A bit of unsolicited advice from a chapter staff member and long-time
volunteer coming up. It doesn't represent my view on this proposal, but is,
as I said, simply unsolicited advice! Feel free to ignore it if you want.
Here we go...
It seems to me that the term 'paid volunteer' is an oxymoron. A volunteer
is, by
definition<http://www.volunteering.org.uk/iwanttovolunteer/what-is-volunteering>,
unpaid, aren't they?
That said, this definition, *as applied to paid editing,* is a good start,
but it seems like it needs a little reworking to cover what you're trying
to cover, in particular the part that reads "This includes employees and
contractors...". I'll explain why this is my advice below:
- Paid volunteers are employees, contractors or part time
contractors of Wikimedia
organizations or other organizations having agreements or partnerships
with Wikimedia.
- *[This could include, say, Google, who have probably signed a
Wikimania sponsorship agreement with the WMF at some point]*
- The paid volunteer contributes to Wikimedia projects and discussions
that influence the content of Wikimedia projects.
- *[This would include any Google employee who edits Wikipedia in his
spare time]*
- This includes employees and contractors that may not be paid for
their on-project
activities,
- *[This would also include a Google employee who edits in his spare
time about trains as his hobby]*
- however their employer benefits from the content of the same projects.
- *[Which Google does because they trawl Wikimedia projects and thus
benefit from them... but then, most of the "Western World" benefits from
Wikipedia one way or another!]*
This would mean that anyone who works for Google, and edits Wikipedia about
1920s Welsh steam trains, is a paid volunteer, regardless of whether their
job has anything to do with Wikipedia. As a paid volunteer, presumably
their would be extra rules which apply to him - but rules which would not
serve any purpose in his case except for preventing some sort of
Google/Wikipedia/Welsh Steam Trains tryst that wouldn't realistically occur
anyway.
What I'm saying is that this would potentially cover an *awful* lot of
people. To give another example, what if the US State department granted an
amount to the "Wikimedia Idaho" chapter to do an editathon (with a short
one-page grant agreement covering what the £250 grant would be used for)?
Would that then mean that any US State Department employee, worldwide,
would be a 'paid volunteer'? By this definition, yes...
Don't get me wrong, this is a discussion that the community needs to have,
but the stated definition, in my opinion, may be overreaching a bit more
than intended...
Richard Symonds
Wikimedia UK
0207 065 0992
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. 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.*
On 4 April 2014 12:26, Philippe Beaudette <philippe(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Perhaps I'm just being obtuse, but I'm a
little unclear on the definition
of a paid volunteer. Could you possibly try rephrasing it so that I'm more
clear?
pb
*Philippe Beaudette * \\ Director, Community Advocacy \\ Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc.
T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 | philippe(a)wikimedia.org | :
@Philippewiki<https://twitter.com/Philippewiki>
On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 4:14 AM, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Proposal: "Paid volunteers" should take
care to identify themselves on
Wikimedia Projects and discussions related to Wikimedia Projects.
Sue Gardner's initial report by the WMF into the Belfer case makes a key
decision that there must be effective processes for escalation of
employee
activities that may not comply with Wikimedia
local project best
practice.[1][2] The WMF can direct their own processes for their staff,
but
a consequence for the wider community is that on
our projects we should
have policies that ensure there is simple and straight-forward
transparency
for who is a paid volunteer and may have
interests related to their edits
or their contributions to discussion. The current situation is that paid
volunteers have no requirement to identify themselves and may contribute
anonymously or pseudonymously in ways that obscure their interest, in
fact
this is current common practice.
I am thinking of raising this proposal on meta, so initial thoughts and
comments on this list would be welcome to decide whether this is worth
taking forward as beneficial to our volunteer community.
*Definition of "paid volunteer":*
Paid volunteers are employees, contractors or part time contractors of
Wikimedia organizations or other organizations having agreements or
partnerships with Wikimedia. The paid volunteer contributes to Wikimedia
projects and discussions that influence the content of Wikimedia
projects.
This includes employees and contractors that may
not be paid for their
on-project activities, however their employer benefits from the content
of
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Univers…
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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