Talk:Task Force Selection Committee/en

There are three major pieces I see here:

• Defining the task forces -- and the process for creating and modifying them so that others can engage in this over time (outside of the narrow time frame required for the 6-month goal of a short-term WMF strategy)

  Better language is needed here to identify work done for a December guideline, and work done to promote strategy in general.

• Defining why task forces matter; how they related to the practical goals of strategy; and how people can help build task forces and contribute to them. All this should be defined in such a way that anyone who thinks a major topic is essential or important can contribute -- to defining a TF, helping with its background and research, helping find people to contribute to one, or signing up to take on a core TF role for three months.

  Without this it's hard to see how/why people would take part; seems too abstract (whereas the point of TFs is, at one level, to be practical)

• Defining how task forces should work -- common practices that all should share, even though there will be many differences among them. Basic guidelines for sending invitations to collaborate, sharing notes & transparency, reporting & other measures of progress, and publishing final overviews.

  this should include where to go for help with any of these elements

Sj 22:12, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks SJ - great points, will start to edit the TF section to reflect these meta questions Serita 00:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Eligibility of members

While I do not know who selected these people (strategy project team says nothing to me), they seem to be higly biased and in strong COI with this project. Wikimedia is here for general public, and general public is who has to make decisions on strategy. There should be people in this committee and in task forces that have never heard of Wikimedia (by this I mean all of its projects) - only these can bring unbiased opinions and recommendations. That is what we need, right? --Kozuch 17:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

We are absolutely in agreement that the task forces should not include only "insiders", and we are being very conscious of that. The task force selection committee, however, probably does need to be people who are familiar with the skill sets of the people who are applying to be on task forces - at least some of them - and should be familiar with what roles each task force will need to fill. So, in answer to your question - I think the selection committee is fine; I hope the task forces will include outside voices. -- Philippe 17:12, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I think half of the committee members should be replaced by outsiders. Half all taks force members should be outsiders too. The volunteering questionarie was greatly missing this point - I am curious how the committee will recognize the level of involvement with Wikimedia projects.--Kozuch 17:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind that the selection committee has an extremely short period of time in which to do their work. The time necessary to orient an outsider to that role would be overwhelming. I'm not sure I'm quite with you on "half", but I agree there should be a strong voice of outside opinion on task forces. Ultimately, that's not my decision, though. :) -- Philippe 17:31, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Progress so far?

How many volunteers did you collect as of the cutoff on October 5th? When do you expect that the selection committee will define what a task force is and is not (all three of SJ's points above)? When will you begin to hand out specific tasks to the volunteers? How will this happen? (A message on each individual's talk page? Email? A master listing on this project page? And/or the ESP page?) As a prospective volunteer, I've already set aside 15 hours a week, starting on October 1st, and it's already October 8th.

Also, what meetings have you had already on these topics? Don't you think someone should take meeting notes and publish them here? Should there be a period for comment and review of the selection committee's final results? The original plan was to allow three months for this initial process. If you're not ready to hand out assignments essentially by now, that time frame may have to be extended, especially if we go through all the bells and whistles necessary for "transparancy". --RoyGoldsmith 11:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the good questions, Roy. In the interest of getting you answers quickly, I'll answer the ones that I can, and hopefully a committee member will come through and answer the others. There were roughly 2100 applications submitted, and some still coming in. We have purposely not closed down the volunteer site, but the committee is proceeding with its work. The task force work and purpose are defined at ESP. I can't answer your question about specific tasks, because that depends on the committee, so I'm leaving that one open for them to respond to.

I also can't answer your question about meetings or meeting notes, because that's committee specific, and I'm not on the committee. My impression is that we're fairly close to rolling out the first couple of task forces, with others to follow fairly quickly. -- Philippe 13:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

These are all fair questions, and I'll echo what Philippe said (except that I'm on the committee). We're pushing, but we're dealing with a tremendous volume of applications, and simply getting through them has been a task. You can see some stats at Process/Evaluation/Call for participation. The discussion about the actual Task forces has been happening in public and on this wiki, and I'd encourage you and everyone else to contribute to those discussions, as it will help us make the task forces strong. We'll hopefully roll out a few Task forces by early next week, and the rest of them by the end of next week. --Eekim 14:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

In the section on Procedures in Emerging strategic priorities, someone says that the Task Force Selection Process will take two steps and the Selection Committee hopes that both steps will be finished by Oct 5th. It is already Oct 15th. Where is the announcement? Will there be any reply to the 2100 minus 200 applicants that did not get selected? Or have we moved beyond ESP? If so, where should I be looking?

I see some teams being built in the subpages of Task Force. Is this the "official" list? But most of these pages don't have any members, at least so far. For example, look at Task force/China Task Force (many members) versus Task force/Local Language Task Force (none). Will the Selection Committee add the members or should we just put down our names on any teams we're interested in? Also, is this all the task forces or are more still being added?

In my opinion, there should be some central place (Village Pump? Main Page?) that does NOT use Liquid Threads and that lists all of the new topics and what they contain. I just happened to stumble across Task force by accident. Or maybe I just don't understand your linkages. Is there any documentation? And, by the way, who decided that Liquid Threads would be our preferred method of communicating with each other? And where is the documentation for it? --RoyGoldsmith 18:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Roy, I just answered these questions at Talk:Emerging strategic priorities.  :-) -- Philippe 18:57, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

OK. I will consider this page expired and will voice any further questions on ESP. Thanks, Philippe. --RoyGoldsmith 23:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)