On Monday 14 February 2011 02:03 AM, Hari Prasad Nadig wrote:
It is probably unfair to say that the chapter hasn't communicated much on time in just the last one month right after it has got registered legally, when the information that flowed right from the time the EC was formed (by you) haven't gone out appropriately and on time. This has been more or less the case for almost two years from there. The leadership has changed in last month. Is that why only the last month's updates are being targeted?
No, it is not. Lack of transparency always concerned (eg: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-March/000474.html ). And as you know, January last week's thread was originally about Malayalam Wikipedia's edit count, later diverted and subject changed (Start http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/thread.html#1834, First Diversion http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/001864.html, .....) to Indian Chapter. Then interim EC's *very delayed* announcement about leadership change immediately worsen the situation. Reason for changing the leadership is still unknown (or atleast to me).
I am sorry but frankly, making things foggy is not appropriate for an EC Member.
I believe Indian Wikimedian community must consider seriously about Jyothis' and Achal's suggestions.
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala@gmail.com mailto:aprabhala@gmail.com> wrote:
Couldn't agree more. I think that there is/ has been a lot of needless noise. It's not productive to cast insinuations against the chapter or foundation (or community for that matter) as a whole. I do think, however, that communication from the chapter regarding the last set of meetings (and changes then on) have not been communicated very well. If, for instance, some of the basic questions were to be addressed, I suspect that there would be much less basis for this kind of distracting and unhelpful noise. As far as I am concerned, I have fairly simple question: I still don't know why one set of the India chapter leadership (scroll down: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-ChapComVer) was suddenly replaced by another (as detailed here:http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Announcements/Communication_from_the_Executive_Committee_regarding_first_meeting_on_January_22,_2011). Not being on the EC, I am aware that there might well have been good reasons to reshuffle of the chapter leadership team; I would merely like to know what these reasons were. And also how you decided to change the structure, who stood for elections to various posts, etc. - as I would expect from any Wikimedia community body. Perhaps this is something that the chapter can consider in this instance, and in the future. As for Praveen's email, thanks for the explanations, Delphine, Anirudh, others. However, Anirudh, while the point about moderation/spam filters makes sense, mailman does generate emails (on a daily/per instance basis) to the admins of a list to check/approve messages caught in the filter. So I would imagine that for a message to stay unanswered/unresolved for three days indicates that the burden of administration on WikimediaIndia-l deserves to be shared by more than two people from the Wikimedia India chapter. Specifically, and to follow up on the intent expressed in previous messages (from Jyothis, Salman, Delphine and others), how can we help to immediately create a process whereby two non-chapter community members from India might be added as Admins to WikimediaIndia-l? Hari and Anirudh, I would imagine that the instant you can facilitate this process, there will be sufficient uptake from the community to fill these two slots - many thanks in advance for considering this request from us seriously. Good wishes, Achal
On Sunday 13 February 2011 11:59 PM, Jyothis Edathoot wrote:
Achal,
Good points. Thank you.
To have additional mods, it is fairly a simple process to add them in mailman. I would suggest that atleast as a start, we can ask people here to nominate themselves for the positions and we can pick two. Would be great if they are already familiar with the work. *Please note* that it is not a title, but a daily work that comes your way.
About the chapter issues, I dont think we need to say more that what Tinu and many others have already mentioned about. While not counting out the efforts that were made by the existing EC on building this out, Transparency is the primary issue that echoes thru. It is probably worth remembering that chapter is just a support system and has no control over the projects or its actions. It is neither an administrative power nor a place for people who just want to have a title on their business card or get their expenses covered. Chapter will be answerable to every single paisa spent to the community and community should stand up and demand for the clarity and visibility on things. If the chapter cannot do it, trust me, it will not last for ever. Probably the interim EC should not have re-elected themselves behind closed doors. Instead, they should have probably opened the memberships and conducted the election for the first official EC.
However, my vision about the future of EC is slightly different from what we have now. Unlike many other chapters around the world, Indic chapter have a unique challenge: Many different language Wikimedia projects, ranging from highly active to dead, (and more on the way) rolls up under its umbrella. To deal with this, we can probably take a page out of our democracy itself and consider building a representative assembly style administration system for our future.
Some thoughts around this:
- *Local Representation:*All local wikis should elect a respected member of their community for a period of a year (or two) and form an administrative council for the chapter. This could be per language basis or per project basis, based on their community size. I would not exclude English, but would limit the participation to one member in council. for the rest of projects
50 (this is just a number, we can look at the real world situations) active people (not including bots) - we can allocate one member per project to the council. other wise, one member per language projects would be enuf. this is just to ensure that we have enuf coverage per project and per language depending on the size of people.
- It could be probably like for every project that has more than
- *Formation of EC:* From the administrative council, the EC can be elected in for a term. This election should be by the chapter members / local language wikimedians.
- *Limit on Term in EC:* It may also be worth enforcing that no project gets more than one (or at the most 2) consecutive term in EC (if we have enuf representations to fill in all slots). This will ensure that all projects gets it share of EC terms over the years.
- *Communication: *A Monthly or quarterly report of the chapter activities should be published by the EC and admin council. Individual representatives are and should be responsible for communication between chapter and projects. Should there be a reason to replace the member by the local community, such a provision should be provided.
- *Removal of member: *Inactivity and lose of trust by the general public should be considered as a reason for removal as usual. On the other hand, if the rest of the administrative council members feels against one member, chapter should be able to request for replacement citing proper reasons for it.
- *Funds and Grants: *All funds and grants from chapter account probably can be openly discussed and approved on the foundation wiki or meta wiki (like the foundation grant process)
- *Audit and Annual report:* End of every financial year, an audit committee for the financial and functional aspects of the chapter's actions should be formed from the administrative council and audit results should be made public along with the annual reports.
We can go on like this, but I would leave it open to further discussions.
Thanks.
Regards, Jyothis.
http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis I am the first customer of http://www.netdotnet.com
woods are lovely dark and deep, but i have promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep and lines to go before I press sleep
completion date = (start date + ((estimated effort x 3.1415926) / resources) + ((total coffee breaks x 0.25) / 24)) + Effort in meetings