Water cooler/2013

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

New members pack

Hi all! I want to put together a 'pack' for new members which provides a simplified overview of the organisation they've joined and how to get involved. Lots of discussion to be had about what info to include and how to deliver it - plus I want your help to write things like an FAQ section. Have a look here :) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 14:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia deal is off

It seems the QRpedia deal is off. [1]. What will happen now? --Andreas JN 22:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

But the whole point of that thread is to say that negotiations are ongoing...? Jarry1250 (talk) 23:06, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

it also seems you jump to conclusions Andreas - by the way my offer to talk to you directly in the office about any number of things still stands - have you not been getting my emails?Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 14:00, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. The e-mail address you used is one I normally only use for mailing lists, and its inbox gets hundreds of e-mails a day. (I have my normal address enabled in Wikipedia.) I am very rarely in London, so will have to take a rain check, but thanks for the invite.

I noted your statement on the mailing list, in which you say that depending on the outcome of the negotiations, it may be necessary to dissociate the charity from QRpedia. ("What I can assure you is that the trustees understand the need to reach an agreement soon or disassociate the charity from any involvement in QRpedia.") I guess I don't really understand what is at issue here, and why the ownership of QRpedia.org matters so much. Couldn't you or WMF have a commercial agreement with QRpedia, just like PediaPress has an agreement with WMF for the "Create a book" function? Or is the disagreement about something else than the ownership of QRpedia.org? I guess I don't really understand it. But given that it has gone on for so long – a year and a half, if memory serves – the community should be told something about what the sticking point is. Andreas JN 03:51, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure I really understand "disassociate the charity from QRPedia" either. To reassure everyone, if the 'Wikimedia movement' wanted to start using an alternative to qrpedia.org and stop using the name "QRPedia", this would not stop the QRcodes in current use in GLAM and all other projects from continuing to work, the only consequence would be where the public would be advised to go to create the QRcodes to use to point to Wikipedia in multiple languages. Members can see all the issues that that I am aware of by reading the board minutes and the thread above #QR codes. I am not aware of any "sticking point" beyond those that are now public and those negotiating are obliged to keep the trustees promptly informed on any issue of strategic import. Others have been handling the negotiation since my final recommendation to the board, for what I thought was a manageable and fair non-financial agreement, in July 2012. My understanding throughout the last year and a half, is that both Roger and Terence have always been, and remain, 100% committed to the open knowledge movement and their aim is to ensure that the system can be used freely in perpetuity by everyone. They are friendly good guys, the UK board are friendly good folks and jointly we are trying to deliver an optimal solution, when we probably should have all got on with it and accepted a working solution a year ago.

There is a UK board meeting in February where I expect, and will be pushing for, a final decision. All the alternatives have been explored, analysed and discussed at more than sufficient length for a decision to be made; in my personal and considered opinion.

<history lesson> By the way, my "considered opinion", is based on being there at the beginning, when Roger and I were excited at working together playing around with QRCode creation for Wikipedia pages and I created the first user script to generate them automatically at the click of a link on the English Wikipedia toolbar and supplied the first QRCode sheets to demonstrate the concept to GLAM institutions, which I did with the British Library when QRPedia had yet to be pulled together. I was personally relieved to see an easy alternative to piggy-backing on Google's free QRcode service and then Terence had his brain wave of the multi-language resolution service. </history lesson> Thanks Fæ (talk) 08:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Governance: Respecting emails on Wikimedia closed email lists

Hi, I am currently a member of several closed Wikimedia email lists - e.g. chapters, cultural-partners, internal and LGBT. Some of these even require admin approval to join. After some emails of mine were reposted without my permission, I had reason to pen down my ethical stance of how I would respect closed list emails, and how I would escalate any issue beyond the list (for example a serious chapter related issue that should be flagged to the WMUK board). I would appreciate feedback and thoughts on making something similar a behavioural policy for board and staff members of WMUK.

Ethical statement for behaviour on closed email lists.

• I will always attempt to resolve any issue, concern or correction on the email list rather than forwarding emails posted on the list elsewhere.
• When this fails I will inform the other party(s) that I am escalating a complaint and offer them the opportunity to redact any information in their emails that raise privacy or legal concerns for them.
• If emails from closed lists or other conversations, where there was an expectation of privacy, are passed to me without permission from the originator(s), I will attempt to inform the originator(s) and inform the complainant that I will disclose their identity on request, should they still wish me to pursue an issue on their behalf.
• All my emails that relate to Wikimedia matters where I have a recognized unpaid volunteer or paid role are on the record, which means they may be made available for any reasonable investigation by a regulatory body, however I expect any privacy or legal matter to be handled with discretion and, in particular, the originators should always be offered the opportunity to redact any matter of personal concern.
• I reserve the right to make any of my emails a matter of public record in line with my ethical stance of openness and transparency.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

2013 Travel Grants

The board recently approved the 2013 Activity Plan, which includes a sizeable travel grants budget, including approximately 4x£500 places for the 2013 Amsterdam Hackathon, to be held in late May. I realise that's four months away, but equally things need to be booked in advance and application processes take time. Is there any plan to start working on the process pages that can support such applications? (I'm interested in applying.) Or do they already exist out of the way somewhere? Thanks, Jarry1250 (talk) 16:36, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for this Harry - and your reminder email. We had a short discussion at the board meeting this weekend. Here is where we stand (Mike Peel might want to supplement).

Wikimania Hong Kong - applications in the first instance to the Foundation. When they have allocated their places we will see who has not been successful from the WMUK community and a small panel will decide our scholarships. Wikisym - we have two scholarships advertised at the moment. Amsterdam - Amsterdam Hackathon: Mike Peel and Richard Nevell are about to advertise this. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 10:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Richard Nevell posted the Amsterdam Hackathon page earlier today, it's at Amsterdam Hackathon travel grants, and I understand a blog post about it will be coming out soon. The Wikimania and Wikisym scholarships pages are linked to from Scholarships. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Interwikis

Is there any chance we can have an English Wikipedia interwiki prefix set up? Currently, we have :w:en: but that's a bit hacky to remember - and if you get it the wrong way around, as :en:w:, you end up with a rather forbidding error message (en.wikimedia.org does not exist).

I've also seen people (including myself) use :w: (which drops you on the Ukranian Wikipedia) or :en: (error message again). It's really quite daunting, especially for people who're loosely familiar with interwiki links but have only just come over to uk.wikimedia.

I think :enwp: would be a good solution, and fit with a generally used shorthand form. Any thoughts, & if there's interest, how do we get it enabled? Andrew Gray (talk) 14:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes! Fantastic idea. No idea how we go about it, however... Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:40, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The {{w}} template should work, and is quick and easy to remember, but having the interwikis set up better would be good. A request to make a change would have to go through Bugzilla. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:49, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Can we get w: fixed so it links to English? This wiki was initially misconfigured with Ukrainian as the default language, if memory serves - is that what caused the interwikis to be set up wrong? If so, it should be possible to fix it. --Tango (talk) 21:14, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Main Page works. But yes, it would be nice if w:Main Page and/or wp:Main Page worked too. Yaris678 (talk) 09:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Should the request go on Bugzilla? I'm not completely sure of the status of this site - has it been migrated to our own hosting, or is that just the internal wikis? Andrew Gray (talk) 09:32, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Only the various non-public wikis were migrated, this one is still hosted on foundation servers. KTC (talk) 11:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed - see here for the update - the next progress meeting will be at the end of this month, feel free to use discussion page of minutes Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:56, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Right - it's probably best holding off any bugzilla request until we have a definite decision on whether it'll be hosted by us or WMF. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The pros/cons of moving this wiki to WMUK hosting are at IT Development/This wiki; it's on the agenda for the board meeting this weekend to decide on. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Governance: Co-option of trustees

I realized this morning, after looking again at the current co-option process, that there are features of it I am unclear on. Could one of our old hands summarize here the interplay between AGM elections and the co-option process including issues with the board of trustees offering a co-option seat of different durations? For example, Saad is a highly successful example of co-option, but I think, had we chosen to do so, the board could have offered him a 2 year term. In practice, I believe we are hoping Saad will stand for election at the AGM, so this is moot. As co-option is relatively new for us to try, we may want to discuss the alternatives and different possible future scenarios (such as a trustee standing down before an AGM avoiding the election process, and then being co-opted shortly after the AGM). Though we need not cover every eventuality by detailed policy (the trustees should be expected to apply good judgement), it would be nice to see if the mechanics of the current process are sufficient to avoid major pitfalls. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The Articles, 17.4, state "A Director appointed by a resolution of the other Directors must retire at the next annual general meeting." A trustee being co-opted shortly after an AGM could only happen if another trustee resigned, died or turned out to be ineligible to be a trustee. Co-option isn't new to us as an organisation, as we co-opted Tango in the '09-'10 board term. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. The requirement to resign at the next AGM is standard for co-options to fill casual vacancies. We did modify the CC's model articles slightly regarding co-option. The model articles all co-option for any vacancy, we only allow it for a vacancy resulting from a board member leaving the board. That means if an AGM fails to elect a full board (as happened in 2010 - only 5 people stood for the seven seats) the board can't fill the extra places by co-option and either has to call an EGM or allow the vacancies to remain for the year (we did the latter). I can't remember why we made that change... if we're amending the articles regarding co-option as part of the governance review, we may want to change that bit back to the standard rules. --Tango (talk) 12:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks Mike, I think that's clear enough, so any Co-option is limited by the date of the next AGM. If we follow the Compass recommendation to have 3 or more co-optees, then the board of trustees will need to openly plan to reappoint some co-opted trustees and by-pass the election process or change the Articles in some minimal way. Under the current system, this may mean that co-option is essentially a one-shot process, each time lasting less than one year. Maintaining 3 or more co-opted trustees every year, might turn out to be quite an administrative burden if the members do not want to change the Articles. Anyway, I'm sure this is a great topic for GovCom to thrash out and advise on. --Fæ (talk) 12:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The current Articles are designed for an all elected board with the ability to co-opt if a filled seat goes vacant. If Wikimedia UK want to have any co-opted trustees as a matter of course, then it have to change the Articles. If the members do not want to change the Articles, then the board does not have the mandate or legal power to co-opt as a matter of course. -- KTC (talk) 12:56, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely, I'm all for limiting powers to the bare necessities. I would just like a future board to avoid being criticised for having a co-opted trustee stand down at an AGM, just to be re-appointed shortly afterwards. Crafting a well written and clearly explained resolution seems the way forward, though this would be a challenge to sort out in time for the next AGM. --Fæ (talk) 13:37, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Recommendation 9 on p. 19 of Compass's review clearly envisages a change of the articles. I agree that a well written and clearly explained resolution in time for the next AGM would be good. Yaris678 (talk) 14:08, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

WMUK has received legal advice on the changes to the articles that would be required to implement the Compass recommendations. The advice is on this wiki somewhere (I'm at work, so I'm not going to go searching now). One of the changes would be to allow co-option for more than just filling casual vacancies. The way the articles are written now, you couldn't do it without someone being elected to the board and resigning the next day in order to make room for the co-opted trustee to come back, which would just be silly (the co-opted trustee could have just stood themselves!). --Tango (talk) 17:40, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

VLE talk at WikiConf UK

I've posted a suggestion at WikiConference UK 2013/Speakers. Anyone agree, disagree or able to speak to the right people? Yaris678 (talk) 13:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Yaris678, thank you for your comment. I think it's a really sensible suggestion. I'm not a part of the organising group, but if someone involved can confirm whether there's a space I can certainly speak to some of the people involved in the project and identify a speaker. People can either let me know here or via email and I'll look into it. Thank you. --Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Propose it here: WikiConference UK 2013/Talk submissions. I'm sure there will be space. --ErrantX (talk) 14:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

ErrantX, I'd prefer it if someone who knew something about the subject proposed it there. Ideally the person who is going to give the talk. But who do we get to speak on the subject? Yaris678 (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, Charles is the obvious person... :) --ErrantX (talk) 17:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Cool. Can someone ask Charles? Yaris678 (talk) 17:46, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I can certainly suggest it to Charles, that's no problem. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 18:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks. Yaris678 (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello again. I've been in touch with Charles and he isn't planning to be at WikiConference so I'm more than happy to do this instead. I'll add something to the proposals page to see if there's an appetite for something along these lines. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 09:38, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I had a chat with Charles only a couple of weeks ago with regard to demonstrating the VLE, it may be one of those things that is better for folks to try driving than to explain. I suspect a quick taster and a brief overview of what the outcomes are for the project might be all there would be time for anyway, if the previous model of 15 minutes slots is what we are going for. --Fæ (talk) 22:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Volunteer equipment

The charity has a budget of £2,000 to purchase equipment to be used by volunteers. There are some suggestions already, and people are invited to take a look and make their own suggestions. The page is at 2013 Activity Plan/Volunteer equipment. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:32, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I am concerned that we can demonstrate good value for any capital spend. In the example of the 3 (or is it more?) volunteer laptops, how much use have these had over the last four weeks and how many different volunteers have benefited from their purchase? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

If you want to review the return on investment on those laptops, you need to consider a longer timescale. There could be months where they have minimal use, and months where they are actively used. Just considering the last four weeks where Wikimedia UK have been relatively quiet in terms of outreach events for example wouldn't necessarily be fair. KTC (talk) 21:14, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, okay, any number of months then, at the moment I have no numbers at all. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 21:56, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae, we supplied numbers at your request in this report (on office wiki) on 17 November last year. We recorded their use over ten weeks, and estimated that an individual laptop is, on average, used for 23 days out of every 50. To break down the cost, the laptops have a three year life expectancy, which equates to a cost of £9.49/month. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 22:22, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Richard, I am unsure what the benefit is of keeping these numbers on the office wiki when they are of use to our members in justifying other purchases. I asked about the last four weeks as I thought that staff could recall roughly how many times volunteers had been in and taken the laptops on loan off the top of their heads without spending ages doing an expensive and complex analysis. Presumably there is also a register so we know who booked them out, in line with how most organizations would meet their insurance requirements, so that would be an easy way of checking whether the 50% usage rate from last autumn has been sustained. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I am afraid that I can't recall off the top of my head how many times they have been used recently. I'm happy to make the numbers public, but as you can see they are part of a much longer five-page response which I have not broken down. Will you trust me (as the office manager) when I say that the laptops were a good use of our funds? I am not so sure about the cameras - we really need input from volunteer photographers for that, which is why Richard was asking for suggestions. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 23:07, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Asking questions as a trustee is a duty I have, you don't really have to ask about trust when I do so. Though my notorious gay intuition is perfectly happy to leave these matters to your best judgement, particularly as an employee that I took personal responsibility for recruiting, there has to be a point where outcomes and value for the charity is measurable in a consistent and simple way, even if there is an additional cost of measurement and reporting, that I can point to if we get scrutinized for our governance at a later date. --Fæ (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi all, I would just like to note that suggestion on this are still very much welcome. Whether it's equipment that you would find useful yourself, or just ideas on equipment that you think other people would find useful, we would love to hear it! Thanks -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 10:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Human readable summary of the STV variant to be chosen

Can someone respond to my post at User talk:LondonStatto/Proposed STV Election Rules#Details of the system. I think it is essential to have a human-readable summary of the rules of the STV varient that we will be using. This summary should be available well before EGM 2013 so that people can analyse it at at their leisure. Ideally we would give people time to develop any alternatives they may think up. Yaris678 (talk) 13:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I asked this very question. I was told we would adopt the Electoral Reform Society system. On their website there is a good explanation of how it works in practice. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Have you got a link to a good explanation of the specific version of STV that we are going to use? The best I could find is this, but it needs summarising. I'm looking for something similar to my bullet points at User talk:LondonStatto/Proposed STV Election Rules#Details of the system, except written by people who know what they are talking about.

Yaris678 (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

It is quite difficult to summarise the ERS97 voting method, although http://www.crosenstiel.webspace.virginmedia.com/stvrules/details.htm#Section5 is slightly better laid out with hyperlinks for anyone needing to see how exactly it works. If people want to get an idea of what's involved, you could give a rough outline of an example like this:

• An election for 4 places has 50 valid votes cast. Voters have listed as many candidates as they wish in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, ...
• The quota is 50/(4+1) = 10. So each of 4 candidates needs 10 preference votes to be elected.
• The number of first preferences are counted for each candidate. Anyone receiving 10 votes or more is elected.
• If candidates receive more votes than the 10 needed to be elected, the surplus is redistributed proportionately to the candidates who were second preference (so candidates will receive fractions of a vote).
• Anyone who now has received 10 votes or more after the redistribution is elected. The redistribution of surpluses continues until 4 candidates are elected or no candidate is elected at that stage.
• If the redistribution of surplus does not result in another candidate being elected at that stage, then the candidate with the lowest vote is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the next preferences. This continues until another candidate is elected, then the redistribution of surpluses continues, and so on.

So the system requires voters to give candidates an order of preference; and the counting is designed to minimise the number of wasted votes. There are special modifications to the detailed procedures (for example to resolve ties), but they don't change the broad principles. Variants of the system exist and are described at w:en:Single transferable vote; the w:en:Hagenbach-Bischoff quota is the quota described by ERS97. --RexxS (talk) 20:59, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks RexxS. This is very helpful. Not a million miles from what I put at User talk:LondonStatto/Proposed STV Election Rules#Details of the system... but its good to confirm my understanding.

N.B. This could be moot unless the draft resolution is changed. See Talk:EGM 2013/Draft Resolutions#The precise terms of the election shall be determined by the Board.

Yaris678 (talk) 14:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

High quality photographs for Wikimedia UK

Hi All,

So, by now you'll have seen the first couple of members newsletters, a soon to be published donors e-newsletter, and ongoing publications coming up including Annual Review, handouts for conferences, other leaflets and forms.

Its becoming increasingly difficult to find high quality 'marketing-materials' type images to use - not necessarily because of a lack of images in some cases, but because when we document WMUK events we're not necessarily approaching it like we do a 'Wiki Takes...' event. This is a real shame, as I know week-in, week-out exciting events are happening around the UK but we simply don't have enough new images representing us. I think we're all keen to see the numbers of volunteers, members and donors creep up and show increasing diversity and engagement, and high quality publications with exciting images that really encapsulate who we are and what we do are vital.

To that end I've created a page called Photographs as an acorn from which I hope great oaks can grow. I know there are experienced and talented photographers among you, and many of us who go to events but perhaps don't think to document them in this way and for this purpose as a matter of course. I'm open to all suggestions about how we can grow and improve the flow of photos covering our work, as I'm really keen to avoid having to use paid-for photographers to plug the gap.

Let me know what you think here, and please go mash-up the page so we're getting something useful put together Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 15:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Commons:Commons:First steps/Quality and description is a useful basic guide to point to for those less familiar with uploading photos. Any volunteer with more experience, can always benefit by asking for some feedback on their uploads at Commons:Commons:Photography critiques. I believe that avoiding the use of paid photographers is quite easy, the chapter has never done this and has no plan to start, though expenses have been paid for volunteers supporting events with video and audio recording or webcasting. We may want to experiment more with techniques such as the British Museum time-lapse video taken in 2010, which demonstrated how an edit-a-thon works. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, I've added them to the page(as external links, the interwiki linking doesn't seem to work for me in your links?) Please feel to add any other useful resources you know there directly?

I really don't want to use paid photographers, because its not been budgeted for and because we should be supporting volunteers to do this kind of thing. However, we're not getting sufficient images either a) with the frequency we need e.g. last meetup photos on commons under that category were November last year or b) Of the variety we need - we need to be representing the diverse nature of our community, and the things it does. We seem to have a lot of pictures of Wikimedians in windowless basements lit only by the glare of laptop screen as they edit. Where this isn't the case, the pictures are of events quite some time ago. I would love to better reflect our social side in an up to date way - and not always in pub meets. Some people aren't that fussed for the pub :D Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 16:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Just fixed the links, I had missed out the extra 'Commons'. We should recognize the fact that most of what we do is primarily to support people on their own, editing from their home computers or having meetings in shady basements and pubs, however we should find some rather photogenic things coming up soon, for example the Natural History Museum will be great for photos (it is incredibly noisy with over-excited screaming children) and some of their collections are outdoors. I'm glad you are determined not to pay photographers, neither am I, and would be against any such proposal should it come to the board, as I believe using the charity's funds this way fails sufficiently to meet our Volunteer Policy or our values. However I would support a significant budget to pay expenses for volunteers to be encouraged to do more, and would consider the merits of equipment hire or purchase to support a well proposed plan of volunteer activities to create better representative media as well as more experimental media and virtual presence innovation. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:04, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I will bear all this in mind when talking to Katy about this as a part of volunteer development work. I agree NHM a good opportunity, screaming kids aside... I think for now I will work on getting a photography permissions system a bit more firmly in place on events pages and trying to alert volunteers to events we would like photos of. A worked out policy on these specific expenses and a budget like is a good idea. Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Virtual presence

Virtual presence innovation? Wossat then? —Tom Morris (talk) 23:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked Tom. :-) One of the fundamental components of the chapter's mission is to support Access to open knowledge. It is therefore bizarre that when I think through our history of events over the last 3 years, we appear to be going backwards in terms of the proportion of events with effective access for "e-volunteers" who would like to join us live, but cannot, or prefer not to, join us in the physical world. WMCH has been doing good work with experimenting with the open source Big Blue Button virtual conferencing system, which makes a great free practical alternative for the closed systems of Skype or Google Hangout, but sadly in these access stakes WMUK has been failing to take a lead. In fact, we are in the process of reducing the access to our board meetings, by locking away draft minutes and the trustees even discussing whether we should block any future attempt to video or webcast our "open" meetings for fear of negative press should anyone ever make a misstatement during a meeting. In practice we do not need a policy to go into lock-down; if you check through our track record of making video available after our meetings over the last six months, you can see this has effectively already happened; I believe the answer is zero.

