Engine room

Welcome to the Engine roomThis is a place to ask questions about how we operate as a charity and Wikimedia chapter, and to discuss organizational issues. To discuss our external projects and activities, see how you could get involved or suggest ideas that could help our charitable mission you should head over to the Water cooler.

2013 2014

Liability insurance for OTRS volunteers

Does WMUK's liability insurance for volunteers cover project activities where we may be corresponding through OTRS and to what extent?

For example, I sometimes add tickets to images to confirm copyright status on Commons and these may be in support of WMUK projects. I am particularly interested in scenarios with civil suits for damages against our volunteers from correspondents who may feel they have been treated badly or misrepresented or civil suits by the WMF against an OTRS volunteer. It would be useful to have considered responses based on the terms of the current insurance policy (which is no longer available publicly, certainly I do not have a copy) and potentially an official statement from the charity, rather than informal or speculative replies.

I have raised a suggestion for a risk warning notice at m:Talk:OTRS/Volunteering#Liability_and_risk_warning_for_prospective_volunteers.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK only ever intended to have insurances for volunteers while they are "undertaking activities, officially, on behalf of Wikimedia UK". Acting as a volunteer on WMF OTRS is not, has not, and will never be considered as acting on behalf of WMUK. This extend to Wikimedia project activities in general such as editing Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons etc. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 13:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the official clarification. There seems a slight contradiction in the statement as a volunteers can and do take part in projects officially funded by Wikimedia UK which are advised to use OTRS as a process for confirming copyright releases, there are many examples and this is a normal part of our official training courses for volunteers. If all WMF OTRS activities are not and have never been covered by our insurance, then this is a definite change in official policy since we first purchased the insurance when I was a trustee. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 13:25, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Fæ. My memory agrees with Katie's. However, if it were part of a WMUK activity then I'd have thought that part of it would be covered, e.g. if someone raised an issue with being advised to contact OTRS then that would be covered, but if someone had been involved on OTRS in processing the release and applying it to the projects then they wouldn't be covered as that couldn't be counted as an action on behalf of WMUK. It would be good to see a clarifying wiki page setting out what counts as a WMUK activity (particularly when talking about 'officially') and what doesn't, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:31, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I will discuss this with our insurers when I am back at work next week. In the meantime, and without documents to hand, my recollection is that volunteering for the WMF as part of the Volunteer response team (OTRS) is not and never has been covered by our insurance. Mike is right that this needs clarification, but in the meantime if anyone has any concerns about whether they are covered for a particular activity, they should email myself or Jon and we'll check. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 22:32, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks, it would be good to have a clear official statement. The documents always used to be on the office wiki as well as previously available to all volunteers on this wiki. I would recommend keeping them on the office wiki so that they are easy to find for anyone with access and so that any trustee, contractor, staff member or others with access can answer questions about insurance for volunteers on our projects.

As an active volunteer can I have a copy of the current insurance policy as it relates to my activities please? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I will discuss this with our insurers too. Last time I spoke with them, they advised against circulating copies of our full policies, especially online - we wouldn't be able to ensure they were kept securely. I will try and get an answer for you. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 18:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I was asked to remove a statement that I had professional indemnity insurance from my website, even though it was a legal requirement for me and everyone else in the same profession to hold it. I think the insurers here are probably more worried that publicising the cover will encourage claims somehow, rather than anything else. Why would the policy details need to be kept secure really? Philafrenzy (talk) 00:56, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Insurance details do not need to be kept secure from the insured parties, in fact I believe there is a legal requirement on an insurance company to provide access to the policy to the insured (i.e. volunteers for Wikimedia UK). My impression from this discussion is that Wikimedia UK has refused to provide a copy of the insurance policy, or access to it, in response to a request from an insured party. As the legal definition of insurance is a contract between the insured and the insurer, if the insurer is now requiring Wikimedia UK to keep the contract secret from the insured, then the contract can be considered invalid.

If someone were to provide me with the name of the insurance company and the policy number, then I am happy to offer to spend my time giving them a phonecall (as an insured party) and provide some factual feedback here, rather than wasting any more employee time on this bureaucracy/game of Chinese whispers. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 06:52, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Fae, as I said earlier, "I will discuss this with our insurers when I am back at work". I am now back at work, have dealt with the most urgent tasks, and can focus on requests from volunteers: I have also received a reply from the insurers. I must impress upon you the need for patience, this sort of thing can't be hurried.

You will be pleased to know that I have spoken to the insurers and that although they have reservations about making the policy public, I have discussed this with Jon, and we have agreed that the risk to the charity is minimal. I will email you a copy of the policy as soon as I have time - I expect this will be in the 24 hours. You will note that you are probably not covered for the data protection risks that doing OTRS volunteer work for the WMF involves. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 16:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Sent! Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 16:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Received. Unfortunately this is not the relevant policy. You have emailed me a copy of the current privacy protection/breach insurance (supplied by Hiscox) that as I recall the charity only started purchasing after the WMF made it a requirement of payment processing. It is a form of technical insurance for data, which specifically excludes liability resulting from any services provided by the charity, so it not only excludes volunteers from its cover, it actually excludes services from employees or contractors.

Could you supply the correct insurance policy that is relevant to the activities of the charity and to which I believe I and all other active volunteers are insured parties? Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Of course. There are a few redactions I'll have to make, but I'll try and get it to you in the next few days - it's a much bigger policy and is printed on weird embossed paper so I'll need to scan the pages individually (they don't go through the feeder properly). Out of interest, what is it you'd like to check? Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

As an insured party I would like to exercise what I believe is the normal legal advice that parties to a contract read the contract. I believe all unpaid active volunteers for the charity would be sensibly advised that they should understand and have access to any insurance policy that applies to their activities before volunteering to deliver services or benefits on behalf of the charity. Should I ever be sued for damages when working as an unpaid volunteer for the charity, for example as a result of volunteering to support an editathon, when I have records showing every reason to believe that I am covered by appropriate insurance, I do not want to be caught out by only then finding out that the Chief Executive had made a decision at some point to renegotiate the terms of the policy and not tell me or any other volunteer about it.

