On Apr 3, 2013 11:34 AM, "Michael Peel" michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
# Agreements, particularly those with global impact, and/or where they
affect more than one Wikimedia organisation. Part of the recent Monmouthpedia/Gibraltarpedia situation was caused by a lack of transparency about who had signed what agreements, and when they had been signed - if these had all been shared on an internal wiki then some of this could have been avoided. There's also a lot of experience now with existing agreements that could be reused when new agreements are being written, e.g. for Wikimedians in Residences. Sadly, not all of these can be made publicly available (or at least, they haven't been to date).
I'd like to see that kind of thing made public. There are rarely good reasons not to other than vague expectations that they be private based on what other people do.
# Press releases. When there's an upcoming significant press release from
a Wikimedia organisation, then it should be good practice to share it with the other movement partners prior to its release, so that they are aware of it, can provide feedback, and can plan around it. Some of this already happens on wmfcc-l, but not consistently - much more could be done here.
wmfcc-l sounds like the right venue to me. Pre-publication press release are transient things, so a mailing list works well. Wikis are better for long term storage of information.
# Domain names. There is a list of these on internal already, which is
actually being maintained by some people. Tackling squatted domain names and keeping track of who owns what is a global problem that should be done collaboratively, but in confidence, rather than just by individual organisations.
A proper domain name policy making clear who should own what is what is needed there. Having domain names owned by random people is the problem, not the lack of a list of those random people.
# Contact information for the various organisations. Some of this can be
done publicly, but not all, and it would be good to have a central place for this information anyway.
All organisations should have public contact details... We're not a secret society...
# Notices of sensitive activities. E.g. if there's an upcoming risk of
law suits, infrastructure difficulties within organisations, etc. then it would be good to be able to share these and ask for help without publishing them to the world at the same time. That doesn't need a mailing list - it can be done on a wiki.
Again, this is transient so is better suited to a mailing list.
I think internal-l has a purpose, but the internal wiki was abandoned long long ago because it wasn't actually useful. I once had a go at cleaning up the wiki (never did finish) and pretty much everything on there was several years out of date (and that was about 3 years ago - it's hardly been edited since).