Working Group Minutes/MWG 2020-12-04

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

The Membership Working Group met on 2020-12-04 at 2000 UTC via Big Blue Button

Participants

  • Michael Spreng (datendelphin)
  • Thomas Barris (Thomas)
  • Steve Friedl (SJFriedl)
  • Jonathan Witkoski (jonwit)
  • Guillaume Rischard (Stereo)

It was noted for the record that on Aug 6 2020, an informal group met to discuss logistics of the Active Contributor program, but it was not a meeting to make policy and no minutes were kept.

Acceptance of Minutes

Steve moved acceptance of the minutes from the 2020-01-19 meeting, Michael seconded, approved unanimously.

Thanks to withdrawing members

MWG also extends their thanks to Paul Norman and Joost Schouppe, who are withdrawing from the MWG to attend to their board duties. We're grateful for their long service.

Membership Renewal Date handling

Thomas led a discussion about how gaps in membership due to grace periods are handled with respect to election eligibility and how these are represented in CiviCRM. Members in their grace periods are not eligible to vote, and CiviCRM adds a bit of confusion by maintaining two fields: "Member Since" and "Start Date".

Jonathan Witcoski joined the meeting at 20:19 UTC

MWG will use the same renewal logic for Active Contributor memberships as with paid renewals with the membership taking effect the day after the previous membership ran out, though Active Contributor memberships will have the option of essentially restarting a new membership effective on approval of their status - this distinction might matter for the purposes of voting eligibility.

Within CiviCRM, MWG will use the "Member since" date only as a general notion of how long the member has been in the OSMF ecosystem, with "Start Date" being authoritative for voting eligibility decision.

MWG Workload

Thomas discussed workload of processing Active Contributor applications, which requires that MWG perform a number of verifications (OSM Username and contribution status). The workload is relatively minor now, but it was substantial in the runup to the voting eligibility cutoff.

Efficiencies could be improved substantially by adding hooks to CiviCRM to handle some of this automatically, and MWG is seeking subject matter expertise to assist in this integration.

This will be especially helpful as OSMF engages in outreach to under-represented mapping communities, inviting them to apply under this program.

Michael will send a note to the OSMF Board noting our high workload and asking to coordinate any new initiatives prior to initiating.

Software Dispute Resolution Panel

OSMF board member Allan Mustard requested that MWG nominate one of our group to participate in the Software Dispute Resolution Panel; as Ilya has expressed interest, MWG nominates him.

Practices for conducting MWG online business

Guillaume joined the meeting at 20:45 UTC.

The group had an extensive discussion about best practices for conducting these meetings, with an eye to convenience and (especially) privacy of any sensitive member information that might be part of an MWG discussion.

MWG had traditionally used IRC, but as this bridges to Matrix, there are concerns about data retention not under OSMF control, so other options, including hosting of a communications server of whatever protocol is appropriate.

No decision was made, leaving it for further study.

The meeting was adjourned at 19:15 UTC; SJFriedl recorded the minutes.

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