Annual Report | 2014
Annual Report | 2014
Unbeknown to most, Wikimedia’s OTRS instance quietly celebrated its 10th birthday in September 2014. 10 years ago,
Jeronim
kicked off the first email recorded in our database, a message to himself with only the magic word “tets [
sic
]” in it. Since then, quite a bit has happened. Today, our installation is used by the Volunteer Response Team to handle general inquiries on the Wikimedia projects and image releases from copyright holders; by oversighters, who remove personal information and offensive material from the Wikimedia projects; by a large number of chapters; as well as by several other users working on various tasks and projects within the movement. More than 1,500 users have had access to “our” OTRS at some point, and they have been in touch with more than half a million individuals; finally, last year, another major milestone was reached as we received the 1,000,000th ticket (excluding spam, of course).
This year’s annual report on the state of our OTRS instance, and especially the
Volunteer Response Team’s
activities, the third of its kind, is also the most comprehensive yet. As every year, we hope you find it informative, and welcome your feedback as well as general questions and comments on the matters reported
on Meta
. Thank you!
The OTRS administrators
, February 2015
Introduction: 2014—A Look Back
Tickets Received
We received 72,714 tickets in 2014, spread across many different types of queues.
The queues with the largest amount of activity are our info queues, which handle queries related to Wikipedia. Another large queue is permissions, which receives releases from copyright holders. The other third of our tickets are related to chapter queries, photo submissions, and other miscellaneous queues. Figure 1 details this activity.
Fig. 1 |
Tickets received in 2014, per queue type, adjusted values
(n=72,714)
Figure 2 provides a rough sketch of the number of tickets received over time, by queue type.
Fig. 2 |
Tickets received annually from 2007 through 2014, per queue type, adjusted values
total
info
permissions
chapters
other
The trends in the number of tickets received will be analyzed in more detail in one of the upcoming monthly reports.
Documentation and Policies
One of the priorities of the OTRS admin team in 2014 was to improve existing documentation to allow for easier on-boarding of new members. One of the outcomes from this was the development of a
new step-through guide
to OTRS’ interface, which many new agents find hard to get accustomed to, particularly if volunteers lack prior experience with ticketing systems (as most do). The guide has been received well with the agent community, and is currently being translated by the community into more languages.
A short excerpt from the new guide.
To make help and policy pages easier to comprehend for non-English speakers and yet maintain the continued factual accuracy of the translations, the
Translate
extension
was enabled on OTRS Wiki. Fortunately, this has also prompted a very desirable boost in translation activity.
In an effort to make account creation and activity-based account closures more consistent, the OTRS admins published two policy documents in December which clarify the underlying (largely long-standing) procedures. The
Access Policy
and the
Activity Policy
are available from Meta.
Meet-ups at Wikimania and locally
German members of the Volunteer Response Team gathered in
Hamburg, Germany
, in April for their 10th workshop since 2008. 13 volunteers attended the two-day event, which this time revolved primarily around legal aspects, hosting Ansgar Koreng, an attorney specialized in media and copyright law, who regularly advises and represents the German chapter, and John Weitzmann, attorney and Legal Project Lead of Creative Commons Germany.
The Volunteer Response Team also had some presence at
Wikimania
, the annual conference of Wikimedians and people interested in the Wikimedia projects, last year taking place in London. Keegan gave a talk on the response team’s tasks and responsibilities (
recording on Youtube
), and a couple of OTRS admins hosted a meet-up as part of the pre-conference track with about 20 team members in attendance. The meet-up provided an opportunity to exchange ideas and lessons learned among volunteers from queues in different languages, who don’t normally work with each other.
Inspired by conversations at Wikimania, French volunteers held their very first-ever workshop at Wikimedia France’s
Paris
office in November. On the first day of the event, a general training session was offered for both current Volunteer Response Team members and others with OTRS access (e.g., members of Wikimedia France with access to the chapter queues). 14 people attended. On day two, “info-
fr
” members held a closed session that enabled them to touch upon confidential issues from their day-to-day OTRS work. Both regional workshops, the French and the German one, were extensively supported by the respective local chapters.
Meet-up of French OTRS volunteers in Wikimedia France’s office
Photo by
Pymouss
(license:
CC-by-sa 4.0
),
via Wikimedia Commons
In September, the OTRS admins held their first
admin meeting
, which is discussed in more detail
below
Staffing
In December 2014, we introduced an
Access Policy
, which, among other things, defines different account types, and the corresponding activity requirements and account creation/closure process. The following table makes use of these account types to provide a nuanced overview of last year’s changes in the composition of the agent base.
