Official positions
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Note: This page is largely historical in light of the hiring of an interim ED (since June 2006) and subsequent board actions.
The Wikimedia Board of Trustees appointed official positions within the Foundation. The initial proposal for such positions may be found at Talk:Official position history. The reasons for such positions to exist, and proposals for further positions are discussed below. For other positions within Wikimedia, see Board of Trustees and Wikimedia staff.
Current positions and board composition are described in WMF organigram.
The first position was the one of the Chief Financial Officer very early on after the first board election (June 2004). Other positions were proposed during the board meeting of May 16 2005. Some currently have an officer; others do not.
Ideas for what these positions should involve are welcome on Meta (please discuss on the talk page).
Finance and Fundraising
[edit]Assisting the Treasurer with Wikimedia's finances and co-ordinates fundraising drives. See Chief Financial Officer for more details. It is possible that Finance and Fundraising could be two separate roles.
Hardware/Technical
[edit]First point of contact between the system administrators and the Board. The aim of this position is to improve communication, both within the sysadmin team,between them, the Board and the community. Documenting activities that affect the community to ensure people are aware of potential downtime, and notified about the current state of the hardware. See Chief Technical Officer for more details.
Development/Software
[edit]First point of contact between the developers and the Board. The aim of this position is to improve communication, both within the development team, and between them, the Board and the community. Documenting the activities of the developer committee so the community are aware of who to contact about different issues, and to ensure smooth communication between developers. See Developer Liaison and Hardware Officer for more details. As of summer 2005, no one holds the role of the Developer Liaison (which is likely to stay an artifact).
This role is to study Wikimedia's content, technology and community, to identify and prioritize the needs of the individual Wikimedia projects, to make recommendations for targeted development, to guide and motivate outside developers, to assist in the study of new project proposals, and to collaborate with researchers who are not part of the Wikimedia community. See Wikimedia Research Team. See Chief Research Officer for details.
Promotes the application of grants throughout the communities, finding grants and people to work on them, and coordinating grant-writing efforts to ensure deadlines are met. Provides feedback to the board on what has been applied for, and suggests areas where more grants may be useful. See Grants Coordinator for more details.
Press/PR
[edit]Co-ordinates press releases, deals with queries from the press, organizes Jimbo's interview schedules. See Press Officer for more details.
Legal
[edit]The role of Chief Legal Officer has been abolished in favor of the role of General Counsel. The General Counsel is responsible for the legal affairs of the Foundation.
Local chapters
[edit]Works with the Chief Financial Officer on financial matters concerning the chapters, aids the flow of information between local chapters and the Board, acts as a liaison between the Foundation Board and local chapters. See Chapters committee for more details. This role was first proposed during Wikimania.
Elections officials
[edit]See Election Officials: Varies with each election