That the insurance company Wikimedia UK has chosen as a supplier appears to be putting up apparently arbitrary obstacles in the way of sharing the insurance policy with the insured parties, I find not only bizarre but in all likelihood would be found unacceptable behaviour by the Financial Services Authority. If you are defining policy for Wikimedia UK, it may be worth checking directly with the FSA on this point, rather than relying solely on what might be a misguided middle-manager within the insurance company. --Fæ (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

As I have said, I will be sending you the insurance policy as soon as I can. No-one has put up any barriers. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:03, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The barrier as described in this thread has been introduced by the insurance supplier by insisting that Wikimedia UK remove the policy from the website, where members and volunteers could easily access it, and volunteers have to ask for a special redacted version to be created which required authorization from the Chief Executive which may or may not be granted based on unspecified criteria and may take several days. --Fæ (talk) 11:41, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on the Main Page

In response to Stevie's email about the main page, can I suggest a few tweaks to its text?

• "They are written and curated by thousands of volunteers, and are supported by voluntary donations, just like Wikimedia UK." - this is not strictly true, as WMUK sadly isn't (yet) written or curated by thousands are volunteers. Also, the aim here should be the Wikimedia projects being supported by voluntary donations *through* WMUK rather than making a distinction between donations to the projects and donations to WMUK! So perhaps rephrase to something like "They are written and curated by thousands of volunteers. They are also supported by voluntary donations through Wikimedia UK and other chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation."
• "Wikimedia UK is the registered charity" - that should probably mention "in the United Kingdom" or something similar, as other Wikimedia organisations are recognised as charities.
• "this year we are hosting Wikimania" - has it now been clearly set out that WMUK is hosting Wikimania? The last time I was looking at this, there was a draft agreement being prepared between WMUK and the individuals that bid for Wikimania, but it was still being drafted - has an agreement now been set out and signed? If so, please could a copy be shared on-wiki?
• The new volunteer/join us/donate buttons are very nice. :-) Can I suggest adding a bit more horizontal padding between the button edges and the text, so that they look a bit less squashed, though?
• Having 'volunteers' in bold in the 'Get Involved' section looks a bit odd, as it's the only unlinked and non-title bit of bold text on the page. Perhaps it could be turned into a link?

(I also made a formatting/punctuation tweak earlier - hope that was OK!)

It might be worth thinking about doing a more thorough overhaul of the page at some point. It's been developed in a bit of an ad-hoc way over the last few years, and it's starting to show (e.g. with the triple language/logo bar/advert at the top of the page, immediately followed by the 'About Wikimedia UK' bar). Perhaps a mini-competition could be run to encourage volunteers to come up with new concepts for what the page could contain and how it could be laid out?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

The nice big Volunteer button goes to the Volunteering Portal which has loads of text but no clear direction at all as to what to do next. A new visitor would really struggle to go beyond that page, as there is no clear pointer to 'what do I do now'? There could at the very least be a blindingly obvious button to send the Charity an email to get more information. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:25, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

It's being worked on today. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 08:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Katie! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:51, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Keep the comments coming, all useful, - We are working in the background to make the front page (and the whole UK Wiki) as good as possible in the longer term. The circumstances this weekend have meant that we have had to put together very quickly something as an experiment. If what we are hoping comes off, comes off, then we will learn a lot. We have to be circumspect about it as making it public would probably mean it would be significantly less likely to happen. Sorry to be so cryptic but that is the way it is. With luck we will be praising one special volunteer to the roof on Monday, if not we will still have got the nce new buttons. Have a good weekend Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

in reference to Mike's third bullet point above I think we need to say WMUK is a charity registered in England and Wales. We are not OSCR registered and I don't think the term UK Charity is correct. Can someone check with the charity commission advice on this please? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 13:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I have also asked above whether the term Charitable Company, which we have capitalised, is correct? Is that a separate thing provided for in law. We mention the charitable status on the next line. Philafrenzy (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all of these comments. I'll make some small changes that hopefully take the above into account. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Just one point about Mike's comment on chapters and the WMF etc. That will be meaningless to newcomers, who this is really aimed at. We can think about coming up with something more detailed later on if we need to. But I do take the point on board. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, scratch that. I've made a minor clarification there which I think helps Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Stevie - the changes you've made look good. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

No problem, thank you for your constructive comments!Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The Donate and Join Us buttons on the main page direct to respective pages that have different (out of date) side bar layouts on the left. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:34, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Michael, not sure why that is, other than they don't sit on our wiki. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The blog is on Wordpress, with a skin to make it look like our website. While the side bar on the wiki has been revised over time, the blog hasn't been kept up to date. At the moment I'm looking into updating the blog. It's a minor thing, but one worth doing for consistency. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I couldn't work out how to get the headings to quite match, but the links are right at least. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 16:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

You should be able to copy-paste the code from the left-hand menu of this wiki to the wordpress template, and it should work - the blog uses CSS from enwp (something that should actually be improved at some point). Let me know if you want any help getting this working - although I no longer have access to this so I can't do it directly atm... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Stephen Fry

Nice work on that, everyone who made it happen. Is a Facebook post coming on it or is anything else planned to maximise publicity? Philafrenzy (talk) 18:30, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

+1 Good work. Just as Andy has done, I encourage others to think about dropping celebs an email (or a tweet) so they can supply missing photos or audio; your success rate might only be 25% (based on my past experience), and it's made a bit complex having to explain we need a CC-BY release, but always worth a punt.

If this does generate interest, could we also use this as an opportunity to encourage audio and video more generally on Commons? We are particularly poor when it comes to free performances of classic music (or out-of-copyright music), so anyone with an interest in amateur performances or folk music should be encouraged to borrow the chapter's recording kit and have a go. We are also weak when it comes to sound "effects" such as different car engines, cat meowing, market traders calling etc. These may seem odd things to collect, but they can be great for bringing articles to life.

By the way, if you have large collections of free audio or video, drop me or Andy an email. We can arrange batch conversions to free formats for uploading to Commons. This could easily become a pragmatic "help me service" the chapter might be the point of contact for. --Fæ (talk) 18:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello both. In terms of publicity we're waiting to see if Stephen tweets it. We're hopeful that he will, in which case we could be looking at a spike of, literally, hundreds of thousands of hits an hour. Work has taken place behind the scenes (thanks to Tom Morton) to make sure that our infrastructure can handle it. The real credit for all of this goes to Andy Mabbett, who has been working on this for a long time. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 18:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Here's hoping. Who has the next highest number of followers in Britain? Jeremy Clarkson? Do we have his voice? Philafrenzy (talk) 18:59, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I've had a look at some of the figures which are surprisingly tricky to come by. Mostly, the top ten comprises of members of boy band One Direction, singer Jessie J, BBC Breaking news, Stephen Fry and comedian Ricky Gervais. The good news is that Stephen Fry did indeed tweet about the project here. I'd like to say congratulations to Andy Mabbett for all his work on this project. Tom Morton did a great job on the tech side of things and Katie Chan worked very hard to get the volunteer portal in to a good shape today. All around, an excellent piece of collaborative working that brought together volunteers and staff in a very productive way. More of these collaborations, please! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 21:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, excellent work. There must be a strong correlation between high numbers of Twitter followers and Wikipedia notability so this could certainly happen again. Philafrenzy (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• http://thenextweb.com/media/2014/01/25/wikipedia-adding-celebrity-voices-biography-pages-preserve-celebrity-voices-future-generations/#!tm2WR
• http://www.thedrum.com/news/2014/01/26/stephen-fry-helps-launch-wikipedias-wikivip-voice-recording-service
• http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/01/wikipedias-adding-voice-recordings-of-famous-people/

