Restoring the TEI Bylaws to TEI

[ebeshero]

Since 2013 the Bylaws have been maintained only on Wordpress with the regrettable problem of not having a good way to document revisions. To restore the Bylaws' robust metadata record consistent with our consortium's guidelines, I’ve posted a version of the TEI Bylaws restored in TEI here: https://github.com/TEIC/Documentation/blob/master/Bylaws/Bylaws.xml . It needs review for use on the new TEI website and to establish a workflow for continued updates.

Prior to 2013, the Bylaws were maintained in TEI, and good traces of the old change log were still visible in the Wordpress code, just not displaying on the TEI website. I’ve restored that change log in a <revisionDesc>, but we have something to do: We should track down metadata about the amendments to the Bylaws from between 2013 and 2023 if we can and as we find that info and add it to the <revisionDesc>. (This Bylaws document is the most recent with the latest amendments, but we’re missing the metadata about when those amendments were added.) It’s possible the only amendment was when we lengthened Council terms to three years, and we can trace the date of that with some help.

[sydb]

’Fraid I cannot help look for amendments — I have no record of any amendments after 2009.

[lb42]

Of course if the Board minutes were only available in TEI it would be pretty easy to find the time that all such change decisions were officially taken. But recent meetings of the inner sanctum are not even fully documented in Wordpress sfaics, so not much hope of that.

[lb42]

There is a useful document summarizing the changes made in 2013 (essentially formalising the text and introducing legalese to please the then board chair)

bylaws-summary.xml.txt

This was voted on at the 2013 members meeting, as presumably were other subsequent modifications to the Guidelines. So maybe worth checking the minutes of those meetings too.

[ebeshero]

Thanks, @lb42 ! I had not seen this useful summary document, and it allows us to flesh out our description of the 2013 changes a bit. What’s there now is kind of vague on the matter of what content changed.