Hence my recommendation that the charity firmly encourages volunteers to make suggestions for how we can innovate live virtual access to events, as well as finding better, faster, cheaper ways to capture the event as a passive record through photography, video and audio. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 07:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree we need to do a lot, LOT more virtual and online. When I was based in t'north it was very frustrating as a volunteer that events in london were expensive and rarely webcast. We need to get better at this. We've been asked to cover the open day on the 23rd March by Skype by one volunteer; we can take lessons for this and start to look at how to build this into other events. Big Blue Button is an interesting development too - I understand there is an idea we could trial that on the 23rd instead of Skype? Meanwhile, I'll put 'Supporting Virtual Presence' on the next agenda for the Tech Committee. Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll be looking into the Big Blue Button in an effort to learn more about how it compares to the alternatives. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, Fæ. Finding ways to work with e-volunteers on projects would be worthwhile. I participated remotely with one of the editathons in the US, for instance, but that was just IRC. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Come to next Tech Committee and discuss? PLEASE! :-) Good cross over with potential VLE usage as well, which is also on the agenda...Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 12:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Big Blue Button

Any update on the office experimenting with this? I would hope we can show it off at the EGM. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 23:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

So far we haven't yet taken the Big Blue Button for a test run. We have, however, been in touch with the WMF to learn from their experience of streaming videos which they do so regularly (eg: metrics meetings). Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Lua and Pizza

We are thinking of having Learn to Lua event in the office for people wanting to get to grips with the template creating language. There has been some positive reaction on the UK lists, especially when Pizza was mentioned. Anyone interested? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

This has been arranged for Sunday 19 May. For those interested, please sign up on Lua on Wikimedia. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 14:19, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Great news that people are signing up - we will have to order more pizza! Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:24, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion about mailing lists and the Water Cooler (split from "Lua and Pizza")

Which UK lists was this notified on? I would like to avoid repeating material already discussed by chapter volunteers. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

wikimediauk-l. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

If wikimediauk-l is the official and only way that chapter staff are choosing to first communicate with volunteers and members (in preference to a chapter members list or this public wiki, for example), then this should raised as a risk at the next board meeting. The chapter office appears to have forgotten that the chapter has no control over the list management and cannot recommend its use to members of the charity. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:31, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

wikimediauk-l is not the "official and only way" that chapter staff are communicating with volunteers and members. Honestly I'm not sure how anyone could arrive at that view. We do also use this wiki. We use other mailing lists where appropriate, such as the cultural partners list. We use our blog. We use Twitter and Facebook. We have monthly reports (on this wiki, shared via as many channels as we can). We have a monthly IRC chat (tomorrow is the next one, hope to see plenty of people there!). We have newsletters to members and donors. We attend and host events. Staff try to visit meetups to speak with community members in person. Sometimes the wikimediauk-l is a convenient way to reach many members of our community. As far as I am aware we have never said that we own, or control, the mailing list. Of course, we always welcome any further channels that might be viewed as useful although I think we actually have enough channels already. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stevie, I was specifically referring to how we choose to communicate with volunteers and members in the context of planning future events; as per the title of this thread. In this case I believe none of the alternative channels in your list was used or considered. I would be happy to be corrected if you can point to any emails on lists such as cultural-partners, on posts to the blog, twitter or facebook with regard to this proposed event that pre-date Jon's note. You may want to apply these alternative channels now if they have not been used, and formulate a better guide for staff in terms of how to make best use of our communications channels if you think that improvement is desirable. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

In this case, the list is one of our most active outlets for collaboration. A lot of volunteer collaboration occurs on there, so it would be illogical for WMUK not to utilise that :) All the other venues you list would have been sub-optimal for the discussion that happened. --ErrantX (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

So best not to try then? Communicating with volunteers and members of the charity using this list alone certainly excludes me, and I am not the only member of the charity who is uninterested in received emails from wikimediauk-l in the light of how some people have been treated there as a permanent public record. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:14, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

It bears repeating that the wikimediauk-l is not the only channel we use to communicate. It's interesting that this point was raised on another channel that was also used to try and determine whether there is interest within the community for an event like this. Of course, once the event is set and a date is fixed, then it will of course be shared once again via wikimediauk-l, linking to an event page on this wiki, shared also via Twitter, Facebook, our blog... we really aren't short of communications channels. I am certainly confident that we utilise enough different media to be as inclusive as possible. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Although I much prefer discussions taking place on this wiki, wikimediauk-l is *the* mailing list to use for email discussions about things like this. It's where some of our key members are, and we should continue to recommend to WMUK members that they subscribe to that list. It's far better for openness and transparency than closed lists such as cultural-partners and the WMUK office mailing list. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:58, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Mike, by all means raise this matter at the next board meeting, again. The Wikimedia UK charity has never recommended that members of the charity join the wikimediauk-l list, it is not owned, nor controlled by the charity, nor do the administrators of the email list appear to wish it to ever be so. It is independent of the charity and is not governed in a way that can be assessed against the mission or values of the charity. If the UK charity wishes to communicate with volunteers for the charity or with its members, then this list is not a reliable mechanism to achieve that goal.

I remind you that my objection is not that this list exists, just that it should not become the first and only way that charity staff work with volunteers to create events or disseminate information about the charity. It evidently is being used in this way at the moment. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

No huge deal here - let's use both. Remember Stevie's recommendations in his comms paper? In any case we now have Katie on board who will be making completely sure we communicate with all our volunteers. The best thing is that there are a groups of really enthusiastic volunteers who want to be locked away in a room with pizza to discuss and develop templates - let a thousand flowers bloom! 85.159.94.23 09:28, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

It's the primary way of communicating with the UK community (with a small number of exceptions). I think the distinct lack of response to Jon's posting here, compared to the active response on the mailing list, examples why it is the most important communication channel. If what you're proposing is the replace the WMF-hosted mailing list with a UK-wide (i.e. members and non-members) list hosted by Wikimedia UK, then that is an interesting idea. However, at this time the wikimediauk-l list is the most active forum for discussion in the UK. And for the charity to ignore this primary avenue for collaboration would be cutting off its nose to spite it's face. Only a small number of people object to the list, and as a trustee I'd expect you to rise above your personal objections and examine what is in the best interests of the charity (i.e. from the perspective of collaborating with the broadest user base). In this case the list was used to informally float an idea for feedback, and once interest had been firmed up posts were made at other venues. Had Jon popped something here I doubt it would have gotten as far by this stage... --ErrantX (talk) 09:38, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Fae, I'm really not sure where this idea comes from that the list is the "first and only way" that charity staff work with volunteers. It is not "evidently being used in this way" at the moment. Is it the most popular method? Yes. It is certainly not, and visibly not, the only way. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stevie, rather than an "idea", it is literal and visibly based on the evidence. This was the first way that staff chose to discuss a possible event (Mar 14) and until Jon raised it here after 4 days of discussion and much of the possible content, dates and location had been agreed, it was the only way. As our communications specialist, you may wish to formulate a better guide for staff in terms of how to make best use of our communications channels, if you think that improvement is desirable. Hopefully future communications will be more accessible to volunteers such as myself, and I will be happy to help by using this page to point out where this fails to be the case. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:51, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

It was the only way until another way was used... rather tautologous... I don't see the harm in using one forum to get a rough idea of whether there is any interest in something and then announcing it more widely after that. Your paranoia over the mailing list confuses me - it's just a mailing list. It takes emails from one person and distributes them to lots of other people. It really doesn't matter whose server it is running on... --Tango (talk) 12:20, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As I'm being accused of paranoia by the process of asking fact based questions as an interested volunteer, obviously this conversation should be considered at an end until this happens again, and in good conscience I have to raise it all over again. Tom, if you believe I am unfit to be on the board due to a mental illness, please do produce some evidence, as that would actually be a valid reason for me to be required to leave, this time. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

While paranoia is a symptom of certain mental illnesses, it is not in itself a mental illness. It is simply a form of irrationality. I never said anything about trying to get you off the board. Please don't jump to such ridiculous conclusions. I always say exactly what I mean, so there is really no need to try and read between the lines. --Tango (talk) 13:21, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

(ec) For the record, nothing's been agreed other the that it's a good idea as a possible event. Possible dates have been suggested (by me) when I was speaking to one of our volunteer and potential runner of the workshop to see if it sounds like a good idea, and that didn't even take place on wikimediauk-l. Location was always likely to be at Development House, if only for familiarity and cost reason. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 12:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Getting back to the topic at hand, yes, the mailing list was the first place that the idea was mentioned. In my view this was the best choice, too. I see no need to formulate a "better guide" for staff and am perfectly happy that the wikimediauk-l mailing list is used, as long as it isn't used in isolation (and it isn't). In the specific example you raised it was very quickly evident that there was enough interest to make an event feasible so there was no need to pursue this speculative line of enquiry anywhere else as the question had been answered. Of course, when details are firmed up the event will be promoted elsewhere. This is standard, as already outlined above. I continue to disagree with your assertion that the mailing list is the first and only place we communicate because this is palpably not the case. As the communications specialist I am happy that our communications are accessible and I am happy with the way they are functioning. I believe most people would agree. That's not to say there isn't always room for improvement. Of course, as a member of the community I encourage you - and anyone else - to continue to raise concerns where you feel communications fail to meet your expectations and I will always be happy to address them. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Chronology version seven.

This is version seven of the chronology relating to the governance review.

It differs from version six in that John Cummings, who had not been interviewed for the study, felt it was inaccurate in one place. After being interviewed the chronology was amended at the end of February. Apologies for the delay in getting this version up. Thanks to Stevie and David Gerrard for overcoming some technical hurdles. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 18:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Is the link correct? It says "v6" rather than "v7". Thanks --Fæ (talk) 22:35, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Can you save us all some time and post a diff? Thanks. --Tango (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I have spotted that the document titled "v6" does in fact contain the document which has "v7" in the footers of internal pages of the document, though the index page calls it "Chronology" and other internal pages use the term "Descriptive chronology".

Unfortunately the licence on this wiki does not contain the attribution required on the second un-numbered page of the document (the first two pages have no identifying numbers, with numbering starting from "page 1" on page 3). Please ensure the attributions are correct on all the versions of this report, including any that have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

I note that the report is dated "February 2013" with no note, nor indication that this was later revised, my understanding is that this had agreed changes that should be dated as some time in March 2013, and should now supersede all previous versions of the report. Was this an error? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 00:08, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Given that the report has already been published and widely distributed, it might be easier to just issue an errata rather than amending it. --Tango (talk) 00:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. To clarify my slightly confusing paragraph above, it is the attribution on-wiki that should be changed to match the agreed licence in the report. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 06:56, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

To pick up on a minor point here, the reason the file remains named "v6" is simply because there are existing links in other places to that file URL. By updating the file, while keeping the same filename, we are able to ensure that existing links to the descriptive chronology remain functional and that they point to the correct document. --Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

We can move the file to an appropriate new name, and create a redirect from the old name to the new name? -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 11:33, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Could you also correct the required copyright attribution at the same time? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

A URI with a version number in it should always link to that version of a file. Add a notice to the file description saying there is a later version. Don't break links. --Tango (talk) 12:17, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it now (during lunch, I hasten to add!). I've renamed the files on Commons. Richard Symonds (talk) 14:46, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Richard! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The links appear to be Commons:File:Wikimedia UK Governance Review Descriptive Chronology.pdf and Commons:File:Wikimedia UK Governance Review Descriptive Chronology.djvu.

As highlighted previously, the copyright attribution remains incorrect. If the intention is for this to persist on Wikimedia Commons, the copyright licence needs to right. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 23:49, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As Tom requested towards the beginning of this thread, is there a diff available, or can someone point out where the corrections are supposed to be? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 23:52, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The changes are on pages 24 and 25 and relate to John Cummings at Wikimania. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, but do I really have to bring up two versions of the document side-by-side and play a game of spot-the-difference? --Tango (talk) 11:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. It's not actually "our" report, so I believe the charity has only been copied the pdf. As a trustee, this is first time that I have seen this changed document, so I have not been presented with the differences and have yet to work out what they are. If someone can highlight the changed text, that would be great. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:52, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Please correct the copyright statement on all versions of this report that have been made public

The referenced Wikimedia Commons file page for the djvu document above, includes the statement "described by uploader Richard Nevell of WMUK as CC-by-SA", however the required attribution statement remains incorrect. Can someone please put this right? The Chapter should set a good example on correct copyright releases, particularly when it is Chapter staff choosing to release material on Wikimedia Commons. For those that are unaware, CC-BY-SA includes moral rights under UK and US law, these are enforceable under the law, not optional. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:15, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Fae, I'm having trouble parsing the sentence above. You're the most active Commonist we have, whereas the staff are relative newbies - we don't edit Commons very often! Are you saying that we need to update the 'author' field on Commons to read 'Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK'? If this isn't correct, please let us know in simple terms what needs changing, and we'll change it. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae, I should probably be the one to sort this out as I've been involved in the uploads. I confess though that I'm not following what's wrong. The PDF report states "The content contained in this report is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence v3.0 ... by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK unless otherwise stated. The trademarks and logos of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikmedia UK, Compass Partnership, and any other organizations are not included under the terms of this Creative Commons licence"

As you are focussing on the dvu file I assume your issue is with the self template, although your explanation wasn't exactly clear. Does this clear things up? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:16, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

No, thanks for having a go. The issues I have identified with copyright are as follows:

1. In the chronology document (File:Wikimedia UK Governance Review Descriptive Chronology.pdf) there is an unambiguous statement of copyright that under the BY conditions of the CC licence must be part of any licence, as the SA component is invoked on the original, then only the CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence can apply on any reuse. On Commons this can be done by using the template {{cc-by-sa-3.0|1=<the required text>}}. Currently, there is no attribution text on that file. I would expect the full paragraph from the report to apply, to avoid any ambiguity or misinterpretation.
2. In the djvu version (File:Wikimedia UK Governance Review Descriptive Chronology.djvu) the attribution text has been partly quoted in the general description, but has not been added to the licence as a required attribution of that licence. Again the SA component means that the licence should be identical to the original, and the attribution should be quoted in full (currently there is an ellipsis where the text has been trimmed).
3. The main report Commons:File:Wikimedia UK gov review rpt v5.djvu contains no licence for free reuse that I can see. It may be that the contract with Compass makes a free reuse licence a requirement, but it is not within the Chapter's or the WMF's authority to release this report without unambiguous permission for this specific report. I recommend it is deleted until the licence is unambiguous. The licence used in the Chronology report cannot be retrospectively applied to the main report as the main report contains the Compass logo, which is specifically not included in the Chronology licence. If this was an error, then this needs an agreed amendment with Compass.

Lastly, if any other versions or variations of Compass reports have been uploaded, I would appreciate direct links here so that we can keep track. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:55, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this edit and this should sort out the licensing on the chronologies, using full wording of the text in the document and the |1= field in the cc-by-sa template as you suggested. Is that part sorted?

As for the full report, I will have to get back to you on that. The release of the file under CC-BY-SA is probably buried in an email thread somewhere. That is the only version of the full report on Commons, the pdf version is on the UK wiki. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I've just dug the relevant correspondence out of my email inbox and forwarded it to Richard and Fae. WMF and WMUK own the copyright to the report and agreed to release it under CC-BY-SA. The Land (talk) 12:53, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. As per email, the chronology looks good copyright-wise, the main report we might have to think about how to make a more robust release for. --Fæ (talk) 13:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Error on Recent Changes

There is an error on Recent Changes. The red link to Mary Buckland should presumably be Mary Buckland. Yaris678 (talk) 18:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. KTC (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Katie. Yaris678 (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks both! :) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 21:27, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Volunteer and Trustee Security checklist

Hey all,

I'm starting to work on a brief set of guidelines and checklist around data protection and IT security that we can show to new volunteers and Trustees. It's here and I'd appreciate input, including making it as plain english as possible. Please feel free to reshape as you like - though I would like to keep a basic check list in their somewhere, as its often very useful for busy people.

I should add that most of this stuff is common sense, but that in my experience we all email unencrypted files to each other, or keep stuff saved that we no longer need. I'll work on this over the next few weeks, and will start the call now for all volunteers who have any personal data stored on personal devices in relation to their roles, past or present, with the charity that they no longer use or require, to please securely delete it - there will be further reminders in newsletters and on the mailing list over time :) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 19:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if this were marked as a draft at the top, to avoid any confusion with board approved policies. I see it has been added to Category:Policies, we may want to use a category for draft or proposed documents instead, and reserve that category for approved documents only. Unfortunately there is no standard process for the chapter to refer to approval and review records from a published policy or process, that would probably be a sensible general improvement if we could agree a system. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:11, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

D'oh, yes, makes sense to indicate it's draft. I don't think it really is a 'policy' either because its not prescriptive, so perhaps a new category needed. I really hope GovCom can work out some of these processes and issue staff with guidance as to best practice, as I have no problem complying with procedures when I know what they are :) Honest! Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 10:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

23rd event - come in from the cold

Looking forward to seeing about 42 people tomorrow at the offices to discuss the next five years of Wikimedia UK. The heating comes on at about 10 but vests might be in order!

Am pretty certain that transport will be running and there will be a warm welcome and hot drinks for everyone.

We have a busy day so will be starting promptly at 10 please.

Thanks for giving up the time to come.

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 15:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Anyone interested in running bots?

There's several maintenance tasks on this wiki that would probably be best-suited to an automated bot rather than manual work - for example, fixing bad interwiki links, and tagging uncategorised pages and files with unclear copyright. Would anyone be interested in running a bot to do this sort of work? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:16, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

This should be pretty straight-forward. Can you spec the tasks? Rich Farmbrough, 23:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC).

Governance: What are the member's expectations for openness and transparency from the Board of Trustees?

Back in October last year, I raised the issue of how much of the UK Board's votes and discussion was conducted in-camera, on closed email lists and closed wikis. Since that time, I believe the Board's behaviour has been to become yet more closed than ever. Though there was agreement in principle, there has yet to be a single example of a vote of the board held outside of the board meetings, being made public, with public discussion. The most recent in-camera vote, was the necessary vote of the board supporting EGM 2013/Resolutions, already a public document, with the resulting 5 days of discussion, changes of vote and explanations of votes, being unavailable to our members apart from the outcome which was made public at Agenda 26Mar13 as it will be confirmed at the next board meeting. This way of working has become a convention for the Board.

In the same month as my raising openness on the Water cooler, Mike created an in-camera vote to ensure that the Board would decide which in-camera decisions should be made available to members. 19 significant decisions were part of that vote. 5 months later it remains open, with only myself and John Byrne (now no longer a trustee) having voted on it.

When there have been strategic or operational issues of interest to the Trustees, they are invariably discussed in-camera, even though many of our members have interests and expertise that might offer better or faster solutions.

In 2011, as a trustee I could see and browse the financial records of the charity, I could easily answer questions from volunteers, I knew at the time if an email had been formally been sent to the WMF, the Charity Commission, or a significant meeting or an agreement was made a supplier or partner. In 2013, this does not happen. Spot-checks are impossible without resorting to a vote, and debate, to make it happen through others. In some instances that might be a good thing, however transparency and openness has been reduced.

So, why an I raising this here and now? —
We are approaching an AGM, and this will be a chance to influence the values that our members and wider community expect of the new board. I encourage our members to share your expectations for openness, whether it remains a top priority or not, and to draw the line as to when you think it is necessary or appropriate for the board to operate behind closed doors, so that we establish an understanding in the minds of prospective new trustees as to whether this is a value that we can gradually put aside, and fall more in line with the conventions of other UK charities, or whether our community wishes this to stay central in our values, expressed through visible and measurable actions by the Board of Trustees, and differentiates us from the way most other charities choose to function.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 18:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Fae, in the good old days when we were colleagues on the Board, you talked a lot about the coming transition of the Board's role to strategic oversight, similar to the trustees of other charities. You complained informally that far too much board time was spent on minutiae. You put a lot of effort, successfully I think, into getting good-quality staff and processes in place to run the charity. You'll recall that I was an enthusiastic supporter of that Fae and wanted him to have a very central role. That Fae would have seen this: "I knew at the time if an email had been formally been sent to the WMF, the Charity Commission, or a significant meeting or an agreement was made a supplier or partner. In 2013, this does not happen." as progress.

