Water cooler/2012

This is an archive page, please do not edit here. This page is for discussion threads that have been dormant for a long time.

Foundation listing

Could someone tweak http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters to say that we are a charity? Not in my SUL for some reason. Thanks --Fæ 22:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. The WMF wiki doesn't use SUL since it is closed for general editing - you need a separate login for it. Mike Peel 00:02, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania 2012 scholarships

The Wikimania 2012 scholarships page is now online. I'm aware that last year Wikimedia UK helped fund some scholarships on top of those provided by the Foundation budget. According to the FAQ, this year chapter scholarships will universally use the same application system as Foundation scholarships, and that applicants will automatically be considered for chapter scholarships as well, where available. Is Wikimedia UK planning to participate in this? CT Cooper · talk 21:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We have a budget that will support people's attendance at Wikimania 2012, but we haven't yet had chance to discuss the details (such as the number of scholarships, the criteria, and the application method). I'd personally love to see us participating in the main application system, but the timing of this may sadly mean that this isn't possible and we may have to make use of an independent application system. In particular, the board's attention is currently focused on the Fundraising and Funds Dissemination discussion, as well as UK-specific activities, that have prevented us from discussing Wikimania 2012 thus far. Mike Peel 21:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not to fussed about applying multiple times as necessary, and I understand the board has plenty of other things to think about. Thank you for your quick response. CT Cooper · talk 22:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Mike: If you want to do a separate application process, that's okay I guess. Or we can allow you to review UK applicants (after Feb 16) to the main scholarship system and select some. Either way, please let us know so we can plan accordingly. Cheers. Aude 21:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll see what we can do - but there's so much going on right now that this probably needs to wait at least a week or so before we can start to think about this in any detail. Mike Peel 00:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

To wrap this up: we are offering scholarships via the main Wikimania scholarships program - so please apply there. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel 20:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, that should make things easier for applicants. CT Cooper · talk 23:07, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Huge foot

Every page on WMUK includes 3 lines saying "Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited, a Charitable Company registered in England and Wales. Registered Company No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered Office: 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT" in the footer. Do we really need to do this, it seems unsightly? By the way, the Main page duplicates all this information in the body, which seems doubly unsightly. --Fæ 21:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Or at least: the information in that text needs to be on official pages (and correspondence). It doesn't need to be duplicated, though - so can probably be removed from the body of pages. Mike Peel 21:45, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it can be shrunk down, I'm not sure the Co. no., C. no. and full postal address all need to be there as opposed to on a linked contact page. It might also just be shrunk to an even smaller font or just wrapped in a way that does not take up three separate lines. --Fæ 22:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought the address, charity number, and registered name had to be on all official pages and that seems to be the easiest way to put them there. I don't see the extra few lines at the bottom as a big deal—it's about the same as is taken up by This page was last modified on 16 January 2012 at 06:24. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. at the bottom of Wikipedia. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Friendly Space policy

Does anyone have counter suggestions with regard to adopting the WMF policy for dealing with harassment at events (wmf:Friendly_space_policy)? A variation was recently created for DC m:GLAMcamp_DC/Friendly_space_policy. Unless we have a reason to create a UK variation, the WMF policy could be linked to from the Events page. --Fæ 08:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the need to create a UK-specific version is pretty clear - e.g. from a quick look it needs to say 'Wikimedia UK' rather that 'Wikimedia Foundation', give the appropriate contact details, and be generalised to include all events rather than just conferences. It also needs to have links to the relevant UK law. There's also a couple of general changes that we'd need to make to our event organisation if we adopt this policy - e.g. ensuring that all organisers are clearly identified (by a badge according to that policy - we may want to go for T-shirts instead or similar). So I'd suggest creating a copy of it here and pointing people towards it for discussion, with the aim of putting it forward for adoption at the 11 February board meeting. Mike Peel 14:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I've copied it over to here and adapted it a little for UK needs, although there is still more work to be done. Regards, Rock drum (talk • contribs) 15:24, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I suggest further discussion for improvement is at Talk:Friendly space policy rather than here. --Fæ 15:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

