West Bengal Wikimedians/Annual General Meeting/2020

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West Bengal Wikimedians
User Group

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The Annual General Meeting 2020 or the first Annual General Meeting of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) has been convened as per Article 23 of the Bylaws of the user group.

Logistics

Venue: Calcutta Bidyabhavan, 36C, Shri Aurobindo Sarani Road, Raja Nabakrishna Street, Sovabazar, Kolkata, West Bengal 700005
Date: 5 January, 2020.
Time: Representative members are to attend at 10 a.m and General members at 2 p.m.
Sponsor: WBG will reimburse all participants for local travel within West Bengal. Accommodation will not be provided and reimbursed.

Representative Members who are expected in AGM

Confirmed participants

(Please confirm by adding # ~~~~ below.)

Representative members

Bodhisattwa (talk) 13:57, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 14:42, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
IndrajitDas 14:59, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Gangulybiswarup (talk) 15:34, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tito Dutta (talk) 18:16, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Atudu (talk) 02:22, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
খাঁ শুভেন্দু (talk) 18:36, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

General members

Sorry, I will not be present

Hrishikes (talk) 17:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Draft agenda

Selection of Representative Members and Representative Committee members for the year 2020 as per bylaw.
Review of the user group activities in 2019. What went well and what didn't went well.
Planning for the user group activities for 2020.
Review of user group budget allotted for 2019 and financial planning for 2020.

Participants

Representative Members (from 10 am)

General Members (from 2 pm)

Minutes

This page is currently a draft. More information pertaining to this may be available on the talk page.

Translation admins: Normally, drafts should not be marked for translation.

The meeting started with by welcome message from Titodutta, Gangulybiswarup and Bodhisattwa as Representative Committee (RC) members.

Titodutta explained what an Annual General Meeting (AGM) is. He emphasized that although West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) is not a registered society or a company, it is following its Bylaws seriously and conducting the annual general meeting.

He also explained what an AGM is not. He stressed that the meeting is not an workshop or a place of criticism of the past. He reminded the participants that meeting is not a place to discuss wider movement or activity of other organizations.

Photo policy was explained. No participants objected on taking photographs.

Participants were requested to object if they feel, some part of the minutes should not be recorded or documented officially.

Bodhisattwa declared the AGM as valid citing Article 28 of the Bylaws of the user group as more than 50% of the RC and more than 50 % of the Representative Members (RM) were present in the meeting.

Some additional agenda were proposed by participants and included in the meeting agenda as per absolute majority decision. They were -

How to support members (financial and non-financial)
Social media Standard Operating Procedure of representative members
Distribution of responsibilities

Bodhisattwa reminded of the timeline of submission of different reports of the user group like annual activity report and fund report. He explained about these reports and how these impact WBG.

He informed about the current status of different user group projects and break-down of the money spent on them. He informed everyone that around Rs. 50,000 has been spent in these projects till January and still Rs. 90,000 could not be spent. He also reminded that January 31, 2020 is the last date of the rapid grant period and informed everyone that few more projects will be done in January. Bodhisattwa explained that most of the unfinished projects were due to the months long Indian General Election, 2019 and the recent nation-wide unrest with respect to CAA, which might cause safety issue for the participants.

Tito stated that this is a bad impression for the user group to not spend money within timeline. He stressed that WMF Rapid Grants team should be informed about this issue beforehand and request rollover of the remaining funds for next few months. It was accepted by the participants that this has been a new experience for the user group and from next time, due care will be taken only to include those projects which are practically possible to execute within timeline.

Reporting of financial situation was accepted by the participants with absolute majority.

Plan for next year was sought from each participants.

