Submissions/Balancing Code and Community: A Liaison's Life

This is a withdrawn submission for Wikimania 2013.

Submission no.: 5025
Subject no.: E2 or T1

Title of the submission: Balancing Code and Community: A Liaison's Life

Type of submission: Presentation/Discussion

Author of the submission: Oliver Keyes

Country of origin: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Affiliation: Wikimedia Foundation

E-mail address: okeyeswikimedia.org

Username: w:en:User:Okeyes (WMF)

Personal homepage or blog: Quominus

Abstract

For the last 18 months, I've been the Community Liaison for Product Development - the only Liaison in the WMF's Engineering department. My job is to ensure we bring the community into the process of making decisions about our software, and to communicate what we're doing to the editor community. I'd like to talk about what we've done so far, where we're falling down, and what we're doing to solve for that.

Detailed proposal

One of the major focus areas of the Wikimedia Foundation is software engineering - maintaining the code that allows our projects to function, and building new extensions to expand and improve upon what our users can do. Doing this requires deep knowledge of our users' needs and limits, which has traditionally not been a problem; the young Foundation was mostly dedicated towards preserving existing infrastructure, and drawn from the community. With increased professionalisation and growth, along with a shift in Engineering's focus to prioritise editor engagement, we live in a very different world: our efforts tend more towards building software that overlaps with existing, community workflows (such as page patrolling or anti-vandalism work) where each project has their own special way of doing things. The result is that now, more than ever, it is important for us to involve the community in software development. One of the efforts to bridge the gap between the Foundation and the community in that regard was the hiring of a Community Liaison for the Product Development team in November 2011. The Community Liaison is tasked with representing the community in discussions, reaching out to bring other editors into the discussions, and generally providing knowledge of how our projects function.

What I'd like to talk about, really, is several things:

What it's like, as a long-standing editor, being inside the Foundation;
What I've found that works well for bringing the Foundation and the Community better together;
What we're bad at - and how we're hoping to improve, and how you can play a part in making any improvements work.

Track

Technology and Infrastructure

Length of presentation/talk: 25 minutes

Language of presentation/talk: English

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yep

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests: A pony? I'm generally approving of free ponies.

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