Water cooler

Welcome to the Water cooler This is a place to let you know what is happening and to discuss our external projects and activities. Feel free to suggest ideas that could help our charitable mission or ask questions about how you can help. To discuss organizational or operational matters you should head over to the Engine room.

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Grants - micro, macro or otherwise

I understand that there is a major underspend here. Can we have a refresh please on what sort of grants are OK? It seems to me that as there is no payment for time, there always will be an underspend as that is likely to be the largest cost of most projects in reality. I have no evidence, but am theorising that projects with large costs are also likely to take up a lot of time and that people can't afford to do them for free even if the out of pocket expenses are paid, and that is why there are no applications? Philafrenzy (talk) 22:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• The problem is mainly the huge effort of pulling together a proposal, always a major barrier for a project. For this reason it becomes do-able to have microgrants as you can knock out a few paragraphs and have lost little if they don't work, and it is okay to work on "very big ideas" like the GLAMtools project with Europeana as they involve teams and tend to be partially running even as proposals develop, but the middle-ground of a couple of thousand quid is highly unlikely to get done due to the fact that it may take as much of your volunteer time writing the proposal and making the case as would be spent doing the project.
• You can have your time paid for, this is precisely what Wikimedians in Residence do, they are invariably contract or employed positions, I cannot remember the last time we used that title for someone who was unpaid (though we should have such examples!).

For example, if I had a clever idea for working with an archive to get a massive amount of useful and well categorized material on Commons, then I could either spend a year trying to do it for free and exhausting myself, or I could put in a proposal that the partnering organization supports, based on an FTE rate for my time to work for 2 days a week (with a list of committed outcomes) and have it all done within 12 or 24 weeks. A well written proposal might even be able to get funding even if the UK chapter had to ask for special funding; in fact a well written proposal might end up having funding bodies rushing to fund extensions to the project. --Fæ (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at of course. An academic recently told me how she got funding from Leverhulme for a project to do a particular piece of work. I don't know exactly how that goes, never having worked in academia, but it seems to me that we need to cross this bridge and allow people to apply for a round sum amount of money to deliver specific outcomes, for which they would be accountable, in order to move beyond the useful but narrow scope of the WIR. This would allow payment for time but not on an hourly or daily basis as such. It would be up to applicants to manage a project and decide what their time was worth. This might also allow a wider range of projects to be funded than is currently possible. How do other chapters handle this? I imagine there might be tax problems. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a significant problem and one that we share with other chapters and the foundation. At heart we are restricting individual recipients to Chapter members which limits the people who tend to know about it. At the last London meet-up I asked around whether the people there (about 22 people) knew about the grants or would be interested. There was no real enthusiasm but the issue that Philafrenzy raised. paying for time, was discussed. We have tried to streamline the process and this may help but there are some questions that I would like the community to think about?

• Should we open up the grants to non-members?
• Can we make the process easier in any way?
• How can we better promote the grants?
• Should we offer recompense for time as part of the grant?

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 16:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

For large grants:

• Membership is not important as anyone can get it for £5 but a track record in relevant work would be essential. This could be in one of our projects or a related field, e.g. OpenStreetMap. Applicants would need to show they were credible. If involved in a Wikimedia project they should also be in good standing. We could set any criteria we like, to ensure a good fit with our aims. This would also be an excellent opportunity to fund things that are not related to Wikimedia projects which we ought to be trying to do as part of our charitable objectives.
• If the grant is many £1000s then the process would inevitably get more difficult but micro grants could continue with a light touch.
• We do not spend anything now to promote grants or anything else about membership even at meetups. We would have to do some proper marketing rather than relying on word of mouth and free pens. If we became known as a grant making body, WMUK would find itself listed in relevant charitable directories and would probably start to receive regular inquiries from potential applicants.
• I don't realistically see people making applications for large grants unless they receive something to live on. Is it fair to expect people to work for free or expect other people to fund them (spouses, employers)? The people in the WMF or WMUK don't work for free, nor should they. If we make a grant of £5000 and somebody does a great job of producing something worthwhile but only spends £3000 on expenses and lives on the rest why should we care? There is also the point that most of the current budget already goes on time built into the services and products bought, we just don't separately identify it. It seems unfair that everyone we pay gets payment for their time apart from the members who are expected to do everything for free. (our unpaid trainers for instance)

I understand the issues regarding paid editing on Wikipedia but WMUK is not Wikipedia and I don't think the same rules necessarily apply. It might depend on what the anticipated outcome of the project was. Editing Wikipedia, for instance, would be quite different from a digitisation project that was then made available as a resource on a Wikimedia project.

