[Wikimediaindia-l] India map and indian laws
Hi all, There is a discussion going on at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:India#Map about compliance to indian laws about representation of India in maps. According to Indian law it is illegal to show a map that differs from the official map (which includes, Pakistan controlled Kashmir and the Aksai Chin). An editor has raised the concern that using the current map (which shows only areas administered and not areas claimed) is exposing Indian editors to legal liabilities and prosecution. Since the Indian govt has successfully forced organisations like Google and National geographic to show the official map previously and now the foundation has plans for an India office, shouldn't this issue be considered seriously? Should we contacting the foundation legal office about this? regards Bala ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
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: 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 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
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 aprabh...@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
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
Update on Liam's Mumbai visit by Pradeep. Regards Arun Begin forwarded message: From: Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com Date: 13 February 2011 11:19:14 PM GMT+05:30 To: Mumbai List Wikimedia wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com, anir...@wikimedia.in Subject: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary hi, For the past few days, Liam Wyatt has been going around cultural institutions in Mumbai. He will be going to a few on Monday morning as well. This is a small report for the benefit of the group and for those interested and who could not make it for the meetup today at the Pinstorm offices in Santacruz. Our thanks to Netra there who offered and allowed us use of space on such short notice. We had a nice turn up today of around 20-25 people. We started off with directly with Liam's talk on his work with the British Museum. His work/documentation of his work here can be found at http://enwp.org/WP:GLAM/BM. He then talked about his idea behind doing a project with the British Museum after a controversy the year before with the British National Archives. He said that the relationship was mutually beneficial to both and did not compromise on the principles of either Wikipedia or the British Museum. He talked about the series of conferences called GLAMWIKI that have already happened in London and Paris and are planned in Washington DC and Barcelona. He then went on to talk about five of the events that he conducted during his 5 month stint as the Wikipedian-in-Residence at the British Museum. These included the Backstage Pass, One on One Collaborations/Photos Requested, Feature Article Prize, the Hoxne Challenge and the School Translations. Backstage Pass involves a free tour of Museum objects in display and out of display by curators of the Museum for Wikipedians working on an article. The One-on-One Collaborations was an exchange of requests between Curators and Wikipedians who needed each others help - curators to improve articles on Wikipedia and Wikipedians for expert advice on articles in Wikipedia. Photos Requested requested for photos in different parts of the museum. Feature Article Prize was an interesting if controversial experiment. The British Museum offered 100 pounds for the 5 articles in Featured Article in Wikipedia related to an item in the British Museum. This became similar to the pay-for-edit idea. However, the rationale was that since the prize money was not for an article on the British Museum and was for an object/topic related article, it was okay. The Hoxne Challenge was an effort to see how Wikipedians could improve an article on one subject given access to subject experts etc.The subject given was that of the Hoxne Hoard discovered in England in 1992. I think it goes without saying that the article reached Featured Article rating pretty quickly. The last was the School Translations project where a group of French school children that Liam knew translated the articles on certain items in the British Museum from English into French as part of their English class homework. The students later visited London (like they regularly apparently did) and visited the Museum to see the objects they had written about as part of class. These were some of the implementations possible in the 5 week period whilst Liam was with British Museum. Bishaka and Liam reported on their visits to The Museum (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay) and Jnanapravaha. I accompanied Liam and Bishaka to The Museum. I am pleasantly surprised by the way they have transformed it! We've reported on positive responses from these cultural institutions. Liam and Bishaka will be visiting one more institution tomorrow. We then had a brief introduction to pad.ma. The part that relates to Wikimedia Commons was a demo on how a plugin for Firefox developed by the same team helped in uploading files in the .ogg format to Wikimedia Commons. We had a small reference to the Workshop for Women on Wikipedia (an idea suggested by Tinu Cherian) and we suggested the idea to two students who had come from SNDT Women's University to the meetup today. We've requested them to check on the possibility of using their labs to conduct the Workshop in Mumbai on or around March 8, 2011 (to re-iterate: the centenary celebrations of Women's Day). warm regards, Pradeep Mohandas ___ Wikimedia-in-mum mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-mum ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on 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://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 On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpna...@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
