Page 58 – WMUK

Community Consultation on Wikimedia UK Governance

This post was written by Keith Smith from Compass Partnership

As indicated in a previous Wikimedia UK blog post we as Compass Partnership have been invited by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK to review Wikimedia UK governance, and in particular the management by the board of any potential conflicts of interest. We have been asked to make recommendations setting out any practical steps which we think should be taken to strengthen the governance of Wikimedia UK to ensure it conforms with good practice. As part of this review we would be pleased to have community views. If you wish to respond, please would you email your response to the five questions below to us at Compass Partnership at wiki@compassnet.co.uk by Wednesday 28th November 2012.

Wikimedia UK is a charity and company. It is governed by a board of trustee/directors. There are currently six trustees. They are not paid for their work as trustees. The organisation is subject to English charity law and the trustees have established governance codes of conduct. The role of the trustees has been described as planning, setting high level policy, and monitoring performance. The Wikimedia UK Chief Executive reports to them.

In your response, could you indicate to which numbered questions your replies relate.

1. What key things do you think have gone well with the organisational governance of the charity Wikimedia UK?

2. What has not gone so well with its governance?

3. The Charity Commission for England and Wales acknowledge that potential conflicts of interest or loyalty may well arise on a charity trustee board. When they do it is required that they be declared to the board and then appropriately managed by the board. Do you have any comments on how the Wikimedia UK board of trustees appears to have managed any such potential conflicts of interest or loyalty to date?

4. Over the year changes have been made to the Wikimedia UK board and its practices in part to develop the management of any potential conflicts of interest or loyalty on the board and between Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation. In your view are any further changes in this regard to Wikimedia UK governance required, and if so what?

5. Do you have any other comments to offer to aid the future development of the organisational governance of Wikimedia UK as a charity?

If you wish to respond please email your response to wiki@compassnet.co.uk. Your response will be used by Compass Partnership to carry out its independent review of Wikimedia UK’s governance on behalf of Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Parts of your response may be quoted by Compass Partnership in its report to the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK but would not be attributed to you as an individual. The details you provide will not be used by Compass Partnership for marketing purposes or be shared with any other third party.

Announcing the appointment of two technology contractors

Wikimedia UK is pleased to announce that we have appointed two contractors to take over the running of our technical resources: Emmanuel Engelhart (User:Kelson) and Tom Morton (User:ErrantX).

Tom and Emmanuel bring a well-balanced mix of technical experience and expertise to Wikimedia UK, including software development, project management and system administrator experience. They are already familiar with developing and maintaining the open-source tools that Wikimedia UK uses on a daily basis, and they also both bring valuable experience of the global Wikimedia movement.

Following the first discussion meeting on Friday, Tom and Emmanuel will first be focusing on transferring the Wikimedia UK websites from the space we currently use on a donated Virtual Private Server to a cloud-based system. They will then be working to improve our systems, including a new email ticketing system and migrating our fundraising systems to Drupal/CiviCRM. You can see their to-do list here.

Their work will be line managed by Jon Davies, with Katherine Bavage acting as their first point of contact on a day-to-day basis. A Wikimedia UK Technology Committee is being established to provide Jon and Katherine with guidance on Tom and Emmanuel’s contract work, as well as to help define the long-term strategy for increasing our technology infrastructure and development work. If you are interested in being on this committee, please get in touch via the committee’s talk page.

We’re all looking forward to seeing their work at first hand.

In response to today’s news articles in The Times and The Daily Telegraph about PR editing of Wikipedia

This morning The Times ran a story about how staff at the public relations firm RLM Finsbury edited the Wikipedia article on Alisher Usmanov, including removing negative material. The Daily Telegraph also ran with the story online.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and as such its articles should be written with a neutral point of view. To maintain this neutrality we recommend that anyone with a conflict of interest, such as PR professionals, follows the guidelines we created with the CIPR. When PR professionals engage with the volunteer community via talk pages, we almost always see good results. If you need to seek an urgent correction, you can email info-at-wikimedia.org for assistance – there is a volunteer team on hand 24/7 to help.

