Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning chapter language. What is this? For eg.
*Anirudh:* At this point of time, we don't feel the need for having more list administrators, however list subscribers who are interested in keeping a check on the spam filter as moderators can write an email to either list admins.
*Translation:* Can all the ordinary members of this list please keep out of my business? I would prefer to continue censoring this list with my best friend HPN. After all, I am the EC of the India chapter and I have an unlimited Wikimedia Foundation sponsored travel budget which I regularly use to go to Frankfurt, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Berlin, etc. etc. and I would really like to get back to my travel now and stop worrying about stupid issues but if any of you slaves feels like doing my dirty work while I travel then of course I welcome that with open arms.
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa ponappasudhir@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning chapter language. What is this? For eg.
Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message that would require moderation! Rude personal attacks such as these are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing list.
I have no idea what's been happening lately on the mailing list.
Please keep it civil, this is getting rude and inappropriate for a national list. It would be archived and viewed by many others, please do bear that in mind.
User:Theo10011
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org wrote:
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa ponappasudhir@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning chapter language. What is this? For eg.
Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message that would require moderation! Rude personal attacks such as these are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing list.
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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_Comm...). 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 02:41 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
I have no idea what's been happening lately on the mailing list.
Please keep it civil, this is getting rude and inappropriate for a national list. It would be archived and viewed by many others, please do bear that in mind.
User:Theo10011
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Casey Brown <lists@caseybrown.org mailto:lists@caseybrown.org> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa <ponappasudhir@yahoo.com <mailto:ponappasudhir@yahoo.com>> wrote: > Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. > I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning chapter > language. What is this? For eg. Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message that would require moderation! Rude personal attacks such as these are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing list. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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:
1. *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 - It could be probably like for every project that has more than 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. 2. *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. 3. *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. 4. *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. 5. *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. 6. *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) 7. *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
Jyotis,
(This is my personal view.)
I concur with the broad idea behind points 3-7 though specifics need to be worked out to suit the legal entity that the chapter is. In fact, some of these have been addressed in the MoA, I think. However, what is the additional role that you envisage for the administrative council given that a general body of members exists? Also, I suggest that a separate page be opened in wikimedia.in wiki to discuss this.
- Sundar
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 - It could be probably like for every project that has more than 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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) 7. 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.
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Jyothis Edathoot je@jyothis.net To: Wikimedia India list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, February 13, 2011 11:59:49 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
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 - It could be probably like for every project that has more than 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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) 7. 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
Sundar,
Having a house of representative system will help managing things better. You are looking a great number of projects and people - if everything goes well - in the general body, and it would be absolutely chaotic when it comes to discussions. 99% you will not see most people for doing something and will have more action thrillers afterwards. It will be as problematic on management of the chapter. Administrative council can act as the advisory board for the EC and they can be the main link between communities for day to day things and will ensure the community participation going forward. This also adds accountability and transparency between chapter and communities.
Since wikimedia.in is hosted on some ones private hosting and thoughts are going around about moving to foundation's hosting, I would rather open this in meta. What do you say?
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
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 2:55 AM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.comwrote:
Jyotis,
(This is my personal view.)
I concur with the broad idea behind points 3-7 though specifics need to be worked out to suit the legal entity that the chapter is. In fact, some of these have been addressed in the MoA, I think. However, what is the additional role that you envisage for the administrative council given that a general body of members exists? Also, I suggest that a separate page be opened in wikimedia.in wiki to discuss this.
- Sundar
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 - It
could be
probably like for every project that has more than 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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) 7. 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.
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
Jyotis,
The proposal needs further discussion. I'm fine to have it on meta, but, I'm sure all the discussions currently on wikimedia.in will be preserved when it is eventually hosted on Wikimedia servers. But, I leave it to you and other members.
