More OTRS agents would certainly help (any experienced Wikpedians, please do go to
meta:OTRS/volunteering if you can help). But lack of agents isn't the only problem
with OTRS. We're inundated (and that's not an exaggeration) with emails we
can't do anything about.
Many people email us with issues that can easily be resolved on-wiki or don't realise
that OTRS agents don't have superpowers and can't intervene in disputes. We get
rants, chain letters, and plain old spam (because the email addresses are plastered all
over the Internet). We get emails that we *can* help with but end up taking up a lot of
our time (I have a ticket that's been open for over a year and I still get regular
emails from the client). We get all sorts of general enquires, feedback, and other things
that probably should go elsehwhere. It adds up to thousands of tickets a week. Try finding
the urgent BLP complaints amongst that lot, bearing in mind that OTRS agents are
volunteers and that we have other commitments on Wikipedia, not to mention in real life.
I don't have a proposed solution, I'm just trying to let people knowwhat we're
up against.
So Andreas' suggestion of directing people to COIN makes a lot of sense
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
Phone: 024 7698 0977
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
________________________________
From: Richard Symonds <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
To: Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Wikimedia UK mailing list <wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012, 15:48
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] PR industry blames 'cumbersome' Wikipedia (Andreas
Kolbe)
Oh, that's much better - but the process still needs an overhaul :-(
Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development
House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK
chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia
Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor
responsibility for its contents.
On 14 November 2012 15:25, Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Richard: a slight correction, the processes for obtaining OTRS access have changed - I
think in 2009/2010.
Instead of the full 'identification' to the WMF (where you send in a copy of your
ID to prove you're >18), OTRS access only requires you to send an email with your
full real name and age (OTRS access can be given to people >16) to the OTRS admins.
If people aren't required to send their full identification documents perhaps that
could reduce that stumbling block slightly?
Thehelpfulone
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
On 14 Nov 2012, at 14:36, Richard Symonds <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
For what it's worth, my opinion (as some who has had access to a fair few OTRS queues
for a fair number of years) is that we need more OTRS volunteers. Lots more. At the
moment, Wikimedia UK has about a dozen semi-active volunteers for its queue, and we have
reasonable response times (48 hours ish). I'm not sure how many the WMF has for the
global queues, but to answer every email within, say, 48 hours, would require (in my
opinion) at least several hundred volunteers, with several dozen being active daily.
Wikimedia UK did run an OTRS workshop, which was useful, but it turned into more of an
OTRS planning weekend, with only a few new people trained to use OTRS. It's a very
slow way of training people - it's not just the OTRS software, but customer service
skills which are needed. Most Wikipedians can't reliably answer emails from OTRS
because they don't have the needed levels of WIkipedia experience, OTRS system
experience, and customer service experience. There's the
added (necessary) stumbling block of identifying to the WMF.
<radicalthinking>
Perhaps OTRS access to the English Wikipedia courtesy queue could be given to English
Wikipedia admins who are willing to identify to the WMF? That would free up the
experienced OTRS agents to handle the more important 'quality'
queue. </radicalthinking>
Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office 4th Floor, Development
House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK
chapter of a global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia
Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor
responsibility for its contents.
On 14 November 2012 12:53, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com>
wrote:
On 14 November 2012 12:42, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed,
Nov 14, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> On 14 November 2012 00:00, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > And there is. Oliver's revamp of the Contact Us pages has made a huge
> > difference, because previously, PR professionals would pass three
> > invitations to fix the article themselves before they would come to the
> > OTRS
> > e-mail address.
> >
> > But there is still room for improvement. OTRS e-mails should be
> > responded to
> > the same day, not up to four weeks later. Is anyone collecting data on
> > how
> > quickly OTRS mails are responded to? Are those data public? If not,
> > there is
> > another potential area for improvement.
>
> What WSQ said.
>
> Also, rethinking the "contact us" route is one thing, encouraging more
> people to use it early is another. The first may well be helpful, the
> second in current circumstances is not going to improve things. Some
> of your questions here are clearly for the WMF.
>
> Charles
For better or worse, Wikipedia is the number one Google link for pretty much
everything and everyone. With that comes a responsibility to get things
right; a responsibility we cannot live up to, given the open editing system
we've got, and the number of articles and editors we've got.
The trouble is ... we have no power over Google, do we? It is a
familiar argument that you are putting.
The actual solutions are (1) to grow the community (and I mean
growing it with responsible, well-trained editors). I personally have
put time and effort into this in the past, as well as editing many
hours a day. And (2) to make it easier for the community to do useful
work.
Now the WMF is well resourced, we should really be discussing these
matters. The traditional spiralling blame game set off by "case
studies" is not the best way, IMX.
Charles
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