I can't comment on whether the number of in-camera decisions is excessive because of course I don't know what they are. I know that there are good reasons as well as bad ones for keeping some decisions in-camera. I expect that as the chapter is professionalised, incidences of the good reasons (e.g. legal negotiations, duty of care to individuals, staff issues, sensitive issues concerning relations with other parts of the Wikimedia movement) will increase. I think it's reasonable to expect from the board some indication of the kind of categories of reason for deliberations to be private. Describing it as "operat[ing] behind closed doors" just sounds like hyperbole.

Personally, I think the coming priority for the members and enthusiasts who want to see Wikimedia grow and succeed ought to be to deal with the counterproductive and unnecessary hostile tone that characterises far too many of our internal communications. I don't think we can afford the assault on volunteer (and staff?) morale. Nor can we afford to have valid criticisms passed up because they're embedded in trivia and point-scoring, or because the combative tone discourages other people from engaging. I expect the Trustees to show leadership in this, and this means we should hold you to a high standard. So the sort of "visible actions" I want to see are adoption of a consensual style of working rather than an individual trustee pursuing a seemingly wrong-headed conception of their role in the organisation. I want each trustee to accept that they are not going to get their own way all the time, and that the best decisions have emerged, and will emerge, from a collegial approach. For the most part, the board are and have been good at this. That's the kind of positive change I'd like to see you focus on, and you might find that people hunker down less as a side-effect. MartinPoulter (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

You may be surprised to find I am still the same person Martin, I know you are sore about it taking several months of me repeatedly raising concerns over the management of the Midas contract and the associated declaration of interest to reach a conclusion, but this thread is about the more general views of the members and the values we would like to see for the future board. If any member wants to know more of what is going on behind closed doors, they need to ask, I know of nothing so sensitive that the fact that the trustees have discussed it, or are currently discussing it must not be mentioned or appropriately summarized.

By the way, I estimate that only a minority of what is actually discussed behind closed doors would fit your example categories above. Most of the correspondence could easily be shared on-wiki or via a members email list, without any complications, particularly if a delay were introduced - for example discussion of significant blog posts for the charity that are public a day later. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem is, Fae, you keep asking these kind of leading questions of members. As I think I've said before, we don't appreciate being treated as pawns in your political point-scoring. Your concerns are valid, but you really don't help your case by playing these games. --Tango (talk) 18:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Tango, this is not the first time you have made these unsupported allegations of me using the members as pawns in some sort of weird unexplained political scheme. Considering I am not standing for election until 2014, and there is no political process I am involved with, could you explain exactly how me raising the question of how much of priority our value of openness is for the members, is supposed to benefit me politically and personally? From the comments here, if I were a politician, being the only trustee asking these questions looks like political suicide. Obviously if the leading members of our charity don't really care when one of the six trustees on the board of the charity is raising this question, then I'll just go along with keeping the business of the board in-camera. I can assure you, that without the scrutiny of members like yourself, there is far less for the board to worry about, though we should probably drop it from our list of Values if that is our new way of working. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Trying to keep to our values of openness and transparency is a laudable aim, and I should admit that I was the trustee who voted against the initial draft of the resolutions and later changed my vote after several days of discussion. I had spotted a drafting error, but found it beyond my powers to explain in simple terms the problem that it would cause. For that I apologise to my fellow trustees and to the membership. I also wanted to raise my concerns that a side-effect of the balancing provisions (Articles 16.3/16.4) which we were amending would be to decrease the stability of the Board at times when turnover was highest. I would prefer to see some three-year terms used to restore a 4-3 pattern of Elected Trustees in alternate years, rather than the one-year terms that are currently proposed at EGM 2013/Resolutions #Article 16 - particularly in the light of the Hudson Report's recommendation that trustee terms should be 2-3 years as is the norm in the charity sector. This debate took time, but was worthwhile. It could have taken place in public (and a very similar one did at Talk:EGM 2013/Resolutions), but having a little privacy can allow trustees to be rather more blunt with each other than would be seemly in public. In this case, there was no need, but we didn't know that when we started the discussions. Personally, I'm not too worried about having some debates in camera and later releasing them into public whenever we can. You have my assurance that in my remaining time on the Board, I shall continue to support those values of openness and transparency to the best of my abilities. --RexxS (talk) 21:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Expanding the descriptions of events

I'm faintly embarrassed that the text about the presentation and workshop I'm doing are taking up several lines on the front page, while the links to things like GLAM-Wiki and the EGM are very compact. The solution is not to cut down the descriptions of my stuff, which are correct and just long enough to say what the event is, but to improve the usability of links to the more important events.

• Does someone who is not part of our community, and just checking out this site to see what they can do to help Wikimedia, know that GLAM-Wiki is a very important conference, or even that it's a conference?
• Does someone who is active online but not experienced with companies and charities know what EGM stands for? Will they recognise that it's important from the initials?
• A lot of us regulars know what IRC is, but there are some very technical, internet-savvy people out there who have not heard of it. Will they know what an "IRC office hour" is? Maybe "virtual office hour (in online chat)" or something similar would get it across to them more clearly?
• I could make piecemeal changes myself, but we need a change in communication style from what we've long being doing, in order to appeal to more than just each other. If staff or more involved volunteers implement this change in style, the rest of us need to empower them to do it, and avoid being too conservative. MartinPoulter (talk) 15:38, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right Martin, the current descriptions are of less use if you're not up to speed with the charity and its activities. Even Wikipedians might not know what GLAM-Wiki is. Expanding the descriptions sounds like a good idea. Changing IRC office hour to something along the lines your suggest is something I'll be implementing and I'll see about coming up with something for the rest. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:34, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Some really useful points here Martin and Richard, thank you. These are definitely the kind of things that we need to take into account when restructuring the wiki. As a broader point, something we lack as a wiki (as opposed to a conventional website) is a solid information architecture so hopefully when Richard and I work on this we can find some way, working with the community, to come up with something that's a bit easier to use and find a way around - especially for newcomers. Some user accessibility / user experience testing would be good too, especially if it's independent. Plenty to think about but one thing is for certain - we have to make things easier for everyone, especially new and potential volunteers and editors. --Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 17:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I think a consistent style would be good - either short notices of about four-six words, or a couple of lines for everything (other than, eg, meetups) to give details. (I tend to prefer the former - easier to have a month at a glance). Andrew Gray (talk) 20:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The next five - years, tell us what you want.

Towards a five year plan

Hello all - There is now a page on the wiki where you can start fleshing out what you want to see us doing over the next five years.

Plunge in, or take a while to have a look at the feedback from the event on Saturday and the situational review; there are links at the bottom of the page and very interesting they are too.

The timetable is quite tight if we are to have something substantial to discuss at the AGM so don't hesitate to get going.

Have a good Easter,

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 18:38, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Spreadsheets on-wiki

A lot of the business of the chapter relies on spreadsheets or complex tables that rapidly become unrealistic to maintain on-wiki. Can anyone recommend solutions? At the moment most key spreadsheets (such as the monthly financial reports) are sent around as Google spreadsheets, which means that any comments or changes are buried in emails and there is no systematic tracability. I note that Extension:Googledocviewer might be an option if we really are stuck with a Google solution and nothing better is possible at this time, this would at least make it possible to view spreadsheet reports on this wiki without jumping to another application. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

This extension would be very helpful. I'll ask the tech team to enable it. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Richard asked me to take a look at this from a technical perspective. The extension looks fine technically, however I discovered that to get documents to display staff would have to select "publish to web" - this bypasses privacy controls and means anyone knowing the URL could access a read only copy of the document. That's above my pay grade to figure out if it is acceptable or not :D Certainly it seems OK for public documents. Oh, from a technical perspective we couldn't install it on *this* wiki because we don't yet have control of it. But following a migration it would certainly be possible. --ErrantX (talk) 12:49, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Digital Impacts: Crowdsourcing in the Arts and Humanities

I've just come across this event taking place on Tuesday 9 April at the Oxford Internet Institute. I wonder if there are any volunteers who might be interested in going and representing the Wikimedia movement? Do let me know if you're interested and we can make some arrangements. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

On the subject of the humanities and crowdsourcing the Roman limes project led by WMDE might be an interesting topic of conversation at the event. And very topic given the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition at the BM which opened last week. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:09, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Request: Staff hierarchy

Could someone update the staff hierarchy at Staff? It does not explain how the current team of 11 staff and contractors are organized. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I will work on this and upload the new version when it is ready. I don't have a timescale for completion at this point as I have other pieces of work that have a higher priority. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a volunteer produced this before, I made the request on the Water cooler so that a volunteer could jump in again and help out so I was not particularly expecting this to be another staff job, especially as everyone is busy. In the meantime, for general information and to help a volunteer update the chart, is there a document that explains who is reporting to who at the moment? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I see this has now been updated by Rock Drum, presumably taking zero staff time. It might be an idea to plan to have these charts updated when we are recruiting for new positions that change the organization significantly. This will help both members and trustees stay up to date with the changes. --Fæ (talk) 16:19, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Confirmation of how many laptops are currently available for events, 3 or 6?

Hi, I am a bit confused by a minor detail at Lua on Wikimedia. This says that the Office has 3 laptops available for loan. However as this is the only event on that day, I think there should be 6 laptops available at this event, considering that 3 additional cheap laptops were specifically purchased for volunteer use this year, and there were 3 previous to that. Could someone confirm the status of these and that the Fixed Asset Register is correct? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:32, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae. Both the Fixed Asset Register and the event page are correct. The other three laptops will not be at the event unless we really need them. One is in use by a volunteer, and the other two are unsuitable (being a Mac and a Chromebook) unless there is a huge demand for laptops. Thanks for bringing this up. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, perhaps the event page ought to say something along those lines and that a maximum of 5 are available. Certainly if an event is popular and more than 3 volunteers need laptops, then I would guess they are really needed, especially as there is no particular expectation that all our volunteers require a Windows operating system, particularly as I understand that the Office all use Macs. By the way, the event is more than six weeks away. I would be concerned if a volunteer were "borrowing" a laptop from the charity for months at a time, perhaps whoever this is, should put in a proposal of some sort so that the board of trustees are aware of why this is to the benefit of the charity. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 14:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

For clarity, the office staff do not all use Macs. I believe three staff do, the remainder use Windows machines. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for that, presumably that means there is no issue with loaning both the Windows and Mac laptops at events, with the single Chromebook as a backup. After experiencing one of the Lenovo Thinkpads being unable to cope with simply running Skype (plus my normal OS being Mac so Windows would slow me down as I would take ages to work out how to switch on the Dvorak keyboard layout), as a volunteer I would much rather be offered the much nicer Macbook Pro at future events. As it cost £1,100 I would like to see the charity get lots of use out of it.

Is there anything the chapter can say about long term loaner laptops for volunteers? If these are available, it would be sensible to make this a policy. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

As it has been 11 days now since I asked my question, I would guess there will be no answer forthcoming.

Just to be really clear, can someone please confirm that one of our laptops has not now been broken, lost or stolen, and that the volunteer that currently has one (as above) in their possession for an undefined period, for some reason, is known to the board of trustees? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:44, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

As we're discussing a specific volunteer, even if that volunteer is unnamed, I'll drop you an email about it rather than reply here. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:35, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the other parts of my previous question can be answered for the benefit of members without revealing the name of the volunteer? For example what policy are long term loans of laptops covered under as I'm sure there are other members that might be helped in their volunteer activities if they can take such a loan? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:08, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I think it's more appropriate to do it by email rather than potentially upset a volunteer. I've sent it now though. The idea of cementing long-term loans is an interesting one, and potentially very useful, but I don't think it needs a board level policy - something for Katie to sort out instead. I'll drop her a note about it. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I find the charity is doing 80% of its business these days by emails and closed wikis not shared with the members. A pity compared to the 80% open of only 2 years ago. As a trustee, I am ultimately responsible for the management of the assets of the charity, so I find this approach of secrecy odd, we certainly have never accepted a non-transparent scholarship or microgrant request in the past, even if we may have accepted a pseudonym, so I don't understand why this is different for any reason. This is more "secret" than I would expect us to be, as in this case the trustees still apparently know absolutely nothing about it, and this is not covered by any agreed process that I was previously aware of, or that has been quoted here. I have separately raised the issue for consideration by the board and potentially the A&R Committee. If we need a policy to allow this sort of thing, then we should approve one, rather than leave this ad-hoc and uncontrolled, which in practice leaves the staff who appear to be making these decisions about long term loans of the charity's assets at some risk should things go wrong, as there are no delegated powers for them to do so and basic requirements for appropriate protection, such as insurance, do not seem to have been considered. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:50, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Just to comment on the MacBook Pro; during the security review I noticed that you (Fæ) and Jon had logged into it using personal accounts. My recommendation was that for the moment it be limited to Staff/Trustee or carefully supervised use until it could be properly cleaned & confirmed free of any possible personal details etc. --ErrantX (talk) 12:03, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Inspiration and imagination needed for the five year plan...

Please get your thoughts on the next five years down!

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Towards_a_five_year_plan_2013-18

There is an abundance of supporting material and ideas on the main page but what is mostly needed is your imagination and energy.

Jon

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 15:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments

It's that time of the year when planning for Wiki Loves Monuments picks up for those countries interested in taking part. In both 2011 & 2012, there were discussions about the UK taking part, but for various reasons it never ends up happening. I would really like to see it happen this year, and to that end have started the associated page on Wikimedia Commons.

For those who don't know, Wiki Loves Monuments is an annual photography competition running in September around cultural heritage monuments, which in the UK has in the past taken to mean listed buildings. Participants upload their photos to Wikimedia Commons, identifying it the subject of the photo to be one of the qualifying monuments with the best photos nationally and internationally winning prizes.

If you are interested in joining a working group to help with the organization, even just a little bit when you have time, please sign up on commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom. I would plan to have a phone conference in the near future to discuss what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, who might be interested in doing it etc. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 15:48, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Katie, thanks for setting up the poll to find a time to talk. As this page is probably not very often looked at, maybe you could advertise on Commons as well? I see that there was a volunteer Wiki Loves Monuments brainstorm in 2012 about this, and the subpages have some useful information that could be picked up on now. Maybe a follow-up meeting would be helpful this year, especially as the community now has you working away in the background ;) Looking at the suggested timeline on this page, it seems we are already a month or so behind schedule. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:42, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Note: I've had to remove and revdel'd the link to the poll as it was leading to one or more spammer removing existing responses and adding response/comment that are racially or sexually inappropriate. Anyone reading this who want to join into the upcoming phone conference can contact me for a link to the poll. Thanks! -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 19:53, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Privacy policy - comment and edit

Hi All,

I've just published a new version of a Privacy Policy - we need to get this drafted to our satisfaction so the Trustees can approve a version which will apply to how the chapter manages all its sites, including QRpedia, facilitating the process of transferring the domain.

Because it's important we get this right, we'll get the final version checked by a lawyer - so feel free to edit and query as usual, but it may be that a final tweak beyond these changes to ensure the policy is compliant needs to happen.

I need to come back to out legal counsel by next Friday 19th April, so comments and changes before then would be wonderful :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 15:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit protected for Template:BoardApprovedHistory

I think that the first line of Template:BoardApprovedHistory needs to be changed from

[[{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]] - {{{3}}} (<span class="plainlinks">[{{SERVER}}{{SCRIPTPATH}}/index.php?title=&oldid={{{4}}} approved revision]</span>{{#if:{{{lastid|}}}|, <span class="plainlinks">[{{SERVER}}{{SCRIPTPATH}}/index.php?title=&diff={{{lastid}}}&oldid={{{4}}} changes]</span>}})<br /><noinclude>

to

[[{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]] - {{{3}}} (<span class="plainlinks">[{{SERVER}}{{SCRIPTPATH}}/index.php?title=&oldid={{{4}}} approved revision]</span>{{#if:{{{lastid|}}}|, <span class="plainlinks">[{{SERVER}}{{SCRIPTPATH}}/index.php?title=&diff={{{4}}}&oldid={{{lastid}}} changes]</span>}})<br /><noinclude>

i.e. the two inputs for the diff are currently the wrong way around.

Thanks,

Yaris678 (talk) 11:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I notice some trouble with trying to get the template to work. See my comments at Template talk:BoardApprovedHistory. Yaris678 (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright law support for UK GLAMs ?

Not sure if this is the best place to post, but here goes ...

One thing I found interesting at GLAM-WIKI 2013 was the extent to which GLAMs seemed to be very fearful of the complexities of copyright law, getting things wrong, and possibly being sued. This seems to be quite a large problem, to the extent that some GLAMs feel paralyzed and unable to do anything without seeking professional legal advice (which, to be honest, they don't want to get involved in, and which is anyway usually much too expensive). The GLAM-WIKI conference may arguably have not encouraged GLAMs who want to do the right thing but who are just scared of all the legal stuff. Indeed, several speakers mentioned that it is a 'difficult' area which they were not going to touch on. I'd like to think that WMUK could provide some more specialist help in this field.

Ideally, I'd like to see WMUK commit within the 5 year plan to putting some easy-to-understand copyright law resources in place for UK GLAMs, including on-line pages of information on the legal background (UK copyright specifically, but touching on US to the extent to which Commons needs to comply with that), as well as flyers and other resources focused on particular types of GLAM holding (old and new photographs, paintings, sculptures etc). Also, it would be good to have a UK Copyright law question and answer forum where GLAMs could seek informal advice, either on a specific point or on general issues affecting the opening up of their collections.

Hope that makes sense. If this would be of interest to the community, I would be happy to put some effort into it. As a newly-retired UK patent and trademark attorney (until March I was a partner in one of the top London firms) I do have a reasonable knowledge of UK law. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It makes very much sense. You may wish to start with Commons:Freedom of panorama and works that are of USA origin. You have two from w:List of Academy Award trophies on public display. The FOP page doesn't mention country of origin for 3D works on permanent display in the UK. Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter doesn't mention country of origin either in the 3D sculptures section. We may have to ask WMF legal weigh in on this one. Can you upload an FOP image from the UK of a 3D work with the country of origin being the USA where FOP is not allowed for statues?--Canoe1967 (talk) 22:32, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

A 3D US work on permanent display in the UK would fall under UK FoP copyright.

I would be happy to support a UK working group of some sort to help improve guidelines and policies related to GLAMs and copyright, perhaps with an emphasis on avoiding mistaken 'copyfraud'. In terms of location, doing this as a project on Commons would make the most sense to me, as any guidelines would have the most impact there; plus we could really do with attracting more contributors to related RFC and key deletion review discussions that are right at the cutting edge of this stuff. By the way, we have a lot of wikilawyers who will put forward what they think the law says, but few who will put in the spadework of researching and digging out legal cases to support an on-Commons case book; we have even fewer who can see the bigger picture and understand the difference between significant doubt and insignificant doubt that might be raised by fine hypothetical interpretation of the words of the law... Thanks --Fæ (talk) 05:44, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant thought Michael and very practical - could also support non glammers. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 09:43, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

@Fæ, you may wish to clarify on Commons:Freedom of panorama as well as Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter. Neither of those pages state anything about the country of origin. One editor at en:wp thinks we can't host images of Oscar taken in the UK because the statue is copyright in the USA where the servers are.--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:02, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

At the conference in Milan, the WCA council rep from Armenia got a round of applause as they are the first country in their region to gain FoP. As a copyright concept it is critically important for open knowledge, I really don't like to see folks pointlessly whittling away at the fringes of it. Country of origin for a permanent work on public display is of course, irrelevant. Where the servers are can be relevant if the release relied on something like expired copyright; not the case for this scenario. It would be great if you could add your example and suggestion for clarification to the commons policy talk page; don't wait for me to get around to it. :-) --Fæ (talk) 05:07, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I am worried about US copyright law for images hosted on commons. If we have a museum take a picture in the UK of the Oscar then will the Academy lawyer up when they see it on posters in the US? Does the US copyright law cover imported images of 3D works that are under copyright in the US?--Canoe1967 (talk) 09:17, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Michael, that would be very useful, but my take on this is that it isn't always knowledge of copyright law that complicates this subject.

• Many institutions have objects and images that are on loan or otherwise subject to restrictions from the donor.
• Some institutions have objects and images that are considered culturally sensitive or may involve personality rights, especially in ethnographic collections.
• Sometimes the subject can be of such an apparent age that reasonable people would disagree as to whether they were adult.
• Sometimes the applicable law may itself be uncertain and the prevailing standards for seeking subject consent may have changed radically since the photo was taken. For example a 1930s photo showing a topless teenage woman in what was then the colony of a European power.....

