Talk:Reports 11May13

Open reporting

At every board meeting this year, it has been pointed out that staff reports were published using closed formats. There is nothing to stop the wiki being used natively to publish these reports as they are almost entirely plain text with the odd table. As the year has progressed we have moved from some of the reports being presented on-wiki, to the current situation with none of the reports being available in an open standard, instead they appear to have been printed to PDF files from open office documents as a way of making them less open, guaranteeing they will not show up in on-wiki searches, almost impossible to comment on, difficult to cut and paste from, or share actions from.

This may be considered a very minor issue, but as it has been highlighted as an issue over so many meetings, I believe it now requires a vote of the board of trustees in order to either adhere to the underpinning value of openness, or to remove it as one of our top level values, that would be expected to guide the way we work together as a charity. --Fæ (talk) 16:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

"Just because we use PDF files for staff reports,surely doesn't mean we are no longer being 'open', and thus the charity should remove this as a value."

PDF files are an open standard: Adobe officially released the PDF as an open standard in 2008 (ISO 32000). We use PDFs for several reasons:

• They're viewable on any system, be it a mobile phone, a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Linux-based system. Many volunteers do not have OpenOffice - some trustees do not have it either. Being open is not just using an open-source writing program or an easily copyable file - it's making sure that the highest number of people possible can read the file, in any format, anywhere in the world.
• Reports are meant to be 'frozen in time' - a snapshot of what the staff have been doing. They are an important record of the charity and it would be a risk if people were able to go back in and change them.
• PDFs are an international standard which are used throughout the Wikimedia movement, and accepted for upload on Commons.
• Although PDFs are not searchable on mediawiki at the moment, there is an open bug which will allow them to be searchable in future: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6422. The PDFs are easily readable and it is easy to copy and paste from them. It is also easy to comment on them.

This issue is not a strategic one, it is based on what is practical, I don't think that file formats are something that trustees should be deciding, frankly. When we have complicated documents, including tables and spreadsheets that are living documents we need quick and easy access and the ability to change things quickly. I hope that the community and the rest of the board will agree.

We could place the majority of the reports on-wiki as wikitext as well, but I am hesitant to do so for the following reasons:

• They will not be viewable as easily on all systems.
• They will not be frozen in time, allowing people to make changes after the report deadline (or even during the board meeting!)
• There will be two versions of the reports in circulation - the PDF, and the on-wiki version. These will end up differing (inevitably).
• It's more work for staff, for very little benefit. We need to use our resources wisely.

The most important thing is to share the information as openly as possible and I think we are. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)