Water cooler

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

A Water Cooler for members only?

It has been suggested several times above that it would be useful to set up a 'private' water cooler, for members of the charity only, where members can speak openly and raise issues that are perhaps best not discussed in an entirely open forum. I am myself in two minds about that, and it would be good to have a discussion here. As I see it, there are pros and cons:

Pros

• There is nowhere else that members can discuss private issues of interest, nor internal or contentious issues that may not be easy to discuss openly in public. Having to ring the office is not always a good solution for a member who would like to start a quiet discussion.
• Members with concerns would be able to raise issues without contributing to what otherwise - to uninvolved readers - can easily come over as 'washing dirty linen in public' or 'navel-gazing'. Doing everything on a public forum can easily give the incorrect impression that the charity is more concerned about internal in-fighting than actually getting on with its mission.

Cons

• Transparency is part of the charity's mission, and we should not keep things confidential unless there are very good reasons to do so.
• The very existence of a closed discussion forum could and probably would generate suspicion, and provide fuel for conspiracy theories.
• Users with critical views to express may well not want them kept confidential, and may prefer to have an open discussion in a forum (here or elsewhere) where they might hope to garner non-member support. That could largely undermine the purpose of having a confidential forum.

I am sure there are more issues that I have not thought of. Comments and discussion would be welcome. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

We have long experience of closed wikis, they tend to be used rarely and only by small numbers of the groups they are intended for. If you consider the closed WMUK Board wiki, the closed OTRS wiki and the closed Chapters wiki as examples, they tend to be used as places to dump reference material, none is a good place to discuss any issue and are likely to disenfranchise those that are less wiki-passionate, in fact related open email lists tend to be far more popular. I'm not against an experiment, even if openness is at the heart of the WMUK values, however my expectation would be that few of the 220 members would join (after all only an average of 20 members ever write here) and even fewer would use it for anything. If we increase membership (the target for 2014 being 400), I would expect an even lower proportion to engage in closed wikis or closed email lists.

If the incentive here is to close down discussion of topics such as entryism for this charity, it should be noted that the board of trustees openly published minutes of their vote and discussion on this issue of membership verification. The general way membership functions or fails to function correctly for a public charity, should be a matter of public record as it is of distinct public interest. I struggle to think of any topic that would be of genuine interest to members that should not be discussed publicly that would not create equivalent problems if encouraged to be discussed on a closed forum, for example suspected instances of financial fraud or defamatory allegations that should not be made in any written forum. Especially in the light of the fact that members are effectively anonymous, and we would have no way of stopping any member copying discussions back into an open forum, nor could we take any legal action in such circumstances unless it were a criminal matter or libel. --Fæ (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

No 'incentive' here from my perspective. I opened the thread as it is an idea that Philafrenzy has suggested several times, and it seems at the very least to merit discussion. But there are quite clearly serious 'cons'. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I will give a fuller reply later but may I point out that it is hardly my original idea Michael. The chapter, and Jon in particular, have been worried for a long time about how the water cooler appears to the rest of the world including potential members and trustees, and I think several people including trustees and Jon have asked whether things raised here could have been raised in private. I am just stating the obvious which is that if this is too public, the only logical response is to make it more private. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:40, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this, Michael. At the moment I would tend towards "no", for two reasons;

• It is useful and possibly important to have non-members looking at, and participating in, the kinds of issues that members discuss. For instance - a Wikimedian who's never quite got around to joining might see something that interested them, and add some useful comments, and then get more involved. Also, there are some people who have valuable input but have reasons for not joining: for instance because of professional reasons, or because they don't want to compromise their anonymity.
• Any shared space is vulnerable to abuse: if the frequency of negative interaction increases too much, people will start to avoid it and find other places to have conversations. This problem is worse in closed spaces which have fewer users. There was an example of this recently on a Wikimedia Foundation email list called internal-l, which used to include many Foundation staff and board members, chapter board members, and the like. Sadly, it became dominated by a couple of people sending shouty emails, a bunch of people unsubscribed, and it's now scarcely used. In general, more interaction, more positive interaction, and more community regulation of the shared space is more likely to make it successful, and these things are on the whole easier in the open.

But it would certainly be worth hearing more thoughts on this. The Land (talk) 08:29, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Some good points there, and in conjunction with Fae's point about the probable lack of engagement with such a forum I am also tending towards "no". More comments would be welcome, though. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Clearly there are major disadvantages in protecting this page in some way or making it member only and I don't think that two water coolers would work or be necessary. There remains, however, a reason for having a page, perhaps little used, where members only may raise matters that are not suitable for a public forum and which need to be raised in writing with the membership as a whole in a confidential way. I acknowledge the point that such confidentiality is easily broken but that is not an argument for not having such a page.

The page could act as a sort of safety valve that would allow members to "whistle blow" to other members and act as an early warning mechanism for the board that there may be something that demands their immediate attention. It would also give members a choice, which they do not have at present, of how they raise matters with the chapter and the membership and remove the excuse that there was no alternative but to post here. I acknowledge the possible anti-democratic implications of, for instance, having important debates such as about CIPR there rather than here but it is desirable, I think, that members should be able to communicate with each other in writing and in private without having to go through an intermediary on the board or the staff, as we are currently encouraged to do. It is irrelevant that such a page may be little used. It ought to exist for its own sake, much like the emergency brake on a train. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Change is required

The Water cooler had many uses, not the least of which showing me that tilde is not spelt like a 70's instant curry! Moving to a private space is not the answer but we need to think hard about how it is or is not functioning.

It is not attracting more than 20 people. That cannot be good. It is uspetting people. That is certainly not good. Despite all the news of good initiatives and opportunities its content tends to be dominated by 'navel gazing'. Even I struggle to understand the nuances of some of the discussions. This IS our public forum after all and perhaps we should make more of an effort to be accessible? I would argue that it is far too introspective. From my observations much of the vibrant dialogue on the community happens on facebook (crosses himself lest the devil takes his open source soul). The watercooler has little levity or humour or lightness of touch. There is often a distinct lack of AGF. One of my staff fears looking at it and told me so this morning. Should I ban staff from using it? That would be so sad. How can we make it more interesting and accessible? We share a lot of brickbats and not enough barnstars on the Watercooler. As one ex-trustee once told me ' we are an organsiation that hasn't learnt to say thank you" Could the Watercooler be part of a change in this culture?

I would like to see a watercooler where my member of staff logged on every morning with enthusiasm hoping to learn more about what people were thinking and feeling ready to contribute knowing people would be polite and even kind to them. I don't think this is impossible.

Tilde time Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 20:17, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I somewhat agree with Jon here, particularly when it comes to not moving to a private space, and also when it comes to people fearing to look at this page. :-( This should be a place where everyone can discuss WMUK in a pleasant manner, without aiming to upset anyone. At the same time, though, everyone should be able to honestly and openly express and explain their viewpoints here. I think that introspection is a really important aspect of this - and I'm really disappointed to hear that there is dialogue taking place on facebook, since that excludes a lot of people (including myself since I only participate in personal conversations there!) Levity and humour doesn't necessarily need to be here, although I would hope that this would happen naturally where things are going well. I'm not sure what 'brickbats' means (since enwp also doesn't know this term), and barnstars belong on user pages rather than this page, but it would be good to see more barnstar-worthy comments left here. I'm rather saddened by Jon's last line, though, as it really should be *our* members of staff rather than Jon's. :-( Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to put words in his mouth but I think Jon feels protective of the staff Mike, and that their efforts are under-appreciated and meet only with criticism. I understand why he might feel that way. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:42, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

In some ways I agree with Jon here, but I also feel he is also using polarising language: Should the CEO be either commanding staff to use the Watercooler, or banning them from using it. Could not they be given discretion as to how to handle whatever situations arise as they arise? And isn't it the tensions which surface on the Watercooler which upset people, rather than the water cooler itself. Yes, it is a public forum, but not a platform for WMUK to advertise itself. For myself I think one area where clarity would be useful is that I feel we need a clear distinction between Wikipedia/Wikimedia communities, and WMUK which is a firm. In fact they are like chalk and cheese, and whenever they are turned into an amalgam, it will generate problems. When I edit Wikipedia, I am not a "volunteer" so much as an "amateur" (I really dislike the way "professionalism" has come to imply a superior quality of performance, when this is so often far from the case.) When I edit are participate in what Yochai Benkler calls Commons-based peer production. However when I volunteer for Wikimedia UK, I am functioning as an unpaid member of a firm, donating my labour because I wish to contribute to the shared goals of the organisation. Now I realise this all getting somewhat theoretical, but it is my view that this is the only way to develop a way of coping with what I regard as inevitable tensions. Let's see! Leutha (talk) 22:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Splitting the Watercooler

(after edit conflict with Leutha and Philafrenzy) Wiktionary is more illuminating about what a brickbat is, possibly it could be more so but it is a start. The second sense is the one being used here.

As to the substance of the comment, I can understand why someone may not like reading this page. Far too often I'm seeing comments that read as if they are based on the assumption that the staff and/or trustees are bad, wrong and out to deliberately destroy the charity. Not a single one of the WMUK people I've met (at least two trustees and most of the office staff I think) has been anything of the sort and such attitudes should have no place on any Wikimedia-related project. If staff are frightened to come here how can we hope to attract volunteers?

Linking to Wiktionary has given me an idea for a possible way forward that might be a step in the right direction to fix this problem. At the English Wiktionary there are multiple central discussion spaces, all equally public, but each with their own purpose:

• An Information desk, similar to the Help desk at the English Wikipedia. For minor problems, help and queries
• The Tea Room, and Etymology scriptorium which deal with queries about specific words and etymology (not dissimilar to the en.wp Reference desks).
• The Beer parlour is where policy discussions happen; and
• The Grease pit is where technical requests, discussions and development happens.

