Wikimania

Submissions/Volunteer Response Team Workshop

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Presentation Media


Review no.

70

Title of the submission

Volunteer Response Team Workshop

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Workshop

Author of the submission

Alice Wiegand

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

lyzzy

Country of origin

Germany

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Wikimedia Deutschland

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

OTRS is a ticket request system which is used to handle most incoming e-mails regarding Wikimedia projects. Besides Foundation staff and chapter affiliated people there is a group of volunteers who take the responsibiliy of answering complaints, questions, permissions and lots of other subjects.

They work for different Wikimedia projects in different languages and most of them don't know each other. Exchange between agents across project borders is very rare. German volunteers have set up some workshops over the past years and continue to meet regularly. They organize their work and improve the quality of the answers in discussions and in sharing experiences and best practices. Lawyers and communication trainers support them to extend their knowledge and skills.

This workshop could be the first one to bring agents from all over the world together to talk about some comprehensive issues:

  • What are the goals the volunteer support team wants to achieve?
  • What do agents need to improve their work?
  • Are the provided communication channels helpful?
  • How can new agents become fit for work?
  • How can WMF or chapters support the volunteer response team?

The outcome of the workshop could be used to detect and describe organizational or technical defects, to rework help documents and processes and to prepare further meetings.

The workshop primarily addresses active OTRS agents and everyone who wants to know how they organize their work is welcome.

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

People and Community

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Recommendations

  1. International Workshop by WMDE&WMF for giving workshops on OTRS
  2. Write introduction material
  3. Explore the existing OTRS features that we are not using currently
  4. Set up a feedback process
  5. Send physical rewards to all OTRS agents world wide
  6. Some more statistics
  7. Make OTRS improvement more of a priority of the tech team (lobby needed)
Comment: Many of these will mirror the outcomes of the multi-month OTRS study that Christine has been doing for the WMF. Hope to share those results soon. Philippe (WMF) 08:21, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I work for the OTRS Project and would be happy to assist the Foundation with finding better ways to use our product. Drop me a line at mb@otrs.com in case you'd be interested. Mb 08:55, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Initial results of the study mentioned by Philippe were presented at wmuk:UK OTRS workshop. Nemo 22:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

  1.  guillom
  2. Vibhijain 11:54, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. odder 21:42, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Thank you, I've always wanted to know more about this WM-DE project! Nemo 23:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Sumanah 15:38, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Stepro 21:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Raymond 05:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Add your username here.
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