Ideas for the 4th General Meeting

Please, add your ideas here. If there is no section for your idea, please, add it.

Organizational

General secretary?

• We need at least a person who would take care about daily jobs in our community; i.e. we need a secretary. I think that it shouldn't be one person (first of all, because it is hard to work alone), so I suggest a three persons secretariat. Also, I think that people in secretariat should rotate every three months (maybe more, maybe less, we should talk about it). --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• What involves the "daily work" of the general secretariat?

--Libertà 14:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

General meetings on the wiki?

• I think that our IRC General Meetings are not so useful because not all people have enough of free time at the particular moment. We have a wiki and I think that we should use it. According to my experience, I suggest three-phases wiki General Meetings: (1) one week for gathering proposals, (2) one week for discussions about proposals and (3) one week for voting (if voting is needed). --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with this and think it will be very useful. What sort of voting are we talking about, however? I'm very much opposed to majoritarian politics... Beta M 07:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Voting and members

• I agree with this and think it will be very useful. What sort of voting are we talking about, however? I'm very much opposed to majoritarian politics... Beta M 07:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think that simple majority is a good solution. Consensus-like system should be good enough (I think that 80% majority is OK). But, as I remember, we didn't have any non-consensual decision through our almost three years of history ;) Also, a good questions are: who is voting?, which people are "us"? We should define at least a person per language who would be responsible for new people; or we should make some other mechanism... --Milos Rancic 08:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• I think that the rampART collective constitution deals with that quite well. When you simply use their services you are a visitor, if you want to join you simply have to begin participating and on the second participation you are a part of it. Now they are quite weird, as it doesn't actually work this way in real life... but i think it would be a good thing. Let's say that if a person has at least 2 days of contritubions (whether that is articles or any other sort of contributions) the person is a part of the collective. Beta M 11:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I learned one good lesson while participating on Serbian Wikipedia and Wikimedia Serbia: Until we were small and unknown project, we were very good. When we started to go to public, we became an easy target for people who were trying to heal their frustrations there... I don't want to talk a lot here about that experience, but I don't participate there since April. So, the point is to find a good defense positions for the community. Even we have much more similar political positions then any community on Wikipedia has, I know destructive anarchists (and what about non-anarchists who are willing to spend a lot of time to destruct one anarchist project?). So, if we want to have such fast adoption in the community, we need a fast exclusion, too... But, I think that better idea is to find some slower and safer method for adopting new members. Some of the ideas for thinking are:
    1. Local adoption and local rules. This may mean, but not necessarily (and maybe better not) language-based local communities. In general, this should be a model of affinity groups (btw, we don't have that article on eng:). So, we should constitute some number of affinity groups (for the beginning, we may say that we have as many affinity groups as languages Anarchopedia has) and to leave to the particular groups a way of adoption of new members (which would become members of Anarchopedian community, too). Also, we should find some way for relatively fast recognizing of affinity groups: a procedure of one week voting after some group express desire to become Anarchopedian affinity group? (We should talk a lot more about this issue. This paragraph is just a scratch...) --Milos Rancic 06:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
    2. The crucial thing in the world full of hierarchies is to find a solution between openness and integrity of our own community. So, the previous model (above) may be a good one, but, for sure, it is not the only one. So, we should talk about possible models of organizing our community. --Milos Rancic 06:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Publicity of work

• There is one more thing: If we have something which shouldn't be decided publicly (I know people who don't like to work publicly ;) ), then such decisions may be made on IRC. However, the main idea is to relax IRC decisions because of the main reason (see above). --Milos Rancic 08:06, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm for public decisions for things that are public. For example the discussion on Anarchist Point of View must be public... but the discussion how we pay for something that needs to be paid for needs to be private if it names some people or something. Beta M 11:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Time of the next session

• In that sense, I suggest that we make 4th General Meeting on IRC (for example, at Sunday, 22nd July) just to delegate three persons for temporary secretariat who would prepare the 5th General Meeting on wiki. --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• So, when would we have another session? For sure, after the a-camp, but when? Maybe to wait people to back from a-camp and to decide then? --Milos Rancic 06:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Transparency

There will eventually be some major problems if Anarchopedia doesn't become more transparent. There needs to be a clear explanation, a single place where all the agreed rules are listed. At the very most it should be two places, one for the Anarchopedia as the whole, and one for the particular language. It should not be like Wikipedia where users learn the rules slowly as the time goes by, as this creates preferential treatment for the users that have already been a part of the project, and as such is in fact a form of hidden hierarchy. The rules that must be listed (whatever we decide these rules should say):

• Point of view on Anarchopedia
• Giving people software access priviledges
• Blocking people for vandalism
• How to propose changes to the rules

Beta M 15:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Please see Anarchopedia:Policy Beta M 16:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Finances