We are pleased The Times notes that, while it took more than a month for the Wikipedia community to initially spot the changes and undo them, once they were changed again it only took seconds for this to be picked up on and undone once more. This shows that the Wikipedia community is active and that protecting articles from this kind of editing is taken seriously. This is important for Wikipedia’s credibility and for its readers and editors.

We also welcome the CIPR response to these reports. It is clear that the majority of PR professionals are willing to work with the Wikipedia community and to follow the community’s guidelines. Problems arise when PR professionals try to “fix” articles by directly editing them, as this story shows.

Wikimedia UK is always happy to engage with anyone, including PR professionals, about how Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects work. You can contact us by emailing info-at-wikimedia.org.uk or by calling our office on 020 7065 0993.

Happy birthday to us! WMUK turns 4 today

It’s four years to the day since Wikimedia UK was incorporated. In that time, we’ve achieved many great things. We’ve become a registered charity. We’ve made significant contributions to the global movement. A great many people have become engaged with our projects due to Wikimedia UK initiatives.

All of this is possible because of the hard work and dedication of our volunteers, so today is the perfect time to say a big, heartfelt thank you to everyone who has made a contribution to Wikimedia UK. There will be a celebration at the London Meetup on Sunday 11 November. We hope we to see you there!

We’re looking for Wikipedians in Residence!

The Wikimedia UK GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) working group is now ready to find UK institutions willing to work with us by creating Wikipedian in Residence posts.

Our budget is limited but there is enormous scope to be flexible. These posts could be for one day a week, they could limited term posts, based at home – or full time positions at an institution, like the British Library post. We will of course be pleased to see applications from institutions with whom we have already begun a positive relationship – but please do note that the applications have to be from the institutions, rather than individual volunteers.

Time is very short so we need bids to be received by 5pm on November 15th. Please send your completed form to daria.cybulska – at – wikimedia.org.uk Daria will be convening a panel to make the decisions that will be recommended to the board, hopefully at the meeting of November 17/18. Please also feel free to contact us for more information by emailing Daria or calling our office on 020 7065 0990. If you are having trouble accessing the form please email stevie.benton -at- wikimedia.org.uk

The story of Ada Lovelace, the Royal Society and Wikimedia UK

26 October, by Daria Cybulska

The imagination of the Wikimedia UK community was first ignited by the idea of the Ada Lovelace Day in May 2012. When we found out about it, we immediately decided we had to get involved. Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories about women in science that inspired you. However, if a female scientist does not have an article on Wikipedia often it’s difficult to learn about her – hence she cannot serve as a role model for others. So, the idea is to spread the stories about them, and at the same time inspire more women to get involved, not only with Wikipedia, but in maths, science, technology and engineering.

This is one of the issues we wanted to approach with this event – the other is the fact that, proportionally, there aren’t many female editors on Wikipedia. For more background on this you can read a blog from Sue Gardner, Executive Director. By promoting the idea of the Ada Lovelace Day we wanted to take a step in changing this situation. We were able to share that inspiration with the Royal Society in London, who agreed to partner with us for an event on 19 October. This was an ideal match as not only does the Royal Society have a wonderful library, but is also maintaining a network of ‘women in science’. The Society’s library holds a rich collection of printed works about women in science, including biographies and works authored by scientists, which we made great use of during the event.

I was aware that a lot is being done within the movement to increase female participation, but during the course of working on the event I have realised quite how much enthusiasm and collaboration there is to get women editing. Linking up with the Finding Ada movement has been very inspiring too, and we are now connected to many more women that want to support Wikipedia.

The main effort of the event was to run the editing session focused on creating articles about women in science, particularly Royal Society Fellows. We then arranged an evening panel discussion about women in science to give more context to the issues of women’s participation.

To say the event was popular is something of an understatement – we ran out of tickets within a few hours of announcing the event! The amount of participants and their curiosity and willingness to contribute to Wikipedia was extremely encouraging.

