Water cooler

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Photography training workshops for volunteers

Hello everyone. I've been looking in to the possibility of offering some photography training for Wikimedia volunteers. This is definitely something we can do in the form of one-day workshops for small groups. This would be delivered at no cost to the volunteers so at this point I'd like to assess how much appetite there is for this kind of workshop and get a sense of how many people would like to take part. This would be a really worthwhile activity and help to empower volunteers and give them additional skills that can be used not only when contributing to Wikimedia projects, but elsewhere, too. If you are interested, please do let me know, either by replying here or sending me an email. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:55, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Twitter user and Wiki Loves Monuments participant @secretlondon has expressed an interest so far. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:29, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

RodW is interested in a session in the Bath / Bristol area. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:02, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd also be interested in the Bath / Bristol area. Rwendland (talk) 13:20, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd love to go to a workshop like this. I'm not averse to travelling, so Bristol would be fine (Bath's a bit of a pain but not impossible). Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:39, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd be interested in such a workshop in London. Edwardx (talk) 16:34, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

• I found the photography workshop in Edinburgh enormously useful. But, my experience from that suggests such should be preferentially offered to established Wikimedians. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:38, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
• I would be interested if held in London (or a short train ride away). A segment to discuss some of the issues relating to uploading user photographs that can cause snags could be useful; I would be happy to share some examples from my 150,000 image uploads. Common issues include erroneous or non-standard EXIF data (leading to bots reaching wrong conclusions), the impossibility of finding non-identical duplicates, work for hire, model consent, video processing, and unexpected copyright issues from photographs taken in other countries (assuming the group has a good awareness of UK copyright) such as photographs where there is no freedom of panorama or photographs of manufactured products. If there was interest then a discussion of tools for mass processing could also be productive for those with larger collections. --Fæ (talk) 09:35, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your interest so far. I'm going to leave this open for a short while longer but it looks like we may have enough people interested to have a cohort in London and one in Bristol. I'm particularly keen to offer this to any other volunteers who attend Wikimedia UK events (especially training) on a fairly regular basis. Fae, your suggestions here are useful and I think that there would be a chance to raise some of these issues with a trainer, particularly the batch processing. I know that Adobe Photoshop can handle this, I suspect that GIMP can too. However, the main (aha) focus of the event would be how to take technically good photos rather than spending too much time looking at copyright, freedom of panorama and so on. I think that would be an altogether different session and might be something that we could do separately. There may well be someone who is an expert on copyright who would deliver perhaps a half day seminar / workshop for those interested in that area. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure Fae and I between probably know as much about UK copyright as a hired instructor would! ;) I'd love to talk about mass-uploading and some of the other issues Fae raises, but as you say, Stevie, they might best saved for another event. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:29, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I could help in London and maybe in Bristol too. Would you like a talk on UK copyright for photographers? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I have taken a couple of thousand photos as a volunteer and would be interested in a photography course, preferably in London. A copyright session might also be interesting, presumably this would also cover issues for uploaders? Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 12:31, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. Just a quick update on this. It is still on the agenda but we are looking to extend the offer to Wiki Loves Monuments participants (this depends on whether the level of demand makes this unrealistic). I will be in touch again about this shortly. Michael, your offer to speak about copyright is gratefully received and I may well accept it :) Thanks everyone. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK contact database migration

This weekend wikimedia uk will be migrating its contact records management database, Civi CRM from its current platform hosting (Joomla) to a new platform (Drupal) and the most up to date version of the software available.

This will mean at some points of the weekend users will notice changes on the donate.wikimedia.org.uk domain as the new database and web forms are migrated and re-established.

If you experience an issue please log it on the WMUK instance of Bugzilla - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org.uk/ - you can register an account with your email of choice and this will be activated for you,

User testing of the migrated version will commence on Monday and will hopefully establish quickly any remaining issues, allowing the chapter to continue to use the database as before, with a view to moving on to adding new features that will allow for a better experience all round (including better sign-up forms for new and renewing members, events forms and so on)

Please do feel free to reply here or email me directly (katherine.bavagewikimedia.org.uk) with questions.

Thanks all! Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Did this go OK? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:49, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It went pretty awesome - thanks to User:Kelson! We're ironing out two bugs at the moment - one around changing payment statuses, the other about installing the WYSIWYG API - you can view these in Bugzilla if you like. When I'm happy it's essentially as useable as it would have been pre-migration (hopefully before Friday) I'll email all users a link to the log on. THEN we get to the good stuff like redesigning online forms so they are, well, better, and hopefully using the site to collect sign ups for events and so forth. Thanks for asking :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Alastair McCapra's declaration of interest

I am grateful to see Alastair update his declaration at Declarations_of_Interest#Alastair_McCapra in advance of taking up the role of CEO of CIPR.

CIPR and WMUK have had a productive relationship in the past, however this appears to introduce a direct conflict on interest on the WMUK board. During my time as a trustee and the Chair, the viewpoints of board members were varied, complex and at times heated, with regard to failures of governance within the PR industry, which resulted in a pattern of PR professionals being caught out when covertly attempting to manipulate the content of Wikimedia projects.

In my personal view, though I respect CIPR and the impressive lead it has taken to guide the industry, especially around individual governance, the mission of CIPR is not one that sits well alongside the WMUK mission and values. We now have the situation where a trustee on the board is a paid advocate on behalf of the public relations profession. Having the CEO of CIPR advise the WMUK board is incredibly useful and valuable, having the same person as the WMUK Secretary and a voting trustee, introduces a realistic reputational risk for WMUK to be open to future allegations of using resources and putting political pressure on Wikimedia projects to the benefit of the PR industry.

I would appreciate Alastair's thoughts on how he intends to manage his conflict of interest and whether he believes it is best for the charity to continue as the Secretary and a Trustee on the board in these circumstances.

Should Alastair remain active as a trustee, I call upon the board of trustees to openly publish an independent review of this conflict of interest in advance of Alastair taking up his new role in November. Considering Alastair's appointment was made public more than a fortnight ago and he would have advised his fellow trustees in advance of his appointment, though to my knowledge not before his election at the AGM, I am sure this has been subject to an in-camera review which might now be useful to publish for the benefit of the members of the charity. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

These two roles are fundamentally incompatible in my view given the respective functions of the two organisations and I do not believe that Alastair can carry out the duties of both jobs without an actual or perceived conflict of interest. Alastair should either resign here or not take up the other job.If he does not he will inevitably be accused, unfairly no doubt, of being a trojan horse for the PR industry. I have met Alastair and he seems a completely ethical individual, however, the very idea that this could be managed or that the two roles could ever be compatible shows an astonishing lack of judgement by Alastair and the current board IMHO. I am sorry to be so blunt. The next time an article on Wikipedia does not go the way the PR industry would like, will he not inevitably be asked to exert pressure via Wikimedia to have it changed? I thought that Wikimedia UK were working to avoid the own-goals that have so damaged us in the past? It would be interesting to know what influence, if any, Alastair's current position here had on his selection for the CIPR job and whether he knew of this potential position at CIPR at the time he stood for the Wikimedia board. Perhaps Alastair could clarify these matters. Philafrenzy (talk) 17:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae. Can't say I agree with you here. On the subject of conflicts of interest - Wikimedia UK's work does not really involve the PR industry. We do a great deal of work with the education and culture sectors, but the only project involving the public relations profession that I can recall was the collaboration between volunteers who were Wikimedia UK members and CIPR members to produce what was effectively a guide on how people in PR could understand and respect Wikipedia policies. That was a very worthwhile initiative, but nothing further is planned. We have always been very clear that Wikimedia UK has no control over the content of the Wikimedia projects and even less over the policies governing such content. So I do not see any conflict of interest. Naturally we're all aware of one another's professional backgrounds, which are disclosed on our register of interests, and I am confident that should any potential conflict arise from any quarter it will be identified early and dealt with properly.

Regarding reputational risk, I also can't agree. It's important to note that the CIPR is not a PR firm, it is a professional body which helps ensure that people who work in PR do so competently and ethically. The CIPR has a Code of Conduct for its members which requires them to act with integrity and transparency, principles all Wikimedians will be familiar with. Regards, The Land (talk) 18:03, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Let's not be naive, the CIPR is not a regulator. It is paid for by the PR industry, its members are PR professionals, its job is to promote the interests of the PR industry and it's code of conduct is written by the PR industry. Philafrenzy (talk) 18:14, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

(ec) "Wikimedia UK's work does not really involve the PR industry". I think the "really" tells the story here. Some of what Wikimedia UK does does involve PR firms; and by its very nature that small sliver of its activities are also among the most media-friendly. It will look like a COI to the press. It will look like a COI *problem* to the press. It is sad, really, because the truth of the matter rarely gets a look in. We are forced to (and must) discuss issues like this in terms of appearances and not realities. Jarry1250 (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, let's not be naive about anything, least of all COI on the Board. But we might try to state a point clearly in terms of the Board's function. Is it to influence Wikipedia content? No. Is it to influence creators and potential creators of Wikipedia content? Certainly. Wikipedia's "interface" with PR professionals is not in a particularly good state, compared to the interface with the "cultural sector", where some good things have been happening, and the educational sector, where some good things might be happening. The suspicion with which it is treated is understandable. The upside of closer contact is fairly easy to explain: if PR pros who muck around on Wikipedia are shown that they are not only behaving unprofessionally, but against their clients' best interests, then they will realise why they should take greater care to respect the terms of use of the site. Not rocket science. The downside is what is generating comment here. Does the Board influence Wikipedia policy? Hardly. Seems to be a presentational matter to me in fact. Now I disclaim expertise in presentational matters. But it seems a shame that this line is being taken: it is not about nuances, it speaks to what the Board does and doesn't have in its remit. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:53, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Charles, the board makes direct choices as to how to spend £750,000 of Wikimedia Foundation funds. This is a great deal of influence to give out jobs and grants and choose what outcomes are required. These outcomes include generating content on Wikimedia projects (such as through Wikimedians in Residence) and co-funding initiatives with other bodies that generate a lot of press interest and media coverage. To say that the board of trustees has no influence over Wikimedia policies is to disregard their influence in controlling who gets funded, for example, to present at events or take part in workshops that create Wikipedia policy, and be the visible face of Wikimedia in the UK and elsewhere. --Fæ (talk) 20:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

So the Board has patronage. I didn't use the expression "Wikimedia policies", which is ambiguous because "Wikimedia" is ambiguous. You make a reasonable point about events, though my impression is that the staff now do a high proportion of the event organisation.. Workshops that create Wikipedia policy? I believe the community does that. Being the "visible face"? I've gone on the BBC to bat for Wikipedia, as have a few others. There is some patronage in sending reps to chapters meetings or funding Wikimania scholarships. Are people's concerns really at this granularity? Of course if you want to make the case that anyone from the PR sector is an entryist and should be treated as such, it is a one-liner. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Chris, please read my statement again. I have asked for a response from Alastair and a follow-up with an independent report. As the current Chairman of the charity, I would expect you to take a lead to ensure these basics are done, in alignment with policies that we established to cover these situations. You appear to be disagreeing with what you imagine I am asking for, rather than what has actually been written. I see nothing for you to disagree with in a basic request for openness with the members of the charity and for the charity to be conducting itself with the best possible governance processes. If you are disagreeing with an independent review or are disagreeing with Alastair making a response, then I would appreciate a better explanation of why you, as the Chair, believe these are bad things.

By the way, I suggest members carefully review CIPR's mission statement, it unambiguously states it exists as an "advocate and voice of the public relations profession", it is not just about ethics. I doubt the public would have any other expectation than the CEO of the organization to also be an advocate for the PR sector and present it in the best possible light at every opportunity. --Fæ (talk) 19:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, it has been known for the Board to be used as a soapbox. For example to be an advocate for free software, and present it in the best possible light at every opportunity. Certainly we should not be naive about this kind of thing, when it runs counter to the purposes of the charity. Might be rather easier to do in the case of someone with a clearcut day job. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Dear all - thanks for the comments. Having spoken to Alastair, he's keen to respond to the points that have been raised, and expects to be able to do so by the weekend. Philafrenzy referred to the lessons of the last year - one of the main ones is that the trust of the membership and the Wikimedia community is vital - and we'll respond to this debate accordingly. The Land (talk) 20:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi - Sorry it has taken me a bit of time to reply to the points made above. First I’d like to say I understand why there is concern about conflict of interests on the Board. Anything which looks like it might corrupt the integrity of the encyclopedia is a potential threat, and WMUK has suffered badly in recent years from conflicts of interest which have cost it a lot and which nobody wants to repeat. Second I want to acknowledge the particular concerns people have about some members of the PR industry.

I am not a PR professional and had no previous connection with the PR business before applying for a job as CEO of CIPR. Coincidentally this was around the same time I stood for election as a WMUK trustee. I had applied for the job at CIPR before the WMUK AGM, and had my first interview a couple of weeks after I was elected to the Board. I was aware before I stood for election of many of the problems which WMUK has had to deal with recently, but wasn’t aware of the problems that had arisen as a result of Wikipedia editors defending the integrity of the encyclopedia from people who perhaps did not understand what the purpose of Wikipedia is. As a prospective employee I had to declare my various interests, including my recent WMUK election, to CIPR before I accepted the job, and I did so. I only learned of the issues which are causing concern here when I was made aware of them by CIPR after I had accepted the job.

I am very clear about what my role as a trustee is. It is to advance the charitable objects of WMUK in the public interest. Those are to promote and support the widest possible public access to, use of and contribution to open content of an encyclopaedic or educational nature. I am not there to advocate the cause of the PR profession, or to secure some kind of rule-bending on behalf of PRs working for their clients. Every trustee on the Board has a daytime job to which they give their full professional commitment, and none of us acts as an advocate for that industry or interest on the WMUK Board.

The reasons I stood for election to the WMUK Board are simple. Firstly, I believe in the project of building free, open knowledge all round the world, and in particular, in the immense benefit to humanity of a universal encyclopedia. Secondly, I am an experienced trustee and manager of small charities. I have dealt with dire financial crises, major overhauls of governance, and most of the other problems that beset charities at one time or another. I believed, as I still do, that my experience and skills can make a useful contribution to WMUK and that I can help it specifically to get itself out of the difficulties it got itself into in the last couple of years over governance. I currently serve on the Audit and Risk Committee where I am helping establish reliable financial controls, and as Secretary I am working to clear the backlog of unpublished minutes of Board meetings, or parts of meetings, which stretches back to 2009. I have also met with representatives of WMF and talked to them about the changes we are bringing about in the UK chapter, with a view to their agreeing, in due course, to allow us to take part in future fundraisers.

The question has been asked as to how I think I will manage my conflict of interest. I think I would genuinely have a conflict of interest if I had any desire or inclination to argue, in the WMUK Board, for some special treatment of PR professionals or for some bending or relaxing of Wikipedia editing rules. However, I don’t have any desire or intention to do this, and it is not part of my new job to speak up for bad editing or to defend the practices of PR professionals who don't follow WM rules.

As it happens, well before I had any contact with either Wikipedia or CIPR, the two bodies had collaborated to produce guidelines for best practice on the part of PR professionals on Wikipedia, and these are published on the WMUK site at https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_best_practice_guidelines_for_PR . They represent the official CIPR position. Despite this, I think it is possible, in my new role, that I may be approached by some CIPR members who are unaware of these guidelines, asking me to ‘do something’ about ‘their’ article. If I am, I will refer them to this page. If there appears to be a widespread and persistent problem with CIPR members reading or abiding by those guidelines, then I will propose some training sessions to help them get their heads round it. In the extremely unlikely event that one of my employers becomes threatening in their demands that I conspire to subvert the encyclopedia, I will bring a professional conduct complaint against them. However, in considering what pressures I may come under in my new role, I take comfort in the fact that the incoming CIPR President, Stephen Waddington, authored a chapter on Wikipedia in a recently published handbook for PR Professionals, in which he restates what is set out in the guidelines above.

If some community members are inclined to assume bad faith on my part, or just some ethical fuzziness, such suspicions are perhaps natural as I am new, you don’t know me, and my new job stirs up understandable anxieties. However if this is how you feel I hope you will at least have enough faith in the integrity of other Board members to believe that they would absolutely not tolerate any inappropriate behaviour on my part, and if they thought I was trying to open the encyclopedia to manipulation I would be removed from the Board pretty quickly.

Aside from whether I might be tempted to try and undermine the cause I stood for election to uphold, the question has been raised about the reputational risk of my continuing to serve as a trustee. As I say I understand the reasons why some community members may have anxieties about my roles, but outside of this community I’d be very surprised if anyone was much interested. The conflicts between PRs and editors is pretty big news in the Wikipedia community and fairly big in the PR profession, but not of much interest outside of that.

The question has also been raised about the press and what they might make of my roles. If you have a look at what negative stories tend to run in the press about Wikipedia, it is usually about hoaxes, inaccuracies, trustees being paid to work on projects, and pornography. Would the press really get excited about my job? It doesn't seem likely to me.

Perhaps I am just not being sufficiently imaginative in my thinking about these issues and others can foresee scenarios that it would be potentially much more difficult for me to handle. If so, by all means raise them here as I need to think about these issues and my fellow Board members need to be mindful of them too. What kind of difficult position do you think I might find myself in?

Fae has suggested that there should be an independent review of this matter and in fact we are about to undertake an independent governance review in any case to see how the charity is responding to past criticisms and dealing with its problems. I think it would make sense for the consultants to give us their view on this matter.

For now, my commitment to working for WMUK is undimmed, I wish to continue to serve on the Board and don’t feel, on the basis of what has been said above, that there is a strong case for my not doing so.