Primary account type
Accounts closed
Accounts opened (reopened)
Community account (e.g., a volunteer for info or permissions)
56
68 (6)
Chapter account (e.g., WMDE staff)
23
14 (4)
Role account (e.g., a steward or Wiki Loves Monuments organizer)
24 (2)
Wikimedia Foundation staff
14
3 (2)
Other
4 (1)
Total
102
113 (15)
With this, we had 660 open accounts on OTRS at the end of 2014, on top of roughly 850 closed since installation.
Info Queues
These queues are the general information addresses that are displayed on the “contact us” pages on the Wikipedia projects. (See the
English Wikipedia’s page
, for example.) They usually deal with questions from readers of Wikipedia and from the subjects of articles. They are typically divided based on the language that they are written in, not the project that they relate to, because the queues are staffed by Wikimedia volunteers speaking a certain language, not from a certain project.
Tickets Handled
The first columns of the table provide the number of tickets closed in the years 2013 and 2014, respectively. (For the particularly data-savvy, you can also display the 2012 values through the button at the top right of the table, right next to the search box.) The columns on the right show the number of agents as of December 31 of the respective year.
These numbers are slightly lower than the actual as some agents have support access that covers multiple queues and these are not reflected. These users do not usually answer tickets regularly though, for example OTRS administrators who have access to all info queues for administrative purposes.
2012
40,722
+ 17.50%
2013
47,850
− 22.10%
2014
37,273
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
Agents 2012
Δ12-13 (%)
Agents 2013
Δ13-14 (%)
Agents 2014
Tickets/agent
2013
Tickets/agent
2014
info
220.0
16
6.2
17
108
-11.1
96
-12.5
84
0.2
0.2
info-
af
18
-77.8
-75.0
0.0
0.0
4.0
1.0
info-
als
-100.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
n/a
n/a
info-
ar
162
192.6
474
51.1
716
57.1
11
9.1
12
52.7
62.3
info-
ca
89
-37.1
56
10.7
62
0.0
0.0
18.7
20.7
info-
cs
419
-1.2
414
-0.7
411
16.7
-14.3
63.7
63.2
info-
da
109
14.7
125
-8.0
115
-16.7
20.0
22.7
20.9
info-
de
7617
-7.7
7032
-16.0
5905
47
-6.4
44
2.3
45
154.5
132.7
info-
el
112
81.2
203
-35.5
131
100.0
-25.0
67.7
37.4
info-
en
21384
36.4
29168
-24.7
21955
206
1.9
210
3.8
218
140.2
102.6
info-
es
2427
-15.1
2060
-25.2
1541
22
13.6
25
-8.0
23
87.7
64.2
info-
et
22
-81.8
-100.0
-100.0
0.0
8.0
n/a
info-
fa
30
1243.3
403
-33.0
270
600.0
14.3
100.8
36.0
info-
fi
15
193.3
44
-65.9
15
33.3
-50.0
12.6
5.0
info-
fr
1433
-20.7
1136
-13.7
980
27
3.7
28
35.7
38
41.3
29.7
info-
he
192
1.0
194
-48.5
100
10
-30.0
42.9
10
22.8
11.8
info-
hr
-25.0
-66.7
-50.0
0.0
1.0
0.5
info-
hu
179
40.2
251
-43.0
143
14
7.1
15
13.3
17
17.3
8.9
info-
it
458
-9.4
415
-59.5
168
10
-20.0
37.5
11
46.1
17.7
info-
ja
392
-39.0
239
-41.0
141
50.0
-44.4
31.9
20.1
info-
ka
Inf
-100.0
Inf
info-
ko
82
-56.1
36
-16.7
30
0.0
300.0
18.0
6.0
info-
nds
200.0
-66.7
Inf
Inf
info-
nl
2651
-4.9
2521
-6.6
2354
17
11.8
19
-5.3
18
140.1
127.2
info-
no
260
-22.7
201
13.4
228
-40.0
0.0
50.2
76.0
info-
pl
732
74.3
1276
-35.1
828
12
-25.0
11.1
10
121.5
87.2
info-
pt
107
-60.7
42
26.2
53
0.0
44.4
13
4.7
4.8
info-
ro
123
23.6
152
-19.1
123
0.0
33.3
50.7
35.1
info-
ru
982
-23.6
750
-42.1
434
15
13.3
17
5.9
18
46.9
24.8
info-
sk
-100.0
Inf
0.0
0.0
5.0
info-
sl
n/a
n/a
666.7
23
n/a
n/a
-25.0
1.5
6.6
info-
sr
42
19.0
50
-26.0
37
-50.0
0.0
33.3
37.0
info-
sv
324
-23.5
248
-23.0
191
-33.3
50.0
99.2
76.4
info-
tr
159
20.8
192
-24.0
146
-40.0
0.0
48.0
48.7
info-
uk
Inf
50.0
Inf
100.0
6.0
3.0
info-
vi
37.5
11
-90.9
0.0
0.0
11.0
1.0
info-
zh
181
-34.8
118
15.3
136
13
-7.7
12
-16.7
10
9.4
12.4
(“info-
ka
” was created in August 2012, “info-
sl
” in November 2013, and “info-
uk
” in December 2012.)
