Re: [Wikimedia Brasil] Inivtation for a Webex call about Wikimedia Brasil - WikimediaBR-l

8 Oct 2012

Ni!

Dear Tomasz, María, and by proxy AffCom,

Thank you for your interest in holding a conversation with us.

Rodrigo just shot a very short reply and forgot to address everyone,
he's quite troubled taking care of Wikibrasil matters and I guess tried
to expedite things. What he stated is correct, though, but deserves more
explanation - which is reflected in Thomas' puzzled reply on the wiki
page Rodrigo suggested:

http://br.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Comit%C3%AA_de_Afilia%C3%…

The long story is, we have brought your proposal to the attention of our
community, and it came to a consensus that we'd much rather discuss
this: "all matters related to Wikimedia Brasil's process of recognition
as a Wikimedia chapter, specifically including the recent developments",
on a wiki page, or perhaps on IRC[1], but preferably the former.

As much as a voice conversation may seem simpler to you, and I agree
it's friendlier, it actually comes with a huge overhead on us as a
community and an organization.

We trust it is best for everyone to come to their own understanding of
the matters rather than hearing it from what little reporting a couple
of people will be able to do in the time they have for it. And
also, important discussions like these usually get a lot better when we
can provide input from the whole community, plus discussing on a wiki
has the immediate added benefit of producing fine documentation.

I think the same will apply to some extent to AffCom itself, as many of
you still have questions about our doings, and it seems to me more
productive for everyone to have readily available a source against which
to check any ambiguities which inevitably arise in reporting.

Should we agree on this, we would gladly set up and keep carefully
organized a page on Meta for this conversation - not the link Rodrigo
sent you, - so you can fill it with your facts, news, observations and
questions from AffCom. We are eager to proceed with this dialogue.

Also, we've recently received an OTRS request from AffCom, which we have
started to discuss but have not concluded a reply yet. Should we
disregard that request in light of this current contact?

Finally, at the same time, if you want a friendly chat with no strings
attached, feel free to find me on IRC as "solstag", call me on the
jabber/gtalk network, where I'm &quot;solstag(a)jabber.org&quot;.org", or request my
personal phone number.

Hugs,

ale

PS: I have the habit of copying WMBR's list in my replies to private
requests, though you're not required to keep it on record when replying
yourselves.

([1] except on IRC we'd rather do it in Portuguese, as María can
understand it and it makes more sense for one person to use a
translating tool rather than have everyone on the other side do it.)

On 07-10-2012 07:49, Tomasz W. Kozłowski wrote:
...
  Dear Rodrigo, Al-Scandar and Castelo,
 I am contacting you on behalf of the Affiliations Committee to invite
 you for a Webex call about Wikimedia Brasil's process of recognition
 as a Wikimedia chapter.

 We would like to use this call as an opportunity to discuss all
 matters related to Wikimedia Brasil's process of recognition as a
 Wikimedia chapter, specifically including the recent developments
 (since our meeting at the Chapters Conference in Berlin, Germany, at
 the end of March).

 The Committee will be represented by Maria (CC'd here) and myself, and
 I have contacted you as the three most active and well-known members
 of Wikimedia Brasil that I could think of; I you feel that you will be
 unable to take part in the call or have another suggestions for people
 that should be part of it, please let us know. If possible, I would
 like, however, to limit the number of people taking part in the call
 to 5/6, because the bigger the group is, the harder it is to have a
 productive call.

 On a more technical note: Webex is a web conferencing system developed
 by Cisco Systems, Inc. that is used by the Wikimedia Foundation. It
 enables people not only to take part in a conference via their
 computer, but also makes it possible to join the conference through a
 toll-free call-in phone number or to receive an incoming call from the
 conference (so you don't have to pay for the call).

 The WMF has been using Webex for some time already, and I have also
 thoroughly tested it myself; it's very easy to use, and the
 possibility of calling-in the conference makes the audio quality very
 good, much better than Skype or other VoIP services; also, the only
 requirement to use Webex is to have a Java-enabled browser.

 If you'd like to take part in the call, please write down your
 preference using a Doodle form at
 <http://doodle.com/nsv6yusym5dxgs8h>. There are 5 hours of difference
 between Europe and Brazil, so I have tried to make it possible for all
 of us to take part in the call, scheduling it for a late afternoon in
 Brazil (which is a late evening here in Europe). Please note that the
 hours are given in UTC -- but you're able to convert them to your
 local time using a drop-down menu just above the suggested times.

 If you have any questions about the meeting, please do not hesitate to ask.

 Thanks in advance for your time,