On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:15 AM, James Hare <messedrocker@gmail.com> wrote:

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?