The above table includes tickets in subqueues. A low-level breakdown of the activity in queues with subqueues in provided below:
de
en
fr
nl
pl
zh
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
info-
de
7617
-7.7
7029
-32.4
4751
info-
de
-dvd
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
Verifikation
n/a
n/a
115300.0
1154
(“Info-
de
-dvd” was closed in 2012, and “info-
de
-verifikation” opened in March 2014.)
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
Advocacy
1243
-99.6
n/a
n/a
Article Feedback
11
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
Blacklist
0.0
n/a
n/a
Call required
44
-95.5
-50.0
Campaigns
52
-53.8
24
595.8
167
Copyvio
517
8.5
561
-50.1
280
Courtesy
6937
13.3
7858
-24.6
5924
From other queues
18
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
Mobile
194
-69.1
60
n/a
n/a
Organizations
11683.3
707
-9.8
638
Quality
2276
-14.9
1937
-36.3
1233
Reuse
402
14.2
459
-38.1
284
Schools
56
19.6
67
-22.4
52
Tech-issues
272
119.1
596
-12.8
520
Urgent
485.7
41
-97.6
Vandalism
1614
35.9
2193
-31.6
1499
Voice messages
377
-89.1
41
-41.5
24
info-
en
7242
101.8
14615
-22.5
11332
info@wikipedia.org
114
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
(“Advocacy,” “Article Feedback,” “Blacklist,” “Call required,” and “From other queues” were all closed in November 2012; “Mobile” was closed in April 2013, and “Organizations” created in November 2012; “info@wikipedia.org” was closed in October 2012.)
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
info-
fr
1433
-20.8
1135
-13.7
979
Posters
Inf
0.0
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
info-
nl
1328
-4.4
1269
-4.6
1210
wikiportret
1323
-5.4
1252
-8.6
1144
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
baninfo
83
-45.8
45
6.7
48
info-
pl
649
89.7
1231
-36.6
780
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
info-
zh
102
-35.3
66
30.3
86
info-
zh
hans
34
-32.4
23
-13.0
20
info-
zh
hant
45
-35.6
29
3.4
30
Workload Distribution
This chart shows how many agents contributed to working on a given queue. Each color represents an agent for that particular queue and shows how many tickets they handled in relation to others. Do note that if you spot two same-colored areas, this does
not
mean they represent the same agent—we’ve just run out of easily distinguishable colors :). The numbers in parantheses correspond to the total number of tickets handled in that queue.
While,
per se
, it is great to see that a particular volunteer brings the dedication to handle the lion’s share of inquiries in “their” queue, a high dependence on just a few individuals also poses risks for the robustness of the queue’s efficient processing. For instance, in the chart above, the Czech queue (info-
cs
) stands out with one volunteer handling 403 out of 411 tickets. In this circumstance, it seems particularly desirable to recruit new volunteers from the Czech Wiki community.
Response Time
The following chart shows the distribution of the amount of time it took for the team to send the first response to a new ticket. (Tickets that were not replied to, for instance because they contained off-topic material, were ignored.) It provides the answer to the question which share of emails has received an initial reply within a given amount of time. (Only provided for the largest queues.)
Response times in the major info queues do not seem to give much reason for worry. Some highlights: The “info-
en
” team managed to reply to half of its roughly 22,000 tickets within less than four and a half hours, and the Polish team sent their initial reply to 90% of all tickets within just slightly more than two days. The English-language team responded to 77% of its tickets within 24 hours (ar: 84%, pl: 80%, nl: 73%, de: 70%, fr: 56%, es: 33%).