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] unified log-in not happening in hindi wikipedia for some reason
In-line :- On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 02:38, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Unified Login or SUL (Single User Login) is a mechanism which allows users to use a single global login on most of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. It allows to maintain a consistent identity across all linked projects, and no you necessarily don't have to login manually to each Wiki. You first need to Merge your account by visiting [[Special:MergeAccount]] Hi Theo10011/Salmaan, Perhaps I was not explicit before, my account is already merged about a month or a little more back, still to reconfirm had gone yesterday and saw it gave a thumbs up again. In fact, was little disappointed with [Special:MergeAccount] it didn't remember that I had come and merged before. Anyways , tried to access it and again was *not* automatically logged in. Filed a bug on the bugzilla as well, will inform the list if, when, as I get the info. to perform Login Unification. if your particular wiki is not allowing access through SUL and you have to login Manually each time, for example Strategy Wiki does that from time to time, you might need to file a bug. Check with other users on your wiki if this is a consistent issue, and post on VP. For more information, read: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login Salmaan User:Theo10011 snipped -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
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 j...@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://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 On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpna...@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
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on 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 de10...@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 j...@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://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 On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpna...@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
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Hoi, As someone who is interested in how India and its projects are doing, the India mailing list is a treasure to me. I am afraid that the current type of bickering will have people move away, first from the mailing list and potentially away from our projects. The objective of both this list and the chapter is the opposite; it should function as an enabling force. As more responsibility is shared more will get done and the potential and power of the chapter and the movement grows Thanks, GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/02/indian-growing-pains.html On 11 February 2011 12:44, Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Hari and Anirudh, As moderators of WikimediaIndia-l, could you describe the policy you normally adopt towards moderation? Do you only block obvious spam or other messages, and if so on what basis? I am naturally curious since a message from Praveen that you only just released seems to have been sent in 3 days ago. Furthermore, I think we'd benefit from understanding how people may apply to become administrators on this list. In light of Anirudh's recent appointment to administrator of this list, is there an open process by which other members might apply? (Foundation-l seems to have three administrators, though I would imagine that there is nothing stopping WikimediaIndia-l from having more than three). Please note that I don't ask with persecutory intent, but merely to clear gaps in my own understanding, which might be a problem that other people on this list face as well. Since WikimediaIndia-l is such an important place for all kinds of conversations that cut across the movement in India, it's in all our interests to know exactly how it is managed. Best regards, Achal ___ 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
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Hello Everyone: I'm using Bala's email because I think he's done a great job of summarizing the various issues on this thread. 1) Why was the election held without informing others of the agenda (the EC answered that it was a required step to formalise the organisation per registration rules, ) This is correct - while the MoA (apologies, Pradeep) requires this to have been done post registration - maybe we were wrong in not communicating this earlier or in a more transparent manner but this ties in to point two below. 2) Why was the delay in communication about the 22 Jan meeting (the EC answered that as a formal org now, they cannot issue communiques without first having the paperwork in place) Having been bitten more than once with the legal complexities around the registration of the Chapter, we wanted to play safe on this and dot all the i's and cross all the t's before making a public statement. 3) Why were the leadership designations changed among the EC members. (This hasnt been answered as far as i know) It isn't that the designations were changed, so to speak. Post registration, we had to elect office bearers and during this election, these posts changes. Hence. 4) Why was Praveen's mail moderated ( clearly answered; because it got caught in the spam filters due to an embedded HTML) This would be my assumption too - good faith holds. That said, yes, I think it would be nice to have a wider representation of admins and that this is clearly the India list and not the India Chapter list. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://social.prathambooks.org/ ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