Philafrenzy (talk) 12:37, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the links Philafrenzy. I'm collating a report of all of the coverage I can find - lots of people pinging back to our blog post - so will be sure to include these. Some interim figures you may be interested in for now - as of this moment the tracking link has been followed 2,841 times (and climbing steadily), and Stephen's tweet has received over 100 retweets and over 100 favourites. Not sure how that will translate in terms of fundraising, membership and volunteering, but I've had two separate people write to me to get involved in the voices project. Good going so far. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Any evidence yet of membership applications as a result of this? Philafrenzy (talk) 10:26, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I haven't seen any data on this yet - the alerts don't come to me - but I will look into it and see what I can find. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello again. I've aggregated as much of the coverage as I could find and have added it here. Please feel free to add anything I've missed! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think you have found most of it! Hoping, however, that we garner more than publicity from the effort. Not sure what we should expect and over what time frame, given the ephemeral nature of a Tweet. Philafrenzy (talk) 12:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Completely agree and I'm really looking forward to seeing the figures. I'm completely in the dark about what is reasonable to expect from an increase in traffic to our site, but traffic that isn't familiar with is. Once we get to look at the numbers it will certainly inform the way we approach something like this in the future for recruitment (volunteers and members) and fundraising. I'd certainly welcome any input on those areas once we know what we're working with. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's far too early for the analysis, but we don't need the publicity as such, we need more members, donors and volunteers. Those will be the indicators where everyone will be looking for a spike in the graph. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Have there been any membership applications or new volunteers as a result of this yet? (I know it's early) Philafrenzy (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Not sure about membership - I know there have been some problems with our database but I shall ask Katherine to see if she can shed any light on the question. In terms of volunteers, there have been four or five people getting in touch about how to get involved with the Wiki VIP project which is promising. Andy has advised me that the link to the homepage is still being retweeted (hence reverting the homepage to show the relevant blog post again). Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

This could have quite a long tail as the same original material is copied over and over again by different outlets. Shows just how the "news" really works. All to our benefit of course. Philafrenzy (talk) 11:58, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, I've spoken with Katherine about this and it appears that we didn't receive any new membership applications that were a direct result of this activity (at least to this point). While there were two larger gifts during the last week, it appears they are also unrelated to the Stephen Fry post. If this is the case, given that the tracking link has been followed 3,986 times so far, I would suggest that this makes quite a compelling case for a major overhaul of our public facing website / wiki. As a community we've had this conversation before but this presents evidence that it should be put back on the agenda. Not a single attributable conversion from almost 4,000 visits is really pretty poor and if we're serious about increasing membership and volunteer numbers we should take notice and see it as a spur to action. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Visitors simply don't understand at first glance (and that's all they give it) who we are and what we do and why they should bother to get involved, or even if it is relevant to them. They don't understand Wikipedia, and they understand us even less. Everyone knows what an animal or children's charity is and it has an immediate emotional pull, but an "open knowledge" charity? Philafrenzy (talk) 12:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely a part of the problem - but a problem to which there must be a solution. Working together I'm sure we can find a solution that produces good results. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:52, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Fry twitter followers who click on a related link and read it for an average time of 3 seconds are incredibly random (in terms of marketing, people clicking on the link are have no pre-qualification, such as relevant self-selection). The conversion of random surfers likely to be interested in voices of celebrities through to paying £5 or donating to a charity they have never heard of before is unsurprisingly un-measurably minuscule. I believe this has been said on the water cooler by other volunteers in the past, and it has been our past experience with transient social media "trending", but a serious article or editorial in the weekend edition of The Times or The Observer that tells the story of one of our events and their benefits, is far, far, more likely to attract a relevant and educated segment of the British public, thereby providing meaningful numbers of donors, participants in our future events and long term volunteers than a tweet that is popular for a day. By the way, this matches my past experience as a marketing director when I invested some serious money in different advertising channels... nothing worked better than personal contact at events and conferences and in terms of cost per "conversion" it is the most effective "sales" channel.

To test any sales campaign, I strongly recommend not linking to the front page of this website; it is not a targeted sales brochure and should not become just a means of converting internet surfers into donors. A campaign specific landing page would be far more effective that directly hooks into any campaign and provides a targeted explanation of what this charity does and how it benefits the reader based on the nature of the campaign and how prospective donors/volunteers have been qualified. Personally, I see no problem in linking to a webpage separate from this wiki for that purpose and other chapters have done precisely this for similar reasons. --Fæ (talk) 13:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

That sounds sensible and I certainly feel that we ought to do more to make our name known. The chapter has a very low profile, and the publicity that it has had has generally been negative. That may have created a feeling that we should "keep our head down" for a while. Fae's suggestion of an article in a quality paper describing a specific project is a good one. Also, I may have missed it but I don't see Jon ever quoted in the media. Our projects are essentially intellectual so they need to have a human angle added in order to create a compelling proposition and to make them newsworthy. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

