Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/2012-02-08

Attending

• Donald Albury (OA)
• Cindy Ashley-Nelson (OA)
• Christopher Cheney (CA)
• Tom Fish (OA)
• Richard Knipel (CA/RA)
• Piotr Konieczny (CA/OA)
• Swaroop Rao (OA)
• Jami Matheson(WMF)

Guests

• Aude
• Dominic (CA)

Discussion Topics

• Restructuring WMF/SC duties
  • Idea is to move SC to subcommittee structure with focus on long/short term strategy, recruitment, day-to-day operations
  • Eventually will allow WMF to hand-off more duties as originally envisioned back in 2011 but was put on back burner with increased funding
  • Ideal situation is 2nd week of March a meeting in SF to confirm details, but per emails looks like a go with official handover Fall 2012
    • Question then becomes, what can be done today?
  • Proof is needed of success in order to better sell the program to the community - newsletter?
    • Student Tracking Program ETA is currently April 2012
    • Talk that we need to sell that B/C Class appears to be better than the average user - and GA is not always going to be possible (even if it remains the gold standard for classes)
    • Data will be out shortly on Compare the student editor to a typical new user to see if their contribs are generally better/worse/the same 2. establish whether we have more copyright violations
      • Currently outside of IEP - rest of education is moving nicely
  • Piotr offers up his class as a partial guinea pig: Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/User:Piotrus/Fall_2011#Articles_edited

• Class Objectives/Types
  • Question is raised do we need to focus more on graduate classes (or at least make the undergrad classes more contained then they are currently).
  • Question is also raised should we try to encourage some classes to contribute to some gnome like work
• Newsletter
  • User:Thelmadatter/sandbox is getting a start on it - should be back in business shortly
  • Weekly level? perhaps a little lofty right now, focus is getting more regular attention in the signpost.
  • Agreed to take more action and use resources at hand, red tape be damned.

• Wikiproject
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject_Classroom_coordination is a partial model for some pieces, may try to fold in operations once things get moving nicely

• Germany Update
  • Germany got off the ground in december, Frank, Annie paid visits to their campus teams. No impact on US/Can but likely next term.
  • Spain: Toying around with a new model that takes place on en.wp (for non-professional reasons) - user:Thelmadatter is also heavily involved both on Spain and general newsletter project
    • May want to keep an eye on spanish-catalan - but spillover should be minimal
    • Spanish point persons are on target to meet up in Berlin in March

• Regional Ambassadors
  • We need to potentially find a replacement for the NW region - Tom Cloyd looks like he is stepping down
  • Also should Western Canada be folded into said NW region instead of being covered from the Great Lakes
  • Can Campus Ambassadors really take over the job as efficiently? / how can we find new ones in a timely manner - in particular when ambassador ranks are low
  • Would it be possible to have Assistant Regional Ambassadors - yes but only regions with enough ambassadors.

• Academic Journal
  • The Wikipedia Review? Could be a combined effort on marketing side, and get more people involved for the potential prestige?
  • Idea needs to be floated through the right back channels, but could work.
    • Jan will float to Geert and others that may be more inclined..
  • Would the focus need to be strictly academic/marketing - or both
  • CUNY Digital Humanities / MSU Quello would they be interested in helping?