In-line :- On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 09:13, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com wrote: hi, Thanks Arun for posting it here. I was really tired when I posted this yesterday to the Mumbai mailing list. It does seem more or less accurate. A few additions from what I missed out yesterday night. 1. With The Museum ( Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalay - CSMVS), we spoke with the Museum Director, Chief Art Conservator and the Business Development Executive there. After the requisite background that Liam provided (it also helped perhaps that the British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor visited the Museum this week) that we gave them a rough idea of possible activities we could do together. We also explained to the Conservator how a typical session would be conducted to help them understand their part of the responsibilities and what will be ours. 2. At Jnanapravaha, Bishaka and Liam visited. After the usual pitch, the feedback was that they were interested in getting students to write and improve articles on Indian art and aesthetics on Wikipedia. They have asked for help previous to the next semester in July on how such a thing can be organised. 3. Ashwin Baindur asked about how to work with institutions like Maharashtra Archives which are facing a brunt of the budget cuts (they get the money after the song and dance shows, museums etc all get their cut) and have trouble with up-keep of their archives. Liam replied that this would mainly be in helping them digitise records. The trouble, Liam said, was on where to begin and how to priorotise work. Stating the example of the National Library, Kolkata he said that some books were not even docketed (I forget the original word - something to do with giving the books numbers and classifying appropriately). Hi all, Wanted to come but for many reasons couldn't be there. Anyways, the word you are searching for is 'cataloging' and having some sort of 'Integrated Library Management' . https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Integrated_library_system https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Library_catalog In fact making or getting a good cataloging system is a high pain point. There are many foss tools that could be used for ILS but all of that will need funding I guess. For inspiration people could look at Delhi Public Library as they have used FOSS tools. Koha is what they use. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Koha_%28software%29 We agreed that Libraries and Archives also suffered because there was no good Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for Indic languages. Liam suggested a French example of how an old French cursive text made it un-OCR-able (new word - mine!) and got help from Wikipedians to manually type in text onto WikiSource. In Pune, around this time lot of colleges have their technical weeks where they show projects, last year and couple of years before I had seen students who had made nice OCR's which could work with indic languages but obviously required lot of polish and getting into the whole 'code maintainance' thing. The students motivation for that had been to do as a project and not getting things 'maintained' which is unglamorous grunt work. Also documentation is something that would need to be looked at and fine-tuned. 4. Bishaka raised the point that all of the GLAM activities could also be simultaneously done in various languages locally. So, during a Backstage Pass event in Mumbai, we could improve the English, Hindi and Marathi (say) articles at once. Editors in any language are welcome to contribute. 5. There have been an influx of new people and requests from people for a basic editing session. Perhaps it is time to interlace the meetups with WikiAcademy. With that, I hope I've more or less covered all Wikipedia territory from the meetup. If I missed out on anything, feel very free to jump in and add your notes. warm regards, Pradeep -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
2011/2/14 shirish शिरीष shirisha...@gmail.com: In Pune, around this time lot of colleges have their technical weeks where they show projects, last year and couple of years before I had seen students who had made nice OCR's which could work with indic languages but obviously required lot of polish and getting into the whole 'code maintainance' thing. The students motivation for that had been to do as a project and not getting things 'maintained' which is unglamorous grunt work. Also documentation is something that would need to be looked at and fine-tuned. Indic OCR, at least the bits that are available under an appropriate FOSS license, have an accuracy of around 80%. Considering the volume and fragility of what you will OCR, that's remarkably low. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
