Of course you don't need to be a member to volunteer with us or to be part of this or any other consultation. There are only a very few things that are restricted to members or that need member support, for example borrowing our equipment and handling the charity's money.

Michael

Fæ mailto:faewik@gmail.com 5 June 2015 15:22 Do you have to be a paid up member of the charity to be part of the consultation or the envisaged interest groups?

As last year you changed the charity policies to limit all equipment to paid members only, which caused WM-LGBT+ a pointless degree of hassle to even borrowing a projector, I presume that the same policy of exclusivity would apply.

Fae Previous Chairman of Wikimedia UK, uniquely excluded from membership of the UK charity or elections.

Michael Maggs mailto:Michael@maggs.name 5 June 2015 15:14

Dear movement colleagues

I thought you might like to hear about a new WMUK initiative, following on from our recently-completed staff restructure. We are hopeful our local community will react positively to much greater levels of volunteer engagement.

Our initiative might be of interest to other chapters who are trying - as we are - to get away from a perception of not being sufficiently open to community involvement.

Also, we are looking for movement-wide input. If you can provide thoughts, ideas or feedback, do please make contact.

For the full details on wiki see: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Volunteer_strategy_consultation_2015

Best regards

Michael

---

Michael Maggs

Chair, Wikimedia UK

*From:* Michael Maggs *Date:* 5 June 2015 14:38 *To:* "wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org" wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org *Subject:* [Wikimediauk-l] Volunteering with Wikimedia UK: a call to action

Volunteering with Wikimedia UK: a call to action

Wikimedia UK needs your help. We want to transform the way we work so that we can bring volunteering right into the heart of the charity.

We plan to:

• Establish a new volunteer engagement panel https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Volunteer_engagement_panel or steering group, focusing specifically on volunteering and volunteer engagement
• Embed members into our day-to-day decision making via a new evaluation panel https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Evaluation_panel
• Encourage the setting up of volunteer special-interest working groups https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Working_groups to replace the existing non-board committees https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Committees#Non-board_committees
• Set up cultural/GLAM https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Cultural_and_GLAM_advisory_board and educational outreach https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Educational_outreach_advisory_board expert advisory boards to advise the WMUK main board on high-level strategy
• Change our Articles of Association https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/2015_Annual_General_Meeting/Resolutions#.281.29_Enabling_non-trustees_to_become_full_members_of_Govcom.2C_ARC_and_any_other_board_committees_that_may_be_constituted to allow volunteers to be appointed full members of board committees
• Provide more effective support for volunteers via the new project coordinator https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Project_Coordinator staff roles
• Move toward project-based https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Project-based_working working practices to improve efficiency and to enable better self-evaluation of our work

These draft plans follow on from the excellent feedback we received from our last Volunteer Strategy Gathering https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Volunteer_Strategy_Gathering/July_2015. They deliberately don't attempt to answer all possible questions about implementation, as we think it best that both further questions and the answers to those questions should come out of collaborative discussions. The plans are not set in stone, and with the community's help they can be improved, strengthened and fleshed out.

We would like your feedback, either online or in person at our next Volunteer Strategy Gathering https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Volunteer_Strategy_Gathering/July_2015 on Saturday 25th July 2015, in London. For more information, see the links on the right.

Feedback, comments and discussion are more than welcome on the discussion page, or you can email chairatwikimedia.org.uk if you have feedback you would prefer not to make public.

To read the full details on wiki see here: https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Volunteer_strategy_consultation_2015

Best regards

Michael

---

Michael Maggs

Chair, Wikimedia UK

...

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:

The bizarre part of this is that the charity you are currently chairman of, does not do any meaningful checks on members when they join (for five quid).

The fact remains that only one person is excluded from membership, voting or taking part in advisory committees, and as a previous chairman of the charity, you would think I would be more trustworthy with charity owned equipment than people who may well be using fake names or temporary addresses.

The real-politic is that you chose to spend a large amount of donated funds on legal advice to censor me from asking the last CEO any relevant questions about the financial control of the charity. Considering how costly and embarrassing the lack of adequate trustee oversight of finances has worked out to be, I would hope you might realise that my concern for the charity were valid. You might even find a way to let me positively help you again with the organization you are responsible for.

Hopefully this will be a part of your excellent, if significantly delayed, volunteer consultation.

Fae

Fae - why do you think you alone, of all people and despite your history of contributions, have been excluded from membership, moderated on the list, barred from voting, etc.? Is it merely because you pointed out hard truths? If that's the case, then certainly excluding you must be unjust. But under the assumption that the leaders and members of WMUK are generally reasonable people, it's hard to imagine there aren't other factors.

In any case, it might be helpful if your personal issues with WMUK didn't derail all other public discussions (on wikimedia-l or elsewhere) about the charity itself.