I get the feeling that here the Water cooler is trying to be all of them, and isn't doing a good job of it. We don't need 5 spaces, we're not that big. So can I suggest the following reorganisation (but maybe with better names):

• Water Cooler (or maybe Lobby or Pub it wants an image change): A place that focuses on being an open and welcoming space for informal light-hearted discussion among everybody. The welcoming public face that we show the world. The atmosphere should be as friendly and welcoming as the office is.
• Break room: For discussions about internal matters that are not relevant to the world at large. While anyone is welcome to come and join in, it isn't thrust in their faces if they aren't interested. This should still have a welcoming atmosphere, but needn't necessarily be as jovial as the main area.
• Technical lounge (if needed): For technical requests and queries about the wiki. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Since the discussions here are discursive, and making any of them private seems to be off the menu, how will we ensure appropriate use of the pages? Won't it just lead to discussions spread over three pages? Philafrenzy (talk) 22:49, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not even sure we need that many options: just one for "Governance and Membership" and one for "Events and Endeavours": that is, one where we discuss "serious, dull" issues, and one where we discuss "charitable, fun" issues - or similar. Just a thought! Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 23:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Richard, as frequently happens an idea of mine is improved by simplification! Thanks!

Philarenzy, all it needs is someone to split threads when tangents arise. More thread discipline wouldn't go amiss regardless of what we do. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 23:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Cat herding? Philafrenzy (talk) 23:44, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of "Governance and Membership" and "Events and Endeavours" spaces. The first is essentially internal-facing, the second external. What we need are two short, snappy names for them. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

A lovely discussion full of good ideas and faith - thanks. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 11:17, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

So, could we have some suggestions for short, snappy names for the proposed "Governance and Membership" and "Events and Endeavours" spaces? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a proposal for the renaming of the Water Cooler and the creation of a new public facing page if I understand it correctly. I am not sure about names but where will each page be positioned in the navigation? Philafrenzy (talk) 15:29, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If by "the navigation" you mean the sidebar on the left, then I'd suggest the "Events and endeavours" page takes the Water cooler's spot at the top of the "wiki" section with the "Governance and Membership page" appearing on the line below. Alternatively the public facing page could move to the "participate" section (either at the top, or after Events, Join us or Volunteer) and the inward-facing page would take a spot in the "Organisation" section (probably after either People or Board meetings). I think there would also be benefit in adding linking both pages from the "Get involved" section on the main page.

As for names, "Smoky back room" comes to mind for the membership page but that's completely inappropriate! "The pub" might work for the public page, but I'm in two minds about that. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 17:26, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have morphed from making the Water cooler members only to changing its name and possibly changing its position too. I acknowledge the sometimes fractious nature of the debate but I am not sure that there is consensus to do either right now. Under "Participate" we have events, join us and volunteer which seem eminently useful pages and where I would go first if I was new. I actually wouldn't head to Water cooler first because it is not a term in everyday use in the UK. And if visitors are going there and being put-off participating (for which we have not seen the evidence) it may only because they are seeing us as we really are. Philafrenzy (talk) 14:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added a couple of section headers to try and clarify that this discussion is about splitting the present Water cooler page into two separate spaces, one friendly and welcoming to everyone that focuses on public-facing things; the other for internal-facing discussions of governance and membership that is open to all but primarily of interest to members. Obviously that should be friendly too, but there will sometimes be reason to be harder and more interrogative which can be offputting. The names issue is purely because we cannot have two pages both called "Water cooler" and so we need a new name for at least one of the pages. The only person to bring up changing position is you - based on your comment I floated an idea, which may be the best thing since sliced bread, the worst idea in the history of the world or anywhere in between. With exactly zero feedback on it I can't say. Your point today that the name and change of position may not be independent isn't something I'd previously thought of. A sidebar link saying something like "discuss at [the Water cooler]" or "Talk with us (at [the Water cooler])" may or may not help (I've given it only a few seconds thought). The split isn't dependent on the change of name of course - temporary names can be used until we come up with something better.

As for what there is consensus for, I'd say that there is consensus that the status quo needs changing, and of the possibilities for change splitting has the most support and seemingly meets with the approval of Jon, who was the person who noted the issue with the member of staff having problems with this place (it seems that this is not a safe space (for a reason that is likely confidential)). I don't know whether Jon has discussed the splitting proposal with that member of staff (I'm not sure whether it is appropriate for us to know that or not?), but if they have and both Jon and that staff member think it would help (or would at least be worth trying) then in my opinion it should be done. If something within the control of the Chief Exec is preventing the charity from getting the full value from a member of staff then I want him to do what he can to improve the situation as doing otherwise is wasting the charity's money. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 16:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am unclear how renaming this page (and/or moving it) or creating a new public facing page (we already have several good ones) will make anyone feel any more comfortable. Won't it just be the same people posting the same things? Unless you vary posting rights and/or access in some way, which has been rejected, then you essentially have the same participants as you do now. I don't want to be defeatist about it but I think the problem, to the extent there is one, relates to the conduct of individuals and no amount of messing around with the pages will change that. We also need to be very careful not to further reduce member discussion of the activities of the chapter even if occasionally it might result in bruised egos. Can we have more details please of how the new arrangements will make the staff feel safer reading or commenting here, or is the idea that the staff will not be expected to post on or read the new Water cooler? Philafrenzy (talk) 19:23, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The basic premise underlying the proposal is that there are two sorts of topics discussed here, for ease of reference only I'll call them A and B. Type A topics are the ones about events, activities, workshops, etc, These are the ones that most interest non-members and new members, and the discussion around them is generally positive and friendly. Type B topics are the ones which discuss membership, governance and similar things - including this thread. They are typically less interesting to non-members, but it is around these sorts of topics that the ill feeling happens (and I agree it's only a small number of individuals responsible in almost all cases). This navel gazing and intemperateness is not welcoming to newcomers and outsiders.

Based on this premise, my theory (and it is just that) is that if we split the Water Cooler into Space A and Space B then things will improve. By becoming more welcoming to everyone, Space A will draw more people in (everybody wants this) and it will be a non-toxic environment to which staff, members and everyone feel welcome in. This should lead to more input into everything and hopefully more members. Space B will not be fixed by this proposal alone, but it should be less contaminating. With more people becoming members then that should lead to more discussion - once people are comfortable that is. I am unusual in being prepared to jump right in to a policy discussion and not be afraid to offer suggestions, even when the environment is hostile. Sensible newcomers would run for the hills.

My intention is most definitely not to reduce member commenting, indeed exactly the opposite. I hope that is what will happen anyway - I have no evidence. Nobody has presented any evidence to the contrary though, nor any better alternatives, and something needs to be done. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 22:44, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Monuments ceremony

We are really pleased to announce that during our volunteer Christmas party at the office between 4 and 8 on December 10th Jimmy Wales will be coming to present the prizes to the winners. We hope to see as many people there as possible. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 14:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Outcomes from Berlin Diversity Conference

The goals of the Diversity conference have been laid out quite clearly:

• Establish a sustainable dialogue with collaborators in Wikimedia Chapters, the Wikimedia Foundation and the international communities to frame the issue of diversity in the context of Wikimedia.

with an aim to build a shared understanding of what diversity means for Wikimedia projects and why it is important.

• Connect, multiply and create successful initiatives for increasing gender and other types of diversity in Wikimedia.

with an aim to turn ideas into action.

Particularly as WMUK is one of the partners of this initiative, I fell it would be useful to use the water cooler to reflect on what this might be in practice, and what could be some possible outcomes we would like to see from the event. Leutha (talk) 23:18, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I would like to see an appropriate proportion of WMUK's budget committed to diversity outreach spent on LGBT related initiatives. Despite having this budget around for a couple of years, I do not recall any money ever going to fund an LGBT project, such as the projects created by Wikimedia LGBT. We may assume good will, but this track record seems to show that other projects invariably take a priority for attention. As no unpaid volunteer active in WM-LGBT from the UK has been funded to attend the conference, this would seem to put the UK as a laggard in addressing the balance in this area. --Fæ (talk) 23:35, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree committing budget to diversity is a good idea, although I think many (you and I included) would be cautious about committing budget with no clear idea where it will go/appropriate actionable projects in mind. So certainly I think we should have a discussion about how WMUK can support LGBT issues and where it might have had opportunity to do so in the past but failed. The Wikimedia LGBT looks great and it'd be fantastic if WMUK could engage with it, but Fae there's no need to stick the boot in at every opportunity, the project is young and mostly focused around wikimania 2012 as far as I can see, so sure let's talk about how WMUK can be supportive but the "laggard" comment is just detracting from opportunities to actually open up useful discussion. Not to mention, the choice of volunteers being sent has been discussed elsewhere. Sjgknight (talk) 08:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The commitment to diversity was more than a good idea, it was a firm commitment of the 2013 Activity Plan to spend £10,000 in this area, part of which was to be targeted at the LGBT community. My understanding is that 0% of this £10,000 was spent on LGBT projects. However, if asking questions about it is to be considered "sticking the boot in", then I doubt that other unpaid volunteers from the WM-LGBT community will be much interested in joining me in discussing how to improve that situation here and we will look for funding our projects more directly and leave the UK chapter to collaborate with itself. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Not what I said. Asking questions isn't sticking the boot in, accusations of lagging with respect to a specific young project is though. If the situation remains the same over time, particularly if there are missed opportunities to support organisations/projects who could've been supported then I'd be worried, as it is I think it's entirely reasonable to ask questions and think about how wmuk might be useful, while avoiding assumptions of bad faith...no? Sjgknight (talk) 11:10, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I am unsure what the young project is. When I was voted to join the board as a trustee (2011), I was extremely clear in my candidate statement about my interest in LGBT projects, this was one of the things I wanted the UK Chapter to take a lead in where other Wikimedia organizations had failed. For example at that time the WMF had no openly gay employees even though they would talk to me in private about their support of LGBT projects. My openness as a board member of a chapter led to a number of people active in other chapters feeling they could discuss their plans with me (even in countries where anyone openly gay would definitely suffer public discrimination) and eventually we focused these ideas by creating WM-LGBT as an interest group with its own email list, IRC channel and presence on Meta; for whatever reasons a significant proportion of those involved remain covertly active. I can be criticised for failing to make any significant progress while a trustee, apart from ensuring that LGBT was an explicitly mentioned part of our funded outreach activity when it was removed from the list, though to be fair the implementation of the Activity plan is a matter for Operations rather than the Board of Trustees. In terms of missed opportunities, there has been plenty of outreach for other groups to encourage proposals and projects, in the case of events focused on women contributors, this has been successful. A lack of meaningful outreach for LGBT groups is an issue as it has already remained "the same over time" for a period of a couple of years. If every time someone asks a tricky question the answer is always to press the reset button and to put aside past history, I don't see how issues with implementation can ever be learned from. --Fæ (talk) 11:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Well that gives a lot more detail mostly not around WM-LGBT (which was where my concern re: laggard claim lay). It's worth remembering not everyone who reads cooler has such a long-standing history and contribution to wikimedia, nor will they have time to read up on all the history of the chapter (e.g., me) so these clarifications are useful. Thanks Sjgknight (talk) 12:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