On 14 February 2011 10:18, sankarshan foss.mailingli...@gmail.com wrote: Indic OCR, at least the bits that are available under an appropriate FOSS license, have an accuracy of around 80%. Considering the volume and fragility of what you will OCR, that's remarkably low. What ever became of the Digital Library of India project? http://www.dli.ernet.in/ Wasn't OCR high on their to-do list, as such? Thank you. Best, Gautam http://social.prathambooks.org/ ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:18 AM, sankarshan foss.mailingli...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/2/14 shirish शिरीष shirisha...@gmail.com: In Pune, around this time lot of colleges have their technical weeks where they show projects, last year and couple of years before I had seen students who had made nice OCR's which could work with indic languages but obviously required lot of polish and getting into the whole 'code maintainance' thing. The students motivation for that had been to do as a project and not getting things 'maintained' which is unglamorous grunt work. Also documentation is something that would need to be looked at and fine-tuned. Indic OCR, at least the bits that are available under an appropriate FOSS license, have an accuracy of around 80%. Considering the volume and fragility of what you will OCR, that's remarkably low. please send links to such technology. it does not matter if the accuracy is only 80%. Which means people have a role to play there. I see this as a clear opportunity asking for volunteer time. create a site with an image and the partially correct page side by side, and ask the volunteers to correct it. we can conduct workshops in colleges to seek help of this kind. Meanwhile, when people recognize where and what kinds of places the OCR sucks, we can think of solving those problems. This kind of work itself will help improve the existing OCR for indic-languages. -- GN -- GN ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: What ever became of the Digital Library of India project? http://www.dli.ernet.in/ Whatever happens to projects like that ... (there's a tweet from @abhaga in this regard) Wasn't OCR high on their to-do list, as such? The point I was making is that most of the code that enables Indic OCR to reach higher percentages of accuracy isn't available under FOSS licenses. Debayan had been working on this for a while. There is a reference to the technology (as requested by Nagarjuna in a later mail) at http://sankarshan.posterous.com/the-plan-to-create-a-digital-library-of-100-c -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation and strategies was Fwd: Your message to Wikimedia-in-mum awaits moderator approval
At bottom :- -- Forwarded message -- From: wikimedia-in-mum-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:14 Subject: Your message to Wikimedia-in-mum awaits moderator approval To: shirisha...@gmail.com Your mail to 'Wikimedia-in-mum' with the subject Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held: Post by non-member to a members-only list Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel this posting, please visit the following URL: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/confirm/wikimedia-in-mum/c8dbcac193d1c70934cdf9ae79f51f8f78288fd7 /forwarded message Hi all, This is a query about the moderation affair and sorry for making another thread for the same. I get this message and get these kind of messages when I'm posting to the mailing list . The same logic should be applied to all suspected vandals,trolls etc. as some automated intelligence (some filter/some bot) is there which does this work. Couldn't that be configured to send notices to the member stating that the message is suspected to be of 'x' nature (define x = troll,vandal whatever the filter/bot suspects it for) and moderator would do it. If this is in the current work-flow then I do not know what the whole 'hoopla' is all about. If its not, then of course it needs to be implemented. I can share some part of the plug mailing list http://www.plug.org.in/mailing-list/ where the same thing things and I do get an automated message when my message gets moderated. This happens instantly. When the message is rejected, I do get a mail from the mailing list listing the reason/s for the mail being rejected. Then obviously I re-do the mail so its doesn't contravene whatever reason they said or/and publish the same mail to some other mailing list as well. Lastly, if nothing of the above strategies work then I have my blog to fall back on and do a 'Public letter' kinda thing. Needless to say, till date haven't had to go that far. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 50D 53FB 729A 8B17 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation and strategies was Fwd: Your message to Wikimedia-in-mum awaits moderator approval
shirish, I believe, your mail to Wikimedia-in-mum didn't go through because you have not subscribed to that list. I just checked from https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-mum Regards Tinu Cherian 2011/2/14 shirish शिरीष shirisha...@gmail.com At bottom :- -- Forwarded message -- From: wikimedia-in-mum-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:14 Subject: Your message to Wikimedia-in-mum awaits moderator approval To: shirisha...