Pre-screening image releases for the above may also be a non-trivial task.Checking the IP of this may be a non-trivial task for the institution, especially if this raises questions that may not have been considered when the loan was made.

Then there is the big tension between the role of ourselves and many GLAMs in making information available to all, and the marketing departments of many GLAMs who see digital images simply as a commercial opportunity (even if the copyright has expired). Some GLAMs seem to take the view that possession is >90% of the law, and they try to restrict the use and commercialise stuff even when they should know it is out of copyright.

Among GLAMs that are looking at this from a commercial angle there seems to be a divide as to whether their most lucrative route is to release High definition imagery under an open License thereby maximising use but not necessarily revenue; or whether it is more lucrative for them to release low to medium resolution imagery and get a larger proportion of users buying high res, but a smaller amount of use. Of course the equation changes as more high res imagery being available means that low and medium resolution imagery will tend to be used less, and while this has a big impact on potential image releases it isn't our place to advise GLAMs on commercial impact of releasing images.

Otherwise the institutions have three main approaches on this, One can almost envisage this as a triangle with the points marked "open", "cautious" and "commercial" and every organisation, and indeed GLAM worker seems to fit somewhere on that triangle. I'm beginning to think that there are enough GLAMs into making the material in their collections available to everyone that we should concentrate on them. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 17:06, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I entirely agree. There is no single thing that's needed, but more of a combintion of individual things. Most important of all, perhaps, is to get more volunteers. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

More volunteers would help, but also guidance in the form of case studies, copyright advice and maybe even Government guidance. Other aspects of this are international - I learned at the GLAM wiki conference about one government that is requesting digital copies of information from a UK GLAM. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 10:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

education-committee-l

The Education Committee is now communicating via the education-committee-l mailing list rather than private emails. This will ensure even more transparency and openness, as well as provide an easily accessible archive via the list information page. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 11:17, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Working with non-English language Wikipedias / language policy

Hello everyone. During a recent discussion about the Wikimedian in Residence role at the National Library of Scotland a valid point was raised about notifying Wikipedians who spoke Gaelic to the role. I think everyone is aware that there are opportunities for Wikimedia UK to do some excellent outreach work to speakers of non-English languages and Wikipedians who work on non-English language projects. These are not limited to what might be called indigenous UK languages such as Kernowac or Gaelic, but could also include languages that are pretty widely spoken such as Bengali, Polish and Hindi. If anyone has any suggestions on how we might successfully do this please do share them here. It was also noted that we may have a need for a language policy, particularly to cover any Wikimedian in Residence roles (and, potentially any eventual Wikimedia UK recruitment) in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Again, comments and suggestions are very welcome. Thanks in advance for any input on this important topic! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The inspiration for such a Policy came from a discussion on Scotland, and therefore this thread should really only involve the WMUK's involvement in Scotland rather than an overarching linguistic policy on the situation of minority languages (such as Bengali) in England. Our Policy on Scotland must begin with the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and Bòrd na Gàidhlig who are responsible for Gaelic on behalf of the Scottish Government. Wales has similar, yet stronger, legislation (including the Welsh Language Act 1993 and the National Assembly for Wales (Official Languages) Act 2012) which gave the Welsh language official status in Wales - and I suggest that we also include Wales in our Policy, under a separate heading. The Welsh Language Commissioner ensures that "In Wales, the Welsh language should be treated no less favourably than the English language" and "Persons in Wales should be able to live their lives through the medium of the Welsh language if they choose to do so." There are common elements to both countries, which should be acknowledged as should over-riding international law, including European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996) and to some extent the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. -- Llywelyn2000 (talk) 01:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I would strongly counsel against taking a leaf from the UK's public sector rules on this; they are overly-heavyweight and proscriptive, and don't actually apply to Wikimedia or WMUK. Instead, the focus should be on engagement with and support for non-English language groups (be that Welsh/Gaelic/BSL/Polish/Bengali/Arabic/etc.) - the question really is "are there people with such interests in our communities?" - if yes, where are they and what do they want?; if no, are there things we're doing wrongly that we could correct, and/or are there appropriate groups with whom we can reach out to encourage such participation. Jdforrester (talk) 05:32, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Jdforrester - the employer here is The National Library, not WMUK, they are not only in the public sector but are bound by the laws (not "rules") of Scotland, and their own in-house language Policy. No, they don't apply to Wikimeda UK, but they certainly do to the employer. I've outlined my reasons above why the Policy should mention specifically the different countries (Scotland and Wales) and imho the title should reflect this; I suggest "WMUK's Language Policy for Wales and Scotland". A separate document could be written for other languages which have lesser legal status. In answer to the second half of you comment may I refer you to the Gaelic speaking community here where we have a very live Gaelic speaking wiki. Your most important comment are there things we're doing wrongly that we could correct is very honest and needs addressing. If we have ignored wiki-gd thus far, we need to embrace that community, support and encourage them to be part of our dream; more importantly: can we be part of their dream, their vision? A Language Policy to guide us would be a good start. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:59, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

The most obvious thing is to ask the National Library of Scotland, as they deal with outreach to non-English minorities all the time for recruitment and the WIR is going to be their employee. It may be time for WMUK to run an open discussion about how best to engage with minority groups, this is more likely to reach meaningful conclusions if supported with advice from minority group organizations and using channels and forums where their members hangout. --Fæ (talk) 06:49, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Exactly! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:59, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Also as regards Irish, see Coláiste Feirste, a secondary Irish Medium School in Belfast.86.157.228.106 09:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes indeed! Is there legislation for the Irish language in Northern Ireland? Do you have any other links, relevant to writing a language Policy? Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:17, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• Of course there are laws that we and our partners and potential partners need to follow, but we also need to remember that we are part of a global movement with a global mission. We have a huge amount of the world's heritage in the possession of UK GLAMs, and in many cases as with Tipu's Tiger and the British library's Canada collection we can be the facilitator to get global access to cultural information that is in the UK. Helping UK institutions reach out to non-English speakers here, as tourists or on the web could be at the heart of what the Wikimedia movement associates Wikimedia UK with. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 10:54, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree it would be great for WMUK to be known for the internationalism of our work with cultural heritage; and as you highlight we already are. Over the weekend we met with WMIN representatives to take this particular relationship forward due to obvious shared heritage with key assets in the British Library and other institutions that are of immense value for Indian culture and history. Similarly the initiatives you mention that I took part in sponsoring are great examples of simple international partnerships working within our movement.

We are a highly successful global movement, however we do not lead the field with expertise in multi-lingual outreach or accessibility, in fact, at times we are naff at it compared to other global organizations of volunteers. We had a successful global conference in Milan, however the conference materials and presentations were almost entirely in English and the conference venue and social venues failed to assure wheelchair access, even though we knew that one participant was restricted to a wheelchair (I'm aware of the issues that came up as I took some time out for a quiet and interesting chat about access with the person affected). As an example of our maturity along these lines, I think this is fairly normal for us, and even though we can probably think of counter-examples where it has worked much better, this has not yet transferred into policy and standard practice. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:22, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

From my experience of Wikipedia I thought that creating policies was something that comes naturally! But seriously though, I’d suggest that WMUK has some sort of guide at the very least if not a policy. Formally informing the Gaelic and Scots wikis of this post at the same time as the English one would have just been common courtesy. I don’t for one minute think there was an intention to insult, but its little oversights like this that tends go get people's back up and rightly or wrongly add to the perception that WMUK is more focussed on one langue wiki over others. IF it is agreed that a language/languages guide or policy is a good idea, then the Estyn Llaw project in Wales has a wealth of advice and guidance, some of which can be taken on board and adapted. Here are some suggestions (of mine) on how to draw up a guide:

Theme	Level (easy, tricky, wishful thinking!)	Example	Advantage	Risks	Obstacles	Solutions
Attracting staff with bilingual skills	tricky	Attracting Gaelic speakers to apply for WIR post	*Make good use of Gaelic material at NSL *Increase content on Gaelic wiki			Post notice on Gaelic wiki (!)
Organising events	easy	If arranging a series of events in Wales, arrange a proportion of them through the medium of Welsh	*Attract new editors in that language *Increase content on Welsh wiki		WMUK staff does not speak the language	*Ask local volunteers to help *If a GLAM type event, ask if partner organisation has Welsh speaking staff
Organising events	easy	If one event in Wales, make Welsh visable, e.g. have publicity/posters/webpage bilingually, greet guests in both languages	*Attract new editors in that language *Increase content on Welsh wiki		WMUK staff do not speak the language	Ask local volunteers to help *If a GLAM type event, ask if partner organisation has Welsh speaking staff
Publicity	easy (ish)	If promoting event/story related to Wales , send out press release in English and Welsh	Increase likelihood of story in Welsh language media	*Translation could mean delay *Translation could mean cost	WMUK staff do not speak the language	(cost) Ask local volunteers to help (time) Give volunteers plenty of notice

Anyway, just some thoughts/ ideas I wanted to share!--Rhyswynne (talk) 13:13, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

• As a general rule I think we should work starting with existing Wikipedian communities, rather than trying to build from scratch. This is what we have successfully done in Wales, & pretty much failed to do with the "non-native" language communities in the UK. As far as I can see the level of activity on the Gaelic WP is really very low, & most editors are probably based in the relatively Gaelic-speaking areas. We don't AFAIK have an inside contact, equivalent to Robin, which is an essential first step; then we'd be able to announce things to the Gaelic WP in Gaelic, which of course we should do with things like this. By all means add it as a desirable thing for the Edinburgh post, but I don't see we need a policy. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Of course, it depends what we mean by policy. We don't want to break anybody's balls over this and we don't want a load of legalistic verbiage. But some kind of direction would be useful. I think Rhyswynne's table is an excellent start for that and I also agree with Johnbod that working with existing Wikimedian communities will help in a lot of respects. Yaris678 (talk) 17:08, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
• FYI elsewhere in Wikimedia, these languages don't even have dedicated Wikisources yet. I mention this as the original conversation brought up "Gaelic manuscripts and books" and "Scots classics" at the National Library of Scotland. Multilingual Wikisource covers them, however. Gàidhlig currently has a glorious one text (and, even then, has no source for it), while Kernewek has twenty texts and Gaeilge has many. Scots is actually part of English Wikisource, with 22 texts. This doesn't even need material from NLS to rectify, the Internet Archive has at least a few works available (Example). It just needs people. (NB: All appear to have Wiktionaries but Gàidhlig Wiktionary looks to be in bad shape.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:01, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

  Further to this: NLS have a section on the Internet Archive but all their texts appear it have CC-BY-NC licences (even the clearly PD-old Victorian works). The copyfraud is easily ignorable but it would help if they didn't do that. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:12, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I've created a DRAFT Welsh Language Policy here based on the Language Commisioner's recommended template: Help Llaw. To keep everything together I suggest that any comments be kept here at the Water Cooler! I also suggest a new second policy to follow, should we agree on this one, based of the Scottish Gaelic. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 12:37, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Apart from any specific issues that I may have with your draft, I would say that this is not the sort of policy we want. It is a statement of something that looks like a good idea, rather than an analysis of problems, opportunities or options. I much prefer Rhyswynne's table because it is a good start at an analysis of what our options are. Yaris678 (talk) 13:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

WMUK should have both. Strategic policy and an operational action plan are different things; albeit things that should work together. The draft has a lot that Rhyswynne's table misses (and probably couldn't include) such as communication in Welsh. That does, however, bring up a potential problem: WMUK is not a large organisation and does not, to my knowledge, currently employ anyone fluent in Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Cornish etc. A commitment to answering communications in Welsh and without a delay is probably a bit too much (even with Google Translate available), especially if extended to the other native languages of the UK. Defining it as an aspiration but acknowledging the potential for a delay might be more realistic. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Another thought: Putting something on the Main Page about language coverage would be useful. Just a footer box, along the line of the sister links on most wiki projects, would be enough. It would be a natural assumption to read WMUK as WMEngland; something pointing out the wider remit could offset that. When/if other-language pages are made for this wiki (eg. Main Page/cy) they could be linked from here. In the meantime it could just be a simple selection of relevant languages (or possibly links to the the assorted projects within those langagues, as long as no suggestion of possession or authority is made). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:05, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that putting something on the main page about language would be useful.

A commitment to answering communications in Welsh and without a delay is clearly impractical at the moment... but maybe it would be a good target to aim for... or maybe we should spend our energies on something else. It's difficult to know when no analysis is included. If we did make it a target then knowing why it was a target would probably be a lot more useful than knowing that it was a target. And, of course, setting out some actions to meet the target is also essential, 1. so it isn't just wishful thinking and 2. so we can look at those actions to assess how much effort it will take. Maybe we want to commit to it if it is straight forward but not if it is really complicated. And that is just that bit of the policy. Maybe other bits of it are equally open to question... but it's difficult to know because we don't know why they are in there. Do you see my point? Yaris678 (talk) 21:28, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

My table was only just a sample of what could be included. The draft contains parts that could be implemented right away (e.g. the 'Planning' bit) while some parts may never be adopted. I'm not sur ehow WMUK goes about drawung up policies/guidleines, but how about breaking the draft down to a similar table with a column for people to accept/oppose each 'theme' and cite reasons. --This comment was added by Rhyswynne at 08:40, 25 April 2013‎

Syniad da Rhys. Dw i'n awgrymu fod hynny'n digwydd rwan, efallai ar dudalen ar wahan i hwn fel bod pawb yn medru ei ddeall. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 12:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

This table is a great start. I suggest that Rhys uploads it onto his namespace so that we can all amend and discuss it there. I also like the suggestion that we replicate and translate WMUK's home page into Welsh asap, with a link to two or three fluent Welsh speakers who could discuss with members, potential members and users in Welsh, if that is their preferred language. In fact a number of WMUK's staff and Board members have suggested this over the last year. A bilingual article was actually published in our Report Section.

The question of why we need to do this (asked by User:Yaris678) can be answered in many ways: Dafydd Iwan's poetry mentions that only a fool asks "why is snow white"? Another answer would be because it is there, but crucially: to respect the wishes of members or users who prefer speaking in their own language or because there is legislation in Wales endorses it, and will in the next couple of years demand it, as they do with the main institutions and local government. Another reason of course is that WMUK in Wales can seem to be, to many people, a very foreign creature, and that may be the reason why the Scots Gaelic and the Welsh language (apart from a handful of us) do not bother joining let alone participate. But my personal reason why we need to do this is that we need to reach out with our vision and enthusiasm to people who are much happier speaking Welsh and I we must respect that choice or alienate them. It's part of a worldwide movement which strives for the conservation of the rich diversity of culture on this planet; the opposite is a Big Brother, totalitarian, monotone-grey, state.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, my suggested action plan involves the only two languages which are indigenous to the countries of Britain and which are protected by legislation: Scottish (and Irish?) Gaelic and Welsh. Once this is in place we can look at other languages. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 12:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

You've given some reasons to do a lot more in the area of non-English languages but not necessarily reasons that lead us to what that should be. I think everyone agrees that we want to improve things in the area of non-English languages. We are just trying to work out what to do. Your reference to a totalitarian state is dangerously close to Reductio ad Hitlerum. Yaris678 (talk) 16:40, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Presumably the first and easiest tasks would be to create a few core pages in each language on this wiki. The main pages are obvious and it will probably help if a few other important pages are done too (perhaps Membership, Events, Contact us and Board). I would signify language with a subpage (eg. Main Page/cy, Main Page/sco, Membership/cy, Membership/sco etc.) but if anyone has a better idea please say so. There appear to be enough Welsh speakers here to handle that set. Perhaps others could be found on the appropriate projects; the Scottish ones could come out of the NLS WIR. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 18:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks AdamBMorgan, I've now translated around five of these suggested pages, as testspace; please feel free to amend the links etc.

AdamBMorgan said: A commitment to answering communications in Welsh and without a delay is probably a bit too much (even with Google Translate available)... One possible answer to the fact that staff at HQ do not speak fluent Welsh is to pass on any such communication to any one of the 120 fluent Welsh speakers who edit the Wici Cymraeg regulary; I certainly would be willing to answer any phonecalls, emails or other correspondance passed on to me and I know that other would also do this. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:41, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Table of language scope

English	(English)	en	Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary
Cymraeg	(Welsh)	cy	Wicipedia, Wiciddyfynnu, Wicidestun, Wicidaith,[1] Wiciadur
Scots	(Scots)	sco	Wikipædia, Wikisource,[3] Wiktionar[1]
Gaeilge	(Irish)	ga	Vicipéid, Vicíshliocht,[1] Vicífhoinse,[2] Vicífhoclóir
Gàidhlig	(Scottish Gaelic)	gd	Uicipeid, Uicitobar,[2] Wiktionary
Kernowek	(Cornish)	kw	Wikipedya, Wikisource,[2] Wiktionary
Gaelg	(Manx)	gv	Wikipedia, Wikiockleyr
Englissh	(Middle English)	enm	Wikipædia,[1] Wikisource,[3] Wiktionary[4]
Ænglisc	(Old English)	ang	Ƿicibēc, Ƿikipǣdie, ǷicicǷide,[1] Ƿicifruma,[3] Ƿikiƿordbōc
Multilingual		mul	Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikispecies
[1] This project is on the Incubator - [2] This project is part of Multilingual Wikisource - [3] This is part of English Wikisource - [4] This is part of English Wiktionary

Spinning off from my comment above, I've started this table of UK languages and associated wikiprojects: {{Projectslang}}. This table just lists native languages at the moment, not the significant non-native languages like Polish, Punjabi or Urdu. It also doesn't list the currently unsupported native languages like Angloromani and Shelta. Two extinct languages are included because there are Wikimedia projects in those languages. The bold names link to potential main pages and there is some minor language switching in the bracketed language names (assuming the subpage name is the language code). The, currently unlinked, footnotes will need to be lang-switched too (and the method of doing so can stand to be upgraded too).

As for why bother with this, this can be placed on an appropriate languages page (or pages, as there really should be one of those for each language) or, if suitably amended, on the main page. It shows what languages Wikimedia UK could/should support and what projects could be supported as a result. It also at least acknowledges that these languages and projects exist, compared to the very English-Wikipedia-only appearance of WMUK at the moment (of course, the demographics are likely to always push in that direction).

Feel free to amend or ignore as desired. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:54, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I know Isle of Man is not technically in the the UK, but where would Manx fit in?--Rhyswynne (talk) 10:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

A great spinoff! I'll amend it a little on the Wicipedia Cymraeg; really useful. Thanks. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:29, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, thanks for putting this together. I would be cautious and spell out that this is not intended to limit Wikimedia UK if this table, or similar, is used in relation to the projects of the charity. The charity's scope is not limited to current or past "native languages" and there may be value in finding figures for all non-English languages in the UK as a basis for judging how much impact new project proposals might have for the beneficiaries of the charity (not restricted to people in the UK). As has been mentioned previously, statistically Polish is one of the highest used languages in the UK today, so encouraging Polish readers and writers to take part in our projects is probably an easy win. I doubt there is any need to make a choice between approaches, as it makes sense for us to aim to be as inclusive and diverse as possible. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 08:18, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Fæ, I can appreciate that table might give the impression of limiting the scope of the chapter if it were used in the wrong way. But so long as we are mindful of that risk it should be manageable.

I think some of the recent ideas generated by Adam and Llywelyn have been excellent and fit well into WMUK being a volunteer-led organisation. I really like the idea of mobilising volunteers to represent WMUK in non-English languages.

Adam, Llywelyn, what do you think of the idea of doing a specific media training session in Wales for Welsh speakers who would like to represent WMUK to Welsh-language Media? This is just an idea I have now, but if we speak to the right people I think we should be able to persuade them.

Yaris678 (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting suggestion, I'd support that. It would be cool to have snippets of the odd event/workshop in Welsh on video too. :-) --Fæ (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

@Yaris678 That's exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see, although at this stage, the number of takers is likely to be low, but I'm sure that there would be demand for a Training-the-Trainers course through the medium of Welsh.--Rhyswynne (talk) 10:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

In fact this was discussed in the last meeting of Wici Cymru, a society to further the cause of the Wiki family in Wales. Rhys and myself have done some research into who could deliver such training. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 11:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Nice to see this initiative being progressed positively. I left a comment about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wales but it has largely been superceded by events. Obviously, with 20% of the population of Wales speaking Welsh, the importance of addressing the non-English (official) native languages is a real one for Wales in particular! As for the non-native (but widely spoken) languages such as Bengali and Polish, I would imagine they will be contributing in projects other than Wikimedia UK, if any, in these languages. Sionk (talk) 14:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that Welsh deserves more attention than some languages since it is the second most widely spoken language in the UK.

I think that you have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere when you say "As for the non-native (but widely spoken) languages such as Bengali and Polish, I would imagine they will be contributing in projects other than Wikimedia UK". Wikimedia UK exists to promote free knowledge for all. It can do this in a number of ways, but one of the biggest things it does is encourage people to work on projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which include the Bengali Wikipedia and the Polish Wikipedia.

