On 01 November 2021 at 22:29 Lucy Crompton-Reid <lucy.crompton-reid@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:

Just as a quick PS, I feel I should mention that the decisions you refer to took place several years before I joined the organisation (as per the phabricator thread) and so I will probably need to try to piece together why certain things happened with imperfect knowledge...but I will certainly do my best! 

Yes, we are talking about events in 2013. Which I lived through, in a sense, though the chapter's website was not my concern at the time. There is a Board minutes category on the site. A place to start is

https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Minutes_2012-07-26

in which the chapter hiring a developer is discussed. Such things that are documented will be in the "Approved Board minutes" category there; and possibly in the tech committee records, though those would not have been made public until 2013 for security reasons.

The overall context was migration of WMUK's work from a server run by Mike Peel to other hosting.

Now, what I remember about the decision in question, on the chapter website's hosting, was an issue about the needs of fundraising. Possibly that interacted with the needs of charity status, where the WMUK/WMF relationship was a touchy subject.

You'd need to someone closer to the Board at that time to comment further.

Charles