Pretzel Stand

Welcome! This is Wikimedia Pennsylvania's Pretzel Stand, which is used for discussions of the operations and technical issues of Wikimedia Pennsylvania. Please make your new posts at the bottom of the page, in-line with common discussion practices at various Wikimedia projects. Start a new discussion

OK, the name's a bit silly...

...but it seems to me a nice idea to have this as an option for discussion as well, rather than the less familiar (to some) irc channel, or the mailing list. I called it the Pretzel stand because I was trying to figure out something that catches our local, um, flavor. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 10:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

How about "That place where you'se guys buy cheese steaks"? --Whiteknight (meta) (Books) 19:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

lmao. :-P Cbrown1023 talk 15:17, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Despite my penchant for cheese steaks, I think the Pretzel Stand is brilliant! --Qswitch426 21:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree interesting name, fun place. :) Cbrown1023 talk 15:17, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I like the name, also. :-) Gave me a good feeling about the folks starting this chapter. Will be following developments on IRC, and the email list also. FloNight 18:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations

Have a lot of fun together.. Good luck, I hope to hear a lot of fine stories about how will this model will do  !! :) GerardM 00:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Heh...we'll see about that. (→O - v d e) 01:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Logo

On the mailing list, there is a thread titled "Official website" going around in the mailing list archives. In order to be fair and conscious to everyone here, this discussion will be moved here. Currently, SB_Johnny is suggesting something along the lines of a hex sign, but that's only one opinion. More input is needed. (→O - RLY?) 00:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Another idea of Johnny's was to use the barnstar, which originated in Pennsylvania and are now given out on Wikipedia for a variety of reasons, see Wikipedia:Barnstars.

My opinion personally, is to make sure we still use the "Wikimedia Pennsylvania" logo officially, and then have another logo unofficially. I daresay that any of our recent logo options look very professional. Though the definitely look fun and personal, I would rather go with both. Cbrown1023 talk 01:36, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Huh? SB Johnny 16:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Different occasions would require different logos. I'd prefer we kept the other one and created a new more "local" one. Cbrown1023 talk 16:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Still not with you, but I think I see where you're going. Why on earth would we want different logos for different occaisions? SB Johnny 16:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't really know! :-P However, if we were to do something that we wanted to look more professional or identify more with the Foundation, we'd need to use the current logo. But for just going around, we could use the "fun one". It is also the fact that we want to keep the "WM PA" one because that is the one that all local chapters share. I am okay with our originality, but we must additionally stick with the norm. Cbrown1023 talk 17:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the multiple-logos idea pretty strongly. We only really need one logo. A hex-sign (while originally from PA) is probably not a great choice because it only represents a small portion of the state. I would prefer to keep the good-looking "Wikimedia Pennsylvania" logo, because it looks more professional. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:35, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I kindly propose that the current "Wikimedia Pennsylvania" logo be morphed a wee bit, so that the blue-green-red icon is made to look a bit more like a pretzel. -- SpiralingMusic 17:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. Are you any good with graphic image editing? If so, draw us up a proposal and let us see how it looks. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:54, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I do not think that that can be done with this logo right now per the wikimedia:Visual identity guidelines. However, you are free to come up with a new logo. If you guys think we can do that, just say so. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 00:41, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I would love to get a proposed new logo that we can show to the foundation. I figure it's harder to say "no" when we've put so much time and effort into it, and it comes out so beautiful. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, This is my 2^nd edit, but I just couldn't help myself. When I sa the logo here, I thought it wasn't "Pennsylvaniay" enough. I created a logo that maintains the Wikimedia Wikimedia look to it, but also adds a bit of "Pennsylvanianess". What do you think? Ryan 16:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The link that Cbrown1023 provided to the visual identity guidlines clearly states that the Wikimedia logo may not be morphed and used in this way. And since all existing chapters follow those guidelines I imagine that the foundation will not have a hard time to say no, no matter how much time and effort you put into it. So stick with the official logo that you already have. /Ainali 07:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Userboxes needed

