Wiki Community/Ask the Board

The Wiki Spot board tries to be open, but maybe there's something not said just because it hasn't come up before. The board only handles things like the boring paperwork and accounting stuff needed for fundraising, keeping the web servers running and maintaining the software. If you have any questions about the stuff on the Davis Wiki, you should ask the community. If you have a question about the stuff that keeps the arrows spinning, ask here.

2010-06-25 13:04:41   To elaborate a bit: I've talked to Jason a bit about the board, but I'm curious to know more about it. How does the board function? Does geographical distance end up being much of an obstacle for the members? How frequently do they meet? How does one get involved and help out (without knowing anything about programming...)? Is there any turnover and/or how does one join the board? —TomGarberson

• According to legends, there can only be a certain number of people on the board. In order to replace a member, you must find one and assassinate him or her. I am however curious about software maintenance though. I am a little rusty with my PHP and MySQL but would like to assist with software if there ever is a huge need. —hankim
• All those geeky things can be found here, and a plea for help is here. -jw
• Looks like I could potentially be one of the useless programmers! —hankim
• Sycamore is written in Python. But yeah, the big part of the grant we just got is to write a new wiki platform. I wish there were some things I could direct you to at the moment, but there really isn't much I could link you to. Keep your ears open, though. —WilliamLewis
• I have been looking for an excuse to learn Python in the near future. —hankim

The best thing you could do, software-wise, is just enter your email to the box for more info at http://localwiki.org - we will be sending out an email w/ our source code repository & info when we get majorly started on the new code when our fundraising drive is over.

And that's another big thing — helping us meet our fundraising goal by September! We're in hardcore fundraising mode until mid-September. We'll be holding tabling sessions at Farmers Market, etc to do on the ground fundraising soon. Can you help with that? If so, email [email protected]! We'll be putting a call out for help w/ that stuff soon, too (on the wiki here). Even though we've done really well with an all-volunteer, no-money approach so far, meeting our fundraising goal will do wonders in terms of letting us coordinate and manage volunteers across the globe. And the software grant we've received gives us real legitimacy — we will be doing this! The question is: will we also have modest resources to help with outreach and education? And that's why the fundraiser is so important. Encourage your friends to pledge & help us meet our goal! Know of someone or some business that can donate in-kind? Etc! We will be going all-out on this real soon..

As far as geo distance & board members, we do meetings via phone & email, so it doesn't matter where you are on that front. —PhilipNeustrom

• Keep in mind that most people involved in the software and sysadmin tasks aren't board members. -jw
• Makes it better in my opinion. I always hated paperwork, politics, and bureaucracy. —hankim

2010-06-25 13:08:22   Attend meetings? Be active? —StevenDaubert

• That's pretty much the answer to Tom's question. Meetings are by conference call, and are listed on the board wiki and often announced on the Wiki Spot email list. Historically, they have been pretty spread out (one a year or so), but that might change in the future. Since Wiki Spot is a incorporated in CA, there's some things that require people geographically in the state, but quite a bit of paperwork and calls can be made from anywhere. -jw
• More frequent in the future, for sure. Probably another meeting in July or August, depending on our schedules. Now that we have some money soon, things tend to happen much more quickly. I can also attest these are way more interesting (but sadly less dramatic) than the ASUCD Senate. —BrentLaabs

2010-07-03 09:06:41   Would the board be interested in purchasing a table and canopy for the farmer's market? Without at least a table, tabling isn't going to happen, and we'll probably get a lot more volunteers if they aren't stuck sitting in the sun. While we can sometimes borrow them from other organizations and the like, today seems to suggest that we can't really rely on that. —TomGarberson

• I think the answer to this is yes, definitely. If we can find a cheaper table and/or canopy on Craigslist, that would be ideal, but if not I will throw down some cash toward this effort. — MikeIvanov

2010-07-28 14:46:40   Something that's come up a couple of times recently is how the LocalWiki Project relates to DavisWiki, WikiSpot, and so on. Particularly with tabling and fundraising in Davis, folks are interested in how donations to localwiki are going to affect DavisWiki. Are donations to localwiki going to directly benefit daviswiki or the Davis community, or are they solely for the benefit of the pilot communities and, in the long run, other communities that start local wikis down the line? Obviously the new software is going to be a nice effect for the Davis wiki, but my impression is that that's coming out of the Knight News grant. I'm mainly curious about the pledge drive going on right now.

On a totally separate note, two different people have asked about iPhone apps out at the Farmer's Market. Anything in the works? —TomGarberson

"Wiki Spot" is our organization's name. "wikispot.org" is the generic, noncommercial community hosting service we've been providing. LocalWiki is a totally new project, part of our organization, that will likely be the sole focus of the organization from here on out. DavisWiki is legally a part of our organization, too.

The LocalWiki project has two big parts: technical and community. The tech side will be mostly funded through the Knight grant, for now. The community side is unfunded, hence the fundraiser. The community side of the LocalWiki project will focus most all of its efforts on ensuring success in our pilot communities.

