Talk:Wikimedia meeting agendas

Membership

Since Membership meeting in October and a proposal there has been no information on Wikimedia membership if I recall correctly. Has the proposal become a formal one? Or it is still on discussion? In my humble opinion it would be better for us to settle membership system as fast as possible we can - at least I will be happy to hear it. --Aphaia 09:26, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• It is no more on discussion, since we reached agreement on the topic. We are hoping that someone will help us set up the membership; and still waiting for anyone to bring help. As of today, none of the developers has expressed interest to help, and no one has made a form for membership. So we just wait for a miracle to happen :-) Anthere
• Nothing ever happened, so I proposed membership be removed from the bylaws. See [1]. Angela 05:29, 3 Jul 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for replies, friends, so after bylaws is updated, should we need to remove Wikimedia:Membership too? Or will it be modiried mainly for clarification of voting eligility? --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 06:51, 3 Jul 2005 (UTC)

More reliable and faster system

Hi,

During the last months, 3 new projects were created: Wikispecies, Commons and Wikinews. These are welcome, specially Commons was a long awaited system. But we should now put our priority to have a site much more reliable and faster. Wikibooks could be use by professionals, but cannot since the site is too slow during the day for a normal work. Also I am refraining from doing any promotion for the projects. I will do 2 workshops on Wikipedia on January 13th and 14th, and I am afraid that the site is too slow to conduct these workshops. Yann 19:57, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Artificial languages

An Dispute if a certain artificial language, like esperanto or Klingon could be a letigimate Wikimeda language rises frequently. Once we talked on that Klingon Wikipedia should be closed. I think now the time is riped to determine if it is or not on the board descretion and to close this dispute (here should devide international auxiliary languages like Interlingua or esperanto and other conlangs including fictional languages [mainly created for a fictional story's taste or just conlangers' hobby like Klingon or Sindalin]. --Aphaia | Translate Election | ++ 05:45, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

We discussed this today but it was unclear whether this needed to be a board decision. A vote might be held sometime after September. Angela 23:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Chinese Wikinews

Chinese Wikinews should be on the agenda (see recent discussion on the Foundation-l mailing list), along with the general policy question of whether threats of censorship should ever be allowed to interfere with how Wikimedia projects are run.

This policy issue - as well as the practical matter of indefinitely denying something of undeniable use and value to the Chinese users who requested it and met all the requirements - is far more important than trivial issues like Klingon (see above), or even more serious issues like personnel and funds. Rather, it goes right to the guts of what Wikimedia stands for: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." - No, in the case of Chinese Wikinews that's not what we're doing, and it is a shame. This censorship issue has to be dealt with seriously and soon if we really stand for what that quote says. Dovi 20:43, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

This was on the agenda for today, but Jimmy wasn't present, so it has been postponed to the next meeting, which will probably be next month. Angela 23:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Legal Counsel

I received an offer from Laurence Lessig to help Wikimedia find pro-bono legal counsel for matters related to copyright. Is the board interested in exploring this? If so I can pass on the offer. --Gmaxwell 13:56, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

We discussed this in today's meeting. Although Jimmy wasn't there, we took the decision that he would follow up on this with you by email. Angela 23:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Council / local arbcoms

Yesterday there was a talk about arbitration committees and the idea of a Wiki Council, regarding the current situation on several Wikipedias (mainly related to troll actions and sysop abuse). Sadly, setting up an arbitration committee is a bit harder on different language versions (apart from the languages that members of the Board actually do speak), so it's hard to choose an arbitration committee. There was an idea of Wiki Council discussed. I think it would be good if the Board would talk about it and decide on something, or at least give their approval. Datrio 14:00, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Jimmy is meant to be posting a proposal about the Wikicouncil. This is separate from an arbitration committee, so perhaps that needs to be on the next agenda. Angela 23:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Latin numerals at ml

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAnthere&diff=15858603&oldid=15772378

Request by Bijee

Why is that a board issue? Is it even controversial? Can't a bug be filed at MediaZilla: for it? Angela 05:26, 3 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Dedicated server for History Flow et al.

In a lecture given to Microsoft Research, MIT Media Lab student Fernanda Viegas mentions that she was, at some point, in talk with Mediawiki developers regarding a server dedicated to Historyflow usage. Having been some two years since the software was released, I wanted to encourage the board to again enter these talks. There have also been other projects released lately towards the aim of animating Wikipedia histories. Perhaps an official stance towards these tools would be beneficial to requesting that they not be released in the first place, as was done with History Flow. Because of this, a valuable research tool has gone unused for the last two years. Although it is possible to create minimal History Flow documents manually (with python for example), they are not nearly as feature rich as the plugin represented in Viegas' lecture. --Alterego 03:42, Jul 3, 2005 (UTC)