In the interest of organizing projects, it would probably be a good idea to make userboxes (and associated categories) that can identify users by region and areas on interest, so that we can start up some collaborations. For example, my page should have boxes and categories that say:

• I live in Berks County
  • Good idea. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• My interests include plants, animals, agriculture, horticulture, history, and religion (a box for each)
  • Hmmm... interests.... sounds pretty good. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• I am willing to help with outreach projects if they are within 60 miles of my home
  • I really like this. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• I am willing to help with outreach projects further away if I'm provided a place to sleep
  • I really like this. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• I contribute on Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Commons, and Wikipedia (again, userbox for each)
  • I would shy away from userboxes for the individual projects, but would consent to categories to outline this. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Babelboxes for other languages I speak
  • Babel can be placed on meta, and I, myself, would prefer that they are. However, I agree that some of the most spoken languages in Pennsylvania (say top 5) like English, and pdc, should get babel boxes. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Temple University Alumni
  • Interesting for University alumnis, I would hope we would do this for all PA colleges, and include ones for people who are currently in the college. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• Where I grew up
  • Where I grew up... hmm... :-/ Not so sure what this would be helpful for. Cbrown1023 talk 17:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

• etc.

A welcome template might be nice too :).

Just a personal note: I'm full of ideas and am thinking about WMPA as I'm working during the day, but I have very little time to edit this time of year (I'm a farmer and horticulturist). I hope I'm not coming off as a big old do-nothing nag :). SB Johnny 16:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree in a general sense that userboxes and categories to help put groups together at a glance would be a great idea. That way, we could go through a category and pull out all the members from X county who might be interested in a particular project. If we had a category for "Users willing to commute X miles", we could use DPL (if the developers will give us the newer version of it) to cross categorize "Users who live in X county and are willing to travel Y miles and are free at Z time of the week". We can start small with it though.

Also, I agree with CBrown that things like the babel boxes or whatever can be better done on meta then here. We should really try to keep things PA-specific (and surrounding areas) here. Babel boxes for common PA-languages, such as PDC, spanish, or english might be acceptable, but then we open up the floodgates to everybody wanting to create a new babel box for every language under the sun. And before you know it, we have babel boxes for programming languages, and then "This user contributes using FireFox", and so on and so forth. I think it would be to our benefit to keep the userbox selection small and focused on the business at hand. People can go to Meta or Wikipedia if they want to have a whole dumpster-load of userboxes. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The old DPL can do that, actually. SB Johnny 00:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I concur with Whitenight. (→O - RLY?) 23:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just curious: why would it be a problem if people have a billyun userboxes? A Wikimedia chapter is about the people who belong to it, and they should feel free to express themselves, even if they choose to do that with billyuns of userboxes. Also, speaking/reading/writing other languages can be useful when communicating with other Wikimedia chapters (few of which are English-based). SB Johnny 00:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I know, but the main reason there should be a limit to this stuff is because we don't want this to become too cluttered and disorganised like en.wikipedia. (→O - RLY?) 00:15, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Clutter is better than instruction creep. SB Johnny 00:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not instruction creep to have a single instruction that says "this wiki is reserved for the business of the chapter, and things that are off-topic do not belong here". It's one thing to have a user box that says "I speak spanish", and it;s another thing entirely to have boxes that discuss your love for Ewoks, or your proficiency with mathematics, your preference for the color green, your admiration for feudal japan, that you once visited russia and think it was "nice", that on Wikipedia you've made over 1000 edits, that you are a capricorn, that you own a particular breed of dog, that you are decent at chess or that you prefer sneakers to loafers. If we want to talk about unnecessary creep, we should be worried about BS-creep, and not instruction creep. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• "I have been to Pennsylvania"