It was even more inspiring to see how communities from around the world believed in the importance of what we were doing, so much as to organise their parallel events and link with us online. There were groups in India (led by Netha Hussain), Russia (led by Lvova Anastasia), and the United States (led by Audrey Murray).
During the editathon at the Royal Society, we have created or significantly expanded 20 articles, including Mary Edwards (human computer) and Emily Williamson. This adds to 14 articles that were created even before the event started, thanks to the promotion of the editathon. Many of these are now the first results in the search engines. There were 20 editors present at the Royal Society, most of whom new to Wikipedia. Judging from their tweets throughout the day, they enjoyed the editing and excitement of creating articles immensely. The online participants (of which there were about 25, from UK and abroad), added even further to the pool of created articles. All the information can be found here.

The media seems to have understood the importance of what we are doing, and I have counted 27 pieces of coverage so far (listed here), all stressing both the importance of women engagement and coverage of female related topics on Wikipedia. The articles included pieces in ”Scientific American”, the ”Independent”, the ”Telegraph”, the ”Guardian”, the ”Huffington Post”, BBC (online and on radio with editathon participant Dr Nathalie Pettorelli) and the “Signpost“.

The volunteers who were involved in the editathon made it the unique event that it was. Special thanks to Andrew Gray, Katie Chan, Tom Morris, anyone who joined us online. Also thank you to anyone who had their first go at editing! It all made it a pleasure for me to work on organising the event.

While working on the event, we have been approached by many other groups and individuals really keen to make their contribution to Wikipedia, like the Women’s Library. We hope to get back to all of them – if you are thinking of doing a similar event please get in touch too. There is more work to be done!

More pictures here.

Hasina says goodbye to Wikimedia UK

October 25th, by Hasina Khatun

Hasina Khatun, Wikimedia UK intern during September-October 2012

So, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Wikimedia UK. Being WMUK’s second ever intern has been an amazing journey from taking over where Isabelle (first ever intern) left off, to taking on new challenges with the team.

Working with the team here has certainly taught me a lot. The optimistic atmosphere in the office is great. I am very impressed by the attitude of the staff, no matter what they have to overcome.

My first week started off with the GlamCamp weekend. This was a brilliant opportunity for me to see knowledge being spread across different institutions, within and beyond the UK. I met many different people who are involved with Wikipedia and make such interesting contributions.

Throughout the past seven weeks at Wikimedia UK, I have helped Daria with various tasks related to events. One of the biggest and most important challenges by far was choosing the best cake for the Ada Lovelace Event at the Royal Society Library. The whole event was certainly a success – as the reaction on social media shows! I must say it was a brilliant choice (the event, not just the cake, of course!).

Another exciting event which I am working on to be enjoyed by the Wikimedian community is the Wikimedia UK birthday party! I hope that everyone will come along to enjoy themselves and reflect on the progress which has been achieved in the last few years. I am aiming to make it as nice as possible to show my appreciation to everyone I met throughout my time here. It would be great if everyone can make it to the November meet up on the 11th and enjoy not only the company of their fellow Wikimedians, but to celebrate such an exciting occasion.

Reflecting on my different tasks, I have learnt a lot about governance and transparency at Wikimedia UK. This is due to all the data handling I have been involved in. I have seen the importance of keeping track of all the expenses with Richard – not only have I maintained hard copies but online files as well. Katherine has also given me an insight to the ongoing generous amount of gift aid Wikimedia has received. I have helped sort out gift aid claims to ensure we’re up to date and ready for any regulating which may occur.

My involvement at the Imperial College Freshers’ Fair was a fun experience. I saw how students are keen to get involved and edit together. The Freshers’ Fair was a successful day for the Wikipedia Society as there were a lot of new sign-ups. This positive outcome was certainly something to blog about and with the help of Stevie, I managed to put up a summary for everyone to read.

I have also been involved in the recruitment of a new member of staff, which has been a very long process! Jon and I have heard from a great many people interested and it‘s great seeing such a large amount of people wanting to work for Wikimedia UK. Overall, my internship has been very instructive as I had a chance to work with everyone at Wikimedia UK and get insights to the different aspects of how the charity is run.

