As I recall, there was a reason for that professionalisation. Something to
do with a mismanaged conflict of interest by a board member, compounded by
a PR scandal involving a certain other. Be careful where you point those
rose-tinted spectacles.
And re: Richard, diversity of experience is of course to be welcomed. The
skills required run an office, keep the books, manage staff, or ensure
compliance with byzantine charity and company law are not the same skills
required in writing and researching encyclopaedia articles about castles or
war memorials for example, but diversity is not achieved by only recruiting
people who are *not* from a specific background any more than it is by
recruiting *only* from a given background.
(I'm trying to choose my words very carefully here. My criticism is not of
the Wikimedia UK staff and certainly not of any individual staff member,
all of whom I know to be dedicated and hard-working, some of whom I am
fortunate to count as friends, and none of whom deserve to be singled out
on a public mailing list - something I've been careful to avoid.)
Harry Mitchell
+44 (0) 7507 536 971
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 10:09 PM Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Seems negative Harry. This is surely the outcome that
everyone
expected when the WMUK board was professionalised by going from
volunteer led, to appointing trustees without even minimal Wikimedia
project experience. Add to this a significant reduction in
transparency and reducing elections, while claiming improved
governance, means that volunteers are disengaged and uninformed. We
all saw this happening a long time ago.
As evidence that something is amiss, the last AGM failed to be
quorate, but this was spun as a great success. Underpinning this was
the weirdness over membership numbers, which I guess is not important
as members no longer have access to any regular reports of membership,
so we cannot really make any comment about it.
WMUK is a very different organisation from the one we established, and
its function appears to be mostly as a funding partner for GLAMs to
set up residential programmes, with a few editathons, rather than
fostering a creative community of open knowledge volunteers doing new
and different stuff. If us unpaid volunteers think we need
coordination rather than just acting individually, then it makes sense
that we go back to the way things used to work before 2010 and
coordinate ourselves as a free society, rather than waiting for a
charity which no longer has those skills, and certainly will not
allocate the employee time, to do it to us.
P.S. before someone sends me a haranguing email telling me what a
terrible person I am, I refuse to feel bad about spending my volunteer
time supporting open knowledge, or my lack of interest in covering
every issue with soft soap.
Thanks, and I hope everyone is planning lots of fun stuff for the New
Year, not just talking about Brexit,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
On Mon, 7 Jan 2019 at 20:49, Harry Mitchell <hjmwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The Wikimedia UK wiki used to see a lot of activity. It was never
coherently
organised, but the staff and volunteers who were running
projects used it as a sort of filing cabinet for documentation of events
etc, and a small group of us used to keep an eye on the recent changes for
spam and other rubbish but those days seem to be long gone.
With the key functions of the wiki non-functioning, it is close to
useless as a
coordination hub and discussion venue and therefore the WMUK
community, such as it is (a smaller subset of the community on this mailing
list with a more specific function) is essentially homeless. That this does
not seem to be a high priority, much less cause for alarm, is in my opinion
a reflection on the fact that there is nobody in any senior position at
WMUK with any deep background on the Wikimedia projects - something it's
hard to shake the feeling is a deliberate hiring decision.
Harry Mitchell
http://enwp.org/User:HJ
+44 (0) 7507 536 971
Skype: harry_j_mitchell
On Sun, Jan 6, 2019 at 10:09 PM Lucy Crompton-Reid <
lucy.crompton-reid(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Thanks Chris, and apologies that these issues are still not resolved -
I
appreciate that this is very frustrating. I'll need to look into this
over the next few days and get back to you, but just wanted to acknowledge
your message in the meantime. Cheers, Lucy
>
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2019 at 17:27, Chris McKenna <cmckenna(a)sucs.org> wrote:
>>
>> This issue was raised on the wiki and this mailing list at the end of
>> November. We were assured then that the problem, apparently also
affecting
>> QRpedia among other things, and action
was in hand to resolve this
problem
>> and prevent similar issues in the
future.
>>
>> However, over a month later (albeit with Christmas in the way) there
is
no
>> evidence that anything has happened (I
have made two edits to the
sandbox
>> today, should anyone wish to do their own
testing).
>>
>> This leads to some questions:
>> -Is it really the case that there is only a single volunteer who can
fix
>> the wiki?
>> -If so, how and why has this been allowed to happen?
>> -What contingency plans does WMUK have in case this volunteer dies or
>> otherwise becomes permanently (or long term) unvailable, with or
without
>> warning?
>> -If not, why has the problem not been fixed yet?
>> In either case:
>> -What is the timescale for fixing the problems?
>> -What concrete actions have been undertaken since November to prevent
this
>> happening again?
>> -What concrete actions are pl
Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.anned
to be undertaken in the future to
>> prevent this happening again (short and
long term), and what is the
>> timescale for them happening?
>>
>> ----
>> Chris McKenna
>>
>> cmckenna(a)sucs.org
>>
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna
>>
>>
>> The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
>> but with the heart
>>
>> Antoine de Saint Exupery
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>> wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
>>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> WMUK:
https://wikimedia.org.uk
>
>
>
> --
> Lucy Crompton-Reid
> Chief Executive
> Wikimedia UK
> +44 (0) 203 372 0762
>
> Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge
movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from
individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you
considered supporting Wikimedia?
https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
>
> Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales,
Registered No.
6741827
> Registered Charity No.1144513
> Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street,
London SE1
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>
> The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.
Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
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