Wikimedia Belgium Infrastructure
This page is a brainstorm organised in 2014 about how we organise our infrastructre as ^^Wikimedia Belgium$$.
To do[edit]
- Find an official address to register the association (checking the feasibility of FKAGEU, who rent a co-working desk in Brussels).
Done - Gain control of the wikimedia.be domain and set up @wikimedia.be email accounts Done
- Compile a list of necessary ad materials and merchandise, design them, find financing and order them (business cards, banners, give-aways) Done
- Find a venue for General Assemblies Done
- Compile a list of possible venues and establish relationship with their owners for different event types and projects (so we can help volunteers when they wish to organise something - venue scouting is usually one of the more time consuming tasks)
Doing… - Website concept Done
- Procure building of website Done
- Mailserver procurement Done
Mailserver offers[edit]
@wikimedia.be mails are hosted by Google for Non-profit organisations. 
Done
Website design & functionality[edit]
We choose for a Drupal solution. Done
Requirements[edit]
Brainstorming[edit]
Please answer each of the questions below, and add your comments
1) what is our website for
- a) public facing interface
- member recruitement
- announcement of events
- invitations
- others ( add/ describe)
- b) member communication
- c) internal volunteer communication on projects, organisational matters and events
- d) GA / board meeting notules /reports
- e) Archive of projects (stressing the outreach and esternal collaborations)
2) what functions should our website handle
- a) forum ?
- b) intranet ?
- c) member registration ?
- d) other : suggestions ?
3) what technical aspects of our website should we define
- a) multilingual : NL / FR / DE / EN others ?
- cookies to maintain initial language choice ?
- b) static or dynamic or both
- c) w3c compliance*
- d) mobile compliant
- e) easy interface max 3 layers of menu depth beyond main language interface
- f) incase of multilingual interface should any given page have a short cut to another language equivalent
- g) trace page interface
- h) cookies/ cookie policy
- i) stats userstracking
1. What is our website for? (Public face/interface, member communication, organisational management, reports, other)
>Your answers/comments here
2. What functions should our website handle? (forum, intranet, member registration, other)
>Your answers/comments here
3. What technical aspects of our website should we define? (multilingualism, technical: static/dynamic/w3c/mobile, depth/layers, cookies, stats)
>Your answers/comments here
Concepts[edit]
I did a brainstorm about the necessary functionality in the website MADe (talk)
- Concept 1...
- Concept 2...
- Concept 3...
Meetings places[edit]
We need to find meeting places for the board. Here are some requirements:
- Split geographically
- Close to a train station but easily accessible by car and easy parking
- Public place (library) or private (bar, restaurant) but with free wifi
- Brussels
- North station
pls contact Amazone asbl / vzw , Middaglijnstraat 10, 1210, Sint-Joost-ten-Node, contact person: Isaac Constance
- Central station
- South Station
- Flanders
- Gent
- Antwerp
- Walonnia
- Liège
- L'auberge de jeunesse a Liege est un place libre avec wifi. Rue Georges Simenon, 2 (a Outremeuse) 20 minutes a pied de gare de Liège-Palais
- Namur
- L'auberge de jeunesse a Namur est un place libre avec wifi. Avenue Félicien Rops, 8 (situe au bord de la Meuse)
- Charleroi
- Mons
Email system[edit]
Can we progress with the creation of the e-mail domain and the individual addresses? I suggest that we have our WM usernames as a primary username. Than aliases like “president” and “secretary” be created? (Geertivp)
- Hey Geert, so you mean personal emails like geert@wikimedia.be (no surname necessary I guess), and board function emails like president@ (access Antoine and myself), treasurer@, secretary@, liaison@ (connection to all three liaisions?) MADe (talk)
- except I would append the initials to the firstname to make it unique… board@wikimedia.be would then send the message to all seven of us…
- For my personal e-mail name I would like to use “geertivp” like my Wikipedia username… “geert” is not really a unique name… (Geertivp)
- Yeah you're right, so something like maartend@? Sounds confusing to me... In any case I would avoid using user names, these kind of email adresses exist already. We want to show ourselves to the world, so we should use our real name as official board email adres! MADe (talk) 21:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Well Maarten, it all depends on how technically the system is setup. Will we have a real mail server, or is it just an address forwarding messages to another (external) mail server? If we would have our own mail server, then usernames could remain like geertivp (those could be used as authentication and for the creation of mail distribution lists); aliases like geert.van.pamel@... can then be added without problem. If we would have (different/external) mail forwarding servers than we cannot reply into the original @wikimedia.be domain... and most e-mail servers refuse to accept a "non-domestic" address because of masquerading reasons - Geertivp (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- So the system might allow the freedom to choose between geertivp@ and geert.van.pamel@, so we could use both depending on the context. I believe that both addresses should work for incoming messages. I see that in Germany they use the full e-mail address on the web site, which is OK - Geertivp (talk) 11:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
- And we should have the possibility to choose between the short and the long name when we are sending a message.
- So the system might allow the freedom to choose between geertivp@ and geert.van.pamel@, so we could use both depending on the context. I believe that both addresses should work for incoming messages. I see that in Germany they use the full e-mail address on the web site, which is OK - Geertivp (talk) 11:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
- Well Maarten, it all depends on how technically the system is setup. Will we have a real mail server, or is it just an address forwarding messages to another (external) mail server? If we would have our own mail server, then usernames could remain like geertivp (those could be used as authentication and for the creation of mail distribution lists); aliases like geert.van.pamel@... can then be added without problem. If we would have (different/external) mail forwarding servers than we cannot reply into the original @wikimedia.be domain... and most e-mail servers refuse to accept a "non-domestic" address because of masquerading reasons - Geertivp (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- Yeah you're right, so something like maartend@? Sounds confusing to me... In any case I would avoid using user names, these kind of email adresses exist already. We want to show ourselves to the world, so we should use our real name as official board email adres! MADe (talk) 21:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
- I think an important subject related to email addresses is that we should try to make it possible that the communication is reachable by multiple people, in general, but also when someone takes over the board position. Romaine (talk) 07:03, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
- This is why distribution lists and aliases should be used linked to the real mail accounts! Any knowledgeably mail server administrator should know what I am talking about... - Geertivp (talk) 15:18, 6 November 2014 (UTC)