Yaris678 (talk) 16:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

FYI, English, Welsh (562,000) and then Polish (546,000) are the most widely spoken languages in the UK, (from the 2011 census) closely followed in order:

1. Punjabi 273,000
2. Urdu 269,000
3. Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya) 221,000
4. Gujarati 213,000

Scots is lagging with 100,000 speakers, which is on a par with Irish in Northern Ireland at 95,000 speakers. Whether this should or should not influence our projects is open to debate and interpretation. --Fæ (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

There's an old page at Language support, which could be a good home for this new table. with Fæ's numbers, I think the reference is [2]. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The number of Welsh or Gaelic speakers is irrelevant to this discussion, imho. The crux of the matter is that these two languages have an important legal status given through Acts of Parliament. Please read my preamble to this thread:

Our Policy on Scotland must begin with the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 and Bòrd na Gàidhlig who are responsible for Gaelic on behalf of the Scottish Government. Wales has similar, yet stronger, legislation (including the Welsh Language Act 1993 and the National Assembly for Wales (Official Languages) Act 2012) which gave the Welsh language official status in Wales - and I suggest that we also include Wales in our Policy, under a separate heading. In Wales the Welsh Language Commissioner ensures that "In Wales, the Welsh language should be treated no less favourably than the English language" and "Persons in Wales should be able to live their lives through the medium of the Welsh language if they choose to do so."

Example: A person who wishes to speak in Punjabi at a Crown Court in Cardiff or London would be given a translator; a person who wishes to speak in Welsh at a Crown Court in Cardiff (or Caernarfon) would be given a full hearing through the medium of Welsh.

Wales is a small nation, with few speakers of it's language remaining. Therein lies it's greatness and vitality, it's still live and kicking; WMUK recognises this, as well as it's legal status. Can I suggest we now move on by 1. getting the WMUK website's homepage up and running (I translated it a few days ago) 2. we continue to work on Rhys' plan, using it as a working document 3. we do the same with Scottish Gaelic. Then we pause for breath. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 05:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it would be great to have the page translation tab thingy up and running for the main page at least (you can see an example of what the multiple translations looks like at meta:WCA). As well as the legally recognized Welsh, which as Robin highlights should be a priority (and is easy for us to implement thank to Robin's commitment), it would be brilliant to find some additional volunteers that would enjoy helping with Polish and the South Asian languages (/me thinks of our special partnership with WMIN, I think Pranav is a member of WMUK, someone drop him a note!). I am keenly aware that if we can get some tame volunteers to regularly help with free translations, this is a great asset to our GLAM relationships. ;-) --Fæ (talk) 07:34, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I think Marek69 speaks Polish (he often attends the London meet up and I think he's a WMUK member). I should point out at this stage that I personally have no strong language skills beyond English (although I have family fluent in Welsh and Polish, it's just not in my bailiwick). Some other notes:

1. I moved the template above to {{languages native}} and created a sister temple in {{languages immigrant}} based on wikipedia:Languages of the United Kingdom.
2. I added Manx to the native table on the grounds of "close enough". I was a little worried when I noticed Old Norse and Norn Wikipedias in the incubator but they both appear to have been rejected, so I've left them out for now.
3. I have hijacked/updated the Language support page Mike Peel mentioned above and included the two tables. Since I was making tables anyway, I summarised to existing statistics on that page into {{language stats}} and updated them. (These are all templates instead of entering the tables directly so they can be used on equivalent pages for each language and still only need to be updated once each.) I hope the blurb around the tables, about legal duties and moral responsibilities, is OK; it was a little presumptuous but I needed to put something in there. Please edit if not.
4. I know I suggested using a subpage to indicate language (eg. "Main Page/cy") but would it be better to use the appropriate translation instead (eg. "Hafan")? There are potential problem with this, such as the Scots translation of "Main Page" being "Main Page".
5. Depending on the last point, is there any objection to Llywelyn2000's Llywelyn2000/Template/Main Page going live on "Main Page/cy" or "Hafan"?
6. Llywelyn2000's suggestion of having volunteers answer communications seems worthwhile. Would/Could WMUK keep a list of these volunteers as points of contact or for translation services?

NB: Apologies for not replying to this thread for a while but other things kept coming up. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Things have continued to come up but I have taken apathy as agreement and implemented a few more thngs. See Cateory:Cymraeg and Category:Scots for the only non-English pages on this wiki at the moment. Also, Main Page/cy is in place based on a template created by User:Llywelyn2000. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

The WMUK tech committee are discussing adding a translation extension on this wiki which will allow a Welsh user interface and make translating things into Welsh much easier, using a system similar to http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Translation. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

That would be good, and help support possible non-English speaking (or fluent) WMUKers. (Not to mention at least making them feel welcome and suupported by the chapter.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Press coverage page

Is there any reason we don't have a page on-wiki for Press coverage? So that community members can add coverage of WMUK-related stuff in newspapers and other similar sources. Because, you know, BBC News coverage of the NLS job. Shall I be bold and make a page where we can dump all that stuff in one place, rather than having it scattered in monthly reports and so on? —Tom Morris (talk) 10:07, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Great idea - there is an old one and we put them in the monthly report but this is sensible - Can we leave him to comment on this for although he sleeps with the Westcoasters he will awake later today.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 11:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tom, this is a good idea. We do record press coverage in our monthly reports but a separate page may be useful. Please, do go ahead and be bold! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 18:05, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

My preference would be that we maintain the list of press coverage only in one place, rather than multiple places. That place has always been the monthly reports so far, so I wouldn't say that they've been scattered around. I'm not sure that having a new page for these rather than just pointing towards the monthly reports would particularly help people find them? Please remember that everyone is welcome, and encouraged, to add stuff to the monthly reports! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Wellcome Collection and CRUK meetings

I have arranged meetings next week with Wellcome Collection and Cancer Research UK (these are not linked, however both on 3rd May, London), and looking for a member of community that may be interested in attending.

Wellcome Collection meeting will look at options of future cooperation between the institutions.

Cancer Research UK will look at their recent external funding bid for a Wikimedian in Residence and see how we can improve it. Someone involved in the WikiProject Medicine may find this useful - at the same time this is an initial meeting focused on looking at paperwork and may not be of interest.

Any suggestions of volunteers that may benefit the meetings would be helpful. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 13:39, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Good point about WikiProject Medicine. I have been bold and posted there. Yaris678 (talk) 17:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for coordinating this. I am a Wikipedian in Residence at a United States organization which does health education. It is a bit early to plan, but if Wikimania happens in London in 2014 my organization may present there with a health focus. I work for Consumer Reports. In the UK the equivalent organization is Which?. Our parent organization is based in London and is called Consumers International. I expect that neither Which nor CI know anything about me, but Consumer Reports in America would like for other English-speaking organizations to develop health content, so if you need to mention a precedent then CR could be one and we do sort of have a UK link. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:36, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably! Let's revisit once Wikimania 2014 comes closer - looking forward to meeting you again! Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 07:54, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

2013-18 Five Year Plan, first draft.

The first draft based on the 23rd of March event, comments received so far and our previous version is now up for discussion on the wiki.

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Towards_a_five_year_plan_2013-18

I look forward to your comments. This version will be brought to the board for their comments in May. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 17:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Botswana

Can anyone help Wikimedia Botswana with drafting their docs? (sorry for not linking it correctly)

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Botswana

Philafrenzy (talk) 15:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Possibly... it's rather complex, and would need an understanding of Botswanan law... Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 15:31, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I thought that was something they trained you in at Wikimedia central, Richard. If there is nobody who can realistically help, that's OK. Philafrenzy (talk) 16:46, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Draft 1 of 2013-18 WMUK Plan reminder

The discussion on draft one (to go to the board on May 11th) is hotting up. Please contribute.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:22, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Towards_a_five_year_plan_2013-18

Yaris and I made some comments at Talk:Towards_a_five_year_plan_2013-18#Comments_on_the_draft_five-year_plan last week, perhaps these should be moved to be answered as part of the discussion, if these are to be addressed in a revised version in time for the board meeting? --Fæ (talk) 14:37, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Will do - just hoping for few more before I have a go at it. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 08:08, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

2013 Fundraiser

Just to let you know that we've received a note from the Wikimedia Foundation stating their intention not to renew our Fundraising Agreement with them for the forthcoming year, but leaving the door open for us to participate in 2014-15 after our recent governance changes have had more time to bed in. The Board will be talking about how this will affect our plans at the meeting on the 11th (if you read the reports that have been uploaded today you'll probably find reference to it) & I imagine we will upload their letter here before the meeting. Personally, while a little disappointed, this isn't something I will be losing sleep over: I think there continues to be a strong case for us to participate in the Wikimedia fundraiser in future based on what we can do with the Gift Aid received on donations, and on the use we can make of the email addresses donors give us, but equally this doesn't fundamentally affect our likely income or our ability to fulfill our mission. Regards, The Land (talk) 19:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedian of the Year award

Some of you may remember from last year Wikimedia UK AGM, we gave out a few awards to thank those in the UK or abroad who have helped the UK Wikimedia movement. The idea was that this is going to be an annual thing. In light of that, we would like to invite nomination for this year winners. Please add your nomination on UK Wikimedian of the Year 2013/Nomination by 5pm on 10 May. Thanks! -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 16:23, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Gibraltarpedia is a success !

Just came across this on Commons:

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 16:04, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Well on a more serious note it has just passed the 900 new articles mark (which compares with last years top project which had 550 articles). If you download Layar on your mobile phone and point it at the image above then it will add an augmented reality button to the image which will tell you about Gibraltar in the language of your phone (without a QR code or a pound of charity money being used). Can someone check that this works? It only works with (most) Android and Iphones at present. Victuallers (talk) 14:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

How can the Board of Trustees measure WMUK's performance as an organization?

As well as being recognised for doing well on increasing our quantity and quality of events, hosting GLAMwiki this year and planning Wikimania in 2014, it is useful to set some key indicators with hard measures for the board to assess performance. I am raising the general issue on the Water cooler to encourage different perspectives, though I am aware that few of our members get excited about this sort of thing. :-)

One of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that I have wanted to see published for a couple of years, is the number of active volunteers. Back in July/August 2012, this was part of a board workshop and we estimated the number of active volunteers at 87. However growth has not been as expected, and current views are that the number of active members today, nearly a year later, might be marginally greater but not by much. No systematic way has yet been proposed for measuring and reporting this number.

Another useful figure is the number of members of the charity. As a table or chart showing the trend has never been published, I pulled this together at Membership/numbers. The trend shows that we rapidly increased, nearly doubling in size, from 2011 to 2012, but since the last annual report, we appear to have dropped in registered members by 20% (based on last month's figure). Out of interest, if we consider this a critical demonstration of the "value" of the charity (debatable, though the above total of active volunteers would be an excellent metric to use were it available), we can compare that to our funding, this can be shown as:

• 2011: £257k/165 members = £1,550 grant income per member ref
• 2012: £500k/330 members = £1,520 grant income per member ref
• 2013: £743k/272 members = £2,730 grant income per member ref

This shows that our spending in the last year has gone up by ~50% (or ~80% if counted per member head), whilst our growth in members (and volunteers) has not grown. Caveats: For 2011 I have only taken the grant income while in 2012, 2013 the activity plan has a figure that may include other income streams, in practice I don't believe this makes much of a difference when the trend is the important thing to assess. I am open to other suggestions of how to pick the best number.

It may well be that we can pull numbers together for increasing numbers of events and perhaps the increasing numbers of public involvement, or we could start to measure the benefit of creation of new public resources, such as the release of images from projects with The National Archives and the British Library. If basic KPIs such as members and volunteers continue to be slower to grow than expected in the charity's long term strategy, and yet the charity is seen as succeeding in delivering the mission in other ways, then we are short of verifiable measurements to give us balancing KPIs that show a more holistic picture.

One balancing factor that I kicked off in 2011, was to start our PQASSO quality assessment programme. This has been a modest success with the charity assessed at 'level 1' and we have plans to carry on to reach 'level 2', giving us good credibility for our policies and processes when benchmarked against other charities in the UK. Perhaps improved governance and quality may itself be considered a KPI? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:55, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you for raising this topic Fae. It is useful to be able to discuss this and it provides an excellent opportunity to highlight some of the work that's happening in the office to improve the way we measure and monitor our activity. Perhaps the most important example of this is our quarterly planning grid. We use this to highlight some very top level activities and then monitor progress at quarterly checkpoints. These are then highlighted and monitored using the "traffic light" system. Given that our year runs from February to January we have just completed the reporting for the first quarter. You can view this as a PDF file on this wiki here.

Another aspect of our reporting and monitoring is our report to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC). We use this as a key way of demonstrating the value of our work to the FDC and also to show compliance. This page sits on Meta and our Q1 report can be seen here.

Monitoring and reporting on the number of volunteers is slightly trickier. This is dependent on how we define a volunteer and I'm not sure that there has ever been a satisfactory definition. One way of monitoring this might be to review the activity on this wiki. I returned from my holiday today and reviewed the last couple of weeks in recent changes and noticed some new usernames making a contribution here so it appears, at least to that extent, that we are successfully encouraging wider participation. I can't back this up with numbers. However, we have the excellent Katie Chan working with us and she has the specific remit of broadening volunteer participation. I have no doubt that her work will bring great benefits.

Regarding membership I do think that more can be done to recruit members and I believe that we will continue to improve. Many previous members have simply lapsed and some may have chosen not to renew because the charity has had a difficult year in terms of governance and press attention. Furthermore the only thing that we currently offer members is voting rights. This means that membership of our charity is not of great appeal to people who might otherwise join. It may be that as time passes we are able to refine and redefine membership to make it more attractive. If we were to do this I am confident that we would see a marked increase in charity membership. All this being said I don't see membership levels as being as important as the other metrics outlined above.

I do hope that my comments are useful and I am of course happy to discuss this further. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:31, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Stevie, you can see from the above that I was hoping for some alternatives to volunteer and membership numbers, as Key Performance Indicators that are currently being tracked so that the Board of Trustees use these to help our duty for oversight of operations and to assess the performance of the organization (rather than staff) against our strategic goals. No matter how we re-frame the current measured trends, they are below any past expectations in our long term strategy.

The quarterly planning grid is a good step forward in reporting, and contains a lot of detail. The column "WMUK KPIs if applicable" is a confusing mixed bag, as some of these are administrative service performance agreements, whilst others are statements of activities rather than measures (such as "Value for money checked when ordering"). To cherry-pick this list, it would be useful to have reports of easily quantifiable performance related figures such as "numbers of people taking part" and "new editors trained" for Outreach, and if these were reported to the board providing trends over a period of 6 or 12 months, it would be great to consider rolling these up as part of a high level organizational KPI. Though prospective numbers like this are listed in the quarterly planning grid, which covers the last 3 months, the trustees have yet to be supplied with any of the "KPIs" stated in the form of a simple report with numbers and trends rather than textual descriptions of activities. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:22, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Morning! Not to put a spanner in the works, but a genuine thought re ' they are below any past expectations in our long term strategy.' - what were these past expectations? (Are they clearly articulated anywhere?) More importantly - in light of the last 12 months of challenge, are they relevant? Were they even realistic in the first place? We need to be careful to make sure that we're not comparing the reality of 2013 to pipe-dreams from when we were a smaller organisation in a considerably different position. This is why the five year plan process is probably a good place to thrash this out - because its based on consultation and consensus on where we really are now and what we can realistically achieve. Please don't see this as a suggestion we shouldn't be ambitious or set stretching targets - I'm pro that :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 10:18, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

1. In the Board workshop of 2011, you can find Andrew Turvey's (our Chairman) presentation Minutes_27Aug11/Presentations#Growth. This set a target for 2013 of 2,000 members. At that time the Board of Trustees found that a realistic figure in the light of the fact that we were soon to appoint a CEO and set up an office with employees. That expectation shows we should have achieved six or seven times more members than we have today. You may wish to note that it was this scenario planning that Ting Chen gave us warmly encouraging feedback about. Were were a rare chapter that put forward and discussed strategy in this realistic way.
2. In the 2012 Five Year Plan last year, we set a target of 1,000 members within 3 years. 2012_Five_Year_Plan#Members_and_Volunteers - Drawing a straight line, this means we should have around 400 or 500 members this year. We are more than 50% under this target.
3. In the accepted 2012-13 FDC proposal there is a "Five year target of 2,000 membership" (i.e. to be delivered by 2016). m:FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/WMUK/Proposal_form Unfortunately this target is not meaningful to assess any current measurement against.

Significant growth in membership has always been a core performance indicator. The staff ought to be aware of these documented expectations of the board, if nothing else it would be a good idea to respond with helping the board and CEO set new realistic goals if these are unrealistic targets. Examining the historic pattern here, you may note that targets have been set increasingly longer distances into the future, and with declining expectations. It would be great if these became hard measurable targets for the year so the board could tell if the performance trend was sufficient or not, and to develop SMART actions and measurable plans so that performance review is based on firm foundations. --Fæ (talk) 10:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Quick point, but is that the same presentation that posited that we would end up with 700,000 members and an income approaching £60million per year? Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

One other point here. I'm currently reviewing the five year plan to 2018 which states that we aim: "To have 2,000 members, at least 25% of whom actively contribute to WMUK activities". I think that's a pretty clear and measurable target. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Andrew's scenario planning was great fun. Certainly if I am still alive in 2018, I would look at the 2018 annual report with interest to see if it makes any reference to the current five year plan, or uses any of the targets. In the meantime it would be great if the board can work with non-subjective KPIs and credibly reported trends that we can discuss and review in 2013.

Let us be honest, if against any of our past expectations for the benefits of rapidly establishing our office, we have not grown the numbers of active volunteers in the last 12 months by any significant figure, and at the same time, the number of registered members has actually gone down since the last annual report, then we should admit that as a definite failure in performance by the charity, and now look to put a measurable and credible improvement plan in place that addresses these targets. --Fæ (talk) 12:01, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is slightly disingenuous, honestly. There has been a small upward trend in membership since Katherine joined. The larger drop from last summer could be explained by a change in the way we record numbers although I'm not well versed in CiviCRM so can't be sure. I do know that Katherine worked very hard to cleanse the data when she joined to bring it up to date. One can only imagine how much our membership would have increased had we been active participants in the fundraiser. And we are seeing an increase in volunteers. We have certainly undertaken a lot of positive outreach work, including building relationships with institutions of global renown - and this is by no means hyperbole. Given the difficulties we've faced in the last year I think all things being considered we're doing OK and we have better things to come. There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Stevie, there are always reasons to be cheerful. I find it odd that you are so determined not to give one inch of room to the possibility that there may be something to worry about here. The fact that we can provide no evidence that the number of volunteers is growing or shrinking compared to last year, and based on your statement we are even unsure if the number of members of the charity has actually decreased or not over the last year (when using figures published in our annual report) would worry most other organizations. Do you accept that an improvement plan and some verifiable KPIs with trend figures being available right now, so that trustees can monitor operations might be a jolly good idea?

I'm not sure why you would consider it odd that I feel we have activity in place to encourage more volunteers to participate in our work and to increase membership numbers. I have total confidence in the work that's being done by staff and volunteers in this regard. On the topic of membership numbers from last year, all I can do is reiterate my previous point that I don't have access to, or understanding of, CiviCRM. As I said it may be that there was a data cleanse that meant that test entries or duplicate entries to the database may have been removed. I was actually writing from a personal perspective and not on behalf of anyone else. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

"consider it odd that I feel we have activity in place to encourage more volunteers" - where exactly did I say that? No, don't bother, though I am saddened to see that you are not prepared to accept that some any improvement is needed, this is just distracting from my original point which was to ask for good alternative KPIs that the Board of Trustees could measure performance of the Charity against. If we cannot compare any reliable numbers for Members or Volunteers to compare last year to this year, then we desperately need other measurements that are reliable. --Fæ (talk) 12:24, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I created this thread with the intention of having some views from members rather than only staff, hopefully there will be a few. --Fæ (talk) 16:40, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Slightly related r.e. performance indicators; following the Stamford outreach session I suggested some things we could do to improve our outreach follow up (mostly it seems fire and forget up to this point :P). Including:

• Build a proper "outreach" team of volunteers willing to lend support to groups
• Assign a specific volunteer to liase with the group we are giving outreach both before and after the event - to provide both on and off-wiki support.
• Have a follow up schedule to check on how groups are doing, provide further guidance and see who is editing what

In the case of Stamford I've not heard a peep since, and am not aware of any real follow up with them as a group. Despite a lot of enthusiasm in the room! I think if we had a proper schedule of outreach this would help us with more data points both for new wiki volunteers and active membership. --ErrantX (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I can help with regards to Stamford. I've been in fairly regular contact with them, particularly Dave Sones, who was the key contact and who initially contacted us regarding their project. He is a part of the local civic society. The key idea of their project was to basically rewrite all of the content related to Stamford on the English language Wikipedia. In the end, the project team decided not to go ahead with a wiki-based approach for a few reasons. Mostly, it was related to the idea that they couldn't maintain total control over the content but also related to the encyclopaedic nature of the content that is required by the community (citations and so on). There was an element of promotion / marketing within the project that wasn't appropriate for Wikipedia too, and the group accepted this. I believe Dave remains an editor on the English language Wikipedia which is good. I hope this is useful! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:47, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Measurements for "keeping the volunteer at the center"

At the Board meeting on Saturday, there was some discussion about how we can do better to meet our Volunteer Policy. This was produced so that our plans and strategy could be measured to see how well our aim for volunteers to lead the charity and be in the center of our activities was implemented.

