Wikimedia UK v2.0/Candidate statements

Please put your candidate statements in the appropriate section below. Feel free to add a new section to the bottom if you do not already have one.

Tango

I declare and agree that I have read and agree with Wikimedia UK v2.0/Candidate statements/Declaration. --Tango 01:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I made my first (signed in, at least) edit to the English Wikipedia in December 2002 and became properly active in 2006 (I've not been the most active contributor ever recently apart from the reference desks, but I'm still very much around). I became active in the UK community about a year ago, have attended one meetup (in Birmingham) and am very active on the UK mailing list, as well as the Foundation mailing list. I fought hard to get those running the previous incarnation to either move things forward, or hand over control to those that could, and when that failed I immeadiately started working on this new attempt. My hope is to help the chapter become a functioning tool for the use of the UK community, and intend to concentrate on behind the scenes stuff and fundraising (I'll lend a hand with some of the chapter's actually activities as well, I'm sure).

In real life, I am in the 4th and final year of a Master of Mathematics degree (an undergraduate masters) at the University of Durham. I have some experience of meetings and committees from my positions as Secretary of the School Council and Deputy Head Boy at secondary school, although I have no direct experience of running companies or charities. I am, however, a quick study and have learned a lot about the subject over the past few months (and the past few days in particular).

Cfp

I declare and agree that I have read and agree with Wikimedia UK v2.0/Candidate statements/Declaration. --cfp 17:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Bio and on-wiki history

I'm currently doing a doctorate in economics at the University of Oxford, and you can see my full CV here. I'm not an ultra-massive WP editor, but I fix things when I notice a problem and have the occasional flurry of compulsive editing (I have around 1000 edits on WP and 500 across the other projects). My first edit on WP under this account was in Feb 2004 and my first edit on Meta was July of the same year (I've been interested in WMF's governance and community relations since I started out pretty much). Also while working at EA I did quite a bit of media-wiki-ing on their internal documentation wiki. I arranged for Jimmy Wales to give a talk at the Oxford Internet Institute, and I like to think I may have played some small causal role in WMF getting OSI funding.

Ideas for WMUK

I would like to see us hold an AGM as soon as conceivably possible and for charitable status and a bank account to follow quickly after. Once we're up and running I imagine a small PR campaign to announce our (re-)arrival is the first order of business. After that I'd like to see WMUK:

• firmly putting its weight behind Wikipedia v1.0
• starting to run campaigns in universities encouraging students and academics to edit
• investigating whether we can get around the legal issues involved in hosting/funding a UK squid server
• setting up a UK tool server
• seeing if we can start giving sessions at teacher training "top-up" days on the responsible use of Wikipedia (et al.) in the classroom
• working with the community to increase coverage of e.g. historical sites
• (and of course) actively supporting the Oxford bid for Wikimania 2010

Why you should vote for me

There are two main reasons why you should vote for me. The first is that I've been involved in the discussions around WMUK from pretty near day one. (Here I am in amongst the eventual board members of WMUK 1.0 on the very first sign up list.) I've been closely involved in the discussions around the reform of WMUK 1.0 and when they fell through, with the discussions around setting up WMUK 2.0 (see, e.g. the edit history of Wikimedia UK v2.0). I'm absolutely committed to getting this organisation off the ground and doing useful work for the UK Wikimedian community. The second is to do with our bid to host the 2010 Wikimania in Oxford, which I seem to be leading. Being on the board of WMUK would greatly help my work in getting sponsorship through enhanced reputation etc.. Also, since one of the best ways for me to ensure that the Oxford bid is successful is to ensure that WMUK 2.0 is up and running by the close of bidding, I have an added incentive to keep pushing things to happen quickly. Finally, if we are successful in our bid (and this is obviously longer term) large amounts of Wikimania money would be passing through WMUK accounts, and so it would make sense to be on the board to keep an eye on them.

However, if you think other people are better suited I will not be at all offended if you vote for them instead. --cfp 17:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)