Meetings/June 7, 2005

A Board meeting was held on IRC on June 7 with Jimmy Wales, Angela Beesley, Michael Davis, Florence Devouard, and Tim Shell, primarily to discuss proposed changes to the bylaws.

Bylaws
Jimmy clarified that the changes made previously were to the Articles of Incorporation, not to the bylaws.

Changes to the membership were proposed so that we would not need to rely on non-existent software features to determine who is a member of the Foundation. Until single sign on is in operation, the only determination of membership will be through casting a vote in the Board elections. Voters will automatically be classed as members if they were eligible to vote. The election committee is asked to make this clear in the instructions for voters. The board can recognize people for special contributions as being eligible to vote by classifying them as 'sustaining members'. No such members have yet been specified.

Other changes proposed were the removal of the Disciplinary Board, which has never been created, and a clarification between the removal of members and the removal of editors. The roles of the board were discussed since these do not reflect the roles expressed in the bylaws.

The proposed bylaws will be finalized and presented to a lawyer for approval. A Florida attorney will be hired for this.

For the purpose of the upcoming election, the following two changes were approved;
 * 1) elected terms shall be two years rather than one, and
 * 2) there will be no difference between contributing and volunteer member representatives.

Other proposed changes were informally agreed upon, but will not be officially approved prior to the legal review.

Other matters

 * Elections : The election committee is advised to discuss with their technical contact the software required for the election, and to determine whether the 400 edit limit is technically feasible.
 * Mandriva : Mandriva have returned a modified contract, which has been commented upon and edited by Florence. Mandriva have expressed a desire for the DVD to include Portuguese content, although the Portuguese Wikipedia has not yet undergone a tagging drive. It is not clear yet whether Portuguese will be part of the initial release.
 * Domains : Serbian domain names have been bought
 * Licensing : Jimmy is meeting Eben Moglen on 15 June to talk about proposed changes to the GFDL.
 * Finance : Daniel Mayer has all the bank statements and will shortly have the Quickbooks accounting files. Financial issues will be discussed further at the next meeting if Daniel is able to attend.
 * Chapters : The Foundation's contract with Wikimedia Deutschland needs to be clarified, particularly with regard to the proceeds from the Directmedia CD.
 * Hardware : Kate has helped to determine what we need from Yahoo. Details from the system administration team on what we would like from other potential sponsors would be appreciated.
 * Arbitration : The proposed content arbitration committee was mentioned, but not discussed in detail since there seems little agreement within the arbitration committee, or within the community, for any of the current proposals.

The next meeting will be held on June 9 at 20 UTC. Gerard Meijssen and Daniel Mayer have been invited to attend to discuss Wiktionary licensing issues and the upcoming fundraising drive.