[Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l

[praveenp]

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 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:aprabhala at 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:
>
>    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://www.Jyothis.net
>
> 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


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