In terms of processes, I think we are in danger of trying to reinvent the wheel here. Grant-making charities have been doing this for a long time with no problems. Here is a link to a Leverhulme page which explains how they go about it (much larger sums probably): http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/funding/RPG/RPG.cfm I am not suggesting that we become like them, we can design our own criteria and our own processes, but we could probably learn a thing or two from how they do things. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I hope someone else will give their views on this or the budget seems likely to continue to be underspent, which would be a real pity as projects completed using it have the potential to greatly increase the chapter's impact. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:57, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm just wondering whether we have feedback that have decided not to apply for grants for whatever reason, or is it more that people don't know the grants are available? It could be both of course but spending effort to fix the wrong problem wont help. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 15:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I think we just don't know. It's easier to ask those who applied why than find out why unknown people didn't do something. I hope you agree that doing nothing also isn't an option or we might as well just allocate the money elsewhere. Philafrenzy (talk) 15:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

We should do something, but not just anything for the sake of doing something. At the risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld, there is merit in putting down on (metaphorical) paper what we know and what we know we don't know, and basing our action on things that will address the known issues and on things that will fill in the blanks in our knowledge. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 10:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, to address Jon's points

1. Membership: I think the financial aspects of membership aren't the issue, it is about agreeing with the objects and not bringing the charity into disrepute. By having membership as a criteria for applying for/receiving a grant it means that that issue has been dealt with. However I am not sure how the membership rules apply to unincorporated and incorporated organisations, as the seem to imply that membership is open to all natural persons. Some clarification on this would be useful, and maybe we should look at how organisations could get grants. Access to grants is + for membership.
2. Process: Maybe some change in the processes may come out of this discussion, but no suggestions at the moment
3. Promotion: Regular updates in members newsletter. Blogs from successful recipients.
4. Recompense for time: Fæ suggested this is currently possible, but Jon sees this an open question, but is in favour of it. I agree with Jon's comments. I could and probably would get in a proposal quite soon if this was clarified. But otherwise an individual is taking on a certain amount of risk, probably committing themselves to a substantial amount of work-time (which might otherwise go on editing) for a project which might get torn apart in the application process. Also, it seems that some proposals are excessively scrutinised as regards any personal benefits that a person may enjoy, i.e. as if they were equivalent of trustees. I think a simpler equation of cost and benefits in terms of the WMUK charitable objects would be more effective. However, I do feel that we should be careful to avoid any sistuation which could be described as paid editing.

I also think that in light of the FDC recommendations below, we should look at ways we could encourage matched funding. I think this might work particularly if we dealt with community organisations. In this context we could use networks like the Community Archive Heritage Group as a network to find partner groups to work on relevant issues (and that is just one such network). I would be interested to know whether any progress has been made in linking up with HLF to work on compatibility with their funding strategy. In light of the comments on Kwaku's blog, I would agree that one off editathons are of little use, but working in a consistent way over a longer period I think would lead to much more impressive results. Leutha (talk) 12:42, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The charity is accused, not entirely unfairly, of a lack of impact for its potential and size. Our reaction is to do more of what we are already doing by arranging more low impact events with few measurable outcomes. I have lost track of the number of editathons I have attended, all of which I enjoyed, but which had very few outputs that I could discern apart from WMUK and the host both putting a tick in their activity or engagement plans and some editing which just replaced other editing. Much of our activity (by no means all) amounts to a fig leaf over our lack of impact.

I am suggesting that instead of more and more frenetic activity that pads the plan but delivers little, we start to move to giving grants to individuals or organisations that result in defined outcomes for which they would be accountable. Our annual report would then read as a list of projects we had funded and the specific outcomes that had been produced. The comparison in this respect is with grant-giving academic charities. This does not mean, however, that a lot of what we currently do wouldn't continue, including editathons. The matter of payment for time is crucial as I don't think we can reasonably expect people to produce large projects for free, subsidised in reality by spouses or employers and to face an inquisition here over costs when applying. Lets also not confuse Wikipedia's rules with our own ability to fund specific projects carried out in public with known participants and defined outcomes that can then be used on Wikimedia projects. We have the money, let's use it. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:15, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think we have to admit that editathons can create a handful of important articles and may result in a few thousand good images, however this is vastly outweighed by the productivity of individual Wikimedian volunteers we know well, who personally deliver far more in their spare time than all of these chapter events added up. For example I have uploaded over 150,000 photographs to Wikimedia Commons over the last year (the uploadsum tool has not been working for ages, so I can't check this right now), of which hardly any relate to Wikimedia UK events, they are just me getting on finding historic and cultural free photos (with good metadata) being a pet project of mine costing $0 to Wikimedia. I have recently put in a grant proposal for a dedicated macmini to support this individual non-WMUK organized activity (the sort of thing I could not ask for when I was a trustee), I suggest other highly active volunteers think of ways that Wikimedia UK might support them a bit more; any grants of this type represent incredibly high returns in terms of measurable Wikimedia project outcomes and are actually spot on with the charity's mission statement. Certainly travel and expenses should be claimed more often by volunteers (like Leutha and Philafrenzy) that go out and negotiate/maintain interesting relationships and push for events or projects that are eventually claimed as successes by WMUK. --Fæ (talk) 14:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I would personally be very keen to do more to help and encourage highly active volunteers as this is an area that has great potential for high impact at relatively low cost. At present the main way in which we make anything more than moral support available is via the grants process, and that is apparently not attractive as it has historically been undersubscribed. Innovative ideas for ways in which the charity can do better would be welcome. One idea that has been floated, for example, is a 'bounty board' where we offer a fixed payment as a 'prize' for completing a particular task that we/the community thinks would be worthwhile. In addition to the prize, we would also pay reasonable expenses, if agreed in advance. Such an approach might bring more volunteers forward who want to help out but who are nervous about having to prepare a formal grant application. A possible downside is that we could end up paying out prizes for tasks that a volunteer might be prepared to do for free. However, there are probably any number of tasks that we already know, in practice, that no volunteer is otherwise going to get round to. Thoughts on this, or other ideas? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Another idea is the one that has been outlined above Michael, which is grants that include an element for the time costs of a project. What are your views on that? Can we also please stop obsessing about paring down the costs of everything? We have the money, which currently goes unspent because we give people the third degree if they so much as want to buy a ham sandwich. When people donate they imagine we will use the funds in pursuit of our charitable objectives by spending it on things. Lets start acting like adults running a serious charity with serious objectives and take a chance on people. A few might disappoint, but it is worth the risk. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

