Discuss Board Meeting

Raw transcript:

Mark: So I'm looking at that. And also it. It's old. We've already talked about these things except for the fabricator. So why don't we start with that the the the fabricator items that says go over Fab where it's these 4 items here which I believe is your you are. Gonna go over this or look at this before Eric Shawn.

Eric-Jan: Yeah. Well, so these sponsor obligation to forth a column. They are derived from a original, let's say, kind of a marketing plan of 2,021 or 2,020

Eric-Jan: and so.

Eric-Jan: and in my, in a note of the beginning of this year I wrote down some of the

Eric-Jan: sponsor obligation to which we transferred into these 4 tasks in fabricator

Eric-Jan: So, looking at those 4 tests, they should speak for itself. It's just a matter of who is the owner of this

Eric-Jan: and but

Eric-Jan: also important. Who has the information and data to get into contact with the with the sponsors

Eric-Jan: and Brian has done quite some work on this in the past this could be very useful. I recently found one of the important emails

Eric-Jan: Brian wrote

Eric-Jan: in this regard.

Eric-Jan: But there's there's still some. The work. Is there still to be done? That that's what the naked truth is

Eric-Jan: again you you shouldn't walk on the street as a naked through

Mark: you. Just still be

Eric-Jan: so you would, you wouldn't typically use that expression right in American English. The yeah, you would. Okay, okay.

Mark: I'm just saying, don't. If if you're naked, you know you might want to make sure you careful what you do in public. anyway, it's that's a distraction. I'm sorry.

Mark: the. So we're at 6 months into the year. And we have these things here. What what can we do now? Specifically, what needs to be done now? And who needs to do it, because I I think oh, but first let me acknowledge that Marcus has done a great job on getting that report out finally. So

Eric-Jan: great. Marcus.

Mark: yeah. But going back to this, I we have these 4 items

Mark: we want to. We want to be able to say, Hey, we've actually done something worthwhile here.

Mark: and I think these 4 items are a good good way to do that. But what do we need to do to get to say? This is what we've done, and we've got.

Eric-Jan: Yeah. Yeah.

Eric-Jan: So if if I may, if I may take a huge step

Eric-Jan: into a concrete and practical thing.

Eric-Jan: One of my coworkers. Rubbish! You you know him. He has started a a thread in elements.

Eric-Jan: MW. Stake, General.

Eric-Jan: concerning a real time collaboration

Eric-Jan: concerning what what we call collect that

Eric-Jan: collapse pad. And this is an item.

Eric-Jan: that could be related to a sponsor obligation. So can we solve this problem

Eric-Jan: under collabor pad

Eric-Jan: with hours, hours that are being that are being granted or being allocated

Eric-Jan: to respond to, sponsored to to sponsored money.

Eric-Jan: So this could be a a typical question or subject, or Isq, or task or assignment that is related to

Eric-Jan: sp a sponsor request.

Mark: and Mark is Richard Heikl has already started discussing what Halloween is doing. So I think there's probably some overlap there. But that will be good news, right?

Mark: Yeah.

Markus: I'm probably about I I don't want to read through this discussion. I think it can be

Markus: in the State chat. I was wondering. So.

Markus: Eric, and since you mentioned that this would overlap with our sponsorship applications, so is there a. Because one of the enter the enterprise members for corporate members. Request is such a feature?

Markus: Yes, this is exactly exactly the case.

Eric-Jan: so, and robbers. So my co-worker robots want to start on this.

Eric-Jan: and he is suggested to to to speak about this in the meeting. We take all this group. I said, first, okay, why not first.

Eric-Jan: get this into elements right? Some, perhaps, that there is already this, some experience with this. if there is not, or if or if there's work remaining. This could be

Eric-Jan: related to sponsors and sponsor obligations. So this would be a typical project. I don't know

Eric-Jan: how huge or how tiny it is. But this could be related.

Mark: Yeah, I I definitely see overlap for this. I guess I'm gonna let other people here speak up about that. But I I I'm

Mark: this is certainly an interesting, exciting project. Yes. as I've already indicated in in the element.