Thanks

Mccapra (talk) 08:20, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

In order to have the fullest discussion possible I have posted this matter on Jimbo's talk page, one of our unofficial noticeboards. Here is the link and comments so far. Philafrenzy (talk) 10:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

From the beginning, we've had trustees who have day jobs, in which capacity they are paid to work for different causes. We've had trustees who are communications professionals. We've had trustees who have changed day jobs while in post. From the above complaints I still don't see why this case is different. The speculation that "The next time an article on Wikipedia does not go the way the PR industry would like, will he not inevitably be asked to exert pressure via Wikimedia to have it changed?" misunderstands the relation between the chapter and Wikipedia (as though the chapter can "have it changed"!) Did having an employee of Manchester University on the board mean that Wikipedia policies might be changed, or funds allocated, to the benefit of Manchester University? I also disagree with Jarry that we must discuss appearances rather than reality. Are there people really wishing for Wikimedia politics to become like Westminster politics? Given the amount of experience of charity governance now on the Board, and the scrutiny the organisation is voluntarily under, the idea that Alastair is going to "trojan horse" something against Wikimedia's interest, and that the Board are going to allow him, seems more than far-fetched. If we're keen to avoid own goals, then let's avoid undermining a dedicated and capable volunteer. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

This case is different and it should be obvious why. We need to stop walking into these bear traps (I won't name them all) and then having to spend a year commissioning governance reviews to sort them out. Philafrenzy (talk) 10:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

As the employee of the University of Manchester that Martin refers to, I'd note that I had a very clear declaration of interest and statement of how that interest would be managed - "Mike is an employee of the University of Manchester. Some of our activities take place at this University, and he will abstain on all decisions relating to the University of Manchester." Indeed, during the July 2013 board meeting there was a decision relating to the UoM (funding a WiR there), and I duly abstained from it. I would encourage Alastair to do something similar - rather than just stating the CoI, clearly set out the terms for how it will be managed to avoid it being an issue. Although in this case the management will be more complex as it would extend not just to the CIPR, but also the organisations it represents, I think this could still be a managable CoI providing that there is a clear line set in place well before he takes up the position. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

For those who don't know the background, and for avoidance of doubt: I mentioned Mike's workplace because he was (rightly) a highly respected trustee who left in good standing, such that we can safely laugh off an argument which would have excluded him. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

How can I put this in simple terms? The Vegetarian Association and the National Beef Association may wish to understand each other better, but they can never fundamentally be in sympathy and you can never imagine the head of the National Beef Association being a senior figure in the Vegetarian Association can you? Philafrenzy (talk) 11:10, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The comments above are all helpful in terms of setting out what I think the issue is here – particularly the Vegetarian/National Beef Association one. If I was a trustee of the Vegetarian Association but taking a paid job with the League for the Introduction of meat-based products into vegetarian recipes, I would clearly have a total conflict of interest. Supposing however I took a paid job with a non-Vegetarian association which had a published policy directing its members to respect and abide by the nutritional rules of the Vegetarian Association when dealing with it? That’s actually the situation I’m in. My future employer is on of the few organisations in the country which has explicitly directed its members to follow Wikipedia rules. If CIPR members don’t follow the rules they are not just damaging the encyclopedia, they are failing to abide by the guidance given to them by their professional body. That does not leave much room for conflict. The reference to Mike Peel’s employment is also illustrative of what the term ‘conflict of interest’ actually means (as in, it doesn’t mean ‘something I don’t much like the sound of’). While Mike was on the WMUK Board there was a possibility that the chapter could discuss funding a project at Manchester or somehow involving them, which would potentially put Mike in the position of taking part in a discussion as a funder with an entity being funded. I know from personal experience that Mike was absolutely scrupulous about making sure this did not happen. I doubt it is likely that the WMUK Board would be discussing funding something with CIPR. If it does discuss something of this sort, I will act as Mike did and take no part in it. The same would apply to any trustee in any job. Mike has also pointed out that I need to make a statement about how I will manage any conflicts of interest which may arise, and I will do so. A statement will need to cover as many ‘what if’ scenarios as possible. As I mentioned earlier today it would be helpful to me in thinking about this for people to come forward with ‘what if’ questions so that I can set out clearly what I would do in each case and include all of that in my statement. Thanks Mccapra (talk) 12:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I must admit I wonder why Alistair feels it appropriate to encourage members to spend their time coming up with a series of "What if" scenarios, when he should be encouraging us to contribute towards Wikipedia and its sister projects. The very fact, which he supports, that there are a range of unpredictable scenarios would seem to indicate that this is a matter which cannot be effectively dealt with by a statement. When he points out that his future employers are one of "the few organisations in the country which has explicitly directed its members to follow Wikipedia rules", far from indicating a lack of conflict of interest, this rather indicates the contrary: for most organisations there is no specific reason to issue such guidance. As a trustee Alistair should be looking at the matter from the perspective of the charity, and I hope he will consider the situation fully before embroils us all in another governance debate.Leutha (talk) (Sorry I forget to log in before) 14:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm really not intending to ask anyone to spend a lot of time on this or embroil anyone in anything. However I would appreciate it if some of those are arguing strongly that there is obviously a conflict of interest could spell out how, in practical terms, they think this might present itself. I can think of a few not very likely scenarios, which I have mentioned above. But clearly some people feel there are aspects of this I have not fully addressed. What are they? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 16:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

CIPR define public relations as "the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour." (my italics) The second of our five pillars states that Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view. The essential job of the PR is to influence and manipulate public opinion to favour their client. This fundamentally conflicts with one of our highest principles and is why this appointment is a problem and why it is different from any other appointment. Aggravating factors include the already fraught relationship with the PR industry, which should serve as a warning to us, the disparity in commitment (full time CIPR, part time here) and pay (salaried I assume there, nothing here). No PR firm will ever seek any form of balance in their work. The work is essentially partisan and therefore the whole ethos of the profession is contrary to our values. A man cannot serve two masters, particularly where their objectives are fundamentally in conflict and where one pays and the other doesn't. It lacks credibility. Philafrenzy (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

It may not be Alistair's intention to sap volunteers' time or embroil people, however this clearly what is happening as I find myself once again contributing to this discussion. I feel that his focus on his own psychological state (i.e. intentions) rather than on the consequences of his retaining both roles as Wikimedia UK Trustee and CIPR CEO illustrates the point I made above. I am also left wondering whether his failure to respond to my point is indicative that he hopes to discourage further critical comment by simply ignoring it! So perhaps I should be content myself with suggesting that Jimbo has made the point in a much better way than me:

"It is obviously a conflict of interest and clearly demands a choice between one or the other. There is no shame in that - such is the nature of nonprofit work. But especially for Wikimedia UK, with a history of problems in this area, it's absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt something that has to be handled with the utmost defensiveness about the reputation of the organization. I trust that Alastair will do the right thing." (See here)

Leutha (talk) 22:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Leutha and Philafrenzy. Some conflicts of interest can be managed. Mike Peel's employment by Manchester University is a good example. In these cases, setting out how the conflict will be managed and then managing it in an open way are, hopefully, sufficient. Some conflicts relate to the very purpose of organisations. These conflicts are effectively impossible to manage. The potentially problematic situations can not be listed in advance. They are infinite in their variety. Even if, as situations arise, the correct decisions are made, it will be impossible for the community to be confident of that. Alastair can not be expected to document his every conversation, still less his every thought. Yaris678 (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any problem in this case. Secretary of WMUK is not a position that comes into conflict with CEO of CIPR. WMUK as a whole has limited, if any, impact on public relations involvement in Wikipedia (positive or negative). Secretary is also not a good position from which to easily subvert the chapter and begin infiltrating the entire organisation. Even if, say, Alastair starts laughing maniacally the moment he becomes CEO and pushes for edit-a-thons and training sessions on white-washing biographies it (a) isn't going to mean anything because anyone else can undo it, (b) it will be really obvious if this happens, and (c) he isn't the only trustee. If anything, I expect the influence to work the other way: CEO of a national professional body is a position from which influence extends (and by which Wikimedia could subvert and infiltrate, etc). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 05:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

You have identified one unlikely scenario that could be dealt with easily. But you seem to be missing my point that the purposes of the organisations are in conflict. FWIW, I don't suspect Alastair of being part of any plot and I really hope he can be part of there being a good relationship between WMUK and CIPR. However, he can't do that by holding both roles simultaneously. By having this unmanageable conflict of interest he could easily and unintentionally end up doing harm to both organisations. Yaris678 (talk) 09:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I also don't suspect Alastair of being part of a plot but we can't know what was in the minds of the CIPR selectors when they gave him the job as Chief Exec in an industry in which, as he says, he had no past experience. I realise that Alastair had senior experience in similar membership organisations that no doubt fitted him for the job but there were, I expect, other candidates. The relationship with Wikipedia is certainly one of the hot issues in the PR world and given the poor quality of many of our articles I don't blame them. If I was a PR I would really want to ensure that my client's article reflected well on my client since it will be on the first page of a Google search every time and probably the top result. I would want to exert whatever influence I could to improve that article. That's what the PR industry is paid to do. It's not good enough to say "it probably won't happen" or "there is not much scope for it to happen" or "we will spot it if it does happen" or "the other Trustees will reign Alastair in" or any of the other things mentioned above. The Charities Commission has some useful comments about what they define as a "conflict of loyalty" which is also mentioned in the Companies Act 2006 in reference to Directors of charitable companies (we are caught by both sets of rules). Section d. here says conflicts of interest include those arising from "conflicts of duty which do not involve any material benefit to a director, for example, where a director is also a charity trustee of another charity which might be in competition with the charity ("conflicts of loyalty")" I don't think CIPR is a charity but the concept of a conflict of loyalty certainly seems to sum up what we have here. There is a risk of reputational damage to Wikimedia UK, to the CIPR and to Alastair himself that we would all be wise to avoid. In fact, I am a little surprised that CIPR, if they are as principled as they say they are, have not asked Alastair to resign here. Why haven't they? Philafrenzy (talk) 10:34, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It has now been one week since Fae raised this here and I suspect that everyone who is going to add their views has done so. The matter has also been on Jimbo's talk page and in the Signpost. I believe I am correct that there does appear to be a consensus, including from certain people whose views we should respect, that this appointment represents a serious conflict of interest. Perhaps Alastair and the board could comment on what action, if any, they propose to take in this matter? I would be particularly interested to know whether any legal advice has been taken regarding the "conflict of loyalty" question and what the result of that advice was. I am sure nobody wants to give the impression that they are hoping the matter will just go away. Given the past problems in this area it is essential that a clear and robust rationale is given for any decisions taken. If the matter is still under discussion, please say so and give a timeline for when it may be resolved. Philafrenzy (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Philafrenzy - yes, happy to update you. We discussed this at the Board meeting on Saturday. The Board's view was that there was not a fundamental conflict between the two roles. It was important to us in reaching that conclusion that CIPR's formal position is that their members should respect Wikipedia policies and that deliberately seeking to circumvent those policies is unethical professional conduct. It is also worth noting that previously we have had Trustees who were professional media consultants without a scintilla of a suggestion that this conflicted with their role as Wikimedia UK trustees and directors.

Given the sensitivities of this and the views expressed here, Alastair and I are going to meet later this week to go through different scenarios that might be problematic and work out how we would handle each of them, and use that as the basis of a more thorough declaration along the lines of Mike Peel's suggestion. It is possible in that conversation we will find something that makes us think "actually this isn't going to work", but assuming that doesn't happen, Alastair will remain a valuable Trustee.

We are currently having our progress against the Hudson Review recommendations audited by a consultant called Rosie Chapman. We will ask her to review how we've handled this and include that in her report. The Land (talk) 19:57, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Alastair, you said above, "If you have a look at what negative stories tend to run in the press about Wikipedia, it is usually about hoaxes, inaccuracies, trustees being paid to work on projects, and pornography. Would the press really get excited about my job? It doesn't seem likely to me." If I look at the types of negative stories that have run in the press, one consistent theme – almost a meme, really – is covert exercise of influence on Wikipedia's content by PR professionals. Indeed, I have myself had a hand in alerting the press to several cases of this type. I can assure you that the press's interest in this type of story is significant, and rightly so, as there are few other scenarios more likely to undermine the credibility of Wikipedia than this one. Jimmy Wales has on several occasions been very outspoken about this matter and made comments that have attracted significant attention.

Now, like most matters related to Wikipedia, there are two sides to this issue.

On the one hand, Wikipedia is extremely vulnerable to both subtle and gross bias and defamation. I would like PR professionals to have a seat at the Wikipedia table: there should be a much better-functioning mechanism for people to make complaints about how they are being portrayed in Wikipedia than there is at present. As it is, I cannot morally judge companies and other organisations who make clandestine use of commercial editing services to ensure that they are not being misrepresented in Wikipedia, given that Wikipedia's gates are wide open to clandestine bias and defamation from those companies' and organisations' detractors.

On the other hand, we are seeing more and more advice columns from PR professionals on how to leverage Wikipedia in their clients' or employers' interest. This includes both denigrating competitors, and sanitising one's own entry and/or making it as positive and compelling as possible. Allowing this to go on unchecked is not in the readers' or Wikipedia's interest.

The CIPR has done good work with WMUK in the past to outline some basic terms of engagement. But it cannot be denied that the interface between the PR industry and Wikipedia is among the biggest challenges both Wikipedia and the PR industry face. It is not a settled area; there are still diverse views, from Jimmy Wales' outspoken hostility to PR efforts in Wikipedia to the German model where PR professionals are invited to register verified company accounts ("User:Coca Cola Germany") and contribute in a transparent way. Dirk Franke in Germany is currently conducting a major study of paid editing for Wikimedia, and will I believe report in a few months' time. There is also uncertainty about the legal situation, at least in the EU – see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-11-12/News_and_notes this Signpost article. To my mind there is no doubt that the interaction between the PR industry and Wikipedia is an area that will continue to be negotiated and re-negotiated over the coming years (including, perhaps, the legal arena, to clarify what the law does and does not allow). The outcome of all these discussions is of vital interest to both parties and the public.

Wikimedia UK has played a significant role in this process in the past, and will continue to do so. However, it follows that your having a leadership role in both organisations, simultaneously, constitutes an ineluctable conflict of interest whenever the topic is raised, and that it will be perceived as such by the media and public. A collegial and productive relationship between WMUK and CIPR is, I believe, desirable, and as I say, there is past good work to build on here. But I believe that having one person perform a leadership role in both organisations will ultimately prove to be to the detriment of both. It will certainly make WMUK vulnerable. Regards, Andreas JN 18:54, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out and explaining aspects of this matter which may, as you indicate, have a bearing on whether or not I can continue to serve as a trustee. My belief is that as between my future employer and Wikimedia UK, these questions are settled, but as you point out there are much wider dimensions to be considered.

It may well be that for one reason or another my employment puts me in situations where I do indeed have a conflict of interest. If that turns out to be the case I am aware that I may have to resign. I certainly do not want to give everyone the impression that I am just insisting on carrying on, regardless of the circumstances.

For the time being, I have not even started to work for CIPR, so no situation of possible conflict has even arisen. The Wikimedia UK Board has discussed the situation and concluded, unanimously, that there is no reason for me to resign for the time being. Equally, if circumstances change, they may well come to a different view. I will be discussing the situation with our independent governance reviewer, and it may be that they will advise the Board that I should resign, in which case I will. I am certainly not interested in exposing Wikimedia UK to criticism or embarrassment. On the question of press interest, you may be aware that energetic efforts were made last week to interest the press in my two roles, and there was no interest whatsoever. What I do maintain, for now, is that there is nothing automatic in my roles which forces me to resign at once. If the situation changes, I won’t need pushing. Mccapra (talk) 21:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I am disappointed that the board does not appear to have followed the processes that the previous board laid down after the lessons learned from how to manage Roger Bamkin's declared interest. There is no plan independently to manage Alastair's declared interest, with the default path of the Chair taking the lead seeming inappropriate as he started this discussion with the point of view that he could see no problem or risk to the charity.

Alastair actively failed to inform the board of trustees or the members of the charity in advance of being elected that he was planning to be paid as an advocate of the PR industry during his time as a trustee. There is no doubt that his election as a trustee would have been taken into consideration by CIPR as a direct benefit to his forthcoming job as their CEO. I am astonished that as a candidate for CEO of CIPR, Alastair states he knew nothing of the past work of CIPR with WMUK, or the associated controversies that have damaged Wikimedia's reputation. Such a lack of basic research from a prospective trustee is itself worrying. I now regret the two votes I used to support Alastair at the AGM (I was handling a proxy vote in addition to my own). Alistair would have lost many votes had he chosen to be frank about his plans. I have little doubt that he would not have been elected a trustee had this been openly discussed; certainly as a trustee at that time I would have advised him against running as a candidate had he chosen to consult the board on the potential risk.

The board of trustees is straining credibility by creating new artificial distinctions to justify Alastair's position as not a "fundamental" conflict of interest. No such distinction is recognized by the Charity Commission on handling conflicts of loyalty, or by the policies that pre-existed the board discovering this COI after it was announced in the press. During my time improving the governance processes of the charity in 2011/12, it was clear that a trustee does not need a "fundamental" COI to be expected to step down from the board. The convention is that any conflict of loyalties that may sway the board's opinion on how to deploy its resources or influence should be managed carefully and where doubt remains the simplest resolution is for the trustee to step down.

Alastair, please take the initiative and step down as a trustee. As Yaris678 points out, you do not have the confidence of the community you were elected by. This ongoing risk to the charity exists because you failed to manage your declaration in a timely or appropriate manner either with the members or the board of trustees. The story is dogging you as a scandal on the English Wikipedia (Signpost), on Jimmy Wales' talk page, else where off-wiki, and is unlikely to go away with the classic trick of re-framing rather than real action on your part.

I count 5 members have expressed serious concern here, as I recall it only takes this many to force the board to organize an EGM to resolve this problem should they not be able to do so. --Fæ (talk) 09:45, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae, I'm finding your comments here a little difficult to square with either the facts of the situation or your own previous conduct. The facts are that we have identified this well in advance of Alastair taking up this post and are looking at the issues posed in some detail prior to coming to a decision, and we are doing so with external advice. A number of members have expressed their views here, with a number of very cogent points being made on both sides of the debate, which are informing the outcome. Thinking this through is in line with our policies and with governance best practice. Knee-jerk reactions and drama are not in line with governance best practice.

It's also apparent that you are applying a very different standard to this situation than you did to yourself last year, when you clung on to the position of Chair as long as possible after you were banned from the English Wikipedia. The media coverage that resulted significantly damaged the reputation of the charity, and you would be wise to remember your own history before talking about failures by others. Regards, The Land (talk) 10:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Chris, this is an example of the sort of pointless re-framing rather than action that I referred to. This discussion is about Alastair's resignation as a trustee, not mine. I am sure that a few members would find the history of your manipulative gaming, or the fact that you gave me and Mike a clear steer in Milan that you intended to step down as Chair soon after the AGM but have failed to do so, instead giving yourself at least the rest of this year even though Mike and I have now resigned ourselves from the board, quite interesting and an insight into the shenanigans that go on in-camera against the supposed "openness" the charity is supposed to value. However most members would find this boring or upsetting to review. Your political skills and associated professional background, or ability to bury and distract from your inappropriate conflict of loyalties while holding the post of Chair, is not the topic here and you might be better off not opening up every possible Pandora's box in your attempt to win what you see as an argument worth taking bad tempered pot-shots as me long after I have resigned as a trustee, rather than a serious governance issue for the charity, that you, as the current Chair, are supposed to take a lead in resolving by guiding Alastair to "do the right thing" as Jimmy Wales has recommended. Please properly fulfil the role of Chair in line with the policies of the charity, or step aside and let one of the more dispassionate trustees take a lead. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I think I've been pretty clear about the action that's going on. However, for clarity: Alastair and I are looking at scenarios where the two positions might conflict, establishing whether we think those scenarios can appropriately be handled by recusal. If there is an actual situation which cannot be handled appropriately then Alastair will resign now. If there are hypothetical situations which cannot be handled appropriately then we will set out how to identify them if they occur and what to do if they do.

I don't really see how doing this constitutes re-framing, manipulative gaming, or any of the other things you're accusing me of. Regards, The Land (talk) 12:15, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK having a Chairman on the board of trustees is not intended to stop other trustees answering questions for themselves. Alastair is a PR professional and an elected trustee, so I feel he can probably reply for himself. I have asked for Alastair to resign now in order to remove the reputational risk he has become for the charity, conclude the debate his conflict of loyalties as a paid advocate for the PR industry has created, and out of personal respect for the votes of members that now feel let down by not being informed of the full facts at the time of the AGM. It seems pointless for Alastair's resignation to be left until he starts his role as CEO of CIPR when this was announced in the press a month ago.

