RationalWiki:RationalWiki Foundation/2011 04 03 minutes

Minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting April 3rd, 2011.

April 2011 RationalWiki Foundation board meeting

April 3rd, 2011 19:00 – 21:00 UTC (note: all times below are EDT = UTC-4)

Meeting called by Tmtoulouse

Note: all votes unless otherwise noted were unanimous.

Introduction

The meeting started at 19:03 with all present on Skype (Armondikov arrived at 19:27).

The board approved the minutes for the August meeting.

Founder trustee position

Tmtoulouse presented the clause in the by-laws that allow the board of trustees to appoint him to hold a position on the board. After a brief discussion verifying that he wanted it the board unanimously approved offering him the position and he accepted.

Foundation officers

Tmtoulouse informed the board that there were two officer positions that needed to be filled. The first is the chair of the board that must be elected from the existing board members and the second was the position of secretary that could be anyone.

Gooniepunk2010 expressed interest in the position of chair. A brief discussion was had and then the board unanimously approved him as the new chair effective at the end of the current meeting.

The board briefly discussed options for the secretary position. It was brought up that ListenerX had said he had some interest in the position after the board elections early that year. The board asked Tmtoulouse to contact him to see if he was still interested.

Filling the position was put on hold and Tmtoulouse offered to fulfill the secretary's job in the meantime.

Financial report and fund raising

Tmtoulouse presented the current financial status of the Foundation. He reported that the current accounts held about $475 and that the monthly budget was about $130.

He reported that the January fundraiser raised about $900.

Fund raising for the next quarter was discussed and the board decided to set the goal of $1000. They authorized Tmtoulouse to start a paypal based fundraiser to run up to 4 weeks or until $1000 was raised whichever came first.

RationalWikiWiki

Tmtoulouse presented that current technical specs of the Foundations computer hosting, informing the board that RationalWikiWiki is hosted on a smaller virtual server currently used for automated processes. He informed the board that the estimated cost of hosting RationalWikiWiki was about $15 a month.

Gooniepunk2010 expressed interest in taking over control of RationalWikiWiki and wanted to present the information to the RationalWikiWiki community.

The board agreed that the foundation would continue to host RationalWikiWiki if they paid for their hosting costs, fund raising for payment would be left up to the RationalWikiWiki community.

Russian RationalWiki

Tmtoulouse proposed to the board to create a separate mediawiki instance to host a Russian RationalWiki. He informed the board the costs for such an endeavor were minimal and that Bertran had agreed to administer the site.

Several concerns were raised about making sure the material on the site was appropriate, and the validity of online translators to parse to content was discussed. It was also decided that a Russian RationalWiki should maintain the values of the RationalWiki website.

The board then approved creating a ru.rationalwiki.org website, and attempting to integrate it as tightly as possible with the RationalWiki website.

Additional topics

A brief discussion was had about officially recognizing Eira as the main "meat space" representative of the foundation as she resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was agreed that for now specific authorization could be used on a case-by-case basis.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 20:53