With all the new servers expected from Yahoo, I don't see why this would be a problem. Alternatively, it might be something one of the chapters wants to support by having a server for that. Angela 05:26, 3 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Not having watched the video, I'm guessing that the discussion in question actually took place this past spring; in February. I was there, and the people still at IBM working on the project (who just released the public history-flow tool in April) had no knowledge of any earlier discussions of a dedicated server; however it did come up at the time. The outcome of this discussion was that a dedicated server would be a great thing; and by having such a server, it would not be too much of a load on the rest of the cluster. In fact, we talked about pre-generating little snapshots of the history of a page, which could be visible as thumbnails from the article page directly... and whether or not this would be useful. If you get in touch with the people at IBM Watson, try talking to Jonathan Feinberg; he and Martin W. are the one who expressed recent interest. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 09:11, 3 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Has anything happened on this recently? It's in the same ballpark as the project I'm working on (which is a fine-grained stats service). User:JeremyDunck 10 Oct 2005

Wikimedia Deutschland is currently working on the launch of a dedicated tool server -- Arne (akl) 13:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity

English Wikiversity is a bit of a hot potato at the moment, but I'm wondering if it is a current board issue or does the initiative rest with developers? It seems like it awaits a transwiki to en.wikiversity.org, which needs to be provided. Sorry if I'm overloading an already substantial agenda, but some people on Wikibooks are pretty worked up over it. See wikibooks:Wikibooks:Votes_for_deletion/Wikiversity and Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikiversity. Cormaggio 18:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, this has already been addressed [2]. But I suppose my deeper question is: does the board request a new project be set up or is this the community's prerogative or the developers'? Cormaggio 19:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it needs a community vote in the same way Wikinews had. Angela 19:46, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikiversity

English Wikiversity is a bit of a hot potato at the moment, but I'm wondering if it is a current board issue or does the initiative rest with developers? It seems like it awaits a transwiki to en.wikiversity.org, which needs to be provided. Sorry if I'm overloading an already substantial agenda, but some people on Wikibooks are pretty worked up over it. See wikibooks:Wikibooks:Votes_for_deletion/Wikiversity and Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikiversity. Cormaggio 18:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, this has already been addressed [3]. But I suppose my deeper question is: does the board request a new project be set up or is this the community's prerogative or the developers'? Cormaggio 19:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

implementing group-specific access control

there's been talk of making it impossible to see the titles of pages you're not allowed to read. that's totally never going to happen

I do not think it is should be a huge problem. If something really needs to be private, we can put a non obvious title to the page Anthere

would pages be unprotected by default, or readable by no one? or readable by some people?

they should be unprotected by default. I do not even think that any page should be protected, except if we run into an edit war :-) The idea is that a set of pages should be readable by a group of people, and this group only. Imagine for example 4 groups. Group press. Group grants. Group chapter. Group finance. Some people may belong to one group, or to more group. A given page may be readable by one group or two groups or more. For example, the budget page associated to a grant request could be visible by the Group finance, or the Group Grants. Not by the Group press, nor the Group chapters; Once a person belongs to a Group, she may see all the pages readable by this group.Anthere 14:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Unprotected in the question means: unreadable, not protected in the existing sense. But then Anthere explains it well. Pages should be readable by all by default and then can be put to be read by one or many groups. As soon as they are affected to a group, they're unreadable by any other group that hasn't been allowed. notafish }<';> 14:13, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Correct. Depending on how it can be implemented, pages are visible by all, or only by groups. Anthere

who's allowed to create new pages? anyone? or only sysops?

Anyone. The creator would declare the page created in a certain category, Press (to be visible by Group Press) and/or chapter (to be visible by Group Chapter) etc... Anthere 14:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

can sysops see all pages or they, too only in their groups?

any editor, whether sysop or non sysop can only see pages belonging to a group he belongs to. I think that everyone on this wiki is trusted enough to be able to delete or protect a page wisely. So, ultimately, we could even say anyone could be sysop. However, privacy is privacy. If an information must be shared only by one group, it must be visible only by this group. No matter the sysop status. Anthere 14:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Ryo seemed to imply that he wanted a page owner scheme, like in WakkaWiki where anyone can create pages, and the page creator becomes the owner like in unix filesystems too, I guess you have some kind of site-wide default permission set, but the owner can modify the permissions of the page

I disagree with this view. We should not see ourselves as owner of a page, but as members of a group. Anthere 14:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Organisation of meetings

I would like that a differenciation is seriously made between a board meeting and a meeting with the board, which might require renaming this page. Board meetings would be reported on Foundation website, while more general meetings and board meetings would be reported on meta.

Arguments :

• legally speaking, we need to define which meetings are binding from a legal perspective from which are mostly discussions about how to handle community issues.
• there are meetings planned now about every week. It is impossible to attend all of them. At least, impossible to me, in particular since meetings are curently decided with no prior agreement neither on dates, nor on hours. Some of us have a life and can not be spend one dinner per week-end at a meeting instead of being with their family. So, it becomes particularly important to be able to make the difference between meetings where presence is especially important, from meetings where the presence of one board member could be sufficient
• agenda should reflect the difference. No board meeting level decisions should be made during general meetings. Board level decisions should be taken by board and not anyone else (though others could help in the discussion)
• agenda should clearly indicate which decisions will be made, so that no decision is made without clear beforehand knowledge of the implications. This will also help make the difference between a board meeting and a general meeting.