By the way, if you insist on going on a delaying tangent by examining hypothetical avenues and scenario planning (this is hardly a complex situation, so I don't see why this takes more than 15 minutes), I suggest you start with "Members request an EGM", the resolution of which is that Alastair resigns before the EGM can be held and preferably before an EGM is proposed. --Fæ (talk) 12:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Guys,

1. Please try to refrain from personal attacks on each other and, where possible, on Alastair.
2. For the record, I'd didn't actually say the the community doesn't have confidence in Alastair. I said it would be impossible to have confidence in the right decisions having been made. Arguably the effect is the same, but, as per 1, let's try not to be personal about this.
3. Taking time to consider scenarios implies you either didn't read this comment, above, or you just disagree with it. Any particular reason? Please don't just say that you disagree that the purposes are in conflict. That would be saying that you disagree because you disagree.

Yaris678 (talk) 18:30, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Yaris. Just wanted to respond quickly to your third point before most likely going offline for a few days. If I have understood the point that you and others are making correctly, it is roughly as follows: "The purpose of public relations as a profession is to promote selective and partial interpretations of facts, and this in itself conflicts with the concept of providing a neutral information resource like Wikipedia, which means being someone who promotes PR means you can't also be responsible for promoting Wikipedia". Please correct me if I haven't grasped that correctly.

The reasons why I personally disagree with that view are several, both philosophical and practical. On a philosophical level, it's worth pointing out that selective and biased information resources have always co-existed with those that aim at neutrality, truth, balance or something else, and the promotion of the one does not necessarily mean the rejection of the other. It would be pretty rubbish to have encyclopedia articles that had the content of press releases, and also pretty rubbish to have press releases that had the content of encyclopedia articles. But the existence of the press release doesn't mean there is no need for the encyclopedia, or vice versa.

On a more mundane level I also think it's not that unusual to find people who in their professional lives have the responsibility to communicate in their employer's interests. For instance, I'm a fundraiser - if you read any fundraising letters I produce at work, you will find that they present the causes I work for in the best possible light to encourage people to make donations. We also have lawyers on the Board, and lawyers at work have a professional responsibility to present their client's case as effectively as possible (within the bounds of law and professional ethics, of course). I do not think there is a big gap between the positions of lawyer or fundraiser and that of public relations person. Indeed, we and other entities in the Wikimedia movement have had Board members who have worked in public relations one way or another in the past.

This is why I believe this question is a practical one of "how might these positions conflict and would it be possible to handle it if they do". One area which would make it impossible for Alastair to continue would be if the CIPR had public views which were opposed to Wikimedia UK's views or values. Fortunately on the most important of these areas - how PR people should treat Wikipedia - the CIPR has a firm position saying "follow Wikipedia policies" and regards it as unethical to do otherwise. Of course there are other potential problems and it is those we are looking at.

I hope this makes sense, and if I haven't got your point correctly, please let me know. I don't think the situation is an obvious one. I hope that we'll reach a position where either we are being very clear about how we'll handle any prospective conflict that might arise, which will give reassurance to people who (like you) are worried about the situation - however, it's also possible that potential conflicts are too serious and too likely for Alastair to continue as a Trustee, in which case we'll have made that decision in the right way. The Land (talk) 19:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

You argue above, if I understand your position correctly, that true impartiality is impossible so we should just manage the risk through a complicated set of rules to avoid problems on a case by case basis. The point others are making is that the situation is inherently unmanageable. How can we, Alastair or CIPR be sure that decisions taken in one venue or the other are not going to adversely effect a client of a CIPR member or one of our projects? As has been said, the range of possible scenarios is simply too great and we do not have complete knowledge of the interests of every client of a CIPR member and which particular version of the truth they may be seeking to promote at any given time. Unlike a lawyer or fundraiser who might have a particular client about whom conflicts may be fairly readily identified, and for whom Wikipedia is probably a fairly minor concern, the PR industry is a business whose stock in trade is the manipulation of the truth and which has a track record of acting against us. We are rightly wary of them. If he takes up the job, Alastair will have a duty to promote the interests of people we have good reason not to trust. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:33, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it may be useful to have another look at the piece Jane Wilson wrote for "Huffinton Post Tech UK" back in May last year: PR: If You Want to Understand Wikipedia, Become a Wikipedian. She concludes with the reflection "The first step is always the most difficult, but is also the most important." I am afraid I cannot agree with her. Perhaps she did not imagine a "scenario" where someone slipping into her shoes as CIPR CEO would also feel comfortable continuing as a Wikimedia UK Trustee. (She wrote this piece in her capacity as CEO of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.) It is not a matter of there being a "potential" Conflict of Interest, Alastair is stepping into a key role in an organisation which already has a distinct interest in relation to Wikimedia UK. Please also note that WMUK employees from time to time have meetings with CIPR (such as this). Now I find myself in a tricky situation as regards chasing up Stevie as regards what happened at that meeting. Leutha (talk) 00:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Some of the assumptions are interesting:

• "the question of the most appropriate way to engage with audiences through Wikipedia" We are not here for this purpose.
• "If Wikipedia is an element in your online reputation management strategy" Nor this.
• "Wikipedians and ethically minded public relations professionals share similar goals -providing accurate, factual, and up-to-date information" We may share those goals but they don't share our additional goals of neutrality, impartiality and avoiding advocacy, quite the opposite in fact. When was the last time a PR firm put anything in the public domain that might reflect poorly on one of their customers?

Mutual understanding? Dialogue? Codes of conduct? All yes. Good friends who share our values? No. Philafrenzy (talk) 01:57, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. I'm keeping out of this debate as it's important that it takes place within the community. I do, however, want to respond to Leutha's comment above. Leutha, I'm not sure why you find yourself in a "tricky situation as regards chasing up Stevie". You, and anyone else within our community, are always welcome to ask me about my work. The meeting you point to, I remember very well actually. Checking my diary, it was on Friday 15 March. I met with Gemma Griffiths, a member of the CIPR's social media panel (who also has her own PR agency). We met at Shoreditch Grind for coffee (which I remember came in a glass the size of a thimble and was expensive and lukewarm - but I guess that's Shoreditch for you). We spoke about the potential for doing an updated version of the guidelines that you link to. We both felt that it would be a useful exercise but that it wasn't a priority for either of us or our organisations. The intention was to float the idea with both our communities over the summer but this hasn't happened because a) everyone is busy and b) there isn't an urgent need. You may also be interested to know that I visited the CIPR offices in Russell Square on the previous Thursday (8 March) along with Dirk Franke from WMDE who was visiting our office with some colleagues. While there we met with Gemma, Andy Ross of the CIPR and another CIPR officer, whose name escapes me (could be Francis Ingham). There were two reasons for my visit. Firstly, it made sense for someone to take Dirk along as London is a confusing city for visitors and it's easy to get lost. Secondly, I wanted to learn about Dirk's research into paid editing on the German Wikipedia. He was already scheduled to speak with CIPR about this so I went along to learn about it. It's very interesting and I'm looking forward to reading his report when it is ready. I hope this helps and please, don't think of asking me about my work as a tricky situation. I'm quite approachable and don't usually bite so please feel free to ask me. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:08, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I am sorry if it appeared I was suggesting that Stevie is anyway unapproachable. The trickiness of the situation was basically as Stevie put it, he's trying to keep out of this debate. By the way, thanks for the info (I have something not directly related to this discussion to take up with Dirk.) Leutha (talk) 14:02, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Leutha. I appreciate your comment and I apologise for not updating that page at the time. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:29, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

May we have an update from the board and Alistair regarding what action, if any, is taking place on this matter with some dates? Thanks. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:28, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Philafrenzy: I think the draft minutes now up at Minutes 14Sep13#AM potential CoI should answer your question. I'm not sure we have dates yet as Chris is on holiday this week, but I know it's being worked on. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:24, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Edit break

The Board minutes were clear enough, though the board seems to have an odd view of the discussion on this page as the minutes make it sound like this thread is a resounding success for Alastair, when it looks pretty ghastly from where I am sitting. I would like to see Alastair reply to my request above, and consider the statement from Jimmy Wales, for him to do the right thing and step down as a trustee, after failing to manage a declaration in a timely or appropriate manner either with the members of the charity, or the board of trustees, rather than having replies through second parties or leaving the members to deduce what might have been said from carefully worded reports of closed meetings long after the fact. Had the members been told before voting at the AGM that one of the candidates was planning to soon become a paid advocate of the PR industry, there is no doubt that Alastair and the charity would not be in the current situation. --Fæ (talk) 15:30, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree the minutes sound a bit rosier than this discussion (although I perhaps think the consensus here is less "ghastly" than you do). I'm also not certain the the claim "Had the members been told before voting at the AGM that one of the candidates was planning to soon become a paid advocate of the PR industry, there is no doubt that Alastair and the charity would not be in the current situation" is obviously true, and I think you're implying some bad faith on timing here, which I think has been refuted above. As for the J'Wales comment while I think that view should be taken into consideration, it'd be a bit weird if we start deferring to Jimmy Wales on every disagreement...and there's far more discussion going on here than there was on that post (unless there's another section I've missed). Not sure what I think of this potential COI, but I think new points would be more useful than returning to these ones again Sjgknight (talk) 15:49, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

In terms of timing, Alastair, nor any other member of the board, has yet confirmed in writing exactly when he first informed the board about accepting the job. I believe the board was only told after this became an issue on Wikipediocracy, a couple of weeks after CIPR put out a press release. If this is the case, then timing is a problem, as Alastair had several months in advance of this to informally approach his fellow trustees about a potential conflict of loyalties, or openly advise the members about these events, but chose to act and update his declaration of interests when it was too late for the members to use the information to influence their votes and only after the press already had a version of events and the board of trustees were in a position of reacting to events and attempting to quench the exposure rather than planning and seeking advice on a potential risk. Conflict of Interest Policy states "Trustees must not use their Wikimedia UK position or title to advance any private interests", there is no doubt that CIPR knew about his position as a trustee of WMUK when deciding whether to appoint Alastair and CIPR were fully aware of their effective partnership with WMUK even if Alastair was not, as they had worked closely with the charity on guidelines for Wikipedia and even presented at our 2012 AGM. I would expect Alastair included his position as trustee in his portfolio and would have discussed it during interviews, it's up to Alastair if he wants to set the record straight and make a full explanation to the members about how and at what point his position as trustee became relevant to his new job. The same policy states "Any board member's potential conflict of interest must be discussed with the Chair or the full board before any decision is made", this did not happen. If you contrast this with Roger Bamkin's behaviour, the board was informed about a potential contract well in advance and I had time on behalf of the board to seek independent advice which we fully followed. If you contrast with the press interest in me, I reviewed this potential risk with the board months before it became a public problem. I do not see the board responding more openly now, or in a more timely fashion, than we did with those events, in fact the process followed today seems less effective by only reacting to events and is being controlled by the Chair who has stated here that he sees no problem and has only acted after repeated complaints from members, a situation that I would expect the board to pick up on, and put someone with an independent viewpoint in charge of a COI review.

With regard to Jimmy Wales, the board has no duty to ignore his comments, and I used the word "consider", not expecting to just do whatever Jimmy Wales says blindly. At the moment neither Alastair nor the board has responded directly to Jimmy Wales' statement as far as I can tell. --Fæ (talk) 06:43, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Alastair has provided a full statement

Hello everyone. I'd like to draw your attention to a full statement that Alastair has written on managing potential conflicts of interest that may arise as a result of his paid employment. This can be seen here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:08, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I thank Alastair for the amount of effort that has gone into the preparation of this statement which would be more than adequate in any normal conflict of interest situation. What stands out for me is the number of different scenarios, the double negatives, the recusing and non-recusing. This complicated document is symptomatic of the legalistic and managerial approach that has been taken to this matter, with an attempt to break it down into a number of smaller problems and to design a solution for each one, thus minimising its significance and avoiding the need to face the more difficult questions of principle. At point two particularly there seems to be an argument that because we have the agreed editing guidelines there is no fundamental conflict of values between the PR industry and Wikimedia or conflict of loyalty between Alastair and Wikimedia. This is incorrect in my view for reasons already given.

We can see where the higher loyalty will lie, with multiple scenarios outlined where Alastair will resign here but, tellingly, none where he will resign from CIPR. It is clear that when push comes to shove it is the CIPR that will come first. Does anyone expect Alastair to resign from CIPR on a matter of principle involving Wikipedia? This tells us something about the uneven nature of the arrangements. I don’t believe that Alastair’s statement addresses the fundamental conflict of values between the PR industry and our movement. Some conflicts are so deep that they cannot be dealt with through carefully worded legal statements, this is one of them. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:16, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

+1, I agree with Philafrenzy's point of view. The risks are all one way, for WMUK rather than CIPR, the charity requires trustees to put the interests of the charity first, not barter interests between their conflicts of loyalties. Rather than a full statement, this appears an over complex, hypothetical and inadequate one. The facts we have established on this page are:

1. Alastair failed to declare his conflict of loyalties to either the board or the membership until immediately after a public fuss about it was made on Wikipediocracy. Alastair knew about this conflict of loyalties before running to be a trustee at the AGM, he failed to discuss it with the board of trustees then or declare it so that members voting had the full facts.
2. Neither Alastair nor any board member has confirmed the precise date on which he made a declaration to the board. This fails to follow the agreed WMUK policy with regard to conflict of interest. This would be a simple statement of fact, that it has been skirted over appears a failure of the board to comply with the value of openness.
3. Alastair has responded once to questions here from members, avoided responding to any further questions and given no response to the statement by Jimmy Wales asking for him to do the right thing, instead he has preferred to work through Chris and Stevie. It is notable that Alastair's long statement says nothing about his accountability to the members that voted for him and gives no assurance that he will be accountable to the members in the future.
4. The board has failed to comply with their own published process for management of conflict of interest. The board failed to ensure an independent review occurred before reaching a decision, and has failed to ensure a process for managing Alastair's active conflict of interest is in place, instead accepting that he makes a long hypothetical statement. Chris and Alastair agreeing a statement is not an independent review, when Chris stated his final position before any discussion started.

As has been pointed out previously in this discussion, Alastair's conflict of loyalties appears unmanageable, failing to establish a process to attempt to manage it or independently review it, apart from "parking" it by saying it will be mentioned in the general governance review, long after entrenching views and the trustees have fully committed themselves to one option, gives the impression that the board is acting to quickly bury this problem and putting PR spin first, rather than taking on board the valid concerns and questions of members and the founder of the WMF - the organization that directly controls almost all future funds of the charity. --Fæ (talk) 06:23, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure there is much more to say except that the Board takes a different view, and I'm not sure another statement of the rationale is going to help. However I do think I ought to address Fae's post as there are a number of factual inaccuracies.

Regarding your point 1). This is not the case.

Given Alastair's extensive engagement on this page, I don't think it is fair to say he's failing to take the issue seriously, or not discussing with members.

Your statement that we have failed to follow the Wikimedia UK policy with regards to disclosing his new job is untrue. Please see Conflict_of_Interest_Policy#Disclosure. The policy states that interests should be raised and discussed early, and then the Board should decide on how they are to be handled, which has happened. There is no requirement for prospective Trustees to disclose to us any prospective job they are applying for, particularly one so tangentially related to the Wikimedia movement. And while there is no requirement in the policy for the handling of any conflict of interest to be independently reviewed, in handling this we have taken advice from Rosie Chapman, the consultant performing our current governance audit, and we have asked her to comment on our handling of this situation in her report.

Regards, The Land (talk) 09:30, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris. If my point (1) is not the case, could you, Alastair or another member of the board give a precise date on which Alastair put his conflict of loyalties to the board of trustees for the first time, so that the members can confirm that this date was indeed before it was raised on Wikipediocracy? I am sure that Andreas can compare dates for us. I find it extremely odd for this date to be kept obscure when it is as easy to confirm as a trustee checking the date of the first email from Alastair to the board about his relationship with CIPR.

With regard to policy it states "Any board member's potential conflict of interest must be discussed with the Chair or the full board before any decision is made." Alastair made his decision to become the CEO for CIPR without consulting with the board, as far as I am aware. There was a press announcement by CIPR before anything was put in writing, or discussed, with the WMUK charity. I note your partial responses have tacitly accepted the other issues as correct.

As for Alastair being an advocate for CIPR, when CIPR has publicly worked closely with WMUK for more than a year previously, I find it surprising that anyone would dismiss that as "tangential". It is not tangential, it is bang centre of the COI policy as an issue of having an active PR lobbyist brokering the values and mission of this charity. The policy states "Trustees must not use their Wikimedia UK position or title to advance any private interests and must ensure a clear distinction between their role as Trustees and any other activity they engage in" I believe it is a perfectly common sense reading of a "private interest" that having Trustee of WMUK on your CV when applying to be CEO of CIPR, an existing collaborator with WMUK, is indeed advancing a private interest that requires discussion.

Why is it you that is writing here as an apparent official proxy, to address questions put to Alastair, rather than Alastair? Are trustees no longer supposed to discuss problems with members without going through the Chair? This seems an approach that runs directly counter to the Nolan principles included in the Trustee Code of Conduct, in particular "[Trustees] should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider interest clearly demands."

Lastly, you mention "we have taken advice from Rosie Chapman", please publish this advice. I am sure the charity paid well for it and it would be great for the members to consider it and learn from it. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:22, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I too am finding the relative absence of Alastair here puzzling. Even his statement was posted by someone else. I note there has been some interaction here but it seems to be principally via intermediaries and there is a lofty detached tone that suggests that Alastair feels that he is an important man above all this annoying nonsense from the trouble makers on that Watercooler thingy. This does very much play into the feeling that the trustees don't actually get much involved in the nitty gritty of our work and that has been said above in defence of these arrangements. I note particularly that one does not often see the trustees at the London meetup. I know not everyone is in London but there is nothing like those meetings for taking the temperature of the community and understanding who we really are. I hope also that we will start to see Fae at those events as he also has been absent. I hope that Alastair will correct me and give us some sort of personal statement that faces head on the worries that people have, rather than relying on documents draw up by committees, boards and lawyers.

Regarding Chris's assertion that this appointment is "tangentially related to the Wikimedia movement", this is a troubling and factually incorrect statement to say the least. The PR industry exists solely for the job of "influencing opinion and behaviour" (their words) for the benefit of their paying clients. Information and its use is their currency. How can that not be a concern to us? Philafrenzy (talk) 11:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I am intending to be at the next London meetup - see m:Meetup/London/74 --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:20, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Great! Philafrenzy (talk) 12:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for chipping in on this thread Michael, it would be interesting to touch base at the wikimeet on some Commons projects, I've added it to my diary. While you are here, it would be great if you could confirm the date of the first email from Alastair bringing up the issue of his relationship with CIPR as a potential conflict of loyalties. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 12:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae. I have been responding here because it falls to the Chair to deal with Trustees' conflicts of interests, and with allegations like the ones you are making that the charity has failed to comply with its policies. Alastair spent a great deal of time at the start of this conversation responding to peoples' points and nothing new has been added since. Also, you said above that you felt I had "tacitly accepted" some of the things I have said - this couldn't be further from the case. If you make an untrue statement and I fail to disagree with it, it does not mean your statement has suddenly become true.