(Unindent for ease of reading) So is this representing something of a sea change? I remember when I suggested a couple of months ago that we could make great use of an overlay website as an accompaniment to the wiki it was met with a mixture of incredulity, anger and outrage ;-) Let's be careful how we approach this, though. I can't see any potential future where we spend money on advertising channels (although if there was some way we could contact university students en masse easily and cheaply. I do like the idea of a specific campaign, though. Much of what we have been doing for a long time has involved plenty of tail-chasing. We're becoming more structured now which allows for more planned work and campaigning falls under this. The chapter is gaining visibility, bit by bit. The work on the open coalition is a good part of that, as is the series of residencies with high-profile cultural and educational institutions. Our contributions to the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU will act in a similar way (and I have a volunteer helping me with this). Wikimania represents a great opportunity, and there's the possibility of an evening event at the Science Museum, too - notes on this were published earlier in the week. With regards to Jon being quoted in the media, he's been quoted a fairly decent amount in news stories about us. Sometimes, a lack of consensus (or sometimes, being completely honest, my own fear of community responses) prevents me from feeling entirely confident of making the chapter more available for comment on relevant news stories. Philafrenzy, as you rightly observe, the fact the chapter received some pretty strong negative coverage over a lengthy period also contributed to this. On the subject of getting stories into the quality nationals, well - if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. That being said, we haven't done too badly, particularly the last couple of months, with the Guardian and Telegraph. There are some feature ideas being developed (such as teaching people to edit). I also have a good working relationship with a journalist from one of the leading quality nationals who is very interested in case studies involving the use of Wikipedia in higher education (especially Oxbridge). I hope all of this is useful. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we need to be clear what our message is before we can communicate it properly, but using case studies with a strong human interest angle is most likely to make a good story. Are we seeking to differentiate ourselves from WMF or Wikipedia and describe our own separate charitable mission? Can we sum up our message in one or two pithy sentences? Philafrenzy (talk) 14:54, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

We have Mission. --Fæ (talk) 15:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

As can be reviewed in the archives, what was objectionable to many volunteers was changing parts of the function of this website from an open wiki to a closed one controlled by the CEO and his employees. A website, with very few pages, acting as a "brochure" for the charity, rather than a news service and project hub for members and volunteers (which is what this wiki is for), is little different from publishing the Annual report on-line as a pdf. The trick is to ensure that it is implemented in keeping with our open volunteer-centric values. Just because some webpages are not wikis, does not mean that they cannot be developed and reviewed on-wiki. If the outcomes are achieved using an operational plan and consultation processes truly meeting our shared values of staying volunteer-centric, open, transparent and focused on the mission of the charity, then there can be no "incredulity, anger and outrage". --Fæ (talk) 15:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Community consultation - Financial and Expenses procedures

Some changes in WMUK's financial procedures are being proposed to reflect reflect the 2013-14 internal management changes, with the setting up of two Board Committees (GovCom and ARC), the introduction of the QFMR system and also the Board’s Scheme of Delegation of day-to-day management to the CEO.

Community feedback is invited on the two pages below. This consultation will close at midnight on Saturday 1st February 2014.

• Financial Policy & Procedures (proposed)
• Expense procedures (proposed)

Please make suggestions/comments on the respective talk pages. Thank you. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Michael for posting these changes for community consultation. Mike Peel (talk) 17:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Why does this need a "community consultation"? It's just rearranging the deckchairs ever so slightly. I wonder about the collective wisdom of the board if it (thinks it) has nothing better to do than fiddle at the edges of procedures that work fine on paper. Harry Mitchell (talk) 17:36, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Harry you're conflating two issues, 1) is whether we need to make these changes ("fiddle at the edges") 2) is whether we need a consultation. On 1, we're working towards good governance and operations practice, this is part of that, the board is working hard. On 2, I'm sure some will agree with you, and others will not. Being open to comments before adopting is low cost. Thanks Sjgknight (talk) 13:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with an open process where members can see and comment on the changes; it's a good thing even when not of interest to the majority. Gradual small improvements of Financial procedures is something that I would expect the CEO to work on and then make positive recommendations to the board, rather than eating up a lot of trustee (or other unpaid volunteer) time. The only aspect here that may require members' attention is whether the trustees are doing a good thing by increasingly delegating their authority to the CEO.

Harry, If you feel the board should prioritize or give more oxygen to something else (when I was the chair, I attempted in instil the good board management practice of realistically doing something about a maximum of 5 top risks at one time), then it might be better to point out the risk you feel they are failing to address or openly discuss.

Of the things clamouring for attention, I would say that a decline/lack of growth in membership or active volunteer numbers (compared to 3 years ago), should remain top of the agenda; both for trustees and member discussion. It remains unclear to me how the trustees have been holding the CEO to account for that key performance indicator, which is on the record as being an issue for the last 3 years but never turned into a firm, reported, basic, performance target.

• Volunteers/numbers - last published number October 2013.
• Membership/Numbers - no growth for the last 4 months.

--Fæ (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Fæ, apologies for the tardiness of my reply. I won't point to any one issues in particular, because someone will inevitably address that specific issue at the expense of the broader point (and I think that's human nature, not an implication of mal-intent, just for the record). My concern is more that the board is busying itself by rearranging the deckchairs than it is about any particular issue. There are plenty of things I can think of that I'd be looking at first, and I'm not much of a strategic thinker, so if I could think of something better to do, there must be lots of things that would seem, to a humble volunteer, to be far more important than renaming policies to "procedures". Harry Mitchell (talk) 18:43, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Harry you seem to have deleted Michael's post (which I'm reposting below). Re: the broader point, we very much encourage any comments you have on the strategy consultation below. Sjgknight (talk) 22:24, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Apologies to Michael; that was unintentional. I'm sure you say that with nothing but sincerity, but the reality is that I'd be wasting my breath—any comments I've offered on such things in the past have been ignored, or at best have been met with a very short response and a promise of a more substantial response that never seems to materialise, so for now, I can think of more productive uses of my time. Harry Mitchell (talk) 13:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

+1, understandable. --Fæ (talk) 16:32, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

This consultation has now closed. Thank you for your comments, everyone. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Trademark agreement

Hi all. With the new Trademark policy in the process of being approved by the WMF, I was reminded about the trademark agreement issue from a few years ago. The new policy says 'These groups enter into agreements with the Wikimedia Foundation, which allow them to use certain Wikimedia marks.' Does WMUK have such a trademark agreement at the moment? I seem to recall that we had an informal letter of understanding from Mike Godwin (WMF legal counsel before Geoff) so that we could make limited use of the Wikipedia trademark, but I can't recall a trademark agreement being set out after that. It might be worth WMUK checking with Geoff to find out what the plans are here, and to provide early comments on any draft agreement that might exist at the moment. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:14, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Use of the Wikimedia logo is covered by the Chapter Agreement. I'll leave it for others to comment on the use of other marks. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 10:44, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