  Bastique 14:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

  Did that have anything to do with the userbox discussion? (→O - RLY?) 14:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, it I think it did. Lighten up guys, we shouldn't be banning certain kinds of personal expression for fear that a problem could possibly happen someday if we don't do something NOW!!! I started this topic because I felt it would be good to have a way for participants with common interests to identify themselves and find others. The conversation since then has been truly alarming. If you have a problem with people being themselves, expressing themselves, and offering their time, you should gat out of this project right now, because we don't need people like you. SB Johnny 21:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

  Please note that "you" did not refer to anyone in particular. No one at all, don't take it personally. Cbrown1023 talk 21:06, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Johnny: This new chapter isn't a game and it most certainly isn't wikipedia. This website is, in almost all respects, a social networking site: We are here to attract wikimedians and to do work in the community. First off, we do not yell at people, or act disrespectful to people. Treating people poorly is exactly not what we want. We want to attract new members and get people involved, not disrespect people. Bastique, especially, is a person who deserves our utmost respect at all times. This is not an acceptable location for trolling, or flame wars, or wheel wars, or any other kind of bad behavior.

Beyond that, something that is worth mentioning now, is that being an administrator here does not give a person any sort of authority whatsoever. Admins on this site are basically going to have two jobs only: cleaning up vandalism and protecting important pages. I do not want to see any abuse or misuse of the admin tools here or I will be in touch with the chapcom and the developers and the stewards and the flags will be revoked without any kind of warning or process.

I know there is some kind of excitement around this whole process, and that's fine. However, people here are going to act like adults or they will not be participating any longer. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:17, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for my part in the yelling there. The point is that we just aren't populated enough yet to need policies banning userboxes, and we aren't populated enough yet to start defining the community. The early adopters need to be cautious here .

I was there for the start of en.wikiversity, and we had an early period where arguing over policy and mediawiki was about all that got done (including a months-long flame war about round vs. square corners). It drove a lot of people off, and the only vestige of those early days is a long list of proposed policies. The userboxes and categories I'm hoping to come up with are simply ways for people to find otehr people to work with. Similar interests, skills, education levels, backgrounds, and wikimedia project participation are all part of that. Whiteknight, for example, has offered to help me do soume outreach for plant related stuff, even though he doesn't know anything about plants. That's fine for just teaching people the wiki part, but he wouldn't be able to answer certain kinds of questions if they came up. Creating a framework for lines of communication is crucial to the success of this project. SB Johnny 10:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Site Policy

The above debate has brought up a number of points, and I would like to give some of my ideas about how this website should probably be run so as to be more conducive to our goals. First off, once the bylaws get finalized and approved by the board, we will have an executive council who will be responsible for the "everyday administration of the chapter". This says to me that the executive council will administer (or appoint others to administer) this website. To that end we won't really need to codify any policy whatsoever, because people like the admins will be appointed by the executive council to help maintain the website. This way we can avoid a messy RFA process, and just have admins be appointed when needed, and decomissioned when not needed. Issues about what belongs on this website and what does not belong here should be pretty straight-forward. This website will primarily serve as a social hub for the chapter. Things that deal directly with the chapter, our activities, or our users, may belong here. I propose that within these guidelines we give users large latitude. For instance, one thing that I think we could allow is for members to post their resumes or credentials here, as a way of lending a certain amount of legitimacy to their wikimedia contributions. We can open this matter up for debate, of course, it's just a first thought. I really don't think we need to have many policies here, and I certainly don't want to get mired down by all the bureaucratic garbage that other sites have. We should keep things simple for now, with the knowledge that our first executive council will take care of all the details. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Meh, I'd rather the exec board take a laissez-faire approach towards this wiki. Letting the contributors decide all but the legal and scope issues has served the MWF quite well, and we should emulate that as much as reasonable.

As far as making policy decisions now, I agree: lay off. Until we have more people active here, we neither need policies nor should we be making them.