Philafrenzy - yes, I'm planning to be there - I was in the habit of coming but haven't been for a while. Look forward to seeing you and talking some of this through. The Land (talk) 12:45, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Also great! You have been to dozens more meetups than I have I know. Philafrenzy (talk) 12:48, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for continuing to write here Chris. I am familiar with the role of Chair having held it myself and discussed it with the board many times before and after that; it certainly was never the duty of the Chair to replace the voice of other trustees, nor to take a PR role and answer instead of others when the members have direct questions for a trustee that is not the Chair. By the way, calling my statements "untrue" does not make your assertions that there is nothing to worry about here and policy has been followed "true". Alastair was offered a job with CIPR after becoming a WMUK trustee, that appears to be a personal benefit. Alastair failed to come forward and discuss his potential conflict of loyalties before the AGM, despite CIPR being fully aware of their long term relationship with WMUK. As for the order of events, the members have no idea, as neither Alastair nor anyone else on the board has explained who knew what when.

It is easy for any reader to see that your answers are selective. If you don't wish them to be seen that way, perhaps you would be prepared to answer a very simple question that I have asked around 4 or 5 times now but has been skirted around every time. What was the date of the first email to the board from Alastair bringing up the issue of his relationship with CIPR as a potential conflict of loyalties? --Fæ (talk) 13:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, will someone please just answer this question and put us all out of our misery. What possible reason can there be for not providing this factual piece of information? Philafrenzy (talk) 13:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a closed question, which could have been answered at any time by any trustee cut & pasting the date from an email, it does not take hours to write a reply, let alone days or weeks. It would be refreshing if a response just gave a date.

In terms of a comparative timeline, Alastair was running for the CIPR job before the AGM and he became a WMUK trustee on 8 June 2013, CIPR made a public announcement of Alastair's new job on 27 August 2013, the thread on Wikipediocracy was started on 10 September 2013 and in apparent response, Alastair decided to declare his conflict of loyalties the day afterwards[1] 11 September 2013. --Fæ (talk) 15:22, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

28 August. I hope that settles the matter. Regards, The Land (talk) 15:00, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I was wrong. 24 August. There we go. The Land (talk) 16:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, there is a good quote from Jimmy Wales on page 172 of the book Share This Too: More Social Media Solutions for PR Professionals (ISBN 1118676939) issued by CIPR and referred to elsewhere here. "What I have found - and the evidence for this is pretty comprehensive - is that people who are acting as paid advocates do not make good editors. They insert puffery and spin. That's what they do because that is what paid advocates do." (my italics) Quite. Our Secretary, apparently, is to be their leader. Philafrenzy (talk) 18:15, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment from Geoff Brigham

Hi all. As General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, I have followed with interest the efforts of WMUK to address a number of outstanding governance issues over the last months. See http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/19/movement-governance-recommendations/ If I may, I would like to share some of my own thoughts here in light of this ongoing discussion and concerns about a possible conflict of interest.

I have been favorably impressed by WMUK’s recent leadership in seeking to address outstanding governance issues and solving past issues, including the recruitment of strong Board members with rich experiences and talents. I appreciate the opinion of others on the handling of this and other potential conflicts; that said, I personally feel that the chapter is taking the right steps in addressing the necessary legal requirements of managing this potential conflict.

The first rule of thumb to managing a conflict of interest is to declare it timely, completely, directly, and transparently to the parties affected, including the decision-makers, which I feel was done here. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Guidelines_on_potential_conflicts_of_interest

The second rule is to put in place a protocol for managing the declared potential conflict. Such a protocol rarely requires resignation as a solution when Wikimedia interests can be addressed by removing the declarant from discussions and decisions on the matter where the potential conflict could arise. On this last point, WMUK sought, received, and followed advice from a leading UK governance expert on the topic; its Chair and Executive Director reached out to me early for my thoughts given our working relationship and my past experience on these types of ethical questions; and, in layperson’s language, Alastair issued a comprehensive, transparent statement, which, in my mind, addresses the legalities satisfactorily. To be sure, there is always a possibility that scenarios may change, and such unanticipated changes may require a course adjustment in the management of the potential conflict; for that reason, ongoing vigilance to ensure against any future conflict is appropriate by both Alastair and the Board. This is the nature of any legal potential conflict of interest, however.

To manage duty of loyalty cases, I have always subscribed to a somewhat conservative double recusal rule that applies to both organizations. In this case, if a substantive issue arises at CIPR with respect to Wikimedia or its projects, I understand that Alastair intends to recuse himself from discussion and decision and appoint someone else at CIPR to act as the final decision maker on that issue within CIPR to avoid any appearance of a conflict of duty of loyalty. Alastair would also recuse himself on the WMUK board from a discussion and decision on any issue concerning CIPR. If an issue is particularly contentious and critical to the very fabric of either organization, Alastair may need to make a decision of resignation to address the potential conflict on that question, but such decisions can be handled on an issue-by-issue basis. The mere possibility of such a scenario does not necessitate resignation today.

Of course, as General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, I cannot give legal advice outside the Wikimedia Foundation, so the above represents only my view, not advice. Indeed, WMUK has sought outside advice from its own ethics expert in the U.K., who has a better understanding of UK governance than I (obviously). Also, to be clear, I am not addressing the broader extra-legal policy issues of paid editing, which I understand could be a subject to debate. My focus is getting the more narrow legalities correct.

In short, I have expressed my discontentment in the past when conflicts of interests have been undisclosed or mismanaged; at the same time, I believe we should also recognize when they are handled well, despite challenging circumstances. It is a tough job handling these issues professionally, and I commend the chapter and Alastair for their efforts to do so here.

Geoff Brigham (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

It's good to know that the chapter has taken the correct legal steps in this matter, however, Geoff's opinion does not directly address the question of the appropriateness of the head of the UK's professional body for public relations also being the Secretary and Trustee of Wikimedia UK. It may be legal for that to happen but is it right? Philafrenzy (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Fundamental conflict of values/Conflicts of loyalty?

Thanks to Alastair for working on his statement. However, I feel it only serves to illustrate that there is a Fundamental conflict of values/Conflicts of loyalty.:

"For the present CIPR and Wikimedia UK volunteers have agreed a set of guidelines for PR practitioners on how to interact with Wikipedia, which states essentially that PR practitioners should not edit articles for their clients and should always follow Wikipedia policies and guidelines."

Now I realise that Alastair may not be particularly familiar with what went on, and it would be interesting to know whether he was advised on this by

1. the people at CIPR
2. Wikimedians who participated in the discussion

Certainly he did not contact me for my view on it. Indeed there is a bit of Catch 22 here, because as far as I am aware this is the first time that someone, whether a member of staff or a fellow trustee, has referred to an agreement between CIPR and "Wikimedia Volunteers". On the one hand it would be a serious omission if this was not included, but on the other this is precisely the sort of announcement in which Alastair should not be involved. Indeed the Catch 22 is precisely indicative of a fundamental conflict! Certainly if he had checked the documents he would have found that I contributed to the document, only to have something removed without discussion by Philip Sheldrake. Please check Draft best practice guidelines for PR

1. These are a draft.
2. There was never any "agreement" as far I was concerned. Now I may be wrong, and certainly checking for one is the sort of thing that Alastair can do once he takes up his position as CEO of CIPR, and if it does exist I would certainly like to know how it came about.
3. On May 31st we were informed that the CIPR planned to create a Version 1
4. This was carried out on 27 June 2012, when Philip Sheldrake also suggested that there should be a "Version 2". CIPR issued a press statement, which quite understandably included a quote from the CIPR CEO (as well as Jon). Nowhere was there any reference to any agreement in this press statement. The statement also stated unequivocally:

Furthermore, the guidance document published today is merely version one – it will continue to be reviewed and refreshed as the relationship between the Wikipedia and public relations communities continues to progress."

It is hard to see how this sits comfortably with Alastair's statement.

1. Alastair also makes reference to Share this too, a book recently published by the CIPR, with a chapter by Stephen Waddington, President of the CIPR. Now, I have no problem with The CIPR publishing their views about Wikipedia, and it would be churlish to accuse Alastair of promoting a CIPR publication, (even though by including it in his statement he inevitably is - I doubt if I would have heard of the book otherwise). But this again underlines the problem that we have here an ongoing relationship
2. Alastair accepts that he "must be mindful of the fact that if, in future, CIPR and Wikimedia no longer agree on matters which relate to Wikipedia", but what does that mean: Wikimedia UK, the Wikmedia community - two quite different entities, one a legal defined corporation, the other something much more nebulous.
3. Alastair goes on to say "If I become aware that CIPR is seeking to modify the guidelines I would need to make the WMUK Board aware of this and take no part in any following discussion." In this he seems to be unaware of the CIPR view that:

1. CIPR view Draft best practice guidelines for PR as a living document.
2. CIPR would like to see a more concise document for Version 2

He also seems unaware that:

1. Changes have in fact been made since Version 1
2. By a curious irony the very last line states: "This introduction (everything to this point) will not feature in the guidance; everything hereafter will."

1. As I touched on previously, there was a meeting to follow as regards Version 2, about which I felt uncomfortable prompting an update from Stevie in the context of this debate. Stevie reported that there had been an idea of seeing whether there was any interest in working on a Version 2, over the summer, but that in the end neither organisation regarded it as a priority.

So to summarise my view: I do not wish to pillory Alastair, and I have no doubt that he could make a very helpful contribution to WMUK, and Wikipedia and its sister projects, however for the reason above, I do not understand why he sees no conflict of loyalty between his role as CEO (a less significant role might have been more manageable) of CIPR and that of a WMUK trustee. I feel he has been more naive than anything else in this matter. For the reasons I have argued above, I do not think he properly understands how the relationship between CIPR and WMUK has developed, and his suggestion that there is any sort of agreement is incorrect. And, er yes, I have got better things to do than spend hours clarifying the situation as I have done this evening. After I engaged with the CIPR people on this, I came away feeling very dissatisfied, with little respect for them, and perhaps a little more understanding of persuasion actually works. I do find Alastair's suggestion that I have agreed to the CIPR guidelines problematic and I do not understand why those of us who had troubled ourselves to contribute to the draft were not consulted before he issued his statement? Leutha (talk) 21:29, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

By whose authority were these guidelines "agreed" if indeed they are agreed at all? I was not aware that WMUK had the authority to do such things. Certainly they can be of no binding effect as far as Wikipedia or the Foundation are concerned. Whilst guidelines are welcome, I am not sure that WMUK should be the ones writing them. We certainly seem to be being used by CIPR as a proxy for the community as a whole. Would these guidelines have been agreed if they had been put forward for community agreement on a wider basis? There is considerable dissent on the talk page here alone. Who decided the matter was settled? If these guidelines have some official status as far as WMUK are concerned, then the least that should happen is that WMUK members should vote on them. Should an EGM result from the other matter, I think the WMUK community should have a chance to vote on these guidelines too. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

This may be old news but this US PR firm claims to be able to manage their customer's Wikipedia page through "our network of established Wikipedia editors and admins". Philafrenzy (talk) 22:28, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

How much do they pay, maybe we should put our names down at $400/day?^† Considering that WMUK already acts as a certification body for consultants for hire rather than factoring these services out, the realpolitik approach the charity has adopted towards the PR sector by having a paid advocate of the PR industry as a voting trustee would seem to set a trend that the board would have no problem in officially supporting this sort of paid work, or even having this organization as an approved commercial partner. Anything else would seem contradictory, wouldn't it?

Perhaps it is time for the board of trustees to re-write the mission. --Fæ (talk) 08:32, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

†—I have dropped WIKI-PR an email to find out more. By the way, I was offered money to sort out a biography on en.wp through my work on OTRS. Maybe I was being stupid to turn down the offer. --Fæ (talk) 08:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a pretty shocking site. Though, as has been pointed out many times, CIPR's position is that anyone working in PR should avoid anyone using the "dark arts", avoid doing any of the things that site claims to offer, and follow Wikipedia policies regarding not engaging in COI editing. So I am still not particularly clear of its relevance to this situation. The Land (talk) 08:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree, I am not suggesting that is happening here, and CIPR do reject that sort of thing but it is a reminder of the broader context. Let's not get too cosy with the PR industry please. Philafrenzy (talk) 09:01, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Chris, I suggest that as the Chairman of the charity, you avoid defaming WIKI-PR on public record unless you have specific evidence to support your allegations of "dark arts". You should be particularly careful that WMUK might be seen to be only critical of non-members of CIPR considering that the board has a trustee that is a paid advocate of members of CIPR. The WIKI-PR site states extremely clearly that "We respect the community and its rules against promoting and advertising." If you feel that it is the charity's business to create an official list of approved PR suppliers, rather than just your public allegations about who is good and bad, maybe you should make a proposal.

Philafrenzy, I cannot imagine WMUK getting any more "cosy" with the PR industry than having a paid advocate as a trustee with a legal role as the Secretary of the charity. If we have a paid advocate as a trustee, there seems little reason any more to disapprove of having paid advocates as volunteers for the charity. --Fæ (talk) 09:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Fae the "dark arts" comment was re: CIPR's position, not Wiki-PR (being shocked isn't defamation), much as that bait and switch made me lol. CIPR is also different to single PR organisations, in that it's an overarching body and taking a rather different tact to wikipedia to (the American) Wiki-PR. You say "I cannot imagine WMUK getting any more 'cosy' with the PR industry"...and then go on to give an example of how that could happen. Alastair's status has been discussed, COI managed, let's discuss separate issues separately... Sjgknight (talk) 09:24, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I was misreading. Chris Keating speaking as the Chairman of the charity has said that he finds WIKI-PR "shocking". I think it would now be proper for that to be expanded so that the members understand the difference between WIKI-PR and other PR companies, in particular so that we can contrast with the sites and behaviour of the members of CIPR that Alastair McCapra is paid to be an advocate for, whilst also being the Secretary of the WMUK charity. For those volunteers for WMUK that would like to get paid for their editing time, it would be great if Chris could point out some paid editing sites that he does not find "shocking" and that are going about this the "right" way, presumably by following the guidelines that WMUK and its members has officially agreed with CIPR in the past. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 09:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Now you're just trolling. The Land (talk) 09:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

And you are claiming that WIKI-PR is "shocking" but now prefer to call me a troll rather than explaining why so that the members of WMUK can apply the same standard to other PR agencies in a fair and even-handed way, in particular the charity must be seen to be apply the same standards when we approve or disapprove of the behaviour of members of CIPR. If I get an email back from WIKI-PR, I'll send them a link to your comment here. --Fæ (talk) 10:02, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Draft_best_practice_guidelines_for_PR Sjgknight (talk) 10:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Sjgknight, though as WIKI-PR upfront (on its main page) says it complies with the policy, there seems no reason to suspect it would not be happy to comply with the best practice guidelines that WMUK agreed with CIPR. In what way is WIKI-PR shocking if this is the case? --Fæ (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Just for some context regarding Wiki-PR, if you haven't already seen it; Signpost coverage. The Land (talk) 17:38, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

---

All sides of the debate are inviting more members of WMUK to speak up, so I'm taking that invitation. I say "all sides" not "both sides", because there are actually two sides of this discussion offering contradictory reasons on why Alastair can't handle his COI:

1. Some argue that WMUK and CIPR have a "fundamental conflict of values";
2. Others argue that Alastair has a personal conflict of interest arising from the working relationship between WMUK and CIPR.

These can't both be true, and in my opinion the first one is false. As Philafrenzy illustrated, "the Vegetarian Association and the National Beef Association" have a fundamental conflict of values because vegetarians fundamentally don't do beef. In contrast, there's nothing in WMUK's vision that says we don't work with the PR. If there was a fundamental conflict of interest, "CIPR and Wikimedia UK volunteers" would have never "agreed a set of guidelines for PR practitioners on how to interact with Wikipedia".

That's pretty definitive proof to me that there isn't a "fundamental conflict of values", so it boils down to how Alastair should handle his own conflict of interest. As pointed out earlier in this long discussion, WMUK does not fund CIPR in any way, so there is no financial COI for Alastair. This makes Alastair's COI between WMUK and CIPR nothing more than any other COI - as Mike Peel illustrated, we all have involvements beyond Wikimedia in other walks of society and each of them is both a perspective to be welcomed and a COI to be managed. If we as WMUK choose to single out Alastair and CIPR, we're simply shooting ourselves in the foot. I commend Alastair for declaring his forthcoming job well in advance, I agree that no further special action is required other than Alastair's expected standard of "double recusal" (thanks Geoff) so long as he holds both WMUK and CIPR executive positions, and I hope that we'll stop being paranoid about our trustees' lives outside Wikimedia. Deryck Chan (talk) 21:37, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

The fact that we have the so called agreed guidelines proves nothing of the kind Deryck. You hang an awful lot in your argument on something that is not even agreed by WMUK members, has never been ratified in any way by the community, and has no standing of any kind on Wikipedia or with the Foundation. The fundamental conflict of values is the fact that in our work we seek neutrality, impartiality and to avoid advocacy, while the PR industry exists specifically for the contrary purpose of manipulating public opinion to the benefit of their paying customers. Please explain how those things are not in conflict. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Need for an EGM

It is pretty clear that many in the community find the statement about managing Alastair's COI woefully inadequate. It also appears that the board doesn't understand the concerns of the community. I think we need an extraordinary general meeting. Yaris678 (talk) 12:03, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree, as long as it focuses on issues not individuals. I feel that a motion should be put that "It is incompatible with our principles for a senior figure in the public relations industry to also be an employee or trustee of Wikimedia U.K." or something along those lines to be agreed. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

If it becomes clear that there is a strong opinion from our members (or the wider community) that we've got this wrong, then there won't be a need for an EGM. But, as I just posted on the email list - since Alastair posted the details of how he will handle this situation, only 5 people (myself included) have taken part in the resulting discussion. Some have posted at some length and in strident terms, but I don't yet see the picture I would need to see to be persuaded we are taking the wrong course of action here.

This time last year we had a very clear message from our membership, from the broader community, and from the Wikimedia Foundation that we needed to greatly improve how we handled conflicts of interest. That resulted in the Hudson Review, which gave us some pretty clear recommendations. We have followed those recommendations in dealing with this situation - taking external advice early, thinking carefully about the likely impact of the potential conflict of interest, and coming to a conclusion which the Board believes defends us not just against the risk of anything bad happening, but any allegation of impropriety. In short we have been to the best of our ability doing good governance. You might see Geoff Brigham's comments above if you were in any doubt about that.