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
From: Jyothis Edathoot je@jyothis.net To: Wikimedia India list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, February 14, 2011 4:45:37 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Sundar,
Having a house of representative system will help managing things better. You are looking a great number of projects and people - if everything goes well - in the general body, and it would be absolutely chaotic when it comes to discussions. 99% you will not see most people for doing something and will have more action thrillers afterwards. It will be as problematic on management of the chapter. Administrative council can act as the advisory board for the EC and they can be the main link between communities for day to day things and will ensure the community participation going forward. This also adds accountability and transparency between chapter and communities.
Since wikimedia.in is hosted on some ones private hosting and thoughts are going around about moving to foundation's hosting, I would rather open this in meta. What do you say?
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
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 2:55 AM, BalaSundaraRaman sundarbecse@yahoo.com
wrote:
Jyotis,
(This is my personal view.)
I concur with the broad idea behind points 3-7 though specifics need to be worked out to suit the legal entity that the chapter is. In fact, some of these have been addressed in the MoA, I think. However, what is the additional role that you envisage for the administrative council given that a general body of members exists? Also, I suggest that a separate page be opened in wikimedia.in wiki to discuss this.
- Sundar
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 - It could
be
probably like for every project that has more than 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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. 5. 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. 6. 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) 7. 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.
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
Dear Achal,
The below email seems to be trying to address too many things. I'll try to answer some of those. I appreciate your continued interest in the Chapter activity, considering that you were the one who started this out by putting together the initial team.
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?
And the attack on EC has been either overreactions, emails from trolls and personal attacks. Like many observed on the list, it has been everything else but civil.
I personally feel that some etiquette has to be maintained on this list. Be it when you're sending the entire mail digests copied while responding back, or when people are sending bulky attachments or bulky HTML email (and when that gets filtered out by the spam filter and put into moderation - blame the mods who've been looking after this list for like 6 years now!) This also applies to those who've been writing making personal attacks on a public mailing list.
I do not see why we should be pushing for more admins on this mailing list when the present admins are active and have maintained this list for all these years. However, since both of the mods who've been helping out as community members here have now ended up in the Executive Committee, I feel that we should probably add two more people.
Like Delphine said, moderating lists is more of "janitor work". We'd be more happy if people (who aren't trolls) volunteer for this. I'd personally prefer someone outside the Indian Wikimedia community or the Chapter to also be on the moderator list among the two we add. That would probably help where otherwise people have been just jumping into presumptions about "moderation" when just the Indians are involved. From my own experience, the spam filter's doings have been attributed to us many a times and distrust has prevailed since then.
We *do not* selectively moderate emails on this open list.
It is deeply saddening when you read the kind of emails coming in during last couple of weeks, and seeing the appalling interest of few in continuing it rather than putting up a note pointing out to the etiquette.
- HPN
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Achal Prabhala 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_Comm... ). 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 02:41 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
I have no idea what's been happening lately on the mailing list.
Please keep it civil, this is getting rude and inappropriate for a national list. It would be archived and viewed by many others, please do bear that in mind.
User:Theo10011
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Casey Brown <lists@caseybrown.org mailto:lists@caseybrown.org> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa <ponappasudhir@yahoo.com <mailto:ponappasudhir@yahoo.com>> wrote: > Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. > I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning
chapter
> language. What is this? For eg. Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message that would require moderation! Rude personal attacks such as these are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing list. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Hari,
Couldnt help asking, but could you please point out whom are you referring as trolls here and who attacked you (or any member of EC) personally? As far as I see this, community members raised multiple concerns here and other threads about transparency in EC's actions and we, as community members, would expect the EC to clarify things, rather than coming around and calling them trolls and marking it as personal attacks. Such a line of defense is not expected from a person sitting in the secretary post of the current EC.
Just to add, you very well know that the concerns that we see here is not something new and has that has been around the time the formation plans were announced. I hope you remember the conversation even we had and the discussions that happened right at the out set in mailing lists. Sorry to say this, but I dont think there was any serious efforts came from forming group to reach out to the communities to fixi things up. Atleast not to my knowledge and I may be wrong.
