Board Meeting Minutes: August 18, 2012

ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING
August 18th, 2012, 14:00 UTC

PRESENT: Kristen Murphy, Ira Gladkova, Nikisha Sanders, Julia Beck, Jenny Scott-Thompson.

GUESTS: Eylul, Enigel, Elz, James_, Aja, sunusn, Claudia Rebaza, anatsuno.

ABSENT: Naomi Novik, Francesca Coppa.

DECISIONS TAKEN SINCE THE LAST MEETING

  1. Agreed to switch board liaisons for Wiki and Open Doors
  2. Approved Volcom sending out the Code of Conduct to all staff and volunteers for a review period.
  3. We are continuing to discuss the issue of meta on the AO3. See also the update in Open Session.

OPEN SESSION

  1. Volcom has proposed a two week review period for the Code of Conduct and Constructive Correction Action Procedure, with a message to invite staff and volunteers to look at the documents and ask questions and make comments.
  2. Tag Wranglers are working on many things, including work being done to take some of the “behind-the-scenes” documents about tagging public.
  3. The org’s taxes (the 990 form) are completed and have been filed. They will be available under our reports and governing documents once Board member’s personal contact information has been redacted.
  4. DevMem are considering dates for the October membership drive, and are looking at Oct. 6-10. That would make the drive 5 days long. (April’s was 7 days; recall that when we debriefed from April we talked about making the next drive a bit shorter.) The deadline to become a voting member for the 2012 election is October 14, so that would leave a few days after the end of the drive for momentum to continue via reblogging, etc., and bring in a few more voters. We could then post a reminder of the approaching deadline on the 12th or 13th.
  5. Systems have finished setting up the new firewall for the AO3.
  6. AD&T is working on updating the roadmap and making plans for the future, testing the next deploy, and chugging along with coding and communications.
  7. Wiki has invited gardeners to test the new Fanlore forums, for which Webs contributed the CSS.
  8. We discussed when chair terms begin and end. They’ve traditionally been done at the turnover of terms for everyone, except in the cases of Volcom and Journal. Volcom has asked if we can 1. set official policy, and 2. that policy be something that separates chair turnover from term turnover for staff. We discussed related timings and principles, and agreed to ask chairs what times of year they would prefer – it varies per committee.
  9. We agreed on new meeting times for the board.
  10. We approved the minutes of last meeting.
  11. We gave an update on the ongoing meta discussion from the perspective of the three Board members still present at that time (Jenny and Julia had left).
    • Overall, what emerged over the course of much discussion is that ideally, we all wanted to host meta, but had varying concerns. There were concerns from both sides about prioritization and resource allocation around the idea of hosting meta now (as opposed to some point in the future), especially with relation to other media that are scheduled to be hosted on the archive and other promised features. Some wanted to delay on this basis, and others felt it would be unfair and counter to our mission to wait.
    • At the time, a majority of Board members voted “no” to immediately opening up to allow all things which could be called meta. This majority also agreed that if the groups who are most involved in the issue — Content Policy, Abuse, Support, and AD&T — can agree on a policy for allowing a subset of meta that they are all comfortable with, we would be happy with this.
    • A minority of Board members dissented with this vote. The minority agrees about the stakeholder committees deciding the details of the policy, but disagreed with the overall approach of saying “no” to meta and allowing in only a specific subset.
    • This vote is not final and the issue is still being discussed by the Board. A further, detailed update will be provided next week.

CLOSED SESSION No quorum, since Jenny S-T and Julia Beck left early. All items below will also be taken to e-mail or brought up in following sessions.

  1. We discussed a confidential personnel matter.
  2. We proposed a weekly day off for board, as some board members are getting overly stressed working 7 days a week.

The meeting was adjourned at 17:00 UTC.

Minutes approved by the board on 24th August.

2012-09-29 admin

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