Minutes 2010-12-07
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Minutes of the meeting of the Wikimedia UK Board on Skype 19:30 on 2 November 2010.
Present on Skype: Board trustees Andrew Turvey (AT), Mike Peel (MP), Tom Dalton (TD), Steve Virgin (SV), Joseph Seddon (JS); with Charles Matthews (CM) taking notes.
Meeting got under way 19.44 on Skype.
Skype connection troubles: The meeting had to be rehosted at 21:16 and 21:30. AT (Chair) suffered from ongoing problems with breaking up. ACTION: AT to investigate phone conferencing facilities as substitute.
Agenda handling: The community IRC meeting from earlier in the evening was inserted at A3.2. B2 was substituted (Spending plans for Media strategy) in the absence of Gemma Griffiths.
A: Minutes and Reports
A1. Apologies: N/a.
A2: Approval of minutes
A2: The minutes for the meetings of 22 October and 2 November 2010 were approved unchanged. CM was given notes on improvements to be made to the presentation of the minutes.
A3.1: Decisions taken by email
The issue of email list discussion and subsequent ratification by the Board at its meetings was slated as an item for the February meeting in person. On the current handling, MP asked for active moderation/chairing of Board email list discussions. AT asked for clear, explicit indications in the subject line for threads when there is a decision required.
- Approval of Donor Privacy Policy: the very minor diff from the WMF version should be noted at the end of the page, with the banner template. (ACTION: on AT)
- Approval of Guidelines for responding to queries: it was agreed that this could be modified at need by a Board list decision; and that the existing skills of staff assigned to the OTRS duty can and should be taken into account.
The following decisions were also ratified:
- Decision to sign the agreement to participate in the Annual Fundraiser
- Appointment of Gemma Griffiths as Head of PR (on a one day per week basis)
- Approval of associated blog post on GG
- Approval of Press Release re the Fundraiser
- Approval of text for promotional material for Jimmy's talk in Bristol
- Grant permission to Festival of Ideas for use of WMUK logo to advertise the Jimmy Wales talk.
A3.2: Community IRC meeting
An IRC channel meeting for the UK Wikimedian community had taken place in the early evening of the same day, and was well attended with about 20 taking part. JS had attended for the Board. ACTION: JS will send a synopsis to the Board and the WMUK general mailing list. He reported the need for a regular meeting of this kind.
A4: Reports
A41: Report from AT (includes Office Manager)
Under CM's work as Office Manager, a list of 54 names on the office wiki was approved by the Board, one bank transfer being verified in real time. Two names were given conditional approval pending confirmation of payment of the membership fee.
CM was asked to supply addresses with future lists; he had looked over these names for clusters. ACTION: AT to follow up with CM about information presented to the board about new membership applications.
ACTION: CM to send the "congratulations" mails out for these approvals, after weeding out a small number of duplications from the past. ACTION: TD to present all cheques to the bank, to progress pending entries. ACTION: TD to liaise with CM about ambiguities or issues with membership payments
AT reported that Sue Gardner of the WMF had commented that the lateness of the WMUK accounts was (i) a breach of the fundraiser agreement, and (ii) should have been a matter on which the WMF was kept informed. Here (i) was common ground, but (ii) led to discussion. Reporting an issue should not be used to pass the buck (SV). There was a partial coverage for sharing via lists already. Reciprocity should be sought from the WMF on matters it should share with chapters. Single point of contact had been raised on their side, but wasn't infallible (MP). Some reporting matters hinged on courtesy (JS). ACTION: AT to report the Board's view on chapter-foundation reporting issues to Sue Gardner.
On advice for the fundraiser agreement, AT reported difficulties in receiving the solicitor's advice in letter form. ACTION: AT to go back to the lawyers to ask for a letter confirming the advice with transferring money to the Foundation.
AT and the other Britain Loves Wikimedia judges had made selections and needed to reconcile views. ACTION: AT to finalise.
A42: Report from MP
MP reported that the WMUK press phone was now being used as a more general contact number, and suggested that it would be better looked after by someone else. After discussion, it was decided that MP should continue holding the phone as there was currently no workable alternative.
