[Foundation-l] Open questions

Tue Apr 5 01:48:54 UTC 2005

Thank you to everyone who replied to my questions at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions.

A lot of good suggestions and helpful comments were made, and I'm
hoping we will be able to carry out some of these in the near future,
or to at least begin considering them.

Here is a summary of some of the suggestions. The inclusion of these
does not mean there was necessarily agreement on carrying out the
suggestion. Please see [[m:Board agenda/Open questions]] for the full
discussion.

== Hosting ==
* Delegate the management of offers or centralize all hosting offers with Jimbo
* Create a private wiki
* Hire a secretary for Jimbo
* Hire someone to manage grants and partnerships
* Use OTRS more effectively
* Run offers by a legal committee first
* Hire a lawyer to write contracts
* Ask potential partners/hosts whether we can list them among our
"potential partners and hosts" before doing so
* Have a standard response for people making offers
* Be clear about how we could integrate the resources on offer
* Consider placing databases outside the US
* Consider the legal implications of chapters owning servers

== Trademarks ==
* The status of trademark/domain registrations should be listed on the
Foundation website
* A group should be tasked with keeping track of this information
* Get a lawyer to write a contract regarding licensing the logo
* See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy

== Membership ==
* Create a portal that allows the community to pay one another to
produce such tasks
* Revive the membership task
* Hire a programmer
* Specifying tasks properly
* Mixed views on whether membership was worthwhile, but most thought it was.

== Money ==
* Developer committee should advise on what to buy
* Budget should be documented
* Hire programmers for Wikispecies and have them write a decent UI

== Promotion ==
* Appoint a multi-lingual PR coordinator
* Have an explicit PR budget
* Have an unofficial PR committee
* Spend more on promotion (not all agreed with this)
* Outreach programs to educational institutions

== Grants ==
* Hire a full-time grants coordinator
* Find a way of getting more community involvement with grants

== Developers ==
* Appoint a developer liaison and possibly a separate server liaison
* Encourage and empower the developer committee

== Communication ==
* Clarify the relationship between the Board and the community
* Global message notification and translation
* More regular letters from the board
* More regular/more often meetings
* More formal involvement between chapters and the board
* Reform the OTRS procedures
* Reinvigorat the system of embassies, with elected ambassadors

--
Angela.