However, we also clearly have a duty to our members, and a responsibility to maintain the goodwill of the Wikimedia community as a whole. If there is a widespread view that, even with the steps we've outlined, it's not in the charity's best interests for Alastair to continue, then we will listen to that. So if there are a lot of people out there thinking to themselves that the Board has got this wrong, but haven't summoned the time or energy to post to that effect, please do post and let us know your views. Equally, if there are people who have been watching this conversation and haven't participated because they feel the right decision's been made and so they have nothing to add, please do speak up. Regards, The Land (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

See my comments elsewhere about the democratic deficit here, caused by the active membership being too small, leading to difficulty all round in determining the views of the community. Philafrenzy (talk) 19:44, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I do not have a particular view on whether an EGM is or isn't needed (I don't have much time to consider the matter). But as a gut/largely uninformed reaction, assuming Fae is correct to suggest that Alastair was running for the CIPR position before the AGM (apologies if this has been rebutted somewhere, I haven't been able to read everything), I find it disappointing that the process we had in place at the AGM did not bring this to members' attention at the time, given how much we talked a lot about COI there. Jarry1250 (talk) 19:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I have contributed before here, and was going to leave it at that. I thought Alistair's statement above could have been stronger. If this thread still has life in it, I have a few comments from Wikipedia experience. Namely: (a) there will certainly be those who see process as the dominant factor, but they tend to be on the wrong side of arguments; (b) I was (for once) heavily involved in WP policy when it came to the COI guideline, and there the whole point is that "potential COI" should be distinguished from what happens in practice - which leads me to back the Board's approach; (c) the argumentum ad Jimbonen here, which has been brought up, brings nothing new to the discussion on PR for those who have been paying attention - Jimmy Wales is our "tough cop" in this area, for good reasons from past history, but stringency isn't the only approach. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Charles, I'm not sure what you are saying here. You caution against seeing process as the dominant factor, and yet you appear to be supporting the boards current position, a position based on process, a position that neglects factors like trust, community and simplicity and instead gives us an unconvincing description of how hypothetical future problems will be dealt with. Yaris678 (talk) 09:27, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, I lived through what could reasonably be called the "scandal-torn" era of the English Wikipedia. Some such scandals were caused (I'm thinking of Essjay, in particular) by "trusted" people being not what they seemed. Some reasonable precautions were the answer there, not more reliance on criteria about whom to trust. You can call reasonable precautions "process" if you want, but my point is an old one, as far as I'm concerned: wonkishness about process isn't the answer. I mean by that privileging form over content. Community concerns should be met, and a sense of history does matter to the movement as a whole. Here we are, hoping for the end of the "scandal-torn" era of WMUK. The basic argument against the Board seems to be that to over-correct is the only safe way, and advocacy for it picking holes in what has been done so far. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:28, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The basic argument against the Board seems to be that to over-correct is the only safe way, and advocacy for it picking holes in what has been done so far. I am not quite able to parse the second half of your sentence. What does "it" in "advocacy for it" refer to? Do you mean that advocacy for over-correction means picking holes in what has been done so far? And if so, do you mean to say doing so is a good thing or a bad thing? Andreas JN 18:07, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Response from Alastair

Hi sorry for not contributing for a while but I've had login problems following the migration of the site.

Fae opened this discussion on 11 September by asking that I make a statement about how I think I would manage the potential conflict of interest and I have done this. He also asked that there be an independent review of the conflict of interest. This matter has been considered by the WMUK independent governance advisor, who will be publishing her report in due course.

There was a question of why I did not declare a potential declaration of interest when I stood for election, which I believed I had addressed in my comments on 12 September but evidently not in sufficient detail. At the time I stood for election I had not even been interviewed for the job, and was unaware of the potential conflict I would have to deal with. I certainly did not conceal anything from the members who were considering voting for me and am quite sure that nothing I have done as a trustee since being elected has fallen short of what voting members properly expect.

I only became aware of the issues which have caused concern on this forum after I was appointed to the job. I then discussed the matter with Chris as Chair, and disclosed the potential conflict to the Board on 24 August. It was understood that I would need to think the matter through thoroughly, and prepare a detailed statement for publication on the matter, which I’ve now done.

In my earlier comments I hope I did set out that I understand the serious concerns people have about the PR industry and the way it often interacts with Wikipedia and I certainly have not tried to minimise or downplay that. I have however tried to make the point that my future role at CIPR is not to represent or to advocate for those behaviours. I’ve also made clear my own personal view on bad editing and corrupting the encyclopedia.

The view has been expressed that the approach I have taken to handing this is excessively legalistic or managerial and that this approach avoids something fundamental. The approach I’ve taken is exactly the approach required by the Charity Commission and by WMUK’s own policies – to think about how to manage the situation. Some people have expressed the view that there is a fundamental conflict which makes these steps inadequate, and if that is the case then there is nothing that I can I think, say, or do, can make any difference. If that really is the view of a large part of the Wikimedia UK membership or the Wikimedia community then I can't continue as a trustee. Most of the comments here have come from a small number of people however and it would be helpful for me to hear from others too to know whether what is being said here represents a substantial body of opinion..

What this boils down to, I feel, is that I have found myself in an unexpectedly sensitive situation. I believe that have responded to it thoughtfully and responsibly and the opinion of WMF legal counsel, posted here on the water cooler, confirms this. The WMUK Board is satisfied that I have acted properly and that the situation is manageable. The independent governance advisor agrees with this. However, since these views do not coincide with the opinions of those who originally called for me to make a statement and to seek an independent view, they evidently no longer count for anything.

My statement has generated a lot of detailed discussion about the ‘Draft best practice guidelines for PR’ which I have referred to as ‘agreed’. It seems from some of the comments here that I perhaps ought not to have even mentioned them, as the mere mention creates a conflict of interest, so I think that kind of puts a stop on my discussing them any further. I hope it is clear from the context of my statement that I referred to the guidelines, as well as to a couple of other examples, to illustrate that CIPR seeks to promote good behaviour on Wikipedia. In the postings on this topic there have been several references to what individual PR practitioners or firms do, but nobody has yet indicated a statement or action by CIPR itself which is contrary to the values and principles of Wikipedia.

There was a suggestion that I attend a London meetup to understand the community better. I have attended two since being elected and enjoyed them both very much. I also intend to come to the next one. Mccapra (talk) 21:09, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Breach of CC BY-SA 3.0

My problem is this: in his statement Alastair stated:

“For the present CIPR and Wikimedia UK volunteers have agreed a set of guidelines for PR practitioners on how to interact with Wikipedia.”

As one of the volunteers engaged with the discussion around the Draft best practice guidelines for PR, I also contributed to the document itslef, both the version as published by the CIPR, and the version currently on the WMUK website.

The terms of my contribution were the CC BY-SA 3.0 license which says:

“Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)”

Alastair, by his statement has suggested that as one of the volunteers contributing to the work, I endorse its use by CIPR.

When I challenged him on this he has declined to make a further comment.

The chair has also not made any comment on this, despite otherwise being active on the WMUK Wiki over the last few days.

I have what I consider good reasons why I do not want to be seen as endorsing either CIPR or their use of the document. But such reasons are secondary to the issue under debate here.

I take exception to the CEO designate of CIPR, in his capacity as a Trustee of WMUK issuing a statement on the WMUK Wiki stating that some WMUK volunteers – of which I am one – have agreed with CIPR to a set of guidelines when this is not the case.

I regard this not only as a conflict of interest but also a breach of the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

I would like to make a further request to Alastair that he retract his claim or provide evidence to support what he has stated. Leutha (talk) 15:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. Without taking a position in this discussion overall, I do want to respond to this comment from Leutha. I was involved in facilitating the discussion that led to those draft guidelines last year. The guidelines received over 200 edits, by the way, so we know there was a decent amount of collaboration. There was also a good amount of discussion, too as the talk page received around 130-150 edits or so. On 24 June last year it was noted here that version one was going to be circulated. It was further noted that the document would be kept open. Now, I think the reason that Alistair may have felt that these were “approved” was probably because he would have got that impression by speaking with me – and I was under the similar impression. I suspect this is entirely down to me and for any confusion here, I apologise. I certainly don't think it's fair to blame Alastair for something which he knew nothing about. However, I note that at this point I had only been in post for three months and was still getting to grips with some of the finer points of the movement. As far as I was concerned I was happy with the guidelines, especially as they had received so much input. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 08:25, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Stevie. Just to make it clear, I am not blaming Alastair, I am saying that what he said in his statement was incorrect. I do not believe he was aware of its consequences. One of the reasons why I have suggested that it is inappropriate for him to maintain both a position as a trustee and as CEO for CIPR is not because I am suggesting that he has any personal short-comings, but because I have insights into the CIPR-WMUK relationship having been involved with the Draft_best_practice_guidelines_for_PR. Nevertheless, his statement did cause the problems which I have outlined above. And I feel these need to be resolved.Leutha (talk) 08:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

It might be a good idea for WMUK not to be involved in writing "guidelines" (for which read rules) which quite reasonably might be interpreted by the other party as being a community-agreed official policy of Wikipedia or the Foundation, when we can't even agree amongst ourselves. CIPR, for instance, clearly see WMUK as a kind of proxy for the movement as a whole and the presentation of this document in the recent book and elsewhere to me read as "we have negotiated with Wikipedia and done a deal and this is the result". I don't know what authority WMUK had in the first place to issue any sort of guidelines to anyone, surely this can only come from within the Wikipedia community directly? However carefully couched, the true status of such documents is likely to be misunderstood by others. Philafrenzy (talk) 09:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

For clarity, I wasn't involved in any writing of guidelines. I simply facilitated the discussion and continued the work started by former Trustee Steve Virgin. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:00, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Noted. Philafrenzy (talk) 10:03, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Leutha, that's a novel attempt to open a new legalistic line of attack, but your allegation of a breach of CC-BY-SA 3.0 is legally unsustainable. The CC licence provides third parties with permission to do certain things that would otherwise be an infringement of the IP rights (typically copyright) of the author of a 'work'. It does not and cannot provide the author with any new rights over and above those which arise from existing law. Copyright simply restrains third parties from reproducing, distributing and creating adaptations of the work without permission. If none of those things have been done, no rights of the author have been engaged and the CC licence does not come into play at all. Alastair has neither reproduced, distributed nor created adaptations of those parts of the Draft best practice guidelines for PR that derive from your contributions, and his reference to the entirety of the draft guidelines as having been 'agreed' does not as you appear to suggest represent a breach of any of your legal rights. The copyright you hold in your own contributions cannot be used by you to restrain anybody from commenting on them - and that applies whether you agree with the comment or not and even whether the comment is factually correct or not. It is for just that reason that Wikimedia editors who contribute to policy cannot allege any infringement of the copyright in their own contributions when the policy is adopted by the community against their wishes.

It might be helpful for me to comment on CIPR's position as well, to anticipate anyone thinking of following up with a potential switch of your 'breach' allegation from Alastair to CIPR. I am not sure where the purported licence text you quoted above came from, but your wording appears nowhere in the licence itself. What the licence actually says is "You may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work". CIPR has certainly reproduced the draft best practice guidelines, but has been careful to comply with the CC licence. CIPR's publication is a paper by them which is addressed to their own members, and there is nothing in it, explicit or implied, that breaches the licence requirement. The document says "Note: These guidelines have been written collaboratively on an open wiki with input from public relations professionals and Wikipedians. The text above and below is a ‘snapshot’ of the content of the wiki at midnight on Sunday 24 June". The acknowledgement that "Wikipedians had input" ("Wikimedians had input" would have been more accurate, admittedly) bears no implication that any particular contributor, such as yourself, agrees with the final result.

Some people have criticized those who support Alastair of being overly legalistic. I make no apology for focusing purely on the legal issues here, as my intent is merely to respond to your specific legal allegation of a breach of licence. You are of course perfectly entitled to disagree on non-legal grounds with what Alastair has said, and you have made your views very clear on this page. I entirely respect your right to do that. I will be at the London meetup on Sunday, and would be more than happy to discuss in person: I think you have said you expect to be there too. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:23, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Michael.

Leutha, your comments about Alastair seem entirely over-stretched. You've made a big deal out of a sentence having "agreed" rather than "contributed to". You've labelled it repeatedly as a breach of a licence and a misunderstanding on Alastair's part, when it's clearly not. In fact, calling for trustees to be educated about this matter is a bit ironic in the circumstances.

Elsewhere on this page you write "I must admit I wonder why Alistair feels it appropriate to [...], when he should be encouraging us to contribute towards Wikipedia and its sister projects." This is another blatant straw man. The discussion about Alastair is happening for (mostly) good reasons. It's not reasonable to ask that he respond to allegations by deflecting the issue. It's reasonable to complain at wastes of volunteer and staff time, but at least direct the complaints to the people making reckless allegations. All I ask is that you take a step back and a deep breath before getting on Alastair's case again. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:56, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"CIPR and Wikimedia UK volunteers have agreed a set of guidelines for PR practitioners"

Noting Michael's points on copyright above still leaves Leutha's outstanding question of the status of the guidelines as being not agreed and CIPR's version challenged. Reviewing the documents listed at Wikipedia and PR, resources, CIPR and some individual members of CIPR gained a great deal of non-financial reputational benefit from working with Wikimedia UK, even though Wikimedia UK did not fund CIPR directly.

ACTION: Could the Wikimedia Board of Trustees definitively withdraw these Paid Editing* guidelines or pass a binding resolution that the board of trustees underwrites them? In my view, they give a false impression that it is the business of the Wikimedia UK charity to impose standards on the English Wikipedia and that the Wikimedia UK board of trustees supports this ethical position, rather than being a workshop that would go on to work with the English Wikipedia community (which is not represented by Wikimedia UK trustees). The document has been draft for nearly a year and a half, and CIPR (including Alastair McCapra in both his roles as CIPR CEO and WMUK Secretary) seem under the impression that this can be used as a PR success when they are clearly not. I propose they are now formally withdrawn to avoid any confusion, in the light that it would be unlikely and a massive waste of volunteer time, for Wikimedia UK to attempt to get these guidelines agreed with the English Wikipedia (which is the only project the guidelines address) through a community RFC inside that project. * The term "Paid Editing" was used in the title of the presentation in the 2012 AGM presentation by Philip Sheldrake and Neville Hobson, this is the most accurate term for what these guidelines give a process for achieving by any commercial provider. --Fæ (talk) 15:10, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Uninvolved opinion

I haven't been following the blow-by-blow postings on this issue, but a post on the mailing list from Chris Keating invited comment from those who have not yet done so. I've now read most of what has been posted here, and I'm failing to understand why there is still an issue. Questions were asked and those questions have been answered repeatedly - concisely and expansively.
As I understand it, at the time of the AGM there was the potential for there to be a potential for a potential conflict of loyalties. No policy requires such to be disclosed, nor could a policy that did be effective (when looking for a specific tree that might or might not exist, planting a dense forest of trees, potential trees and potential potential trees and then examining each one individually is not helpful). When he became aware that this potential, potential, potential COI was now merely a potential COI Alistair advised the board in accordance with policies and best practice. The board initially made an interim judgement that no resignations were necessary and sought advice from at least two external expert sources, both of which also said that no resignations were necessary because Alistair can (and AIUI has said he will) recuse from any discussion or decisions about CIPR that come to the WMUK board, and from any discussion or decisions about WMUK that come to the CIPR board.
Some people seem to be trying to prejudge the appropriateness future actions of a professional body in the UK based on the alleged past actions of an unrelated body in the US and what Jimbo said about a hypothetical editor who might or might not be eligible to join that body. This is just as ridiculous as claiming that because a US journalist made POV edits to a Wikipedia article five years ago, the goal of the National Union of Journalists is fundamentally incompatible with anything and everything anything related to the goals of any Wikimedia project.
Scrutiny is desirable. You do need to accept though that no matter how much you may want there to be a scandal, sometimes there really isn't one. There may be one in the future, but if you keep hounding people over events where people acted correctly and everything is above board then they will not believe you when you next cry wolf.
I am not yet a member of WMUK (I have applied, but AFAIK there has not been an appropriate meeting since the date of my application at which it could be considered), but I am not seeing a need for an EGM. If one was called though, I have not seen any evidence that would lead me to support a motion as proposed above. Thryduulf (talk:local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:30, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

1. Please don't accuse people of crying wolf. With some notable exceptions, this discussion has mostly managed to maintain an assumption of good faith and I think everyone would like that assumption to continue.
2. I agree the colourful examples from elsewhere weren't exactly helpful, but that doesn't change the fact that the purpose of CIPR is in conflict with that of WMUK.
3. A number of people have stated that they hope that the conflict can be managed in a sensible way. I for one think that the draft guidelines on COI editing will help in managing the conflict. There are probably other things we could do to, but having an individual in a position of trust for both organisations is not one of them.

Yaris678 (talk) 09:52, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is very far from crying wolf, and, for me, this is about the future not the past and about both jobs being occupied by one individual, not one particular individual. Inevitably we have to keep mentioning Alastair's name, but the exact same considerations would apply to anyone else who sought both jobs. We are already getting bogged down in COI issues, even over the so-called agreed guidelines and there seems plenty of scope for more. Although our values are not compatible with those of the PR industry (see above) we do operate in the same information ecosystem and that is exactly the problem. We both trade, so to speak, in information, it is in what we do with it and in how we approach it that the conflict arises.

I am unclear exactly how this is all going to work in practice. Both are senior appointments, both bodies operate in the same information ecosystem, exactly how many times can one person recuse themselves from different discussions or argue contrary to vested interests of an employer before they cannot carry out the duties of these positions effectively? What if we need in WMUK the Secretary's experience in a particular matter but he has had to absent himself? What if CIPR or one of its members says "we are paying you £50/75/100K per annum, we want you to stay in the room and earn your money and act in our interest not someone else's". What if Alastair is in a CIPR board meeting or with a client of a CIPR member and these matters arise, is he really going to bite the hand that feeds and be seen to argue against powerful corporate interests, leave the room or remain silent? There simply isn't enough clear blue water here between the two posts to make me feel comfortable. Philafrenzy (talk) 10:43, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I have seen these arguments above, but I still have not seen any evidence that the two organisations actually are both so diametrically opposed and indivisibly entwined, despite numerous assertions with varying levels of hyperbole. Iff the CIPR asks Alistair (or another person in this position) to act in a way that would force an actual applied conflict of interest (by which I mean not recusing from discussions where you have a COI) then Alistair (or whoever) would need to resign one or both positions, just as he would if WMUK asked the same thing. It would be inappropriate for anyone to dictate to Alistair which position he should resign from. I have full trust that the WMUK board would not appoint someone who would refused to resign when faced with this situation. However until such a situation actually exists we have no cause to claim one does, or to insist the parties act to resolve it as if it did. Thryduulf (talk:local | en.wp | en.wikt) 11:36, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

No one has said the two organisations are diametrically opposed. Indeed, I have implied that they are not diametrically opposed by expressing the hope that the conflicting purposes of the two organisations can be managed with such measures as guidelines on COI editing. This does not change the fact that the purposes of the two organisations are in conflict. One organisation seeks to support Wikimedia projects, projects that value neutrality, not least because it enables people of differing points of view to work together towards the common goal of free information. The other organisation seeks to represent the interests of the PR industry, an industry that seeks to bring the public round to agreeing with the views that are in its clients' interests.

