[Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l

[Jyothis Edathoot]

Achal,

Good points. Thank you.

To have additional mods, it is fairly a simple process to add them in
mailman. I would suggest that atleast as a start, we can ask people here to
nominate themselves for the positions and we can pick two. Would be great if
they are already familiar with the work. *Please note* that it is not a
title, but a daily work that comes your way.

About the chapter issues, I dont think we need to say more that what Tinu
and many others have already mentioned about. While not counting out the
efforts that were made by the existing EC on building this out, Transparency
is the primary issue that echoes thru. It is probably worth remembering that
chapter is just a support system and has no control over the projects or its
actions. It is neither an administrative power nor a place for people who
just want to have a title on their business card or get their expenses
covered. Chapter will be answerable to every single paisa spent to the
community and community should stand up and demand for the clarity and
visibility on things. If the chapter cannot do it, trust me, it will not
last for ever. Probably the interim EC should not have re-elected themselves
behind closed doors. Instead, they should have probably opened the
memberships and conducted the election for the first official EC.

However, my vision about the future of EC is slightly different from what we
have now. Unlike many other chapters around the world, Indic chapter have a
unique challenge: Many different language Wikimedia projects, ranging from
highly active to dead, (and more on the way) rolls up under its umbrella. To
deal with this, we can probably take a page out of our democracy itself and
consider building a representative assembly style administration system for
our future.

Some thoughts around this:

   1. *Local Representation:*All local wikis should elect a respected member
   of their community for a period of a year (or two) and form an
   administrative council for the chapter. This could be per language basis or
   per project basis, based on their community size. I would not exclude
   English, but would limit the participation to one member in council. for the
   rest of projects - It could be probably like for every project that has more
   than 50 (this is just a number, we can look at the real world situations)
   active people (not including bots) - we can allocate one member per project
   to the council. other wise, one member per language projects would be enuf.
   this is just to ensure that we have enuf coverage per project and per
   language depending on the size of people.
   2. *Formation of EC:* From the administrative council, the EC can be
   elected in for a term. This election should be by the chapter members /
   local language wikimedians.
   3. *Limit on Term in EC:* It may also be worth enforcing that no project
   gets more than one (or at the most 2) consecutive term in EC (if we have
   enuf representations to fill in all slots). This will ensure that all
   projects gets it share of EC terms over the years.
   4. *Communication: *A Monthly or quarterly report of the chapter
   activities should be published by the EC and admin council.  Individual
   representatives are and should be responsible for communication between
   chapter and projects. Should there be a reason to replace the member by the
   local community, such a provision should be provided.
   5. *Removal of member: *Inactivity and lose of trust by the general
   public should be considered as a reason for removal as usual. On the other
   hand, if the rest of the administrative council members feels against one
   member, chapter should be able to request for replacement citing proper
   reasons for it.
   6. *Funds and Grants: *All funds and grants from chapter account probably
   can be openly discussed and approved on the foundation wiki or meta wiki
   (like the foundation grant process)
   7. *Audit and Annual report:* End of every financial year, an audit
   committee for the financial and functional aspects of the chapter's actions
   should be formed from the administrative council and audit results should be
   made public along with the annual reports.

We can go on like this, but I would leave it open to further discussions.

Thanks.

Regards,
Jyothis.

http://www.Jyothis.net

http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis
I am the first customer of http://www.netdotnet.com

woods are lovely dark and deep,
but i have promises to keep and
miles to go before i sleep and
lines to go before I press sleep

completion date = (start date + ((estimated effort x 3.1415926) / resources)
+ ((total coffee breaks x 0.25) / 24)) + Effort in meetings
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20110213/dda3ce2a/attachment.htm