West Bengal Wikimedians/Annual General Meeting/2021

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West Bengal Wikimedians
User Group

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The Annual General Meeting 2021 or the second Annual General Meeting of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) has been convened as per Article 23 of the Bylaws of the user group.

Logistics[edit]

Venue: Online
Date: 9 January, 2021 and 10 January, 2021.
Time: 7 p.m IST to 9 pm IST (both days)

Representative Members who are expected in AGM[edit]

Confirmed participants[edit]

(Please confirm by adding # ~~~~ below.)

Representative members[edit]

General members[edit]

খাঁ শুভেন্দু

Draft agenda[edit]

Welcome and establishment of Quorum
Friendly space policy, photo policy and recording policy
Financial reporting
Representative members - outgoing and new.
Representative committee members - outgoing and new.
Relevant resolutions to include in the Bylways
Registration of the group
Future projects
Any other

Minutes[edit]

This page is currently a draft. More information pertaining to this may be available on the talk page.

Translation admins: Normally, drafts should not be marked for translation.

The 2nd Annual General Meeting of the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (WBG) started with welcome message from Jayantanth as Representative Committee (RC) member and Founder member (FM) of the group.
Quorum was established as per Article 28 of the Bylaws of WBG as more than 50% of the RC and more than 50 % of the Representative Members (RM) were present in the meeting.
Titodutta explained Wikimedia Friendly Space Policies to all the participants and requested them to adhere to that.
Titoduuta explained photo policy and recording policy of the meeting.
Bodhisattwa placed the agenda of the meeting.
Bodhisattwa placed the latest financial report of WBG which was approved by the Wikimedia Foundation. He also notified about the two rapid grant proposals placed from the user group which would help to successfully execute future user group projects for the next year. No objections were raised.
Questions related to the tax liability of the individual rapid grantee, handling of bank interests of the grants and types of bank account were answered by the RC members.
Article 10 of the Bylaws of WBG was explained to let participants understand or recall about the Representative membership.
As per Article 10 of the Bylaws, শুভেন্দু খাঁ re-entered as a Represented Member (RM) with approval from RC as per Article 13.
Considering the inactivity of Satdeep Gill regarding user group activities, the RM asked Bodhisattwa to contact him officially if he has any plans to engage with the UG. The mail was sent and Satdeep Gill confirmed that he could not take responsibility of a RM now. He was thanked for his service.
It was informed to the participants that Sumitsurai and Indrajitdas are eligible to become a RC member in this year.
Gangulybiswarup proposed himself to remove him from RC to give space to a new member in the committee.
Indrajitdas refrained himself to be part of RC citing personal commitments for this year.
As Indrajitdas didn't want to get included in RC this year, Sumitsurai was included there as the only eligible candidate.
It was also notified to the participants, that there has been no sections in the bylaws which can introduce new members to the RC and that resolutions needs to be passed after drafting the relevant sections.
There was agreement with absolute majority that it is ok to retain the status quo with respect to the number of RC members as mentioned in Article 24 of the Bylaws of the User Group.
However, it was also decided with absolute majority that following Staggering Rotation Policy, one RC member will be replaced by new member in the Committee. It was argued and agreed by all participants that complete change of RC every year might be detrimental to the group as there will be loss of organizational knowledge transfer. It was also decided by absolute majority that the exiting RC member can however return after one year of gap.
Titodutta proposed to change the Bylaws to give gender preference in the RC. While he argued to have exception in the Bylaws to include a female RM in the RC, Pmilneditor argued about giving preference to female over male candidates when both fulfill the same criteria without making any exception to the Bylaws. The two proposals were rejected by majority of the RM including Atudu, the only female member. Their point of argument was not to allow any reservations to any category whatsoever and treat all human as equal irrespective of gender, caste, creed and religion. The proposal thus did not materialize into a resolution.
Discussions also happened on the criteria to select one new RC member among multiple eligible candidates. It was decided that recent online contributions along with offline leadership and engagement with user group activities will be taken into consideration while the selection will be discussed in RM and if needed in RC.
A brief discussion happened about the possibility to register the user group as a society, trust etc. but considering the complex nature and huge impact of such activity, it was decided to have a dedicated meeting later.
Future plans of the user group for next year were briefly discussed. All upcoming projects were mentioned. Atudu mentioned about her plans regarding the 5th iteration of Wiki Loves Butterfly. Few questions came from the participants which were subsequently answered.
A short discussion about new users and members from West Bengal happened.
A very short discussion on recent developments about a general member of the user group on Bengali Wikipedia village pump (parmalink) happened and necessary possible steps to take in future were discussed.