A bounty board would actually be one way to achieve 'payment for time'. The bounty would be enough to represent a worthwhile investment of a volunteer's time, though it need not explicitly be described as a time-based payment. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 06:54, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Rather than a "bounty", a suggestion I made a couple of years ago of keeping an Agile style backlog list of "volunteer jobs", some of which might entail compensation or prizes as an incentive, would be a reasonable step. On the whole this works better for lots of small tasks and we ought to choose tasks that it remains unlikely that volunteers are ready and willing to do for free. Two examples:

1. (Large task) if we were looking for volunteers to help with a UNESCO bid for matched funding bid of £100,000 to help with a 5 year programme of minority language cultural preservation, then paying £1,000 for an estimated two weeks of effort to research and write up a draft (just over the minimum wage mark) would be a pragmatic offer for a task that would be demanding and remain unattractively hard for most volunteers.
2. (Small task) get the popups navigation tool working on the UK wiki, it is a neat feature and has been waiting for a year for someone to do. Reward - £10 John Lewis voucher.

--Fæ (talk) 08:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it does not matter what this is called, but perhaps a page called 'bounty board' would attract more immediate member interest than 'volunteer jobs' (pure PR, I know!). Anyway, we are talking about very much the same thing. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:28, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) On bounty boards, and generally paying volunteers for time, the thing I'd worry about is that it sets up the expectation that volunteers would be paid for their time (and hence, no longer being volunteers), which may result in them not volunteering their time when no money is on offer. Probably the best example of this in the Wikimedia movement is technical development work, where there is much more of an expectation of being paid to contribute to MediaWiki than there is to the other Wikimedia projects, and in my opinion that's now a fixed trend that would be impossible (and probably also undesirable) to change. There is currently a risk of organising outreach events going the same way (although more in terms of being a paid employee, either directly or as a WiR), which would be a real shame. I wouldn't like to see other activities going the same way, which would be a risk if there is the promise of money in return for doing things. Compensating people who are running a big event that needs a lot of time spent on it that prevents them from working their day job is one thing (and something I would support), but paying for small tasks that can be done in spare time is a very different thing.

Reading through this section, I've just spotted Fae's comment about a small paid task being fixing the navigation popups. I fixed that a few days ago based on the discussion here; I probably wouldn't have done so if it had been a bounty board task. (Note that this wasn't planned - I didn't notice his comment until I started writing this!) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

My particular proposal Mike, is not for payment for completion of small tasks. That probably would have the undesirable effects you suggest and certainly would be time consuming to organise (though there is an unresolved question about the trainers who find themselves teaching a room in which every other person is being paid). No, my proposal is potentially more far reaching and involves moving to spending more of the chapter's funds on large grants (£1000s), including payment for time and expenses, to complete projects in line with our charitable objectives that would not otherwise be viable. For instance, a large digitisation project that could then be a source on one of our projects. The WMUK annual report and the plan would then be a list of projects funded and outcomes achieved rather than a list of low impact events that I suspect we only do because we have to put something in those documents. I said at the start that I am theorising that we don't get applications for large grants because people can't afford to work for six months for free. Who knows what projects would be completed if we used some of our money creatively? If we don't revise the grants budget in some way, it really ought to be transferred elsewhere or returned to donors or the Foundation as surplus to our needs. Philafrenzy (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Philafrenzy. I was referring more to Michael Magg's point in my comment, so I agree that most of what I said doesn't apply to your proposal. On your points, the major question for me would probably become 'why WMUK?'. If WMUK focuses its work on giving 'large grants', then why couldn't that be done by the Foundation (which has a lot more experience with grant-giving than WMUK at the current point in time.) Personally, I believe that WMUK has a lot of potential for 'value-add' with this sort of thing, which would come in terms of staff resources, local knowledge and general infrastructure, and any large grant should really be able to demonstrate that sort of benefit. Being able to professionally temporarily hire people to work on the projects that they are proposing would probably also be a good thing, provided that the conflict of interest issues are suitably managed (which would mean significantly improving WMUK's current CoI policy!). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Postponed events?