No one has said that the list mods has not done there job. If the community feels that the current mods are getting swamped and more mods are needed, I would assume that it is up to them, as it is their list.
just my opinion, rest of my fellow community members may disagree and correct me if I am wrong.
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
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpnadig@gmail.comwrote:
Dear Achal,
The below email seems to be trying to address too many things. I'll try to answer some of those. I appreciate your continued interest in the Chapter activity, considering that you were the one who started this out by putting together the initial team.
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?
And the attack on EC has been either overreactions, emails from trolls and personal attacks. Like many observed on the list, it has been everything else but civil.
I personally feel that some etiquette has to be maintained on this list. Be it when you're sending the entire mail digests copied while responding back, or when people are sending bulky attachments or bulky HTML email (and when that gets filtered out by the spam filter and put into moderation - blame the mods who've been looking after this list for like 6 years now!) This also applies to those who've been writing making personal attacks on a public mailing list.
I do not see why we should be pushing for more admins on this mailing list when the present admins are active and have maintained this list for all these years. However, since both of the mods who've been helping out as community members here have now ended up in the Executive Committee, I feel that we should probably add two more people.
Like Delphine said, moderating lists is more of "janitor work". We'd be more happy if people (who aren't trolls) volunteer for this. I'd personally prefer someone outside the Indian Wikimedia community or the Chapter to also be on the moderator list among the two we add. That would probably help where otherwise people have been just jumping into presumptions about "moderation" when just the Indians are involved. From my own experience, the spam filter's doings have been attributed to us many a times and distrust has prevailed since then.
We *do not* selectively moderate emails on this open list.
It is deeply saddening when you read the kind of emails coming in during last couple of weeks, and seeing the appalling interest of few in continuing it rather than putting up a note pointing out to the etiquette.
- HPN
Hi Jyothis
I believe Sudhir Ponappa for one sounded aggressive, designation of a troll is not that far-fetched. You can check with Casey as a neutral observer if that comment was worth moderation or not. I would also include the post on the other thread by praveenp which is responsible for this thread and this entire line of questioning as another example. I hope, I don't need to quote and point out what I am talking about.
If anyone on this list has any concerns about the chapter, please feel free to take them up. I feel that this list is being overtaken by issues of chapter accountability. I don't like that this list is being used primarily for chapter relations. There are other issues too, besides the Indian chapter in India.
Second, I have been keeping out for the most part on this entire Chapter accountability thing, one thing that seems rather strange is the repeated accusation of miscommunication. I have been a subscriber to this list for a while now, the registration happened a month ago and they've already been accused of miscommunication, chair-shifting and so on. What happened to assuming good faith? is a month enough of a time to justify this questioning?
Jyothis, I think you as a steward should be the voice of reason in this, feel free to ask questions directly and if the chapter doesn't reply then it should reflect on them, but please don't let this list be overtaken by these questions. There are others things besides the chapter.
Theo10011
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Jyothis Edathoot je@jyothis.net wrote:
Hari,
Couldnt help asking, but could you please point out whom are you referring as trolls here and who attacked you (or any member of EC) personally? As far as I see this, community members raised multiple concerns here and other threads about transparency in EC's actions and we, as community members, would expect the EC to clarify things, rather than coming around and calling them trolls and marking it as personal attacks. Such a line of defense is not expected from a person sitting in the secretary post of the current EC.
Just to add, you very well know that the concerns that we see here is not something new and has that has been around the time the formation plans were announced. I hope you remember the conversation even we had and the discussions that happened right at the out set in mailing lists. Sorry to say this, but I dont think there was any serious efforts came from forming group to reach out to the communities to fixi things up. Atleast not to my knowledge and I may be wrong.
No one has said that the list mods has not done there job. If the community feels that the current mods are getting swamped and more mods are needed, I would assume that it is up to them, as it is their list.
just my opinion, rest of my fellow community members may disagree and correct me if I am wrong.
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
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpnadig@gmail.comwrote:
Dear Achal,
The below email seems to be trying to address too many things. I'll try to answer some of those. I appreciate your continued interest in the Chapter activity, considering that you were the one who started this out by putting together the initial team.
