Workgroup:WikiEducator Administrators/Coffee time discussions

Workgroup to propose policies and guidelines for WE Administrators Project Home/Charter  |  Meetings  |  Workgroup report  |  LANDING PAGE - Policies and guidelines Draft Policies WE Admin page | Selection of Admins | Policy for page deletions | Policy for page protection | Policy for blocking users Draft Guidelines Page deletion guidelines | Guidelines for Blocking users  | Guidelines for protecting pages Also see & edit Consensus Policy (Draft under development) of inter-group interest

Suggested timeframe for to-do's

Email from Anil to Workgroup members, 14 June 2009:

Dear friends,

We are now 12 members strong. The group is fortunate enough to get ardent leaders of our community as members, including the founder.

Now let us start with a Coffee time <smile> in the beginning for five days, ie, from 15/07/2009 to 19/07/2009. During the Coffee time we will collaboratively build a draft charter on the group home page. It is an informal coffee time and therefore all are free to add/edit without prior discussion. Members can also opt to put suggestions on the page. Changes need not be signed during this time.

From 20/7/09 to 25/09/09 we shall have formal discussions on the project page. Form 26/7/2009 to 30/7/2009 we will vote the charter. I know it is a tight schedule; however we have to conduct the business in a speedy manner since we have to finalize the proposal before the WCC meeting in September/09.

Entire August/09 will be for developing the proposal and we will vote it in the first week of September/09.

Another suggestion is about creating a Google discussion forum for the Group with the name like “Admin Group” or any other suitable name. It would be nice if the forum is created using the same id from which the Google main list for WE has been created (it will be helpful for documentation etc for WE in log run). Admin Workgroup members will be the only participants in the forum. If agreed, Dr. Wayne may please arrange to create the group.

Please share your comments on the above,

Warm regards

Anil

Great plan. Here are a few comments:

• Love the idea of coffee time to build charter, but not sure how to go about signing all of my edits. And I wonder if this is necessary. I've found that using the "newer edit" feature in the compare tool on the history page (starting at a point where I left off, comparing that edit to the newer one and then selecting "newer edit" to page up to the current version) allows me to see everything that everyone's done to a page and their edit summaries in a quick review. Anil, maybe you have another reason for signing the edits, that I'm not thinking of. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Hi Alison, first of all thank you very much for taking the discussion to the right place. About signing, during this coffee time we needn't sign the changes. For the main business we can think about suitable methods like... for content editing a good summary in the summary box will be sufficient, suggestions should be signed etc etc.

Anil Prasad 04:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Anil, Geez, how embarrassing. I totally misread that section of your post. Glad I'm among friends. Thanks for the redirect. I like your suggestions for collaborative authoring, let's put them in the "ground rules" section of the chater. --Alison Snieckus 15:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'd like to see all of our discussions on the WE pages, rather than use a google group for some things. Email could be for reminders and encouragement, in which case Anil and others can email the group members directly. Just my preference. If others prefer the google group, I'm OK with that.

--Alison Snieckus 17:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Alison, you are right, the intention is just to pass on notifications by members - an additional measure for ensuring attention. The main discussion will be on WE only.

Anil Prasad 04:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Anil -- I concur -- this is a great plan, and I think that the objectives are achievable within the time lines you have suggested. A thought -- hopefully our workgroup will achieve consensus (rather than resorting to a voting process.) An issue requiring a vote would suggest that we're having difficulty achieving consensus. In the event that a vote is required on a contentious matter -- the results of the vote would be presented to WCC for consider. I would hope that Council would defer back to the workgroup with suggestions for achieving consensus. Given that WE is a community project -- in situations where there is clearly divided opinion -- a community wide referendum may be required. Personally -- I think referenda should be a last resort, because consensus is a far better model :-) --Wayne Mackintosh 23:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dr. Wayne, thank you very much for the invaluable support. I also prefer consensus becuase it is the most cordial way. Let us adopt consensus method.

