Board Minutes 2008-02-08

Meeting called to order on highspeedconferencing.com @ approx. 1600 GMT. Present: AC, JC, MMcG, DPOD. Regrets: DP, PR, TS, RRDT.

Journal

Volume 4 (DC) is nearing completion. Rather than do rolling release, we are going to release them as a single packet. AC is to discuss with DP what needs to be done to get the articles that are farther from finished into a finished state.
Volume 3 (Regular rolling Release): DPOD will do an inventory of where we are on the outstanding articles and MMcG and DPOD will concentrate on speeding up time to publication for this Spring.

There was a discussion of our evolving publication system (rolling release of issues with special numbers released as whole). We believe that we are fine in terms of citation, as each article has a publication year and we are using volume numbers for the rolling release [Note: in fact we could also specify volume years for rolling release as well: e.g. 3 = 2007-2008)

JC reported that wiki was up, though empty
DPOD indicated that his research assistant, who was supposed to scrape entries out of the old Wiki (removing the spam), had resigned for personal reasons.
Decision was made to resurrect Old Wiki (warts and all) at a non-official URL to facilitate the scraping. Commonly cited pages could be scrapped and moved while we wait for DPOD to find a new research assistant; DPOD noted that he could perhaps call on a volunteer who had expressed an interest in keeping the wiki pages up-to-date.
AC asked about version control problems between old and new wiki: what if somebody starts a new page matching an older topic? Decided that we would treat that like a SVN version control issue: i.e. a human would have to intervene to reconcile the old and new material.

JC reminded assembled about problems with Hilda remounting in Read only mode, which causes Cocoon to crash when the newserver tries to write new entries because the error messages are not wellformed XML.
DPOD asked whether the problem was not simply that the server fstab should have the remount=ro setting changed; JC said that he thought it was, but that the error message problem still needed fixed as it still would crash cocoon anyway.
DPOD said he would fix that part of the atom.php script and also finish the long-standing repair to how the newserver handles single quotes.
JC asked about getting mail notifications from the newserver when it is updated (note: this is also a problem with the wiki, which asks for email addresses when one signs on, but throws an errors when you do because it can't mail). Currently DPOD checks relatively regularly by hand. JC is to contact Jeremiah Merkl to see if we can't get some mail functionality establish, even if it is to a single email address (e.g. news@digitalmedievalist.org); DPOD is to be cc'd on the message to merkl in case local muscle is required ;).

DPOD apologised for setting the meeting for the last Friday of January on the Second Friday of February. It was also noted that 1600 GMT is difficult for TS, but 1500 GMT is difficult for MMcG and DPOD (or at least unpleasantly early). We agreed to alternate between 1500 and 1600 each month. DPOD to set meetings for rest of semester, alternating as requested, with reminders being sent 7 days in advance.

AC is to discuss with DP what needs to be done to get the articles that are farther from finished into a finished state.
AC also to check with Gabby and Simon about introduction and SM's article.

~~Set DPOD as administrator on wiki for some reason I forget.~~ (Reason was so that he could edit minutes, only board should be able to edit them (if others need admin rights, just ask James 13:11, 10 February 2008 (MST))
JC is to contact Jeremiah Merkl to see if we can't get some mail functionality establish, even if it is to a single email address (e.g. news@digitalmedievalist.org); DPOD is to be cc'd on the message (Initial email sent. James 13:11, 10 February 2008 (MST))

Arrange for resurrection of Old Wiki at a non-official URL to facilitate the scraping. DPOD noted that he could perhaps call on a volunteer who had expressed an interest in keeping the wiki pages up-to-date.
Inventory where we stand with 3 and start working with MMcG to clear backlog
correct error messages in newserver to stop crashing cocoon
fix signle quote problem in newserver
~~schedule meetings for rest of semester~~ -- 2008-02-08