Apologies

Apologies were received from David Buckley (Bucko)

Present (exec members listed first)

Name (IRC Alias)

Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
David Byard (db_rat)
Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
Kim Tibbetts-Harlow (Kim)
Sean Connolly (Morlark)
Fred Emmott (Fred)

Jonatan Ring (BlueParrot)
Arun Prasannan (Polar)
Chris West (Faux)
Benjamin Weber (benji)

Members@ List

The exec decided to subscribe the exec list as a moderator to official CompSoc lists which are moderated so any member of the exec can approve pending emails to them.

BFL signups notice

This item was added as Bucko was concerned that there may not have been enough notice of the signups for the end-of-term LAN. Since there appear to have been no complaints made the exec decided that this was a non-issue.

IRC Abuse

The member of the society who was causing problems on the CompSoc IRC network by deliberately irritating other members appears to have calmed down recently, especially since we made it known that we had been in contact with ITS regarding this abuse. Db_rat suggested that we should formalise a procedure to deal with this sort of situation, such as 3 bans from the network and then contacting their ISP. Some of the other members of the exec pointed out that this sort of event happens so rarely that there is little point in having a formal procedure in place for it.

Forums

The email from the member who runs the unofficial Compsoc forums, to the exec list was read to the meeting. Despite the points raised by this member, Kim and db_rat felt that the forums.uwcs.co.uk and link on the CompSoc main website make the forums appear sanctioned by the exec, regardless of whether they are or not. The exec decided to remove the redirect and link on the website.

Morlark suggested that any decision on official forums should be differed until the new website was completed, however Kim pointed out that starting new forums now has the advantage of there probably being a reasonable number of posts by the start of next academic year. Fred said that most popular forum software should be easy to integrate into a new website, by using server-side includes or iFrames if necessary. The exec present voted on creating official forums; 4 were in favour, 1 against and 2 abstained. Fred was nominated to organise the provision of official forums.

Gaming group

The meeting were told that someone had approached the society via the unofficial forums with the intention of wanting to organise inter-university gaming. Candle said he was happy to go but didn’t want to organise it. The exec felt it was probably up to Bucko to organise it, as gaming officer.

BBQ plans and times

Kim said he would email the BBQ plans and times to the exec list.

Xan Servers

Fred reported that ITS have been poked several times in the last week but we are still waiting for IP addresses from them.

Status of Bong

Fred told the meeting that Bong was still not rebooting properly and that a new sata card was required as the onboard sata seems to be broken. A replacement PSU is already on the way to replace the existing QTec one which will hopefully fix some of the problems.

Accenture

Candle said that he would draft an email to Accenture and send it to the exec list for comments.

Minutes

The minutes of last weeks meeting were agreed.

Any other business

Fred asked about the status of the clothing order. Candle said he needed to sort it out.

Further to the discussion about official forums, it was decided that the exec should be moderators of any such forums.

db_rat said he needed some set dates for next year and would like Kim’s help with it. Kim said he would do so after his exams have finished. Polar reminded the meeting of the Compsoc calendar which can be updated once some dates have been set.

Morlark was concerned by the fact that non of the exec had access to akick on chanserv. The exec decided that there are enough people with op powers to make akick unnecessary.

Kim was concerned that the bot occasionally appears to be unstable. Faux explained that no active development is performed on the bot in #compsoc

db_rat said he would look at the leaflet for inclusion in the ITS pack for new students after the exams.

An Oriely book, or similar, was suggested as a possible prize for db_rat’s academic competition at the BFL.

Bruce was asked to check that the LUG had meeting rooms booked for the remaining LUG meetings this term.

Apologies

Fred Emmott (Fred) was absent due to illness.

Present (exec members listed first)

Name (IRC Alias)

Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
David Byard (db_rat)
Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
David Buckley (Bucko)
Kim Tibbetts-Harlow (Kim)
Sean Connolly (Morlark)

Timothy Retout (Tim)
Arun Prasannan (Polar)
Chris West (Faux)
Benjamin Weber (benji)

Exec Abuse

The main problem seems to be that the exec member who changed a members hostmask did not own up immediately. The exec decided that the exec member in question should write an apology to the member in question.

