Elezioni della Wikimedia Foundation/2022/Candidati/Kunal Mehta
Kunal Mehta (Legoktm)
Legoktm (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA • AE)
| Dettagli sui candidati | 
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| Dichiarazione introduttiva / Riepilogo della candidatura. Questa sezione sarà tradotta. (massimo 150 parole) |
Sono un Wikimediano dal 2007 ed ex componente dello staff di WMF per 8 anni (vedi la biografia completa). Da entrambi questi ruoli ho acquisito una forte comprensione delle esigenze tecniche e delle realtà del movimento. Una comunità tecnica sana e sostenibile è quella guidata da volontari, affiliati e personale WMF, ragion per cui ho lavorato in modo da guidare e responsabilizzare gli sviluppatori volontari. Il mio lavoro è concentrato sulla creazione di funzionalità e strumenti che diano il controllo agli utenti su wiki, come il filtro anti-abusi, la SpamBlacklist e i CSS/JS globali.
Una parte fondamentale del lavoro di WMF consiste nello sviluppo e nella manutenzione delle funzionalità tecniche - è fondamentale che il Board prenda decisioni ben informate su iniziative e priorità tecniche. In quanto persona con un'esperienza pratica nello sviluppo, nell'implementazione e nella manutenzione delle funzionalità che soddisfano i requisiti unici di Wikimedia, credo che la mia esperienza e prospettiva possano aiutare il Board e WMF a servire in modo migliore il movimento. | |
| Contributi nei progetti Wikimedia, appartenenza a organizzazioni Wikimedia o affiliate, attività come organizzatrice/organizzatore del movimento Wikimedia, o partecipazione a un'organizzazione collegata al movimento Wikimedia. (Massimo 100 parole) |
As a Wikimedian since 2007 and a former WMF staffer for 8 years (see full bio), I have a strong understanding of the technical needs and realities of the movement. I work to build features and tools that give control to users on-wiki. A healthy and sustainable technical community is one led by volunteers, affiliates and WMF staff alike, which is why I’ve worked to mentor and empower volunteer developers. Wikimedians are disappointed with the WMF’s recent technical output; I would like to bring my experience in successfully creating, deploying and maintaining technical projects to the WMF board. | |
Esperienza nella aree di abilità identificate come necessarie dal Board.
(massimo 150 parole) |
I bring significant experience in “Enterprise-level platform technology and/or product development” as well as “Organizational strategy and management” to the board. Wikimedia technical development is radically different than the rest of the web, with an intense focus on privacy, security, transparency, internationalization, and user freedom. Blending my experience as a longtime volunteer contributor and as a WMF engineer, I understand the desires for new features and bugfixes while balancing the day-to-day needs of building and defending a secure platform. I’ve developed new features for editors and resolved sitewide outages during late nights and weekends. I regularly give input on technical roadmaps, favoring a bottom-up approach for determining strategy. | |
| Esperienze vissute nel mondo. Siamo particolarmente interessati a leggere le esperienze vissute nelle regioni dell'Africa, dell'Asia meridionale, dell'Asia orientale e sudorientale e del Pacifico e dell'America Latina e dei Caraibi. Crediamo che avere esperienza in queste regioni possa contribuire all'incremento della capacità del Board di raggiungere l'obiettivo della strategia del movimento di una partecipazione più equa, sebbene riconosciamo che anche altre esperienze possano fornire contributi importanti. (massimo 250 parole) |
As a journalist, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to others, tell their stories and amplify their experiences. I’ve interviewed homeless university students, victims of assault, as well as politicians and activists. In 2018, I traveled to Italy and Greece to report on the ongoing refugee and migrant crises firsthand. On the island of Lesbos, we visited Moria (aka “the worst refugee camp on earth”), interviewing refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war, as well as residents on the island who were living with the influx of refugees.
