Talk:2012 Five Year Plan/First draft

Tango's comments

First of all, I'd like to say how fantastic it is that work has started on a 5 year plan. I remember the board meeting just over a year ago when we agreed the 2011 budget and we were just making it up as we went along trying to come up with something vaguely sensible that made the books balance (and I think we actually did a pretty good job, under the circumstances). Now we are seriously thinking about what we're going to be doing not just next year, but in 5 years. This is a really big step for the chapter and I'm really pleased to see it.

I am also really pleased to see how many of the items in the first draft have specific, clearly measurable targets ("SMART targets", as they are known). That is something we have historically not been very good at (both in WMUK and in the wider Wikimedia movement). It is really important that, in a year's time, 3 years' time and 5 years' time, we can go through and say "Yes, we succeeded in that." and "No, we didn't quite manage that, what went wrong?". The way this draft has been set out, that will be really easy to do. So, thank you, staff!

Now for the criticisms! I see two potential problems with this draft plan. Firstly, it looks too ambitious. Each individual target is realistic and achievable, but I think if our attention is split between so many different things we'll end up not managing any of them. I think we need to come up with a relatively small number of priorities (4 or 5, say), each with one or two targets (at each time period) to measure success against. Off the top of my head, inspired by the targets already in the plan, I think good priorities would be: "Financial stability and sustainability", "A large and engaged membership", "Strong and transparent governance (as measured by the PQASSO marks)" and "Large scale member-led activities in GLAM and education".

Secondly, I'm concerned by the financial growth you are projecting. WMDE may have been able to achieve that kind of growth, but that was a very different time in the movement. I think we need to clearly separate out funds raised through the annual fundraiser on the WMF sites from funds raised elsewhere (the plan already says we should be diversifying our revenue streams, but it doesn't give any numbers for that yet). We then need to make sure we're not intending to spend more than our fair share of money from the fundraiser. (I suggest we not worry about how much we're raising in the fundraiser and how much we're sending to the WMF, since that is very much up in the air at the moment - let's just focus on how much we actually spend. Once the future of Wikimedia fundraising is a little less foggy, we can figure out the details.) I would advise against any plan to get more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the annual fundraiser. I think we will struggle to justify any growth higher than that at the expense of other chapters and organisations (who mostly have budgets less than 10% of ours at the moment). I'm not sure what growth is intended by the numbers in the current draft, because it isn't clear where that money is coming from or how much (if any) of that money is intended to go to the WMF. It may well be that the intention behind those numbers doesn't involve more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the fundraiser, in which case please just clarify the numbers. --Tango (talk) 19:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Timetable

What's the timetable for writing and agreeing this plan? The page says it will be discussed at the board meeting in late April. Is the plan to then agree it at the AGM in May? Or will it be discussed at the AGM and then agreed at some later date? I think the latter is preferable - planning 5 years in less than 2 months is a big ask! I'm not quite sure how we would agree it, though - waiting until the next AGM is too long, written resolutions require 50% of total membership to actively support it, which might be difficult to achieve, and EGM sounds like a lot of hassle, and anything which doesn't involve formal approval by the membership sounds like a bad idea to me. What thoughts have the board and staff had on this subject? --Tango (talk) 19:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Harry's comments

These are specific things that jumped out at me and that I felt it worth commenting on, rather than an analysis of the whole plan.

• 1 year:
  • "ensure integration with the community" is crucial—the chapter only exists to support the community, and staff (even those with more back end jobs if we hire more in the longer term) should make every effort to make themselves part of the community, as the the current four have done and are doing.
  • "Regular wikimeets established in five locations"; we've already done this—London, Cambridge, Coventry, Manchester, and Liverpool. I know four of those are outside London, but they still count! ;) Monthly newsletter is long overdue and a good way to encourage greater participation, so great to see this included.
  • Training—YES, YES, YES! Especially for volunteers who do a lot of teaching, a mix of professional training and workshops where we can learn from each others experience would be invaluable, and would hopefully encourage more people to do that sort of volunteer work while giving us a core group who can train other interested volunteers.
  • GLAM—small-scale GLAM events are very easy to set up, and don't need much support from staff. The key (as with other types of outreach) is to build local Wikimedia communities and set them to work. This is best done by people 'on the ground' (even if they've been parachuted in).

