Water cooler
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Pelican Books donates reference E-books for Wikipedians
We are delighted to announce that Pelican has given us 50 free Ebooks for Wikimedians to use. Applications are open now, details are on a page on the Wikipedia Library. Giving reference books to Wikipedians is one of the most practical ways to improve Wikipedia, and we are delighted to have Pelican's support in this. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 15:01, 26 November 2014 (GMT)
The charity's plans for 2015
The WMUK board's regular two-day strategy overview meeting was held in Cambridge last weekend. This is the time of year when we focus on future plans and we were joined by our interim CEO, D’Arcy Myers, who provided us with fresh perspectives from the point of view of a relative newcomer.
The minutes of the meeting are being prepared, and should be available within the next week, but the board felt that it would be useful to publish a guide to the broad challenges that face us, and how we are tackling them.
One of the tasks of the meeting was to review the third quarter financial report, which included a consideration of the full impact of Wikimania. The WMUK office ended up playing a larger role than had originally been anticipated, and the charity's costs on both staff and Wikimania-related programmes in the third quarter of the year has been significantly higher than anticipated. At the same time, the Funds Distribution Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation has indicated that it will not recommend granting WMUK the full amount we requested for the 2015-16 financial year.
These factors mean that the board needs to review our plans for the coming year in the light of the reduced funds available to us, and to ensure that in spite of financial constraints our reserves are not allowed to drop to an unacceptably low level.
It is inevitable that over the next year the charity will need significantly to reduce its direct expenditure, both on overheads and on programmes, and over the next few weeks our CEO will be working on his recommendations for a detailed action plan to achieve that. The focus will be not on 'business as usual' and salami-slicing our existing expenditure, but on the opportunity we have to re-direct our energies towards those programmes that are most able to provide us with high charitable impact when weighed against the resources required (direct costs, staff costs, number of willing and skilled volunteers available and so on).
We need to prioritise, and to accept that we no longer have the luxury of being able to support highly-resourced programmes that do not provide a commensurate level of direct charitable impact when measured against our strategic goals. There are an almost infinite number of useful free knowledge projects we could be involved in, including many which are directly aligned with our goals. But we have to have the courage to turn projects down and acknowledge that our charitable aims are best met by doing a limited number of projects exceptionally well than accepting a multitude of ideas that we don't have the resources to follow up on.
Of course, the resources available to us are not fixed, and we will be making significant directed efforts to increase both volunteer resources and also locally-sourced finance via UK-based fundraising and gifts in kind. The extent to which we are able to accept and support project ideas for which we have insufficient core funding is likely to depend on whether the project has a sufficiently large and skilled group of enthusiastic volunteers who are able to lead and run it with minimal staff help, and whether it is of interest to external grant-makers who can be persuaded to cover the non-core costs.
Once the CEO has a draft action plan and 2015-16 budget prepared, they will be shared with the community for comment and suggestions before coming to the board for approval of a financially sustainable package of activities geared to achieving our agreed strategy. We are happy to accept general questions on this, but of course we can't discuss anything relating to internal HR or staffing issues. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 07:19, 17 December 2014 (GMT) for the board.
Bodleian Library WIR
The Bodleian Libraries and Wikimedia UK are delighted to announce that we will be supporting a part time Wikimedian in Residence at the Bodleian library in Oxford. The post provides the opportunity to work with some of the world’s richest collections to improve content on Wikipedia and its sister projects and to share with the world the resources held in the Bodleian Libraries. More details including how to apply at bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Regards Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 14:30, 19 December 2014 (GMT)
London Wikidata Meetup 2
Our next London Wikidata Meetup will be on Wednesday 5th January 2015 at Development House (where Wikimedia UK is based). Some of you may already be familiar with the recent Signpost article on Wikidata. This concerns Wikidata:WikiProject Wikidata for research page, which concerns a funding application for a virtual research environment with a deadline for 14th January. One of the topics we hope to discuss is how we might like to be involve in this. If you are interested, but can't make it to the event, we have a list for organising activities here, please join us. Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 12:41, 5 January 2015 (GMT)
BETT UK 2015
Free tickets are available to colleagues/guests to attend Bett UK 2015 between 21 and 24 January at Excel London. This is "the world's leading learning technology event".
Jimmy Wales is delivering a keynote and I'm on a panel about 'The changing landscape of technology in higher education'. I believe that Diane Strassmann (from Wiki Ed Foundation) is also participating in this multi-day event.
Feel free to contact me directly if you need any further information. --Toni Sant (WMUK) (talk) 07:28, 7 January 2015 (GMT)
Volunteer Strategy Gathering Data
During the Volunteer Strategy Gathering, John Cummings led a workshop where participants provided all sorts of information on post it notes. This information had been collated and put into some sort of order. This now available as JPGs here. It would be great if you could look through the data and join in the discussion on the talk page. The more people who help with this, the clearer we can get about what we want out of the follow up Volunteer Strategy Gathering/February 2015. Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2015 (GMT)
Harassment and Gender Gap: looking for a solution at the IdeaLab
- "While Wikimedia projects are rightly criticized for failing to achieve gender diversity, it is less recognized in Wikimedia discussions that other online communities are similarly having gender diversity problems and that editors perceived as non-male in any online volunteer collaborative project also experience heightened risk of discrimination and harassment. To some extent, the problem goes beyond Wikimedia projects and is inherent in the act of groups meeting in virtual spaces."
This is from a contribution to the IdeaLab on Meta Human resources sharing in the open movement. Making the Wikimedian community more welcoming, particularly to female editors, is one of the strands to emerge from the Volunteer Strategy Gathering 1 (VSG1). I think putting the issue in the broader context of other online communities may be useful.
Another initiative on the IdeaLab is WikiProject Women: "There is currently no space on Wikipedia where a woman can go and be sure that she'll be able to participate in discussions without being dominated by men's voices. Wikipedia needs a place where women can feel safer and not always overwhelmed by male advice, criticism, and explanations." There is quite a long discussion, particularly on the talk page, which anyone interested in this topic would benefit from having a look at. Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 14:32, 15 January 2015 (GMT)