Dear Council Members and everyone interested in the WCA, On 16/17th February 2013 a number of Council Members visited the London Conference I had proposed in mid January to talk about the way of the WCA and to prepare the Wikimedia Conference in Milan. We are happy that the London Conference did happen, and, in spite of the debatable WMF board statement of 5th February, that two WMF board members still agreed to join us.
Because in 2012/2013 the signals from the WMF were not very consistent I tried to receive more clarity about the relationship between Foundation and Association. This was only partially successful, but I understand that the two present WMF board members were as open as it was possible within the constraints of the WMF board unity. We very much appreciated the commitment of Alice and Jan-Bart and were happy not to hear certain allegations from the board statement again. The London Conference discussed many WCA subjects collected during the last months. One of them was communication, and I am content that I could convince the participants of a major change. For someone who is interested in the WCA it has been very difficult to follow the proceedings, plans and results. When e.g. a Council Member wanted to talk to others or discuss something, he or she used one of the several mailing lists the movement has, or Meta Wiki, or private email addresses. I believe that this has been a fundamental problem with the regard to the perception of the WCA, and that the participation even from Council Members suffered also because of this kind of communication. After the election of a new Chair, the Chair of the WCA Council will issue a Bulletin, a kind of short report, with a summary of what happened recently and what are the plans for the near future. This will be put on Meta Wiki, and, naturally, discussions will centre around those Bulletins. For those who are interested it will be much easier to follow and to participate. If someone wants to support the WCA via translations, he or she can translate those Bulletins instead of a lot of messages. There will be a special list 'WCA-announcements". If you want to be informed about Bulletins and discussions, join the list and you will get links to Meta Wiki. It's a one-way-list, because the discussions are supposed to be on Meta Wiki. This is a WCA service for Council Members and non Council Members alike. In this way, nobody is obliged to be on a heavy traffic list such as Wikimedia-l. When we talked about the future and a possible new election of the Chair I also asked about my position. If for any reason someone believed that there should be a new election of the Deputy Chair, I wanted to hear. The participants said that that is no issue and that it is good to have continuity. The role of the Deputy Chair is to be there for the case that at some moment there is no Chair, and then the Deputy has to arrange the election. The WCA continues to exist and will make some rearrangements - it's exiting to follow the evolution. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht ----------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