When you talk about the board appointing Alastair you miss the fact that he was actually elected. I doubt he would have been elected if the members had known that he would later be given a senior role at CIPR. I don't want to cast any aspersion about this. Arguably, it was perfectly reasonable to not mention it, since he hadn't been invited for interview yet. The issue is the best thing to do now, given the situation we are in. How can the board maintain the trust of the community? How can we ensure that the charity stays true to its purpose? How can we manage the situation without having to decide, in advance, how a trustee would respond to each of an innumerable set of hypothetical problems?

Yaris678 (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment by Joseph Seddon

I have been unable to comment prior to this but feel that as someone who has criticized the board publicly and privately in the past I should, if in the best interests of the chapter, do so again. I have called on board members to step down in the past when they, as far as I am concerned, have materially damaged this chapter and its reputation due to their continued presence on a board. I would do it again if so required. In the case of Alistair this has not happened.

Firstly, Alistair has not in anyway acted in a manner which is unbecoming of a board member. In fact Alistair has handled himself throughout this in such a way that he is almost beyond reproach. He declared the conflict of interest, he publicly acknowledges it and going forward we simply ensure that as a trustee, he does not act on behalf of Wikimedia UK working with CIPR. Any contacts through Alistair's role should simply be offloaded to another board member before being pursued. The board has gotten some useful experience handling COI with Mike Peel's role with the FDC and the relationship we have with CIPR is no in anyway as symbiotic or intrinsic to our existence.

Secondly CIPR and WMUK have a good history. We have done some fantastic work with them through Steve and Andrew and its work we should continue to build on if it is of benefit to us. Being the secretary of WMUK isn't going to give CIPR some tactical advantage in getting PR agencies an inside track to Wikipedia. Lets be a little realistic here. WMUK has no real power on wikipedia and we should not have delusions of grandeur as to how much leverage CIPR would have even if we didn't manage the COI.

Thirdly, we are not talking about someone who is financially gaining as a result of his role with Wikimedia UK. Alistair has experience of being a Chief Executive of a professional body long before he joined Wikimedia UK. He has experience of working with PR and communications etc. long before being involved with Wikimedia UK. We were no springboard and he has not abused his position. I do not think it undermines the position of the chapter either. If anything the fact that we have someone who is a chief executive of a major professional organisation means we have some fantastic governance experience on the board. Getting rid of that would be idiotic at best.

I encourage members not to support any call for an EGM in relation to Alistair at this time. My recommendation is that the board appoint a board member to handle all relations with CIPR going into the future. If people are going to continue to be paranoid, other ideas might be for the board to maintain a log of any actions in relation to CIPR and Alistair's role and review these every 6 or maybe 12 months.

Lets turn down the vitriol however. It is a great deal more damaging to the chapter than Alistair's continued presence on the board. Seddon (talk) 18:08, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Addressing your points in turn:

1. Alastair has not in anyway acted in a manner which is unbecoming of a board member - Agreed
2. CIPR and WMUK have a good history - Agreed
3. We are not talking about someone who is financially gaining as a result of his role with Wikimedia UK - Agreed
4. Let's turn down the vitriol - Agreed

But you have not address the point about the purposes of CIPR and WMUK being in conflict. Your mention of Mike Peel and the FDC is an interesting contrast. In that case, the conflict of interest is clear... but the way to manage it is also pretty clear. This is doable because the ultimate aims of the organisations, to support Wikimedia projects, are not in conflict. The conflict only arises about the means to those aims. e.g. Mike might want WMUK to be responsible for delivering something that the FDC wants to pay for but it is not necessarily in the interest of the FDC to get WMUK to do it, which is why Mike recuses from decisions of the FDC relating to WMUK. No such simple solution exists when there is a conflict in the purposes of the organisations.

Yaris678 (talk) 19:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Joe (especially his closing sentence) and Thryduulf. I have the utmost respect for those arguing that Alistair should step down, but I respectfully disagree. I don't believe the two positions are so incompatible that Alistair must sign from one or the other. There is a potential conflict of interest, but it is one I believe can be managed. Alistair is not going to be practising public relations as such (ie advocating for a client), he is going to be the chief executive of the industry's professional body; nor does his position with WMUK put him in a position to influence Wikipedia content. The vast majority of WMUK's work would have nothing whatsoever to do with the PR industry, and Wikipedia is presumably only one in a vast array of resources through which the industry might seek to promote their clients. We need trustees with experience like Alistair's (and we can't keep losing trustees!). Harry Mitchell (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Seddon also. I think Alastair and the Board have handled the situation well. There is a potential for conflicts of interest to arise, but Alastair has anticipated these and been very clear about them in his statement. This approach is in line with Charity Commission guidelines, WMF guidelines, and the Hudson report - and this has been endorsed by an independent governance expert, and by the General Counsel of the WMF. I see no need for any resignation here, and in fact believe it would be damaging to the charity. The wub (talk) 22:45, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Seddon, Harry and Peter above. Alastair, an outsider, has invested significant time in getting to learn about our organisation and how he can be of service to it as a volunteer. The policy on eligibility for the Board is clear: if we didn't want him as a trustee, the policy should have been different. When he was on the board, Fae had ample opportunity to shape this policy. Policy, rather than post-hoc drama, is how mature organisations handle this sort of issue. Yaris, I see what you're getting at with your in-conflict/not-in-conflict analysis, but I think you've oversimplified and the two cases are more similar than you've made out. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:04, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Martin, you neglect the question of whether Alastair would have been on the board in the first place had it been known he was applying for the CIPR job. He could have waited a year, worked as a volunteer like the rest of us and applied later. As it is, he has gone almost straight in as Secretary with no past experience in our projects, weeks before then getting the CIPR job, appointed by people who knew about his appointment here. It is the motives of the CIPR selectors that continue to worry me and the difficult ethical challenges anyone might face when dealing with the PR industry all day long, particularly given the disparity in commitment and pay. I accept at face value that Alastair was unaware of how contentious this matter was, despite extensive publicity about it. Did he not research Wikipedia and the PR industry before applying for either job? One would think he would have done. Here is a May 2012 article from PR Week for example. I hope I have just been reading too many copies of Private Eye.

You also rather miss Yaris's, and my, point that it is precisely because the PR industry and Wikipedia have so much cross-over that this is a problem. If the two entities were completely divorced in their activities none of this would matter. We both deal in the same medium, information, but it is in what we seek to do with it that we are so fundamentally different. It's all been said above. Philafrenzy (talk) 11:09, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

That I'm not persuaded by arguments doesn't mean I've neglected them. Sorry, Philafrenzy, I appreciate your good intentions and your patient argument, but I'm still seeing the arguments as oversimplifications, and you repeatedly describe the role of Secretary as if it's something that requires editing Wikipedia pages. "Disparity in pay" is a red herring: plenty of our community have day jobs that pay all their bills and an involvement with WMUK that actually costs them a bit of money, but they're far more loyal to the chapter because they recognise and internalise its ideals. I think if you were to look at the objectives of almost any volunteer's day job, you'd find goals that are contrary to the Wikimedia movement. For example, educational institutions such as universities are increasingly focused on competition and on ownership of intellectual property. We manage that by judging volunteer contributions on their individual merit, or by having formal partnerships with narrow scopes of activity. MartinPoulter (talk) 12:09, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think I have explained above why this case is different Martin but I really feel that in this thread almost everything worth saying has now been said and we ought to turn our attention elsewhere. I haven't changed my views but it is evident that a motion of the type I mooted above would be unlikely to pass in an EGM and therefore I am withdrawing my support for an EGM. We will just have to rely on good old-fashioned vigilance. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

BCS Women invites you to their Festival of Wikipedia for Ada Lovelace day

Hello everyone, thought you might be interested to see that BCS Women, a part of the Chartered Institute of IT, is hosting a Festival of Wikipedia as a part of this year's Ada Lovelace Day celebrations. There are sessions in Edinburgh, London and Southampton and they are being delivered in association with Wikimedia UK. You can find more details here. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

And here! Especially if you are available as a trainer. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 11:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK spreads the word about GLAM showcase stories in Poland

Dear All,

We have been invited to participate in the openGLAM Conference 2013 - Open Cultural Resources. The main purpose of the conference is to present outstanding examples of implemented initiatives as well as to discuss the benefits - and challenges - of openness. I am able to attend and show Polish GLAMs how they can benefit from the partnerships with Wikimedia using examples from the UK. I'd love to get suggestions from you as for what would be the best examples to present. Wikimedia Poland has been particularly interested in the Wikimedian in Residence programme, but any other suggestions are welcome!

Many thanks - Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 11:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Migration of the UK Wiki on 27th September 2013

If I could direct your attention to this page on Wikimedia UK's site: WMUK wiki migration

It contains the details of the migration, the impact it will have on users of the UK wiki who have user accounts, and how the old wiki will be archived as a read only document. You will also see a site notice go live for the next two weeks reminding readers to do the following...

The most important things to do in the next two weeks are:

• Enable email from other users
• Download your watch list text before the migration (put in your diary for the day before)

Following the migration you will need to:

• Check your email for your new password to a stub account on the migrated site
• Reimport your watch list data
• Update your bookmarks in your browser or phone
• Log any emerging errors on our bugzilla - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org.uk/

The above is only necessary if you currently have a registered user account.

If you don't have an account on the UK wiki but follow this list then, why not register? Logged in users can interact better with other members of the community around Wikimedia UK business by adding agendas and topic pages to their watch list and staying up to day with chapter business :-)

Any questions, fire away here, on my talk page, or email me katherine.bavagewikimedia.org.uk. NB I am on annual leave 16th - 20th inclusive, so will ask other members of staff and User:Kelson to keep an eye out and respond in my absence! Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 13:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could do a quick note explaining how users can import watchlist data. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

This is in the linked to page at WMUK wiki migration. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I have just switched over to the new site, and have to say that from my perspective the transfer was really smooth. Many thanks to all who worked hard to make that happen. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 05:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again to all who worked on this. One problem that remains regards people using the old site and either missing out on updates on the new site or trying to make edits and getting confused. We have updated the banners on the old site to try and signpost this better and put a striking graphic on the old home page but if anyone has any other ideas about how we can help this process post away. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 12:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I've made the notice a bit bigger. ;-) If anyone can figure out how to use {{FULLPAGENAME}} in a site notice, it would be good to add that to the end of the top URL so it's easy to click through to the correct new page here... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

What should our volunteer space look like?

In the London office we have always tried to make volunteers feel welcome with places to sit (or slump in the case of bean bags), wireless, coffee, bics etc but are we getting it right?

In October we are re-designing our space and hope to make some changes that might give us the chance to offer volunteers more of what they fancy?

At the moment we have:

• Sitting area
• Spares screens and keyboards
• Spare laptops
• Wifi of decent quality
• A slide scanner
• AN SLR camera with accessories
• A DV camera with accessories
• Digital recording equipment

Amongst other suggestions we have had are to establish s small reference library to help with editing.

What would you like to see? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 13:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

On the topic of the reference library, I've started to bring in some of the books I own about the First World War so that they can be used as sources for any interested in doing some editing on this topic, particularly around the centenary. Do let me know if you're interested and I can provide a list. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:47, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

A list of equipment currently available for volunteer use can be seen at Volunteer equipment, while a list of books currently owned by the chapter can be seen at Library. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 14:47, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Beanbags are nice for lounging, but for those hoping to pop in and work with a laptop a couple of desks would be most useful. And some chairs to go with them. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

We'll have a couple more of those - maybe enough space for 12 or 14 desks (up from ten). In addition, we'll be paying per sq ft, not per desk, so this will be something we can do without spending too much more. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 15:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Registration for EduWiki Conference 2013 is now open

Hello everyone, just a quick note to let you know that registration for our 2013 EduWiki Conference is now open. The conference takes place on 1 & 2 November in Cardiff. You can find all of the details, including the registration information, here. We're looking forward to seeing you all there. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Signpost discussion

Note ongoing discussion between Stevie and myself, concerning the York Museums Trust Wikipedian in Residence job, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-09-11/In_the_media Andreas JN 14:37, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

For those interested in the discussion, I've added a further response which I hope is helpful. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Basically, the upshot of the conversation from my point of view is that

1. it would make sense to co-ordinate publicity with partner institutions, so the public does not gain the impression that WMUK is funding institutions' self-promotion;
2. if we have money to spend, we should focus less on broadening Wikipedia's coverage of niche subjects, and more on enhancing the quality of pages that both (a) attract high page views AND (b) cover topics that it is important for Wikipedia to get right (e.g. medical advice, including drugs advice and sex education, legal advice, "vital articles", etc.)

If we use donors' funds, we should prioritise projects in a way that ensures both that the largest possible number of readers profit, and that the improvements are as significant as possible from an educational point of view. I would like to see WMUK expand the Wikipedian-in-Residence concept beyond the GLAM area, paying subject matter experts in reputable educational organisations to monitor and contribute to important articles and topic areas in Wikipedia.

Further discussion welcome. Best, Andreas JN 12:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Note recent comments from Sue Gardner. Stand-out quote for me:

• Last year, WMF spent US$ 4.71 million in FDC annual plan grants, excluding WMF (US$ 5.65 million for all grants), and is projected to increase this up to as much as US$ 6 million this year for FDC annual plan grants (US$ 8 million overall in grants). That's a lot of money. While the Program Evaluation and Design, and Grantmaking Learning and Evaluation teams at WMF will be supporting the FDC in understanding the impact of global Wikimedia programs, there is currently not much evidence suggesting this spending is significantly helping us to achieve the Wikimedia mission. I believe we're spending a lot of money, more than is warranted by the results we've been seeing.

Before donations are spent, there ought to be a process of prioritisation, based on quantifiable reader benefit – using criteria such as number of readers that will benefit, degree of improvement, importance of the information, etc.

I read what Sue says here as a startlingly clear admission that she believes donations are not being spent wisely and effectively – and that is what donors are promised in the fundraisers. --Andreas JN 04:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

"paying subject matter experts in reputable educational organisations" is not a suitable use of donor money. Those experts are already paid, usually by the taxpayer or by charitable funds. They already have a push from funders to engage with the public or to open up education. It's not a sustainable model for Wikipedian's 24 million articles, or even a relatively small subset, to have experts paid from donor money to monitor them. What is feasible is for Wikimedia UK to do training and outreach which overcomes the barriers to these experts engaging with Wikipedia routinely. That way, small amounts of donor money leverage (horrible word, but it's appropriate) large amounts of non-donor money and effort.

A relatively large proportion of our outreach is already in the medical sector, and it looks like something will be happening with Bristol NHS in the coming year. Different people have different views on what is important knowledge to preserve and disseminate: if you want to tell arts and humanities academics, librarians or curators that their fields aren't important, be my guest. I don't think you speak for all donors on this matter.

Some consideration of marginal impact has to be made when using funds and effort, and the marginal effect on what you call a "niche" such as a local museum can be much greater than medical or scientific areas where huge sums of public and charitable money are already being spent on informing and engaging the public. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Those huge sums may be spent on informing and engaging the public, but they are not spent on improving Wikipedia, which is what our donors' money should be spent on. If you can create a paid position in York Museum, you can also create a paid position staffed by an actual expert in an educational institution to assess Wikipedia coverage of key topic areas. The benefit to the public will be infinitely greater than paid work on some niche area. It's about leveraging funds to best effect. Andreas JN 15:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, has the WiR for York been selected yet? Andreas JN 15:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi Andreas. Leaving aside your other points, the York Museums Trust Wikimedian in Residence has been provisionally appointed (after an open recruitment process) and we hope to be in a position to properly announce this soon - hopefully by the end of this week. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Open House December 10th.

For your diaries:

We will be repeating last year's successful (NOT A CHRISTMAS PARTY) Open House for the community and friends at our offices on Tuesday December 10th from 4pm until 8ish

Refreshments will be provided but if you can bring a bottle or snack (we still remember Johnbod's smoked salmon last year) it would be appreciated! Come and enjoy a chance to chew over the past year and the exciting one to come.

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 12:48, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Cornwall

I am in discussions with a Cornish museum about a possible tripod friendly event for photographers. Is anyone in or near Cornwall and willing to be the Wikimedia UK host for such an event? If so please drop me an email. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 14:18, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Loves monuments anomalies

I've been fixing some of the anomalies that have been coming in through Wiki Loves monuments in the UK, and I think it is fair to assume from the entries that are neither grade I nor grade II* that the community wants this scheme extended to scheduled Ancient Monuments, or at least Stonehenge, and also to Grade II listed buildings. Perhaps we can add both next year? We also seem to have some monuments coming in with a different coding system. British Listed Buildings uses English Heritage Building ID: 407791 this seems to equate to the UID field. Would it be possible to modify the bot so that it uses that field where the ID doesn't match the List entry Number? WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:47, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with Grade II listings is that there are an awful lot of them -- imagine the work we have all put in maintaining lists, etc, x10, and you'd be close the overall amount of work (okay, if we did it again we'd be better at it, but you know what I mean). I agree that some expansion should occur, we just don't want to bite off more than we can chew.

Not sure what you mean by "Would it be possible to modify the bot so that it uses that field where the ID doesn't match the List entry Number?" The UID is used throughout for all English listed buildings (Scotland, Wales & NI maintain their own numbering systems. Jarry1250 (talk) 22:42, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Here's one I fixed manually. Basically there are two coding systems, we use one but some of our images are coming in using the other codes. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 11:48, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I just followed the 'upload another image' link from the table in question and the correct list entry number was used. I'm not sure why that particular file had an incorrect one. I'll ask Richard Symonds if he knows what happened. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

First ever Northern Ireland meetup

This is close to being scheduled. Can anyone suggest a NI event around which to organise the meetup? In Belfast ideally. It could be as simple as an informal trip to a local museum in the morning (a Sunday) followed by a meetup in the pub from 1.00. Or a photo compettion of some kind. It needn't be a full editathon. Possibly Ulster Museum. The placeholder page is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Northern_Ireland/1 Philafrenzy (talk) 18:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that idea is spot on, except that (for me at least) a Saturday would be preferable. I could do a meetup on Saturday evening, followed by a museum trip on Sunday morning, or both parts on Saturday. I think it would be best to do everything on the same day. Sunday afternoon is no good for me because I would have to fly back to Liverpool, and then drive home. (Theoretically I could stay off the drink, but...)

So I suggest a visit to Ulster Museum at 10.30 on Saturday with a best-photo-uploaded-to-Commons competition thrown in for good measure, followed by a trip to the pub for a normal Wikimeet at 1pm. No obligation to do both parts. In terms of a pub, the Bot (anic Inn) is handy for the museum, and it might be OK for an early afternoon pint, but it's likely to get really busy and loud later on, so perhaps the Wetherspoons (Bridge House) might be the best place for the main meetup (free wifi, good value, and no music).

