Wikimedia South Africa/Board Meeting/20 November 2018

WMZA Board meeting

20 November 2018 | 19h00 - 20h00

Attendance

• Bobby
• Douglas
• Ian
• Michael
• Rossouw
• Yonela

Apologies

• Adri
• Coenraad

Agenda

Afrikaans Writing competition

• Planning 15 Dec - 15 Jan destubathon
• Proposal for Amazon gift vouchers as prize
• US$140 in total asked for from the 2018 grant budget
• Rossouw, Adriaan, Gert will be judges for the event based on quanitity of articles destubbed.
• 5k bit min as a entry requirement

Vote

• Support:
  • Douglas
  • Rossouw
  • Michael
  • Bobby
  • Ian

• Against
  • none

• Vote passes. Chapter will purchase US$140 worth of Amazon gift vouchers

Afrikaans Wikipedia Maroela Media

• Deon has forwarded email to Douglas and Ian. Ian will forward to board for further discussion

2019 Grant update

• Douglas has submitted application - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia_South_Africa/2019
• WMF turned down funding for employee
• Want to see improvement in reporting track record, improvement in capacity
• Have suggested short-term contract for a particular project
• Douglas suggests Wiki Loves Earth
• Instead of funding for language conference (Afrikaans), suggest scholarships to WikiIndaba (now that's it's been postponed)
• Michael's Hackathon has been budgeted for under the description "WikiFundi Competition", but still needs to be added to the grant plan wiki.
• Wiki Loves Earth planned for May (assuming we get contractor)
• Douglas has run Wiki Loves Monuments before, has good idea of what is needed
• Will participation be open to board members? Possibly, but certainly not to judges
• Estimate first prize of about R2000
• Need to discuss the process of hiring the contractor. Douglas does not see it as himself, but has person in mind.

Infrastructure update

• Ian is looking at moving from 1grid as their support is poor and there has been a huge increase in the hosting fee. Unfortunately, we have paid up for the year again. Recommends that we start paying on a monthly basis from 2019/20 onwards whilst looking for other hosting options.
• Douglas recommends that we start moving the periphery sites (WikiLovesMonuments, WikiIndaba, Jobergpedia, etc) to Wikimedia to save costs and reduce server burden
• Reuben and Ian have looked into moving the whole website to Wikimedia Foundation servers. Decided against it as we can't then continue to use our existing WMZA url.
• Those that want to send (and not just receive) emails from their wikimedia.org.za accounts need to have an account. Ian will add those that request.
• Twitter: Ian to share login details with those that want it

Meeting ends: agree to cover remaining agenda topics at next meeting

Next board meeting

• Ian to create Doodle poll for next meeting (4th or 5th December)