Hi all. There seem to have been quite a few postponed events in the last few months, which is particularly notable since I don't think we've had to postpone events in previous years. Do we know why this is happening? Is it an indicator that events need to be planned further in advance than they currently are? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 05:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Mike. Thanks for asking. I know about two, which I can clarify. The first was the VLE workshop due to take place early in November. This was set up plenty of time in advance but there have been some technical problems in making sure that the Moodle platform has been ready to use, particularly the Moodle + MediaWiki transclusion function. Given the technical problems, Charles and I felt it best to postpone until the software is ready for a proper road test. We are making progress and the event will be rearranged in the new year. The second one I am aware of is an event at Imperial College this weekend. As I understand this has been pushed back because there aren't actually many students around because the end of term is approaching. I haven't been personally involved but perhaps someone who has can add some extra context. Hope this is useful. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 08:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Stevie - that is good to know. The first sounds like a reasonable cause postponement to me; the latter sounds like the timing needs to be better considered before an event is scheduled. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there are two factors at play. One factor is the relatively low number of active and experienced volunteers and members available to notice the events calendar and will register to take part, the other is the move over the last two years from volunteer driven events to employee driven events.

As employees are concerned that WMUK is seen to have a full calendar of events, it is no surprise that they are pushing the envelope of what is practical. As a result we have seen wikimeets and editathons that fail to attract an appropriate number of attendees and have cases of some being cancelled or floating forward. When we had volunteers driving more of the events, they tended to only be set up after being discussed with other enthusiastic volunteers at wikimeets, meaning that there was already a handful of folks intending to sign up as soon as the registration page was available. Employees tend not to do this, with events being planned with partners and sometimes announced without much testing of the volunteer community.

If membership went back up to the 330 level of 2 years ago, and the number of active volunteers increased from the declared "101" to several hundred, then our problem would be how to cope with numbers registering for our free events.

One part of the solution would be better networking with volunteers at wikimeets to test the coming proposed quarterly schedule of events before they are announced with fixed dates on the website, and reduce the monthly number if unrealistic. Employees would be better measured by popular and volunteer-driven events rather than just a number of events. If we knew that 3 or 4 volunteers were ready to sign-up immediately after an announcement, and that these key volunteers would work with the community to make the event popular, we might avoid these problems. --Fæ (talk) 10:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the reasons behind postponement of individual events; it depends on a variety of factors, not all of which are under our control. And Fae, you're half right, but what we've moved from is events driven by board members (acting in a volunteer capacity rather than as directors/trustees) to events driven by staff, which isn't quite the same thing as you suggest. Harry Mitchell (talk) 18:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes Harry, I have seen you repeat this theme several times, it wears a little thin as I don't accept it as matching our history. The fact is that there always were plenty of unpaid volunteers not on the board that were busy and engaged in creating events without being directors or trustees. Some of them even became employees. I don't think it is a good thing that any future board have a majority of members that do not actively help make our events a success, being a trustee should not ban you from supporting our activities for fear of treading on anyone's toes. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't match my recollection of our history; your involvement in WMUK pre-dates mine, but I remember from late 2010/early 2011 most of the active people were also the directors (that's not a criticism, merely a suggestion that we haven't seen a sudden exodus of volunteers). There were a handful of people (like Andy and Rock drum, for example) doing things on their own initiative with support form the board, but most of them are still involved today. I think you and I agree, though, that more needs to be done to recruit and retain more of those people, and that WMUK hasn't, to date, been very good at that. And I completely agree that being a trustee should not ban you from supporting our activities..., though that seems to have become the default state in the wake of the so-called "Governance Review". Harry Mitchell (talk) 15:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I haven't said there was an exodus of volunteers, though membership dropped by 30%, the number of volunteers has been relatively static (i.e. under a 20% increase over 2.5 years when employee numbers grew by 900%), only that we moved from events driven by volunteers to a de-facto standard that events are driven by employees, oh and sometimes employees wearing a volunteer hat. --Fæ (talk) 17:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Mike, can you give some examples? I saw the Ctrl Alt Change one, and the VLE one, but I haven't seen many more postponed... I recall the membership survey asked some questions about why people don't attend - one of the answers was related to "not planned far enough in advance". When the results are out I think that'll help answer. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, discussing the causes before looking at the actual data set would be pre-judging the situation. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:04, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a bit tricky to do as a complete data set - the ones you mention (VLE Workshop and Ctrl Alt Change) are currently labelled as postponed on the Events page, but there are others that were postponed but are no longer marked as such. The others that I've spotted being postponed are Early Photography in Scotland Edit-a-thon and Training the Trainers/February 2014 event; perhaps the office can remember if there are any others that I've missed from this list? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