• We need to gather some money for hosting and domains... However, Libre should tell more where we are standing. --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
  • how do we organise the donations's data backup ? do i have to put that in clear (and the fact that all peoples can see it) or do i have to put the list in private just for anarchopedian peoples ? or do we put it on public/private anarchopedian-lists ? i think names don't have to be enounced in the donation's list, or maybe just pseudo (but no one could have put their pseudo when they have send their donation). problem is that, like i am the treasurer, it would need maybe some controls on money which go on accounts... you can trust in me, don't quiet. But if we were two peoples to verify money account (paypal, others), it would be best, maybe. -- Libre 17:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
    • I think that our finances should be transparent. This means that we should announce publicly how much money do we have and how do we spend them. People who gave money should have possibility to decide would they do that anonymously or not, but we should put the list of donations (like: person1 -- 10 EUR, anon1 -- 10 EUR, anon2 -- 20 EUR...). --Milos Rancic 18:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Yes, it is a good idea to have more than one person as treasurer. I shouldn't be that, Beta_M is willing to take a responsibility of general secretary, X doesn't like to deal with banks, so Rev is the only person on my mind now (however, maybe we have other people who are able/willing to be treasurers). --Milos Rancic 18:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
      • In fact, i think too that it must be transparent. But i thank with some last discussions, that there were a problem with money transparence... I've put donations's list here. -- Libre

Technical issues

• Anarchopedia is taking a lot of Tachanka's CPU (sometimes 70%). The only relevant solution is to find some money and get more resources... See finances for details ;) --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

  This is a critical problem, I think. CPU usage is high but still we are not serving many pages per second. Our number of users is limited by the number of pages we can serve. I have enabled this page via the apache configuration, to estimate any speed improvements. Possible solutions:

  1. Compiling PHP or trying other PHP code optimization. (using php5-xcache meant a 3x speed up, but we are still below 2 pages served per second). More optimization should be possible by not compiling separately the code for each language-based anarchopedia.
  2. Installing and configuring an HTTP caching proxy like squid (as was used in the past), this should speed up especially the requests from search engine bots and the occasional readers, leaving more space for contributors.
  3. Rate limiting the requests from search engine bots.
  4. Changing from Mediawiki to a different, faster software (may not be easy).
  5. Trying a different version of Mediawiki.
  6. Hardware upgrade (eg. more RAM)

  ~Rev 22 14:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• We should set up a standard regarding the icons we use for certain actions of categories. This should be set up global, since the upload is on meta. This way we won’t fill up the hdds with useless images, and everything will become way more accessible. --Blindattack 08:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
• People upload images with lowercase first letter... this makes them inaccessible (Image:black cat.png) and this in turn leads to duplication (Image:99051.jpg), can this be changed in any way... possibly just by making a note on the upload page saying that it's important to keep the first letter capital. Beta M 09:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Server

I'm not content with our server-place in USA. I also dislike a place in Europe and prefer a place in south/middle-america. How about Mexico (in example vientos.info) or Venezuela? --X 17:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ideas

• I opened test phase of "Anarchopedian blog". I think that we should talk about it at the linked page (at the moment nothing is there; I'll write something about it, but anyone who has some questions, ideas, suggestions etc. about this issue -- let (s)he feel free to start the page. The main idea of the blog is to gather community. --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

  Maybe you already know about this, maybe you don't. I've just found it now. http://anarchoblogs.protest.net/ Blindattack 21:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

  Good point, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel when the resources (specifically 'human resources') are not that great in our project yet. Beta M 09:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

  I can't disagree with you on that but I think that the main goal of a blog, for a group or collective, is to get a way of communicating what's around, what's being done, to invite to participation,... I think it could bring the project to more real-life-connectedness (new word) - samarre (french AP)

• Also, I think that we should start a project "people.anarchopedia.org", which should be a social networking site for anarchists, which would allow categorization by interests, ideas etc. What others think about it? I made a link to the page, so anyone interested in such project may add her/his comments there. --Milos Rancic 19:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

  I don't know if this is such a good idea. I understand you are trying to get more people on anarchopedia, and this will definitely get them, but it won’t get the type of people that would actually contribute to anarchopedia. They’ll basically just fill up their profile pages with useless junk, and use up the space on the servers for nothing. --Blindattack 08:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, this is always a problem. Maybe we should introduce blog now and to see how it is going with that... If our experience with blogs would be good enough (i.e. we got some new editors), maybe social public networking site wouldn't be so bad idea. I think that such things are needed by the online anarchist community and that we should try to make it. --Milos Rancic 11:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

  I wish to disagree with this. Let's think about who will actually blog. Most likely it will be only some of the people who are already on anarchopedia, it will not bring up more people. Social networking however, does help. The problem is that it needs to be very well throught through, and it should be something well done or not done at all. I think this topic has been discussed on #anarchopedia before. Beta M 09:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Projects space

I would like to add space on meta wiki that would be used on contact between the different apedias. A page where different apedias could explain their projects would be very helpful to understand others and maybe inspire from what they create. - User:Samarre-fr

Iʼll definitely second this proposal. I think that there needs to be enough autonomy for the decisions made in the different communities, but others should know of what is going on. Beta M 10:33, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Are the projects saved?