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?
And the attack on EC has been either overreactions, emails from trolls and personal attacks. Like many observed on the list, it has been everything else but civil.
I personally feel that some etiquette has to be maintained on this list. Be it when you're sending the entire mail digests copied while responding back, or when people are sending bulky attachments or bulky HTML email (and when that gets filtered out by the spam filter and put into moderation - blame the mods who've been looking after this list for like 6 years now!) This also applies to those who've been writing making personal attacks on a public mailing list.
I do not see why we should be pushing for more admins on this mailing list when the present admins are active and have maintained this list for all these years. However, since both of the mods who've been helping out as community members here have now ended up in the Executive Committee, I feel that we should probably add two more people.
Like Delphine said, moderating lists is more of "janitor work". We'd be more happy if people (who aren't trolls) volunteer for this. I'd personally prefer someone outside the Indian Wikimedia community or the Chapter to also be on the moderator list among the two we add. That would probably help where otherwise people have been just jumping into presumptions about "moderation" when just the Indians are involved. From my own experience, the spam filter's doings have been attributed to us many a times and distrust has prevailed since then.
We *do not* selectively moderate emails on this open list.
It is deeply saddening when you read the kind of emails coming in during last couple of weeks, and seeing the appalling interest of few in continuing it rather than putting up a note pointing out to the etiquette.
- HPN
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
*Aniruth said: *
At this point of time, *we don't feel the need for having more list administrators*, however list subscribers who are interested in keeping a check on the spam filter as moderators can write an email to either list admins.
This type of reply is not expected from a moderator, even after keeping one member's mail under moderation for more than 3 days because of the busy schedule of the moderators. Since current moderators are very busy, I assume already few community members offered their help to support them. Also since this is not a Wikimedia India Chapter specific mailing list it is not good to have both the moderators from the EC.
*Theo1011 said*
I have been a subscriber to this list for a while now, the registration
happened a month ago and they've already been accused of miscommunication, chair-shifting and so on.
In case you are not a subscriber during 2010 March, read this mail thread. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-March/000474.html So the issue not new.
Shiju
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:42 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Jyothis
I believe Sudhir Ponappa for one sounded aggressive, designation of a troll is not that far-fetched. You can check with Casey as a neutral observer if that comment was worth moderation or not. I would also include the post on the other thread by praveenp which is responsible for this thread and this entire line of questioning as another example. I hope, I don't need to quote and point out what I am talking about.
If anyone on this list has any concerns about the chapter, please feel free to take them up. I feel that this list is being overtaken by issues of chapter accountability. I don't like that this list is being used primarily for chapter relations. There are other issues too, besides the Indian chapter in India.
Second, I have been keeping out for the most part on this entire Chapter accountability thing, one thing that seems rather strange is the repeated accusation of miscommunication. I have been a subscriber to this list for a while now, the registration happened a month ago and they've already been accused of miscommunication, chair-shifting and so on. What happened to assuming good faith? is a month enough of a time to justify this questioning?
Jyothis, I think you as a steward should be the voice of reason in this, feel free to ask questions directly and if the chapter doesn't reply then it should reflect on them, but please don't let this list be overtaken by these questions. There are others things besides the chapter.
Theo10011
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Jyothis Edathoot je@jyothis.net wrote:
Hari,
Couldnt help asking, but could you please point out whom are you referring as trolls here and who attacked you (or any member of EC) personally? As far as I see this, community members raised multiple concerns here and other threads about transparency in EC's actions and we, as community members, would expect the EC to clarify things, rather than coming around and calling them trolls and marking it as personal attacks. Such a line of defense is not expected from a person sitting in the secretary post of the current EC.
Just to add, you very well know that the concerns that we see here is not something new and has that has been around the time the formation plans were announced. I hope you remember the conversation even we had and the discussions that happened right at the out set in mailing lists. Sorry to say this, but I dont think there was any serious efforts came from forming group to reach out to the communities to fixi things up. Atleast not to my knowledge and I may be wrong.