For now, I think proposals should be about what we can, could, and should do... not about what we're not going to permit people to do. SB Johnny 19:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I concur with SB_Johnny. (→O - RLY?) 19:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

That's my point exactly, I don't want to be creating all sorts of rules, I want to leave that till later when we have an actual organization. A laissez-faire approach is an acceptable one, but I don't think that should mean that nobody gets to keep things here under control if such is needed. The chapter is going to have a centralized governing mechanism eventually, it would make no sense to me to have a second group of people managing this website. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:13, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

If it's needed, we can deal with it as a community. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason we need an exec board is because the Commonwealth and the IRS require us to have one: our government (the real world one we pay taxes to) is based on democratic principles, as opposed to consensus principles. Our exec board shouldn't be a government, but rather just a group of people brave enough to be accountable and responsible for a consensus-driven body. I skimmed over a thread on foundation-l a few days ago about whether the board would pay attention to the "election" results (they are under no legal requirement to do so), and it really made me think that our board should be completely defanged. This project is about the members getting together and doing things, not about creating heirarchies. SB Johnny 00:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that's really the wrong way to think about things. What we shouldnt do is let our personal preferences against government or authority cripple the chapter in perpetuity. We are going to need people to handle daily business, and where people need to be accountable, they also need to be responsible. I'm not entirely convinced that this organization needs to be consensus-based, especially considering the substantial difficulties that our projects (wikipedia, wikibooks, etc) have in even understanding consensus (much less in employing it properly). It seems to me that a complete reliance on consensus is not a good idea for an organization that is going to have real-world time-frames and deadlines and projects. On wiki we have time: time to talk and discuss and argue. In the real world, we need to make appointments and have deadlines.

Now this is not to say that consensus is not valuable, nor useful in some situations. However, it is a slow and indefinite process, and when a decision needs to be made it would be good to have at least a fall-back plan. Having an executive with both the authority to make decisions when needed, and the wherewithal to ask for consensus when possible, is the best of both worlds. Besides a vague moral distrust of authority, I guess I can't see any reason not to be structured like any other corporation, and to behave like any other corporation with a governing hierarchy. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:58, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this should be a policy: "Exercise Common Sense." I'd love to see a wiki run with that as the basis. Expand on that. Bastique 18:47, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Bastique. The number of precepts that we have around here are going to generally be very small. I think we could get away with only these two rules (at least at first):

1. Exercise common sense
2. Vandalism, Spam, Nonsense, off-topic discussion: We know it when we see it. We delete it when we know it.

Beyond that, there will be a governing body to handle any exceptional cases, and I hope that we don't see too many of them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed All in favor? :) Cbrown1023 talk 04:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. (→O - RLY?) 18:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me too :). SB Johnny 19:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to make a page for it: Project:Site Policy. The name, hopefully, will deter other people from attempting to make another page with more policy. If we can keep it to a minimum, and therefore keep the drama to a minimum, I think we will be in good shape. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Coming up with "course materials" for outreach projects

Well, we're on for our first official outreach project, with the Lower Merion Conservancy (showing them how to use wikiversity, wikibooks, and commons for a number of purposes). Should we develop course materials here, or on Wikiversity? My preference would be to develop the course on wikiversity (eventually importing it to wikibooks as part of a textbook on doing wikimedia outreach), and make a report here afterwards saying how it went. Sound like a good use of our many resources?SB Johnny 18:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Definitely. If need be, we could always copy it all or import it all over to here. Cbrown1023 talk 18:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, this site isn't a content site. We should be doing everything in our power to move the focus to the proper projects, and not try to duplicate anything here. This site is just a social hub, not a content storage or creation location. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Licensing options