I think October is too soon, and December is too Christmasey, so that leaves November. The 16th is a no-go for me, so I reckon the 9th or 23rd would be best. What do you think? Bazonka (talk) 20:18, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I have scheduled it for Saturday 23rd. A Saturday may not be to everyone's taste but we can always split it into a Saturday photo competition and a Sunday meetup if necessary. If it takes off it could even became a Belfast Wikimedia Weekend! Philafrenzy (talk) 13:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK now has the lowest membership total this quarter on record for more than two years

Fellow members may recall that I created the page Membership/numbers when I was a trustee as, even as a board member, these numbers seemed hard to get hold of and the decline was rationalized as database problems. You can see the trend in the table now showing the charity is at a record low. For the entire time I was a trustee I attempted to use membership as a key performance indicator and when we employed Jon Davies two years ago, agreeing and reporting KPIs, such as membership, was a top level commitment written into his terms of reference. As far as I am aware, verifiable and accountable KPIs are still to be agreed.

I see this the declining membership as an urgent issue, and I suspect there has been a matching failure to grow volunteer numbers in any significant way but no numbers get reported in any reliable fashion. The CEO has full responsibility and authority to fulfil the strategic plan to grow the volunteer base and ensure a solid membership for a volunteer centric charity. Despite generous funding from the WMF of more than £700,000 and a current staff complement of 9, this has failed to happen over the last two years. The most recent board minutes do not mention this as a problem or risk, neither did the public reports from the CEO or the fundraising report (which I assume covers membership).

I welcome other members to express a view as to the direction the charity is going with regard to openness and accountability, and whether the CEO should be accountable using these most simple and basic key performance indicators, and be questioned by the board of trustees on how he has improved them at each board meeting, rather than being assessed on apparently subjective and unmeasurable claims of success. --Fæ (talk) 19:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea why these numbers are so low, who should be accountable for it or what the "right" membership number is for an organisation of this type, however, I am absolutely sure that it is not 165 or 200 or anything like that. It looks wrong and feels wrong to have so few members with such a budget and so many staff. A higher membership would mean more voices, more volunteers, more brains and more potential trustees. In the 2013 strategy day there was a presentation showing 5750 monthly direct debits. That's 5750 people who are prepared to pay money to Wikimedia UK. I understand there is a problem collecting membership dues at the same time as donations but that's 5750 individuals who one would think are keen enough to pay £5 for membership. Has anyone emailed them and asked them to join? Should we consider abolishing/reducing the subs or making it a one off payment for life membership? Could the board please review this urgently and make increasing membership a strategic priority? Philafrenzy (talk) 21:30, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

You may find the discussion in May helpful, when I last explained the history and past expectations of the board (not the current board) for strategic membership growth—see Water_cooler/2013#How_can_the_Board_of_Trustees_measure_WMUK's_performance_as_an_organization? where the main response to this problem was "we're doing OK and we have better things to come", however since then when we were using a membership total of 272, we have suffered a drop of another 50 members. --Fæ (talk) 22:36, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not unusual for a charity to have more donations than members - people largely are happy handing over money, but actively avoid participation. Which is fine. Looking at the figures, that is a major drop - but IIRC we picked up a massive boost of members from the fundraiser we ran for the WMF, which we unfortunately were unable to do last year (because of Fæ and others). So I'm guessing natural wastage from that? --ErrantX (talk) 07:02, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You are attempting to blame me for WMUK withdrawing from the fundraiser and the decline in memberships rather than your boss, the CEO, who is actually paid to do this stuff and has full operational authority and responsibility to deliver the strategy and been given every resource he ever asked for to do it? Irrelevant rubbish. The fact is that Chris Keating ran a vote of trustees to withdraw from the fundraiser a few hours after a closed meeting with the WMF CEO and WMF Legal, a meeting that Chris Keating denied me access to and failed to publish any record of. I was neither invited nor given access to vote (making it an invalid vote of the board per the articles of the charity). The decision and the reasons behind it given in emails from the WMF CEO had nothing to do with me, apart from the fact that I advised the board, multiple times, to take legal advice before making such decisions, which Chris Keating and Jon Davies ignored.

Membership is in rapid decline and the trend has been obvious and predictable for anyone that either examined the top level figures or was prepared to forecast based on dates of expiring memberships. There is no excuse for anyone to be surprised considering how I highlighted it at every board meeting whilst I was a trustee. --Fæ (talk) 08:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

There should be a zero on the end of those numbers with WMUK's budget, staff and profile. A higher membership would reduce the democratic deficit here and help to avoid the risk of groupthink by the board because they have heard too few dissenting voices. If only a handful of people contribute to each debate it is easy to dismiss dissenters as just the usual "awkward squad" and eventually those voices become a form of static that the board does not hear at all. Philafrenzy (talk) 09:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

+1 it seems routine to shoot the messenger and hide problems away with in-camera meetings, only speaking after carefully crafting a response analysis on the Office wiki, as if we were the Tory party, rather than frankly discuss a problem with members. Not the innovative and open charity we hoped to create back when Andrew was our Chairman. --Fæ (talk) 09:40, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll observe here that there is one conversation to have about our membership, why our membership goes up and down, and what we can do about it (and indeed other governance issues). There is another conversation to have where Fae hurls bricks at me over my perceived failings as Chair over the last year and a bit. I am asking our staff to deal with the first conversation only, and I am also going to say as little as possible in response to the bricks that are being hurled at me: I think my record and Fae's can be allowed to speak for themselves. The Land (talk) 14:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Excellent idea. Certainly asking our staff to stop attempting to make it appear that I am somehow responsible for the current decline in membership or your decision to withdraw from the fundraiser, when the facts are easily demonstrable otherwise and on record with the charity, would be helpful. As for up and down, the steep drop over the period of Jon's tenure as our CEO in the official figures from 330 members to 220 members, is hard to brush off as either acceptable variance or database anomalies. Rather than focusing on me, I'm just an unpaid volunteer with no authority or responsibility, you may want to focus on the CEO's performance, a duty you bear on behalf of the members. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Fae, it's simply incorrect to state that membership is in rapid decline. There was a big drop around May/June of this year when the membership of many people that joined when Wikimedia UK last took part as a payment processor in the WMF annual fundraiser expired (12 months membership + 6 months grace). Since then, membership numbers have in fact been slowly increasing. Of course we would like the number to increase more quickly, and the board at its meeting this month agreed the volunteering strategy as a plan of action towards increasing the number of both volunteers and members. To point to just one outcome of the strategy, we have a newly designed member / volunteer recruitment leaflet that has just gone to print. This will help to inform potential volunteers and members of our activities and how they can get involved with the charity. The community does need to consider whether it's appropriate, or desirable, for the charity to offer benefits to members that are only available for members. Successive boards have decided that we as a charity does not wish to discriminate against non-members by offering any members-only benefit beyond voting rights and the ability to apply for project grants. If the community believes significantly increasing our membership is a priority for the charity, then having significant and identifiable members-only benefits will certainly help.

For reference, you also asserted that this issue was not covered in either the last board meeting or in the fundraising report. I'm not quite sure how you reach these inaccurate conclusions. It was in fact referred to as major risk 3 in the CEO's report on the risk register. It is also, very clearly, mentioned in the fundraising report. To quote:

“Membership planning – Numbers had plateaued prior to the donor newsletter which recruited some new sign up. The volunteering portal and recruitment leaflet will help when available from the end of September, and welcome emails will be updated to reflect this. The new database will mean we can have better sign up/renewals options online. The delegated approvals system has worked well, meaning members can receive confirmation of joining within 48 hours, maintaining momentum and hopefully improving engagement." Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 17:09, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Though the Fundraising report mentions the topic of membership, it does not highlight this issue (or mention the numbers), such as the fact we are at the lowest membership this quarter for more than two years, as Mike Peel's graph on Membership/numbers now clearly shows (the graph makes it reasonable to conclude that membership is actually running at a three year low). Similarly the CEO's report does not mention this as an issue (issues are risks that have happened) and the CEO did not highlight this for the board to review in the meeting, the point of the CEO's "five top risks" section in the report (something that only happened after I repeatedly asked for it to be included) is that these are the risks that the trustees will consider in the board meeting. The detailed risk report is separate from the CEO's report. As for asking the community what it believes with regard to membership numbers, good idea, however this always was considered a key performance indicator for the CEO and after two years in the job, having membership significantly lower now that when he started is a problem that the board of trustees must take seriously due to the resulting "democratic deficit" as Philafrenzy mentions and the increased risk of entryism, especially considering how easy and cheap it is to set up fake memberships to manipulate a vote of members for anyone who fancies getting their pal on the board as a trustee or just to cause cost and disruption by legally forcing the board to call another EGM using a handful of votes.

What is needed here is a commitment to new action, rather than reiterating that "we are doing okay" and a rethink of the current organization which has failed to deliver measurable growth over the last two years against expectations (or any published strategy) despite having 9 staff and £700,000, with the same budget again requested in the 2014 pipeline.

For those that have not thought through the figures yet, during Jon's tenure the charity quadrupled its budget, went from 1 employee to 9 and yet there is no evidence that numbers of long term active volunteers has increased (in fact the only estimated numbers available appear to show this decreased) and numbers of members of the charity has dropped from 330 to 220 rather than growing. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 04:44, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

This thread really is extraordinary. Last year this charity received negative press coverage about not one but two of its recent chairmen - the two before the no current chair and both still trustees at the time that the news became public. One of these only resigns as chair after there are moves by the membership to call an EGM after the board fail to force the issue. The other's conflict of interest leads to the charity having to hire in external consultants to advise them on how to not let something like it happen again. It would have been surprising if a substantial proportion of the membership had not failed to renew. And yet, when the figures are revealed, one of those recent chairmen complains and objects to any suggestion than he might have had a teensy-weensy bit of influence on this drop.

The remaining members of the current committee do share some of the blame for not nipping things in the bud. The poor press coverage was entirely predictable. However loyalty is in its way admirable. Fae is right that Jon has a measure of blame for not meeting the charity's growth targets. A major point in paying £60K, or whatever it is, for an experienced charity executive is to have them point out to the inexperienced trustees when they are heading for trouble. Instead it appears that the trustee who saw the impending difficulties with Roger's COI was left feeling unsupported by Jon and ended up resigning. However, given that the way that Jon damaged the membership figures was by not pushing for Roger and Fae to go, it is absurd for Fae to be criticizing him for the loss of numbers.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:47, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

"Saddening" was the word I had in mind actually. Saddening that the point of this thread has been lost in all the vitriol and personality clashes. If everybody (and sorry Fae, but I'm talking to you in particular) put their opinions on individuals to one side, we could have an intelligent discussion on membership, its purpose, and how or whether we should be recruiting new members. If you all want to carry on blaming each other for this, that, and the other and making this a personal issue about Jon, Chris, Fae, or anybody else, please do so elsewhere (Wikipediocracy comes to mind—in-fighting like this serves nobody but our critics); if anybody wants to make an intelligent comment about membership without playing the blame game and without attacking anybody else, I suggest you do so below this thread. Harry Mitchell (talk) 11:44, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If I may quote myself from above: "It looks wrong and feels wrong to have so few members with such a budget and so many staff. A higher membership would mean more voices, more volunteers, more brains and more potential trustees. In the 2013 strategy day there was a presentation showing 5750 monthly direct debits. That's 5750 people who are prepared to pay money to Wikimedia UK. I understand there is a problem collecting membership dues at the same time as donations but that's 5750 individuals who one would think are keen enough to pay £5 for membership. Has anyone emailed them and asked them to join? Should we consider abolishing/reducing the subs or making it a one off payment for life membership?" Philafrenzy (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

That's an interesting suggestion, thanks. Personally, I'd like to see a discussion about what the purpose of membership is and how we recruit members. I think the statistics above show that signing up members by asking them to tick a box when they donate during the fundraiser wasn't the best idea, in that it leads to an ostensibly large but uninvolved and apathetic membership which plummets 18 months later. Harry Mitchell (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. There are two issues here. 1) Achieving a higher membership base 2) Communicating regularly in order to encourage participation to address the democratic deficit that may result in bad decisions being taken in good faith by the board because they are operating in a bubble of mutual agreement with too few opinions being heard. (I know they don't always agree, far from it). Philafrenzy (talk) 13:52, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there any legal requirement to charge anything for membership or at any particular frequency? Members don't actually get anything tangible for membership and many are also donors anyway so why charge anything? The costs of collecting the money may exceed the subs. Obviously, precautions would need to be taken to prevent entryism. It would be useful if someone from the Chapter with knowledge of the legal position could comment on these matters. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:28, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

There are charities that give membership as part of other things (paying for entry to an event for example), however we have always been wary of how the articles are currently worded. If you have 2,000 members instead of 200 then the articles would need to change as the percentage of the membership required to vote to make changes would probably have to adapt as membership grows as the percentage interested in voting will drop, or you need two classes of members (some other chapters realistically handle votes at general meetings this way). There is a second issue of the fact that members are not verified, which means that free or even cheaper membership might encourage larger numbers of people using fake names. According to Stone King, our membership charge at £5 was already remarkably low compared to equivalent organizations with similar issues. --Fæ (talk) 14:38, 28 September 2013 (UTC).

• Info: <Postings removed here> This thread is for objective discussion of membership numbers only. Anyone using the thread to criticise or attack individuals can expect to be blocked. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If free membership is too vulnerable to entryism, what about a £10 lifetime membership (or for a 5 or 10 year term)? This would avoid the annual admin chore of needing to renew which probably costs £5 per member in staff time to organise, and as many don't renew now there might not be a significant loss in revenue. Contact with members would then focus on news and involvement rather than collecting small sums of money. It would also avoid the mass cancellation of membership each year because people have forgotten to renew. Are we really sure those people aren't interested? Enthusiasm can wax and wane and people have many calls on their time. Do we keep in contact with the ones that don't renew? If not, I think we should. It costs little to send them a newsletter. CK would be the expert here in keeping in contact with people on a long term basis. Philafrenzy (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes! Extending the membership term sounds like a great idea. Yaris678 (talk) 18:34, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Possible editathon - Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Hello everyone. As you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I'm in discussion with a breast cancer charity at the moment about a training session / editathon in London towards the end of October. Please do let me know if you're interested in attending as a trainer or volunteer. I'll share further details as they emerge. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:28, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello again. Following some discussion, this event is definitely taking place. It's provisionally lined up for 22 October and I'd love to recruit a couple of volunteer trainers to help on the day. If anyone is interested please do let me know. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:52, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

WMUK programme for 2014-15

Our application to the FDC (the funding committee of the Wikimedia Foundation) for next year has now been submitted. Thanks to everyone who helped.

It is based on the board's agreed budget and contains quite a bit of detail. It is however not carved in stone. We will have a great deal of flexibility within our programmes and we will be asking the community where our emphasis should be as we plan the work for next year.

I hope you find it interesting.

Have a good weekend and make any comments or ask any questions here.

Jon.

Interwiki prefix from outside

What is the new interwiki prefix to reach this site from elsewhere? For example, on both English Wikipedia and Meta, it used to be possible to use [[wmuk:Events]] to reach the Events page here, but that no longer works - it still points to the old site. --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 20:42, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Let see if it's possible to get the WMF interwiki table updated to reflect the new address. -- KTC (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I have requested an update at m:Talk:Interwiki_map#wmuk. -- KTC (talk) 21:06, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Changes made at m:Interwiki map [2]. Actual update to the WMF database will happen whenever someone with access run the necessary script. -- KTC (talk) 21:31, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I am still having trouble with links made before the migration; they still are linking to pages on the old site with the wmuk prefix. The above response sounds like it should be automatically directed to the page on the new site, unless I've misunderstood? Advice would be appreciated; for now I've just used an external link for events pages. ACrockford (talk) 10:27, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

No, the interwiki links from WMF site have not been updated yet. The process for updating such prefixes on WMF sites involves an admin on Meta-Wiki updating m:Interwiki map. Someone with Foundation database access then come along once a while and run a script copying what's on the wiki page into the Foundation's server database for all its wikis. The first bit have happened, the second not. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 10:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha - I'd just misinterpreted the previous message. Will make do for the time being then! ACrockford (talk) 11:32, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Will the office be open during Wikimania?

It's a bit far off but does anyone know if the WMUK will be operating and open for visitors during Wikimania 2014? I noticed it was not far from the Barbican and it's possible that people may want to have a look. On the other hand, there's a good chance everyone from WMUK will be at Wikimania. If it will be open, I was thinking of adding it to Wikivoyage:Wikimania 2014 London Guidebook. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:21, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, that's a sensible question. Yes, the office will be open. Most staff will be at the conference but we will be making the office space open and available, too. And we like having visitors! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:33, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Cool. I've added a listing under "Do". It's slightly off the edge of the embedded slippy-map but not too far (and visible on the big one). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 14:17, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

That's great Adam, thank you for doing that. Much appreciated. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Migration bugs: Scripts, styles and NavPopups on this new wiki

I've just copied my en.wp user CSS and user JS over to here (CSS, JS), but they're not being imported in the header.

Also, I enabled the Gadget Navigation popups and hovering over things gives me the popup menu, but without the styling (so a transparent div with an unordered list of links) and without the onmouseout event (so it never goes away).

I'm guessing these are just teething things; is there somewhere better I should be posting this kind of problem or should I just put them here? — OwenBlacker (Talk) 16:18, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Popups never worked properly on the UK wiki. I'll look into why when I have time. -- KTC (talk) 19:46, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Announcing new WMUK trustees

The board of Wikimedia UK is pleased to be able to announce today the co-option for a two year term of two new trustees, Carol Campbell and Kate West, both of whom have specialist expertise. Carol has extensive experience of volunteer organisations and brings strong conflict-management and relationship-building skills to the board. She was previously Cathedral Executive Officer at Ely Cathedral. Kate is Chief Operating Officer at the Electoral Reform Society, and brings strong governance, management, policy and planning skills. We welcome them both.

Further extension of the board can be expected soon, particularly with a view to increasing the proportion of trustees who are active members of the Wikimedia community. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Preparations for EduWiki 2013

Preparations for EduWiki Conference 2013 are now in full swing. The event will take place on 1-2 November 2013 in Cardiff. Registration is open until 20 October and a number of different rates are available. Details about accommodation options at and around the conference venue have also been released. A limited budget to support scholarships for the conference has been allocated and applications; please contact Daria Cybulska (daria.cybulskawikimedia.org.uk) by Monday 7 October to apply.

We are also in the process of trialing a conference information mobile app called EventSpark, which is being developed by a potential Wikimania 2014 sponsor. More on this in the coming days - i.e. as soon as we have something concrete to share with the public.

