Sausages and Scholarship: Wikipedia and Digital Literacy

The Economic and Social Research Council is supporting a series of academic seminars on “Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights”, led by Prof. Gillian Youngs of the University of Wales, Newport. Last Friday’s seminar at the University of Leicester invited four representatives from outside academia, including myself for Wikimedia UK. Although the day’s theme was “digital literacy”, the twelve presentations covered a dizzying range of issues, from the legal structures that regulate television, to community journalism, to “sexting”.

My presentation paraphrased the German saying, “People who enjoy sausages or legislation should not watch them being made.” I contrasted this with scholarship: it is better to have a closed system of publication and review, or an open, wiki-based process which lets us see the sausages being made before we eat them?

For the topics of rights, connectivity, creativity, digital policy, and digital literacy, I argued that the Wikimedia perspective Continue reading “Sausages and Scholarship: Wikipedia and Digital Literacy”

UK attendees attending WikiConference India 2011

WikiConference IndiaThis Friday, the first WikiConference India will take place in Mumbai. The three day event will see over 600 participants discussing a wide range of topics related to Wikipedia, and will provide a significant boost to the reader and editor community of Indian-language Wikipedias.

Wikimedia UK has given four scholarships to attend the conference from the UK, all four will give presentations to share their experiences and knowledge. They are:

  • Dr Toni Sant, Director of Research at the University of Hull’s School of Arts and New Media in Scarborough, UK, talking about Embracing Wikipedia as a Learning & Teaching Resource
  • WereSpielChequers, a long-time contributor to Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK’s activities, talking about experiences of Wikimedia-GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) partnerships in the UK
  • Dhaval Vyal, currently the only active administrator on the Gujarati Wikipedia, talking about Growth of Gujarati Wikipedia and possible aspects of dissemination
  • Vinesh Patel, founder of the Imperial College Wikipedia Society, talking about Wikimedia and student societies: present and future

The scholarship recipients will be putting together public reports of their experiences which will be posted to the Wikimedia UK wiki over the next few months.

Charity Status for the world’s favourite encyclopaedia – and a milestone for Charity Law

Today the Charity Commission has approved Wikimedia UK, the UK membership organisation supporting Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, as a registered charity.
The news comes shortly before the launch of this year’s global Wikimedia fundraiser. Starting  on 14th November, Wikimedia UK aims to raise £1 million to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The Charity Commission’s decision, regarded as a milestone in charity law, means that for the first time British donors to Wikimedia will be able to make their donations go further with Gift Aid.
For Wikimedia UK, being recognised as a charity is a springboard for ambitious plans to work with a growing range of major organisations (including the British Museum and British Library). Wikimedia UK recently appointed its first Chief Executive and will open new offices in central London on November 14th.

Gaining Charitable Status

Wikimedia UK one step closer to charitable status

There was a record-breaking turnout of UK Wikipedians on Sunday 16th October for the 50th London Meetup and an Extraordinary General Meeting of WMUK.   The single resolution passed with 49 votes for, none against and one abstention (including 24 proxy votes).   The resolution adopted a new  “Objects clause” in our constitution to make us ready to become a UK Registered Charity – our full Articles of Association are available to view here. It was explained at the meeting that discussions with the Charity Commission have been progressing well, and the Board are optimistic that Wikimedia UK will achieve charity status soon, hopefully in time for the start of the 2011 Fundraiser in November.   This will enable WMUK to collect Gift Aid, and brings other advantages, such as discounts on normal business rates – and providing a more professional and trustworthy image to the public.   The new CEO, Jon Davies, also answered questions from attendees.

Our plans for 2012

Wikimedia UK has just published its 2012 Activity Plan. Please have your say!


The Activity Plan is an outline of the work we will do in 2012, and the resources we need to support it. It is an important stage in the development of our 2012 Budget. When we’re asking people for money in this Autumn’s fundraiser, the Activity Plan will show people what we’re hoping to achieve with their donations – so it’s also important for the openness and accountability of our fundraising.

We’d welcome your views – please edit the talk page if you have any comments or suggestions.  There will be plenty of scope to take feedback from the community into account when we finalise the 2012 Budget later this year in the light of the actual fundraising income.

Welcoming our new Chief Executive

I am delighted to announce that we have offered the position of Chief Executive to Jon Davies and he has accepted. He will start on 1 October 2011, in time to help us prepare for the annual fundraiser that is due to start on 1 November.

Many of you will have met Jon at the September Wikimeet, along with the other finalists. He is the former Chief Executive of Families need Fathers, Britain’s leading shared parenting charity, and a former leader of the London Cycling Network. He will be coming along to the 50th London Wikimeet and the Wikimedia UK EGM on 16th October, where he is keen to meet as many people as possible and hear how they would like the chapter to develop.

Jon is a fantastic find for us. His skills and experience – working with volunteer led organisations and leading charities though periods of change and growth in activities – are just what we have been looking for. His consensual approach is a natural fit to Wikimedian culture and his confident and reassuring manner will be invaluable in the times of change ahead. I am very confident that he will be a very successful addition to the chapter.