• 3 year
  • Staffing: as long as we're very careful that we're not expanding the bureaucracy to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Consideration should be given to whether a given role can be performed by temporary or part-time staff, and obviously it must be remembered that the staff and the chapter exist to support volunteers, not to control them. If we get up to eight staff in three years, that, in my opinion, would be the time to consider basing staff outside London—with all the staff living and working in London, we risk turning what is already arguably Wikimedia England into Wikimedia London.

• 5 year
  • Regular wikimeets within 20 miles of 90% of the population is almost impossible, and not especially wise, imo. The most obvious issue is sparsely populate areas like most of Scotland, Wales and South West England. Even excluding them from consideration, we'd have to hold wikimeets at motorway service stations to fulfill this, and there would be large overlaps in the communities—for example, we'd be having meetups in Coventry and Birmingham (and probably Wolverhampton), or London and Watford, for example. 50 miles would be more realistic, or perhaps one in every city or conurbation.

I'd like to see more priority given to education outreach—the plan is very thin on this, and is basically "let's get some more contacts and put the odd WIR in place", compared to GLAM, where there are firmer ideas for progress and the plan seems to have staff falling over themselves to support it. It's not just about getting contacts at universities—there's a lot we can do ins schools and FE colleges, and where we have contacts at a university, we need to build a relationship and hold events to make it mutually beneficial. Expert outreach is not mentioned at all, and yet having recognised experts involved in Wikipedia is crucial to it being taken more seriously by the academic community (and, even more importantly, to it being an even more reliable tertiary source). Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

90% of the population isn't that difficult to reach. According to Wikipedia, 83.8% of the UK population lives in England. If we have regular meetups throughout England and in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast, that ought to be enough to meet the 90% target (I'm not saying we should ignore everywhere else, just that the target isn't unrealistic). --Tango (talk) 21:46, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments by Charles Matthews

• Wikimeets are not WMUK activities, and in the past Mike Peel has said something along those lines, the nuances of which probably matter; but in any case they are not run by the chapter. They are emphatically not "membership" activities. The point came up recently, also. The distinction is actually important, and slurring it is a very bad idea.
• Education. Yes, we were once going to have materials for teachers and so on.
• GLAM. The three-year estimate is reasonable, but there are factors that may cause some "saturation"; and the calendar is going to need to be taken in hand.
• There is nothing concrete in the plan about grants, online journal access, that kind of thing. Where is the direct relationship of the plan to content in the projects?

86.6.26.208 21:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you objecting to WMUK getting involved with meetups or just with them being classified as "membership activities"? I think the chapter can and should do a great deal to help support and encourage meetups. We should be careful to distinguish between "community" and "membership", though. The chapter should serve the entire UK community, whether they choose to join the chapter or not. Something like a meetup is a community activity, not a membership one, you are correct. --Tango (talk) 21:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Any implication at all that meetups are "members only", however slight, should be resisted as deleterious. It is complete misdirection.

It is much more likely that those who are casually interested in WMUK activities would come to a meetup, just to encounter other Wikimedians, than that they come in with a definite interest in what the Board are currently up to. Meetups are not dominated by chapter politics, which would be something just as likely to put off newcomers as motivate them. I.e. it matters that meetups are seen as "first contact" for those who have never seen another Wikimedian in the flesh, and are in no way cliquey.

All that said, if WMUK has ways to support meetups appropriately, that is to the good. 86.6.26.208 06:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Filceolaire's comments

This looks good to me. Things that could be added:

• Grants programme
• Software development
• Major project
  • Updated Wikipedia for schools;
  • Video interviews/recordings/
  • Language teaching courses

The 5 year plan doesn't have to specify what these are - just that WMUK wants to have a grants programme, do software, support a major project. Filceolaire (talk) 22:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)