Indrajitdas said he needs a modest infrastructure for video documentation next year. He also said that he has a plan to conduct a photo-competition specific to Kolkata Municipal Corporation heritage buildings, a Wikidata label-a-thon and a Commons workshop.
Titodutta stressed on newsletter and regular meet-up.
Jayantanth said that he will continue his work on scanning and content release. He also has a plan to help translate Wikipedia related core policy..
Pmlineditor stressed on regular offline/online meetup
Gangulybiswarup says next year he may plan for GLAM related activities next year.
Atudu has a plan to conduct Wiki Loves Food competition before September
Bodhisattwa that user group will organize WLM again next year, including a plan to organize a datathon on heritage structures of West Bengal and Wiki Exploration projects. He emphasised to work on GLAM.
খাঁ শুভেন্দু said about organizing an article writing contest on Bengali Wikipedia.
Titodutta reminded of Wikisource contest and Wikidata WikiProject West Bengal, which were missed.

Indrajitdas suggested that existing representative members should decide even if a new member fulfills the criteria to join RM, which primarily Jayantanth and Gangulybiswarup opposed arguing RM is not meant for such power. Titodutta said that any suggestion which requires change in Bylaws should be placed in wiki portal, where RM can discuss and vote for the decision and as this particular suggestion also aims to change the Bylaws, it should be placed in such a way. Everybody agreed including the proposer.

Bodhisattwa explained about the membership of WBG.

Bodhisattwa read the criteria to become a RM from Article 10 of the Bylaws. He informed the participants that খাঁ শুভেন্দু has been blocked in English Wikipedia since March 7, 2019 and thus according to Article 10.6, unfortunately he cannot remain in the RM until he is unblocked. RC and RM agreed with absolute majority and by that decision খাঁ শুভেন্দু is no longer considered as Representative Member (RM).

Bodhisattwa also discussed about the representative membership of Satdeep Gill considering his lesser involvement in user group activities in any capacity. It was acknowledged by Titodutta and Bodhisattwa that Satdeep Gill is involved in idea-level discussion about user group. It was decided by the participants with absolute majority to request him to involve more in user group activities for next year as representative member.

All other existing representative members passed the criteria as per Bylaws and was selected again for this year.

Existing RC passed the criteria as per Bylaws and was selected again this year.

Titodutta suggested two changes in Bylaws and upon consensus from all participants, agreed to put the following points to be discussed on-wiki.

Ensure diversity in RC.
Take decision on how to select RC from more than 5 candidates who fulfill the criteria to become RC
Lower criteria to become RC

Titodutta suggested to approach suitable persons and get at least 2 honorary members within next year.

Lunch Break was taken at 1 pm.

4 General Members joined the meeting at 2 pm.

2nd half started with discussion on getting a venue for WBG events. Titodutta explained about the procedure to approach NUJS. He also said that Harriet Vidyasagar will be approached to find a free venue. It was also explained that meetups do not require proper venue.

Regarding running newsletter, blogs or social media promotion, which was much needed for the user group as user group activities, how impactful maybe are still unnoticed in Wikimedia world. It was concluded that volunteers are not expected to spend their valuable time on this work and thus a paid person is required to do that. It was decided to approach CIS-A2K to provide support on this.

Importance for SOP for social media was discussed. It was acknowledged that RC and RM should express their personal opinions in social media in a modest way thinking in mind that they are the face of the user group. It was suggested by Titodutta that RC and RM can declare a disclaimer in their posts that their opinions in the posts were absolutely personal and not related to WMG in any way. He also suggested that RC and RM should not add any affiliation about WBG in their profile, if they decide to post strong controversial opinions on religion, politics etc from that profile. There was not a concrete conclusion about the SOP in the meeting.

It was also discussed that members should share responsibilities of UG activities. As per the discussion, the responsibilities and the members responsible are as follows

Maintenance of WBG website by Jayantanth
Facebook promotion by খাঁ শুভেন্দু
Finance by RC
Blogpost by Amitabha Gupta
Monthly call by Tarunsamanta
Offline meetup by Tarunsamanta and Pinakpani
Infrastructure Coordination by Bodhisattwa
Reporting by project leaders and Bodhisattwa

The meeting was concluded by Titodutta and Atudu.

Group photographs of the participants were taken.