Kindly direct any personal questions or concerns to me. We hope to see many members of the WMUK community at the conference, especially those who live within easy traveling distance from Cardiff. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 10:14, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

When you say EventSpark are a potential "Wikimania 2014 sponsor", does this mean that that money will be changing hands. Will WMUK be in receipt of any funds? Having looked at their app, it seems to be some form of advertising ("It’s now easy to feature and sell your space online."), possibly in competition with WikiVoyager. Whilst I can understand it would give them an enormous boost to have it promoted at Wikimania 2014, I am not quite sure what either WMUK or the wider Wikimedia community get from this trialing? Leutha (talk) 22:28, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any money changing hands nor whether this may or may not happen in the future. WMUK will certainly not be in receipt of any funds from this arrangement in relation to EduWiki. WMUK has agreed to be involved in this as a way to support Wikimania 2014, since the request came from that event's main organisers. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 14:39, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

EventSpark is in fact a different product by a different company - the one we're thinking of using is a conference support app similar to something like http://www.eventmobi.com/. The sponsorship element would involve in-kind donation of their app as a service. EdSaperia (talk) 11:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Training for Trustees

It is great to see some new trustees come on board, but unfortunately I have recently found myself in a situation where it seems that a trustee has not really grasped what is meant by "attribution" in the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Creative license (This license says that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work" (emphasis added). As Carol Campbell and Kate West have not arisen from within the community, I would suggest they are provided with some training in this. It may well also be useful to provide some refresher training for existing trustees to help them better exercise their responsibilities in this area. Leutha (talk) 22:16, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that will be included in the induction for Carol and Kate, and refreshers can easily be provided for anyone who needs it. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Why have the Water cooler?

I wonder if it might be a moment to think about why we have the [cooler] and how we can use it best.

I see it as two things. Firstly a forum for discussion and debate and secondly a notice board for ideas, events and activities.

But a few questions:

How can we get more people involved? We counted less than 20 people using it in a six month period.

How can we make it more manageable? The scrolling has become a little out of control.

Are there postings, and I put this in the kindest way possible, that might be better as direct enquiries to the person concerned? Some of the postings are so arcane that they could better be answered off-wiki.

And one final question - can we make it more friendly? Even as I type this I wonder whether I am putting my neck on the line for a good chopping. It shouldn't be like that. If people see lots of negativity they will be put off and miss out on all the stuff we share. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 10:32, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There is a fairly easy way to make it more manageable, auto archive all discussions that haven't had a post in 7 days. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 10:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Not sure that would eliminate the excessive scrolling because on the current page today that would archive next to nothing and the excessive scrolling would remain practically as is. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 11:04, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Richard N did a big archiving session manually this morning, if he hadn't there would have been threads with stuff from August. But we can probably collapse some threads. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 13:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I knew there was something more to your suggestion than meets the eye! :-) --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 13:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

"We counted less than 20 people using it in a six month period" - this is a natural symptom of failing to increase the membership of the charity, or increase numbers of volunteers (two years ago we expected the numbers of volunteers to grow exponentially and organically, we never dreamed the charity would remain effectively static +/-20%). If we only have 80 active volunteers who work with the charity (not counting those that are being paid to contribute), then the likelihood is that you would be doing fantastically well to have 25% of them writing here about anything, or even reading this forum. --Fæ (talk) 11:24, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Should it be visible only to members? That might be one way to make membership more distinct from non-membership, though it wouldn't necessarily make it more friendly as people might speak even more frankly out of the public gaze. I am in favour of openness but not sure why this particular forum necessarily has to be a public one? Philafrenzy (talk) 11:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Benefits for members is something to consider, but closing forums without a solid reason to do so, goes against the mission of this charity. --Fæ (talk) 11:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I understand but there seems to be nowhere here where the membership can have a robust debate without washing our dirty linen in public. It's not like we all go to the same place of work or have a regular meeting everyone attends. How do other chapters handle it? Philafrenzy (talk) 12:01, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Other chapters handle it with some difficulty too. Some chapters have a 'members only' wiki, others have an online forum for discussion, rather than a wiki. Would enabling some of the features of Mediawiki help - such as Flow when it's ready, or Echo? These tend to make the wiki easier to use, and might encourage more outside input. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 12:18, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how enabling echo could be a bad thing, regardless of whether it is an answer to this question or not. I don't have any experience of using Flow, but if its like Liquid Threads then its unlikely to help anything.
One possibility to solve the scrolling problem would be to have different pages for different topics, with this page being left for things that don't fit elsewhere - kind of like how the reference desks are organised at en.wp. If MediaWiki supports restricting read access to certain userlevels then some pages could be made members only if desired. This would require setting up a "members" class of user (not difficult) and assigning all WMUK members to it (potentially tricky to identify all as you are not required to disclose your username when registering) and unless automatable there would be a delay between becoming a member and getting access to the members only pages, at least for those joining outside office hours. Really though I think only things that cannot be discussed in public should be members only - I imagine the COI discussion would additionally attract accusations relating to hiding things if held in a members only venue for example. Having members only pages might encourage increasingly more things to be members only though, which I'm not generally in favour of.
Another option would be to set up a forum additional to this wiki. MediaWiki is a fantastic wiki platform but it's very poor at being a forum because it isn't one and was never designed with that usecase in mind. Things like event signups work well on wiki pages, and would remain here but threaded discussion would move to the forum. If you choose to do that, make sure before it goes live that there are no copyright, licensing or T&C impediments to the two-way copying of posting between venues. Ideally you'd choose a forum platform that can be closely integrated with the wiki, but I don't know to what extent that is possible.
In terms of reach, fæ has a point but I suggest that simply not being able to access some of the discussions presently here would not be a sufficient draw, on its own, to a significant number of people and that not being able to access any of these discussions would result in fewer people becoming members - this page is what finally prompted me to join for example (although I'm still waiting for confirmation of membership). Accordingly I suggest that for now we treat them as separate questions - if we increase the membership without coresponding activity here from those new users then we can revisit it. If we get changes here right then in theory it should be equally attractive to new and existing members. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:10, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this discussion has missed something (speaking as somebody who keeps a lazy eye on the recent changes on this wiki but doesn't really follow the water cooler). We like to think that lots of people read this page, but it's simply not the case. The main forum for discussion of WMUK-related things and Wikimedia-related things in the UK is the mailing list (I know some people like to think that's not so because they think WMUK should control everything, which seems to have been the the idea behind the migration of this wiki, but it's a fact). The 20 people using the water cooler (other than trustees and staff, and the handful of volunteers who look at this wiki on a regular basis) were probably drawn here from posts to the mailing list. Personally, I find the mailing list is easier for people to use and easier to keep up with, but some people really don't like mailing lists, so it's worth having both, but the number of people who follow the water cooler who aren't on the mailing list could probably be counted on one hand.

Whether the water cooler has the potential to be a more lively forum depends on whether we can define its purpose and how we advertise discussions here, but I would respectfully suggest that duplicating posts to the mailing list isn't the answer, and neither is posting messages here and not on the mailing list. I would imagine that increased use of the water cooler would be a symptom of larger and more involved volunteer and membership bases, but it's not an end in itself. Harry Mitchell (talk) 17:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think Wikimedia UK needs a website

Wikimedia UK is perhaps alone within the charitable sector in the UK in that it does not have a conventional website. We do have plenty of information that is publicly available through our wiki but it is disorganised and lacks a proper information architecture. It is especially unwelcoming for new and potential volunteers as well as those people just interested in learning more about the work of the chapter. Wikis are at the heart of our activities and this is appropriate. However, I propose that we create a small, welcoming and friendly website that overlays our wiki. This would have its own design and would not generally be community editable (although the content would be written collaboratively). It would feature perhaps six or seven useful pages (see below) that would all link back to the wiki. The wiki would remain of fundamental importance as a place of collaboration, discussion and engagement.

It is important that useful information is quickly and easily available to people interested in our work but not experienced with wikis. This includes many of the significant number of people who are familiar with reading, but not editing, Wikimedia projects.

I understand that there may be some resistance to this approach given the importance of wikis to our work. However, for our charity to develop its base of volunteers and members we must be much more appealing to newcomers. By having a website overlaying the wiki we are making important information available to everyone rather than those familiar with the use of wikis. I would like to show respect for the community by encouraging volunteers to take part in drafting the content for the website if the proposal is accepted. Nothing is yet set in stone so I hope we can have a useful, friendly and open-minded discussion about this idea. Proposed pages would include:

• Home
• About us / about the movement
• How do wikis work?
• Volunteer / get involved / join us
• Publications page – cheatsheets, welcome booklet, commons booklet, education / GLAM booklets etc
• Contact us (off-wiki but to also include on wiki information)
• Media page

Suggestions for further content are welcome although the idea is to keep it simple. In terms of design there is a need for the site to look modern, clean and visually attractive. It also needs to be as accessible as possible. I envisage a design with plenty of white space but with appropriate use of spot colour based on our brand colours. Each page will include a prominent link to the main page of the wiki and contact us pages as well as appropriate editable content / project / event pages on the wiki.

With a view to taking this forward I am looking to meet the MD of a leading local web design company who is interested in delivering some work on a pro bono basis. I believe that implementing a small website over the top of our wiki will make us an easier organisation to engage with while making us more attractive to volunteers, donors and the media. It will also help to reinforce our brand identity by being in keeping with printed collateral that we prepare in house or with a graphic designer. A side benefit is that we may even be able to implement some of the design elements from this website into the VLE although this is nothing more than conjecture on my behalf at this point.

Please do let me know what you think. I believe this would be a good move for Wikimedia UK and would make it much easier for people who aren't familiar with us to get involved in our activities. For context, WMDE have already taken this approach and I know that WMNL are working on something so this wouldn't be setting a precedent within the movement. I'm looking forward to receiving your constructive feedback. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a terrible idea. :-( This sort of thing doesn't need to be done separately from the wiki, and in a separate way - it can be done by having carefully designed wiki pages and navigation links/sidebar that provide structure for the rest of the content. Mike Peel (talk) 13:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we all take care with our pages. But I don't think it has worked so far. To outsiders it is impenetrable... Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:30, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The current home page is not obviously wrong to my eye, it looks quite professional and the wikiness of it ties in quite well with what we do actually. All the same links as proposed by Stevie seem to be there. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:54, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

+1 for Mike's point of view, along with the fact that if we lock editing away from volunteers we create cliques and artificial barriers. Wikimedia UK is not supposed to be like other charities. The norm for other charities is that every word on their websites gets reviewed or written by a paid staff member, working this way would be a long, long way away from the mission and values of charity that we created - neither would we be able to call the charity "volunteer-centric" any more. --Fæ (talk) 16:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The main page is already locked so that only admins can edit because it is an official page and the first place many people will encounter the charity, so editors are not losing any rights with the implementation of a site over the wiki. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:18, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Not only is the main page already locked but you'll notice that the content for any website would be collaboratively written with the community. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point - really, the main page should be unlocked a bit so that everyone can update things like the events list. Other pages that Stevie's talking about here aren't currently protected, though - e.g. Volunteer... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression that protection defaults to none. This means that protection only happens where there is a problem or there is unusual risk (such as a footer template that is transcluded on every page) and if the risk alleviates then protection periodically gets removed. If there are "official" pages, it would be good to have a category of those so they can be monitored and the numbers minimized to help avoid bureaucracy and ensure the site remains volunteer-centric. --Fæ (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

That's broadly the standard approach of enwp (and it is a very good approach), but I'm afraid that it isn't the approach that that we've been taking on this wiki so far (dating back to WMUK having its own wiki). We have been designating 'official' pages that only admins can edit for quite a long time. I do like the idea of a category that includes all protected pages on this wiki, though - is there an easy way to do this? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be a simple bot script, though having moved the wiki I am only assuming the API will work in an open manner as it does on Wikimedia sites and has not been restricted in some new way. However, you can browse existing protections by using this special page—tweak the parameters to suit. --Fæ (talk) 22:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Align left for readability. I think there's an important point here that's being missed and that is the audience for the website - people who aren't familiar with wikis. In my view we need something that is light, welcoming and clear for people who have just heard about the chapter and want to learn more. It's not established editors or volunteers. The wiki would be totally unaffected. And just to touch on the point about unlocking the main page. I don't think that would be sensible at all. The idea that anyone can come along and vandalise the main page of the charity's public facing website doesn't really bear thinking about. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 08:09, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The home page does seem light, welcoming, and clear to me. Do you have any evidence Stevie that people don't like it or find it confusing? I think this might be a lot of effort to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist. Don't we have enough real stuff to deal with? Philafrenzy (talk) 08:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

The evidence I have for this is anecdotal but may I suggest that as someone familiar with wikis that this would influence your opinion? As far as "real stuff" goes, we've been seeing a lot of discussion about engaging new members and volunteers. Somepeople have been expressing the view that we don't do enough to encourage people to get involved. I'd say this would be a step that we could take to make it easier to bridge the gap from someone hearing about the charity then taking the step to being a member. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 08:35, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

+1 for Philafrenzy's point. Though improving the website is a nice regular thing to work on, there is no evidence that changes had any impact on the numbers of volunteers or members, indeed the wiki has had many improvements over the last few years, especially the landing page and events list, but these had no tangible effect for which anyone could provide evidence, such as user stories. I suspect from several years worth of anecdotal evidence that wikimeets where volunteers talk about projects and problems with other volunteers, are far more powerful at engaging new volunteers. If we want to reverse the decline, and for membership to go back to as it was, 50% higher, before Jon's tenure as CEO, then radical changes are needed. I can only hope that the board of trustees are considering significant change rather than Pollyanna-ish plans to spend another £700,000 in 2014 by drawing a straight line, on the assumption that we are doing fine and things will get better without agreeing any solid performance indicators for the charity that would underpin a robust strategy that the CEO will be held against (robust means measurable, such as publishing a monthly count of the number of active volunteers against a growth plan, so we can see whether the trend is up or down from a count of 87 active volunteers in 2012). We were committed to double or quadruple the size of the charity as measured by the numbers of active volunteers, it is a shame that these targets were dropped when found inconvenient, rather than driving new approaches.

Wikimeets are volunteer-centric events that cost the charity nothing and many volunteer driven projects that are enthusiastically talked about at wikimeets (such as my upload of 100,000 images of Aircraft, the categorization of 2,000,000 UK photographs on Wikimedia Commons or the LGBT free media collective) cost the charity precisely nothing and take no staff budget to manage but are still the bread and butter of the Wikimedia movement. --Fæ (talk) 09:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

What do people think of other chapter websites? France Germany Netherlands Austria Switzerland

I would value some honest opinions? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 12:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Some are similar and some are slightly more glossy with greater use of graphics, but none are that different from ours. I would favour refining what we have, perhaps by making it slightly less cluttered, rather than a completely new site which will suck up everyone's time in arguing about the content. Are we embarrassed about using Wiki's? Please don't sacrifice usability and honesty for coolness. Isn't there also the point that if you create another corporate-style website for us we just become like all the rest? The current site is slightly geeky maybe but that might be distinctive? Isn't the clue in the name? Philafrenzy (talk) 12:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think a welcoming landing page is a good idea, even if all it did was link off in friendly ways to various wiki pages. I refer you to e.g. the homepage of The Wikimedia Foundation: http://www.wikimedia.org/. Experienced users of wikis screen out the sidebars and extraneous links, but virgin users do not, and it can certainly be offputting. A custom landing page could also be made to work well on mobile devices. I can't help but imagine Yahoo executives in 2000 deriding the design of Google's homepage. It's worth noting that a lot can be achieved visually with just wiki code. I am pretty sure you can hide almost everything if you try hard enough, so maybe that's a reasonable compromise. On the other hand, I don't think a welcoming language page should be very high on the list of priorities for WMUK staff time, because I think the vast majority of valuable volunteers will cut their teeth on wikis like en.wikipedia.org before discovering such a thing as WMUK exists, so perhaps we should focus on e.g. making more people aware that wikipedia is a site that even they can edit, rather than worrying about non-technical people who manage to somehow stumble onto a small organisation that supports some activities of a few volunteers. EdSaperia (talk) 02:39, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Note that the home page for the WMF is http://wikimediafoundation.org/ - http://www.wikimedia.org/ is more an index page for the projects. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:39, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Volunteer trainers needed

Martin Poulter looking for volunteer assistants for next week's Women In Science editathon at Oxford University, on the afternoon of Tuesday 15th:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_University_of_Oxford/AdaLovelaceDay2013

...and our first Veterinary Science editathon, in London on the afternoon of Wednesday 20th November

https://wiki.wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Veterinary_Science_editathon

He reminisces:

My serious involvement with Wikimedia UK started when I supported training at Cancer Research UK. More experienced and confident people than I delivered the training, and some of us helped one-to-one. That low-stress experience helped build confidence to where I could deliver training workshops myself, and so now I'm particularly interested in working with people who are taking their first steps.

If you are interested could you him: infobomb@gmail.com

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 16:30, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Who are our members and why did they join?

Following on from the membership discussion above, one thing that has just occurred to me is whether it is known why the existing WMUK members joined? If we know what attracted them we can go about doing/publicising more of those things. If we know why former members no longer are again we can see about either meeting their expectations or changing the publicity so we are not implying things we don't want to. How did they find out about WMUK?

If there is a breakdown of the membership by demographics then we can also use that to advise how we go about recruiting more members. It would be interesting and possibly useful to compare our membership with what is known about the general editor demographics of Wikipedia and of those actively engaged with the Wikimedia community as a whole and how we compare with other chapters (where that is known). Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:28, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

*Some* of this was covered in a members survey last year and I need to re-run that again soon at the end of this month. There is also a survey for people who have expired/cancelled which is sent ot everyone but I don't think has ever had much engagement (maybe, three responses in the last year?) If you'd be interested in helping draft the questions/look at the other data with me I'd be so grateful as I've never got enough time to do in-depth analysis like this. If you want to pop to the office at any point again soon we could chat about it or just catch up on IRC? I'm keen to have more useful info to inform everyone's discussions :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 09:18, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll pop into the office when I can next walk properly (hopefully just a trapped nerve) and see what I can do. I'm not a brilliant analyst, but I can maybe help. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 09:51, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Awesome and you can definitely help by being a sane extra pair of eyes :-) Dont come in if you're not well though - we can start on IRC? Is there a good time next week for you? Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 11:28, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Training the Trainers November 2013 event

Wikimedia UK is committed to supporting our volunteers and to encourage them to teach others how to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, we are running a weekend training workshop. This will take place on the weekend of 23—24 November 2013 in Cardiff. This session is targeted at volunteers in Wales and the immediate surrounding areas. We are especially interested in editors of Wicipedia Cymraeg who work through the Welsh language. However, both English and Welsh language editors will be welcomed.

The workshop will be delivered by a professional training company and aims to improve delegates’ abilities to deliver any training workshop. It’s especially relevant to anybody who already runs Wikimedia-related training, or is very interested in doing so in near future.

The workshop is a chance to:

• Get accredited and receive detailed feedback about your presenting and training skills
• Get general trainer skills which you can then apply when delivering specific Wikipedia workshops
• Share your skills with others
• Help design a training programme that serves Wikimedia UK in the long term.

The course will run from 9:30 am—6:30pm on Saturday and 9am—5pm on Sunday. A light breakfast and lunch will be provided. We should also be able to cover travel and accommodation if you let us know in advance.

If you are interested in attending, please indicate your commitment by signing up on Training the Trainers/November 2013 event. Spaces are limited to 12 places.

If you are not able to attend this time but would like to take part in the future, please add it to the event page or let me know by email to katie.chanwikimedia.org.uk — we will be offering more sessions in the future.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions. I can also put you in touch with past participants who will be able to share their experiences with you.

Regards,

Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 10:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki_PR update

For those interested Wiki Pr have been implicated in mass sock-puppetry.Leutha (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2013 (UTC)