As a quick and easy to do measure, I walked through the blog this morning to pull some numbers of who writes the Chapter blog posts, here are some results for 2013 only, hopefully accurate +/- 1 post:

• Posts by volunteers:
  • 9 with 2 of these posts being by volunteers in paid positions, such as a paid WIR post.
• Posts by staff from other organizations:
  • 7
• Posts by WMUK staff
  • 33

Many of the posts by staff were standard notices, or posts generally on behalf of the charity, which might be counted as from the Board of Trustees, or the sort of thing that volunteers or trustees would not be expected to write. However more could have been written by volunteers, which might indicate a lack of interest in doing this from volunteers, or that this needs more encouragement.

I think this would be an interesting figure to track the trend of, but I don't think it would be the best measure. It would be interesting to find long term figures for:

• number of projects managed or led by volunteers compared to those led by staff and paid volunteers
• percentage of the annual budget led by volunteers compared to the amount led by staff and paid volunteers
• moving average ratio of staff, volunteers and paid volunteers at events

These are just some rough suggestions, at the moment we do not publish any numbers or trends in order to assess the projects for how volunteer-centric they are, as far as I am aware. Any alternative views?

By the way, the Board does have a commitment to review the Volunteer Policy - "by the Board, in consultation with the Chief Executive and the community, on an annual basis...", so you can expect this to be part of a later survey or community consultation exercise this year. --Fæ (talk) 11:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Need to kick-start WLM 2013 in the UK if it is going to happen

A few of us had a brief phone meeting about WLM 2013 over a week ago (Commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013_in_the_United_Kingdom/planning), but I can't see any on-wiki progress since. If we are to run the competition in the UK this year, some hard work is now very much overdue. We are already quite some time behind on the timeline (see Commons:Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2013_in_the_United_Kingdom).

It would be a shame if the UK missed out again, for the 3rd year running, due to lack of interest.

My understanding is that WMUK is fully behind the community in backing this, and presumably what is needed is some greater volunteer action.

I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but unless another volunteer is in the middle of doing something I will in the next few days post some additional planning suggestions on Commons and will also advertise there to to try to bring in more help, as we certainly don't have enough people at the moment.

Any thoughts? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I think Katie Chan, Richard Nevell and WereSpielChequers are in the process of this - but I'm not sure who is organising it as a volunteer or as a staff member, or which other volunteers are currently involved. I think we already have the list of monuments done.... I'll prod Richard Nevell and get him to reply here. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 12:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

There is a lot of value to be re-used in the work of volunteers last year. I suggest Commons:Commons talk:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 and Wiki Loves Monuments brainstorm/Notes are good places to check, though I recall other discussions were documented which I don't have immediately at hand. --Fæ (talk) 12:56, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Michael, by all means add some planning suggestions to Commons. As you know from the planning meeting where we recapped previous attempts, there was interest last but it wasn't capitalised upon. At the moment interest is building, and since the first planning meeting three people have put their names down to help out, and encouraging more people to get involved is a good idea. I will check in with Katie on how we are doing against the timeline. It would be great to see Wiki Loves Monuments take off in the UK. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Third Age Online Survey

We would like to invite you to take part in our survey among Wikipedia Users. This survey is part of the international research project “Third Age Online” (TAO). TAO aims at developing methods to activate and mobilize senior citizens to participate online and to improve their quality of life. In the framework of this project, this survey is executed by UNU-MERIT, a social science research institute of the United Nations University and the University Maastricht (The Netherlands).

The survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/taowiki and is available in English, Dutch and German. It will query your activities, motivations and motives at the Wikipedia platform. We would appreciate it if you can fill out the questionnaire until May 15, 2013. This takes about 10 minutes of your time.

Information and contacts If you have questions about the project or this questionnaire, please visit www.thirdageonline.eu or contact Stijn Bannier, Researcher Maastricht University T.: 0031 43 388 44 79 bannier@merit.unu.edu

I'm posting this because until now we have 350+ German, 350+ Dutch and just 7 English responses. Any idea to increase the English responses are appreciated. Ter-burg (talk) 10:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ter-burg, I just tried getting hold of you on IRC but we seem to have missed. Is there any background of discussion with RCom (m:Research:Committee) for this survey? There are often concerns about the privacy of data collected and whether IP addresses will be tracked or used in some way. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Addendum I did catch Ter-burg on IRC and they were not aware of how RCom could help. If I receive any later clarification, I will update this thread. --Fæ (talk) 13:07, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Program Evaluation and Design Workshop - grant to attend! - June 22-23, Budapest

Dear Wikimedia UK members,

Re the Program workshop in budapest this June

Apologies for short notice, but Wikimedia UK is willing to fund a volunteer to go to this event.

If you are available for 22–23 June 2013 and would like a grant from the UK chapter to attend this then please email me in the next 24 hours with up to 50 words explaining why you and the chapter would benefit from this, and where you would be travelling from.

If you are interested in the UK bidding for a future workshop of this type then please say so here.

Regards

Jonathan Cardy

GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) Organiser

Trefnydd GLAM (Galeriau, Llyfrgelloedd, Archifdai a llawer Mwy!)

Wikimedia UK

Thanks for the interest, we will evaluate responses and get back to the applicants. We've also had interest expressed in running a further session in the UK anyone else who is interested in that please comment below: Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 15:50, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom is ready to go!

For the very first time, the UK will be competing in the annual Wiki Loves Monuments competition in September. This is a community-led effort, with support from WMUK. A number of volunteers have already expressed interest in helping to organize the contest, but there is much to be done and many more volunteers are needed, both now and over the coming few months.

If you would like to contribute towards making our first ever competition the great success we expect it to be, please visit Commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom and leave your name there. Even if you are only able to offer us moral support, or want to take part as photographer in September, please leave your details anyway. You need not be based in the UK to help. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Jisc Wikimedia ambassador

As mentioned in a post on the WMUK blog three weeks ago, JISC are looking for a Wikimedia ambassador. From their advert: "Jisc invites tenders for an individual or organisation to be the Jisc ‘Wikimedia Ambassador' and run a nine month training and coordination project for the use of Wikimedia tools and techniques for educational purposes." If you're interested in applying, the deadline is at 12:00 on Wednesday 22nd May. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

File:End of Q1 2013-14.pdf

The PDF linked in the heading is to the quarterly planning grid, showing our progress at the end of the first quarter. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Research position available via Wikimedia Germany

Dear Wikimedia friends,

thanks for the valuable input on the project draft for the Chapters Dialogue[1] in the recent weeks and at the Chapters Meeting in Milan. I have now integrated the feedback and updated the Meta page accordingly. The process is designed to be open and transparent, so please feel free to comment on and enhance the description.

As of now, we are looking for a contractor (paid position, 6 months) from within the Wikimedia movement to design, realise and evaluate this project. We are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated person.

Requirements

• Background knowledge of the Wikimedia movement
• Ability to shape and actively guide the dialogue
• Willingness and ability to travel world-wide
• Skills in inter-cultural communication
• Good written and spoken English skills, favourably also in Spanish

and possibly other languages

• Knowledge of project management and interview techniques
• Ability to work independently and remotely
• Attendance at this year's Wikimania 2013
• Experiences in survey design and data analysis are nice to have
• Be more of a story collector than a story teller ;)

Please apply until June 10, 2013 via email to nicole.ebber@wikimedia.de and include

• a short motivation letter
• an overview of your experiences in this field
• a short description (max. 1500 characters) of what your first steps

in this project would be

• your earliest entrance date
• your time availability (full-time, part-time)

Find all the relevant information on the meta page. I am available for all your questions and input, feel free to get in touch or leave comments on the talk page.

Cheers, Nicole

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Dialogue

Why did you volunteer or become a member? Why should anyone else?

Hi all!

I've started a drafting page today (see here) to put together the content and ideas for a dual purpose handout the chapter can use to get expressions of interest from volunteers or potential members.

You can all help massively by dropping by and adding a sentence or two about how either volunteering and membership has led to interesting experiences, projects, or other outcomes. Also, I'm happy for use to draft section content - what would YOU say to get people to get involved?

There is no hard deadline on completing this, though I will probably be running around at the AGM session on writing the new members pack asking similar sorts of questions, so I would hope to see the first draft of that and this ready by the end of June!

Ping me on talk page or email me if you have questions - happy to answer and listen to advice :-)

Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 10:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Update! I've now added this into the mix - http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership/Promoting - do have a look and add your thoughts :) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 13:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Ada Lovelace 2013

Hi All, I am working on setting up an Ada Lovelace event for 2013 - for now together with FindingAda we are feeling the ground to see if there is interest for running small events WMUK could support (via a blog post [3]. A while before there is progress, but if you are interested in helping get in touch. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 10:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Does my Y chromosome disqualify me? If not, I'm happy to help setting something up. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. Let me know what stage of organising you are interested in. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 14:04, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Do you think it would be a good idea to get in touch with the Girl Geeks? This seems like something they'd be interested in. Yaris678 (talk) 16:07, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The Manchester cohort is already working on an event for October - I will be letting you know! If you have contacts for other groups, it would be good to get in touch. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 17:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

List of UK meetups

I have just come across m:Meetup/UK, a page listing UK meetups. Could someone also transwiki the page to the WMUK site? WKUK should keep in touch with as many local meetups as possible. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Michael, several us endeavour to keep WMUK's events list up-to-date, including meetups. I agree it's extremely important for the chapter to keep in touch with these informal groups as there's a lot it could do to help them with their Wikimedia activities and they're effectively a ready-made supply of volunteers across the country (hint to any staff or trustees who haven't been outside the M25 for a while ;) ). Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Board Election questions

Only 5 days to go, and only 2/9 candidates have left any answers to the questions (at WikiConference UK 2013/Elections/Questions), which is very disappointing! I'm not going to Lincoln, & might otherwise be voting now. Past experience suggests that the electorate read answers carefully, and candidates who don't respond, or do so very late, lose votes as a result! Johnbod (talk) 13:24, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Towards a five year plan 2013-18/Draft goals

Ahead of this weekend's AGM a new draft of the five year goals has been put up. It would be great to discuss the strategy at the AGM, and in the meantime comments are more than welcome on the talk page. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:01, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

OSM State of the Map scholarships

Wikimedia UK is planning to offer two (2) scholarships to OpenStreetMap's State of the Map 2013 conference, taking place on 6-8 September in Birmingham. Applicants must be based in the UK and be a contributor to both OSM and Wikimedia. Please see OSM State of the Map scholarships for more details. The deadline for application is this coming Monday 10 June 2013. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 11:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Welsh main page

In case people miss it above, Main Page/cy now exists. It would help if someone with the appropriate authority could check it out. If everything is OK, please can someone add {{language bar}} to the English-language Main Page and Membership, otherwise no one will know about the non-English pages and site navigation will be difficult. Cheers, AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, this looks great! I'm really pleased that someone has taken the time to put together something in Welsh. I do have a quick question which you may be able to help with. Firstly, is there any intention to populate the Welsh language version of the homepage with the content from the blog or the events section? If so, how will this be maintained? Also, the page links to the Wikimedia UK Twitter and Facebook, which is great. But I don't think we're able to Tweet in Welsh at the moment. Is there an alternative Twitter that could be used? I don't know if @WikimediaCY (or similar) exists. If not, could be worth registering one for all things Wici - we can encourage followers for the account, too. Of course, if we have a follower or two that are fluent in Welsh and are willing and happy to translate tweets into Welsh then we can, of course, share those. Thank you! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I actually have very poor language skills, so I can help with structure but not content. Communicating in Welsh looks like a job for Llywelyn2000 or Rhyswynne. Further up this page Llywelyn2000 did write, "I certainly would be willing to answer any phonecalls, emails or other correspondance passed on to me and I know that other would also do this." I expect there is an intent to populate the page but that might partly depend on WMUK's communication policy. For example, how do you want it to work? They should also know if there are any preexisting Wici social media. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:20, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi both. Let's keep things simple for now. I suggest the page goes on as it is. Yes we Tweet in Welsh - it's called Trydar, yes we could translate the WMUK Blog and WM Foundation link, but let's keep it simple. The Office have my phone numbers, email etc and could in theory ask me to discuss any Welsh language queries on their behalf, should they wish to do so in the future. All that's needed now is a link from WMUK's home page to this. Let's then discuss whether we can take it further in any way. Any internal dialogue can be done in English; this Welsh home page is a statement of intent, a warm welcome for potential members and enquiries and a recognition that our community is inclusive and that these islands of ours (which are today called UK) has a rich, diverse, colourful rainbow of different cultures and people. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 17:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Blog: Ideally, it would be nice to have blog posts in Welsh, but for the time being, having English language blog posts appear on the Welsh version is OK IMHO. I couldn't personally promise to be able to translate them into Welsh (even with a flexible timescale), although having posts in Welsh could provide WMUK with a good avenue for publicity, as the aggregator Blogiadur gathers RSS for a wide range of Welsh language blogs/news sites and has decent readership - something to consider. Posts don't have to appear simutaneously, so timing isn't all that important.

Twitter: I've set up @wicipedia which automatially pumps out RSS for new articles created on the Welsh Wicipedia. Its not pretty, but its better than nothing. Again, having a Welsh account for WMUK would be nice. As WMUK's tweets don't appear on the wiki (as far as I've seen) this isn't such an issue for this discussion, but we have two opptions:

1. WMUK press officer e-mails content of Tweets to Llywelyn2000 or/and myself, and then sends out the tweet (on a Welsh WMUK account) when one of us finally get round to translating it. As tweets are so short and only 2-3 a day are sent out, it should not be a burden. The first one to translate should 'Cc' the other translator in the reply in case we duplicate work for ourselves.

2. Llywelyn2000 and I could get access to the WMUK_cy Twitter account and just translate and then tweet ourselves when we see something appearing on the English account (problem here is trusting us with access, and we have to be sure we don't miss anything - I sometimes only check my Twitter account every few days and I don't think Llywelyn2000 currently uses the service at all.

Both these are issues that can be incorportated in the proposed Welsh language police/guide discussed above, something I'm hoping to work on in a few weeks. Thanks again Andy for your work thus far.--Rhyswynne (talk) 09:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

It's just occurred to me that the Welsh language homepage could use a Welsh language banner. If someone could post the text here - "Supporting free and open knowledge" - in Welsh then I can create the image. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Cool. "Yn cefnogi gwybodaeth agored a rhydd" --Rhyswynne (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. I used Linux Libertine (OC) as font and used the same images as on en. Very unusual to have a "{{CopyrightUnclear}}" licence! I also added a video on Friday and finished the translation. The new blog needs translating, and a weekly upkeep with dates etc. Let me know if you have comments or suggestions. Thanks to all for your encouragement! Brilliant. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 15:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello again. Just wanted to drop a note here to congratulate everyone involved in putting the Cymraeg main page together. It looks wonderful and it's marvellous we can now offer the homepage in Welsh. Great job. If there is anyone reading this page who would like to have a go at other languages, that would be excellent! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

WLM competition in Welsh

I just noticed the above topic, and it would be great if we could run the WLM competition in Welsh as well as English, especially for the Cadw list. That shouldn't be too difficult to do, if someone would kindly volunteer to do some translations later in the summer :) Would either or both of you be willing to add your names to the Welsh translations team, at Commons:Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 in the United Kingdom/People ? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:39, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Volunteer strategy

Hi all. A draft volunteer strategy for Wikimedia UK have been posted at Volunteers strategy. Please have a look, comment or even on the talk page rewrite or expand it as you see fit. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 11:08, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation elections

Hi all,

Now that the Wikimedia UK AGM is over, there’s a couple of other important elections going on within the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation is electing three (3) community members to its Board of Trustees, the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition, the community is also electing two (2) members to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and also the FDC Ombudsperson.

You can find more information on all of this, including the candidate statements, ask the candidate questions, list of eligibility requirements for voters and information on how to vote on m:Wikimedia Foundation elections 2013.

As the work of the Foundation Board of Trustees impacts the ways the movement pursuit its goals, and the FDC are involved in the grants making process which the chapter was involved in last year and expects to be again this year, I would encourage as many of you as possible to take an interest and vote in these elections.

-- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 12:49, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Review of the Train the Trainers programme

We are reviewing the Train the Trainers programme. The documentation can be found here. Feel free to join in and leave any comments on the talk page. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Rheolwr Cymru/Wales Manager

Rheolwr Cymru

Mae Wici Cymru a Wikimedia UK yn chwilio am Reolwr i Gymru i ddatblygu'r Wicipedia Cymraeg a Saesneg yng Nghymru drwy ysbrydoli a hyfforddi golygyddion newydd drwy gynllun y prosiect Llwybrau Byw!

Dylai'r Rheolwr fod yn brofiadol mewn: golygu prosiectau Wicimedia (Cymraeg a Saesneg), cefnogi ein gwirfoddolwyr, rheoli personél, gweithio o fewn cyllideb a chyflawni targedau mewn pryd. Bydd y gwaith yn cynnwys penodi a chefnogi hyfforddwyr a threfnu a chynnal sesiynau hyfforddi ledled Cymru.

Mae medru siarad Gymraeg a Saesneg yn rhugl yn hanfodol.

Mae'r swydd am 12 mis a bydd yr ymgeisydd llwyddiannus yn cael ei secondio i Wici Cymru a fydd yn goruchwylio'r gwaith (ar y cyd gyda WMUK, y cyflogwr) a Llywodraeth Cymru fel cyd-noddwr.

Mae'r swydd hefyd yn amodol ar ganllawiau a chytundebau WMUK ac am 4.5 diwrnod yr wythnos. Ffurflen Gais a chwaneg o wybodaeth oddi wrth:

Jon Davies: jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk ac ar wefan www.wikimedia.org.uk

Cyflog: oddeutu £25,500 - £29,000 yn ddibynol ar brofiad.

Dyddiad cau: 21ain o Fehefin, 2013 am 10 y bore. Cyfweliadau yn Wrecsam ar fore ddydd Mercher y 26ain o Orffennaf.

Wales Manager

Wici Cymru and Wikimedia UK are looking for a Wales Manager to develop the Wicipedia Cymraeg and English Wikipedia in Wales through encouraging and training new editors via our Llwybrau Byw - Living Paths Project.

The Manager must have experience of: Editing Wikimedia projects (both English and Welsh), supporting volunteers, managing personnel, working within a budget, and delivering outcomes in time. The work will involve appointing and supporting trainers, and organising and delivering training sessions throughout Wales.

Fluency in both the Welsh and English language is essential.

The post is for 12 months and the successful applicant will be seconded to Wici Cymru who will oversee the work, jointly with WMUK, the employer, and the Welsh Government as financial partner.

The post is subject to Wikimedia UK's guidelines and contracts and is for 4.5 days per week. Further information / application forms are available from:

Jon Davies at jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk and on www.wikimedia.org.uk

Salary: In the range of £25,500 to £29,000 depending on experience.

Closing date: 21st of June, 2013 at 10 a.m.

Interviews to be held in Wrexham on the morning of Wednesday June 26th.

Applications are welcome. The closing date is 10 am on the 21st of June 2013. Applications cannot be accepted after that date. Interviews are planned for the morning of 26th of June 2013 in Wrexham. Candidates need to be available for this.

For an application form, please email jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk

Full details

5 Year plan last call for suggestions

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Towards_a_five_year_plan_2013-18/Draft_goals

I will be creating the version to be discussed and approved by the board at its meeting in July, next week. So any more comments please. Thanks Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 09:25, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Reviewing Train the Trainers.

All - please have a look at Training/Consultation (We have re-named this page as it may have been a little lost amongst all the other pages). I am looking at how the Train the Trainers project has worked so far and would welcome comments.

Those who have been through it will be asked to fill in an additional survey that will form part of the report. I will then be reporting to the July Board meeting. Thanks, Jon

Martin Poulter stands down as an Associate

In August 2012 the WMUK Board voted to appoint Martin Poulter as an Associate of Wikimedia UK so that the charity would continue to benefit from his experience after he stepped down as a Trustee. Since then he has supported our education work as an active volunteer and attended several board meetings to report on his work. Owing to a job offer that could conflict with this role Martin has now stood down as an Associate. The charity wishes him good luck. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:52, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Editing on fashion topics to become fashionable?

