Compsoc Minutes (29/09/2006)

Fri 29 Sep 2006 Meeting Minutes

Present (Exec listed first)

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

Tim Retout (Tim)
Sadiq Jaffer (Sadiq)
Graham Hayward (Covbob)

Agenda

Fresher’s Fair
Events System
Moltov’s ToS
OSP
EGM
LAN Rooms
Forums
Any other business

Fresher’s Fair

We have been allocated floor space on Friday with the other academic societies. Candle reported that he has request power for our stand at the fresher’s fair and would like at least 1 computer to be present on the day. Fred said he has at least 3 computers which he could loan for the day. Candle also request a good quality screen, with a large viewable area to play videos on. It was reported that, hopefully, Yvonne would be able to supply some freebies from IBM for the stall. Kim reported that he had received a second email from the ‘Rough Guides’ person with regards to putting some of their books on the stall, which he had forwarded to the exec list.

Candle enquired as to the status of the 1st social, after the fresher’s fair. Bruce reported that meeting rooms 4 and 8 had been booked as one room (with the partition removed) for the Wednesday after the fresher’s fair. Fred said that hopefully the live CDs should be ready by the first social, and Candle suggested that it would be nice to have some at the fresher’s fair if possible.

Laurence said that it would be a good idea to promote the society in a lecture during the first week, if possible. Kim suggested a lecture early in the week, before “[the freshers] realise they’re a bad idea”. Sadiq suggested having a single OHP slide and plugging ourselves in more than one subject’s lectures (e.g. Computer Science, Physics etc.).

I was also suggested that we should decide who is turning up at what time for the fresher’s fair to make sure it is covered all day.

Events System

Laurence said that the events system should be feature-complete soon, and asked Tim if he would be happy to put it up in its current state where it is largely just missing the event’s details page. Tim reported that he would be happy to put it up in its current state and he would do.

The meeting was asked who was booking the coach for Hursley. Candle said he would, and Sadiq informed him that it needs to be done through Pam Walker.

Molotov’s ToS

The meeting noted that changes to Molotov’s ToS should be announced through both the newsletter and a news item on the website. The meeting also noted that the changes to the ToS were to reinforce the existing policies and reduce grey areas and not to introduce completely new policies.

Candle pointed out that quotas need to be fixed on Molotov. Fred reported that the quotas should be fixable, but if things do not go as smoothly as predicted there could be significant down-time.

The meeting agreed on the following changes to Molotov’s ToS (for brevity only the portions affected have been included, the full ToS are published on the society’s website);

Section 4.2 should be changed from:

4.2) Content

You must not use Molotov for the distribution of any of the following types of content:

to read:

4.2) Content

You must not use Molotov for the distribution, or acquisition, of any of the following types of content:

A new section, 4.4, should be added:

4.4) Reasonable use

You must not do any of the following on or via Molotov, without the explicit permission of the exec:

OSP

It was suggested to the meeting that given the current OSP, a file-sharing application, may not looked upon favourably by parts of the university with whom the society would like to maintain good relation, a re-thing of the idea may be in order. Laurence proposed that since the society technically has no academic officer at the moment, and that the OSP is under their remit, a decision on a new OSP should be postponed until a properly elected new academic officer is in place.

EGM

Kim reported that he has sent an email informing the members about the EGM. Candle informed the meeting that he intends for the EGM to be held 2 weeks from today. Laurence said he would add information to the newsletter reminding people that they can apply for the position.

LAN Rooms

Unfortunately, no suitable rooms are available the weekend of term 2, week 8.

Laurence pointed out that the weekend of week 24, as suggested by room bookings, is after the end of term and people resident on campus with 30 week lets may have problems attending as they have to have completely emptied their rooms by 10am Saturday. Candle suggested trying for a week before or after the week we originally wanted. Kim said to take week 24 if no others are available. It was also suggested that having a LAN after term’s end would give a slightly more relaxed LAN as there would be no exam or course-work pressures.

Forums

This item was added to the agenda to discuss the recent problems with having no forum admins available when they were needed due to spammers on the Forum.

Covbob reported that he still has his admin account but has not done anything with it due to not having the approval of the exec to do so. Fred said that he could modify phpBB to have fine grained permissions, but phpBB is ‘interesting’ enough already. It was suggested that the exec all be given admin privileges on the forums. This motion was voted on, and passed with only one vote against from the exec members present.

The meeting were also asked to arrange for any non-bio posts from the bios thread to be moved to another part of the forum, or removed altogether.

Kim suggested that the forum could use a theme, other than the phpBB default. Sadiq suggested matching the theme of the new website, and covbob suggested filing a ticket. It was also suggested that theming phpBB must be fairly straight-forward due to the shear volume of silly themes available on the Internet.

Any other business

Covbob informed the meeting that he had emailed a person in networks regarding insomnia. Apparently the call has been open for over 2 weeks now. Covbob also suggested that we make a complaint if the matter is not resolved in the next few weeks. It was pointed out that it might not be a good idea to annoy ITS by complaining as they do not have to host insomnia for us. Covbob pointed out that they are required to do something about the call even if they can not do anything about insomnia.

Sadiq enquired about the current status of gaming. Unfortunately the gaming officer was not present at the meeting, but had left a letter informing the meeting that no contract has been signed with ITS yet, and we are awaiting to hear which rooms will be available. Covbob said he was unsure as to whether the new Social Studies rooms will be 24-hour access so they may not be suitable. ITS are also waiting to hear from the Math’s department as to whether we can use their rooms or not.

Covbob reported that the suahu user account has been renewed. Sadiq pointed out that now resnet is completely separate, and ITS are being much more proactive about clamping down on abuse of the system in addition to capping the speed of internet access in all rooms we will have to be more proactive about what happens on the gaming machines as we are responsible for their use whilst logged in as suahu. Kim said that we should be much stricter about the fact that members only are allowed access to the machines. Laurence suggested that this would be enforced by checking university cards against either the sign-ups or the members db.

Laurence was asked to include information about the progress on gaming in the newsletter to keep members informed as to what is going on. When we finally get gaming going again, a separate “we’ve got gaming back” email will need to be sent, containing a reminder that gaming is for CompSoc members only and it will be strictly enforced.