Sister Projects Queues
As the numbers below show, there are not many tickets that relate to non-Wikipedia projects, but the
Sister projects
queues were created to give them special attention so that they could be handled by people who know more about the specific project.
Tickets Handled
2012
690
− 26.81%
2013
505
+ 54.85%
2014
782
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
Agents 2012
Δ12-13 (%)
Agents 2013
Δ13-14 (%)
Agents 2014
Tickets/agent
2013
Tickets/agent
2014
Commons
385
-40.0
231
127.7
526
73
30.1
95
-23.2
73
2.8
6.3
Wikibooks
80
11.2
89
-11.2
79
73
30.1
95
-75.8
23
1.1
1.3
Wikidata
inf
-22.2
73
30.1
95
-55.8
42
0.1
0.1
Wikinews
47
-70.2
14
-21.4
11
73
30.1
95
-72.6
26
0.2
0.2
Wikiquote
60
3.3
62
22.6
76
73
30.1
95
-77.9
21
0.7
1.3
Wikisource
-42.9
0.0
73
30.1
95
-75.8
23
0.0
0.1
Wikispecies
n/a
n/a
0.0
73
30.1
95
-78.9
20
n/a
n/a
Wikiversity
12
-41.7
-71.4
73
30.1
95
-77.9
21
0.1
0.0
Wikivoyage
600.0
57.1
11
73
30.1
95
-76.8
22
0.1
0.2
Wiktionary
98
-16.3
82
-19.5
66
73
30.1
95
-68.4
30
1.0
1.1
(“Wikidata” was created in December 2012, “Wikiversity” in April 2012, “Wikivoyage” in December 2012, and “Wikispecies” in February 2013.)
Note that the drop in the number of agents of individual
Sister projects
queues from 2013 to 2014 is due to a re-organization of the access structure. Until 2013, there was just one access right for all
Sister projects
queues. This practice was changed in 2014, to a large part because granting just one right makes it impossible to identify queues that are in particular need of more volunteers. As of Dec. 31, 2014, 20 users (included below in each row) retained access to all
Sister projects
queues due to an interest in many of the queues, while all other access rights are now granted on a per-queue basis.
Workload Distribution
Response Time
Permissions Queues
Sometimes Wikimedians would like to use images in articles that do not have clear cut licensing information. These images might not be licensed already, might have a license that is not permissive enough for use on Wikipedia, or might otherwise need confirmation that the copyright holder has agreed to the license shown on the projects. Wikimedians often contact the copyright holders of various images and ask them to license them so that they can be used on Wikimedia projects.
The
permissions
team on OTRS is the one that processes these “permissions” e-mails and attempts to verify that the copyright holder releases the images under an allowable license, that they do so clearly while understanding what that means, and that they actually are allowed to license the images in such a way (e.g., they hold copyright). These e-mails are then stored in the ticket system so that they can be verified by anyone with appropriate access. For more information, see
Commons’ page on the topic
Tickets Handled
2012
13,605
+ 8.81%
2013
14,804
− 13.15%
2014
12,857
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
permissions
65
201.5
196
-28.6
140
permissions-
ar
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
53
permissions-commons
3583
16.8
4185
-11.5
3702
permissions-commons-
ar
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
permissions-commons-
de
743
-4.4
710
-1.7
698
permissions-commons-
es
120
64.2
197
-10.7
176
permissions-commons-
fr
181
83.4
332
-17.5
274
permissions-commons-
he
927
23.4
1144
-4.7
1090
permissions-commons-
pl
137
-2.9
133
-43.6
75
permissions-commons-
pt
94
11.7
105
-2.9
102
permissions-
de
2094
-3.3
2025
3.7
2099
permissions-
el
69
-7.2
64
3.1
66
permissions-
en
2569
10.7
2843
-24.3
2153
permissions-
eo
-100.0
0.0
permissions-
es
149
-10.1
134
-39.6
81
permissions-
et
33
75.8
58
-34.5
38
permissions-
fi
14
42.9
20
-25.0
15
permissions-
fr
645
-22.2
502
-37.1
316
permissions-
hu
299
2.0
305
-26.2
225
permissions-
it
255
18.8
303
-18.8
246
permissions-
ja
Inf
16
12.5
18
permissions-
ko
n/a
n/a
700.0
permissions-
ml
425.0
21
-95.2
permissions-
nl
219
-21.9
171
-2.3
167
permissions-
pl
178
0.0
178
13.5
202
permissions-
pt
133
-27.8
96
-15.6
81
permissions-
pt
-nf
-25.0
0.0
permissions-
ro
100.0
750.0
17
permissions-
ru
743
-21.3
585
-12.5
512
permissions-
sk
40
30.0
52
-57.7
22
permissions-
sl
388.9
44
-45.5
24
permissions-
sr
46
-6.5
43
2.3
44
permissions-
tr
27
163.0
71
-43.7
40
permissions-
uk
30
343.3
133
-39.8
80
permissions-
vi
50.0
-66.7
permissions-
zh
46
-71.7
13
-38.5
permissions-
zh
hans
80
1.2
81
-43.2
46
permissions-
zh
hant
64
-45.3
35
-17.1
29
(“Permissions-
ar
” and “permissions-commons-
ar
” were created in May 2014; “permissions-
uk
” was created in October 2012, “permissions-
ko
” in October 2014, and “permissions-
ro
” in July 2014.)