IRC Policy

The exec discussed the proposed IRC policy. It was suggested that #compsoc could be censored, banning certain words but it was decided that this was a bad idea. I was also proposed that quotes which contained ‘not safe for work’ URLs be removed from the quotes database. Faux reported that this would be impossible due to the shear number of quotes in the database. An alternative suggestion was that all quotes containing URLs be tagged as ‘not safe for work’. The exec were asked to thoroughly read the proposed rules, and submit suggestions for improvement to the exec mailing list.

IRC Bans

A member of the society has been repeatedly banned from the main IRC channel and the IRC network however they continue to deliberately evade the bans which have been put in place. At one point the entire channel was moderated and other members in the channel given voice to minimise the disruption caused. It was suggested that only people who were authorised with Nickserv could be allowed to join #compsoc however this was dismissed since it would force people to auth with Nickserv who did not want to and potentially exclude new members from accessing the channel.

Steve Mathews Meeting

Db_rat reported that the meeting with Steve Mathews was very successful and would like to thank everyone who attended.

Website Project

Tim said that he would appreciate some help with the website project, but realises that most people are busy at the moment with exams. He also reported that twilight needed some more ram, but this is already ordered.
It was reported that the website is almost complete, lacking only an events system. The exec were also told that it would not be difficult to convert the new website to a wiki-style site, for easy updating, without any major changes. Db_rat reported that IBM were not happy with the current appearance of their logo on the website. Additionally they felt that the Compsoc website could look more professional.

Xen Servers

Since Fred as absent, this item was postponed until the next meeting.

Status of bong

The exec were told that something between the motherboard, SATA controller and hard disk is broken, however in the absence of Fred this item was also postponed until next week.

Feedback from IBM meeting

The exec were informed that the Hursley trip should happen on a Wednesday near to the 16th November. IBM have offered us two people for academic talks, an expert on viruses, worms and security exploits or an ex-Warwick student who designed a tracking system used by insurance companies to trace vehicles. The exec asked db_rat to ask if it would be possible to get both of them.
IBM have also asked us to increase our advertising of academic events through fliers, posters and calenders which they have offered to provide financial and design support for. Advertising at the start of lectures was also suggested as a way of increasing turnout. IBM are also happy to subsidise the LUG live cds and the Linux tutorials, provided they feature the IBM logo.
We have also been told that we can probably have a selection of IBM freebies to hand out at the freshers fayre. IBM would like their logo on the website fixed. They also suggested that it would improve the image of the society if the Compsoc website looked more professional.

Complaints procedure

It was decided that was was essentially a non-issue as complaints are dealt with at exec meetings. There was no exec meeting last week, which made it appear as though an excessive amount of time had passed since the ‘exec abuse’ complaint had been received to being properly discussed by the current exec.

Aston/Compsoc LANs and Monitors

Kim said that he was approached by a member of Aston’s compsoc about running joint LAN events. The exec decided that, unless special cross compsoc LANs were organised, the members of Aston compsoc would be welcome but would have to use guest signups after Warwick members had had an opportunity to sign up. While we cannot have larger capacity LANs due to there being no other suitable rooms available to us. The possibility of hosting cross compsoc LANs was discussed, perhaps with a 20/35 signup split between Aston/Warwick but no firm plans were made.
Kim also said that he was asked about the possibility of providing monitors for them, if we were to host a joint LAN event since a fairly small proportion of their membership have TFT screens. The exec decided that at the present time it would not be possible for the society to organise such a provision.

Minutes

It has been pointed out that individual members should not have been named in previous minutes. This comment has been taken on board by the secretary and efforts will be made to ensure that this does not happen in future minutes.
The exec had previously decided that all ex-exec members should have op powers, not just the previous year’s as was minuted.

There were no other objections or corrections to be made to last weeks minutes.

