James,
I realize your tickets were already resolved but I thought I'd take a
moment to clarify the issues that cause the delays in response.
The Wikimedia Volunteer Response Team ("OTRS") relies on the generous work
of hundreds of volunteers from all over the world to handle hundreds of
thousands of e-mails each year.
The scope of these tickets range from vandalism reports or technical issues
to problems with biographies of living people and other generic edit
requests, and dozens of other categories. A large percentage of the
overall tickets received are "permissions" tickets -- e-mails used to
verify the release of content on Wikimedia sites, typically from third
parties.
Like every project that Wikimedians work on, there are various things that
the volunteers are tasked to handle. The agents who take on this role do so
in addition to their existing editing activities, often at the cost of
their own free time. Due to the trust and patience required to handle these
public-facing aspects of Wikimedia, the pool of available volunteers tends
to be smaller than in other areas of the projects. Unfortunately, backlogs
can occasionally crop up and take a bit of time to deal with, especially in
the more complicated e-mails (like BLPs), that can take up to an hour to
process. It happens on every large Wikimedia project -- where some backlogs
never get cleared (just look at the English Wikipedia’s articles with
unsourced statements! [1])-- so it is something I believe almost all of us
can relate to in one way or another.
We had very good queue levels for much of 2014, but began noticing an
increase in permissions and general information tickets (specifically in
the English language) around the end of the year. Unfortunately, the end of
the year typically shows higher than usual response times, likely because
of volunteer free time. While OTRS agents are very dedicated, answering
tickets can be stressful at times, so it’s not typically the type of thing
you’ll want to during holiday vacations. Pair those longer response times
with an increase in tickets because of our hard-working Wikimedians adding
content and submitting more permissions tickets in their holiday free time,
and it creates a bit of a backlog. :-)
Just as in other areas of our projects, backlogs are inevitable, especially
in the more mundane and tougher areas. However, our dedicated pool of
volunteers works diligently to clear these backlogs when they come up.
While, again, it’s a tough job that’s not for everyone, we always welcome
new applicants. Actually, we're continuously adding new agents. In 2014 we
added 62 new community queue accounts[2] to handle general information and
permissions inquiries. Additionally, our agent retention is better - we
lost about half as many agents in 2014 as we did in 2013. But finally, if
you really want to help with the backlogs, we’re always looking for great
new team members. Feel free to throw up an application on
[[m:OTRS/Volunteering]] if you think you’d make a good agent and we’ll be
happy to review it.
Basically, OTRS is tough job that runs into backlogs just like any other
part of Wikimedia. However, we’re continuously working to add more agents
and clear those backlogs as soon as they start.
I hope this helps clarify the current issues.
Ryan // User:Rjd0060
(OTRS admin)
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_unsourced_statements
[2] Community queue accounts are OTRS accounts with access to queues that
answer general information inquiries about our projects, permissions and/or
photosubmissions tickets. Other types of accounts do not have answer these
tickets, but instead have access to a smaller subset of queues, such as
those related to the Foundation (e.g., donations), chapters, or advanced
rights on the projects (e.g., oversight, stewards). See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/Access_policy#Community_queues for
more information.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 11:52 PM, James Heilman <jmh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> OTRS does not even bother replying to the consents I send them. Thus the
> images I have received releases for get deleted. Going forwards I am simply
> uploading to En Wikipedia. Not ideal but not sure what the solution is.
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>
> The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
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