Minutes:2005-08-18
A Board meeting was held on IRC on August 18 with Angela Beesley , Michael Davis, Florence Devouard, Tim Shell, and Jimmy Wales, WMF officers and representatives of the French, German, Italian, and Polish chapters.
Chapter coordination officer
- Office of chapter coordinator created (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter_co-ordinator)
- Delphine Ménard (notafish) appointed to office
- Discussion of Wikimania and its relationship to chapter coordinator officer; decided this was 2 different things, and that helping local chapters host wikimanias will be a minor part of job duties
- A mailing list chapter-l to be created, as well as a chapters wiki (see next item)
New administrative wikis
- Discussion of wikis for grants, press, legal, and local chapters, whether they should each be separate, and who would have access
- Settled on one new commbined wiki, with access restriction features to be developed soon by Brion Vibber, pending receipt of specs
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Private_wikis
Logo and trademark policy
- Draft of policy will be made public on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy)
- Contracts with Wikimedia chapters to be posted on meta
- General contract for licensing with commercial entities to be public
Wikimania 2006
- Decided there should be a Wikimania 2006
- City specs to be released September 1; shortlist of candidate cities to be published October 1; a city to be selected October 15
- Organization team to be put together after this
Fundraising and fundspending
- Discussed general fundraising drive for WMF versus donations to local chapters
- Noted that WMF donations are not tax deductible in France and Germany, while donations to local chapters are
- Decided that chapters will ask first for to WMF, and then offer the tax deductible local chapter donation option, along with an explanation of why two options are being offered
- Discussion of how and if money raised by chapters can be used for WMF; whether the German chapter can own servers in Florida, whether WMF can open datacenter in Germany that hosts servers owned by German chapter
- Concluded a trip to the German tax consultant was required before these questions can be settled
Other matters
- Chinese Wikinews was discussed, at it was decided this is an issue best left to the Wikicouncil
- Dispute resolution committee was proposed to deal with issues on projects that do not have their own arb coms, and for cross-wiki issues; discussion of this idea on mailing lists is encouraged
- Decided to discuss the creation of wikicouncil; Jimmy to submit his suggestions to mailing list; draft proposals to be developed on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil)
- Scheduling of future meetings discussed; open meeting planned for August 27; meeting of Board, officers, and chapters for Sept. 18; additionally Board-only meeting may be arranged in between other meetings
- Angela has proposed rationalizing the scheduling of meetings, having them every 12.125 days; discussion of this proposal is encouraged at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings_proposal