No problem, I would imagine the Board of Trustees has the same issue; with Mike and myself having left the board this year and only Chris' personal perspective informing the in-camera discussions about events that are now considered part of "history" such as our original vision for the charity, and how best to interpret the values that we established at that time. --Fæ (talk) 12:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Something that came to light in a presentation at the EduWiki Conference over the weekend might be of interest here. Discussing the gender gap on Wikipedia, I learned that while there is a very large gap on the English Wikipedia - figures have ranged from about 85-90% of contributors are male - within the Wikipedia Education Program this shifts to around 60% of participants being female. Not really linked to the diversity conference outcomes but thought it worthwhile sharing that here. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 08:10, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Do we collect information about gender balance at events like editathons? Obviously it would be inappropriate to be surveying people at such events about their sexuality, so we can't know how well or otherwise we are doing inclusivity wise for that. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt)

I disagree about setting a budget aside for Diversity issues, as this in essence is creating artificial scarcity around rival resources, which can create real or perceived ill feeling. So for instance by allocating funds for x staff and y volunteers to go to the conference, with an unclear process of selection the board created precisely the sorts of problems discussed on the water-cooler earlier. I was very disappointed to see that people criticising the process were then caricatured as jealously suggesting that they should go instead of the person who was selected. I feel it is precisely this sort of approach which gives rise to some of the negative views expressed on the water cooler, and that attention should be given to these structural issues rather than the hand wringing which we have witnessed here.

More specifically I think that one outcome of the Diversity Conference should be:

• all attendees leave with a clear understanding of the factors which have made WMUK interaction with the Welsh speaking community such a success.

Speaking personally, I only really grasped these issues at the EduWiki conference, in particular, that there is a goal of reaching 200,000 pages of content as this is considered the tipping point to persuading Google to provide a version of their search engine in Welsh. Aside from the benefit of having a much larger on-line encyclopedia in Welsh, this provides a further bonus with a positive impact on Welsh speakers outside and beyond the Wikimedia community.

Another lesson from the Welsh experience is that rather than simply dispersing relatively small sums of money from a limited budget, it is a matter of bringing in more funds to expand our activities. I would much rather see staff time being made available to explore additional funding which can impact on areas included in the discourse on "diversity" (I am uncomfortable with this term: it is a concept which has attracted criticism in that it hides power relations and thus impedes strategies for change from below). Such funding bids should include funds to cover the investment of time in drawing up the bid, and other management costs, so that each new project does not constitute a drain on limited resources, even if there still remains potential rivalry over supporting different projects when faced with tight deadlines. However, even this could be dealt with by having sessional staff to deal with any bottle-necks, with their costs being covered by an ultimately successful bid. (Safeguards would need to be worked out to cope with unsuccessful bids were covered, but this would not be too onerous.) To some that up as an outcome:

• a non-rival approach to developing "diversity" projects.

Leutha (talk) 14:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Our response to LGBT issues in the chapter has indeed been disappointing. We were hopeful of having a Wikimedian in Residence at the Women's Library this year. This is an institution that contains a lot of material relevant to LGBT issues and history. We chose them but owing to circumstances beyond their control (their hosts closed the building and the collection was transferred) we were unable to go ahead but hope we can do so next year. In the meantime it would be great to see some grant applications to do work in this area. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 14:58, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

An odd example to put forward, considering the relationship with the LSE started with me, my contacts and long term personal friendships there and the fact that the LGBT archives in the LSE only exist because it is a part of the Hall-Carpenter Archives that I helped with as part of our small gay archive community for many years before Wikimedia UK existed. Considering how coldly my recent grant application was handled, I have hardly been encouraged. --Fæ (talk) 15:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I've been following the progress of WM-LGBT for a while, but I have to say I haven't noticed any initiatives resulting from it that the Chapter could be involved in funding. If there are then please do tell us! Indeed, any proposal from any quarter would be welcome - thinking about the LGBT Wikimedians I know, I think more of them aren't involved in WM-LGBT than are, and being part of an organisation isn't a prerequisite. Regards, The Land (talk) 21:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris, if you have questions or criticism for WM-LGBT, please do feel free to raise them at m:LGBT where the community can reply. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 23:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae, is there a particular outcome you'd like to see from this thread? You're coming across as rather hostile, but if there's something you think WMUK should be doing that it isn't, I'd be happy to work with you to try to rectify that. For example, if you have an idea for an event with a partner organisation, I'd be only too happy to help you facilitate it, but it seems a little unfair to criticise the chapter for not supporting LGBT-related projects if nobody has made any suggestions for such projects that WMUK could support. Harry Mitchell (talk) 06:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems odd to blame volunteers for failing to put in proposals if the UK Chapter has done hardly any outreach to LGBT groups. I have quietly made past suggestions for contacts and follow up, such as the gay history month group, but only my contacts at the LSE were followed up on in a sustained manner, presumably as this was the Women's Library rather than because it houses part of the Hall-Carpenter Archive (for which there has been no particular proposal from WMUK apart from Jon Davies mentioning the gay archive here, presumably without understanding its background). I am not the only gay in this village, and certainly when a Trustee it would have been particularly foolish for me to start intervening or leading any funding proposal for my own pet projects as this would have been jumped on as an inappropriate COI, indeed my nominal 6 months of "clear blue water" have yet to expire, even if most other trustees seem to ignore that gentleman's agreement. If WMUK wants to see more LGBT related projects then active outreach in the same way as we have seen with Women or BEM is the best way to achieve that. There are 9 members of staff and only one of me, and I have been pretty busy making 3 million edits on Wikimedia Commons after leaving the WCA.

As precious little has been arranged in the last two years, then I may set up an editathon at a gay archive and historic library I happen to be friendly with in 2014, when my 6 months window expires, something that would require no WMUK employee time and I can do under the WM-LGBT banner, but making this sort of thing work should not wait for me to get around to it, nor should it depend on the charity's money going to fund a WIR before anything happens. --Fæ (talk) 09:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I actually tried to set something up for LGBT History Month at the beginning of the year, as it happens. Fae, you were involved in those conversations. It didn't get very far as there wasn't a great deal of interest from the group we proposed it to via lgbthistorymonth.org.uk - perhaps if there's enough appetite the chapter could try again this year but approaching a different group. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 09:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Just to point out that there is no obstacle to you doing that now if you wished - the "6-month rule" in the Conflict of Interest policy relates only to remunerated positions at organisations funded by Wikimedia UK, not to volunteer activity. The Land (talk) 21:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually the policy includes partner organizations even where there is no direct funding from WMUK, such as CIPR, though as this has been conveniently put aside for Alastair's new job when there is significant remuneration, I guess the board is uninterested in taking that bit as seriously as I do. --Fæ (talk) 22:58, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

CIPR is not "organisations funded by Wikimedia UK or Wikimedia movement organisations", nor would there be any COI in contacting organisations to set up partnership or events if you are not intending to apply for any possible post resulting from such partnership or accepting remuneration. I hope that clarify matters. Regards -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 23:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The policy only relates to "any post or form of remuneration". Running an editathon is neither a paid post nor something that you have to be paid to do. So unless you intend to charge for giving it (which I hope isn't the case), then there's nothing stopping you going ahead and doing it if you want to. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Katie, the COI policy states "A conflict of interest may occur even where a board member does not have a personal financial interest in a third party, but has a historical connection or loyalty to them", so we must consider COIs to exist when considering partners like CIPR where no direct funding has taken place but the partnership has been declared and many people have used this for their reputational benefit and a PR benefit for CIPR, for example on CIPR's website Gemma Griffiths states "In January 2012 I brokered a partnership between the CIPR and Wikimedia UK". The partnership with CIPR was a matter of public record for more than a year before Alastair applied for his new full time job as CEO of CIPR, that this is a conflict of interest is in no dispute and there has been no period of "clear blue water" as Alastair was unwilling to step down as a trustee to resolve his conflict of loyalties. --Fæ (talk) 08:36, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

