Communications committee

The Communications committee (ComCom) is one of several committees within the Wikimedia Foundation. It was authorized by a resolution of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees in January 2006, and its initial members were confirmed in February of that year.

[edit] Statement of scope

The statement of scope and areas of responsibility below has been approved by the Board of Trustees.[resolution]

• Coordinating communications with the press, including press releases, interviews, and inquiries.
• Supporting communication between the Wikimedia Foundation and project communities.
• Organizing and coordinating publicity and outreach.
• Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public.
• Maintaining a Wikimedia style guide.
• Reporting on core Wikimedia statistics.

[edit] Function

The aim of the Communications committee is to facilitate communication between the Wikimedia Foundation and the public. This includes the general public, the media, and the "internal" public comprising the communities of the various Wikimedia projects.

[edit] Current responsibilities

• Managing the OTRS system.
• Coordinating the work of local press teams and production of press releases on Wikimedia projects as well as helping draft and distribute Wikimedia Foundation press releases.
• Maintaining a list of people willing to be contacted by the media for interviews.
• Contacting editors and publishers of Wikipedia press coverage to request that corrections be published as needed.

[edit] Contacting the committee

The committee can be reached by sending email to its mailing list: wmfcc-l at mail dot wikimedia dot org (note that to deal with spam, posts by non-members to the list are moderated). Messages may also be left for the committee on the "Notifications" subpage.

[edit] Subcommittees

To best focus on specific elements of Communications for the Wikimedia Foundation, Communications subcommittees are formed around tasks and needs. The individual subcommittee workspaces may be found there.

[edit] Membership

Jimbo Wales and the Schwartz PR team are acting as advisors to the committee.

Current committee members include: Michael Snow (Chairperson), Angela Beesley, Nicholas Moreau, David Gerard, Kat Walsh, Walter Vermeir, Mathias Schindler, Mark Pellegrini, Aphaia, Sabine Cretella, UninvitedCompany, Elian, Akl, AlisonW, Zuirdj, Chb, Avatar, Swatjester, Htchien and Itzik Edri.

The committee is in the process of adding additional members. The emphasis is presently on staffing the various communications subcommittees. You can find the full list of people participating in different areas on that subpage. If you are interested in joining any of the subcommittees, please contact any of the people organizing them directly.

[edit] Working tools

• An internal press wiki (enotif enabled) and a closed mailing list will be used to coordinate the work of the communications committee. The mailing list and the wiki will be open to all people doing PR on an international or project level.
• The press & translation queues in otrs
• The press release distribution and archive software on wikimedia.de

[edit] Meetings

It is now: 20:15 UTC, Friday 5 September 2008, (you may need to purge the page to get the correct time)

Meetings are held at IRC, #wikimedia-cc on Saturday. The next Communications Committee meeting is not yet scheduled.

[edit] Older agendas

see the archives for agendas from before May 13, 2006

[edit] See also

• Wikimedia:Press room, Trophy box, ...
• People working with ComCom: OTRS, Translation coordinators per language, Communication Projects Group ...