Hello Danese, I appreciate your advice and insight to how Wikimedia works. Neritocracies can be very nice, as well as the opportunity to work and learn while doing something that I feel is important. I may not be incredibly useful at this point but I suppose that will be the learning part.
Thanks again, David On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Danese Cooper <dcoo...@wikimedia.org>wrote: > Hi David (and Wikitech-l), > > You've seen Aryeh's thoughtful answer to your question, but I thought > I'd expand a bit on the topic of student involvement... > > We *love* to have students get involved in Wikimedia engineering, but > like most open source communities there is a requirement that you "show > up" and do some good contributing before we start rolling out the red > carpet much. This is because we are very leanly staffed and don't have a > lot of spare time to mentor. My advice is to find an area to contribute > (looking as Aryeh says at bug lists and other places where wants are > recorded), ask (and later answer) questions on mail lists and gradually > work your way up the meritocracy. > > We *do* have paid contracts with some of the best student engineers to > encourage them to continue to contribute during their schooling. There > are several of those students on this list. Many of them have told me > that contributing to Wikimedia projects is the more interesting than > most of the work assigned them for coursework, and we really like to see > that spark of recognition that what we're doing is important, impactful > work. All of them started out finding their way into the project and > gradually building reputation until we felt fairly confident of the > quality of their work and also that they are rewarding for us to work > with (eg we like engineers who work well with others). There is no > magic shortcut...showing up is the only way to do it. > > Cheers, > Danese Cooper > CTO, Wikimedia Foundation > > On 7/21/10 10:57 AM, David Breneisen wrote: > > Ahoy there, > > > > My name is David Breneisen. I was referred here by James Alexander. I'm > a > > Comp. Sci. student at George Washington > > University and have had an interest in open education web development for > > the last few years. I thought that I might be able to offer technical > > services for the Wikiversity development/maintenance while getting some > > experience working on larger, "real," projects. > > > > I also hope to see if it is possible to do a more formal summer > internship > > after this school year with Wikimedia, and thought it > > would be nice to get used to the overall manner in which Wikimedia > > design/development goes. > > > > Regards, > > David Breneisen > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