The Netherlands Chapter had a really good session on editing their pages on fashion subjects. According to those who attended it attracted a lot of new people the vast majority of whom were women. A key target for us of course. We have some world class colleges in the UK where we could deliver a similar editathon. Does anyone think this is a runner and would you be interested in taking a lead on this? (via Jon Davies) Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:28, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Review of Commons' Scope is now OPEN

I am pleased to announce the launch of a comprehensive review of our existing policy & guidelines on Commons: Project scope, and Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. This is an important review and will cover a number of contentious issues that have recently been extensively discussed both on and off Wiki. As background, you might like to look at these recent English Wikipedia Signpost articles:

• The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons, a Signpost Op-ed by Gigs
• A response to The Tragedy of Wikipedia’s commons, two Signpost Op-eds by me and Mattbuck in response.

Please visit the main review page to take part. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Where should Board meetings be?

Just wanted to ask if you have suggestions on locations for Board meetings over the coming year! Since we're a national charity we should avoid having meetings in London all the time. The AGM was in Lincoln, but prior to that the last non-London Board meeting was last September in Coventry. We should aim to meet at least twice outside of London in the coming year. If you have any suggestions, drop me a line. The criteria are:

• we'd like to go somewhere where there is a Wikimedia-related project going on that we can learn about / help with in some way (e.g. the Coventry meeting coincided with Wiki Takes Coventry and also with a project at the Herbert Museum)
• it needs to be readily accessible by public transport,
• we need a good meeting room available for 2 full days and a hotel for people to stay in (though this is the easy bit to sort out in many ways)

If you have any ideas let me know! Thanks, The Land (talk) 09:56, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Queries about 2011 annual report

Wer900, who is an editor in good standing on the English Wikipedia, has started a thread about the WMUK 2011 annual report on the Wikipediocracy forum. He is pointing out that according to the report, the "cost of generating voluntary income" (£21,459) was greater than the voluntary income generated (£20,603). Is that correct, or is Wer900 misreading something? Would it be possible to give an indication of what the £21,459 were spent on?

I hadn't ever looked at the 2011 report before, but on following Wer900's link noticed that there was an apparent expenditure item of £3,000 for a Jimmy Wales lecture (listed on page 11). Does this relate to the University of Bristol lecture, which as far as I can tell was an event that charged an entrance fee? If so, was there a particular reason that donors' money rather than income from the sold-out event was used to cover costs? And who specifically did the money go to?

I am sure there will be an explanation for these expenditure items, and would be happy to forward that to the forum. Of course, WMUK board members and ordinary members are also cordially invited to register an account over at Wikipediocracy, if you would like to join the discussion and post a reply in person. Regards, --Andreas JN 07:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello Andreas, thank you for getting in touch. I'll look into this for you and get back to you with a response soon. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 07:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Before my time but we will try and find out and report back here. Budget lines can appear quite complicated and sometimes misleading to the non-expert so Wer900 is right to ask the questions rather than jump to conclusions.

Re the 2012-13 accounts (another question raised in 'an other place') there was a draft statement reported by our treasurer at the AGM and the finalised SORP accounts are now completed, we await a signed copy in the snail mail this week for reporting to the next Board meeting in July. There is no exceptional delay. Just because a financial year ends it doesn't mean the accounts are ready the next day. It is a slow and meticulous process that involves a lot of professional due diligence at the best of times and something as simple as an unpaid invoice or a refund owed us by a supplier can cause weeks and weeks of delays. This time a couple of missing bank statements needed to be re-issued and that took a long time. Our accountants gave us an unqualified statement for the accounts so all is well and Wer9000 can anticipate many happy hours poring over our accounts. If S/he emails me I will priortise a hard copy in the post. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:18, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Andreas. The "cost of generating voluntary income" also covers the income listed under "fundraising events", which was the annual fundraiser - I think we kept that separate to distinguish what funds were covered by the fundraiser agreement with the WMF. It was primarily paypal fees if I recall correctly.

The 'Jimmy Wales lecture' was indeed the Bristol one, but the £3k listed is an estimate of the donation made in kind - it's there both in the income and expenditure columns, but no money changed hands, and I don't think we covered any costs using money from other donors. If I recall correctly, there wasn't an entrance fee for the event, and it was also freely webstreamed. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:59, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I've reproduced Jon's and Mike's answers over there, and suggested that if people have further questions, they might as well ask them here. Regards, Andreas JN 09:30, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Andreas, it's interesting that "as far as [you] can tell" the Bristol lecture charged an entrance fee, when a quick Google search for "Jimmy Wales talk Bristol" find publicity materials promoting it as a free event. Could you spell out for us what sources or what reasoning led you to the false conclusion? It would be good for the charity to know where this urban legend started, whether in someone telling lies to smear Jimmy Wales or the charity, people on online discussion boards with over-vivid imaginations, or an honest misunderstanding (of what information?). You might have to set one of your correspondents straight, assuming they're in the latter category, or otherwise ignore them. What light can you shed? MartinPoulter (talk) 12:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I saw [4], which said the event was "sold out". Thanks for the info, Martin. Andreas JN 20:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Simplifying language and avoiding acronyms

Just wanted to re-draw attention to this old discussion. I still think we should say "virtual office hour" rather than "IRC office hour" etc. MartinPoulter (talk) 19:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I've changed 'IRC' to 'virtual' on our front page, events page, and have moved IRC office hours to Virtual office hours. That should make it less likely that will slip bback into the habit of using the acronym again. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 09:47, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

To me, the confusing bit was always the "officer hours" not the "IRC". What does "office hours" mean? Yaris678 (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

London based volunteer - time to help the charity with data?

Hey all, I posted this on the community mailing list a few days ago and no response :( Asking again here in case it catches anyone's eye.

You may have picked up the odd mention in staff reports to the board or passing conversation, but one of the pieces of work I'm responsible for is the Charity's gift aid records and claims.

After delay getting our first claim through, then needing to update our records with HMRC so the right people and bank details were on our record, I'm ready to work on the outstanding data files for the claims for last financial year.

However, it's a big job that can't really be automated - it involves reformatting and then checking through spreadsheets with mixture of search and replace and common sense to make sure the claim records we're submitting are those of individuals (not companies) and include real name data.

Is there someone who would be interested and able to help? It would require at least a couple of days in the office next month - its not really appropriate to do remotely and you would have to sigh an undertaking to treat the data confidentially.

We can support some expenses here (travel, lunch/per diem) but I'm not sure we could pay for accommodation - its therefore most probably an appeal to those who are in/near london based to help.

Do let me know if you think this could be something you could do!

Thanks all :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 10:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Mozilla Festival

Hello everyone. I write regarding the Mozilla Festival. It's taking place this October and has as its focus the future of the web and all things webmaking. There's currently a call for session proposals which can be seen here If anyone is interested in putting something together that's Wikimedia-related please do get in touch and let me know if there's anything Wikimedia UK may be able to do to support you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

This looks very cool. I like the fact that it focuses on practical sessions, rather than talks. No ideas for a session myself but if someone wants someone to bounce ideas off or give feedback then I'm happy to do that. Yaris678 (talk) 21:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Opinions on merchandise

Wikimedia UK is currently conducting a review of its merchandise. As part of this we have sent out a questionnaire to some people. If you would like to fill in the survey email me and I'll send you a link. It's a short survey so shouldn't take too long to complete. Alternatively, feel free to leave your opinions here. For reference, I've listed the merchandise we regularly use below:

• Wikipedia globe stickers
• WMUK stickers
• Wikipedia pens
• Wikipedia button badges
• Commons button badges
• A6 notebooks
• Lanyards
• Wikipedia car stickers
• Wikipedia beer mats
• WMUK mugs
• WMUK annual report
• About Wikimedia UK fliers
• Cheat sheets
• Creative Commons flyers
• Education case study booklets
• Welcome to Wikipedia booklets
• Wikipedia t-shirts
• Wikipedia polo shirts

We want to know what in your experience works and what doesn't, and if you have ideas for items not on the list which might prove useful please let us know (especially if you have design ideas...). Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Key rings should be added to the list. I collect them, and almost all the tourist places stock them so they must sell. Thryduulf (local talk) (en.wp talk) 15:26, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Good idea although these are not for sale - rather, give outs at outreach events etc.

• Cheat sheets are useful to hand out at events for newbies, but I'd add space for them to write their user name. Beer mats are good as a promotional item, I gave a few out at the GLAM Wiki conference and they were amazingly popular amongst curators. But generally we need a cash value on the promotional items idea - if we are giving stuff away for free then it needs to be either very cheap, very promotional or very instructional. So an office mug "someone in this office supports Wikipedia with a gift aid donation to Wikimedia UK" would cost a few quid, but would probably be a worthwhile investment as a gift to anyone taking out a direct debit or an existing direct debit person who complete the gift aid form. For Merchandise it is more a matter of what can we profitably do and have fit our brand values. At Christmas I usually give a few people calenders. If Wikimedia sold a calender in the Autumn I might well buy a couple. So I think we could get into the charity calender business and that if we had a calender stocked by the big retailers we could get a serious amount of cash, we would also be promoting Wikimedia as a source of very good images. We could potentially do xmas cards, but in that case we would get into the vexed issue of whether we use seasons greetings or Xmas greetings - I'm not sure that a global culturally neutral organisation should get into such a culture specific product. And then of course we should do flip flops. I would love to walk across a sandy beach leaving [citation needed] on the sand behind me.... That's the sort of merchandise I would buy for myself. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 09:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

• A couple of people in the survey noted that while the cheat sheets are useful, we should perhaps revisit their design. They're intended to be taken home to use when trainers or someone who knows wikicode isn't around to help. Is the idea of including somewhere to write their user name in case they forget what it is? Is this a common problem? Last year there was a calendar for the overall winners of Wiki Loves Monuments. I don't know what the print run was or how many were sold, but I'll email around for more details. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Memory sticks. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

• You read my mind Michael. I've got a memory stick from my old university with their logo on which I use all the time. I'm going to start looking at options for stuff like key rings, memory sticks, and the other items suggested in the survey. If anyone has any ideas, please do get in touch. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• I as going to suggest memory sticks. But I forgot... Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Plus 1 to Memory sticks. Especially if we can preload them with some pdfs such as a "how to edit wikipedia". Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 13:08, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• I rather like that idea. We wouldn't want to completely fill up the memory stick, but we could even include a short video about Wikimedia UK. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 09:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd love a memory stick and a keyring. These are awesome ideas! --Deskana (talk) (email) 10:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Flossie conference 8-9 November 2013

Hi All, Flossie is running a two-day event for women who use or are otherwise interested in any aspect of open technology, open knowledge, digital arts, and social innovation. They have a call for proposals that closes on 19 July. It sounds like a perfect opportunity for us to get involved - we are even mentioned in their proposed section 'Open Collaborative Communities'. Would anyone be interested in contributing? If so let me know so I can help. Thanks! Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 13:07, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably worth noting the deadline is 19 July. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 13:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) steps down from Wikimedia UK board

Hello everyone, just a quick note to let you know that Ashley Van Haeften (User:Fae) has resigned form the Board of Wikimedia UK. You can see more details on our blog post here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:31, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to Fae - "thanks and appreciation to Fae for all of the time, effort and expertise he has contributed to the charity over the past two years".... Why don't we appreciate our volunteers more?

If any volunteers are contemplating standing for the board then please have a look at Fae's brief post, which briefly summarises Fae's resignation and Fae's donation of literally thousands of hours of selfless work. It should include that this is the man who put together our first GLAM outreach outside England ( Scotland). He negotiated deals with the British Library, National Archives and the Wellcome Trust. Fae also put together the Chapters group in Berlin together with four other leading chapters. Fae also took a leading role in getting WMUK established as a registered charity and helped us resist pressure from WMF board members and staff to not take part in the fundraiser. Fae took a supporting role with many large projects enabling WMUK to rightfully claim that it was a leader in the GLAM field. The first WMUK committee with delegated powers was led by Fae. Fae also led for WMUK at international GLAM events including New York, London and Amsterdam. Fae recently helped in setting up the WIR roles at the National Science Museum, and ... and ... and

Oh and I should also mention that Fae has categorised more pictures on Wikimedia commons for the UK than Wiki Loves Monuments has for the rest of the world. This is an achievement that when it was first discussed was thought to be beyond value (but it also was thought to be somewhere between "major boring project of unknown duration for a dozen volunteers" and "impossible".)

Doug Taylor also stood down from the board at the last AGM and he too achieved amazing things. I'm not sure why these people's achievements are not being mentioned and I apologise for nor doing a more thorough job here. These people both worked practically full time for WMUK and their contribution should be more than my comment on a talk page, a generic thanks or just a record of when and where they stood down. If we don't appreciate them then we don't deserve these volunteers. Thank you Fae and Doug on behalf of myself at least. Victuallers (talk) 21:21, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Fae, despite tumultuous drama and events, has been a dedicated and hard-working volunteer for the chapter. For this, he deserves praise for his enthusiasm and diligence. And the same for Doug. —Tom Morris (talk) 08:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Roger and Tom, thanks for your comments. It's certainly important that we focus on the positive achievements of all of our volunteers. This is something that has been discussed many times but I think it's important that we speak about it again. How can the chapter do a better job at acknowledging the positive contributions of volunteers? Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 09:06, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot to be said for barnstars. Recently I gave barnstars to Johnbod and EdwardX for the time they spent manning a stall at the Open collections trust exhibition. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 09:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to add one more comment here if I may. When Doug retired from the Board the chapter offered him very heartfelt thanks, both publicly and privately, and with good reason. He offered endless support to the chapter and his dedication to open knowledge, and Wikimedia projects, is remarkable. This is a good opportunity to reiterate those thanks to Doug. (Sorry, forgot to sign so signing now) Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts Roger and Tom, I look forward to working with you on future projects. --Fæ (talk) 19:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Upcoming Wikimedian in Residence projects in the UK

Dear All,

Following from some successful projects earlier this year, Wikimedia UK has been working on setting up further Wikimedian in Residence projects. I am pleased to say that three exciting ones have been approved by the board at the recent meeting:

• York Museum Trust
• The Royal Society, London
• The University of Manchester Library

We are now discussing the details with them. It will be a couple of months before the projects start, but we wanted to share these exciting news with you now. What would you like to see happen within these projects? You can start letting us know now!

Do you live in the area and would like to be on the recruitment panel? Do get in touch as well. (daria.cybulskawikimedia.org.uk; jonathan.cardywikimedia.org.uk

All the best - Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 10:59, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Tender specification for review consultant

At the board meeting on July 14th the Board agreed, in line with the Hudson Review to hire a consultant to conduct a short independent audit of governance, and in particular the progress the charity has made in governance issues this year. Detail of the tender specification are on this wiki. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking for potential trustees in Scotland

Wikimedia UK is a maturing charity with passionate volunteers, dedicated staff and devoted Trustees. We’re part of the global Wikimedia movement which supports projects such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikiversity (to name but three).

A review of our governance practices and procedures found was that we’d become even more effective with a larger and more diverse Board of Trustees. This is where you come in.

If you have an interest in Wikimedia projects, a commitment to open knowledge and the desire to help, we would love you to join us in helping to lead the charity through a period of growth and diversification.

To make sure that we genuinely represent the whole of the UK we are particularly keen to recruit someone based in Scotland.

We especially welcome applicants with an experience and understanding of Wikimedia projects but this isn’t essential. Energy, positivity and motivation are equally important.

We hope that this appeals to you and, if so, please contact Richard Nevell, our Office Support Assistant, for more information on 020 7065 0990 or richard.nevell@wikimedia.org.uk

Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:23, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This reads more like an advert than an update at the water cooler. Am I right in thinking that the above text has been placed in a number of places that potential trustees from Scotland might come across it? Yaris678 (talk) 18:00, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Bore da Yaris! I've placed a link on Uicipeid na Gàidhlig to the ad. Robin Owain (WMUK) (talk) 06:32, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It has indeed, and thank you Robin for adding it somewhere else. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Template needed

It works. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Katie. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Instant bot to reverse editor decline

The best ideas sometimes come in strange ways and I thought I'd share this one just in case someone thought it was possible. At our staff training day yesterday a few of us pointed out that we started editing when we saw terrible spelling mistakes but that this is not a big feature of Wikipedia nowadays. So how about a bot that inserts annoying and prominent spelling mistakes to help encourage new editors? ;) Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 07:33, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

What? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 10:47, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably a suggestion to hold on to until the morning of April 1, 2014. :-) 86.181.47.13 10:51, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:BEANS! —Tom Morris (talk) 14:56, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Typos

I've found two typos in Membership/Newsletter/2013/July#Review: Sphingonet Wikipedia workshop. There's an "of" that should be an "or" in the second-to-last paragraph and a "not" that should be a "now" in the last paragraph. Yaris678 (talk) 11:30, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, fixed. -- KTC (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Katie. Yaris678 (talk) 15:50, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually Katie. I've just read your piece Membership/Newsletter/2013/July#Opinion: Where are the women in Wikipedia?. Great piece. But there are a few typos in there too:

• Paragraph 3 - "Wikiboks", should be "Wikibooks".
• Paragraph 5 - "compare", should be "compared" or "in comparison"
• Paragraph 5 - "reason" should be "reasons"
• Paragraph 10 - "bias that exist" should be "biases that exist" or "bias that exists"
• Paragraph 10 - With "an underrepresented topics", drop the "an" or make "topic" singular.

Yaris678 (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 13:38, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the fixes Katie. I have to say, it feels kind of rude to point them out. Any chance that I could be made an admin on this wiki? (Or some other way to give me the edit-protected right.) That way I can just quietly make such changes myself. Yaris678 (talk) 15:44, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Making you an admin sounds sensible to me (I'll vouch for you, for whatever it's worth). Somebody (Katie?) could also give you access to the internal wiki where the newsletter is drafted. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Harry. Do I need to apply somewhere or should I just wait for the cogs to turn? Yaris678 (talk) 08:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no formal application process, just asking one of the staff works fine as we all have 'crat tools and we can sort out accounts on the internal wiki. In this case, asking on the water cooler works too as it's a high profile page. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 09:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there is an agreed process for this - as per Wikimedia:Administrators, "certain trusted users are also be made Administrators if they apply to the Board and are approved." That policy's been there since before 2009... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:48, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I promise I won't be offended if someone takes the admin bit back off me until the board have had a chance to consider my case. Yaris678 (talk) 12:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) To be fair, there are several people (myself included) that have been given admin rights by staff, so you're not the only one following the policy. I have updated Administrators to give both the policy, and the current actual practice. Given the volunteer-driven nature of the charity, it seems a bit backwards to make you have to seek board approval for adminship rights, especially since there's more pertinent matters for them to be focussing on. But I'm not a board member, so what do I know? ;-) --Deskana (talk) (email) 13:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

This is basically a hangover from 2009 when the board did all the work - so the admin rights on the wiki was an important thing. I'll raise it for discussion at the next board meeting, but we can probably just delegate this to the Chief Executive if the board agree. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:05, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Why not just delegate it to anybody who has the 'crat bit and five minutes? It's not as if there's much damage that can be done with admin tools on a wiki like this. But then I'm not nearly important enough to make that sort of decision! ;) Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:19, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania 2014 & Wikivoyage

I know that Wikimania 2014 isn't technically a WMUK project but this seemed a good place to bring it up: With the event happening in London, it would make sense for the London Wikivoyage pages to be improved for the benefit of all the visiting Wikimedians. We have a Wikimedia travel guide; it would be good to use it. While adding a listing to voy:en:London/City of London, home of the Barbican, I noticed that the page status of many London districts can be quite low. The City is at guide status but most are just at usable status and only voy:en:London/Hampstead is star status (the scale goes stub-->outline-->usable-->guide-->star). This is within the chapter's sphere of responsibility but I don't know if this is something the chapter could/would be involved with, or just UK Wikimedians doing bits (I'm going to continue editing but I don't really know enough about the city to cover everything). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 14:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, thanks for your suggestion, which I think is a good one. You're correct that Wikimania itself isn't a Wikimedia UK project but it would make sense for us to try and encourage improvement of WikiVoyage content related to London - and in as many languages as we can, too. Do you have any suggestions on how to do this? If you;d like to deliver / promote a project around this then I'd be more than happy to lend my support and get involved in helping out on this - both as a staff member and as a volunteer :-) Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether this would be a good way to introduce (secondary/high) school children to wiki editing. We have been discussing possible ways to involve school children over the coming year and this may indeed be a relatively useful and certainly interesting way of doing it. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 08:51, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

RE: "Do you have any suggestions" -- to be honest, no, not at the moment. At least, I'm not sure how best to do it. I should probably have waited to bring it up at the meet up in August, so I could discuss it a bit first. On the bright side, Wikivoyage is probably the easiest Wikimedia project on which to make micro-contributions. The majority of a standard guide article is made up of template-formatted bullet points, under standard verb-based headings (ie. "See", "Buy", "Eat", etc) which use templates of the same name (ie. {{buy}}, {{eat}}, etc). On top of which, a contribution could be just adding a good local restaurant. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:41, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, be careful about wanting to introduce secondary/high school students to Wikipedia editing. There have already been a lot of rumblings on English Wikipedia about the need for better child protection policies. WMUK may need to look into the logistics of that with DBS (formerly CRB) checking for volunteers and so on. DBS checking is apparently now free for volunteers. I'm happy to have a DBS check done, as I've been happy to disclose my identity documents to the WMF. —Tom Morris (talk) 10:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

It'd also be great if people could help improve London on OpenStreetMap. I do my part in making sure that certain drinking establishments are kept up-to-date, but there's a lot of other things in London that need improving! —Tom Morris (talk) 10:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Open Government Partnership annual summit call for proposals

Hello everyone. The Open Government Partnership is hosting its annual summit on 31 October and 1 November. This could be a good opportunity to build networks in this area and find ways that we can demonstrate the value of Wikimedia projects. We may be able to find ways to influence thinking around open knowledge and how this can fit in with public policy. They have issued a call for proposals which has a deadline of 1 September. I wonder if this is of interest to anybody and, if so, this is a good place to discuss some ideas. Many thanks. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

• Given the just-started discussions with City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) which — I hope — will lead to their webcasts of council meetings, plus Q&A sessions, ending up archived on MediaWiki servers, this is a point to ensure gets some discussion there. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 17:06, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Student societies 2013 campaign

Wikimedia UK is keen to support student societies towards a better understanding and improvement of Wikipedia and its sister projects. We are currently looking for a volunteer to help me develop a strategic plan we've drafted for reaching out to university student unions across the UK. This work relates to WMUK's developing efforts to support Student Societies focused on editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects; it essentially involves an intensive period of concentrated effort to reach out to potential new student societies. Details available here. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 16:53, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

'Illustrating Wikipedia brochure' - your thoughts?

