OpenWetWare:Steering committee/Meeting - August 2006

Time/Location

• Time : 12-1pm EST, 8/10/06
• Room : 32-262 (Stata center)

Agenda

task check from last meeting?

1. Have the retreat -- nice work with that ;)
2. Put the video (or picture link to video) on the Main Page, but make sure video works with IE. (John Cumbers) NOT DONE - I couldn't do this nicely, so gave up and just left the link. Next video I'll try again or ask for Jenny's help with nice looking graphics.
3. Look into who we would hire/ask to help us put in place formal decision making processes and organizational structure. (Jason Kelly)
4. Put a page listing all the suggested categories up on the protocols page. (Jenny Nguyen)
5. Write letter to labs with empty homepages (Jenny Nguyen)
6. Consider filing trademark applications on "OpenWetWare" in US (and perhaps UK, EU, China, India, and Japan)? who?
7. Hardware Support: Need plan to support hardware and software. who?
8. Look up other sister wiki's and link to them, have on sign-up page, "maybe this wiki's better for you? want to set up your own wiki.. guidelines. John DONE page
9. set up a page of case studies, FAQ of people that we didn't allow accounts. and why? e.g physics lab, highschool students, companies, John to do done
10. add elections to front page. DONE John & Barry
11. Draft bylaws - done - John and Barry
12. Drew, Jason, funding - Consider establishing organizational recognition w/in MIT. This would include gaining an MIT account (for donation purposes).

New Topics

• SC Goals (Jason Kelly)
  • What are our goals over the next 6 months?
• Community Development: Sri Kosuri
  • Do we have a date for Chris Surridge talk (likely in September as of last meeting - need to deal with his travel arrangements, etc.)
  • What are we doing about copyright issues?
• Education Coordinator: Reshma Shetty
  • nothing new to report
• User Experience/Data Management: Jeff Gritton & Barry Canton
• Infrastructure: (Jason & Ilya)
  • Network outage at MIT, site down for ~14hrs.
  • iCampus, professional hosting
• Wikimania recap: (Ilya & Austin)
• Publishing Group Update and Reditt proposal
  • See the project page here.
  • I can only join the meeting at 12.30 or 12.45 so please leave this until the end. I'm here now, a lab course finished early.
• Lab highlights: John Cumbers
  • I apologize for not doing any work on the highlights this month. I will put together a plan for future highlights, recruit some more help, write some new highlights and make sure it keeps going this time. The voting thing should help highlight cool stuff. --Johncumbers 00:10, 10 August 2006 (EDT)
• Passive Recruiting: Should we add a small "Join OWW" icon to every OWW page (at the bottom, sort of like the mediawiki logo? Endy 10:42, 9 August 2006 (EDT)
  • Lucks 11:16, 10 August 2006 (EDT): If we go through with the reddit proposal, we can also ask them to put up a similar 'add' to join OWW.
• Front Page Make-over: When should we implement a new front-page? Jennyn 15:51, 9 August 2006 (EDT)

Tasks for the first 6 months of elected officers time

• To organise the next election in 6 months time and decide on 6/12 month terms

Notes

From Last Meeting

• Decision Making Help?
  • Jason didn't do it.
  • We will have organizational structure as is for 6 months, then work to firm up by-laws, etc.
• Page Removal
  • Jenny did it!
  • No one updated pages, and no one cared they were being removed.
• Trademarking
  • Tabeled
• Hardware Support
  • Ilya will get back to it.
• Drafted By-Laws
  • Barry/John did it!
  • SC makes majority votes; 4 elected positions for next 6 mo., OWW more formal entity, by-law draft needs to be finalized.
  • Log who is being accepted/rejected to OWW.

New Topics

• Firm-Up Goals for SC: see draft.
• Chris Surridge (editor of PLos 1)
  • Late September will be here.
• Copyright Issues
  • e currently do not have a policy for posting copyrighted PDFs. Place notices on people's pages for taking down PDFs.
  • Reshma 14:44, 10 August 2006 (EDT): Added a one line policy to OpenWetWare:Copyrights giving people an email to contact about copyright violations.
• Data Management
  • Hard time tracking users who may vandalize OWW.
  • Create invitations for user accounts on OWW. We should think about making OWW Beta to attract new users. Empowers users to feel like they own a part of OWW.
• Infrastructure
  • Last week, site went down for 14 hrs.
  • Ilya has been looking into pro-hosting options.
    • Keeping reliability is goal #1. The companies that do provide service will lease server to center and have varying maintainence services. Prices range from $400-$800/mo in fees; provides 100% availability, backups, etc.
    • Sri met with ibiblio, and would be happy to host OWW. We may be able to get an additional server for free. May be more favorable to look into this company.
    • Austin suggests that we should see if MIT can provide this.
• Wikimania
  • Ilya update: Semantic MediaWiki Extension (allows tags to links). See this to see an example of data mining. Plans to incorporate this into OWW. This will help organize information to eventually integrate with categories to have drop-down box.
  • WiktionaryZ - looking at dictionaries in different languages. Meanings are linked together, not words. Structured data in the wiki. Implementation of data project - benefits of wiki with structured data.
  • Austin update: Liquid threads - every post on talk page is its own page, threaded and archived. Embedding streaming video into pages - rather than using google video, have OWW stream automatically. OpenID - universal ID (any URL owned) can be used across all projects.
• Highlights
  • John will recruit more members to have more highlights
• Drew's idea about Join OWW on bottom of every page.
  • Yes!
• Publishing - any interactions would be non-exclusive.
  • Reddit.com
    • Way of ranking relevance of pages on OWW.
    • Archive.reddit to post information and have comments; builds relevancy.
    • Short-term, be able to reward people for posting information. (Better Recent Changes), good communication channel
    • Long-term, could be possible publishing mechanism.
    • Technical stuff: need to have Reddit accounts.
    • Start Reddit Trial?
  • Nature
    • Say that we need $250,000, give them access to SC, account, etc. and see where it goes from there without making formal offer. Need 3/yr time-scale.
  • Blackwell
    • Drew is in discussion with them now.

Action List

• Check with ibiblio about additional server.
• Reddit trial.