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 January 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.
• 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.
• 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. There's probably some content from https://robla.net that will get relocated to this wiki.

Since I'm a board member (as of October 2020), I also sometimes read and sometimes edit these wikis:

• Meta: https://meta.miraheze.org
• Staff: https://staff.miraheze.org

CV

Here's a few highlights from my CV that seem relevant to people wondering about my possible contribution the Miraheze Board:

• 2020 - served the board of Miraheze Limited. I should read the company bylaws at some point....
• 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 does RobLa do with Miraheze now?

As of January 2020, I'm on the Board. In March 2020, I attended my first board meetings (on March 6 and March 12). See meta:User:RobLa/TODO for how I'm planning to act on my action items (and feel free to seek clarification on the associated talk page if anything is unclear).