Introduction for new Board members

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DRAFT

This is a short New Board member survival guide.

Logo Wikimedia Belgium

Welcome and congratulations as a Board member of Wikimedia Belgium!

You are appointed by the General Assembly (GA) to represent Wikimedia Belgium, so you are responsible for your own, and the other board members' actions. After 2 years you will be evaluated by the GA, and possibly re-elected. The chairman needs to be re-elected every year.

Internet domain

Our internet domain is wikimedia.be.

This is used for the web site, the e-mail domain, and to identify the Google Suite user accounts. It must be re-validated every year (by paying the invoice from the ISP).

Board members

For the current board members, see Board.

Previous board members automatically get the title of Advisor to the Board, unless they object, or when there is a good reason not to do so.

The board member Alphabet

Indirectly, the board alphabet is a consequence of our motto: Engaging people in free knowledge

A: Attention, Affiliation, Advisor, Activity
B: Board member, Budget
C: Collaboration, Community oriented, Confidence, Contacts, Cultural, Communication, Chapter, Check
D: Documented, Democratic, Double check, Diversity
E: Empathy, Effective, Efficient, Enthousiasme
F: Feeling, Flexibility, Freedom
G: Group oriented, Geographically
H: Holistic
I: Inclusive, Identity, Interested
J: 
K: Knowledge
L: Listen, Learning, Logic
M: Motivating, Member oriented, MediaWiki
N: Neutral
O: Open, Organise
P: Partners, People, Public, Polyglot, Projects, Protecting
R: Reporting, Responsible
S: Strategy, Structured, Simple
T: Trustworthy, Transparent
U: Understand, Universal
V: Values, Volunteers, Verify
W: Welcoming, Wiki, Wikimedia, Wikipedia
Y: Youth

Instant messaging

We try not to use SMS (unhandy), unless in emergency situations. We would rather like to use WhatsApp, Telegram for fast (internal) communication.

For the general public, we use our official web site www.wikimedia.be, Facebook,Twitter, or e-mail (announcements, newsletters), preferably via the info wikimedia.be account.

We use the organisation wiki to post more technical, organisational, project, and transparent information.

You can use video conferencing to contact Wikimedia Belgium, or you can use [1]

Use of G-Suite

For the affiliate administration we use the standard tools of the Google Suite for non-profit organisations available as a web service. For most tools there exist an equivalent Android app. Certain other compatible clients can be used e.g. Outlook and Thunderbird as e-mail client.

We have chosen for G-Suite, because:

We can manage it within our team
It is safe, stable, cheap
Easy to learn, to configure
Most of us can use without any problem
It is accessible from non-Windows platforms
Microsoft documents can be imported and exported
It is GDPR-compliant (important, and mandatory!)

Main functions

Application	Modules	Usage
Calendar	Private, board, projects, admin, public¹	Planning
Gmail	Personal address, distribution lists (groups)	e-mail
Google Docs	Documents, spreadsheets, presentations	Collaboration, preparation of events. Good alternative for etherpad
Google Drive	Folders and documents²	Manage and share private and public documents
Google Keep	Can be used to share simple documents	Private notes
Google Meet	Conferencing tool	Can be used with third parties

For some modules there exist a Windows client (File manager, Outlook).
Linux is supported as well
Most tools have an equivalent Android app
Other modules exist; we might want to discover them

Administrator: Geert

Notes:

Public calendar: https://wikimedia.be/calendar (readonly)
Use PDF documents for interoperability, and non-repudiation (all Google Docs tools allow export to PDF)

Use of e-Mail

Our primary intra-board communication channel is board wikimedia.be (for internal communication within the Board). It can be reached by third parties.

There is a spam-reporting filter. The administrator is notified about spam messages.

Our official mail account is info wikimedia.be.

Administrative email can go to admin wikimedia.be (government, utility and service invoices).

There are multiple types of G-Suite-users:

E-mail tips

One subject = one mail -> more easy to track discussions; start a new message for a 2nd subject
Limit the number of recipients (need to know, to act)
Avoid mixing internal and external recipients (avoid miss-communication, information breach)
E-mail is not always the best communication channel, consider using an URL to a wiki-page, or a (private) Google doc via URL
Be polite and correct
Put people only in TO when they need to answer, require some action, or must be notified
When you are in CC you do not need to answer, unless you see a good reason
Use BCC when doing a large mailing to people that do not know each other (privacy) => e-mail address is a GDPR data element
Otherwise, use BCC sparingly
Spell check... be polite

Sometimes instant messaging, or a simple phone call, is more practical and time efficient but they have no legal value. E-mail can generate unintended misunderstandings depending on people but it can have legal value.

Try to use both e-mail and wiki depending on your purpose. The wiki has a history for each page and each version of page is automatically kept. New people can also instantly read or update the messages. You do not automatically receive notifications when the wiki is modified, unless you mark the page in your watchlist and subscribe to the updates.

E-mail subject prefixes

Useful... the recipient immediately knows what to do with the e-mail.

Prefix	Meaning	Prefix (urgent)	Meaning
I:	information	UI:	Urgent information
A:	Action	UA:	Urgent action
Q:	Question	UQ:	Urgent question

Use of the web sites

Private official web site

Official website: https://wikimedia.be (please do not use http) for general 1:M communication.

Restricted access for update; to be read by the general public, polyglot.

Wikimedia Foundation

The Foundation has lots of web sites, many of them being important for Affiliates.

Public social platforms

We use many different social platforms, to inform our users.

Transparent community communication: be.wikimedia.org
Twitter: (nl) /(en) https://twitter.com/WikimediaBE or (fr) https://twitter.com/WikimediaBE_fr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WikimediaBelgium
Telegram: https://web.telegram.org/#/im?p=@WikimediaBE (https://t.me/WikimediaBE)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wikimedia-belgium

Wikimedia distribution lists

You need to register on https://lists.wikimedia.org to send a message, or to receive messages.

Mailinglist	Usage	Access	Traffic	Coverage
wikimedia-l	Worldwide Wikimedia list (all communities, affiliates, projects)	Public read	High volumes	Worldwide
wikimediabe-l	Wikimedia Belgium	Need an account to read	Low volumes	Belgium

Responsibilities

Keep in mind that in all your (inter)actions you represent the national organisation. You are responsible towards the other Board members, Foundation, our members, the government, and the general public.

Board member Roles and responsibilities

In case of bad behaviour, Board members can be suspended, or demoted.