A quick search of edit summary on Events gives Python and Wikimedia bots workshop Oct 2013 (lack of interest), Leaders in Community Wikipedia training (venue issue), Science editathon at the British Library, AHRC Wikipedia training workshop at the British Library. Early photography was postponed as the organiser (and the one who can let attendees into the building) got ill. So mostly outside our control I'd say. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 20:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Katie. My aim in raising this for discussion was because I was curious to see whether there were any systematic reasons why this had started happening in the last 6 months; if it's simply reasons outside of WMUK's control (and probably due to the increase in the number of events over the last few years) then that's great. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Just to point out the Ctrl/Alt/Change event was an external event arranged by Imperial College that I had been asked to run a workshop and give a presentation at. Mrjohncummings (talk) 16:23, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Part of the reason may be that we are getting better at recording such things. Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 17:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I have been involved in two events that have been postponed. In one case we were targetting the existing community and haven't yet had enough interest in a fairly specialised event. The other case was with a partner who was 95% confident of hosting the event but has since gone quiet. As we have had some unfortunate clashes with two or more events on the same day I would encourage people to pencil in events when they have agreed the date, even if they have to put (details TBC) on it. This will inevitably mean that some things fall through; However I'm hoping that by doing so we can achieve a more balanced program. I'm sure that people would prefer to see some events postponed before they'd had many if any signups if that enables us to reduce the number of clashes. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 12:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU - statement of intent

Hello everyone. As you may have seen the board discussed the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU at their meeting the weekend past. The Group is a collection of Wikimedia chapters which is looking at ways to improve the regulations regarding copyright in the EU. They have provisionally agreed to sign a collective statement of intent which sets out how the group will work. This is subject to a community discussion period. Please do take a look at the statement here and get involved in the discussion here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The statement has been signed

I am pleased to announce that the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU's statement of intent is fully supported and has been signed by the board of WMUK. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:49, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Potential MOU and collaboration with the BBC

Hello everyone. I'm currently exploring how we may be able to develop a working relationship with the BBC. We are discussing various possibilities for collaboration and a memorandum of understanding. Before we go too far I'd like to get an idea of how people feel about working with the BBC. I'd also welcome suggestions for projects we may work on together. There's a page with some notes here so please use the associated talk page for the discussion. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia what next?

We are now dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's on QRpedia. The next question is how do we make sure the community benefits from it? Do we need training, events etc. We have already started a FAQ page to help those who want to use it but is there more we can do?

Can we get some ideas going?

Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 15:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

As Jon implies, this is a good place for us to discuss possible external activities and projects using QRpedia codes that could benefit from WMUK support. Now that WMUK owns the rights in QRpedia, how do we make sure that we get maximum community and public engagement? Following creation of the new Engine room, I have moved the technical and organizational discussion of QRPedia there.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I've been very reliably informed that York City Council are interested in running a city-wide QRpedia project. To my knowledge, there has been no official discussions with WMUK as yet, however, there may be more going on that I'm personally aware of. Given my geographic proximity to York (I'm based in Scarborough) I'd gladly be willing to become involved in such a project were WMUK to support such a project officially. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 14:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Jon Robson's world of Wikipedia

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_of_Wikipedia_by_Jon_Robson.png

Philafrenzy (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The bit about the secret cabal is remarkably inaccurate. It doesn't reference Phillippe Beaudette's cardigans at all. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 01:33, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

And the scale is all wrong. The City of in Popular Culture is far larger than that in reality. Philafrenzy (talk) 00:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Book of Aneirin put online by National Library of Wales

This popped up on my Facebook news feed earlier:

"The Book of Aneirin, one of the most important literary works from medieval Wales, can now be freely viewed online.

The 13th century text is now kept at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Written around 1265, the Book of Aneirin contains a long poem called ‘Y Gododdin’. The poem is attributed to Aneirin, who was in his prime during the second half of the sixth century and commemorates the heroic deeds of part of the Gododdin tribe who fell in an assault upon the strategic site of Catraeth (Catterick, Yorkshire), about the year 600. After a fierce battle, only 3 Brythonic warriors escaped with their lives, among them the poet Aneirin. He then composed a series of stanzas in a form of early Welsh, commemorating the slain young warriors."

• Full news release: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/12/12/book-of-aneirin-put-online-by-national-library-of-wales/
• Landing/intro page for the manuscript: http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=6336

The bottom of the page however notes: "The National Library of Wales has digitised and published the Book of Aneirin by kind permission of Cardiff Council. Rights relating to the use of these images are retained by Cardiff Council: permission for copies for commercial research, or for publication in any form, must be obtained from Cardiff Central Library, The Hayes, Cardiff CF10 1FL, localstudieslibrarycardiff.gov.uk"

I think that means that we couldn't do anything with this on WikiSource for example? Is this something we should be talking to Cardiff Council about to try and get the rights freed up? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 00:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

It might be worth reminding our friends at Cardiff Council that copyright in the original work is not indefinite. While it's possible that local laws allow a "sweat of the brow" claim over new images (reasonably so for pictures of three dimensional objects), that doesn't seem to apply in the USA to images of two-dimensional pages, so one of our overseas colleagues might upload them to WMF servers (suitably cropped, to remove the modern accessories). we could also point to the recent mass release of scanned images by the British Library (not to mention US national archives and the Rijksmuseum) as more enlightened examples of best practice. As for Wikisource, attempts to claim copyright over the text content are laughable and can (IANAL) be ignored with impunity. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:14, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I've mentioned this discussion, on Commons:Village pump. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:52, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Another user has created File:The Book of Aneirin.pdf. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, "sweat of the brow" remains a myth rather than a legal reality in the UK too. This is one of those situations where Wikimedia should be calling the bluff on these sorts of claims rather than letting fear of prosecution where there is no legal basis suppress legitimate open knowledge, especially in the many cases where public domain documents are being locked away on thin rationales of revenue creation, which do not survive basic scrutiny of the financial record. If anyone has some useful UK case studies of anyone being successfully taken to court and ordered to pay damages after a "sweat of the brow" case, I would love to review the case notes.