Workload Distribution
Response Time
While the above chart only provides a top-level view of response behavior, it does suggest that the first-response time distributions of the major permissions queues are much more long-tailed than those of the major info queues, a fact often overlooked when claims are made about “the ‘permissions’ backlog.” For instance, 50% of tickets in “permissions-commons” were responded to within 79 hours—a little more than three days; on the other hand, the 8th decile is already at 638 hours, or 26-odd days. This will be covered in more detail in a future monthly report.
Photosubmission Queues
Wikimedia projects often lack good, freely-licensed images for certain articles, especially
biographies of living persons
. To mitigate this, the
photosubmission
queues were created on OTRS. They allow readers of Wikipedia and article subjects (or their agents) to easily submit photos to illustrate their articles. The
photosubmission
team performs the same checks as
permissions
, but in addition helps to add the images to the relevant articles.
Tickets Handled
2012
737
+ 13.98%
2013
844
− 27.01%
2014
616
Queue
2012
Δ12-13 (%)
2013
Δ13-14 (%)
2014
photosubmission
690
13.6
784
-25.6
583
photosubmission-
da
Inf
-100.0
photosubmission-
de
31
-16.1
26
-30.8
18
photosubmission-
es
16
62.5
26
-50.0
13
photosubmission-
fr
0.0
Inf
Workload Distribution
[Not provided, insufficient queue sizes.]
Response Time
Queue Changes
Among the new queues created in 2014 were those for
Admincon
and
Wikicon
, two regular meet-ups of users from the German-language Wikimedia projects. We also saw the addition of several
mobile-related
queues, which are primarily curated by Wikimedia Foundation staff, but also volunteers helping with handling feedback and crash reports. As the “Wiki loves” family grew bigger, we re-organized the queue structure and now operate a generic “Wiki loves” queue (wlx) with subqueues currently in place for
Wiki Loves Monuments
(wlm) and
Wiki Loves Earth
(wle).
To understand the table below, note that OTRS formats subqueues after two colons. So, for example, mobile::Android (Wikipedia) is the Android (Wikipedia) subqueue of the mobile queue.
Queues created
26
Queues closed
admincon
chapters::wm-br::educacao
chapters::wm-de::wm-de-wikimania
info-
de
::Verifikation
mobile
mobile::Android (Commons)
mobile::Android (Wikipedia)
mobile::Android (Wikipedia)::Crash reports
mobile::iOS (Commons)
mobile::iOS (Wikipedia)
permissions::permissions-
ar
permissions::permissions-commons-
ar
permissions::permissions-
ko
permissions::permissions-
ro
usergroups
WikiCon
wlm::wlm-ua
wlx
wlx::wla
wlx::wla::wla-ar
wlx::wla::wla-en
wlx::wla::wla-fr
wlx::wle
wlx::wle::wle-de
wlx::wle::wle-ua
wlx::wlm::wlm-pk
arbcom-
en
-wp
arbcom-
en
-wp::privileges
devcamp-india
email-outreach
https
Orange partnership
ts-admins
wlx::wlm::wlm-ad
wmcon
In addition to that, the “info-
en
::(Mohammed)” queue was renamed to “info-
en
::Campaigns.” Originally set up to handle complaints about the English-language Wikipedia’s use of images depicting the Prophet Muhammad,
the queue is now used to provide coordinated responses to emails relating to a wide variety of disputes, such as the recent controversy dubbed “
Gamergate
.”