And if there is one lesson we have to keep learning it is START EARLY! The sooner we make the approaches the better. Pride 2014 is only eight months away. We could be building the links now! Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 09:50, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Just now seeing this section, having posted an invitation below at the advice of Chris Keating (I had previously posted an invitation at the Wikimedia UK page at Meta-Wiki). If you have specific projects in mind, feel free to bring the discussion over to Wikimedia LGBT so other project participants can contribute as well. Thanks! --Another Believer (talk) 22:11, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

And make some grants proposals - we are crying out for applications. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 19:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

December 2013 Board and community social

There will be an informal social event on the evening of Saturday 7 December in central Edinburgh after the day's board meeting. All are welcome. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 16:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

And it will be fun, in the oldest Student Union in the World according to Katie who may be biased.(She used to be on the Union Council) We are really hoping to see Sottish Wikimedians, anyone interested in the open knowledge/rights/license movement and in fact anyone who might be tempted to get involved. It will be a great chance to meet the board, some key staff and several people from the Foundation. And there will be a buffet. Beat that! 6.30 until we run out of things to discuss, so late then.Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 19:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

Hello everyone. It's been an incredibly busy few weeks and there's lots of work happening, both on and off wiki. I've been working on a few pieces of work lately that have taken a lot of time and effort from various people and so there's some folks I'd like to say thank you to. John Cummings has spent a good amount of time working with me on various things lately, such as the session we delivered at Mozfest and the ongoing work around that. Charles Matthews and Doug Taylor have been doing a lot of work on the Virtual Learning Environment, in terms of content and tech. Doug, along with Martin Poulter, gave me some excellent and useful prompts during my presentation at EduWiki. Hannah Jones and Jasbir Saund, who many of you may not know, spent an awful lot of time volunteering to make sure that EduWiki was just so. They both did a great job, along with the other volunteers involved. Wikimedia UK had a stand at the Open Government Partnership last week, and I'd like to thank Ed Saperia, Deskana, Harry Burt and Charles Matthews for giving up some volunteer time to help staff the stand over the course of the Summit, along with myself, Katherine and Richard Nevell from the office. I'm sure that a great deal more has been happening elsewhere, but I thought it important that I took a little time to publicly thank these people for all of their excellent efforts - we all appreciate it. With apologies to the people who I have inevitably missed... Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 18:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Knew I'd forgotten someone. Thanks to David Gerard for his very, very helpful briefing today. It was extremely useful. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

And of course, Leutha and Graeme Arnott who both gave me some very helpful feedback on World Cat and libraries. And Simon Knight for his really helpful views on badges and analytics. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Spambots

I see the UK wiki is suffering a targeted automated spam attack. What's the plan for a systems solution rather than volunteers and employees spending their time blocking individual accounts and deleting spam pages by hand? --Fæ (talk) 09:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

It's currently being discussed. May need someone more technical than I to explain it but the gist of it is there's a couple of solutions that could be employed. A captcha for new accounts is one. A limit to how many new accounts an IP can create is another. I don't think a decision has yet been made on this but we will, of course, keep people up to date with the solution that is implemented. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 09:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. Making the login more complex is probably to be avoided, while limiting by IP address seems relatively easy, so long as admins can easily add exceptions when requested. I would imagine that spambots eat up their available IP ranges fairly quickly. --Fæ (talk) 10:16, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd hope that login wouldn't be affected, although I'd need to check. I'm comfortable if the captcha is only used at the registration phase. I don't know about the admin exceptions but perhaps Richard, Richard, Katie or Jonathan may be able to shed some light on that. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 10:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Account creation throttle have been enabled and set to 2 per IP per day. Sysops has noratelimit set to true. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 11:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a fix neatly avoiding too many restrictions, hopefully that will be sufficient to keep the spam manageable. --Fæ (talk) 12:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

We have a numeric captcha that doesn't seem to slow the spambots. I have raised a bugzilla request to replace with a text based captcha. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 12:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Is the spambot really doing that? Rather clever, it would take me ages to sort that out and make it reliable. I wish the spambot writer was helping to improve the projects. --Fæ (talk) 12:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm assuming they have cracked it, otherwise there are a bunch of teleworkers doing this, and doing so very very quickly. I have heard that someone from the AI community has claimed to have cracked handwriting captcha, but they seem to be white hats so it should still work against spambots. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 16:15, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Text Captcha went live for new account creation last night, let's hope that fixes it. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 10:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The main thing is not to have a security clampdown as a knee-jerk reaction. The vast majority of the accounts created remain inactive, so are not actively disruptive. I would recommend not eating up too much volunteer/employee time even blocking these accounts when with a bit of thought we could probably get a bot to do this housekeeping (including deleting any spam pages they create), once a suitable long term pattern makes it worthwhile in programmer time. Right now I could block all the accounts using a bit of smart regex and a script sniffing the account creation log, or create a hit-list that could be human-vetted periodically, but there are more urgent Wikimedia content related things to spent this sort of effort on when the spambots might vanish or change tactics in a week. --Fæ (talk) 11:43, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks but I think we have blocked most of them and closed the door to bot creation of accounts. A txt based captcha is a trivial hurdle for human editors and I doubt that many will be deterred by it from creating accounts. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Enwiki uses a CAPTCHA for edits by brand new (ie non-autoconfirmed) accounts which introduce an external link. Might be worth considering if the problems persist. But why is this happening now? Is it a side effect of the migration? Harry Mitchell (talk) 12:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

To an extent yes. Some, though certainly not all, of the account creation yesterday comes from open proxies / cross wiki spam bots that are blocked globally on Wikimedia Foundation's wiki. Since the migration, we are no longer affected/protected by WMF global block list. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 12:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Our old site and indeed Wikipedia both require a text based captcha to create new accounts. When we first migrated we didn't have that feature and while it is still the first 24 hours, since we've installed it the problem seems to have been fixed. Jonathan Cardy (WMUK) (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyoneJon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 15:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Using mw:Extension:ConfirmAccount would help eliminate 99% of account-created spam. These days, spambots often hop IPs (sometimes only one account per IP) and get around CAPTCHA. The preferred solution on Wikimedia wikis is usually mw:Extension:AbuseFilter.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK - members survey

Dear all -

In October 2012 I ran a survey of our membership which had a bit of bumpy ride but did produce some useful information. This year I'd like to put more collective time into planning the questions, making sure we have a clear commitment to data protection and privacy in collecting and storing the data, and work together to get good response rates to the survey itself.

I've started a page to discuss our options here and maybe we can use this as an opportunity to channel some of the ideas that have been mooted in recent water cooler discussions into outcomes. Helpfully we have Thryduulf in the office with me today and we're going to start developing what we think are a useful series of questions but please get involved. I'd like to distribute the survey to all members alongside the members newsletter i.e. at the end of this month!

Thanks Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 15:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi All! I would like to close this survey draft tomorrow. There has been a lot of discussion and participation so far, and I am grateful to all contributors. Last chance to check it out and perhaps suggest the inclusion of a key question we've missed!

Cheers Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 17:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia LGBT

		Wikimedia LGBT
		Wikimedia LGBT is a proposed thematic organization that seeks to promote the development of content on Wikimedia projects which is of interest to LGBT communities. Proposed activities include outreach at LGBT events, Wikimania and other Wikimedia events, an international campaign called Wiki Loves Pride, and work on safe space policies, among other collaborations and interwiki projects. Active Wikimedians are welcome to join this cause! Please consider adding your name as a participant/supporter. Current tasks include translating pages, building a strong framework at Meta, and achieving user group status (with the eventual goal of becoming a thematic organization). Your feedback is welcome on the discussion page.

Please considering supporting this project, or at least participating in discussions re: the LGBT community in the UK. I know Wikimedia LGBT hopes to have a strong presence at Wikimania 2014, so those conversations will be taking place soon, too. Thanks! (BTW, pleased to be here. I will try to poke around a bit!) --Another Believer (talk) 21:42, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps some of the issues raised by Philip Sandifer need to be considered also. See Chelsea Manning name row: Wikipedia editors banned from trans pages. Leutha (talk) 11:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

We should all be deeply concerned at how badly this incident has been handled, and continues to be badly managed, creating rifts in the community. As part of the generally odd and unpredictable nature of how the English Wikipedia works, I would not dream of commenting about this on the English Wikipedia for fear of being blocked or banned.

The draft blog post touches on LGBT related bullying and if you feel it needs to be more direct, or should do more than take the long view, please do comment on the talk page of m:Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Wikimedia LGBT is about to happen. --Fæ (talk) 06:36, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Diversity conference blog - copyedits needed

Could someone with appropriate permissions, please make the following changes to the otherwise good blog post:

The world we live in splits people into two discrete mutually exclusive categories of male and female. However, human beings aren’t so simplye. Increasing amounts of both research and anecdotal evidence have shown that gender are is actually a continuum or spectrum. In addition, not everyone’s sex appearance, gender identity and gender role matches.

An Eestimate by the Gender Identity Research and Education Society in 2011 gives a figure of 1% of the population for the number of people that experiences some degree of gender variance and 0.2% for those that undergo transition from one gender binary to the other.

