Now there seems to be a big discussion going on here and I would like to clarify a few points as the resolutions come from me and Nando: 1. Why we need resolutions: a) We want to create as soon as a "wikimedia.ch", which is intended for the public. We want to stop using ch.wikimedia.org, because (and this is a position of Wikimedia Germany) it is no good, when content and things from chapters are on foundation servers, because this makes legally the foundation responsible for what we, as Wikimedia CH, are doing, and this should be avoided, cf. Tron-case. So, we need to have wikimedia.ch for public, members.wikimedia.ch for members and board.wikimedia.ch for internal board communication (instead of a extra board-ml) when WIkimedia CH is founded. Actually, we want the wikimedia.ch-homepage already as soon as possible, because if we're in discussions with sponsors, donors, patrons etc. prior to Wikipedia Day, we must be able to say, "look, there is at www.wikimedia.ch a nice description of our verein". And, we cannot wait until Wikimedia CH is somewhen founded and then have a homepage in 1-2 days... So Manuel will need to register the domain etc. and for this a resolution is needed (see below for more reasoning about resolutions in general). For registering the domain, he also needs an adress, which leads me to point b b) We need an adress. I think nobody will say, that we can handle everything per email. And, we don't want, that each time somebody is talking to an "outsider" he has to use his own adress. Because then some people have as contact Nando, others Manuel, other Jürg, others Ilario, others me and so on. This gets complicated so. Okay, and that's why we need a general adress. As has been outlined and discussed on this mailing list, the "Feste Vereinsadresse" provided by the post, seems to be the best thing. Well, and why should we wait to open this adress, as we actually need it already now, see point a... I talked via OTRS to the post (I even sent part of their answer to the ml) and, after further correspondence, they told me, that the person who opens the adress has to bring with him a protocol or a board resolutions enabling him to do so. As we don't have a meeting soon, and we can't bring them a print of a long mailing-list-thread, Nando and I have made a board resolution. 2. Why the board makes this resolutions. Actually, I didn't remember, that a preliminary board (this is my personal translation of "kommisarischer Vorstand") exists, however Manuel told me, that Nando and I have been appointed/nominated/whatever to be this until the foundation. Now, you can't say, that we have been to active until now. However, we have seen, as broadly outlined in point 1, that sometimes, formal resolutions are needed, particularly when dealing with official or semi-official things. Now you have hopefully remarked, that I always posted the resolutions and the amendmends to them to this very mailinglist and I invited people to make comments here. I did not really expect any opposition to the first resolution but if anything had been mentioned I would have been very happy to discuss this here and to change the resolution if it's the opinion of the majority. But nobody said anything and I assumed, that people could live with the first resolution. As far as the second resolutions is concerned, I have made a draft and asked Nando what he thinks about it. Now at this point I would have asked at this mailinglist, if people are okay with it, as important things as the seat are concerned but obviously somebody has seen Nando's approval before me and this is also good so, because it shows that the wiki forces transparency. 3. About the formal language. I have discussed this matter some days ago in IRC with Jean-Baptiste Soufron, the legal coordinator/advisor of the foundation and he told me, that some formal requirements need to be there (e.g. when mandates are terminated etc.) because of the legal validity. The exact terminology like "resolved" etc. is mostly a "product of the moment" and I have no problem with changing this, as long as the proposed alternatives are legally ok. 4. About page protection We have a wiki. A wiki means everybody can edit, at Wikimedia CH only people logged in. But, there are 2 reasons which are imho pro blocking some pages: a)www.wikimedia.ch, which is redirecting to our wiki, is mentioned at the bottom of the Weltwoche article about "us" and therefore people of the public might surf to our website. We don't really want them to see some vandalism at the first page, the main page, do we? So therefore I blocked the main page. b) the german bylaws have been approved by the meeting. They are definitive and are also base of the translations. Therefore I blocked them, because it needs to be ensured, that people know, that this is the stable version. I once thought of blocking en-translation too, because they are now reviewed by ChapCom, so there must be a stable version too. However I didn't protect them then, because we might want to correct typing mistakes et al. The other translations are unprotected at the moment. c)The resolutions are quite official documents. As they are now under discussion, I wanted that everybody sees the version we, Nando and I, decided on, to ensure that everybody is speaking about the same thing. d) my vandal paranoia. You will have noticed by now, that I seem to be a bit paranoid what concerns vandal acts. Well, look at http://ch.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=newusers&user=&page= There are quite a few new users I simply don't know who's "behind" and I don't want to doubt them somehow, but you see that new user accounts can be created easily and as we're now linked on several Wikimedia pages, people will also find us, and it's probably not so, that we can say, we can trust everybody from the beginning, who opens a account or has one. Believe me, I've seen a lot of vandal acts in different wikis and it might be, that sombody finds it funny to mess up or discretely change our resolutions a bit...
(ad Security Council: I must admit, that I've never read any SC-Resolutions, so I didn't copy their terminology. ) Sysopping policy: When the wiki was created, Delphine sysopped Nando and me, because we were listed as contact persons at meta. As Ilario is now presidency candidate and quite involved, he is now also listed as contact person and he's a sysop. But please understand, imho the 10 people regularly contributing on this ml could all get sysops, I have no problem with that. So to sum up, I would like to stress that we never intended to make any top-down action, we invite everybody here in discussing the necessary resolutions and their form/style of writing etc. but sometimes some bureaucracy is unfortunately necessary (and believe me, as gymnasium-student, you're in an age where you're not really in favour of bureaucracy and formalities etc. so I regret it too, but I'm convinced, that it'll will help us later, if we have everything in a proper legal way). For the ones, who read until here (and I assume, there are not so many) I will conclude my mail by apologizing for misunderstandings our resolutions might have caused and by hoping that you understand my point of view. Regards Michael Bimmler On 3/15/06, Frederic Schutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Looking at the latest changes on the CH wiki... is it on purpose that > the current resolutions look as formal as a UN Security Council > resolution ? "RESOLVED... AND... FURTHER RESOLVED... so proposed on the > fifteenth of March 2006". I know it is borderline to hairsplitting, but > this makes the whole thing look very bureaucratic, especially given that > there no formal entity yet... Could we do with "friendlier" texts, please ? > > Also, do we really need to protect the pages ? We all know that even if > changes are made after a resolution has been accepted, they can be > reverted. The reason I am asking this (in addition to the general > principle that we should only protect pages if needed) is that there are > several typos on the page Board/Resolutions/2006/02 that I was ready to > correct. > > Last, but not least... this resolution says that "Wikimedia CH shall > have its seat in Zurich". Does that mean "until a President is elected", > or is there a change to the proposed bylaws ? > > Frédéric > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediach-l mailing list > Wikimediach-l@Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediach-l > -- Regards Michael Bimmler _______________________________________________ Wikimediach-l mailing list Wikimediach-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediach-l
