Special projects committee (2006-2009)

The special projects committee (SPCom) has been created by a Resolution Special projects resolution of the Board along with other Wikimedia committees.

Scope

Distribution of Wikimedia project's content (DVD, Printed, mirrors...), with or without partners (Wikijunior grant, publishing company)
Coordination of Wikimedia projets and possible partner projects to share and connect content (e.g. Internet Archive, runeberg, libraries, dictionary data for Wiktionary, movies and images for commons, geographical data......)
Coordination between other committees and researchers to analyse the projects, in particular when technical or legal issues are involved (e.g. logs, stats......)
Coordination of projects between outside agents and the Foundation for technical or financial benefits of parties (e.g. feeds to mirror sites, which pay the Foundation regularly for our materials, answers.com, yahoo search)
Assistance to improve/finance/start a new project proposal (wikiversity, wikidata...), with implication of outside parties or not
Incubation of other projects, new concepts, new events, and ideas, to be handled to other committees if considered interesting (eg, a conference in arab country next year to event committee)

Organisation

The committee was created on the 15th of January 2006 to make strategic plans and take care of issues listed in the scope. It will be primarily made of one committee, with subcommittees being added as need arise. The creation (and removal) of sub-committees will be decided by the majority of the SP committee.

Main committee membership

The committee initially consists of : Anthere, Jakob, Danny, Aurevilly, Oscar, Cormac, Andrew Lih, Muriel, SJ.

The committee will comprise at least 9 voting members and an unlimited number of non-voting advisers.

New members (voting) or new advisors (non voting) may be proposed by current committee members or can ask to join here or on the SP mailing list. New members and new advisers will be accepted in the committee if they receive support from at least 75% of current members. Any member or adviser may be removed per board of Wikimedia Foundation request. A member or adviser may resign at any time by notifying the committee of this intent in writing.

The committee will meet at least once every month. The presence of at least 2/3 of members at a meeting will constitute a quorum. A resolution may be taken during a real-life meeting, or an irc meeting, or by electronic means, if at least 50% of all voting members support the resolution.

Subcommittees membership

A subcommittee will be proposed by at least one of the main committee member, who will necessarily be part of the subcommittee. For a sub-committee to be created, this initiator will propose a goal and basic rules of operation (membership, communication means and decision making process).

Depending on subcommittees, membership may be entirely open or should meet the approval of the committee or should meet the approval of the committee+board.

Resolutions

Actions effected by the committee are to take the form of a resolution. Resolutions may be proposed by a member or adviser, or by a an individual from outside the committee with the support of a member or adviser, and must be seconded by a member before being put to a vote. A resolution will be considered adopted once a majority of members has voted in favor.

Communication tools

A public mailing list : spcommittee-lATwikimedia.org (moderated membership. Public archives)
A private mailing list :
If you wish to contact one of the committee members on an individual basis, use their talk page in their project of origin (see links above) or use the email feature on the wiki.

To do

Set up language project start-up subcommittee. Who should be on it and how should it operate?
Facilitate Wikiversity proposal. Should it become a fully-fledged Wikimedia project? (lead by Cormac)
Create a business development sub-committee (Anthere)

(feel free to add new items to this list)

Committee procedures

establish a more-or-less-fixed date for IRC meetings
draft basic procedures (voting, removing and adding members)