Cindy: Yeah, I think I think it's a a great topic to. It's it's not simple

Cindy: which I'm sure Mark is gonna test to by the stuff work they've already done on it. And by the discussion. That's already on element as well. I guess my question is is a very concrete one, which is, when you say, use that project to fulfill sponsor obligations. What exactly are you saying? Are we going to

Cindy: like? It's not like we're rolling in money. but you know, use money to hire, you know, or to pay one of the developers to work on it? Or is it just that we use space in the monthly meeting to allow, or, or, you know.

Cindy: create additional chat rooms. Whatever to to facilitate discussion is, is it? What kind of

Eric-Jan: As far as sponsor applications are concerned, we? We've never promised money. We. We've always talked about promising hours. So there's no relationship there. There shouldn't be a relationship, perhaps, between the hours and money if we can find resources to to solve this problem, maybe no money is involved. I don't know.

Eric-Jan: So the sponsor is looking to solve to solve a problem and and the the problem would cause

Cindy: hours of my my concern with my only concern with that is, I don't think we do a good job of tracking

Cindy: anything. And at some point like, I'm not saying we're going to get audited. But maybe we could be. I don't know who audits things like us, but we are a nonprofit.

Cindy: maybe we need to be a little bit more stringent about, you know. Like, if what are we promising? How are we

Cindy: audit, or how are we tracking what we actually do to meet those obligations? And where? How

Cindy: do we transparently tell people what it is that we're doing in order, you know. I think all of these are good things, but I think that if we're going to be promising stuff. We need to be able to back it up that we've actually delivered.

Mark: so

Mark: related to that.

Mark: I I'm wondering if

Mark: is it sounds like

Mark: Eric. It sounds like you already. Have people in mind that you you want to do this work, and it sounds like Halloween already has people in mind that they want to do this work.

Mark: If we're going to say that this is this is work that Media Wiki stakeholders is involved with our. You know, we're doing this for sponsor obligations. Does that mean that you all are doing the work and we're helping coordinate the

Mark: collaboration and sharing of that work. What what does that mean?

Eric-Jan: I haven't. I haven't yet had the time to.

Eric-Jan: we look at research research comments.

Eric-Jan: yeah, of course we could co-creat it in this in the process.

Eric-Jan: I see no High Level estimates

Eric-Jan: in But what What robins have to has told me is that the collect that really needs needs improvements. So the

Eric-Jan: the extension it's improved with otherwise he would already have solved it, and we wouldn't have. But yeah.

Markus: I can't say a little bit. on that. So

Markus: a high level estimate for this to be become a feature. So they say, experimental. Call up head it! That was developed by C. Scott.

Markus: long time ago, and It is kept alive by C. Scott somehow, but it doesn't have any significant have a improvement, especially when it comes to ui and and like more advanced features of initial editor.

Markus: So we have been working on this as part of this price. we did not do so publicly. yet, because it

Markus: it does have some issues. So it's not an easy project.

Markus: and you conceptual as well as technical issues. and where I see some actual room for

Markus: collaboration is to make it stable, right? So I think I mean, naturally. we do have some extra features. We want to have them integrate into call it pad and we're working on this. but I'm I'm I'm hoping to to collaborate on like the days

Markus: collaborative editing right? And there's a lot of decisions to be made. and

Markus: it's a again. It's not super easy. the the thing I want to say on that is So sponsorship obligations. If I do remember correctly, I'm the area of a few tens of hours. to be honest, I mean, I think at least it it it it in it, and holiday. It has been at least

Markus: 200 h on this yet, and it's not done right. So this is not a project, but it just

Mark: no.

Markus: I think

Markus: I'm frozen. Okay.

Markus: What? What? What? What? What part did you, miss? yeah. In in short, it's a huge project. we have sponsorship obligations for like 30 h. This is many of the conceptual face of this in my view. Right? So

Markus: and but but generally speaking, it will be discussed. This the rob is

Markus: it's a message in, and we discuss it internally and I think it. It is a good project, and we'll push the media forward, but it will push me to every key as a home to some, so we are all in for for collaboration.

Eric-Jan: Perhaps we could try to. adopt it. adopted

Eric-Jan: it. what we would say in a wider sense. Right, we would adopt it. as a as a community, perhaps even adopted at a conference. A as a hackathon.

