2008/12/10 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: You would probably be better off pokeing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_London and the like.

On 10 Dec 2008, at 08:50, David Gerard wrote:

> But we need people in London who are confident they can represent > Wikipedia/Wikimedia and talk in soundbites on telly at a few hours' > notice. Anyone?

Are people that are not based in London any use to you?

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 8:50 AM, David Gerard <<mailto:dgerard@gmail.com>dgerard@gmail.com> wrote: We did a great job on this IWF thing. I did well on radio and TV (if I say so myself) and the WMF spoke softly and pointed out a fascinating assortment of big sticks in the background, and the IWF blinked. *does victory dance on the skulls of the IWF* I'd like to say, though, I need more backup in the UK ... people who can go on telly at a few hours' notice, specifically. This is very little-needed - the last round of telly was Jan 2007 over the Microsoft OOXML thing - but when we need it, we *need* it. Missing Sky News was not good. Press, between Alison and I we coped OK. Radio, OKish. I missed doing BBC 5 Live. More reliable contacts there would be nice. But we need people in London who are confident they can represent Wikipedia/Wikimedia and talk in soundbites on telly at a few hours' notice. Anyone? I would be happy to do radio stuff, but would need to be persuaded about telly things. -- Abi

There is a bigger discussion needed here than just gathering some volunteers to appear on TV. We need to work out how we want to handle press in the UK, with relation to the (imminent) new chapter. There are two ways we can talk to the press, as volunteers speaking just for just ourselves and as representatives of Wikimedia UK speaking for the chapter (obviously, no-one is authorised to speak for WMF, we'll leave that to them). We need to decide when press work should be handled under each category, and who should do it. Obviously, anyone can speak for themselves and they can say what they like. Speaking for the chapter can be done by anyone the board chooses, but the real question is who decides what to say. Should individual board members, or even non-board press contacts, be able to decide for themselves what do say or should the board determine an official position, which then gets presented by whoever does the interview (obviously the person doing the interview needs a certain amount of leeway otherwise it doesn't work, but the basic idea of what the official position is can be decided in advance)? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle - whether the board should decide something together depends on how important it is (David's example of a local paper wanting a statement on a piece of vandalism would be an example of something that whoever answers the phone can just respond to off the cuff, whereas if the chapter wanted to make a statement about the IWF block that would probably require a little more thought and collaboration) and also time constraints (it's not necessarily practical to have a full board meeting before issuing a press statement). Major events will end up with multiple people talking to the press, so it is important that everyone speaking for the chapter is singing from the same hymn sheet. Perhaps the board should delegate determining an official position (when there isn't time for a board meeting) to the Chair and Communications Officer. They can talk on the phone and work out what needs to be said and then the Communications Officer can pass that on to whoever is actually talking to the press (presumably the comm officer would be responsible for assigning people to requests for interviews). So, that's my (slight vague) suggestion for how to handle official statements. The remaining question is when to make official statements. Do we want to do everything officially through the chapter, or would it be better in certain cases to leave it to the community to do less formally? One problem with having some things done unofficially would be working out who does them - a member of the Wikimedia UK board, for example, can't really speak unofficially about things related to Wikimedia, anything they said would be taken as an official statement. The same may apply to non-board press contacts that are regularly authorised to speak for the chapter - if journalists get used to David, say, making official statements (I don't know what relationship David will have with the new chapter, but it's plausible that he may serve as an official press contact) then they may get rather confused if he makes an unofficial, personal statement on a given topic. Are there likely to be people willing and able to go on record as "a random Wikipedia contributor" that aren't also closely linked to the chapter? Possibly not. For that reason, it may be best to do everything through the chapter. Can anyone think of a situation where the community would want to talk to the press but it would be inadvisable for the chapter to make a statement? (I can think of one - the WMF going rogue. The chapter agreement involves the chapter agreeing to refrain from "engaging in any activity that might negatively impact the work or image of the Wikimedia Foundation." which would prevent the chapter from being able to represent the views of the community if those views were very anti-WMF, in which case the chapter would have to keep quiet and let the community handle it. Of course, this is a very unlikely scenario - does anyone have a more likely one or is it a situation we can safely ignore?) ________________________________________