By the way, I should declare that I have done a couple of batch uploads from UK institutions this year which ignored false claims of copyright or non-commercial use restrictions. I do correspond with the institutions and try to move them on in their thinking, but as an open knowledge advocate I do not think it right that I should be expected to sit by indefinitely when polite negotiation has got us nowhere. I take care with checking there is completely unambiguous legal evidence on record of the works I upload being public domain; which means that no judge could ever assess damages being more than zero pence, which would make for a useful case study should that ever happen. --Fæ (talk) 12:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Guidance on COI

Hi, Can I have some guidance on what I've done here. I bumped into a conversation in a Google Group that a prominent organisation were actively planning to edit two Wikipedia articles directly associated with their 'products'. I posted into the Google group a bit of advice on COI and provided a link to the relevant page. The two articles fall into a project and so I also advised them to contact the group, and I provided a link for this too. I decided not to create a topic for discussion on the COI noticeboard because, as yet, they haven't actually done anything. Is that okay, or should I have done anything differently? (Sorry if I've been a bit vague but I don't want to out them unnecessarily) Thanks in advance.--Graeme Arnott (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I would not expect any more than off-wiki advice, I would be cautious about raising the equivalent of warning flags on-wiki before anything has actually been done. In my past OTRS work, I have suggested by discrete email that those with plans to edit when they have an obvious COI, share their thoughts on WP:COIN where someone might even offer to help more directly and this sounds pretty much what you have done. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Graeme. You've done just the right thing. If you're concerned that they're going to go ahead with dishonestly, then let an admin know (or the COI noticeboard, but it can get a bit hectic on there with so many people who feel strongly about the issue). Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 19:02, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that folks; much appreciated. :-) --Graeme Arnott (talk) 21:51, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Training the Trainers February 2014 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 1—2 February 2014 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 on all Wikimedia projects will be welcomed. The workshop itself will be delivered in English.

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/February 2014 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

Wikipedia Takes UCL

We are in the process of planning the provision of support for a week-long cluster of events at UCL, which are scheduled to take place during the week commencing Monday 17 February 2014. Wikipedia Takes UCL is the name that has been picked for this series of activities and a number of WMUK trainers are needed to provide the sort of support we normally give at workshops for new editors, editathons, and other similar events. If you are an accredited WMUK trainer, please consider joining the team of trainers I will be coordinating, even if you're only available for just one session. You can sign-up here and make sure you include dates/times you're available. Thank you. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 15:05, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The Water Cooler has been split

I've now gone through the process of moving threads regarding WMUK operational matters to the newly created Engine room, while keeping threads around our activities and getting involved on this page. This will be our first attempt at creating different spaces for different types of discussion, and we're still working on the headers for these pages (the divs now inserted at the top of the page). If you watch the Water cooler you may also want to add the Engine room to your watch list. I've also moved the Water cooler up to the "get involved" section on the sidebar. The new Engine room can be found under 'organisation' on the sidebar. If you think I've incorrectly moved something, or have a suggestion for how we should define and describe these places do let us know (ideally here in the Engine room). Finally, I look forward to seeing people engage on both pages. Cheers Sjgknight (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The title of the section "Archiving this page" suggests it should have stayed here. I've added a note in that section, querying whether it applies there also. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the move notices Andy, very helpful. I think the thread you refer to above does still apply to the Engine room, and there would probably be the place to raise such issues in the future too. I guess in this transition period there will be some such posts which are slightly out of context where they would not be had they originated on the Engine room. If there are any threads you think really don't work moved across let me know (and I'll keep an eye out too) but I don't think that's the case at the moment (copying this note (edited) to both pages) Sjgknight (talk) 15:52, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to Chapters and Photographers for the European Parliament Project 2014

Hello everyone, please see the below information regarding a new project on Commons that's looking to help photograph and record members of the European Parliament. The group working on the project are looking for volunteers to help out with this piece of work and Wikimedia UK will consider providing funding for someone to go and help out. I've copied the below directly from the message originally circulated about the project so that those interested can get full details and context. Wikimedia UK also has equipment that we can loan for use on the project, including camera, lights, lenses and a sound recorder. Please comment below if you're interested, or feel free to email me directly. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:56, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Preamble

Some might have heard about the State Parliament Projects done in Germany and Austria since 2009: A bunch of Wikipedians and photographers meet politicians in the parliament, shoot professional photos, discuss their Wikipedia articles etc. This way hundreds of free licensed, high quality images have been made, Wikipedia articles have been improved. In the latest project at Schwerin (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) we added videos, politicians give a short introduction about themselves, their position and political focus in German and in their mother tongue if different from German. About 20 photographers were able to participate and processes how to work with the parliament's administration, how to interact with the politicians, how to efficiently take a lot of photos in a short time and with good quality have been established.