Telling these stories and more have allowed me to gain a better appreciation for experiences I personally haven’t lived through. I do my best to make sure as many other people can gain that same appreciation by releasing as much content as possible under free licenses. Outside the bubble of the English Wikipedia, my experiences have given me a unique perspective on the technical needs of our diverse communities, which I’d like to bring to the board. During SUL finalization, I worked with stewards on implementing a new global renamers group. To empower cross-wiki patrollers and global sysops, I rolled out global CSS/JS. Wikisourcians particularly felt the pain of musical scores being disabled, and helped test it when we re-enabled it. And they, along with Commons uploaders, raised awareness of large file uploads being broken and helped with debugging until we found the cause and fixed it. | |
| Conoscenza culturale di altre regioni e conoscenza fluente di lingue aggiuntive rispetto alla propria regione di origine e alla propria lingua madre. La consapevolezza interculturale aiuta a costruire ponti all'interno della nostra comunità multiculturale. (massimo 250 parole) |
I learned how to program via Wikibooks and Wikipedia, and it eventually grew into my dream career. I regularly interact with people from across the world through talk pages, IRC, etc., many of whom I now consider friends. I’ve spent my summers mentoring and working alongside GSoC/Outreachy students from Cameroon, India and Taiwan, not to mention many others from around the world through guidance on bugs, patch review and casual conversations.
Despite only speaking English (and fragments of Gujarati and Spanish), my key skillset is bridging the communication and culture gap between technical and non-technical users. I’m fluent in technical jargon and can translate that into plain language when helping people out over chat, in person and on technical village pumps. And I’m able to diagnose user complaints, turning them into actionable bug reports on Phabricator. A key part of the WMF’s work is in developing and maintaining technical features – it is crucial that the board has someone who has real experience developing, deploying and maintaining features that meet Wikimedia's unique technical requirements. I regularly hear that the board and WMF upper management are out of touch with the needs of the developers and editors doing the work on the ground, and don’t realize the full scope or implications of projects they sign off on. Having collaboratively developed user scripts, gadgets, Toolserver/Toolforge tools, and MediaWiki extensions to benefit a diverse group of contributors, I’d bring a bridge to the technical community that is desperately lacking. | |
| Esperienza come difensore della creazione di spazi sicuri e collaborativi per tutti e/o esperienza in situazioni o contesti di censura, repressione o altri tipi di attacchi ai diritti umani. (massimo 250 parole) |
As an administrator, IRC channel operator, and member of the Technical Code of Conduct Committee, I have significant experience ensuring users can work together in safe/collaborative spaces by working to catalyze and de-escalate situations, stepping in with sanctions to protect contributors as necessary.
I've invested time developing and improving anti-abuse/power user tools that give control to users on-wiki like AbuseFilter, SpamBlacklist and GlobalCssJs. Creating safe spaces requires identifying and reducing power imbalances. In the technical community, there is a de facto power disparity between paid WMF developers and volunteer developers. To counteract this, I regularly mentor and support newer developers and nominate them for “+2” merge rights (which WMF staff get by default). A thriving and empowered volunteer developer community is essential to sustain the Wikimedia movement. WMF staff also need a safe space, and must not be constantly in fear of being re-organized at the whims of a constantly changing upper management. The board must support the unionization of staff in addition to the previously promised ombudsperson. I regularly fight attempts at censorship through my work with Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader, by packaging it for Debian, which makes it easier for users to install. Recently I wrote a guide showing how to set up a local mirror of the Russian Wikipedia using Kiwix and Debian. At my day job, I’m privileged to continue the work that the late Aaron Swartz started in SecureDrop, building and supporting software to protect whistleblowers and journalists. | |
| Esperienza in relazione a (o in quanto membro di, nella misura in cui scegli di renderlo pubblico) un gruppo che ha subito discriminazioni storiche e sottorappresentanza nelle strutture di potere (inclusi, ma non solo, casta, razza, etnia, colore, provenienza nazionale, nazionalità, identità di genere, espressione di genere, orientamento sessuale, età, religione, lingua, cultura, istruzione, abilità, reddito e ambiente). (massimo 250 parole) |
I am a person of color and do not feel comfortable sharing more than that publicly. | |
| Verifica | Verifiche eseguite dalla commissione elettorale o dallo staff di Wikimedia Foundation. | |
Ammissibilità:  VerificatoVerificato da: Matanya (talk) 09:03, 17 May 2022 (UTC) |
Identificazione: Verificato Verificato da: Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 23:55, 18 May 2022 (UTC) | |
2022 Board of Trustees Analysis Committee Rating
| Candidate Name | Wikimedia Background | Sought Skills | Sought Regional Experience | Human Rights & Underrepresentation | Overall rating from the average score of the four categories | Overall rating from the average score of the nine criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kunal Mehta | Gold | Silver | Silver | Silver | Silver | Gold |