@gmail.com Your mail to 'Wikimedia-in-mum' with the subject Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held: Post by non-member to a members-only list Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel this posting, please visit the following URL: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/confirm/wikimedia-in-mum/c8dbcac193d1c70934cdf9ae79f51f8f78288fd7 /forwarded message Hi all, This is a query about the moderation affair and sorry for making another thread for the same. I get this message and get these kind of messages when I'm posting to the mailing list . The same logic should be applied to all suspected vandals,trolls etc. as some automated intelligence (some filter/some bot) is there which does this work. Couldn't that be configured to send notices to the member stating that the message is suspected to be of 'x' nature (define x = troll,vandal whatever the filter/bot suspects it for) and moderator would do it. If this is in the current work-flow then I do not know what the whole 'hoopla' is all about. If its not, then of course it needs to be implemented. I can share some part of the plug mailing list http://www.plug.org.in/mailing-list/ where the same thing things and I do get an automated message when my message gets moderated. This happens instantly. When the message is rejected, I do get a mail from the mailing list listing the reason/s for the mail being rejected. Then obviously I re-do the mail so its doesn't contravene whatever reason they said or/and publish the same mail to some other mailing list as well. Lastly, if nothing of the above strategies work then I have my blog to fall back on and do a 'Public letter' kinda thing. Needless to say, till date haven't had to go that far. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 50D 53FB 729A 8B17 ___ 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
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary
hi, At the discussion yesterday, we were told that the OCR did not work at all in case of many Indian languages. Also, as a person who does not understand OCR at all, can any one help me with what they mean by a 80% successful OCR? The other end of the process is the digitisation machine needed to convert the physical text into image. Any ideas on availability and cost of a museum grade digitisation machine? I am sure you cannot and the archives will not let you use an ordinary device to handle these documents. thanks in advance, Pradeep ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Hi, On Monday 14 February 2011 09:23 AM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote: Hari, As the situation has worsened to the levels that EC is now been accused of being here for swindling money (auctioning off membership) and selective moderation in the mailing list (unfairly in both counts IMO), please be blunt and do clear the air without niceties. The basic questions raised about EC are the following: Actioning off membership is a satiric or exaggerated reply to the mail which has an entirely non-related subject (bank account) from original thread. 1) Why was the election held without informing others of the agenda (the EC answered that it was a required step to formalise the organisation per registration rules, ) 2) Why was the delay in communication about the 22 Jan meeting (the EC answered that as a formal org now, they cannot issue communiques without first having the paperwork in place) More than that, why no mentioning about Jan 22 meeting and about new names in the thread which discussing chapter's transparency (Jan last week). I believe chapter do not need to wait until finishing paperwork for sharing information with community. 3) Why were the leadership designations changed among the EC members. (This hasnt been answered as far as i know) 4) Why was Praveen's mail moderated ( clearly answered; because it got caught in the spam filters due to an embedded HTML) I am pretty much satisfied with 1, 2 and 4. But 3 hasnt been answered and people are now accusing you of being a sekret cabal. I am a new member to the list and as someone uninvolved, my humble suggestions to clear the air are: 1) Answer no 3 and any other questions people have been asking 2) Bluntly define the chapter's role - not the MoA/constitution etc (people are under the impression that the chapter can get involved in deletion discussions in commons) I think Bala misread that mail. Somebody asked me to share any Idea which chapter can run, I said many images originated from India deleted in commons because there is no proper source or license for many images. And if we've proper agreement with any museum or art gallery (most of them are under central or state govts) like Tropenmuseum project, that will be useful. Once chapter initiate such process, I am sure interested people will join and take hold. 3) Get some non EC moderators to the mailing list immediately to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. regards Bala Praveen ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
I think Bala misread that mail. Somebody asked me to share any Idea which chapter can run, I said many images originated from India deleted in commons because there is no proper source or license for many images. And if we've proper agreement with any museum or art gallery (most of them are under central or state govts) like Tropenmuseum project, that will be useful. Once chapter initiate such process, I am sure interested people will join and take hold. Oops. sorry about that :-). I misunderstood that you were asking for intervention in deletion discussions. My bad. On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM, praveenp me.prav...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Monday 14 February 2011 09:23 AM, Bala Jeyaraman wrote: Hari, As the situation has worsened to the levels that EC is now been accused of being here for swindling money (auctioning off membership) and selective moderation in the mailing list (unfairly in both counts IMO), please be blunt and do clear the air without niceties. The basic questions raised about EC are the following: Actioning off membership is a satiric or exaggerated reply to the mail which has an entirely non-related subject (bank account) from original thread. 