Next Level: European Parliament

Now we would like to take this to next level: After contacting the European Parliament I was able to get their approval, the support by the parties and a date! Unfortunately the date is already in February, 3rd to 7th, as we have to use the short time gap between budget deliberations and elections. MEPs only travel to the EP when deliberations are ongoing but then they are also busy with meetings, as soon as the election preperation starts there won't be any time for our project within the next 6 months. Anyway I am sure we can do that - the elections are also a great opportunity to raise awareness on our material we have in Wikipedia and on Commons. It is also an excellent opportunity to bring together volunteers in doing our core work together, maybe we can transfer the idea of Parliament Projects to other countries. Volunteers get the opportunity to learn from each other - the EP is a very challenging project, having more than 700 MEPs to be handled within a few days. And Wikipedia may improve its articles, also by bringing together volunteers from different EU countries. Many MEPs have their articles only in a few of the European languages, some not even in their native language!

Your Chapter Involved

We are looking forward to get volunteers from as many countries as possible involved in this project. In order to be handle it we need approx. 35 people to help. Obviously the german and austrian photographers are already waiting for it, from past projects they already know what will go on. But there is much more to it: We want your volunteers! Imagine a project where we could bring together volunteers from all 24 language communities in the EU - that is what we are trying!

Therefore we ask you for a favour:

• please forward this invitation to your local community - you can point them to our project page on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament

• does your chapter provide travel support for those volunteers in your country who want to participate? Please do so. Your chapter pays for the transportation to / from Strasbourg and the accommodation (around 300 EUR per person for all 6 nights), we take care of the rest (transportation hotel - EP, catering etc.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Participation

• does your chapter have photographic equipment we might need? We could use DSLRs, flash units, background systems, lenses...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Equipment

• we would like to supply the volunteers with t-shirts or hoodies with Wikipedia logo or similar - for a unified appearance and to make them visible as volunteers and Wikimedians. Is your chapter (or the WMF?)

interested in providing 90 shirts / hoodies? (We planned 2 pc. per person as they will be worn almost one week.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament/Marketing

• everyone who likes this project: state your support on the talk page of our grant request to the WMF which should cover the general costs of the project. By this grant request we make sure that each chapter only has to handle local support and can stay within it's budgeted limits and area of operation.
  • https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Olaf_Kosinsky/Wikipedians_in_European_Parliament

Existing online resources

Could we encourage volunteers to first think of uploading public domain/copyright free available media published by institutions such as the European Parliament Information Office in the United Kingdom, and to check if there are other media packs available to release on request from their off-line archives, before making plans to create amateur new media? My experience with uploading over 5,000 photographs relating to politicians from the Nordic Region was that this provided a plentiful supply of top quality photographs to illustrate Wikipedias in several languages. These photographs cost nothing in travel or equipment and so initial projects of this type are likely to be of incredibly high "bang for the buck" in terms of using the charity's funds.

If anyone finds such an archive with several hundred or more media files, and would like my help in a month or two with a mass upload, I would be happy to help out by making this part of my 2014 Faebot batch upload projects as well as claiming this as a success under the European Parliament Project umbrella. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:58, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Scholarship to attend Learning Day and EduWiki Conference 2014 in Sebria

Wikimedia Serbia is organising an event called EduWiki Conference 2014 on Monday 24 March at the Belgrade Youth Center (Belgrade Serbia); this will be mostly in Serbian. Learning Day, an internal meeting between members of the WMRS education project and Wikimedians from other chapters takes place on Sunday 23 March, the day before the conference; this will be in English. This meeting will take place in Wikimedia Serbia Office. For more information please check the web page for this event from WMRS (in English).

WMUK is offering one scholarship (i.e. covering travel and accommodation expenses) to an active volunteer from the Wikimedia UK community willing to give a 15-minute presentation at the Learning Day. This scholarship is to cover a proposal made directly by the chapter in relation to its main Education-related activities for the Learning Day. We therefore need a volunteer to present the main Education-related work of the chapter at this event. Ideally, the presentation should be about at least three of the following topics:

• WMUK's EduWiki conferences
• WMUK-supported activities in Higher Education
• WMUK's partnership with JISC
• The Future of Education theme at Wikimania 2014

To apply for this scholarship please email educationwikimedia.org.uk by Tuesday 14 January 2014, indicating your knowledge of and/or experience with the above topics to be included in your presentation in Belgrade.

PLEASE NOTE: This scholarship offer does not exclude us from considering a separate request for support from any other individual interested in presenting their Education-related work, should their proposal be accepted for this conference in Serbia. Wikimedia Serbia is accepting individual proposals for presentations until Monday 6 January, as per the email circulated by WMRS on the Education mailing list.

