Meetings/August 18, 2005

A Board meeting was held on IRC on August 18 with Angela Beesley, Michael Davis, Florence Devouard, Tim Shell, and Jimmy Wales, WMF officers and representatives of the French, German, Italian, and Polish chapters.

Chapter coordination officer

 * Office of chapter coordinator created
 * Delphine Ménard (notafish) appointed to office
 * Discussion of Wikimania and its relationship to chapter coordinator officer; decided this was 2 different things, and that helping local chapters host Wikimanias will be a minor part of job duties
 * A mailing list chapter-l to be created, as well as a chapters wiki (see next item)

New administrative wikis

 * Discussion of private wikis for grants, press, legal, and local chapters, whether they should each be separate, and who would have access
 * Settled on one new combined wiki, with access restriction features to be developed soon by Brion Vibber, pending receipt of specs

Logo and trademark policy

 * Draft of Logo and trademark policy will be made public on meta
 * Contracts with Wikimedia chapters to be posted on meta
 * General contract for licensing with commercial entities to be public

Wikimania 2006

 * Decided there should be a Wikimania 2006
 * City specs to be released September 1; shortlist of candidate cities to be published October 1; a city to be selected October 15
 * Organization team to be put together after this

Fundraising and fundspending

 * Discussed general fundraising drive for WMF versus donations to local chapters
 * Noted that WMF donations are not tax deductible in France and Germany, while donations to local chapters are
 * Decided that chapters will ask first for to WMF, and then offer the tax deductible local chapter donation option, along with an explanation of why two options are being offered
 * Discussion of how and if money raised by chapters can be used for WMF; whether the German chapter can own servers in Florida, whether WMF can open datacenter in Germany that hosts servers owned by German chapter
 * Concluded a trip to the German tax consultant was required before these questions can be settled

Other matters

 * Chinese Wikinews was discussed, at it was decided this is an issue best left to the Wikicouncil
 * Dispute resolution committee was proposed to deal with issues on projects that do not have their own arbitration committees, and for cross-wiki issues; discussion of this idea on mailing lists is encouraged
 * Decided to discuss the creation of Wikicouncil; Jimmy to submit his suggestions to mailing list; draft proposals to be developed on meta at Wikicouncil
 * Scheduling of future meetings discussed; open meeting planned for August 27; meeting of Board, officers, and chapters for Sept. 18; additionally Board-only meeting may be arranged in between other meetings
 * Angela has proposed rationalizing the scheduling of meetings, having them every 15.125 days; discussion of this proposal is encouraged at Wikimedia meetings proposal.