Towards a five year plan 2013-18

At the Board meeting on 14 July 2013, the Board and representative staff members held a workshop to review the draft at Towards a five year plan 2013-18/Draft goals. This draft is based on that workshop together with feedback from the Wikiconference 2013 strategy discussion and is a further iteration of our draft goals, which will then be fleshed out with defined targets and methods.

This is still very much open to comment and questions. Please comment on the talk page (or if you prefer not to for any reason please email me on chris dot keating@wikimedia.org.uk). Also, wikignoming on this page is very welcome.

Encourage, involve and engage volunteers

Volunteers are crucial to the future growth of Wikimedia UK. As we develop as an organisation, we will retain the Wikimedia ethos that anyone can contribute in whatever way they see fit.

1. We will welcome volunteers of all backgrounds, and give our volunteers the skills, confidence and opportunities to participate fully in our work, including proposing and leading projects.
2. We will have a growing volunteer base, growing membership, and growing attendance at events we are involved in.
3. We will continue to develop new kinds of events and opportunities, and will ensure there is a good spread of our activities across the UK

Increase participation from the UK on Wikimedia projects

Our aim is to increase participation from the UK on Wikimedia projects. This comes against a background of continuing decline in the number of editors globally across the Wikipedias, and continued technical and community-related efforts to address this decline from the Wikimedia Foundation.

1. We will recruit and engage new Wikimedia editors and contributors across all aspects of our work, as well as increasing awareness of the fact that Wikimedia projects are open to edit and free for all to use and re-use.
2. We will identify and trial opportunities for large-scale recruitment of new contributing, including developing methods of training and supporting new editors in contributing and assessing the success of these methods.
3. We will actively seek methods and partnerships that will help broaden the diversity of Wikimedia contributors in the UK.

Improve, enable and increase openly-licensed content

We will increase the amount and quality of openly licensed content on the Wikimedia projects and other freely licensed resources.

1. We aim to make working with the Wikimedia movement as obvious a part of the work of any British cultural institution or sector, and contributing to Wikimedia projects as vital a part of the educational curriculum as library research or word-processor use. This will open up vast amounts of knowledge and content to improve Wikipedia.
2. We will, in co-operation with the wider open-source and open-license movement in the UK, be an advocate for change by British government and institutions to open up the data and content they hold.
3. We will increase the number of files / resources released under open licenses as a direct result of relationships with Wikimedia UK, including where appropriate making grants to fund this work.
4. We will continue to support Wikipedia editors in improving content by assisting them with the provision of resources and information.

Technology

Technology plays an important role in our potential impact. While the hosting and technical development of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects is the role of the Wikimedia Foundation, we will use and where appropriate create technical tools to ensure the methods we use to reach our goals are innovative, efficient and scalabe.

1. We will seek to support the creation of new tools that enable innovative and scalable content creation, maintenance and access, and measure their impact.
2. We will ensure that the tools that we host are maintained, developed and accessible to all.
3. We will invest in the development of freely licensed software to support our own organisational technical needs and, where possible, those of fellow Wikimedia and free content organisations.

Resources and Governance

To fulfill our aims we will need to further develop our governance, resources and our role in the Wikimedia movement.

1. We will have high-quality governance based on best practice for UK charities (as illustrated in the Hudson Review) and retain a high level of openness and transparency.
2. We will develop the best possible measurements of our impact as an organisation, while appreciating that some of our objectives are inherently difficult to measure.
3. We will participate fully in the broader Wikimedia movement, sharing learning with the Wikimedia Foundation, other Wikimedia chapters and thematic organisations.

Our principal source of income is likely to remain within the Wikimedia movement, from the #Wikimedia fundraiser and the Funds Dissemination Committee process. We will build relationships with the donors we know and will seek further sources of funding if required and where appropriate.