No one has said that the list mods has not done there job. If the community feels that the current mods are getting swamped and more mods are needed, I would assume that it is up to them, as it is their list.
just my opinion, rest of my fellow community members may disagree and correct me if I am wrong.
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
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpnadig@gmail.comwrote:
Dear Achal,
The below email seems to be trying to address too many things. I'll try to answer some of those. I appreciate your continued interest in the Chapter activity, considering that you were the one who started this out by putting together the initial team.
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?
And the attack on EC has been either overreactions, emails from trolls and personal attacks. Like many observed on the list, it has been everything else but civil.
I personally feel that some etiquette has to be maintained on this list. Be it when you're sending the entire mail digests copied while responding back, or when people are sending bulky attachments or bulky HTML email (and when that gets filtered out by the spam filter and put into moderation - blame the mods who've been looking after this list for like 6 years now!) This also applies to those who've been writing making personal attacks on a public mailing list.
I do not see why we should be pushing for more admins on this mailing list when the present admins are active and have maintained this list for all these years. However, since both of the mods who've been helping out as community members here have now ended up in the Executive Committee, I feel that we should probably add two more people.
Like Delphine said, moderating lists is more of "janitor work". We'd be more happy if people (who aren't trolls) volunteer for this. I'd personally prefer someone outside the Indian Wikimedia community or the Chapter to also be on the moderator list among the two we add. That would probably help where otherwise people have been just jumping into presumptions about "moderation" when just the Indians are involved. From my own experience, the spam filter's doings have been attributed to us many a times and distrust has prevailed since then.
We *do not* selectively moderate emails on this open list.
It is deeply saddening when you read the kind of emails coming in during last couple of weeks, and seeing the appalling interest of few in continuing it rather than putting up a note pointing out to the etiquette.
- HPN
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Hi Jyothis,
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Jyothis Edathoot je@jyothis.net wrote:
Hari,
Couldnt help asking, but could you please point out whom are you referring as trolls here and who attacked you (or any member of EC) personally? As far as I see this, community members raised multiple concerns here and other threads about transparency in EC's actions and we, as community members, would expect the EC to clarify things, rather than coming around and calling them trolls and marking it as personal attacks. Such a line of defense is not expected from a person sitting in the secretary post of the current EC.
I think Hari was referring to Sudhir Ponappa's trolling on this thread. As far as I can see, he is a single purpose account (SPA) created by miscreant(s) for disruption.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/002139.h...
Praveenp's email, however unfriendly, was not moderated by either Hari or I for the sole reason that he is a member of the community. I respect his intentions but I cannot respect the manner in which he had addressed the email to Arjuna. His response is a personal attack on another member of the community.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/002121.h...
I trust this brings clarity. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/002121.html
Just to add, you very well know that the concerns that we see here is not something new and has that has been around the time the formation plans were announced. I hope you remember the conversation even we had and the discussions that happened right at the out set in mailing lists. Sorry to say this, but I dont think there was any serious efforts came from forming group to reach out to the communities to fixi things up. Atleast not to my knowledge and I may be wrong.
Jyothis, I am first and foremost a Wikimedian and a part of the community who happens to be a member of the Chapter EC.[1] I empathize with your position that the Chapter has been unable to send timely reports and communication to the community at large. We can definitely do much better. But let me assure you that there is a large effort that goes behind writing every note to the India discussion list as the members of the ExecComm work as a team in order to build consensus amongst themselves in order to present a unanimous face to the community. Yes, there are occasional disagreements which are resolved through discussion. It's true that we need to make our communications process more efficient. We have had a discussion over this in the past on the EC list where you suggested something that was not legally possible without Chapter registration. It is disappointing to see that you have taken a confrontational approach rather than coming forward to try and help us overcome these teething issues.