A side point, here. I am speaking to the WMF legal team by phone to try to ensure that the new TM policy allows users to make much freer use of the WMF trademarks in conjunction with QRpedia codes. They are broadly sympathetic. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:48, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Any news on this? Does WMUK have an agreement in place with the WMF to use the Wikimedia project logos (aside from the Wikimedia logo as per Katie's comment), or will it soon? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:57, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I am almost certain that use of Wikimedia project logos is covered in the chapter's agreement. But, to put your mind at rest, I will write specifically to the WMF legal team to request confirmation. I'll note any reply I receive here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Stevie, unless Mike has some specific concerns about the trademark clauses of the public chapter agreement I don't think you need to do that. Mike: are you just looking for a pointer to Wikimedia_UK_v2.0/Chapter_agreement or did you have something specific in mind? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

have you read 5.2 of the chapters agreement? Trademarks apart from the Wikimedia logo are specifically excluded from being covered in that agreement - a separate one is needed in order for the chapter to use e.g. the Wikipedia logo. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:21, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello again. I have received confirmation from Geoff Brigham of the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation. I quote: "Correct. The chapter agreement is the trademark agreement for wmuk." Mike, I hope this puts you at ease but thanks for asking the question. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 14:02, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

It's the trademark agreement for the 'Wikimedia' trademark and logo, but it's explicitly not for the other trademarks. I suggest you ask Geoff again and quote point 5.2 specifically. Feel free to loop me into the email discussion if that would be helpful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Just to follow this up. Mike, it appears you are indeed correct. WMF legal team are happy to prepare a separate agreement for use of project logos and they are doing so. I'll update with any progress as it happens. Thank you for this. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Stevie. :-) Mike Peel (talk) 11:55, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Community consultation - Strategic Plan 2014-2019

	Strategy
Strategy Overview of strategy Strategic and operational models Vision, values and mission Strategic goals Operational WMUK activities and volunteers Strategy monitoring plan KPI tracking results 2014 Activity Plan

As most members and active volunteers will know, the WMUK board and staff have been working on a draft of our Strategic Plan 2014-2019. At the board meeting last December, a plan was put in place to complete the work, with full community consultation, in good time for a final version to be approved at the board meeting in March 2014.

We are now at the stage of asking for community feedback, and your comments are invited on each of the draft strategy pages listed below. The pages flow through, from top level vision and mission down to thoughts on detailed KPIs and annual targets, and they will make most sense if read in the order listed.

(The pages could certainly do with some formatting work to make them easier to read as a whole, and to jump between them. If anyone has time, a navbox would be nice! If no volunteer is able to help out, the task might have to devolve on the staff at some future time). Done. Did it myself! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:05, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

• Overview of strategic plan 2014-2019
• Strategic and operational models
• Vision, values and mission (proposed)
• Strategic goals
• Measures and targets

Below this, the staff will have a series of day-to-day working spreadsheets with short-term plans, individual event targets etc, as well as links to individual staff objectives.

Please bear in mind when reading these documents that they set out the thoughts and proposals of the board and staff, and that these may well change and evolve as a result of community feedback. Nothing has yet been finally decided.

This consultation introduces quite a number of new strategic elements and ideas. Now is your chance to say, for example, what you think about clarifying the scope of the the charity's mission by adopting the Open Definition of Free Knowledge/Free Content as used by the Open Knowledge Foundation, rather than rolling our own with variable mixtures of the concepts 'open', 'free', 'freely-licensed' and so on.

Other suggestions that you will see in the new pages include the idea of having annual externally-run surveys, particularly to provide hard information on difficult-to-measure impacts such as reputation, and a class of volunteers called Friends (separate from our members and the community of less-formally-related volunteers with whom we work). The Friends list could grow much more rapidly than our members' list, and could be tapped as a 'volunteer resource' when we need someone with particular skills, or in a particular area, etc. Such Friends lists are used very successfully by many charities.

This consultation will close at midnight on 28th February 2014.

Please make suggestions/comments on the respective talk pages. General feedback and comments on the consultation process itself should go to the General feedback page. Thank you. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

A new definitions page has been added for comment: WMUK activities and volunteers. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

2013-14 Annual Review

Hello everyone, it's time for us to begin working on Wikimedia UK's 2013-14 Annual Review. I've started sketching out some plans for the booklet and would love for people to get involved. If you're interested please do take a look here and leave comments or suggestions. Thank you! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 11:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Cultural Outreach Limited

Cultural Outreach Limited has been established as a wholly-owned non-trading subsidiary of Wikimedia UK for the purpose of holding the charity's rights in QRpedia. It has been recommended that we appoint two independent directors, in addition to Jon Davies. Yesterday, the board formally approved the intended appointment of Mike Peel and Doug Taylor as directors of the company. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:13, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Was that the WMUK board or the Cultural Outreach Limited board? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

The WMUK board.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Two questions for Mike and Doug now they have a majority vote:

1. Are you going to govern COL independently of the WMUK board or defer to WMUK for matters such as who is to be a director or changes in policy and legal foundation?
2. Will you keep the CEO of WMUK as a director of COL forever, or would you prefer to become truly independent? --Fæ (talk) 10:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

My knowledge of company law is limited at best, but if COL is a wholly owned subsidiary, surely there's a limit to how independent its directors can be? It looks to me like this was mostly a formality—the risk of one person going under a bus (for example) and being unable to discharge their duties is relatively high; the risk of three people all going under the same bus is slightly lower, which is why it makes sense to have multiple directors, even if they don't have an awful lot of work to do. Harry Mitchell (talk) 13:28, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The scope of QRpedia (a worldwide service supporting multi-language access to Wikimedia projects and potentially non-Wikimedia projects in the future) is very different from the mission of Wikimedia UK. In this sense it can never be purely a "subsidiary" managed by the Wikimedia UK board, it is only circumstance that has resulted in Wikimedia UK hosting the service for the open knowledge community. If the COL board is independent, then it will be freer to invite board members committed to QRpedia with no connection to the UK and look at potential partnerships or future hosts for the service without having any vested interests in doing this in ways that benefit Wikimedia UK. However you look at it, the CEO of Wikimedia UK is always going to have a vested interest in benefiting the organization he manages.

