[WSIS CS-Plenary] OVERVIEW: WSIS Online spaces

[karen banks]

** i am very sorry this message is only in english, i will try to get it 
translated **

** je suis très désolé ce message est seulement en anglais, j'essayerai de 
l'obtenir traduit

** estoy muy apesadumbrado este mensaje estoy solamente en inglés, yo 
intentaré conseguirlo traducida

Greetings all,

Many thanks to Avri Doria, Frannie Wells and Rui Correia who have offered 
to help with the administration of the CT list. I will write you offlist to 
give you more details about accessing the admin interface and the work 
involved.

But, for the benefit of those of you who may be new to WSIS (or even not so 
new), i wanted to give a quick overview of the online world we use in 
between prepcoms, who is behind the scenes doing all the work and what work 
is involved.

Note: this does not include information about the websites Ralf Bendrath 
(www.worldsummit2005.org), Rik Panganiban, CONGO, NGLS or the WsisOnline 
host. But they may want to share information about their sites, and maybe 
others who host general inbformation sites would like do likewise.

Below is only information about websites and lists hosted at the 
_wsis-cs.org_ domain.

WEBSITE
-------
1) www.wsis-cs.org

What you will find here:
========================
This is a very *simple* site where you will find;

- Information about the elements which make up Civil Society - the Civil 
Society Plenary, Content and Themes Group, the Bureau - and what their 
respective roles are and how, and to what extent, you can participate in 
these spaces. (note - i imagine the working methods group will post any 
updated documents to this site when they are finished with drafting)

- Information about Civil Society regional and thematic caucuses and 
working groups, their focal points, information about mailing lists and 
websites and who to contact if you would like to join these spaces.

- *Links* to content produced by Civil Society Content and Themes group. 
That is, content from CS is *not* hosted on this site, but there are links 
to other sites which host content (see below).

- Information about how to request the creation of a mailing list @wsis-cs.org.
[All regional and thematic caucuses are invited to use this domain, if they 
wish, for the creation of mailing lists to facilitate their work.]

- Links to other useful WSIS related websites.

Who maintains this site?
=========================
The site is hosted at GreenNet, the APC member in the UK, and where i am 
based. It was maintained by myself in the early part of WSIS, and during 
the last 6 months, Ralf Bendrath and Rik Panganiban have taken on sharing 
the workload.

When requests are made from caucuses for updates and corrections etc, it is 
one of us who will do the work.

TRANSLATION?: If all are agreed this is a useful site, and when 
documentation is added from the working methods group - we should look at 
translating the site into at least french and spanish. Any volunteers?

2) Global CS lists
------------------
The main lists are plenary, CT, and bureau. Please see section 3 for 
information about thematic and regional lists.

plenary at wsis-cs.org
-------------------
This list has almost 500 subscribers and attracts about 30-40 pieces of 
spam per day, depending on how active the list is.

Adam Peake and myself are the list administrators. Adam is largely 
responsible for dealing with removal of spam and approving (or not) 
legitimate messages from people who are *not* subscribed to plenary - and 
there are many ;). Adam's work would be more time consuming than mine on 
this list.

I primarily look after approval of subscriptions, but also clear spam and 
admin queues if i notice them. Subscriptions come in quite slowly in 
between prepcoms, but quite quickly during prepcoms. SO i am often doing a 
lot of list admin work during prepcoms (as is adam).

ct at wsis-cs.org
--------------
This list has 230 subscribers. To give you an indication of the spam and 
admin, this list has attracted about 40 pieces of spam posts from 
non-subscribers in the past two to three days. Removing those messages will 
take about 10 minutes (depending on your speed of access to the networks).

Subscriptions to the CT lists are not many, and wouldn't require more work 
than approving the odd subscription from time to time.

What is more time consuming is approving, and then communicating with, the 
authors of legitimate messages who are either

- not subscribed to the list
- are subscribed but are writing from an unsubscribed list (very annoying 
but understandable ;)

The Ct list was administered by Bill McIver for Phase I but due to other 
committments, was unable to do so during Phase II. I picked it up 
intermittently from then until now.

All in all, i would imagine there is no more than 10-15 minutes per day 
involved in maintaining the CT list, if that, if it is done regularly.

bureau at wsis-cs.org
------------------
This list is maintained by NGLS(ramin)/CONGO(renate)/Robert Guerra and 
Joseph Sarr. As it is a private list, i have nothing to do with maintenance 
unless specifically requested to do so.

3) regional and thematic lists
------------------------------
There are about 20 lists @wsis-cs.org. Not all caucuses and working groups 
have their lists hosted at this domain.

Every list has it's own owners. I provide technical support to listowners 
should they need it, and create new lists when a new caucus or working 
group is established and requests a list.

Disclosure
==========
I would like everyone to know that i have root access to *all* lists hosted 
@wsis-cs.org.

I have never abused that position of power unless asked to intervene by a 
list owner.

I am not implying that anyone has accused me of that, but - considering we 
are involved in a summit concerned with (amongst others) issues concerning 
with people, power and technology, and the power that access to technology 
affords some and not others, it should be noted.

In Summary
==========
All in all, the hosting, maintenance and ongoing support of the above (and 
several other lists and websites we have used from time to time during 
prepcom), is not an insignificant task.

This is a voluntary contribution APC and it's UK Member GreenNet, along 
with the indivuals involved as noted above, have made to support civil 
society work in WSIS to date

Finally, I would like publically thank what is, a very small number of 
committed individuals, for playing, or continuing to play this very 
important, but largely invisible supportive role to CS in WSIS, in the 
provision and maintenance of our online world.

best to all
karen