Community Relations

This page is kept for historical interest. Any policies mentioned may be obsolete. See Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Movement Communications.

The Community Relations team (formerly "Technical Collaboration") supports communications between the Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia stakeholders. The team maintains processes, tools, documentation and data to help Foundation teams understand the communities and communicate effectively with them. The team strives to engage a high quantity and diversity of Wikimedians in the Foundation's projects. The team's ultimate goal is to contribute to good common understanding, smooth collaboration and results.

The Community Relations team also run its own programs:

• The Wikimedia Movement CRM

• 
  Quim Gil
  Senior Manager, Community Relations (Contractor)
• 
  Hang Do Thi Duc
  Associate Designer, Community Relations
• 
  Chris Koerner
  Community Relations Specialist
• 
  Elena Lappen
  Community Relations Specialist
• 
  Segun Oworu
  CRM Specialist

These priorities guide the team's work:

• Support Foundation projects with special needs to collaborate with Wikimedia communities, like designing campaigns, gathering information, crafting multilingual announcements or facilitating conversations.
• Document and promote best practices in community engagement and Wikimedia resources for communities, and provide training to both Foundation employees and volunteers.
• Support the organization of online and face to face community events, in coordination with Community Resources and Travel.
• Handle questions asked to the Wikimedia Foundation through identified channels within the movement, responding or escalating as needed.

For the team's planning process, see Planning.

The team's FY 2019-20 deliverable work plans:

• Thriving Movement - Improved Infrastructure
  • Internal Infrastructures - The Wikimedia Movement CRM
  • Community Communications Infrastructure - Wikimedia Translators (TBD)
• Core
  • Critical Support to other staff - Community Relations Support (TBD)

You can see the team's work organized in quarterly columns on Phabricator:

• Specialists Support
• More

See Community Relations/Metrics.

The team supports Foundation teams on a per-program basis:

• Participating in their planning process providing community perspectives and risk assessment.
• Designing communication plans for activities targeting Wikimedia communities.
• Drafting and posting announcements and/or review messages posted by the project.
• Watching project-specific channels.
• Organizing calls for community feedback.
• Turning user feedback into bug reports or actionable tasks.
• Facilitating conversations and meetings with the communities.
• Providing design advice and assets for initiatives led by the Community Engagement department.

• You can leave a message for the team at Talk:Community Relations, or by email at commrel-supportwikimedia.org
• Wikimedia Foundation staff can also find the team on Office Wiki

The Community Relations team was born in July 2018. It was preceded by the Technical Collaboration team, which was organized in two sub-teams: Community Liaisons (now Community Relations Specialists) and Developer Relations. Community Liaisons expanded their scope beyond software projects to support all the Wikimedia Foundation teams. Developer Relations moved to the Technology department and now they are integrated in the Developer Advocacy team. Community Relations was moved from the Community Engagement department to the Communications department when the former was disbanded in 2019.

Historical projects:

• Wikimedia Space, 2019-20
• Design