The successful scholarship applicant will be required to write reports about the Learning Day for the Wikimedia UK wiki and/or blog before and after traveling to Belgrade. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 20:36, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

This scholarship proposal comes across as a bit strange to me. "We'll pay for you to go, but only if you represent what WMUK has decided are the most pertinent topics". Are the volunteers here to further WMUK's agenda, or is WMUK here to further the volunteers'? In honesty, I suspect this is just a hiccup in the wording of the announcement; if you'd instead suggested the applicants cover these topics, you'd have got many applications that would've done so. In my work at the WMF, I run a lot of my public announcements past a community advocate, to make sure I've not accidentally worded it badly; perhaps people should run things by Stevie quickly in future. --Deskana (talk) 21:35, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the words you put in quotation marks in my original announcement, so I'm not sure what you're actually reacting to here. There have been discussions with another WMUK member of staff about this scholarship as well as a trustee (some of which has happened on the Education Committee mailing list), so I don't think this is something I worded badly. Perhaps just not clearly enough. This scholarship is to cover a proposal made directly by the chapter in relation to its main Education-related activities for the Learning Day. We simply need a volunteer to present the main Education-related work of the chapter at this event.

Individual proposals (i.e. not about WMUK's Education projects) for this event are open until Monday 6 January (as per the email circulated by WMRS on the Education mailing list). This scholarship proposal does not exclude us from considering a request for support from any other individual, should their proposal be accepted for this conference in Serbia. I hope this discussion has clarified things a little more. Thanks. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 22:11, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Toni. I read this along the same lines as Deskana - the relevant text here is "WMUK is offering one scholarship [...] to an active volunteer [...] willing to give a 15-minute presentation at the Learning Day about at least three of the following topics:" - by saying that you've defined what the volunteer would have to present about, rather than them being free to present about their own activities. It also implies that this is the only scholarship opportunity available, which I don't think was your intention here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:28, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike. That's a very useful insight. I think I'll add some text from the second paragraph in my response to Deskana to the original call to clarify this point. Thanks again. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all, that change is definitely a useful clarification. Thanks Toni for putting something together on short notice over the break. Could you confirm that you've had info the conf day will be mostly in Serbian? Any detail on translation facility for that? Sjgknight (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

(ec) It is great to see proposals being created, we definitely could do with more coming from unpaid volunteers. When I first read the proposal it appeared to be better suited as a grant to a preselected individual. Off the top of my head I find it hard to imagine that of the small number of active volunteers working with WMUK in all these areas that there would be more than one or two potential applicants with the required experience or interest (and presumably you could write down a short list without blinking), though perhaps the intention is to be a bit more flexible than the text implies. --Fæ (talk) 23:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Simon. I think it depends in large part on what sort of proposals they get, but they're mainly aiming for Serbian contributions for the Monday session. We can ask about translation facilities, of course, but I haven't even found a wiki page in English about this event yet. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 23:27, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

(ec) Thanks Toni - that's a good improvement. :-) I see that Leutha has set up a page at Wikimedia Serbia EduWiki Conference 2014 Scholarship, which I think is a good approach - it's better to have a separate page for this sort of thing than including it in the water cooler as it makes it much easier to cleanly link to in a lasting way. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:30, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Toni, the bit in quotes in my original message is an illustration of how your announcement was coming across to me, and was not intended to be taken as a quote. My apologies for the confusion there. Anyway, now that the announcement has been altered slightly, I feel like my issue has been sufficiently addressed. Thanks! --Deskana (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi all (after 2 edit conflicts!), a couple of points:

I have just changed the link to that of the English language version for the conference. Whether that indicates that English will play a significant role in the conference remains to be seen.

Toni is accurately reflecting the discussion we have had on the WMUK education mailing list, where we highlighted the priorities and agreed that this should be funded as a scholarship. Just to respond to Deskana's point, the Education Committee is very much volunteer led, and as a volunteer I am supporting this proposal. Part of the purpose and function of the WMUK Edcom is precisely to facilitate volunteer engagement in formulating the agenda. It was also agreed that the opportunity for a volunteer to take on this role should be made available by a posting here. While I appreciate Mike's point, the decision made by the WMUK Edcom was that we wanted just one person funded to fulfill this particular role which is to represent WMUK. If there are other proposals falling outside this remit, well, they can be considered on their merit by the Grants Committee (which I imagine fulfills the role of the "ad-hoc panel" mentioned here). However as the opportunity to submit a proposal to the conference has been around since August 2013, perhaps they are cutting it a bit fine? :Personally, I feel having a scholarship which specifies a clearly identified role to play, i.e. representing WMUK, and clearly identified expectations is a step forward from how the way in which the Berlin Diversity Conference was handled. I like to think we learnt from that. On the other hand, I do not think that scholarships should be restricted to this sort of format. The important issue is that it should be made clear what expectations go with the role.

As regards Fæ's point (I had an edit conflict here), no-one has been identified for the role and maybe proposals will come from people who want to negotiate the role somewhat. But as I said above, I think having some formality about the role of a representational delegate is a useful step forward, even if people are currently not so familiar with such an approach. Leutha (talk) 23:32, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. By the way, with regard to formality, I do not know where Sebria is, though I have been to Serbia and enjoyed meeting the chapter folks there (who seemed very keen to take me out to a gay nightclub; they love to party). --Fæ (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)