User:RobLa
User:RobLa is the user account for Rob Lanphier. I am (among other things) an electoral theory wonk, a software developer, and an engineering management nerd. I've been a Miraheze community member since September 2018 (main wiki: electowiki). From January 2020 through December 2021, I served as a member of the Miraheze board.
Latest info - The latest information about me is in my journals. See [[User:RobLa/Journal]]
on "this" wiki (wherever "this" wiki is) or see #Journals below to learn more.
Journals
Here's a list of wiki journals that I'm keeping:
- Meta
- Page: meta:User:RobLa/Journal
- Description: this is where I note my work associated with Miraheze and my responsibilities on the Board
- electowiki
- URL: https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Journal
- Description: my journal for electowiki-related activity
- roblawiki
- URL: https://robla.miraheze.org/wiki/RobLa_journal
- Description: a general purpose journal for misc thoughts
- myndmess
- URL: https://myndmess.miraheze.org/wiki/User:RobLa/Journal
- Description: Journal for myndmess-related activity (see below for more)
Wikis
Here's some Miraheze wikis that I'm an admin/bureaucrat on:
- electowiki
- URL: https://electowiki.org
- Description: This electoral reform wiki has been hosted by Miraheze since 2018. It was a copy of a wiki that I helped start back in 2005. As of December 2023, it has modest but still robust activity.
- myndmess
- URL: https://myndmess.miraheze.org
- Description: this is a wiki I set up in May 2020 to explore personal notetaking. My research in this area goes back much further than that. My interest in this wiki tapered off a bit since I haven't yet seen much interest from other folks, but I haven't given up on it yet.
- roblawiki
- URL: https://robla.miraheze.org
- Description: this wiki was started in June 2020, as a place for me to experiment and put personal content. I still randomly put things on this from time to time. In particular, there's an unfinished framework I've called the "Bill of Responsibilities" which I may use to revamp the code of conduct for electowiki.
Since I'm still part of the Miraheze community, I also sometimes read and sometimes edit this wiki:
CV
Here's a few highlights from my CV that seem relevant to people wondering about my possible contribution the Miraheze Board:
- 2022-2023 - did other stuff
- 2020-2021 - served the board of Miraheze Limited.
- 2019 - served as Director for Core Infrastructure at Internet Archive, managing both the operations team and engineers that wrote and maintained the core storage software
- 2017-2018 - Volunteer political activism work, some private software development work, as well as some maintenance and migration work for Electowiki!, which is mostly hosted at Miraheze now ( https://electowiki.miraheze.org )
- 2015-2016 - Wikimedia Foundation part II - Established Wikimedia Technical Committee (TechCom) - back when we called it "ArchCom".
- 2010-2015 - Wikimedia Foundation part I - Established Wikimedia Platform Engineering by hiring, budgeting, and coaching the team of up to 35 engineering staff in 8 time zones at its peak
- 2006-2009 - Launching the open source client for Linden Lab (makers of Second Life)
- 1996-2005 - All sorts of things at RealNetworks, e.g. launching Helix, RTSP and SMIL
- 1993-1995 - Stuff at Conjungi, Asymetrix, other things here and there
I give details about all of this stuff over on https://robla.net
Links
A few other places to learn more about me
- My English Wikipedia user page: w:User:RobLa, with contributions dating back to 2001
- My contributions on electowiki.miraheze.org
- My homepage at https://robla.net
- My December 2019 blogpost "Why donate to a non-profit with a hard-to-pronounce name?"
FAQ
Some frequently(?) asked questions:
How did RobLa start working with Miraheze?
The short answer: I signed up for an account here because User:Psephomancy got tired of waiting for me to fix the problems on wiki.electorama.com, so they copied the content to https://electowiki.miraheze.org . I decided I liked it here, so I got more involved.
The long answer: See my December 2019 blogpost "Why donate to a non-profit with a hard-to-pronounce name?"
What did RobLa do while he was on the Miraheze board?
From the beginning of January 2020 until the end of December 2021, I was on the Miraheze Board. In March 2020, I attended my first board meetings (on March 6 and March 12). I published a couple of advisory docs during my time (see links in "meta:User:RobLa/TODO"), in addition to giving advice during board meetings. Here's a list of many of theboard meetings I attended:
- meta:Board/Policies/20201023-Agenda
- meta:Board/Policies/20201023-Financial
- meta:Board/Policies/20201023-Minutes
- meta:Board/Policies/20210115-Agenda
- meta:Board/Policies/20210115-Financial
- meta:Board/Policies/20210115-Minutes
- meta:Board/Policies/20210425-Agenda
- meta:Board/Policies/20210425-Minutes
- meta:Board/Policies/20210726-Agenda
- meta:Board/Policies/20210726-Minutes
- meta:Board/Policies/20211008-Agenda
- meta:Board/Policies/20211008-Minutes
What does RobLa do with Miraheze now?
Mainly use the service, and sometimes put comments on RFCs. See Requests for Comment/Reorganization of Miraheze (oldid=353757) for a recent comment I made while logged in as "Robla" rather than "RobLa":