This one will maybe be answered without needing a general assembly, but I still have this question unresolved: are the projects saved somewhere so if the site is hacked, internet goes down or whatever, the texts will be available? - samarre

ThreadMode

I think that having people discuss articles in http://uesmod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ThreadMode is a great idea, and have articles look more like MeatballWiki-like discussions than "articles" which seems too much like NPOV to me. I believe we should include, welcome all points of view (except if they are to promote spam), but this view may be a bit flawed when it comes to authoritarians or people on the "side" of neutrality. But I think that things would be better with ThreadMode, not DocumentMode. Another thing is that we could eliminate talk pages and user talk pages (because user pages and mainspace pages will be discussions) which will save some server space. --Anonymity (aka Ionas_Freeman) 22:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't like that idea. There are already thousands upon thousands of forums for anarchist discussion. There are also wikis which have "All Points of View" policy. But currently there is nothing like Anarchopedia. If we will try to make this project like all the others, we will lose the diversity and any reason for people to be here. Beta M 13:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Protection

I believe that protection of pages should be a last resort, there should be a limited number of pages protected. Also protecting talk pages should not be allowed, as it disallows people from expressing something. I think that this should be one of the policies. Beta M 14:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Anonymity

IP addresses in database

I am currently working on the simple way to make the IP addresses stored in the database almost useless to the attacker who manages to get ahold of our database (either through social engineering or other means). My plan is to hash all the IP addresses before they get stored in the database. This way we can still compare if two IP addresses are in fact the same (allowing us to check for sockpoppetry, or to block spammers), but makes it more expensive to track down the person from the hash in the database. Negative aspects include that i'll probably have to make a slight hack in the code of MediaWiki (i will announce before doing it, and will definitely back everything up prior to that) which will make it more difficult to update to newer versions (as the hack will have to be replecated). The database aspect will be done with the trigger on mysql tables, so that change will be seemless. Beta M 09:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

freekiwiki

Please accept my apologies for the slowness of the delivery of the workable freekiwiki, i am working on it, and hope to have a release which can work propperly in synchrony with MediaWiki. I do not have the release schedule, and cannot say when i will be done, as i am performing a major redesign at the moment. Beta M 09:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Compatibility etc.

The only thing which I would like to be implemented in all changes is the compatibility with MediaWiki code. If we don't have such compatibility, we wouldn't be able to upgrade MediaWiki, which usually includes a very basic things, like anti-spam prevention. The best way for doing so is to make an extension for MediaWiki. --Milos Rancic 10:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, we should be possible to see if two addresses belongs to the same C class. I think that such solution was made by IRC daemon (on irc.indymedia.org). In brief, particular numbers inside of IPv4 notation should be encrypted. --Milos Rancic 10:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have been writing a lengthy response to your post disagreeing with you, and realised that my IP hashing project won't help. If two people use the same IP they will still show up identical after the hash, and if the person can use proxy, nothing stops one from using proxy in the different C class. So here-by i am stopping the hash project. (see my proposal now below) Beta M 14:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

New CheckUser interface (our is very old) may see client software, too (or, at least, how client software introduces themselves to web server). Very often way for making (stupid) vandalism is to use dynamic IP address of one provider, which is usually inside of the same C class. So, having some kind of sum for each IP address may be very useful. Or, at least, having a separate sum for the first three numbers of an IP address (it is not so simple to crack 2^48 of combinations even with known algorithm). --Milos Rancic 17:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Note, also, that one thing is encryption of MediaWiki database and the other thing is encryption of Apache logs. Without solving both things, the problem is not solved. --Milos Rancic 10:35, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Question: For how long do we keep the logs? Would it be possible to set up a simple script that would wipe the logs from January on Chinese New Year, and logs from February on April Fools? The same can be done with the IP addresses in the databases. I mean if after a month we still don't know if the person is a vandal or not, we won't learn that afterwards. I am not talking about IPs which were blocked, or even IPs of the users who aren't logged in, but rather the IPs which are stored for the logged in users in the recentchanges table. Beta M 14:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Generally, until the disk is full (or until Anarchopedia is moving on some other server) and after that an Anarchopedian with good enough Internet connection and enough of space on their hard disk is backupping logs. My personal opinion about logs is that they are our history and that they should be kept somewhere out of servers (encrypted, whatever). However, if dominant opinion is to delete logs, it is OK for me (I understand privacy concerns). --Milos Rancic 17:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I also agree that we need to be compatible, but I cannot program, therefore, I don't think I can help. --Anon. | Talk (@ 23:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)