Talk:Vision, values and mission (proposed)

OKF sources

When did the charity accept the Open Knowledge Foundation's definitions, is this in a past vote of members or is it a change to our Articles? Note, our Articles use the term "open content" not "open knowledge". Personally, I have never reviewed the OKF's definitions, nor been asked to. --Fæ (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The above comment was posted before I had finished putting the pages up. Please see the background information at the Engine Room. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:24, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The question remains. There are two fundamental problems with relying on the OKF definitions rather than sticking to the definitions that the Wikimedia UK charity was created to fulfil:

1. Rather than a short and simple mission, we now ask prospective members, donors and volunteers to go to the OKF website to learn definitions rather that using plain English to understand what we stand for. The definitions on OKF are not simple and this proposal changes a sub-50 word mission into several pages of complex reading.
2. The OKF definition is not compatable with the current aims of the charity. I believe that for this proposal to be accepted by the board of trustees we would have to change the articles of the charity and go back to the charity commission to change our scope; this means the trustees cannot make this change without proposing this change at an AGM or EGM. In particular the OKF definition of access allows for non-free access, consequently Wikimedia UK could use its charitable monies to fund commercial projects with advertising or with access fees; both of these potential changes are an anathema to the existing values of the charity. Fæ (talk) 09:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

WMUK doesn't have a working definition at the moment, the OKF is a good one arising from our (broad) open community. Their definition is on a single page not "several" and is in plain English. It provides a framework for us to work in, while in any case using language ("open") most of us will be familiar with. "Free" doesn't entail "open", but "open" does entail "free", and just as in Wikimedia projects that includes the potential for commercial exploitation (through licenses that do not include the "NC" element). I'm not sure what you think is changing here... Sjgknight (talk) 10:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, looking again at definition used by the Open Knowledge Foundation, it includes the statement "The work shall be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost". That does indeed seem to make it unsuitable for us to adopt, as we focus on working with content/knowledge that either is not IP protected at all ('public domain') or that is released under a licence that must not include any requirement for payment for re-use (not even 'reasonable reproduction costs'). The point of including a definition section that we can refer to throughout is to simplify, and to allow us to use consistent language throughout (not the case at the moment). If there is no obvious external definition we can just pick up and use, by all means let us write our own. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:16, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Fundamental change to limit the charity to "education"

This proposal includes a radical change of scope for Wikimedia UK, from:

Wikimedia UK’s mission is to help people and organisations build and preserve open knowledge to share and use freely.

to:

Our vision is educational Open Knowledge for all.

Our mission is to help people and organisations create and preserve educational Open Knowledge, and to help provide easy access for all.

This change is emphasised in the values as "We promote the provision of high quality educational Open Knowledge to all.".

This drops from the charity's mission the preservation of open knowledge outside of "education" and potentially limits all future projects for the charity to those that provide high quality and "educational" open knowledge (as defined by the OKF, rather than the WMF or Wikimedia projects). This is a radical change which could see WMUK refusing to fund Commons upload projects, or Wikimedia content creation projects that were not judged to be of sufficiently "high quality" or of sufficient "educational" value. For example Wiki Loves Monuments is good for public engagement but tends to provide a mass of non-high quality photos, similarly an editathon at a school would be highly likely to mostly generate content for Wikipedia articles of interest to teenagers but would have almost no true "educational" content. --Fæ (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The above comments were posted while I was putting the pages up, and before they were finished. They are not applicable to the corrected draft text. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:19, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

"V2 Accessibility and Quality" is stated as "We promote the provision of high quality educational Open Knowledge to all." The same points above apply with regard to introducing the new constraint to our projects that we will only consider "high quality". --Fæ (talk) 09:55, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Read through to the first 'goals', specifically to increase and improve content. We track both, but we absolutely should have an interest in high quality content over just any content. That is not to say that mass upload projects would not be funded, but their success would not just be about the number of files uploaded (although that would be part of it). Note that on technical projects, potentially including mass upload, the fourth set of outcomes would also be of interest. Sjgknight (talk) 10:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK is no longer free

The current Mission of the charity includes "use freely" and "free and open licences". This proposal removes the concept of "free" entirely. This is a significant difference between free access and open access or free software and open software; namely this leaves the charity in a position to promote licences and software for which there is no free re-use, nor any free access. Why would the members of the charity want this change? --Fæ (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Open knowledge entails freedoms in that sense. It's a useful clarification but could you avoid the pointy headings please Sjgknight (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

The concepts of 'free' and 'open' are integral to the Open Definition of Free Knowledge/Free Content as used by the Open Knowledge Foundation, and hence no longer need to be stated repeatedly (in varying ways) throughout the strategy. If you mean something different by 'free', could you define your meaning please? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Open is not the same as free. By deleting free from our mission/values you are fundamentally changing the charity. See #OKF sources above. --Fæ (talk) 09:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

See above Sjgknight (talk) 10:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)