Right now we are licencing our content as GFDL. This strikes me as a bad idea due to the whole 7 pages thing. Not sure if it's possible, but it might be better to dual-license everything like they do on commons, but in this case make all contributions be GFDL and "copyright wikimedia foundation" and/or "wikimedia pennsylvania". That way we could use this wiki to collaborate on making flyers, leaflets, and other propoganda without being required to print out the GDFL every time we staple something to a pole. SB Johnny 18:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Very, very good idea... Cbrown1023 talk 18:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, so how do we go about doing that? Can we copyright under "Wikimedia Pennsylvania" even though we don't exist yet as a legal entity?SB Johnny 15:48, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I doubt that we couldn't. Anything I write is licensed "Copyright under Cbrown1023", unless I choose to license it under something different, such as the GFDL. Cbrown1023 talk 15:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point. We might want to have a page defining the terms of this copyright. SB Johnny 16:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

A point that i've made before is that this isn't a content site, and that we aren't really "producing" anything. To that effect, I don't see why we would want to copyright anything at all. If it's just discussions, ideas, and brainstorming, couldn't we just make everything public domain? If we are printing out little fliers and stapling them to a pole, why do we need copyright? And for that matter, if somebody violates our "copyright" are we going to sue over a flier? I say we drop the GFDL and any copyright. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

We can't do that using the current logo (or at least we can't put it on a flier), because the logo we're using now is copyrighted, and thus can't be included in a PD document. SB Johnny 14:15, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I feel like this issue is becoming overly complicated. Lots of different people and organizations do post fliers without ever considering copyright on them. If we are wasting our energies copyrighting fliers or whatever, then we are wasting our time. If we are going to be limited because we have to worry about licensing, then we should just delete this website entirely and start fresh. What I am talking about is the website content, which can be PD without having to extend PD to our logos. Lots of projects host PD content without any conflict that the website's logos are not PD. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, 2 things to say to that: (1) um, dude?, and (2) helping people understand the difference between free beer, expensive beer, and stolen whiskey needs to be part of any outreach projects we conduct. We should always be worried about licensing. SB Johnny 22:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between teaching people about the open content movement, and arguing amongst ourselves about licensing. Especially if that arguing precludes our ability to teach people about open content. Obviously any flier that we post up cannot be accompanied by the complete text of the GFDL. But, considering the throw-away nature of such fliers, i think any effort to have them licensed is absolutely a waste of time and energy. Enough about fliers then, because even discussing them further feels like an abject waste.

As to the content on this website, I say it's GFDL or PD. This website will not be for hosting content, just discussions and planning. Anybody who wants to benefit from our work here should be able to without any restrictions. In fact, we should be encouraging people to duplicate our work here with no strings attached. To that effect, PD makes the most sense. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:00, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

(reset) I don't think it's a waste of time at all, though getting angry about it is probably not a good thing. ©Wikimedia Pennsylvania would be simple enough to define in a way that's as close to PD as possible (along the CC lines), without causing us troubles so far as our use of logos go. Licensing under PD can be problematic, because the license isn't viral. This means that any derivitives of what we do here can be made unavailable to us by the next user. SB Johnny 11:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Whether the license is viral or not really doesn't matter to me. I have no problem with helping others without expecting help in return. Saying that something is "copyright wikimedia pennsylvania" is problematic because "Wikimedia Pennsylvania" isn't currently a separate entity which can hold copyright. Once we incorporate (if we do) we can use that strategy. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, Andrew, that's kinda what we were talking about before you got involved. No-one seems to be interested in doing fund-raising for our incorporation costs, so we really need something to do "for now", because I am already doing outreach, and as things stand now I'm doing it in my own name (well, actually I'm doing it at a "wikiversitan"), rather than our chapter's name.

This organization is dead in the water unless someone takes the reins and makes it happen, and I personally am not willing to take those reins without evidence of a community that needs someone to do that. I'm already out there trying to teach people about the value of wikimedia projects... this "official chapter" thing was not my idea (in fact I strongly believe that this project should be mothballed until the day comes when it's appropriate), and I will not put a lot of energy into supporting it unless I see others doing so. I'll be doing outreach with or without WMPA, so (no offense) you need to put up or shut up, because my patience is wearing rather thin at this point. WMPA has incredible potential to do something, but as far as I can tell the onus on doing actual work (rather than talking about work) has been on my back. I don't need an organization to back me in my work: I'm confident of the value of the thing I'm trying to "sell" people on. BUT: as much as I believe this project has value, I'm frankly too busy to babysit it, and I'm definitely too busy to argue with people who not only dismiss my input, but also dismiss my concerns.