Eric-Jan: but yeah, you you're right. It's you've spent hundreds of hours. I didn't know that, of course.

Eric-Jan: and there's still some work to be done. You're talking about expecting you to be stable to start in a few weeks. Sorry to be able to start in a few weeks. Yeah.

Eric-Jan: so this needs some more work to be done before we can

Eric-Jan: take a decision on this, I would say.

Markus: so. What we found on this is this A big question is, what is the actual use case. So

Markus: collaborative editing on architects as in Wikipedia, is probably not the use case you want to have in mind here. So I guess mostly what we know from is writing minutes like to some real time accompanying real time minutes of wait time meetings.

Markus: that is one of the other we see is is drafts like People want to just spin up a page, and they want to be quickly type something it's saved. And then it's it. There's a draft, not as an article. And and you have these hot faces for articles. I don't know. There is in in my area. We have.

Markus: We set up a new server, and during that we to real time like

Markus: documentation. So there's some people involved in in the document. and each of those that's what we found has a differently month slightly different demand for the ui. So

Markus: and I'm pretty sure we can find other used cases. So I think the challenge here is to how to lead people. how do you make sure that? Why, there's a club or 2 session. There is not somebody editing the option an article, and you know, messing with that. how do you make sure what what people said in this in in this in

Markus: No element conversation. How how do you attribute? It's attribution, even a thing. I don't know. So in in a lot of corporate environments, we do have like audit responsibilities, but proper attribution. As for edit accounts, nobody counts. Edit counts in my from in my customers, so they don't care about the edit accounts. They just need to make sure it's auditory somehow. Right? So that's all different, you know. things. And I think

Markus: again, I think coming up with a good basis for this is is really something where we should. The broad of the basis the better it is for this.

Eric-Jan: Yes, so the the the path of use case defining use case would be would be very helpful. But

Eric-Jan: we we we should. We should be confident in that case that that this is going to be a project because we would spend it yet lots of times, lots of time on each, on the use cases, and if this is doesn't, does not turn into a project.

Eric-Jan: that's also a little bit to.

Cindy: I think the key point is what Marcus said before also, is that what we're talking about for sponsor allegations is in the order of, you know, a couple of tens of hours and we we generally spend that already. organizing 2 conferences a year.

Cindy: easily.

Cindy: And if we we had discussed at 1 point, considering that as being a satisfaction of the sponsor obligations, I would encourage us also to consider rewriting sponsor obligations going forward in a way that it's not committing us to

Cindy: We've rehashed this conversation multiple times of over time. And we're not in a position where we can devote significant development resources to to any project at this point.

Cindy: And again, we're talking about, you know. Of what was it? 30, 30? Some hours. So I I would encourage us to

Cindy: quiet that for the time being, you know, you know, maybe we. I want to reintroduce it in the future. But if we change the wording of what we of what we guarantee, what we are promising for sponsor obligations, and at this point fulfill it just with the conference.

Cindy: planning and support that we're doing. And yeah.

Markus: So I I would like to to add something here to bring up a a idea. So I recently had a conversation with, I came from Wiki Tech.

Markus: and we we found that we have the same

Markus: trouble in the immediate key environmental ecosystem that is, unmaintained but still heavily used extensions. and it it. The one of the examples is the head of for the extension which was not compatible with media, with 139. And you know there were like 3 or 4 for now, which just did the same thing and made it compatible.

Markus: and The the underlying issue is that there are some extensions that are have to use, but they don't have any kind of Maintainer ship. and I was wondering if we were talking about that. An entity like the stakeholders could be one authority

Markus: that

Markus: it does have these resources and the experience to override me, to like rotten Maintainer, in the sense that if the Maintainer of such an extension does not do their proper job for the cop keeping compatibility, I mean not adding new features in it, or make big decisions, but just keep it up.

Markus: so that people can use can see. Use it. I think that could be something we could somehow take on and I'm not talking about the huge formal process. But you know, just say, as part of the sponsorship obligations, we take care of extensions. You can name it. We Ss equity. And then we say, Okay, we do that. That's typically a task of a few hours to get that, you know.