Finally, I would just like to thank everyone at Wikimedia for welcoming me and helping me throughout my time here. I have learnt a lot from each member of staff and am humbled by how genuinely nice and patient they have been with me.

Wikimedia UK and Wikimedia Foundation appoint independent reviewer

Today Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation are announcing the appointment of Compass Partnership to produce the review and report on the governance of Wikimedia UK. The governance review was announced on September 28, 2012 in a joint statement by Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation. The legal teams at Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation made suggestions for potential parties to conduct the review. A shortlist of two was drawn up, from which Compass Partnership was jointly selected.

The review will be led by Mike Hudson who is an independent specialist consultant with an outstanding reputation in the UK charitable sector. Mike will work with Keith Smith, who also has decades of experience as a manager, trustee and consultant in the sector, together with a research assistant.

The review will establish a full account of the recent events related to QRpedia, Monmouthpedia, Gibraltarpedia and related conflicts of interest. It will also aim to answer specific questions that arise on these topics. The review will also consider Wikimedia UK’s current governance arrangements, including internal policies such as the Trustee Code of Conduct, Conflicts of interest policy, Representing Wikimedia UK policy, and any other relevant policies of Wikimedia UK, in the light of external requirements and guidance and best ethical practices. These will include the Charity Commission guidance on Conflicts of interest for charity trustees, and the Nolan Committee Principles.

The review will involve conducting interviews with current and former trustees, staff and some key stakeholders. Compass Partnership will consider as part of the review such community views and information on the governance of Wikimedia UK as they deem appropriate. Such views should be restricted to matters directly related to the governance of Wikimedia UK as a UK Registered Charity, and the scope of the review does not include matters governed by the Wikimedia community on the Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia UK and the Wikimedia Foundation are confident that the review will bring Wikimedia UK to a stronger position. The results of this review will, of course, be made publicly available. A review of this size will necessarily take some time to complete, and some changes are likely to be made in the interim period. We anticipate the review will be published by January 31st 2013, and in any event by 15 February 2013. You can view the terms of reference for the review here.

Bringing evidence-based medicine to the world

Flow of article creation for WP: Medicine — A flow diagram illustrating the article flow process of the WP:MED journal collaboration and translation project

This post was written by Wikimedia UK Associate Dr Martin Poulter

Misconceptions about health are common throughout the world. For example diarrhoea patients respond well to oral rehydration therapy, but there are widespread beliefs that a child sick with diarrhoea needs to be given less fluids rather than more.

The research exists to refute those misconceptions, and if it were widely available it could be a huge step forward for public health. However, there are three big problems with the research: 1) it is often behind a “paywall” rather than on free access, 2) it is too technical for the general public, and 3) it is usually in English. Wikipedia, being freely available in hundreds of languages, is ideal for making this useful, relevant and reliable medical information accessible to the global public.

Wikiproject Medicine is a group of health professionals, academics, students and others who work to improve the quality of medical articles on English Wikipedia. They are currently concentrating on a core of eighty articles, improving them to a comprehensive, professional standard that reflects the most trustworthy current research. The articles include HIV/AIDS, Pregnancy, Tuberculosis, and Dengue Fever.

Other collaborators, including a group called Translators Without Borders, are translating these articles into other languages. Each different language version of an article is being translated by a native speaker, many with medical qualifications. This involves a lot of work: even an article that’s available in the ten most popular languages will reach less than half of the world’s population. To reach most of the world, the information needs to be in dozens of languages. You can follow the progress of the translation project, or take part, through dedicated pages behind the scenes of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s licence gives readers the freedom to redistribute articles on disk, on paper, or even as audio, so information can potentially reach people with no internet connection, no computers, or even no literacy. An important development for getting this information to some of the poorest countries is Wikipedia Zero. This is an agreement between the Wikimedia Foundation and mobile data providers serving Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia. It lets people read Wikipedia on their mobile phones without being charged, potentially reaching hundreds of millions of people who until recently have been information-poor.