For articles subjects that are transsexual, the situation is fairly okay if the majority of their notability is post-transition. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 08:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the spot. I've picked those up now. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 09:35, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Education Committee meeting minutes, 12 November 2013

Hello everyone, the Education Committee has just concluded this evening's meeting. For those interested, you can see the draft minutes here. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 20:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Diversity Conference - Kwaku's report

Hello everyone. One of the volunteers that attended the Wikimedia Diversity Conference, Kwaku BBM, has submitted a very useful, engaging and insightful report of his experiences. It's well worth a read and can be seen on the Wikimedia UK blog here. Enjoy! Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:33, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

One of the best blog posts I've read this year! Thanks Kwaku! Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 22:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

WMF assessment of WMUK's $707,000 bid

Chapter members and volunteers may be interested in the feedback from WMF staff and independent experts review of WMUK's annual funding proposal.

The top 3 concerns were reported as:

Potential for impact on Wikimedia projects is too low in proportion to funds requested Programmatic strategy is diffused and unfocused in the context of WMUK’s size and history Plan lacks clear metrics or a feasible plan to evaluate work

This is an interim stage of assessment (round 1) but will strongly influence the FDC recommendation and the final WMF board decision on annual funding for WMUK. This has been published at Staff proposal assessment. The scores average below 3/5, making WMUK's evaluation as "weak" or below "moderate" alignment with the evaluation criteria. As well as the numbers and summary, there are a number of well explained concerns in the review that would be valuable for the board and CEO to respond to with new plans and commitments in the December board meeting.

Sample comparison

Picking one smaller and one larger proposal from the list to compare, gives the following results:

• WMUK's proposal appears a close comparison with WMCH's proposal for a 30% smaller bid of $500,000, though WMCH scored slightly higher in almost all areas. The main differences appear to relate to the quality of planning and clearer measures of success than WMUK were able to put forward.
• WMDE's proposal was for $2.4m, 3x larger than WMUK's, and scored higher in all areas and significantly higher with their quality of measurement. There are interesting aspects of community feedback highlighted, including a key risk of "Relationships among board, staff, and community have been challenging."

Signpost summary

The following summary graph was used to compare all bids in this week's Signpost article and shows that Wikimedia UK's assessed ability as an organization has declined, with a significant drop in quality ratings from a middle of the pack bid in 2012 to an embarrassing second to last this year, with Wikimedia India just beating us to last place (to be fair on WMIN, they are a newcomer to this type of bid and are asking for 1/5 of the amount of money that WMUK is proposing). The main difference between the way these two proposals were created was that in 2012 the proposal was driven by unpaid volunteers who managed to pull the bid out of the fire at the last minute, creating an adequate proposal through herculean efforts, and this year the proposal was professionally managed by Jon Davies with lead time measured in months rather than days, but with an unfortunately visibly unsatisfactory outcome. This bid is essential to the funding and strategy of Wikimedia UK as a charity, and in the continued absence of agreed top level key performance indicators, the board of trustees will count this as a principle independent assessment of performance in their duty to monitor operations and deciding what major changes need to be implemented for the remainder of 2013/14 to show improvement rather than comparative decline.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:02, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Please share your practical advice for how to improve. For example, what were the practical difference between last year and this year? I don't mean timescale or personnel differences, that's not relevant. What was done last year that wasn't done this year, and vice versa? What actual steps can be taken to improve? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 11:36, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Practical suggestions are welcome of course, but to be fair Thryduulf, we do have nine employees, a budget of £700K and an experienced board who are supposed to be doing all this. What suggestions do you have Thryduulf? Philafrenzy (talk) 13:44, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Summary

The key difference between 2012 and 2013 has been a shift to entirely relying on the CEO to drive our plans and strategy rather than volunteers or other community members. Employees are now budget holders, the CEO leads strategy development, employees manage funding proposals or negotiate large donations, all board level reporting is through the CEO and created by his employees (a possible consequence of membership decline), the majority of outreach and relationships with partners is now through employees, even most on-wiki correspondence and public emails in relation to activities of the charity is now written by employees.

Consequences of this have been poor ratings from WMF's independent assessment, openness has been turned into a problem rather than a value, and there has been a massive increase in administrative costs over the last two years, which means that less than 48% of donated funds go to programmes with outcomes that align with the mission of the charity (as confirmed during the FDC bid process). The question for trustees and members is, do we believe this is satisfactory and if not, are we going to use our charity's money to change the resource plan and employ the level of management experience needed to re-launch our approach to deliver a credible strategy and a programme of measurable outcomes for our $1,000,000 budget charity?

Analysis

My professional advice has been given several times over the past two years, while I was a trustee. I was hopeful that the PQASSO quality programme that I launched would provide a solid foundation, and it did during 2012, however the failures that the WMF correctly highlight are about basic management operational competence in planning, reporting and monitoring; not high level policies. The nuts and bolts of effective and efficient operational management is a topic that many cheap and short management qualifications and off-the-shelf training courses focus on. When the charity employed a CEO two years ago, these were the skills of 'professionalization' that we were buying in and that was the topic the 2011 AGM centred on. If you look through past board meeting minutes, and imagine that several times more was said in camera, I did not stint in my duty to raise issues that required change or improvement to the board as a whole.

After 2 years the board of trustees know precisely what my final recommendation was, it matches that of another trustee that retired early. We are at the stage where the board must take action to put in place management competencies to speedily turn around our track record of poor performance. I am sadly disappointed that the board could not get a consensus to make major changes in 2012, which would have given plenty of time to put in an excellent bid for 2014/15 funding and support Wikimania.

If change is under-way, indeed having a new Chairperson in December may stimulate change, then this is not something that you can expect the current trustees to discuss openly until it happens. I have absolutely no insider information as to whether anything significant is going to really change in the face of hard evidence. It would be great to move away from the mantra "just say we are doing okay, we must keep all criticism in-camera" which can turn into re-arranging deckchairs while asking passengers to avoid looking at the iceberg. --Fæ (talk) 13:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

That's interesting, but doesn't actually answer the question. You've focused on who is doing things wrong now, I want to know what you think can be done better in future. I wasn't around here when you were a trustee so just referring back to what you said during in camera discussions back then is not helpful. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 17:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

As I said above, do the basics of competent management consistently. Track and openly report actions, actively drive operations using risk management, publish and maintain programme plans and measure progress against agreed baselines of the plan (normally from a fixed starting annual budget). With this in place we can then discuss top level indicators. If you look at the current CEO reports, it is rarely possible to track whether what was promised in last quarter was delivered in this quarter, and there are no published programme or project plans (with schedules, work breakdowns and planned deliverables), just budgets. In the bad old days of 1990s, management consultants were soundly criticised for managing by using "burn rates" rather than managing plans with outcomes, pretty much that's where Wikimedia UK is. Here are some examples that could be answered if the basics were in place:

1. Where is our strategy? - There is only a budget for the year and subjective statements of intent. This was a known WMF/FDC requirement, there has been a year to create it, and is a standard expected by the UK Charity Commission.
2. Where can I see the charity's top level performance trends for the year? - You cannot, as an example membership and volunteer numbers is disputed and cannot be measured from one year to the next.
3. How efficient or effective is the charity? - We don't know and we do not measure any trends.
4. Where are the programme plans and objectives for the year? - We don't have these, we just have a budget (which we call an Activity Plan) and report our spending of it, creating forecasts based on discovered burn rates rather than plans. If expected outcomes are not delivered on time or cancelled, we may not even see budget being moved around to document that fact.
5. Did the CEO (i.e. all of Operations) deliver his commitments from the last board meeting? - There is a long history of failing to deliver actions, however this is not tracked or reported, the long trend over the last 2 years has been to report subjective successes whether planned or not (and how hard everyone worked to get them done), at length, rather than consistently and objectively report progress against commitments.

Anyway, all of this is just me writing some random thoughts on a Saturday evening in my spare time, responding to your haphazard questions that look like they are holding me to account for something. What is really needed here is for the board of trustees to be extremely worried about the 3 key points raised by the WMF and their well paid experts (highlighted in a green box above) and for the CEO to rapidly respond with a detailed plan of the improvements that will be put in place in the next 1 to 3 months.

At the moment there are some "acknowledgements" but a mainly defensive response at WMUK/Staff proposal assessment, along the lines of "we are doing okay, look at our successes" and even manages to criticise the FDC process without making a show of taking on-board the serious nature of the concerns the WMF has written up, nor making any commitment to change rather than arguing the case for changing nothing; I cannot imagine the WMF or the FDC taking that well, nor being convinced that this is any more that a transparent political non sequitur. I find the section there "Value for money" more than a little bizarre as I previously ran the chosen "flag ship" relationships with the British Museum and the British Library, including creating the well paid WIR position, with no WMUK money needed nor employees quite successfully (yes that did make them extremely good value, but does not justify a $700,000 grant when the best examples can work just paying expenses for unpaid volunteers like me), and this does not take on that the charity now looks poor value with less than half the donated funds going on measurable programme outcomes.