My simple concern is this: if I'm going to spend energy and time creating something that anyone can use, I want to feel assured that when someone comes up with an improvement on my idea that it's also free for anyone to use, including me. My time and energy are valuable to me, and I'm not going to spend them on an unworthy/unneccessary/cooptable cause. SB Johnny 21:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

@ Johnny, back to the original discussion. We really should be able to claim copyright even though we are not "official" or whatever yet. Just makes ure we are "Copyright Wikimedia Pennsylvania" and GFDL, otherwise all those pages we imported will have to be deleted. And as for your last comment... :-/ and :(. Cbrown1023 talk 00:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Argh, yeah, thar's the rub. Actually, we can't really add any licence to pages created already, so if we're going to make a change, we'll need to template the old pages saying that they are GFDL only (fortunately we don't have many pages yet).

Is it possible to have different copyrights for different namespaces? Maybe if we created a "Flyers:" namespace we could use WMPA, CC, or something easier than GFDL for it. SB Johnny 11:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Any pages that we have currently that are under a conflicting license can likely be deleted outright and recreated under a different license. Most of the pages can be recreated from memory, and many of the recreations might be of higher quality then a fast-paced throw-together job that we did at the beginning. Of course, pages and templates imported from elsewhere will still be GFDL only.

A separate namespace with a different copyright scheme is interesting. We could change the MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning page to show a different message in different namespaces. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

(reset) Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but I'm wondering if it's technically possible (I'm afraid I don't know much about how configurable MW software is). I don't think we need to delete anything, because none of our current content is really useful for this sort of thing, except perhaps the bylaws... that could get complicated :P. SB Johnny 16:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

We currently do this at the MediaWiki site, all content in the "Manual" namespace is in the public domain. See mw:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. (It shows up on the bottom of all pages, so just pick a random page in edit-mode to see the thing spread out.) Cbrown1023 talk 17:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

If we had the material separated by namespace, it would be easily possible to change the copyright warning depending on the namespace. We could use a simple ParserFunction {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Flyer| ... to change the copyright warning for that namespace only. The hardest parts of this are getting the new namespaces created, and then separating out materials to use the appropriate namespaces. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

More than Pennsylvania?

I think it would be more effective if this organization were to expand beyond the realms of Pennsylvania and include the entire northeastern United States for a Wikimedia Northeast-US. 71.251.194.196 02:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I, myself, am already working on this issue. We are creating more chapters for other regions, but they are all currently in development. WM-Pennsylvania is the "guinea pig" right now. We are still working on how further Chapters in the United States will be oriented/run. However, we welcome any one to be a member of the Wikimedia Pennsylvania Chapter, even non-residents. Cbrown1023 talk 15:52, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

We talked about that at the beginning, but the organization is really designed to organize small comunities that are culturally connected, not rediculously large, and geographically close. The Northeast US, depending on how you define it, might take almost a day to drive through, has almost 100 million people, and a lot of regional cultures with interests that are disconnected from other "sub-regions". Going by state isn't necessarily the best approach (the original idea was for the group to cover the wikipedia:Delaware Valley or the Philadelphia metropolitan area, but our friends at Wikimedia apparently feel more comfortable with a group that matches a legal boundary), but it's much better than trying to organize something as large as the Northeast.