Finding and choosing the right person would not have been possible without the help of many people along the way. I would like to thank everyone involved in this. In particular, thanks go to: Continue reading “Welcoming our new Chief Executive”

EGM 16th October – Help us become a charity!

As you all know, since Wikimedia UK was founded, one of our goals has been to become a Registered Charity. The process hasn’t been easy – our activities as set out in our Object don’t easily tick the necessary boxes on the Charity Commission’s checklist.

The Board has been doing a lot of work on this in the last two months. The advice we have received from the Charity Commission and our lawyers is that for the best prospect of success, we need to amend Wikimedia UK’s Object, and also make some minor changes to our Memorandum and Articles of Association.

To do this, we are calling an Extraordinary General Meeting on 16th October 2011, to coincide with the 50th London Wikimeet. There will only be one item of business: the amendment of the Memorandum of Association with revised Objects. The Board is unanimously supporting the amendment of the Memorandum and we hope the new Objects will not prove controversial. The intention of this motion is not to actually change anything Wikimedia UK does, just to re-define our objectives in a way that better fits in with charity law.

You can see the proposed amendment on the EGM wiki page. Members of the WMUK board are happy to answer any questions you have about the amendment; please ask them on EGM talk page.

If you are able to attend in person, please sign up here. The EGM will be at the Penderel’s Oak on Sunday 16 October 2011. We’ll be in the room downstairs (as you may remember the most recent London wikimeet got a bit crowded).

If you are unable to attend then please vote by proxy. This is particularly important to ensure that we have quorum at the EGM in order to pass the amendment. Details on how to vote by proxy are included in the EGM notice.

All Wikimedia UK members will receive an email with formal notice of the EGM. Only current Wikimedia UK members can vote. If you aren’t a member, but would like to get involved, then you can join online for just £5.

This is an important milestone in our development and we are very happy to have got to this stage. Please help us take it one step further.

WikiConference India travel grants

Wikimedia UK welcomes proposals from Wikimedians in the UK community intending to travel to join the WikiConference India. Priority will be given to those with Wikimedia experience to share, links with the Wikimedia movement in India or with credible inter-chapter proposals to discuss and implement with support of the wider community.

Details of how to apply can be found at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_Scholarships. The deadline for submitting a workshop or presentation proposal to the India conference programme team has been extended to Sep 27 19:30 BST.

WikiConference India runs from November 18 to 20 at the University of Mumbai. The conference registration page is available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011.

Wikimedia UK at the Institute of Physics

On Thursday 1st September, two Martins from Wikimedia UK (MartinPoulter and Martinvl) visited the Institute of Physics building in London to train IoP members in contributing to Wikipedia. This was a pilot event, with an audience of six, building towards a larger event in future.

The training is part of Wikimedia UK’s wider programme of engaging with scholarly bodies and funding councils, bringing in experts to review and improve Wikipedia and its sister projects. The collaboration with IoP also includes an article by Martin Poulter and Mike Peel in the current issue of Physics World.

The attendees were very enthusiastic about the Wikimedia mission to make physics (and other areas of knowledge) accessible to as wide an audience as possible, not just through a free, multilingual encyclopaedia but also through projects such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks. Continue reading “Wikimedia UK at the Institute of Physics”

Help us choose our Chief Executive

At the AGM in April it was agreed that professionalising Wikimedia UK and recruiting our first permanent staff would be one of our priorities this year, We are now coming to the end of the process for choosing our first Chief Executive and would like your help with this.

This Sunday is the regular monthly wikimeet in London (details & directions) and the three final candidates will be there to meet the community. We would be interested to hear your impressions of them so that this can feed into the final decision of who to employ. If you require financial assistance for travel costs to attend please get in touch as we have a small budget that may be able to help.

This has been the result of a lot of hard work. Back in May we visited three recruitment agencies to discuss our staffing needs and how they could help. We selected prospect-us, a recruitment firm that works exclusively in the not-for-profit sector, who we felt would be best suited to provide us with the step by step help we need. They helped us draft the job description and advertised on the Guardian, Charity Jobs, as well as in their own network. We also advertised within the Wikimedia community using the geonotice facility on the english Wikipedia.

Over 100 people requested the application pack and 83 people applied for the post. The trustees worked with prospect-us to longlist 16 candidates who then met our consultant for a one-on-one interview. We then shortlisted six people for interview by a panel. We are very grateful to our partner GLAM institutions who who agreed to sit on the interview panel, bringing much appreciated expertise into the process. We also benefited from the help of Sebastian Molenski, President of Wikimedia Deutschland, who have already been through a similar process. The British Library kindly donated a room for our interviews, further demonstrating the importance of such relationships for the Wikimedia movement.

This appointment is going to be one of the most important decisions Wikimedia UK makes this year. We have designed a thorough process to test candidates on all the different angles. With your help, we can ensure that our new Chief Executive is the right choice for Wikimedia UK.