If a real response happens next week, this might even influence the FDC's decision making process, which completes in just two weeks; too late after that, if the funding is slashed by 50%, the CEO will just be forced to scale back accordingly. There are 9 members of staff and the CEO is well paid (full time) to transform this charity into an effective and efficient organization; not me tapping on a laptop while watching Doctor Who on the telly. --Fæ (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I think there are many factors at work that make up the difference between last year's FDC bid and this years. My recollection of last year's process was an fervid period of work where Jon and I collaborated intensively to produce the bid - Jon provided all of the figures and much of the narrative; I did my best to provide analysis and filled in the gaps as well as wikifying the end product. Each of us fed back and modified the other's work in the same sort of way that I'm used to collaborating on Wikipedia articles; I was more than happy with the way the collaboration worked and Jon was key to whatever successes we had in that bid. Nevertheless I knew that last year's bid was weak on metrics and reporting mechanisms, but as that was the first year of the FDC process, I gained the impression in exchanges with the FDC staff that they were probably more lenient with such deficiencies as this was the initial round. I did read all of the other chapters' submissions last year and generally they all had similar problems to ours. From what I've been able to gather from this year's bids, the FDC is taking a sterner line with how well a chapter describes its mechanisms for measuring and evaluating; this will disadvantage WMUK (and WMDE for the same reason) because we have so many diverse activities that we are looking to fund. It is far easier to take a few activities and concentrate resources on them as many of the smaller chapters have done. I still think that we are right to set our targets high rather than taking the easy route - it may take several FDC rounds before we can prove that we have the right strategy, but I remain optimistic that we will. --RexxS (talk) 13:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the optimism and sharing your memories of 2012. My recollection of the board meeting before the bid had to complete was that we realized for the first time how unprepared the charity was to submit any bid. This was a cause of surprize for the board members at the time, having expected this was being planned and managed, though I do remember the fervid activity in the week or so before the final deadline for submission going from a cold start to final document; it all seemed very stressful, one day you may want to flick through the emails of that period. In terms of organizational development, it is well recognized that firefighting can be fun and rewarding (everyone loves a successful firefighter and they tend to get all the medals). Avoiding creating the fires is the next level of maturity but means a shift to rewarding those that deliver planned work, rather than only those that happen to enjoy tackling the unexpected. Two years into having a full time CEO it is these aspects of good planning, good reporting and simple accountability that the board should be measuring performance against. Pretty much these are the 3 areas highlighted in the green box above which are hard to dismiss as untrue, nor are fundamental required improvements that the board should be seen to sweep under the carpet as inconvenient. --Fæ (talk) 23:58, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

What I found particularly telling, as quoted in the Signpost, was the FDC criticism of editathons and microgrants, given that these have been particular interests of certain trustees. Some assumptions do need to be questioned now.

In fact October saw a particularly full calendar for WMUK, and I took part in a couple of events myself. The balance of the staff has been skewed to event organisation/logistics for a while. There is a perfectly good rationale for this: "being active" is the obvious ploy for a chapter trying to show its relevance to the movement. Metrics chat doesn't alter that.

I don't think this whole situation is comprehensible without going back to early 2011, and the _community input_, which created Board discussion and a strategy. I saw that happening, as WMUK's first employee. I think we have to recognise two points: (a) momentum - hiring decisions create activity and you can't change that overnight; and (b) where the WMF and FDC now are is really at odds with where (the vocal parts of) the WMUK community were then, and still are to an extent.

In the past couple of days the Board has been brought up to strength. I have my own fish to fry (as a WMUK contractor) and so I'm not going to comment in detail on the way ahead. I don't find any of this assessment of WMUK strategy very surprising, based on how things were three years ago. My internal comments then had no traction at all, and I'll leave it to others to draw conclusions. I find it obvious where some of the main issues lie, and I don't agree with making the CEO an Aunt Sally. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:17, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

We would be very foolish to ignore what the FDC has said and indeed are not doing so. I do however believe that we have improved as a chapter over the last year and that the FDC analysis is harsh. As staff we feel a great responsibility to do our best and address the issues raised from community members and really appreciate it when there is active support to make things better. P.S. in the true Wikipedian spirit of getting things right I should point out that I initiated and led on PQASSO. I had used it before and recommended it to the board. Last week I wrote a report on our progress, which is going to the board, in which I acknowledge the support Fae gave in this process. So thanks Fae - you saw its value.Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 10:28, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Some of the FDC criticism is harsh. Looking at some of the other bids, I think they've decided to be quite a bit more rigorous in their appraisal of the bids this year, but that's not the whole story. The bid looks like it was compiled in a rush, which is odd considering that the deadline can hardly have come as a surprise, especially after last year's last-minute dash to get the bid in. There is a wealth of excessive detail in parts of it (especially when it comes to talking up administrative and governance issues and other matters that are mostly internal or meta-level rather than directly impacting on the movement, the latter of which is clearly what the FDC wants to see), but others are under-detailed or poorly explained, and misunderstandings by FDC staff (such as around the definition of "editathon", which is used as a generic term for an event where attendees do some editing) have been left unaddressed. It's small wodner the FDC don't think the amount of money requested is proportional to the impact it will have when we can't properly explain how our spending of many hundreds of thousands of pounds benefits the movement. I'm firmly of the opinion that WMUK is doing good and useful things, but it's hard even for me to see what impact it's having with its vast budget and resources that it couldn't have had two years ago when it had a fraction of the budget and resources. And if it's hard for me to see, how do you expect the FDC to see it? Harry Mitchell (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree , it is hard to work out what impact WMUK is having. It might simply be in the nature of the activities that they are hard to measure. I often wonder what the position would be if WMUK had not been formed? Would it have made much difference to the overall health of the projects? That might be a good place to start thinking about it, by asking what we wouldn't have if WMUK had never existed? (This is intended purely constructively, I hasten to add) Philafrenzy (talk) 14:46, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

That would be leaving out things like "Wiki Loves Monuments", then? Harry and I having one year been involved in an ultimately fruitless effort to have it run, it was good to see it happen in 2013, with office support, instead of having to listen to the Board say no one was coming forward.

There is any amount of "outreach" going on, which is not wrong in itself, but lacks the focus of WLM. Where the FDC/WMF type of criticism has some point is in that type of distinction. And the members can be poor judges, in that they may not feel the need to be reached out to, informed, chivvied into becoming involved in editing, and so on. There is something amiss in the argument "I didn't need a chapter to get me involved, so people in general don't".

Anyway, the chapter has been somewhat in denial about being the branch office of a US-based company, and had better get used to the idea once more. As management hardball, this is all fairly straightforward stuff. A chapter can't be a jack-of-all-trades, so trustee whims are a bad idea; it can't behave like Jack the Lad either, just to make a name for itself; it is supposed to pay attention to the mission (and for a charity, its own stated purposes). This is what is coming from San Francisco via the FDC, but in a sense compliance with the second and third points ought to be a given anyway. I have it from the horse's mouth that the jack-of-all-trades issue is what this is all about. There just aren't that many really excellent types of projects, while there are innumerable somewhat plausible ones. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:15, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I was suggesting an alternative way of thinking about it to draw out what has been achieved, that is all. Philafrenzy (talk) 15:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

impact

I'm not sure we can measure impact by counterfactuals Philafrenzy (although I understand your point isn't exactly that). I haven't been around long enough to see all the discussion around metrics and tracking impact, but a quick search throws up these draft metrics, I wonder what people think about them generally, how they're used, whether they're tracked, etc.? I'd rather consider 'impact' as a whole not just metrics (so that might include some narrative contributions, etc.), but either way it'd be good to be able to see (track via templates?) impact statements from projects collected, etc. I used to follow Nominet Trust stuff quite a lot and I was always v. impressed by how they thought about impact (metrics and beyond) as a funding body. Anyway, is that draft a good place to focus some attention? Sjgknight (talk) 15:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Just throwing a couple of relevant links up Program evaluation and Metrics in Wikimedia research. Also on the Thurrock libraries talk page I've started a discussion on metrics, including distinction between outputs and outcomes. More broadly perhaps this is a discussion that should happen on a separate page (or at least thread), I also know many people who watch this page are involved in a lot of these Foundation/wider community based discussions, so may know of other useful resources we could perhaps collate. Any contributions would be much appreciated. Sjgknight (talk) 18:03, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

QRpedia conclusion

The board of Wikimedia UK is delighted to report that Roger Bamkin has signed the final agreement which formally transfers ownership of the intellectual property in QRpedia to Wikimedia UK. Accordingly, as of today all of the IP rights in QRPedia are held by Wikimedia UK.

The final stage in the process is to get the Domain Name Registrars to update their online domain name records to reflect the new ownership. This is purely an administrative procedure which can now be initiated immediately.

We regret the delay in achieving this outcome for the community but we are very happy that the technology has been secured for the global Wikimedia community to use. We would like to once again thank Roger and Terence Eden for their generous donation of QRpedia intellectual property rights and for their patience during the process. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 23:06, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

That is an excellent outcome. Thank you for advising the community. TheOverflow (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I am so pleased that the Board and Roger have been able to successfully move the QRpedia project to its next stage. I'd like to add my thanks to Roger, Terence and all of the Board for their efforts and I look forward to seeing many more implementations of the technology word-wide. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

This is very good news. Well done to those that have pushed this to a conclusion! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 04:38, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Entryism