1) Why was the election held without informing others of the agenda (the EC answered that it was a required step to formalise the organisation per registration rules, ) 2) Why was the delay in communication about the 22 Jan meeting (the EC answered that as a formal org now, they cannot issue communiques without first having the paperwork in place) More than that, why no mentioning about Jan 22 meeting and about new names in the thread which discussing chapter's transparency (Jan last week). I believe chapter do not need to wait until finishing paperwork for sharing information with community. 3) Why were the leadership designations changed among the EC members. (This hasnt been answered as far as i know) 4) Why was Praveen's mail moderated ( clearly answered; because it got caught in the spam filters due to an embedded HTML) I am pretty much satisfied with 1, 2 and 4. But 3 hasnt been answered and people are now accusing you of being a sekret cabal. I am a new member to the list and as someone uninvolved, my humble suggestions to clear the air are: 1) Answer no 3 and any other questions people have been asking 2) Bluntly define the chapter's role - not the MoA/constitution etc (people are under the impression that the chapter can get involved in deletion discussions in commons) I think Bala misread that mail. Somebody asked me to share any Idea which chapter can run, I said many images originated from India deleted in commons because there is no proper source or license for many images. And if we've proper agreement with any museum or art gallery (most of them are under central or state govts) like Tropenmuseum project, that will be useful. Once chapter initiate such process, I am sure interested people will join and take hold. 3) Get some non EC moderators to the mailing list immediately to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. regards Bala Praveen ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Beauty lies in the eyes of the beer holder ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Time to assume good faith and carry on.
Hello everyone, I think the time has come to assume good faith and let the office bearers get their act together. We have had enough emails expressing the community's concerns at lack of transparency, lack of communication, etc, etc. The new office bearers are in an un-envious position. I'm sure that they must now be feeling that all the work of putting up a chapter is a thankless job. It was an important task and let us recognise that tackling any state bureaucracy is not an occupation of pleasure. So let us thank them for doing this task and ask them to henceforth function in a manner which meets the concerns of the community. It would have of course been great if the community had been brought in before establishing the foundation, but that is all water under the bridge now. It is time for us to let them be and go about doing whatever they planned. This spate of attacks/accusation/discourse I'm sure has halted them in their tracks. Such a limbo is the worst situation possible. In expressing our legitimate concern, we have virtually accused them of every possible wrong without concrete evidence and now they stand here already condemned in public eyes. If they have to serve us - make no mistake - chapter activities are meant to serve the community, not govern them - then we have absolutely demotivated them from doing so. To the EC committee, I would like to say, you have my unqualified support for the period of a year and I request you to get your act together and deliver what you have promised. At this point of time, my support is unqualified but henceforth after this grace period, it will be based on your performance and output. I'm giving you the rope, gentlemen of the EC, now either construct a rope bridge and span the gap between you and the community or hang yourselves with that rope (figuratively speaking). To the community, I further request that the tone on the list be lowered to gentlemanly discourse. I am not saying that we stop expressing our concerns but let us do it in a constructive way. Also, we must not make mountains out of mole-hills and we must be even more tolerant than before. If the EC have to achieve ambitious targets, they have to act. When people act, they make mistakes. Only those who dont act, make no mistakes. In my eyes inaction is the greater sin than acting and making mistakes. The EC will make a few mistakes but they may be discussed in a non-accusatory way and lessons should be learnt from them instead of seeking to crucify the EC members at every instant. Also, I will request that all feelings/issues that the community feels strongly about be discussed openly on the list rather than offline and that no efforts be made to influence the EC offline or in an undemocratic fashion. For those who feel, that they would like to be part of the setup in the Wikimedia India chapter - that is a great and good ambition and the way to go about it is by working in constructive manner so that the community's aims are progressed. This email is not meant to point fingers towards any one person, but definitely I feel the community needs to heed my message and if you don't agree, to discuss it politely. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
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: 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. 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 j...@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