Each step in this chain – article improvement, translation and free access – is worth doing for its own sake. Together they achieve something even greater: reliable, relevant health information for billions.

There are benefits within the health profession, too. Wikipedia has very demanding requirements for the sources of medical information, giving the greatest weight to reviews of the highest quality research. Training people to contribute is a way to encourage this evidence-based approach to medicine.

Wikimedia UK’s role in this effort is to help health professionals contribute to Wikiproject Medicine. At a recent event hosted by University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust and supported by Wikimedia Canada and Wikimedia UK, fifty health professionals learned about Wikiproject Medicine and how to improve medical articles on Wikipedia. Librarians Helga Perry and Petra Meeson gave entertaining and useful talks about evidence-based medicine and its alternatives. Jon Brassey demonstrated the TRIP database, a search engine tailored for evidence-based medicine. Jacob Wolff, founder of Wikiproject Medicine, said that he became a Wikipedian for the same reason he became a doctor: to help ordinary people benefit from the findings in medical research literature. James Heilman – a Canadian doctor and very active Wikipedian – gave a presentation on which I’ve based most of this post.

This project builds on our collaborations with the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. We hope the medical community throughout the UK will join us in this effort and invite Wikimedia UK trainers into their workplaces. Contact info@wikimedia.org.uk if you are interested in a similar event in your own institution.

A message from the Wikimedia UK Board

Wikimedia UK’s Board of Trustees met on Tuesday 8 October to discuss recent events, review strategy and evaluate where we want to be in the future. Following the meeting, and subsequent discussions, the Board wishes to make the following statement:

“It has been almost a year since Wikimedia UK achieved charitable status. This is a sensible checkpoint to use to assess the progress we’ve made in the last year as a Board, with our community and our staff.

“We have had a difficult few months which have resulted in negative attention. Some of the coverage has been inaccurate, and much of it has been ill-informed, but we know our community deserves better. Collectively, we have made mistakes. Here and now, we apologise for these mistakes.

“We are determined to learn from our mistakes. We are equally determined to heal the wounds that recent events have opened.

“We welcome the independent review of our governance that we will be undertaking jointly with the Wikimedia Foundation. By looking closely at our governance policies and procedures, and how those have been acted on, we expect the review to have clear recommendations which will help us follow best practice in every area of governance. We are certain that the review will lead to our charity and our movement being in a much stronger position. The results of this review will, of course, be made publicly available and we reaffirm our commitment to transparency and openness.

“Bearing all of this in mind, it is crucial that we do not lose sight of the many excellent achievements of our community and our staff during the same period. We have led the way in our relationships with GLAM institutions. Monmouthpedia was voted the year’s coolest Wikimedia project at Wikimania. Our Wikimedian in Residence programme continues to bring benefits to our movement. Our ground-breaking EduWiki conference highlighted the important role that Wikimedia projects can have in higher education. We are continuing to work hard to grow our volunteer and editing communities, particularly within under-represented groups. We have even taken over the city of Coventry for a day.

“These efforts are continuing every day. Take a look at just some of the activities we have planned for the month of October:

We are celebrating the achievements of women in science and technology on Ada Lovelace Day (in partnership with the Royal Society) and hosting an editathon to encourage more women to edit
We are working with Parkinson’s UK to teach their volunteers and staff to edit Wikipedia, helping to improve the encyclopaedia on a critical topic for many people
We will deliver a workshop at the British Library for groups that have received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
We are teaming up with The Equiano Centre at University College, London, to host an event for Black History Month, improving coverage on Wikipedia and encouraging the participation of new editors.

“That these events are happening at all is a result of the hard work, determination and motivation of our excellent volunteers, our dedicated and committed staff and our generous donors and supporters.

“This has been a difficult few weeks for us. We must learn from it, and we must not let it prevent us delivering our mission. We will continue to work hard for our community and we will continue working to make the sum total of human knowledge available to everyone, everywhere, for free.”