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 definitionhttp://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@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@wikimedia.org | : @Philippewikihttps://twitter.com/Philippewiki
On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 4:14 AM, Fæ faewik@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
the same projects.
Links: [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-April/070827.html [2]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
Fae
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