Wikimedia Canada/Meetings/2008-01-23

Organization Meeting of Wikimedia Canada
Initial Informal Meeting

Date: January 23, 2008 (Wednesday)
Time: 20:00 EST (1:00 UTC)
Venue: #wikimedia-ca

This was mainly to get everyone to know each other and to get an idea of where we are heading/what we want to do. The meeting ended at around 21:30 EST.

Summary of the meeting

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Extremely short summary of what was discussed, if you don't feel like reading the whole log. No guarantee of completeness.

  1. We started by introducing everyone
  2. We have two sets of bylaws up for consideration, went through the local chapter FAQ and step-by-step guide to create a local chapter. Please read them before the meeting on the 30th so we can talk intelligently about them. They need to be good if this is to get off the ground
  3. We mostly talked about what WMC's activities might be once it gets off the ground. This was important because some people were unsure of what the point is of having a Canadian chapter. We need to know where we're going if we're to get there. Some of the ideas put forth
    • WMC gives us an official face to go around evangelizing and/or asking for donations, grants, services etc. It gives the request some oomph that wouldn't be there if it's just some random person asking
    • Promoting Wikipedia's sister projects. Several people noted that Wikipedia gets most of the attention, and that other projects (Wikibooks and Wikispecies were mentioned, but there are obviously others) are often neglected
    • Similarly, this happens with technology. Commons, for example, is using MediaWiki for something it was never intended for, and really needs some work done in the areas of searching and cataloging the media stored there. Likewise with Wikibooks.
    • Promoting all the WMF projects to the public to recruit new contributors
    • Evangelizing for free-culture and wikis in general
    • Lobbying the government to get works by government employees released into the public domain, as in Holland and the US
    • Applying for grants to get revenue for our projects
    • Putting some money into technologies for the non-Wikipedia projects, as they've been somewhat neglected
    • Operating a secondary backup database in case of catastrophic failure of both the main database servers and the toolserver's replicated database servers
    • Investing in research relevant to the goals of the WMF/WMC
    • Providing copies of WMF projects to Canadians in remote areas
    • Creating a media guide for teachers and professors regarding how Wikipedia (and the other projects) can be used responsibly in an academic setting as both a teaching and learning tool
    • Obtaining charity status after the formation of local chapter
  4. We discussed the acronym, and generally decided WMC would be used
  5. We discussed the WMHK status, and how to avoid a similar "limbo" situation
  6. We thought about having our bylaws vetted by a lawyer to take care of the above
  7. It was pointed out that incorporating in Ontario would be a bad idea, but apparently incorporation will be federal, making this a moot point
  8. The steering committee was brought up, and several people expressed interest in serving
  9. Bilingualism was discussed, and we identified people who could serve as translator as needed
Previous meeting:
WMC Initial Informal Meeting
January 23, 2008
Next meeting:
January 30, 2008