Markus: Get rid of the applications and stuff like that. And I guess it would really help the community. so that is something. And and I'm bringing this up because I just recently, it's not only my ideas also. it's floating around in the ecosystem that this keeps being an issue like on on incompatible extensions and things like that. So

Markus: having some sort of a

Markus: like like being a touch point for this problem, and then having the resources to do it. That would, in my view, be like like a extension fixing, you know. Like.

Mark: so, yeah, like, like, Cindy set and chat we're running out of time. We're coming to the end here. but I think this, I think what we're I want to summarize basically what we've talked about, which is Eric John brought up, you know. Hey, this is a this is a collaboration tool that we're working on. Maybe we could use this for the

Mark: to fill our obligations. Cindy. again brought up that she thought, we need to rework the how the obligations are or

Mark: handled, and how we frame that. And Marcus, you mentioned again a a very good idea, which was about the, you know, extension maintenance that we would basically

Mark: put our imprint to her upon. You know, this is this is the official thing, or whatever But to say, this is the one that's managed

Mark: and So I I think all this is a a good thing.

Mark: a good discussion. What?

Mark: But I think I think we need to continue talking about this and and figure out, you know.

Mark: a decision here, you know. I I think right now we have, and I'm sorry. I wanted Bernard. I saw you signal that you wanted to say something. Is there anything you want to add to this?

Bernhard: Yeah, yeah, just to the, to the comment of of of Cindy, as the as far as I understand. If I, if I am a sponsor

Bernhard: and I I have to. What is it here? A gold sponsorship or platinum? It says, guaranteed 8 h project, or guaranteed 16 h project. In my opinion this means, if, for example, came, a would be a go sponsor. I get an 8 h project every year, but I decide what this project is. So you would have to ask the individual sponsor if it's okay to

Bernhard: put their 8 h into whatever it is. So we? We cannot just argue, you know, doing a conference is is much work, and we we put in general those hours in. If I'm a sponsor saying that I get an 8. Our project, I have to at least agree. Okay, you can spend my 8 h on the you know you're inw Com, or something like that. So that's the way I understand it.

Eric-Jan: Yes, this is completely correct. I would say

Markus: so. I would like to add, though, that the the member probably has to actually claim that our. So we're not proactively going to them and say, Hey, you have 16 h. What can do for you but the the the member has to get to the stakeholders and say, Okay, I want my 16 h now and use it on this. Oh, just no, I don't know. He he can. Also he can rely on this to count. He

Eric-Jan: he wouldn't have to. He wouldn't have to to check this. He! He! He might, he might. He may rely on this, that we that we fulfill this obligation.

Cindy: We discussed this also at a previous meeting, and the consensus we came to at that point was that they don't, that there isn't anything there that says that they get to choose the project, which seems a little unfair, and I wasn't kind of percent behind it. But I agreed.

Cindy: I agree that it. It does not say that it actually does not say that they get to choose the project. Just that we will do something.

Cindy: I I that doesn't feel a hundred percent right to me. Which is why I really want us to rewrite that because I could definitely

Cindy: understand if a sponsor came forward and said, Okay, I want my 16 h of work. And I what I want you to do for it is this. I would completely understand that, based upon the current wording. But

Cindy: you know, we we actually did discuss this and decide that unless somebody objects, we're going to interpret it as we, we decide

Cindy: what work we're doing for that.

Mark: But but I but you know, Eric, John. Obviously.

Mark: you know that that's not something that we've recorded. And Eric Shawn is obviously correct in saying, Hey, this is

Mark: open to interpretation.

Cindy: And I think we should fix that.

Mark: Yeah.

Mark: And and I, I'm completely synthetic with with what you're saying, Eric, it's just, you know.

Eric-Jan: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: I, and and it makes sense. It makes sense. What you all are saying makes sense. Which is why he was saying, let's let's fix the wording. But which of us is going to spend 16 h coding

Cindy: for a sponsor project right now in order to deliver on that obligation.

Mark: Yeah.

Mark: all right. So we're we're out of time. But we, I think we need to.

Mark: What, what, what do, what

Mark: we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we could try to have Lex UN unmuted

Eric-Jan: if if we would like to look at the meeting chat.

