Minutes:2005-08-18

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 (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter_co-ordinator)
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 wikis for grants, press, legal, and local chapters, whether they should each be separate, and who would have access
Settled on one new commbined wiki, with access restriction features to be developed soon by Brion Vibber, pending receipt of specs
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Private_wikis

Logo and trademark policy

Draft of policy will be made public on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy)
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 arb coms, 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 (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/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 12.125 days; discussion of this proposal is encouraged at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings_proposal