On an SSL (i.e. Secure Socket Layer) certificate to deal with the insecure logo image on the fundraiser page (WMF not having the capacity to help), MP thought that it could be successfully implemented but wanted further input from knowledgable people. ACTION: MP to email internal-l with problem + current solution with the WMUK logo on the Paypal donation page not being on a secure server, and to implement an SSL certificate if that is the best way forward.
Delivery of newsletters to user pages: MP reported on the Global Message Delivery bot.
GLAM-WIKI: AT asked about a post mortem and the survey results. ACTION: MP to put together a summary on GLAM-WIKI for the next board meeting: survey results, what went well, what could have been done better.
A43: Report from TD
TD had dealt with most of the outstanding invoices on 5 December; still needed to pay that for the in-person Board meeting.
He reported that the PayPal account was still in limbo, under a threat of restriction that had not been implemented but was opaque as far as dealing with the issue was concerned. AT noted that PayPal had raised three queries. After discussion there was agreed ACTION: TD to phone and email PayPal by known routes to resolve the outstanding issues, and to withdraw money from the paypal to the bank account.
Requests for access: ACTION: TD to grant AT and MP internet banking access. ACTION: TD to grant CM PayPal read access for the purpose of CSV format data download. TD noted that CM's reporting task on fundraiser daily amounts was being handled by JS.
A44: Report from SV
The Board agreed to lapse SV's action for a FTSE 100 mailshot.
The Bristol event of 13 January was covered in detail in SV's report. SV still held 45 tickets, and intended to distribute them to WMUK members preferentially. ACTION: JS to post a site notice about the event. ACTION: SV to send out a notice to the WMUK general mailing list. ACTION: CM with SV to progress the newsletter via a concise text version with links and a wikitext version on the UK wiki as target for those links, as a matter of urgency. SV to undertake the role for the Board of leading formal approval. The PDF version only is to wait for later decisions.
A45: Report from JS
JS's report was passed by the meeting without discussion.
B: Decisions needed
B1: Wikipedia Anniversary
Five events were discussed (out of order)
B11: Edit Challenge
SV reported that Martin Poulter was leading this in Bristol, and will update him on progress on a timescale of two weeks. SV had also contacted Bristol Cathedral Choir School, and anticipate the groundwork approach of starting from explanations of NPOV.
B12: London evening
This is to take place December 19, a "freelance" fundraising event organised by en:User:Panyd and en:User:Chase Me Ladies, I'm the Cavalry. The pros and cons of WMUK recognition were discussed. ACTION: JS to email the WMF with a request for them to clarify their position with respect to this event CC'd to the WMUK Board list.
B13: London party
This is the Jimmy Wales event on 15 January. Details were still scarce, but there was an identifiable publicity theme ramping up. JS said he would contact Jimmy over invitations.
ACTION: JS to send an email to JW asking for more info on the London evening event. Transferred to SV
B14: Bristol event
SV had already detailed this (13 January) in his report, and said he was on top of the matter.
B15: British Library
MP reported on a promising approach from the British Library. ACTION: MP to lay the groundwork by getting numbers on their capacity to host "backstage", and on available internet connections.
The assumption is that this event could be run on some adaptation of the British Museum models (Backstage Pass/Hoxne Challenge), but requires everything to be put in place.
B2: Spending plans
TD reported that the fundraiser success meant that spending plans, particularly on hiring, could be accelerated. He wished Board members to consider the implications, ahead of the spending decisions.
C: AOB
C1: Fundraiser
JS reported on extrapolation to a final take over £500K, but with diminishing returns from the current Jimmy banner. The end of the fundraiser will be 15 January.
C2: Organizational Development email
The feeling of the meeting, after JS had talked to Barry Newstead, is that WMUK need not shoehorn its plans into this WMF template, at least as far as timeline was concerned. ACTION: JS to give some feedback to Sebastian Moleski.
C3: Corporate membership application method
Deferred as not urgent.
Meeting ended 22:48. The next meeting will be 4 January.