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Current Meeting

NOTICE: The August 2006 AMA Meeting page is up.

AMA Meeting Proposal

Hello everyone, I hope that this message gets out. I believe that the AMA seriously needs to meet up soon to regroup, go over our current goals, form new goals, and get everyone more familliar with eachother. Instead of meeting up in a chat, which may be tricky to get enough people into as I have seen in the past discussions, perhaps we can use a talk page to discuss issues and take vote on issues, such as:

  1. New Coordinator electon. (Top priority)
  2. Advocacy Handbook rewrites. - We need more information and ideas for "standard procedures" from experienced Advocates.
  3. An Advocacy Alerts Board - An idea I have for an alert board and alert talkpage template so that communication of events and other things such as status- and roll-calls can be executed much more easily.
  4. A System of Accountability - Rewards for excellent service and procedures for looking over complaints. (אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 13:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC))
  5. UCRGrad's complaint (אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 13:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC))
  6. A standard term to describe an "Advocatee" other than "client." אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA/vote for me) 02:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  7. etc.

How does this sound? אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 17:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I am requesting that you add the following to your meeting agenda, which was on this page before someone deleted it. I strongly feel that in order to be effective, the AMA must have at least a basic level of accountability, by which its members can be scrutinized or rewarded for their activities as advocates. For instance, what should be done if an advocate completely breached the trust and confidence placed in him/her to "provide assistance" to his/her client and "represent [his/her] party's side in the dispute," both of which are fundamental principles of the AMA and advocacy in general? I think that if you seek to be the new AMA coordinator, this is an issue I think you would need to address. I also suggest that people considering Steve (The Thadman) for coordinator vs. someone else should examine how he handles this particular issue. I know I will be. Thanks! UCRGrad 05:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
It dosen't matter I'm not in the AMA anymore so the issue is moot. Carry on Steve, Good luck.Aeon Insane Ward 05:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
UCRGrad, your request was archived to create room for new issues on the main suggested topics page and was not forgotten, merely put aside until we actually have a meeting. :-) As Aeon has posted above, he has stepped down from the AMA, so I'm not 100% sure what further action can be pursued. I completely agree with you that we need a better system of accountability, however before we need a punitive system, we desperately need a system of rewards for members who are especially helpful towards our fellow Wikipedians (as Advocacy is often a thankless job). Also, to somewhat quote Captain Hector Barbossa, what we have here are more along the lines of guidelines as opposed to actual rules. We don't really have "clients" (although the word pops up once on our pages around here somewhere), per se, as the relationship of the Advocated to the Advocate is more along the lines of that of a ward or charge. Although the AMA are the "lawyers" of Wikipedia, as it were, we're all firmly against wikilawyering, so how we enforce our guidelines is dealt with on a case by case basis by consensus, and in the case of your complaint will be dealt with in the same manner (again, once we actually have a meeting :-) ). I hope that this properly addresses your concerns. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA) 13:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I prefer to do most of my advocacy work 'under the radar' and don't feel the need for 'rewards', but do agree there should be a system in place to judge the bad behavior of an advocate when it happens. I feel we do our job best when nobody notices that there is any advocating to be done. Like Olympic divers, the best advocates, in my opinion, don't make a big splash. I think it would be the very best to continue to work without too much oversight, where possible and that we can kinda keep the 'process' part informal and flexible. I may have worked on a dozen or so cases and only one or maybe two would show up in a database search. Seems a lot of people would prefer not to have it be known that they even asked for help from us. Anyone else have the same sense of it as me or am I the only one? User:Pedant 00:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

New Coordinator Nominations

Since there has been another user who is interested in assuming the Coordinator position, I've posted this section where we can list nominations. (Self-nominations are also appropriate for any member who wishes to run in the election.) :-) אמר Steve Caruso (desk/AMA/vote for me) 23:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I would like to apply, though Steve has been doing a great job as acting coordinator. Wikiwoohoo 23:28, 11 August 2006 (UTC) I will withdraw my self-nomination and fully support Steve Caruso to become Coordinator. Wikiwoohoo 19:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm very happy with the current coordinator. I cannot imagine anyone doing a better job, and would encourage people to only nominate someone who would work as hard as Steve. If we can keep him, I say lets use him up completely before we replace him. It's not a glory job, but it's pretty important that it be done well, smoothly and responsively. User:Pedant 00:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. Steve appears to have been a great coordinator, really turning the association around from what I've seen and the praise he has received. However, a thought I had recently was that there could be the possibility of establishing a new position; vice-coordinator or assistant coordinator. With much the same, possibility slightly less control of the AMA, that person could then alleviate some of the stress and obvious workload associated with the position. This is however, simply an idea, and any thoughts on developing it are welcome. Wikiwoohoo 21:26, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I would support a second coordinator, if only to allow the coordination process to continue in the absence of our primary coordinator. Ideally, we wouldn't need a coordinator, and I would propose that one job our coordinator(s) could work on might be to help set things up in such a way that very little coordination work would be needed eventually. I hope that we can avoid being bogged down in superfluous process, as seems to happen in most wikipedian associations. User:Pedant 08:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
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