The trustees of Wikimedia UK are perfectly well aware that it is a requirement on them by the Charity Commission to consider if services of the charity can more effectively or efficiently deliver outcomes for the beneficiaries if made independent or handed over to another organization. Creating COL as an organizationally separate entity may provide the means for it to separate itself from Wikimedia UK entirely at some future date, and the COL board should be free to take this option if that is in the best interests of keeping the QRpedia service available and maintained. For example, if in 2015 the WMF decides chapters were always a waste of money and would rather set up regional offices, then the WMUK board might decide to close the charity down and pass all assets to the WMF UK office; if the COL were independent then they might refuse to be passed to the WMF and instead either join another organization (such as the OKF) or create their own funding stream as a global organization with no contract binding them to the WMF. --Fæ (talk) 17:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Harry is quite right. Cultural Outreach Limited has been set up by Wikimedia UK as a vehicle to hold the QRpedia rights. QRpedia is now being maintained for the community by the charity, and the charity will naturally retain full control via its controlling shareholding. That is perfectly normal, and there is no legal possibility for Cultural Outreach Limited, as a subsidiary, to do anything that damages the charity. There is no wedge that can be driven between a company and its subsidiary in the manner suggested. And it is important that that is the case, since otherwise Wikimedia UK could not guarantee to protect for the community (its beneficiaries) the rights it holds. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification Michael. I have no idea why Mike and Doug would want to be directors with no delegated authority to do anything; it sounds exceptionally pointless. --Fæ (talk) 21:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

We identified a risk that needed addressing i.e. me going under a bus. As the sole director that could cause problems. Therefore we decided we needed to expand the board to address this. With luck, and careful cycling, this will never be needed. I think Mike and Doug's motivation, as ever, is to help the charity and I thank them for it. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 10:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

As a point of clarification, my two questions were for Mike and Doug now they have a majority vote. Views and speculation as to how Mike or Doug might have responded (had they been quick enough), from other parties are useful, so thanks for that, but they are not the replies from the new directors that I was asking for.

By the way, I was on the board of trustees when we decided to create COL, it was actually my proposal that we set up such a company, so I am perfectly aware of why we made that decision and my two questions were asked with that knowledge and perspective. However, thanks to Jon for jogging my memory. --Fæ (talk) 11:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The directors of COL are required by companies law to act in the best interest of the company for the benefit of its members. As COL is a wholly owned subsidiary of WMUK, that would be the benefit of WMUK. In terms of appointment of directors, that is again a matter for the members of the company, which is WMUK, and not the directors themselves.

The directors of a wholly own subsidiary company are independent in the sense that they do not take instructions from WMUK in the normal course of business, but they are still required to act for WMUK benefit. If WMUK wish to transfer its assets to a hypothetical WMF regional office (as permitted by law), then that's for WMUK to decide. The directors (as directors) of a company don't have a veto on who own that company, that's for the owner(s) to decide. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 12:03, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I actually said nothing about having a power of a veto, neither did I assume that COL was independent, nor did I say that COL might do anything, anything at all, against the interests of Wikimedia UK or that they might "do anything that damages the charity" (Michael's chosen words), just that the QRpedia service potentially goes beyond Wikimedia UK's mission and that COL might be usefully independent of Wikimedia UK in the future. My questions were directly asked of Mike and Doug, though as employees and the Chairman of Wikimedia UK have intervened and chosen to interpret my questions as some kind of threat, I would guess they would not say anything that did not mirror what has already been said.

Let me just clarify what I thought was obvious but apparently not. My asking these questions is not a threat to Wikimedia UK, I expected answers from the new directors to clarify their viewpoint. I do not expect members of a charity to get shot down through a process of reductio ad absurdum for asking pretty straightforward questions. If Wikimedia UK closes down, or gets taken over in a way that changes its mission, for any reason in the next 100 years, I would expect COL to run independently if QRpedia is still being used. If the answer is that it the Chairman or the board of trustees forbids anyone considering if COL could ever be independent of their control in order to better deliver the service to beneficiaries, then the original concept of guaranteeing the QRpedia service in perpetuity or as long as it is in demand, seems less than meaningful. --Fæ (talk) 12:25, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I find it ironic to read "It's also a good thing for the movement that it's possible to "spin off" projects like this, which the Foundation has decided are no longer core activity, to other entities" (Chris Keating, today on Wiki Education Foundation). If WMUK believed the same might be true of itself rather than just the WMF, then "possible" means we should be free and encouraged to discuss options without it being interpreted as a threat that might damage the charity. --Fæ (talk) 13:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The opposite is happening here; the charity has recently "spun-in" QRpedia - as you are aware. As a result QRpedia is controlled by Wikimedia UK. If your preferred option was for a third-party non-profit independent of Wikimedia UK to hold QRpedia, then you were very quiet about it in the many conversations that happened about this in 2012 and 2013. The Land (talk) 14:11, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

To repeat, as you appear to have missed the point made above, I asked a question of Mike and Doug about how independently COL would operate in the future. This might make it easier to spin off the service but this is not a case of me proposing that nor have I said, anywhere, that I prefer it.

QRpedia was not "spun-in", it was a free gift of a non-Wikimedia project and non-Wikimedia service to the Wikimedia movement from Roger and Terence that, primarily due to your personal objections and then after you negotiated the position of Chairman and took control of the QRpedia agreement from me, then took an incredibly long time to accept. I was not quiet about the alternative options, the idea of the management company being a service controlled by WMUK trustees was never my recommendation. Considering the problematic history of the agreement process, I certainly would never have recommended that the WMUK CEO was the sole director, this was how Saad decided to set it up later on. Perhaps you recall the equivalent difficult discussions about trainer certifications which I always held was a service that was a poor fit to Wikimedia UK's mission and would be usefully a separate service?

Factoring out services and only taking on services that are core to the charity's mission was always something that I took seriously as a trustee, especially considering that the charity has no track record of benchmarking itself to demonstrate it has the capability to perform these services more effectively or efficiently than other organizations. In the light of the board of trustees preferring to not adopt efficiency as a key performance indicator in its new strategy, I guess that these decisions will continue to be based on subjective foundations and personal judgement. --Fæ (talk) 15:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Fae - You are perfectly aware of the fact that Cultural Outreach Limited are owned by Wikimedia UK, and therefore that the directors do not have independence of action. So you cannot be in any genuine doubt about what the directors of COL will do. I am not clear why you are asking the question, given that you know the answer, but my assumption is that it's to try to make some kind of point about something or someone. The Land (talk) 17:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I asked the question of Mike and Doug in order to understand their viewpoint. This is exactly what I wrote above. I am no longer a trustee, nor am I in a political campaign against you. Thanks for your on-going concern for me and your thoughts about what motivation I might have. --Fæ (talk) 17:34, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I note that only 15 minutes after making a pointy comment about my motivation here (and after 4½ months of no edits, which has raised questions about canvassing on IRC), you made this extremely personal comment in my Commons RFA. Surprising for a trustee of Wikimedia UK and quite visibly carrying your disputes into the projects that are irrelevant there. --Fæ (talk) 17:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