Hi All, a new brochure about Wikimedia Commons has been produced. Designed to be a companion brochure to the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure, it covers what Commons is, how to upload files, how to use files, and the basics of free licenses - File:Illustrating Wikipedia brochure.pdf. We would like to have a version printed in the UK as well. What are your thoughts on the content? Do you think we already have a brochure that does the job better?

Do let Stevie know (stevie.bentonwikimedia.org.uk or comment here) - we may even manage to get it ready for Wiki Loves Monuments in September!

Thanks, Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 14:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania Wikidata and a talk

Hello everyone! :) Today DanielK(WMDE) told me that WMUK (or someone from WMUK that was at Wikimania) was looking for someone to 'give a wikidata introduction' talk of some sort! If anyone knows who was talking to the Wikidata team in Hongkong about this (maybe you are that person) then give me a shout as I may be able to help :) Addshore (talk) 20:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Katie is probably the person to contact for details. (I did one of these a few months back and it went well - will happily pass on my notes - but don't have much free time at the moment to do others.) Andrew Gray (talk) 10:49, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I got a poke from Mrjohncummings here. :) Addshore (talk) 10:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Might have been me, I've had a few requests, I put a note on your talk page --Mrjohncummings (talk) 10:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Last chance for comments on Train the Trainers

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Train_the_Trainers_consultation

All comments welcomed especially on the recommendations.

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Forthcoming page creation

Just a notice that I'm going to be making a lot of smallish sub-pages with custom CSS, in a pattern that may seem like a wikivous breakdown when looked at in Recent Changes, but the intention is to create a flowchart tool showing external partners how best to work with Wikimedia. I will do this for the Jisc collaboration project, but hopefully the way I implement it will mean there can be multiple entry points. MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 16:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds very posh! Richard Symonds (talk) 10:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Women's Engineering Society conference 4 October 2013 - would you like to attend to talk about Wikipedia?

Hi All, WES has invited Wikimedia UK to join their one day conference [5] (annual opportunity for women in engineering and related technologies to get together to discuss energy technologies). They are running a parallel session that's much broader in scope - and we got a slot to talk about Wikipedia, gender gap and how Editathons could increase the presence of women, and especially women in engineering, on Wikipedia. I will be attending, and if a volunteer would like to join me to co present I should be able to secure a free entry. daria.cybulskawikimedia.org.uk. Many thanks! Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 14:08, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

EduWiki 2013 Call for Proposals - extended deadline

Please note that the call for proposals deadline for the EduWiki Conference 2013 has been extended to Friday 30 August at noon. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Call for Editathon and/or Hackathon ideas at EduWiki 2013

In an effort to provide a wider range of activities over the weekend of the EduWiki Conference 2013, we are now calling for ideas for possible editathons and/or hackathons to take place during or immediately after the conference. We are particularly looking forward to hearing from people who already have the relevant links needed for such events. Wikimedia UK would be able to cover expenses, as appropriate. The deadline for proposals is Friday 6 September 2013 at noon BST. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 12:09, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Wikimedia_projects

I'm proposing deletion of this page. It should be (and is) part of all our communications that Wikimedia is about more than just Wikipedia. But that page doesn't achieve this. Because it's not easily findable, it's easy for it to be neglected and go out of date (as has happened). It doesn't have information that isn't duplicated in lots of other places. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

One source of confusion I have come across a few times for people dealing with the chapter is the distinction between "Wikimedia projects" and projects organised by Wikimedia UK. Something that explains this could be useful and I'm not sure deleting this page improves anything. 94.185.212.146 18:46, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It's out of date information, it's duplicate information (which Google penalises) and for good reasons it's not likely to be maintained. It will be misleading to a newcomer who stumbles across it. So its continued existence is negative rather than positive or neutral. That's the deletion rationale. Fair point about the ambiguity of "projects". MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Only one page link to Wikimedia projects (apart from the water cooler), and I don't think removing that link from the page would be an issue. I'll delete that page tomorrow if no one objects. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:32, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Activities/Geographical diversity

I'm very keen that we monitor the geographic diversity of our activity. However, this page doesn't seem to be the way to do it. It was a good idea at the time to have an "audit" of our activities around the UK, but it hasn't become embedded in the way we work. It seems to me that the same function could be performed by intelligent use of the category system (Events in North-East England, Events in Northern Ireland...) and that this is more likely to be embedded. Someone creating a page for an event will look at an existing page for a similar event and copy the features it has. So we just make sure past events and geography-specific activities have a geographical category, that should send things on their way (or am I being too optimistic?) In the Economics Network (also mandated to serve the whole UK) we used to categorise our activity according to which of ten broad regions it happened in. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:41, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that page has been long forgotten about. It can be deleted or tagged historical as far as I'm concerned. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:51, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

There are no incoming links to the page apart from this page and two user talk pages. If there are no objections by tomorrow I'll delete it. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Richard. At some point I'll start adding geographical categories to stuff so we're still tracking that aspect of diversity. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:31, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Supporting the UK's first Wiki Loves Monuments competition

Hi all,

For those who haven't been following organizational progress of the WLM competition to date, we have a small group of dedicated volunteers and staff who are working hard to ensure that the UK's first contribution to the world's largest photographic competition goes without a hitch. We have a nice competition website to attract competitors (many of whom will not be Wiki savvy, and will be new contributors & editors). We are expecting this to be quite a big deal, and the staff at Wikimedia UK have been busy making arrangement for publicity as well as helping out with the lists. We hope to get press notices and image spreads in the Metro, which publishes in Bath, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle and Sheffield, as well as in The Times (thanks Stevie). The high-profile nature of the competition has been strengthened by the agreement of Steve Cole ABIPP, Head of Photography at English Heritage, to join the national judging panel (jury) (thanks Richard N.)

The WLM volunteers will do everything they can to make sure the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland lists are in a good state before the start of the national and international competitions - September 1st is just three weeks away now. We are all very aware that the deadline is looming, and that a quite a lot of work still remains to be done. Everyone is working as fast as they can and due to the rapidly approaching deadline it appears that unfortunately a few errors have slipped through. Really, we need more people to help out. There is a particular need for editors who are experienced with bots or scripts to pitch in now, not only to help fix some of the errors, but also to help put up the remainder of the listed building data using the standard WLM templates. If you can help in any way, please make yourself known to the WLM team, either via my talk page, or by adding your name to the helpers' page on Commons. If you can actively help now, you should also, please, sign up to the Wiki Loves Monuments UK mailing list, where you can obtain detailed information. You can see the current status of the data uploads by going to the Progress lists for Wikipedians; you can see there, for example, that we still need someone to deal with the uploading of almost all of the Scottish data. We can provide structured lists of data for those who can help with this.

If you can't help with bot work, but are able to contribute by tidying up or correcting the WP lists for your area, that would still be very much appreciated. You can get to the lists by going via one of the following links:

• Listed buildings in Scotland
• Listed buildings in Wales
• Listed buildings in England
• Listed buildings in Northern Ireland

The best place to report systematic list errors, to ensure that the WLM volunteers see them, is not on this thread, but rather at the main WLM-UK help desk.

Given the fact that the competition will be starting in just three weeks time (whether the UK team is ready or not!), I would ask that editors do not make any radical changes to the en Wikipedia lists at this stage which could inadvertently destroy the competition. In particular, please do not make mass reverts, unless you are able to put everything back correctly, and please do not remove or change the WLM template structure. This is essential for the automated upload tool to work properly, and also for the WLM international team to ensure that the data gets correctly harvested and copied into the worldwide Wiki Monuments Database.

After the competition has finished, at the end of September, would be a good time for the community to discuss - if desired - any possible template improvements to the way in which the UK data is standardized and displayed.

Thanks for bearing with us and for helping out if you can. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

And thanks to you Michael and everyone working on this - absolutely brilliant and I hope we can lead the way in supporting the newbies (especially) to remain active after the main event has happened. Ideas anyone? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 08:26, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Virtual Learning Environment workshop day

Hello everyone, as you probably know Wikimedia UK has been developing a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to teach people about Wikipedia. Progress is going well and we'd like to invite you to a workshop day on Saturday 9 November. The workshop will highlight the features of the VLE, look at how we can make good use of the tool, seek community involvement in the content, maintenance and localisation of the tool. Lunch will be provided on the day and I'm hoping very much to see you there. Please do feel free to drop me a line with any questions. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:22, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

List of interested people:

• Stevie Benton (WMUK)
• Dhaval S Vyas
• John Byrne
• John Cummings
• Harry Mitchell
• MartinPoulter (talk)

Open access hackathon

Hi, not sure if this is right place to leave a message, but there's an event coming up that might be of interest to any Wikimedians who are interested in open access to research. The Open Access Button team (Joe and David) are holding a hackathon in London on the weekend of 7-8 September, venue to be decided very shortly. They are very interested in working with Wikimedia on their ideas, and on the Wikimania 2014 team we're planning on getting them involved in the conference next year. They're new to Wikimedia so are very keen to meet people and get involved. You can contact them on twitter if you're interested. Thanks. Lawsonstu (talk) 16:32, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Further information and sign-up details are now available on their blog. "Millions of people a day are denied access to the research they both need and paid for because of paywalls. It doesn’t have to be like this, but we need your help. We’re two students from the UK making a tool to help change the system – it’s called the Open Access Button..." Lawsonstu (talk) 07:30, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia update

Six months have gone by since the announcement by Chris Keating of the donation, and two months since he said they had a solution that would work. As of today, whois.com shows ownership of the QRpedia related domains as:

• qrpedia.org – Terrence Eden
• qrwp.org – Bamkin Family
• qrpedia.org.uk – Michael Peel
• qrpedia.net - Michael Peel
• qrpedia.co.uk – Bamkin Family

(Mike Peel has stated the ownership of his two domains has been transferred to WMUK (and WMUK reimbursed him for the purchase), and that he has lodged a bug report to have the records corrected)

Could an update on the transfer of the other domains and the future of QRpedia please be given? The last board minutes note that there were “four points that Roger needs to agree”. Has he agreed? If so, when will the transfer happen? If not, what are the steps from here? TheOverflow (talk) 20:16, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

+1. Four days have passed since this question was asked. A holding response from a trustee or employee as acknowledgement would have been nice even if an answer is being debated in-camera. Considering the public statement on 9th February 2013 with the commitment that a "fuller statement will follow" and assurances after similar questions were repeated on 7th June 2013, it seems long overdue for the charity to share information with members. Referring to my diary, which included my recommendations when I was the Chairman to finalize the deal in 2012, more than two years have passed in negotiation and seeing several months of only issuing upbeat public statements eventually becomes a risk, rather than the board sticking to the value of being open and honest with members about issues. --Fæ (talk) 12:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for asking about this. I've passed the question on to people who have been directly involved in the work. Apologies for the delay - I only returned from annual leave today and have been catching up on many things. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:58, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

It has been 8 days since TheOverflow raised their question. The charity has a total of 15 staff and board members available, and in the light of several reports and press releases in this time, none appears willing or has permission to give a simple or prompt update. TheOverflow has gone ahead and updated the English Wikipedia article on QRpedia with the information they have. --Fæ (talk) 08:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Two weeks and, disappointingly, still no answers despite, as Fæ notes the availability of staff and board members. I do note from whois.com, however, that the qrpedia.net, previously registered to Michael Peel is now registered to Wiki UK Limited, and qrpedia.org.uk while still registered to Michael Peel now has wikimedia UK's address as registrant's address, so there seems to have been some work behind the scenes. TheOverflow (talk) 00:48, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the slow reply. We have what is from our point of view a final agreement which will transfer the domains and IP, which was completed shortly after the last Board meeting and it is awaiting Roger's signature. I understand he has, not unreasonably, been taking his own legal advice before signing and completing the transfer. Regards, The Land (talk) 20:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for that response, and the apology for the slow reply. The final agreement from WMUK's view was completed shortly after the last board meeting. That's around two months ago - that's a lot of time to seek and consider legal advice. When do you expect it to be finalised? TheOverflow (talk) 01:03, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Given that agreement has not been reached, the claim that it has been reached should be removed from Governance_Review/Implementation. TheOverflow (talk) 01:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, it is a long time, particularly as the substance of the agreement was settled some time before that (indeed, the basic terms are still what was agreed in January, just with additional complexity to deal with the risk of needing to defend patent litigation in future). I've also updated the implementation tracking as requested, thanks for pointing that out. The Land (talk) 08:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

So, when do you expect it to be finalised? Did you provide Roger with an expectation of when he would return the document? If it is not soon, perhaps a formal announcement of the delay would be in order - given the charity has announced the 'donation' several times over. TheOverflow (talk) 10:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I would certainly hope it's finalised shortly and there is no obstacle on Wikimedia UK's side to the domains being transferred right away. I am not sure I can say any more than that. Obviously this state of affairs where we have a contract waiting to be signed can't continue indefinitely. The Land (talk) 11:14, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it can continue indefinitely; we are seeing it continue indefinitely now. I asked when you expected it to be finalised. I asked if Roger had been given a date. You have answered neither. Given a commitment to not allowing this to be indefinite, can you please specify a date when either the agreement will be signed and the domains transferred, or that an announcement will be made formally turning down the donation? TheOverflow (talk) 05:02, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello Wikimedia UK! This QR discussion particularly interested me and I drafted a proposal that may be of interest to you: Mediawikiwiki:Requests for comment/URL shortener service for Wikimedia which relies on a shortening service such as Mediawikiwiki:Requests for comment/URL shortener. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 02:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

By the way, above edit has not been attributed to me yet. This is meant to be a bug report. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 01:39, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments UK - call for volunteers to pre-screen entries in September

I'm unsure how many uploads we can expect to get as part of WLM in the UK over the next month, but the signs are that it could be in the tens of thousands - far too many for us to give straight to our three-person jury to review.

That means that we will need one or more levels of pre-screening, to knock out the images that are clearly not good enough to pass on to the next stage. We need to plan to do this pre-screening on a daily basis, as the competition proceeds, as there may well not be enough time to do the whole lot in October.

I'm looking for volunteers who could help online with this, either throughout September or at least for a day or two. No experience is needed, other than a reliable ability to distinguish a good photo from a poor one. Although the entries will be from the UK, anyone from anywhere can make a difference.

If you can help, please let me know on my talk page, or add your name to the pre-screening team.

Many thanks, --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:39, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Worth noting that we are well over the 6,000 uploads mark and 325 volunteers out there in the rain! Let's make sure we thanks them all and keep them involved until the next one! Well done everyone involved, it is really impressive. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 15:08, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Getting the word out about the Wiki Loves Monuments competition

As you probably know, the Wiki Loves Monuments competition starts this Sunday, 1st September, and we would like to get as many entries from the UK as we possibly can.

Please do your bit by letting friends and family around the country know, and please also spread the word to local societies that you may be involved with. Of particular interest are local historical groups, civic groups and photographic clubs.

Please feel free to use the text below as an email template. It's designed to be sent to a society, but should be easy to change if you are emailing friends.

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi

I am emailing in case your members might be interested in contributing photographs of their local listed buildings to the international Wiki Loves Monuments competition, which runs throughout the month of September. I am a volunteer with the charity Wikimedia UK.

Entries can be images taken specially for the competition, or can be pre-existing images, and will be available for others to use on Wikipedia.

I would be most grateful if you would be good enough to bring this competition to the attention of your members. The link is www.wikilovesmonuments.org.uk

If you or any of your members have queries, please feel free to email me directly.

Thanks for your help, and regards,

. . .

____________________________________________________________________________________

World's largest photography contest comes to the UK - record your local listed buildings

September is the month when summer begins drawing to a close, the football season is in full swing and the leaves begin to change colour. You may not be aware that it's also the month of the world's largest photography competition.

Wiki Loves Monuments is a global competition, open to everyone. In the UK the aim is to gather together freely-licensed high quality photographs of the UK's listed buildings for use on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. And it's open to everybody.

Wikipedia has a global audience of over 500 million people every month, making Wiki Loves Monuments a chance for entrants to have their photography potentially reach a very large audience. For example, the article about Hadrian's Wall receives around 700,000 visitors a year while the article about London is viewed around 4.5 million times a year.

Aside from being great fun, Wiki Loves Monuments is a way of capturing a snapshot of our nation’s cultural heritage for future generations, documenting our country’s most important historic buildings. Over time, the collections gathered throughout the competition will become an incredibly useful historical resource.

Entries can be images taken specially for the competition, or can be pre-existing images.

Michael Maggs, volunteer member of the Wiki Loves Monuments UK steering committee and a Wikimedia UK Trustee, said: “The contest is a great way not only to contribute to Wikipedia but also to record and share with the world images of your local historic environment. You don't need to be a professional-quality photographer to upload photos and help make a difference.”

Jon Davies, Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, the charity that is helping to support the initiative, said: "Taking part in Wiki Loves Monuments for the first time is very exciting. We’re hoping that the UK will provide a leading contribution to the contest and are calling on photographers, amateur and professional alike, to help to make this happen. We'd love for the global winner to come from the UK."

To learn more about the competition and to get involved, visit www.wikilovesmonuments.org.uk

____________________________________________________________________________________

Style for the blog

I strongly recommend more use of the --more-- tag on the blog, so that the blog front page (and WMUK front page) gives only short teasers and people have to click through

• Not all our readers are interested in any given blog post, but given the diversity of the topics, almost all of them should be interested in at least one recent post. Given how surprisingly reluctant users are to scroll, it's better to make it easier for them to get an overview (headlines and teasers) for a lot of posts.
• If people have to click through to read a post, then the viewing stats for individual posts give a useful metrics for the interest they attract. If people can read all recent posts from the front page, then that potential for evaluation is lost.

I also recommend just having no more than short teasers of blog posts on the wiki main page (sometimes this happens; sometimes there are longer extracts or the full text of the post). I know this complicates things for the Welsh translation of the blog: maybe a separate page can be created for Welsh summaries of the blog posts?

• Google apparently penalises duplicate content.
• In my webmaster job, I've conducted usability tests as well as benefiting from consultants who test usability for sites like the Guardian and BBC. It's amazing how reluctant desktop users are to scroll (just think about how few of the general public are aware of Wikipedia's sister sites, even though you can see them all by scrolling down Wikipedia's home page) and hence a good front page design gets all important items in a desktop user's first screenful. This was really rammed home to me by the consultants. Our text in the "About Wikimedia UK" section is crucial for anyone visiting for the first time, and so arguably are the contact details underneath.

Also, can the left hand navigation on the blog be updated to match that of the main site? They've got very out of sync. Stevie, I recognise you're working hard on a lot of different things at the moment, but maybe this is something a developer can implement? Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 15:53, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Martin, thanks very much for these useful and thoughtful comments. I've made a note to spend a bit of time looking at this and other blog things later this week. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Very helpful. We really need to think hard about what we look like to the outside world. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 09:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)