[Wikimedia-l] Proposal to use the internal wiki more

[Thomas Dalton]

On Apr 3, 2013 11:34 AM, "Michael Peel" <michael.peel at 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).