Compsoc Minutes (28/04/2006)

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.