What I've posted on your Commons RFA is nothing different to what I told you directly last summer. My views haven't changed since then. I shan't be commenting further in this thread as it is far enough off-topic already. Regards, The Land (talk) 18:11, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I do not recall you making ill judged defamatory comments about me in public. I find your statement that I have "an ability to lose friends [and] alienate people which is almost unparalleled" to be a direct personal attack that I would expect accounts to get blocked for on this wiki as harassment. I am amazed that any trustee believes it is okay for them to behave so appallingly in public when commenting about Wikimedia UK matters on a Wikimedia project where they are known to be on the board of Wikimedia UK. --Fæ (talk) 20:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Fæ. I'm still working through the organisation's paperwork before I decide whether to accept the role or not (see User:Mike Peel/Cultural Outreach Ltd for details). I don't know about Doug, but until we accept the role and are formally appointed we certainly don't have a majority vote. With regards (1), I understand that the governance of the organisation should be done independently of WMUK but should, of course, heavily involve consultation with the stakeholders, of which WMUK is the primary one given that they are the sole shareholder. With (2), this is an interesting question that needs to be thought about, and decided upon based on the level of independence that needs to exist between COL and WMUK. I don't know the answer here yet. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Mike. I appreciate your response and its clear distinction from what has been stated above. --Fæ (talk) 23:28, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Will the related domains of qrpedia.net, qrpedia.org.uk and qrpedia.co.uk, held respectively (according to whois.com) by Wikimedia UK, Michael Peel and the Bamkin family, also be transferred to COL? TheOverflow (talk) 23:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Note that qrpedia.org.uk has been transferred to WMUK ownership, but it seems we still haven't managed to convince nominet to update their records to reflect that. :-( I don't know if the domains need to be owned by COL rather than WMUK, as there is a difference between the implementation and the rights-ownership here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

GLAM-Wiki toolset staffing

Hi all. I'm not sure where to ask this, so I hope it's OK I'm asking it here. I was surprised to learn recently that the GLAM-Wiki toolset/mass upload tool only had one developer working on it, which was part of why it really struggled as a tech project. My memory from the initial documents was that there was going to be a lead developer with a number of other developers working alongside them on a part/fractional time basis, with the lead developer being ~50% of the person-time working on the project and the others making up the rest, but the comments I've seen seem to disagree with that (and seem to be a major factor in why the project wasn't successful, along with the lack of code review resource, and a general lack of close and ongoing links with the WMF developers). Can I ask what happened here, please? Did something change part way through the project? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:55, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I have followed the email discussion about this with interest, being a member of the Steering Group, particularly as there seems a misapprehension that this is a Europeana project or tool rather than one owned by the Wikimedia community. There is a team of people within Europeana who have been working on the toolset in the past year, recently Dan was the last remaining team member completing the work, primarily due to an extended unplanned delay of several months caused by the WMF. The team had different types of Agile development roles, but there was no point in the Steering Group finding funds to keep the team contracted to hang around waiting for the WMF to do their thing, when we only needed one point of contact to handle any bugs or last minute new operational requirements that the WMF might create. If you have detailed questions I suggest raising them on the discussion page at Commons:Commons:GLAMwiki Toolset Project; you may be interested in how the Agile approach chosen has been able to deliver the tool even with a major budget shortfall against plan. As for the WMF's feedback on the project, they are more than welcome to video conference in to Steering Group meetings, where they have been repeatedly invited, and we will write up any feedback they have; I have no idea why Erik feels he needs to use various email lists to do this for the first time.

The project has yet to be launched, we will do this with a set of initial GLAM case studies (Àlex <kippelboy> is working inside Europeana to make the launch a success) but the system is live and (finally) integrated into Commons as a special page available to those with the GWToolset right. If someone has been saying the project has failed, it would be useful to put them right by pointing to the facts. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I think Fae is right - this is a question for the GW Toolset people and Fae specifically. Maybe Jonathan Cardy can help too. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 13:40, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

To answer Mike's original question, there was a change part way through the project when some of the other chapters withdrew from the consortium because they needed the money for other things, as a result the scope of this phase was reduced, but still includes a mass upload tool. We still need various other features including a mass extract tool, but that would require more funding. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 17:45, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Fæ and all. Thanks for your replies. There seems to be a mismatch here between what's been said in the email discussion about this, particularly by the WMF, and what is being said here. Perhaps it's an over-simplification on the WMF's part, but it might be worth clarifying this, or generally gathering feedback from stakeholders about what the issues were here and what could be done better next time (I suspect that trying to do that at a video con is not the best approach - better to invite written text). Fæ, I haven't heard anyone say that the project has failed, but it doesn't seem to have been a successful project from my perspective in terms of how it has worked overall, even though the end product has been created (and I look forward to seeing it in action). But perhaps I'm being premature in saying that. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Use of NoIndex on this wiki

I agree with the use of noindex directives to stop search engines indexing out-of-date content on this wiki. However, at the moment it's excessive. The {{historical}} template marks pages as noindex: this is appropriate for old drafts or meeting minutes, but there are lots of pages about our work which are archived yet we still want very visible to the public. If someone hears that Wikimedia UK ran an education conference in 2012, or a GLAM-Wiki conference in 2010, or a training event with the Society of Biology, it's logical for them to search for details, and they might not get any results because search engines have been told not to index those pages. It also hurts our search engine placement because links in to those pages won't be counted towards the ranking of the whole site. Can we have a solution that distinguishes historical-and-outdated from no-longer-updated-but-we-still-want-the-public-to-see? MartinPoulter Jisc (talk) 15:10, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The use of noindex was my idea, to make it easier for people to reach current events through search engines. I didn't realise it might negatively effect search engine placement. It might be worth having two templates: one for out of date pages which don't need to appear in search engines, and one for past events where people may still be turning up looking to learn what happened. Does that sound like it might work? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Good spot Martin. I'd err on the side of not using NoIndex unless it's old drafts. Even on meeting minutes people might well search for something. This is something where having better internal navigation would also help. Sjgknight (talk) 15:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure it makes sense to have pages here noindex'd except possibly if there are specific reasons to do so - certainly it shouldn't be a blanket approach. Why not add a parameter onto the historical template so that individual pages can be set to index=no or similar to activate the noindex code? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:33, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Added it as a parameter. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 14:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Katie. I've also added it to {{Talk archive}} and {{Historical/Job description}}. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:59, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Referendum on Scottish independence