There is a discussion here on this subject prior to the December board meeting. In an earlier thread I proposed changing the membership structure to £5 or £10 for five years rather than £5 per annum in order to alleviate staff time and costs in collecting multiple small sums of money and to prevent the regular lapse of membership by those who forget to renew. This idea seemed to have some support. Could it be discussed at the same time? Could we be told how many members lapse each year and what efforts, if any, are made to retain them? I think we should be focusing on communicating with members about how they can get involved rather than collecting trivial annual subs. A change of this type could lead to a rapid increase in membership if we currently lose a lot each year, though I acknowledge that they would not all be involved members. The larger membership resulting from a longer membership term might also help to protect against entryism. Philafrenzy (talk) 02:13, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Philafrenzy, I'd be more than happy if anyone else wanted to follow up on your idea, but my own view is that it would not significantly help with entryism. We could increase our headline membership numbers, agreed, but the vast majority of members would be disengaged and would have no interest whatsoever in voting. A smaller and active membership seems to me to be more healthy than a larger and uninterested one. Of course we need to keep people involved to dissuade them from leaving, there is no question about that. On the collection of subscriptions, annual subs are pretty well universal for membership charities such as us, and collection should be done where possible by direct debit. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Michael, from the comments I understood that the preferred method of preventing entryism was a large increase in membership and its also one of the key objectives of the board I thought. Although there is a risk of an increase only in uninvolved members, most members are uninvolved now and I don't think we can assume that people retained in this way would be uninvolved. Considering that we have been unable to develop any package of member benefits due to intractable disagreements about whether any such thing should even exist, and that we communicate with members only in a rather haphazard way compared to other organisations of which I am a member, I am surprised that we have as many members as we do. Can I ask you as a member of the board to please find out and state here how many lapses we have each year? I am sure we must have stats on this easily available. It is well established that it is easier to retain an existing customer/donor/member than it is to recruit a new one and I would like to know specifically what our procedures and stats are in this field please. Philafrenzy (talk) 13:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. I have long thought it would be sensible for the charity to publish monthly membership numbers in a table along with numbers of new and departing members for each month. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:31, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Excellent idea. Let's do it (by which I mean that Richard should do it of course!) Philafrenzy (talk) 14:47, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I was sad to see this comment "When WMUK was a very small community with entirely hands-on Wikimedian trustees, there was a reasonable chance that many or all of the Board members would personally know at least some of the applicants for membership. However, as the nature of the board has changed to be more strategic than day-to-day operational, that is no longer the case." It confirms that we have a board that considers itself not personally engaged with members, and worse than that, seems to think this is an improvement; an odd statement for a board that needs to be periodically elected by the same members that they do not know. When I was on the board we considered it part of the trustee duties to go to wikimeets and get to know members and answer any questions they might have.

The statement also ignores the fact that membership has dropped by 1/3 over the last two years, so in fact the "community" of members is actually smaller now than when the board was "entirely hand-on Wikimedians". --Fæ (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

As the pre-Richard person, I find those numbers less than compelling. The first GLAM-WIKI conference gave a discount making it very foolish financially not to join WMUK. Of course that was going to lead to numbers dropping later on. There was, when I was office manager, a great reluctance to drop people who had "failed" to renew (i.e. ignored a reminder). Who included two trustees, famously. In fact the state of the membership register in the past hardly bears thinking about. I imagine the protocols are now more sensible, but they weren't then in the slightest, and the stats are not going to convince me, at least. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Announcing three new WMUK trustees

Wikimedia UK is pleased to be able to announce today the appointment to the board of three new trustees: Joseph Seddon, Simon Knight and Padmini Ray Murray.

Joseph is a highly experienced Wikimedian who will be well known to many in both the UK and wider communities; he was previously a hands-on director of Wikimedia UK before it became a charity, and has been following our progress closely and attempting to provide quiet advice ever since.

Simon is a PhD student who has been very active with WMUK over the last few months in education projects including as an EduWiki speaker; his research interests focus on learning analytics and open content education and cover such issues as using Wikipedia as a platform to support information literacy.

Padmini is an academic with significant knowledge of the University Education field; she lectures at Stirling University on subjects including social media and participatory technologies. Her home is in Edinburgh.

Joseph and Simon have been appointed as 'replacement elected trustees', to fill the board seats left vacant by the resignation of previous trustees Fae and Mike Peel. Their terms run until the next AGM when they will put themselves up for re-election. Padmini has been co-opted for her specialist expertise and will serve a two year term.

We warmly welcome all three. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:54, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Could you please clarify this statement - as there officially is no such thing as "replacement elected trustees", my assumption is that all three new trustees are co-opted, could you confirm for the benefit of members that this is the case and how many trustees on the current board have been elected and how many have been appointed without election?

Could you please provide further explanation as to how the board decided that co-options default to a two year term and those that have been volunteer Wikimedians in the past are expected to stand at the next available election, thereby are only appointed for a period of less than a year at a time and are put at a disadvantage as to the reliability of their term? As a counter-example I note that Greyham Dawes was not considered an active volunteer Wikimedian when co-opted but successfully stood for election after only a few months on the board. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 17:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Padmini has been appointed as a Co-opted Director under Article 17.2 of the Articles of Association and her term is set by the requirements of Article 16.2. Simon and Joseph have been appointed as replacement Elected Directors under Article 17.5 and their terms are set by the requirements of that same Article. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense. A slight legalistic further clarification to your wording, Simon and Joseph must retire at the next AGM. So to answer my own question for the benefit of other members:

• The number of trustees elected by the members of the charity is now 5/10 (50%). The remainder are unelected by the members.
• The number of trustees originally coming from the Wikimedia community is now 5/10 (50%) - based on my personal count rather than self-identification.

Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The makeup of the board is defined by Article 14.4 which says that the board shall 'ordinarily' comprise seven elected directors under A17.1 and three co-opted directors under A17.2. We now have a full board of 10, of whom three are co-opted as required by A17.2. The remaining 7 have been elected or (where they replace you and Mike) will be put up for election at the earliest opportunity as required by the articles. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:34, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

That is correct, my statement is correct too [the Articles deliberately say "must" not "will", there are important differences]. 5/10 trustees have been elected by the members, the remainder have not. You may not have been on the board when there were discussions about the importance of addressing perceptions or murmurings of democratic deficit. Should more trustees elected by the members retire from the board, this may become a thorny issue for the members that consider these things important, even if the articles give much leeway. Personally, I just want the members to have a clear understanding of the current board balance. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 19:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Fæ, I trust your judgement that you don't really worry about democratic deficit. If you really thought that was a problem, I guess you wouldn't have resigned from the board shortly after an election. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to call an EGM but I'm inclined to pass. Deryck Chan (talk) 20:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Deryck. LOL, I am not in the least bit surprised that you think I'm a jerk. Folks get these impressions when just one exaggerated half of a story gets leaked and anyone with a pinch of common-sense can see that I have been made into a simply super scape-goat for all ills over the past two years. Luckily I have been off the board for months, and had no influence for at least six months before that, so issues the current board have with operational performance, or the eventual result of the this year's FDC bid for money, will be incredibly difficult to twist around and blame on me, I'm just a member of the charity and had no hand whatsoever in the way operations is working right now. I don't see anywhere that I called for an EGM, in fact that would be particularly stupid and unnecessary, so please don't put words in my mouth. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 20:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Good to know, just checking! Deryck Chan (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

If any of the 5 elected trustees leave the board for any reason (retirement, incapacity, etc), then consideration should be made to calling an EGM to elect replacements (which I think can be done, but I'm not 100% certain), depending on circumstances though. If it is only one member and happens shortly before the next AGM then doing so may not be in anyone's interests (and within 21 days of the AGM would not be constitutionally possible anyway I don't think), if four of the five leave tomorrow (I hope they don't!) then that's very different. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 09:29, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Michael, I talked this through with a trustee in another charity with a large stable board of trustees, and this helped crystallize the point I was making in my mind. To clarify again, when you state that Simon and Joseph "will be put up for election at the earliest opportunity as required by the articles", this is factually incorrect, whether they run for election at the next AGM or choose to step aside before that should there be an earlier opportunity such as during an EGM, is a matter entirely for them to decide, and is not part of the defined process for appointing directors (trustees) as stated in the Articles section 17.5 which merely states that they "must retire at the next annual general meeting". This a procedural matter, however I do not want any members (or trustees) reading this to become confused as to the intent of the legally binding articles of the charity. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 11:53, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I was referring to the normal and expected course of things, but should something totally unforeseen happen there is indeed always the possibility of an EGM.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Also, congratulations to Seddon for being the first retired trustee to rejoin the board! This has been celebrated by partially rewriting the board timeline code. Deryck Chan (talk) 20:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I hope that the newer trustees do more than listen to Joseph's concerns, and that he can be seen to ensure that our core values stay at the heart of the board's difficult period of change over the next few months. --Fæ (talk) 23:42, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

WMUK Liverpool idea

I'm from Liverpool way; just thought I'd suggest an idea, maybe have some Wikimedia UK days in the Liverpool Central Library (contact details are on site).

I signed up on the old site by mistake so re-created my account on here.

This could be a good idea; make it open to the public, promote Wikimedia sites etc. (not just Wikipedia - maybe Wikinews/Wikiquote/Wikisource etc.), have a "Wikipedia day" there, get people using the library for book references for articles etc.

Just wondering what everyone thinks.

Hope this helps. --Whitacre86 (talk) 11:41, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Jonathan Cardy, the GLAM organiser, is on holiday at the moment but I am sure he would welcome working, with your help, to make this happen. Thanks for the suggestion. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 12:11, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The thinking behind this idea is people can use Wikipedia safely, lessons in Internet safety etc., something that other sites probably don't have (i.e. real-life meetups to promote the site and gain new users); promoting the other Wikimedia projects - Commons, Wikinews etc. and getting local publicity (my local newspapers are Liverpool Echo, Crosby Herald, Formby Times, Southport Visiter). This could also be done at libraries in the bordering areas of Halton, Knowsley, St. Helens and Sefton (after discussion with the city councils etc.). At least I have some sort of idea on how it would work. --Whitacre86 (talk) 13:49, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

And people have the sources for their work right there. Could also be used to reach people who don't have a computer at home, children and those for whom the library is their only conduit into the digital world. Philafrenzy (talk) 17:42, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

This could be rolled out nationally - a Wikipedian in every public library - steady stream of visitors - no need to carry equipment to a venue as they already have it etc. etc. Philafrenzy (talk) 17:43, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. Whitacre86, thanks for sharing your idea. I think it's a good one. It may interest you to know that I'm currently developing a pilot project looking at exactly this kind of thing. I'm hoping to have a more substantial response form the library folk by the end of the week and will share it. But for now, you can get an insight into the way it is developing here. I'm interested to know what people think. Thanks you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

• Given I seem to spend so much time in Liverpool, feel free to ping me if you decide to have one of these days and I should be able to help out. Worm That Turned (talk) 14:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikisource 10th anniversary proofreading contest

Wikisource's 10th Birthday

I've mentioned it on the mailing list but just to be sure: a previous message said that Wikimedia UK would be prepared to provide the prizes for a Wikisource contest. Assuming that is the case, are there any specifics about what exactly WMUK are willing to provide?

