Newsletter/November2008

Wikimedia UK Newsletter

Draft November 2008 Issue

Summary: This is the summary of the newsletter, which will cover everything below very briefly.

In this month's newsletter:

1. Results of elections
2. Status of Company Formation
3. Membership
4. Anything else

Results of elections

The community of Wikimedians in the United Kingdom has come together to form a chapter of Wikimedia. The community elected an initial board of five members to create the new organisation, set up a bank account, request charitable status and arrange the first Annual General Meeting:

• Kwan Ting Chan (KTC)
• Michael Conn (Warofdreams)
• Tom Holden (Cfp)
• Michael Peel (MikeP)
• Andrew Turvey (AndrewRT)

Full results were released in late October, confirming that all five candidates had received the support of more than the required 50% of voters. Final figures were: KTC (88.5% voting to support); Warofdreams (57.7%); Cfp (92.3%); MikeP (53.2%); AndrewRT (73.1%). Overall, well over 50% of users who registered in time to vote cast their ballots.

Status of Company Formation

The board has set up a timeline of objectives. Good progress is being made. Following extensive discussions, a company named Wikimedia UK Ltd has been set up. The company's Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association have been agreed, and these include the organisation's objectives:

The charity's Object is to aid and encourage people to collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify said content, by means including (but not limited to):

1. promoting freely accessible online information repositories whose content is freely and collaboratively editable;
2. acting as a voice and representative for the community of UK residents and citizens who use and edit such repositories;
3. preserving world heritage, and particularly that of the UK, through such repositories;
4. supporting the charitable work of the Wikimedia Foundation;
5. enabling, assisting, promoting and promulgating wider participation in the creation, dissemination and expansion of information and educational resources covering the world's knowledge and languages to all persons, everywhere;
6. furthering the development of electronic, printed, and other resources required to support such participation;
7. producing, publishing and developing, or cause to be produced, published and developed, information resources, whether in printed, electronic, or other forms;
8. making use of or encouraging the use of information resources for the advancement of education; and
9. encouraging the adoption of practices and policies to widen education, participation and dissemination of information worldwide;

    —Objectives of Wiki UK Ltd

A decision from the chapters committee on whether to propose that the Wikimedia Foundation accept the organisation as a chapter is expected on Friday [to update].

Once a decision is made, the board will begin accepting applications for membership (see below for details), and will also be setting up a bank account. [to update].

Membership

Status of membership given here

Anything else

Mention Wikimeets, recent news from UK-based Wikiprojects, etc. here? Anyone at want to write a report?