[Mediawiki-enterprise] #mwstake: Rough meeting minutes

The MediaWiki Stakeholders is a WMF-affiliated user group made up mostly of consultants and enterprise-level users of MediaWiki. We held our meetings monthly. We hold meetings on the first Friday of every month at 10:30EDT and our next meeting is on July 6th (https://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/Event:72). these are the contents of the etherpad that we use for keeping notes for yesterday's meeting (Friday, June 1): phab: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/E892 last month: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/mwstake-2018-05 Report: Barcelona report Incorporation (Bryan, Frank) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lPT3D2gv3OeSQY8srCn9NYzyEt4KEURMy4lyZ62… I (Mark) checked about WMF giving funds to 503c6. I haven't yet (5/12) talked to anyone in grants, but when I applied for the MABS grant, it explicitly stated: Are you an incorporated organization able to provide local proof of nonprofit status within your country? (For-profit organizations are ineligible to receive grants through the PEG program.) This seems to indicate that a 503c6 is acceptable. Additionally, someone pointed out that WM User Groups like #mwstake are incorporated in various ways and their affiliation with the WMF is the important thing. As long as we are not for-profit (eliminating B-Corp possibility?) then it seems we're in the clear. Bryan is working on a mission statement. As Bryan said: "I'm glad to hear you guys talk about your ideas, and I'll consolidate...." EACH person attending should have the action item of writing a brief 500 words (or long if desired) statement of what they would like to see/gain from collaboration in MWStake (on User page of MWStake). It would be helpful of these brief statements address both Mission and Membership, which are both relevant to the selection of the type of incorporation or other organizational form. GOALS / MISSION ideas Who are we? What are we? Our Mission Statement: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group/Mission raise and distribute funds for development of projects/code that are neglected by WMF, but critical for 3rd parties raise and manage funds for conferences / marketing / documentation / or all the non-code activities associated with technology associations Remove single point of failure for collection of money All-volunteer / non-profit; but we want to more formally organize/manage volunteers (money for membership coordinator + membership management system (e.g. CiviCRM) + website management (MWStake.org) CiviCRM has a similar bug bounty program Perhaps we should collect our different conceptualizations of the mission or goals and reconcile them. Clearing house for trusted consultants (if orgs want to do a MediaWiki project, MWStake could be the "Angies's List" for MediaWiki consultants) - Greg (and I've never used Angie's List either) Create and run Training / Certification programs for MediaWiki consultants (grant funded by WMF?) which increases adoption Full Disclosure: Greg is actively working to grow eQuality-Technology as a worker-led cooperative to create a "Super Consulting Firm" for MediaWiki "Note": I think an organization requires a "board" that has regular recorded meetings. Add a layer of representation to other MediaWiki users Lex's comment on a body that acts like a company's support desk that can receive money and provides a service The group can help decide what are the "needed" features or missing pieces and if the group has money, pay developers to do this. There is already a "Mission" of MWStake: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group/Mission which can serve as a basis for further discussion Membership model (Markus, ??) Half of existing groups seem fairly unorganized Other half have a more formal policy incl sometimes approval for membership See membership section below. Examine WikiMed more .... MARKUS Main purpose of membership Make legitimate decisions Representation Any patreon followup? (Ginger, Chris) xMWCon (Lex) Riot/Matrix server <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193961> Waiting for the creation of the cloud There are response time issues WikiSpaces refugee effort (Gergő, Bryan) Bryan reached out to parent copany TES Bryan also said Yaron got WikiWorks listed as a place to go but no one has had success working with TES to seamlessly roll over their users. Possible maint script to do the conversion from WikiSpaces to MW: https://gist.github.com/ilhooq/65c1e2490fdb616413dfede8647f2691 Contribute: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikispaces Greg has been connecting with some Wikispaces users from what I (Bryan) hear and has some experience with migration. EMW Mailing list (Mark) active now, not much traffic yet regularly post minutes of our meeting -> MARK == link to Etherpad? :-) Tech Working Group (from Strategy process) Nominations by June 8: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-May/090014.html We need to nominate representatives. The Wikimedia Technical Conference will take place in Portland, OR, USA on October 22-25, 2018. And, as mentioned in previous emails [1][2] and on the wiki page [3], this conference will be focused on the cross-departmental program called Platform Evolution. We will be providing more information and context as we go along in the process.For this conference, we are looking for diverse stakeholders, perspectives, and experiences that will help us to make informed decisions for the future evolution of the platform. We need people who can create and architect solutions, as well as those who actually make decisions on funding and prioritization for the projects. Provide input on the future direction of MediaWiki's extension management system: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Extension_management_fe… As part of the MediaWiki Platform Team's goal to develop a roadmap for MediaWiki, we want to solicit input on the future direction of MediaWiki's extension management system. One of MediaWiki's greatest strengths is the diverse extension ecosystem. But navigating that ecosystem and managing those extensions can be difficult and cumbersome. If time, I'd like to briefly discuss the (archived) AWS extension. == Membership == Membership models * Sign up via official form ** pro: members mailing list ** pro: required for entities -> preparation ** pro: identification ** types: pdf or google doc ** no money (membership fees) involved in other groups ** examples *** WikiMed: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Project_Med/Membership *** WikiToLearn (create account on their platform): https://de.wikitolearn.org/Mitmachen *** Shared Knowledge: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Shared_Knowledge#Membership * Informal application ** examples *** WikiJournal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group#WikiJournal_Council * Informal (sign with name) ** pro: low barrier ** con: unknown state of group ** examples *** Whose knowledge?: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Whose_Knowledge%3F *** Wiki Women: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen%27s_User_Group#Members *** Wikimedia LGBT: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT%2B/Participants/de * Informal (participate) ** examples *** Wikisource Community: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group#Becoming_a_… *** Wikibase Community (need invitation to join channels) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibase_Community_User_Group#Joining_the_G… *** Tool developers (there are criteria, though): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Tool_Developers_Group#Membership_… Organisation * Informal (most) * Council ** examples *** WikiJournal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group#WikiJournal_Council *** Wikisource Community will start incorporation when 100 active members are reached: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_Community_User_Group#Governance *** Wikimedia LGBT: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT%2B/Participants/de * Incorporation ** examples *** WikiMed (Not for profit corporation, NY): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Project_Med/Membership#Administrative_… *** Shared Knowledge (Macedonia): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Shared_Knowledge/Constitution Bylaws * examples ** WikiJournal: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WikiJournal_User_Group/Bylaws ** Shared Knowledge: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Shared_Knowledge/Constitution