets we receive
• Ability to communicate effectively and clearly with customers, agents, other Wikimedia users and your administrator colleagues
• Ability to motivate agents
• Speaking languages other than English is a plus, with a preference towards high volume queues like French (fr), Spanish (es), and Dutch (nl)
• Technical familiarity with OTRS, Perl, MediaWiki, JavaScript, Regular expressions, and/or SQL is a plus
• Customer service experience or team management experiences are both pluses
• Identifying to the Wikimedia Foundation and being above the age of majority, in accordance with the current identification and access to non-public data policies (required upon acceptance)

How to apply

If you wish to apply please send an email to volunteers-otrswikimedia.org with the subject line “OTRS administrator application: Username” (where Username is your username). Please include the following information within your application:

• Real name, age, and time zone
• Links to the talk pages of the Wikimedia projects where you are most active
• Languages you can read and write
• Technical abilities listed in the qualifications section
• An answer to the question: What would you bring to the OTRS admin team?
• Any other information you find relevant

Applications will be accepted through 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, October 31, 2014. If you have any questions you are free to use the talk page, contact the above address or any OTRS administrator individually.