Anil Prasad 05:00, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Anil, with reference to your query / suggestion to set up a dedicated google group -- my personal preference is to keep discussions in the wiki. This is easier for archiving and historical purposes. While we can keep all discussions in google groups open for reading -- its more difficult to reference the discussions. That said -- should the majority of the group prefer to use google groups, that's find by me as well. You don't need me to set up a gmail group -- just go for it. Use something like Wikieducator-WG-Admin and you're away. Wayne Mackintosh 03:40, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dr. Wayne, as stated above the intention is just to pass on notifications by members - an additional measure for ensuring attention. The main discussion will be on WE only. I propose to open the new group using the same email ID of the main list because WE management team can retain the group communications as long as they want. If I create it, I will be able to delete the group once the business is over.

Anil Prasad 05:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Anil, that's a good approach and will ensure that all participants are kept up to date -- even those who have not added this page to their watchlist. Look forward to receiving my google group updates and motivations to keep actively involved in the developments of this workgroup. BIG thanks from my desk for your leadership and initiative in moving this forward :-D Wayne Mackintosh 07:29, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Old link to charter page

[[/charter|Charter for the Work Group constituted to develop a proposal containing policy and guidelines for WikiEducator Administrators]]

Hi Anil -- I propose that this subpage should be deleted. It is now subsumed on this charter page. As you were the only editor contributing to the page, I would suggest that adding the {{Delete}} is your decision. --Wayne Mackintosh 23:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thank you, DONE! Anil Prasad 05:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on charter organization

(: Hi Anil -- I think the link to the draft charter is redundant --- my understanding of the draft workgroup charter is that this page should contain the headings proposed by the Charter template above. The charter template is a guideline for constituting the group and planning its activities. We will then need subpages for the outputs we're planning to develop, i.e. Guidelines for appointing administrators Administrators, roles and responsibilities of Administrators (which could be the same document), support resources, eg a deletion policy etc. I'd suggest that you copy over the relevant headings of the charter template onto this page, so that we can start developing the charter for this workgroup. Does this make sense? Feel free to delete this note after reading it. --Wayne Mackintosh 23:27, 13 July 2009 (UTC))

Dear Dr. Wayne, it is a very good suggestion, in another email Alison has also suggested to put the current version of the charter template on the group home page. Therefore both the suggestions have been implemented.

Anil Prasad 05:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Anil, Great start. I revised the section formatting to distinguish the charter sections from this feedback/comment section (and the reference and resource sections).

How should we note that this charter is based on our WE charter template? We could make a category (including a statement about how WE workgroup charters use the charter template, or a reference so people can track back to the template. Thoughts?

--Alison Snieckus 13:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Alison, and your idea to create a category for charter template is great. The category page may be updated with most recent charter template, so that it can be traced by placing the category tag on Workgroup pages.

Anil Prasad 16:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Anil, Alison, Wayne, and others: Great work on this. It seems that you have established a good organizational structure for this discussion. May I suggest that we work on some nuts and bolts regarding outcomes. I think we need to define roles for administrators at various levels. Listing the things that we have all been doing informally as time has permitted might be a way forward. I listed some things below that I see as Admin roles. We may add other things like welcoming new comers (although I think any user should feel free to do that). Perhaps we should focus on the strictly admin roles (deletion; use blocking; page protection). Perhaps there other less obvious tasks. Once we have a starting list, I believe that criteria for action will be easier to establish. These are my thoughts; if I am missing the thrust of the task at hand, please straighten me out. Finally, I am on a fairly tight schedule with summer research and will be vacationing in late July and early August, so I can't commit to many specific time slots.dmccabe 02:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Declan -- - right on the button :-). These are the roles we need to prioritise at this stage. I would also suggest that we think about guidelines & process for identifying and selecting future WE admins as well as removal of admins in the case of blatant abuse of authority. Fortunately we've not had this problem in the past -- but it is conceivable that it may happen in the future. --Wayne Mackintosh 03:21, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the workgroup will benefit from having clearly defined roles because it will keep the group on track and may help avoid potential conflicts. --Nellie Deutsch 10:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Other notes/comments

Communication

The Members will communicate chiefly through the discussion sections on WikiEducator Administrators project pages, with occasional email and Google group notifications.

(: Add links, in first and third paragraphs, to specific MediaWiki and Google group sites, once they are determined. --Alison Snieckus 18:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC))

The project plan

Provide a gantt-like focus on who will do what and when.

Can you please clarify what you mean by gantt? --Nellie Deutsch 11:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

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following content will be pushed to a new page

Outcomes

• Administrative roles
• Guidelines for specific actions
  • Page deletion
  • Page protection**
  • User blocking**