2012 election

Would anyone care to look at setting up the 2012 election pages for questions and candidate statements? The Board Interest day (11th February) is not that far away and having these pages to refer to would probably be a good idea when explaining our election process. If anyone has ideas of how to improve the way this works, now might be a good time to put these forward. --Fæ 11:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

UK Wikimedian of the Year 2012

Thoughts? Corrections - Comments welcomed Victuallers 17:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Comparison of UK NDA with WMF NDA

According to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-02-20/Special_report, the WMF is in the habit of asking Wikimedians to sign a NDA for access to some data. Perhaps someone could track it down on-wiki (assuming it has been openly published) so that we can review Non Disclosure Agreement against their best practice? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I signed their NDA when I was helping out with some fundraising stuff while visiting their office. I don't have an electronic copy, and I don't know where the paper copy is. I made them modify their standard one before I would sign it (to make it clearer than it referred onto to things related to what I was doing in the office). While the non-disclosure stuff in pretty much what you would expect, they also have a non-disparagement clause. I discussed it with Mike Godwin (who was general counsel at the time - Geoff might have changed the standard agreement after he took over), who explained that they idea was to stop people using their privileged information to attack the WMF (as Danny Wool once did, if your wiki-memory goes back that far). I can see the logic in that (which is why I did eventually sign it, once appropriately restricted). --Tango (talk) 14:33, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I was talking to Geoff about this at the finance meeting last weekend. I've dropped him an email to follow up on that and to see what's available here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:06, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

House style

For this website and WMUK reports (e.g. the next Annual Report in production) and documents it would be useful to define a local Manual of Style including topics such as colour, plain English, when to use logo variations and so forth. Obviously if it can piggy-back on existing WMF or Wikipedia guidelines then we can simply defer to those pages. Has any of this been mentioned on another page or would it be useful to start creating it from scratch? --Fæ (talk) 11:21, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the new comms person could prepare something? It would be good to have some community consultation, but most of it should be pretty uncontroversial. --Tango (talk) 19:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Compliance with blocks and bans elsewhere

At the moment blocks or bans on :wmuk would be considered on a case by case basis. Is there any reason for us to consider the status of long term blocks or bans on Wikimedia projects such as the English Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons? Considering that :en is so closely entwined with most of our events, it might be sensible to take the status of a contributor on that project into account when considering how an account should be handled on this wiki. In particular someone with a history of deliberately disrupting those main projects can be argued to be in a default status of failing to comply with the :wmuk defined mission and values. --Fæ (talk) 10:37, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

As and when situations arise, then that information should be taken into consideration - but I don't think there's a need for us to take any sort of proactive approach here. Mike Peel (talk) 10:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

No disagreement and should it arise, then I think we ought to take into account any long term disruptive history elsewhere to judge how accounts can be trusted for this wiki. In contrast, for Commons the community deliberately ignore the status of current blocks or bans on other projects as irrelevant unless there has been agreement on :meta for a global ban (which we ought to comply with). In general, our contributor community is likely to stay small, so I doubt this will become a significant policy matter. --Fæ (talk) 12:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. We should consider each case on its own merits, but it makes sense to take conduct on other sites into account. --Tango (talk) 19:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for bot flag

Hi all! Please may User:Thehelpfulbot have the bot flag, I can run a double redirect fixer to empty Special:DoubleRedirects, this already runs without problems on the English Wikipedia and Meta-Wiki. On a site note, could an admin tweak Sidebar from Membership|Join from 'Membership|Join us? The latter sounds a bit more friendly. It may also be a good idea to add a link to the Board itself, so directly under "Organisation". The Helpful One 23:47, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good, thanks for volunteering to fix these. :-) The only problem is that User:Thehelpfulbot is not currently registered on this wiki, though (the userpage exists, but not the user account). If you can create the account, then I'll set the bot flag for it.

On the sidebar changes: I've changed it to read 'Join us'. I'm not sure about linking to Board since there's already rather a lot of links in the sidebar...

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Huh! I was sure that I had logged in on this wiki. Thehelpfulbot (talk) 10:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Done. Mike Peel (talk) 00:50, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Random ideas page

Random ideas<-- things we could consider.Geni (talk) 23:01, 22 April 2012 (UTC)