Most typically, some meetings are currently planned on the agenda, one being very soon :

September (5?) : Translation and communication meeting

no idea who is supposed to be there

no idea where it is supposed to happen

no idea who suggested that meeting

no agenda

September 18 : Board meeting with officers and chapters. 16:00 UTC

no agenda at all

I would like that a meeting is defined board or not at least a week before it really occurs and that for all board meetings, an agenda is made mandatory. Board decisions made in the absence of a board members should be pending the agreement of the missing board member. No unplanned board meeting should be legal. A board meeting should be organised only by the board itself (chair or secretary, it is unclear right now). It is probable these points are all mandatory. In the above two examples, the sept 5th meeting should simply not be there.

Anthere 05:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Legally speaking, I believe Board members are meant to be informed about meetings at least 10 days in advance, so a week isn't enough. I strongly disagree that "Board decisions made in the absence of a board members should be pending the agreement of the missing board member" since this will often not be practical and the bylaws state we can make decisions with a quorum of three. I believe it's the secretary (Tim) who should be organising meetings and the agenda, not the chair. Angela 09:15, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

10 days so be it. If Tim is organising the agenda, can he clarify what this meeting on the 5th exactly is ? If decisions made be done by a quorum (understandable), then it should be mandatory that board members say beforehand whether they will be present or not at a meeting (not currently the case). Decisions to take should still be listed, to avoid cheating with an absent board member by changing the agenda at the last minute. Ant

Wikijunior

Would the board be able to discuss a seperate site for Wikijunior, possibly wikijunior.org, with its own language subdomains. It would be where the public views the Wikijunior content, while Wikibooks would still be the developing ground. -- user:zanimum

Thanks, I see it's been scheduled. -- user:zanimum

See Talk:Wikijunior#New domain name for Wikijunior. Angela 19:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikimedia Poland bylaws

Translation and communication meeting

• Accepting the Wikimedia Poland bylaws

This meeting has been moved since not clearly planned and described. Still on the agenda, accepting the Wikimedia Poland bylaws. Could this be organised by mail ? Anthere 07:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Discussion on pl.wikimedia.org seems to be working best for now. Angela 19:50, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Kannada funding

H P Nadig has sent an email to say a meetup is being planned for all contributors to Kannada wikipedia in Bangalore. The idea is to invite the press (significantly the Kannada Language press folks) to the event to generate some publicity to the kn wiki and push the momentum on kn wiki to a higher degree. He would like to know if funding is possible for this event.

They would require around $400:

• $180 - venue
• $70 to hire projector
• $70 - snacks & stuff
• $70 - parchments for press guys.

Angela 19:50, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

whose venue would these 180 be for ? Anthere 20:12, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

support by the wikimedia foundation to wikimedians whit legal problems

I request that the board would discuss the following principle and if accepted be published on the wiki somewhere as an promise by the wikimedia foundation to its users;

There are many people working on many wikis of the foundation. By doing this the Wikimedians expose them self to legal actions against them. Especialy the people who communicate whit visitors to explain them how wikipedia (and Co) works and sysops.

Example; on an wikipedia is there an article about an person. That person writes to wikipedia to demand that the article is removed from the wiki. An user explains that it can not be removed only because he is asking it. And explains how wikipedia works. Policy, procedure how to remove an article. The user get sued by the complainer.

In general; if an wikimedian get sued or imprisoned because of work done on a wikimedia project or on behalf of such an project. An that user has done nothing that is an clear violation of wikimedia core values, policys or the local policy of that project. So not if he has done something really stupid that it is comment sense that you should not do that.

Basically when an wikimedian get in to trouble for being an good wikimedian then the wikimedia foundation will use its resources to assist the user whit his problems. By legal counsel, money, public pressure. Walter 16:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this could be discussed on the mailing list or here on meta first? I don't understand why someone could be sued for replying to someone if they weren't the author of the problematic article. Angela 12:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it does not make sense does not mean you can not get sued or get in to trouble. The exact hypothetical reason what could lead to this problem is not really important. Only the question of the Wikimedia Foundation will support the principle; when an wikimedian get in to legal trouble for being an good wikimedian then the wikimedia foundation will use its resources to assist the user whit his problems. By legal counsel, money, public pressure, etc. Walter 20:07, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

As a side comment, the juriwiki list received a few requests for help from editors who had received legal threats. Till now, one of the legal persons on the list have always been able to inform that person and a few times wrote to the person making the request. I would recommand any editor with such a problem to write to juriwiki-l anthere