On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
And on another note, should we do something about the current mailing list structure? We seem to be using wm-dc-bid for all the organization matters related to the chapter, rather than only for bid discussion; while this is a natural consequence of the organization having emerged from the bid team, it's probably not ideal in the long run. At the very least, I would suggest that we use wm-dc as the primary list, and reserve the wm-dc-bid list for matters specifically related to Wikimania; it may also be feasible to just combine the two lists, since Wikimania planning is going to be fairly central to our activities over the next year. Another possibility might be to create a separate wm-dc-board list to use for organizational matters, but that might just cause more confusion among the different lists. Kirill
The origin of the private Wikimania bid mailing list was out of a concern that discussion of the bid would be taking up too much of the mailing list's traffic. What resulted was a sort of separation between the people actively working on the chapter (since the chapter is ultimately the result of the conference's needs) and everyone else, and I do not believe it is effective for there to be two separate mailing lists, especially since one is a private Google Group which I run from my personal account. As the conference is no longer in the hands of an ad-hoc group but a non-profit organization as well as its (prospective) members, I propose the following changes be made:
1. The Wikimania DC Bid list is made read-only, effectively shutting it down. Discussion of Wikimania will take place on this list, Wikimedia-DC, to prevent any further splintering of the community and to ensure as much input as possible. The Wikimania Planning Committee may carry out business on this list if it so chooses. (As a member of said committee, I am against the committee sequestering itself onto its own list, since the role of the committee is to lead the wider community process of organizing Wikimania, not to organize Wikimania autonomously.)
2. Wikimedia-DC-announce is created. For those who don't want to be updated on the minutiae of chapter activity but still want to hear about events and other news, this mailing list will be an option. This list will work similarly to existing announce lists such as toolserver-announce-l.
3. If the Board of Directors deems it necessary, a restricted-access Wikimedia-DC-board list is created for Board members and a few select non-Board members.
In the interest of accountability, all of these lists would be operated by lists.wikimedia.org; there would no privately ran Google Groups lists like the Wikimania DC Bid list currently is.
Thoughts?