AOB

It was suggested that IRC and Molotov’s message of the day hold links to the latest newsletter and minutes, and that links be placed in the topic of #compsoc using a service such as snipurl to reduce the size of the links.

An official forum was requested by a member of the exec, whilst another member objected to the current redirect of forums.uwcs.co.uk to a forum run by a member of the society as it contains material which would not be permitted in any official forum due to equal opportunities rules etc. The exec decided that in view of the time and likely length of this discussion it would be postponed and added to the agenda of the next meeting.

Apologies

Apologies were received from Kim Tibbetts-Harlow(Kim) and Sean Connolly(Morlark).

Present (exec members listed first)

Name (IRC Alias)

Fred Emmott (Fred)
Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
David Byard (db_rat)
Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
David Buckley (Bucko)

Arun Prasannan (Polar)
Chris West (Faux)
Benjamin Weber (benji)
Jonathan Smith (Lucidion)
Ian Norris (icStatic)

Ex-exec ops

Fred asked if ex-exec members should retain the power to op on IRC. The exec decided that this should be the case, however only for the previous year’s exec if possible. The exec also requested that the techteam arrange for BadgerBOT to be given voice in #compsoc so that it is visible and can be easily distinguished for other users.
Fred also agreed to arrange for db_rat to take ownership of #osp and #progcomp as the new academic officer.

Money for competition at the BFL

db_rat proposed a competition to be run at the BFL to create something “shiny”. The participants would not be able to use anything which existed in its current form before the competition (e.g. MFJ‘s monitor could not win). Bucko said that anime soc have run ‘art’ competitions in the past and that they tend to work quite well. Candle was concerned that the description and rules were too vague. icStatic suggested giving a specific area, or topic such as ‘a game’. db_rat suggested ‘something which can be shown on the projector’ however was concerned that this would not be liked by everyone. Bucko suggested shiniest graphical ‘thing’. db_rat requested some sort of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes. Bucko suggested finding a volunteer to make some home-made prizes.
Morlark arrived at this point.
The exec agreed to allocate a maximum of 25GPB from the current account for these prizes.

Status of Accounts

We currently have 1088GPB total. 700GPB of which will disappear at the end of the term, and be deducted from next years budget if it it unspent. 300GPB of this will be left after we have made the purchases which we have already arranged to make (not including the 25GPB just allocated for prizes).

Timothy Retout(Tim) arrived to the meeting at this point.

Clothing Order

Bruce asked what the status of the clothing order was, and Candle said this was Kim’s responsibility however he was absent from the meeting.

IRC Abuse

As there was no firm proof as to who changed Skumby’s hostmask and Benji, Lucidion and Laurence were with Faux all afternoon and were sure that he had not done anything wrong the exec could not take any action against an individual. The incident did, however, highlight the fact that any user could change the host mask of any other user on the IRC network. Faux reported that this problem had been rectified by return hostserv to a state in which only IRCops could use it, so a repeat of the incident cannot happen.

Minutes

db_rat recalled that last weeks meeting noted that Laurence was a choob, in his absence and thus this did not get minuted.
There were no other objections to the minutes.

Any Other Business

Silver had requested the option to make karma changes privately (i.e. in PM with the bot). All present agreed this was not a good idea. Faux said he would prefer that problems with the bot were ticketed rather than brought to exec meetings, as he is not an exec member. Candle reminded the exec that when kicking people from #compsoc they should always give a relevant reason.
Polar asked about the status of getting IP addresses for Graveyard and Crypt. Fred said he had heard nothing, and would poke ITS again.
Candle said that we need more notice from the video game design society before their events if they would like our help. He also asked if anyone had a phone number for them, bucko suggested that Sadiq might. The meeting asked Laurence to email the VGDS and inform them that we would like 2 term-time weeks notice and future, and that db_rat is their primary contact.
db_rat reported that he would go and see Steve Mathews again this week about the OS module. He also said that he had mentioned the Linux Tutorials at an SSLC meeting and DCS were keen for these to happen.
Tim informed the exec that he had removed the existing ticketing system and asked if we would like a new one. The exec said they would.