Sorry to post this twice in different places, but there isn't a lot of time left and I'd like to include this in the contest page on Wikisource.

For those not reading the mailing list (and I only usually check it every fortnight or so myself): Wikisource's 10th birthday is this Sunday. A few Wikisources are having a proofreading contest to celebrate, including the English Wikisource (see Wikisource:Tenth Anniversary Contest). Other Wikisources have suggested prizes; the original suggestion was an e-reader for the winner (there have been other ideas too). In this post, Richard Nevell wrote "If there are volunteers interested in taking the lead on this, Wikimedia UK are prepared to provide prize(s)". Now I need to know details to get things ready before the weekend.

I'm also curious about how to best advertise this contest in English if anyone has any ideas (and bearing in mind that there's less than a week to go). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism

I have blocked User:Qemu25, but don't have time at the moment to clean up the mess. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Seems the cleanup has been done. I've added protection to this page and its redirected talk page. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:51, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Andy, that's appreciated. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 12:22, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Email notifications - configuration request

Please could someone with the relevant permissions change the configuration of the description of this wiki for email notification purposes.

Wiki	From	Subject line
en.wp	Wikipedia	<user> left you a message on Wikipedia
WMUK (current)	MediaWiki Mail	You have a new talkpage message
WMUK (better)	Wikimedia UK	<user> left you a message on the Wikimedia UK wiki

Thanks, Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 09:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone know where this table is? Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 13:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

ps: This message also triggered the new external link captcha and I'm puzzled about why? Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 09:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I get exactly the same problem even when there is no external link in my contribution. Philafrenzy (talk) 21:15, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I reckon it's the table that's triggering the captcha as I my edit adding one to the #FDC 2013-14 recommended funding for Wikimedia UK section required me to enter a captcha despite there being no new external links. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 12:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

But just adding a table in my userspace here didn't trigger it, so it's not as simple as that. Sorry. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 13:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the CAPTCHA applies to existing external links, as well as new ones. Chris, the links to your talk pages on other projects in your signature is probably what's triggering it. I suspect most people don't notice because a lot of the more active users on this wiki have admin rights; personally, I'd gladly give you both admin rights (I'm sure you can both be trusted not to break anything) but I'm not important enough to make that decision. Harry Mitchell (talk) 12:28, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Have given Thryduulf admin rights now. Thanks for the edit summary Harry - difficult to spot this otherwise! Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 12:56, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Cheers Richard. Harry it's more complicated than that as I wasn't getting a captcha for every edit I signed, but it's possibly some combination including that as I didn't sign the test edits in my userspace. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 13:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

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)

FDC 2013-14 recommended funding for Wikimedia UK

Amount requested: £442,217 ($714,746)
Amount allocated: £353,000 ($570,000)

• The stabilization of growth of WMUK’s staff is a good sign, although there are concerns about the number of staff devoted to administration (three full time administrative staff).
• Governance issues are being addressed.
• WMUK’s programs are not focused enough, and WMUK has not fully defined its goals and metrics or provided sufficient justification for what it wants to achieve, especially in the context of its size and ability to influence.
• The proposed growth is too rapid and the amount requested is large.
• Despite last year's FDC recommendation, WMUK has pursued a path of rapid and potentially unsustainable growth in the current year, making long-term commitments; furthermore, it is increasing its reliance on FDC funds in the proposed year.
• WMUK’s projected impact on Wikimedia projects is too low in proportion to funds requested.
• WMUK has a lot of potential for impact on Wikimedia projects; for example, through partnering with GLAM institutions, and demonstrated by success in implementing the Wikipedians in Residence program and EduWiki conferences.

Source:FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_round1

I am reposting the FDC recommendation and feedback/criticism of this year's bid for funding for the convenience of members and other readers of the watercooler. Very few members show much interest in the financial affairs of the charity, so any comments and thoughts would be welcome, particularly in relation to whether the FDC's pointers need visible corrective action from the chapter, and given the context of the original bid of £442k included a freeze on staff numbers. --Fæ (talk) 17:18, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to Fae for positing the good news. We received 80% of what we requested, above the overall average. All in all, without pre-empting any discussions in the chapter, I would say a fair result. We don't do everything perfectly but the FDC has recognised that we do some great stuff, have made progress and are addressing the two big issues: the need for a long term plan and consistent and co-ordinated metrics. Mostly thanks to all the volunteers, trustees and staff who helped write the bid and tell the story of the good things we are doing. It as been a really tough couple of years for the chapter but got through them. Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 09:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It's interesting looking at the allocation/feedback and the earlier comments, certainly I think we need to think about how to address the feedback, but it's worth reading feedback to all the chapters and the funds they were allocated as it provides interesting context. Fae do you have things in mind re: visible corrective action or the staff number freeze? Sjgknight (talk) 09:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

It is hard to understand why an originally conservative funding proposal that included no growth in the resource plan being cut back by over 20% can be repainted as a sign of a successful bid. My understanding is that this effectively drops Wikimedia UK's total funding compared to last year. It would be sensible for the board of trustees to put in place timely and specific improvement plans to address the many issues raised by both the WMF and the independent FDC with regard to Wikimedia UK's reporting, resource plans, sustainability and focus of strategy. Defensively blaming both organizations for giving honest feedback is unhelpfully divisive and though we can learn from other bids, pointing to other chapters to say "aha, but look how bad they are" (remembering how low Wikimedia UK's ratings were compared to all other assessed chapters) is equally not a response that recognizes change is needed or a foundation for improvement.

If you want to know what improvements I recommend, I have made the same recommendations for basic consistent operational management and reporting for the past 2 years as a trustee, and have given a number of replies along these lines on this page, repeating these yet again seems pointless. I suggest you talk with the other board members and plan to have a serious review in December making some real changes rather than talking yourselves out of making any. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 10:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fae, I certainly wasn't saying "aha, but look how bad they are". But it is useful to look at the scores, feedback, and funds allocated. On the other point I was responding to your comment re: "corrective" response wondering if you thought there were specific things we should respond to (or rebut) in the feedback, rather than general recommendations. Cheers Sjgknight (talk) 10:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

For some context with the numbers:

Entity	Amount requested	Amount recommended	Difference	Percent recommended	Rank by % recommended	Rank by difference
Wikimedia Nederland	$436,312.00	$410,000.00	-$26,312.00	93.97%	1	3
Wikimedia Serbia	$119,335.00	$108,000.00	-$11,335.00	90.50%	2	1
Wikimedia Sverige	$435,596.00	$390,000.00	-$45,596.00	89.53%	3	6
Wikimedia Argentina	$196,451.36	$175,000.00	-$21,451.36	89.08%	4	2
Wikimedia Österreich	$310,686.00	$276,000.00	-$34,686.00	88.84%	5	5
Wikimedia UK	$714,746.00	$570,000.00	-$144,746.00	79.75%	6	8
Amical Wikimedia	$134,608.00	$100,000.00	-$34,608.00	74.29%	7	4
Wikimedia CH	$552,400.00	$400,000.00	-$152,400.00	72.41%	8	9
Wikimedia Deutschland	$2,431,458.00	$1,750,000.00	-$681,458.00	71.97%	9	11
Wikimedia Israel	$438,306.00	$200,000.00	-$238,306.00	45.63%	10	10
Wikimedia India	$176,214.00	$53,000.00	-$123,214.00	30.08%	11	7

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)

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)

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)

Navigation popups

Is the 'Navigation popups' gadget broken on this wiki? I've just tried it, and the results are unreadable. It works for me on en.Wikipedia and Commons. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:29, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is. As far as I know, it has never worked correctly. I'll see if I can do anything to fix it when I have a moment unless someone else wants to do it. -- Katie Chan (WMUK) (talk) 16:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I looked at it a year or two ago, and raised the question on this Water cooler. It met with a big meh so I was not inspired to fix it.

Dug out the link; Water_cooler/2012#Does_Navigation_popups_work_for_you_on_WMUK?. --Fæ (talk) 23:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

We're missing the required CSS, which can probably be gleaned from a MediaWiki:Common.css on a Wikimedia wiki.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance

Hello everyone. Wikimedia UK has been asked to consider signing a document supporting these International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance In principle I think this is worthwhile and shows that we are on the side of the every day internet user. But some may say it is out of our scope. What do people think? If there's a consensus I'll add Wikimedia UK to the list. Thank you. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 13:22, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

This looks a bit indirect. Could someone spell out in clear and specific terms how this fits with the current Mission of the UK charity?

Wearing a slightly different hat, I note that being monitored by the state due to your identification as LGBT, or thought to be an LGBT advocate, is a hole in this document. Any government agency can choose whether a right to privacy extends to LGBT activities at their convenience, depending on their interpretation of "other status". I would flag the current document for that ambiguity, however the choices appear to be to either support it, or don't. --Fæ (talk) 13:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Tend to agree with Fae here. While the document looks like an interesting one regarding digital civil liberties, and I know many of our members care a great deal about that area, I don't see how it relates to Wikimedia UK's mission. I could be persuaded, though. 137.73.98.70 18:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)