In a previous Engine Room discussion Stevie Benton asked a question about this topic which went on to become a conversation about WMUK's charitable status in Scotland. I don't think Stevie's question was fully addressed, and so can I now ask it to be given some consideration. In the event of a 'Yes' vote, have the consequences been considered both for Wikimedia UK (or might that be Wikimedia rUK?) and WMUK funding? I appreciate that people might not want to speculate on political possibilities, but in a way that's the point: it is a possibility. Graeme Arnott (talk) 22:30, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I would also back this request for consideration. I imagine that the discussion has been had, but I don't any kind of contingency plan in the event of Scottish independence, or even a note/suggestion on what would be an advisable course of action. Given that this could, potentially, be a significant concern for the 2014-2019 plan, I think it would be good to at least have the conversation publicly now. To some extent it would be speculation, yes, but the impact of the referendum is a topic that is being logistically discussed by other organisations both in Scotland and elsewhere, and I know I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts. I'm not 100% sure what I would even suggest myself, so I would definitely appreciate seeing some possibilities raised, however rough they may be at this time. ACrockford (talk) 12:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

A fascinating area to speculate on and I would be interested to hear community thoughts on this. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Just a really quick take on this (although I should be out in the sunshine!), I think it's an important question. My initial thinking would be that we could continue to support the work in Scotland as an element of our international support which is somewhere in the activity plan. But a contingency plan would certainly be worthwhile. I, too, would love to hear what others think about this - especially in the context of the excellent work that Graeme, Ally and others are doing in Scotland. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:23, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Having a vague idea on what it will mean for us in the event of a yes vote is probably worthwhile. However, we don't need to work on detailed specific until and unless there's a yes vote. There will be a period after a yes vote where negotiation will take place between Scotland and rest of the UK on the specific of the separation, and we can use that time. It's not like a yes vote is announced and Scotland will be independent the very next day. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 16:08, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, something we need to give some thought to and haven't really - though worth pointing out that any English-based charity that does work in Scotland will face the same issue!

Some initial thoughts (which are all personal and not remotely a Board view!)

There probably wouldn't be the necessity for anything to change quickly. We will before too long be registered as a charity in Scotland as well as in England & Wales; and even if we weren't, our charitable objects and our Chapters Agreement with the Wikimedia Foundation would still allow us to operate in Scotland, even if Scotland was a fully independent country.

What happens in the longer run would naturally be down to Scottish Wikimedians. It's quite conceivable that we could continue as a "multinational" organisation indefinitely, and I'm sure many organisations on both sides of the border will do exactly that. But if there was a strong call from the community to set up a new Wikimedia Scotland I can't see WMUK trying to object. There are some things that we wouldn't be able to pass on to a separate legal entity (e.g. we couldn't give names/addresses of members/donors in Scotland to a hypothetical new chapter, because of the Data Protection Act) but otherwise I hope we would be as helpful as possible. It's also quite possible that there might be pragmatic reasons to create a new Wikimedia Scotland - if the two countries end up with different currencies with highly variable exchange rates, for instance, or if the Scottish government were to decide to make generous grants to organisations headquartered in Scotland....

But yes, something to think about... The Land (talk) 21:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd say that's a sensible view to take; we can continue operating in an independent Scotland, and if a prospective Scottish chapter forms, we can support them. Would it be worth considering creating a subsidiary to operate in Scotland if there were benefits to having separate entities like those you suggest, Chris? Harry Mitchell (talk) 17:22, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

In terms of data protection, my understanding (and it may be wrong) is that it would be possible to share member information with a Wikimedia Scotland, which would be after a vote) if we have consent from members to do that. It may be worth seeking legal opinion on the desirability of something like "Subject to the laws of England and Wales and Scotland, we may share the information of members or donors who are resident in Scotland with a Wikimedia chapter recognised by the Wikimedia Foundation as the national chapter for Scotland.". It would surprise me if either country thought it in their interests to restrict data-sharing between them, but when politics gets involved it is probably wisest not to bet against any course of action. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 01:12, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Mediawiki Extensions (and highlighting Thanks feature)

I notice we now have the 'Thanks' extension installed, which is nice. So, if you haven't spotted it yet - check it out (top right when you look at a page diff, or next to 'undo' on the revision history lines).

I can think of some things semantic extensions might be useful for...but a bit involved for the benefits, but was wondering if there were other things we could/should be asking tech to look at setting up on this Wiki? I'm not sure how excited I am about Flow, but at some point discussion on discussion is probably a good idea! Sjgknight (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we should be beta testing things on this wiki as we don't have the volume of edits to make it worthwhile from a development point of view, and we don't have the same level of technical support in case things go disastrously wrong. I have no objection to anything that is tried and tested however. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 01:35, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Thryduulf's points are very good ones that I agree with. The counter-argument would be that as we don't have such a volume of edits here, it would be better to try things out on this wiki compared with enwp so that bugs can be caught without a high cost. However, I tend to view that as an argument to try things on smaller wikipedias first rather than on enwp, rather than trying them on chapter wikis... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:00, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I can see points on both sides there, if there's anything worth playing with (established or otherwise) we can cross that bridge then :-) Sjgknight (talk) 22:03, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Membership Survey 2013

Hi all,

I have just published the results of a lot of hard work from User:Thryduulf in producing the reporting into the 2013 Members survey. Do have a look at WMUK membership survey - 2013 report.

It may make sense to ask questions on the talk page of the highlight report. Staff are still thinking about how to carry the report forward and implement recommendations for improvements. There is an intention to re-run the survey in around six months, possibly to co-oincide with Wikimania activities if that will improve response rates and expanded to included volunteers (with an option for respondents to indicate that they are members)

We'll hopefully write a blog about it to go out next week, and can try and include some answers to questions in that as summary if there are some headline themes.

Thanks! Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 15:36, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Very interesting stuff - thanks Katherine and Thryduulf! The Land (talk) 20:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The demographic data seems to be missing? Philafrenzy (talk) 00:24, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Update licence to CC-BY-SA 4.0?

Hi all. I'd like to suggest updating the default license used by WMUK (both here, and through image uploads etc.) to CC-BY-SA-4.0 rather than 3.0. The main change that I can see here is that any breach of license would be given a 30-day grace period to correct the breach before the license would be invalidated (clause 7b1), but there are also other changes such as covering database rights. Are there any arguments against updating the licence here? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:36, 27 February 2014 (UTC)