Money folks give to us during our fundraiser will go into a fund for LocalWiki-community-stuff. What do we need the money for? We want to allow for travel to pilot communities, help with modest expenses in these communities, develop and distribute educational materials in our communities (and on the net), and fund any non-tech thing we run into. The biggest thing, which we're striving for (and we'll need to raise more money than the 25k, but we are working on that), is to be able to pay a modest, even part-time, wage to someone to act as an outreach coordinator — someone who can answer emails, take phone calls, meet with people, and really guide and help communities be successful.

If we meet our fundraising goal, the Davis Wiki will benefit tremendously. There's a bunch of different ways.

• If we meet our fundraising goal, we'll be more focused on just the technical side of the project and won't have to divide our time up doing outreach ourselves (and with no budget) — this means better, higher-quality software for the Davis Wiki down the road. This also means more time for us to interact and experiment with the Davis Wiki (and with projects near Davis, like using the Sacramento Wiki as an immediate software testbed) community rather than spending our time doing coordination work.

• A vibrant, global movement toward collaborative, community-owned local media is the best way to ensure the Davis Wiki survives the long haul. The LocalWiki project represents the best effort to make that happen. And our fundraiser, around outreach, will have a huge impact.

  In summary, I think the best thing to say to people (because you really only have a few seconds) is— This money will help us make Davis Wiki better!, or/and "This money will help us make the software that powers Davis Wiki better!"

  I'm going to be working on refocusing some of the notes around fundraising to be more Davis-focused. Because the more successful the LocalWiki project is, especially early-on, the better off the Davis Wiki is. —PhilipNeustrom

2010-07-29 08:16:27   Oh, and one more question: any geographic limitations on the pilot communities? Do they need to be within driving distance of Davis, for example? —TomGarberson

• Definitely not. We want to see a diverse set of pilot communities, there are no geographic limitations. —MikeIvanov
• Thanks, Mike. So does that mean we're going to hire one community organizer and ship him/her around between the pilot communities, or are we going to try to get someone active on the ground in each of the communities? —tg
• Both. Pilots can only succeed if there is an active, committed group of local participants doing the work of building the community wiki and getting others involved. Our process of finding pilot communities is really about finding those individuals. And we will work with those folks to make sure they have everything they need.

2011-05-26 18:17:51   Note that there's a board meeting tonight at 8pm. For annoying technical reasons, the conference call is closed (yes, it's not ideal). But if you put anything here (questions, issues, etc), I'll make sure to bring it up. Note that this is the Wiki Spot board, which means it doesn't have much (if anything) to do with the content and culture of Davis Wiki, but instead purely handles the technical and legal plumbing that keeps everything running. In other words, Wiki Spot has nothing to do with the thorny issues of allegations or discounts for wiki reviews — that kind of stuff is totally up to us to figure out as a community. The board just keeps the power bill paid for the server and works on long term plans like Localwiki. Sorry for the late notice; that's my fault. Tom suggested this a day or two ago, and it slipped my mind (I also hoped we'd figure out a better way to do the call). Of course, if it's after 8pm or even the following day, you can always ask and get an answer. —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards, [email protected]

2011-07-12 22:09:30   Hi, I work at Lasting Impressions In Davis CA. It was brought to my attention today that there is some fowl language on the DavisWiki site for Lasting Impressions. I just checked it and indeed there is a post that contains an offensive slang word by Mogitha from July of 2010. How does this get removed, or does it just have to stay there? Thanks for your time. Kind Regards, Beth Davis —Bethers

As stated at the top of this page, the Wiki Spot Board of Directors has nothing to do with the content of Davis Wiki. You may want to ask your question over at Wiki Community/General Discussion. —William Lewis, member of the Wiki Spot Board

Dear Davis Wiki. I appreciate greatly this project. I own a local business and I check in on the Wiki regularly. The good news is that more people come to my website through the Davis Wiki than Yelp. The bad news is that people are not contributing comments or content to this Wiki nearly as much as they were a couple years ago. Go through one business page after another and you will see a great decline in comments over the last 18 months. As a result, I'm worried about the long term viability of this project. As a side note, I was also involved in the Experimental College on the UCD campus, which was a great community institution in Davis for over forty years. In December 2013, the EC was suspended by the ASUCD—which is probably effectively closed. The reason the EC was closed, in a quick summary, is that they didn't adapt and they were poorly managed. Please don't let this happen to the Wiki. The Wiki needs to wake up. Do they have a board of directors? Why isn't there a Davis News of the Day section at the top of the front page? There needs to be a campaign to get people to contribute their comments. Do you have statistics/metrics on how many comments are being added each day? These should be readily available so that anyone who is concerned about this project can be aware of its situation. Please don't fall behind.

• There has been an ongoing, long term effort to launch a new wiki soon. See localwiki.org for more information. Or visit http://sacwiki.org/ -jw