Each and every member of the ExecComm is responsible to the body as a whole. Therefore, as a part of the Chapter formation process we delegated tasks amongst ourselves and reported back to the ExecComm with detailed emails. Since September 2010, we have had approximately 600 threads of discussion amongst the EC which have been *permanently archived* in Wikimedia servers. These discussions have ranged from the arranging Wikipedia meetups, discussions with our consultant, meetings with the Registrar and various functionaries around Karnataka and outside for organizational support and more. If it helps, starting up and running a non-profit organization in India is very different from elsewhere in the world (saying so because I think you live somewhere outside this country), there are many laws and rules which the EC must adhere to. Please understand that we have all worked very hard and expended a lot of time and energies over the past year to make this organization a reality. None of us have any personal or vested interests beyond the sheer pleasure that comes with working for an organization with a mission which is in harmony with our own ideas for a better world.
To clarify further, I was not a part of the initial team that was formed to seed the Chapter. My former attempt at registering a chapter in Ahmedabad is documented here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_India/bylaws/historic
Please rest assured that more details will be available to you shortly.
Now coming to the role of the Chapter: my understanding is that the ExecComm has no business being the direct representatives of the community. We are a bunch of volunteers who have made the efforts to organize ourselves into a formal entity which can be used for co-ordinating and supporting volunteer efforts around the country for outreach and community building exercises. My allegiance is solely to the principles on which the Wikimedia Movement (and the English Wikipedia project, for that matter) was founded - to spread free knowledge and make the total sum of human knowledge available to each and every individual on this planet. I hold these goals very dear and feel very passionately about them. All the members of the ExecComm are bound by the same understanding and commitment towards these principles.
I will reiterate my understanding: The Chapter exists to support the Wikimedia community in India and to facilitate its activities across the country. A formal organization can forge associations with organizations who share our goals, and raise funds to support the activities of volunteers. This is the *raison d'etre *of the Chapter. My understanding is that the Chapter aims to remain as transparent as possible in terms of its finances and will submit an annual audit report to the Annual General Meeting.
No one has said that the list mods has not done there job. If the community feels that the current mods are getting swamped and more mods are needed, I would assume that it is up to them, as it is their list.
just my opinion, rest of my fellow community members may disagree and correct me if I am wrong.
I disagree with your assessment, but I am happy to introduce more mods to the list.
I request you to please be patient, and allow us time to address your concerns in the most appropriate manner.
Regards, Jyothis.
I am the first customer of http://www.netdotnet.com
anirudh (my personal opinion)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sir_Nicholas_de_Mimsy-Porpington
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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
At bottom :-
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 23:28, Sudhir Ponappa ponappasudhir@yahoo.com wrote:
<snipped>
*Translation:* Can all the ordinary members of this list please keep out of my business? I would prefer to continue censoring this list with my best friend HPN. After all, I am the EC of the India chapter and I have an unlimited Wikimedia Foundation sponsored travel budget which I regularly use to go to Frankfurt, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Berlin, etc. etc. and I would really like to get back to my travel now and stop worrying about stupid issues but if any of you slaves feels like doing my dirty work while I travel then of course I welcome that with open arms.
Hi all, While I'm not one to choose sides normally, just for the argument's sake say that it is true, wouldn't you or I be doing the same thing. I, for one would have, love traveling and love meeting new people and exchanging ideas.
In my last job I had been given this same function, go and evangelize about free software and connect with people who are into free software within India. Also go into free software events where-ever you go.
There were 2-3 people who were in the same boar. So one was on the road 20 days in a month, some people like traveling and others do not.
Also almost all my traveling expenses were picked up by the company. I may have to contribute something from time to time but when the bulk gets picked up by the company you can manage.
So from my perspective, unless the foundation deems its inappropriate (as you allege they are the paymasters) I don't think its anybody's business to say otherwise.
The foundation may have their performance metrics (as companies do) for their volunteers, employees whatever and till they are happy with the outcome that should be more than enough.
As far as such opportunities are concerned, its normally a function of luck, hard work and networking skills.
spelling mistake :-
There were 2-3 people who were in the same boat. So one was on the road 20 days in a month, some people like traveling and others do not.
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org