On the other hand, I would hope that we can organize, hold meetings, and perform outreach in neighboring states. You don't have to be a Pennsylvanian to be a member... being a Wikimedian is what's important. We should always make ourselves available to help people from other states, both until and even after they form their own chapters (and the other way around, of course). The kind of group we're forming (and the kinds of groups that will form later) should always strive to collaborate when possible, but on smaller and local concerns it's better to stay reasonably small. SB Johnny 15:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, if we *do* get more chapters in neighboring states/regions, we will of course try to work with them and do larger activies/share goods and bads. Cbrown1023 talk 16:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Exactly, if there were an NJ chapter, we would certainly be working with them on many issues. DE, MA, NY, and OH are good candidates for collaboration as well. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Time

I realize this is a silly thing, but currently our signatures use UTC for the datestamp. To avoid unneccessary mental math, could we perhaps switch that to EDT (and later EST)? PA is a big place, but at least it's all in the same time zone :). SB Johnny 17:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Should be easy enough, we'll have to add that to brion's list. :) Cbrown1023 talk 17:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Money

I know it's not the most fun thing to talk about, but we really can't submit our bylaws to the foundation before having a lawyer look at them, which will probably cost a few bucks (at the very least we need to give them $1 as a formality, and personally I think that should be a few cents from all of us).

Assuming the Foundation accepts us, we'll also need several hundred dollars to create a corporation and file our papers with the IRS for non-profit status.

Finally, we'll need to pay the salary of our officers. They don't need to accept the salary, but I'm pretty sure we need to offer it (usually a pittance), and have money in the bank to cover it (and oh yeah, we need a bank account, an EIN, etc.).

One option I'd like to float is a meeting/fundraiser here on my farm. We could have hayrides (everyone takes a turn driving the vintage tractors), "stand up to the goat" contests (i.e., try not to let the goat push you over), frisbee golf or extreme croquet, fishing and swimming, potluck lunch or dinner, campfires, etc. We could also do a big yard sale here to get rid of old junk and make a few bucks for our favorite Wikimedia chapter. I'll have to admit I'm a little shy about this idea, but it's sure better than renting a place (and thus being in the red from the get-go), and I have plenty of room here and a fairly big parking lot (designed for tractor-trailers to turn around in). SB Johnny 17:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good! great! It'll also be a lot easier if we use your farm, that you so willing are giving to us crazy people! :) All your other stuff sounds reasonable and necessary, but I like the "stand up to the goat" contest best! :-D Cbrown1023 talk 17:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the wife reminded me that if we're planning an after-dark campfire, we really need to do this when the moon is high (we don't have streetlights on the farm), so September 29 is looking good.

(And Cbrown: I thought you would be more excited about driving tractors!) SB Johnny 20:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

(lol, I'm excited about that too! :-P ) Cbrown1023 talk 20:35, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

A few points, some of them are repeats and I apologize for that. I'll list them sequentially:

1. Incorporation really shouldn't be an immediate or even a pressing concern for us. Let's attract members first, and then make the chapter a more official legal entity. If we incorporate now and nobody ever joins us, it will be a waste.
2. I don't believe that the version of the bylaws that we submit to the foundation needs to be the "final draft" of them. We can have a temporary set of bylaws now until we know what we need, and revise them later. Things are going to have to change in the bylaws before we incorporate in any case, and as we get more members, those things that need to change will become more readily apparent.
3. Chapcom has start-up funding that we can get, upon approval of our bylaws. We submit our bylaws, get the funding, contact a lawyer, and make better bylaws which would be more suitable for incorporation.
4. Fundraising right now sounds like a great idea, and would be a good first event to try and get people together. What I would definitely like to try and have first is a goal (how much money we are shooting for) and a specified usage for it (buying laptops for outreach, hiring a lawyer, etc). Anything beyond our goal could either be rolled over into a savings, or else donated to the WMF (a habit I would like to get into).
5. As a non-profit, I dont think we need to pay, nor offer to pay, any compensation to our officers. Not even a pittance. It's a volunteer position.

--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Bylaws

I was looking at the bylaws and think i might be able to help with the drafting. Where are you incorporating? Also i may be able to slash your attorney costs to nil. Geoff Plourde 07:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)