Admin Activity
Overseeing the OTRS resources are a small team of experienced OTRS agents who have become
OTRS administrators
. They handle system maintenance tasks such as the spam blacklist, monitor queues and compile information to improve response times and quality; they remove inactive agents and evaluate new applications. And of course, the OTRS administrators assist in answering tickets, just like all OTRS volunteers.
In September, the OTRS administrators held their first-ever meeting at the Wikimedia Foundation office in San Francisco. On the one hand, it served as an opportunity to enhance the exchange with Wikimedia Foundation staff regarding key aspects of the Volunteer Response Team’s work, such as the process for addressing software issues and the proper handling of enquiries with potential legal relevance. Primarily, however, it provided an opportunity for the OTRS administrator team to reflect on the team’s practices and reporting. More information on the agenda and the results of the meeting can be obtained
from Meta
Later in the year, the admin team expanded by two with the addition of
Matthewrbowker
and
Krd
who were welcomed in December. With this additional staffing, we hope to be able to improve our team’s overall abilities within OTRS.
While many of the administrators’ activities are not readily quantifiable (such as, say, the creation of this report), the following table provides an overview over the administrators’ activity in some of the more routine technical areas (because they are always accompanied by an entry in the admin log).
Accounts
Roles changed
Addresses
Queues
Filter changes
Opened (Reopened)
Closed
Created
Disabled
Created
Closed
Cbrown1023
13(2)
58
Daniel
13(3)
21
46
Jredmond
0(0)
Keegan
6(1)
18
Krd
0(0)
Mailer diablo
0(1)
Matthewrbowker
1(0)
Pajz
8(0)
35
196
Raymond
19(2)
16
35
Rjd0060
48(5)
43
139
16
11
Tiptoety
5(1)
15
Total
113(15)
102
355
33
25
25
205
Outlook
As far as the admin team is concerned, some of our key priorities for 2015 are:
Improve
reporting
: This report being a first step towards more comprehensive reporting, we will introduce monthly reports starting 2015, with the January report due in March. This reflects a general feeling within the admin team that, in particular with respect to smaller queues, there is a need for both the admins and the entire community to be able to identify mounting backlogs and other problems as soon as possible. We will also explore posting activity counts on the internal OTRS Wiki (as had been done a couple of years ago), which might have a motivating effect on OTRS volunteers. As a first step, of course, we will consult with the agent community on what would be most helpful for them.
Secure
funding
: Agents have repeatedly pointed out to the admin team existing flaws with the software that make working with OTRS harder than would be necessary, and some also suggested potential improvements that could make their OTRS experience better. Most of the reported bugs likely require only limited programming efforts—however, the Wikimedia Foundation lacks the necessary in-house expertise, and attempts to convince the relevant departments to fund this directly have proven unsuccessful. We have explored a dedicated grant request to do this through the Grantmaking team and plan to work out the details in the coming months, after a consultation with the community to gain a comprehensive assessment of existing needs
Expand
documentation
: We still see much work ahead to bring our documentation in line with new members’ needs. This concerns, in particular, non-technical information, such as how to respond to certain types of inquiries and general best practices. Knowledge-sharing is a key challenge for the Volunteer Response Team, and it is fundamentally important for ensuring the continued quality of our work.
If you have any questions or comments on this report, we invite you to
leave a message on Meta
. Thank you!
Correction, Feb. 25, 2015:
A previous version of this document misstated the language code of Polish as “pk” at one occasion. The correct language code as used by the Wikimedia Foundation is “pl.” We apologize for the mistake.
A few queues were exluded due to abnormal traffic, namely Raw (a maintenance queue), board, chapters::wm-fr::wm-fr-dons and chapters::wm-fr::wm-fr-dons-auto (which traditionally was used for storing donation receipts).
A few queues were exluded due to abnormal traffic, namely Raw (a maintenance queue), board, chapters::wm-fr::wm-fr-dons and chapters::wm-fr::wm-fr-dons-auto (which traditionally was used for storing donation receipts).
For that reason, the tickets-per-agent ratio for, say, 2014 is calculated in the following way: Tickets closed in 2014 / [0.5×(#Agents as of Dec 31, 2013 + #Agents as of Dec 31, 2014)].
See
this 2008 Guardian article
for a summary.
US