Lex: Yeah. Now. sorry.

Mark: Yeah. Lex. So we want to put you as the host for Smw. Cons, since we don't have anyone doing that. So that's what we're nominating you to do.

Lex: Oh, there, there's no response. And I guess it's you know. What? What does that mean?

Eric-Jan: How you know what that means? Right?

Lex: I I I I I I I I examined all the options in Switzerland, and they they're not feasible. Hmm!

Lex: I

Bernhard: I contacted some some people in Germany. But up to now I don't have anyone showing up.

Bernhard: so we might end up in a situation that it would be a fully virtual conference. Because there's a plan, B. If no one shows up. We're going to make it fully online, I guess.

Bernhard: So the the one important question is, Mark, I think you wanted to check if we can use the words. And media, we keep calling

Mark: yeah, and and

Mark: right. And I was supposed to get person to talk to you from Cindy, I believe.

Cindy: So that was kind of a change.

Cindy: Yeah, I was supposed to find out who the appropriate person is. I I will do that.

Cindy: Marcus. Is there any chance that Hello! World would be interested in hosting again.

Markus: I would have the discuss this internally. and to you carefully

Markus: to you. To be honest, I'm not very optimistic, but I could try. I could try to approach or to excel.

Eric-Jan: They were our co-host in the Rotterdam

Eric-Jan: quite a long time ago they did some other things as well I could. I could try to get them in the driver's seat.

Eric-Jan: They're yeah. They are not too active in the community they were in.

Eric-Jan: they did. They did some

Eric-Jan: some work on on a certain chair. So yeah, I could. I could to call them tomorrow. See where they stand.

Cindy: Bernard, you you spoke to you. You tried to spoke to speak to you, Ron and Carson, right about doing it in Berlin.

Cindy: and they're not interested

Cindy: because Berlin would be fabulous with Wikimedia Deutsch L. There. And there's other people that it's nice to do it in a place where there are people who actually use the software, who you can get other people showing up to increase the attendance. You learn said to me that

Bernhard: I should pitch him by he should, but by a professional week you should do that. And I, I told him, basically, I'm not going to do that because I'm pitching, you know, semantic media with a semantic meeting. It comes to everyone.

Bernhard: but not to you. So if you don't know what it is, or what it's worth send to still do it. And no, this is waste of my time.

Bernhard: So yeah, David, I guess. I talked to. I wrote, I think

Bernhard: 3 or 4 different universities in in Germany. so it's not all all those. But it. It was just some basic. Also we would have to wait one or 2 weeks until

Cindy: do you reach out? To? Not that I think that he he would necessarily be able to do it. But Toby at Powderbourne. because he's been involved for quite a while, sort of tangentially. I don't know whether he'd be interested.

Bernhard: I reached out to

Cindy: device odor.

Bernhard: Oh.

Bernhard: oh, yes, yes, and he he was the only one who reacted. or yeah, And he said, he will check. Yeah, he will check in. That's he, he said. That part of born is not, you know, the best place to have it from a physical. And you know.

Bernhard: yeah. But I know he's been involved.

Bernhard: I mean, if we can use the immediately con. then actually, I would say, having it fully online would be

Bernhard: an advantage. Actually, because we couldn't really say, this is a new conference for the first time is so we could, because, you know, we we could

Bernhard: move the disadvantage that nobody really shows up doing it physically move to an advantage because it's in a new and the first conference. And it should be online, because, as many people should attend as possible which is never possible in the in the in a physical meeting.

Bernhard: So I think that would be interesting.

Bernhard: And yeah, that's let's see.

Cindy: Yeah. But it's so much it's so much better to have face to face discussions with people. I would really miss the opportunity to. At least. you know, we could do it with

Cindy: online. Like, since we have conferences every 6 months, we could do an online one, alternating with an in person one, and we could start alternating the in-person ones between

Cindy: North America and Europe

Cindy: if we wanted to do it that way.

Mark: So okay, the point there, we we really need to get people back their time. But I I think, Yeah, I'll I'll I'll write this up and send it out.

Mark: And hopefully, we will have something else.

Mark: Bye, bye.

Eric-Jan: bye, bye. bye, bye.