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Posted by: dogbiscuit

From the http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes_11Feb12:

So having been gifted a large chunk of money by virtue of a website diversion to their own fundraising page, Wikimedia UK contemplate playing hardball over lack of finalising agreements.

Intriguing that Wikimedia UK think in terms of it being their money to grant to the WMF. I wonder what WMF think about such debates.

I also wonder about this grant application business, seems like glorified money laundering to me. I wonder what HM Customs and Revenue think about these schemes. Just to be clear, WMF do fund-raising on their website. They divert UK clicks to a UK based company who nominally are in receipt of the moneys and are able to get tax back based on the UK based company being a charity but in practice have to hand the money back to the WMF. So the UK based company has not actually sought the donations, it has not provided any significant labour or effort to garner these donations. It has simply processed them, with a bit of paperwork to claim the tax back on behalf of a US company. Probably worth a chat with a friendly tax accountant or two that I know.

Thinks, it should also be fun to nitpick and worry through all the minutes so they get so paranoid that they hold everything in secret. Then they might learn why information does not like being free after all.

Posted by: lilburne

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes_11Feb12#Responses_to_threats_and_harassment_.28F.C3.A6.29

Posted by: HRIP7

On a somewhat related topic, there was http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AWikipedia_Signpost%2F2012-02-13%2FSpecial_report&action=historysubmit&diff=477143494&oldid=477142469 from John Vandenberg earlier today:

The memo referred to is the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/WMF_staff_memo. So what exactly is going on there?

Posted by: dogbiscuit

My reading of that is that the WMF don't see that there is great benefit from fund-raising through Wikimedia UK. It is interesting because if you switch off the WMF page switcheroo, you switch off Wikimedia UK funds and they rapidly burn their funds on all their employees which they simply could not fund if they had to fund-raise for themselves without the Wikipedia site.

Who is the driver for chapters anyway? All that effort to set up Wikimedia UK and Erik is basically saying that they are a waste of time (financially at least). I guess the other side is that he is suggesting that they could centrally fund-raise and give grants out in the other direction, but I don't see that they'd be interested in funding the large back office that Wikimedia UK have built up on the pretence that they are a multi-million pound charity.

There is an interesting footnote that they think that they have compliance issues in the UK with Wikimedia UK funding WMF, and there is less of an issue the other way round. (Isn't this where I came in?)

Posted by: HRIP7

The minutes mention two interesting new Wikimedia UK policies: the http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy, and the http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation_policy (draft).

The striking thing about the friendly space policy is that it expressly states that

Isn't that rather hypocritical, given the widespread view that there should be no suppression whatsoever of sexual imagery etc. on Wikimedia websites for any reason, and that people who have uploaded sexual images of themselves, their partners, their former partners (possibly without their consent) should not have the right to ask for these to be removed again?

In fact, Commons is a complete mess for never asking for model releases the way professional outfits like http://www.istockphoto.com/ do. (They also pay their contributors, provide http://www.istockphoto.com/help/sell-stock/training-manuals, and guarantee customers that their images do not infringe anyone's rights ... but I digress.)

The participation policy seems to be an effort to ensure that Wikimedia UK members can remain totally anonymous, as it forbids


Shouldn't this really just be a matter for UK law? How does that compare to other UK charities? Are there any other UK charities that have rules like that?

Prosecutable privacy intrusions are one thing; but is someone's name now private? For example, if you say out loud that a volunteer for the Red Cross who insists on being called "The King" by everyone is really called John Smith, does that mean the Red Cross don't want you no more?

Again, it seems hypocritical. In Wikipedia, efforts are made to locate whatever embarrassing thing can be found in some notable person's history, down to the level of a driving offence, and to make sure that thing is permanently visible under the top Google link for that person's name. But God forbid that there be any scrutiny of the people who accomplish that effort.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

I think the really hypocritical thing about that is that people like Fae appear to define themselves to some extent in terms of their sexuality - it leaks out of their communications all the time, it is part of their WikiPersonality - yet they see it as an intrusion to note this. I think they would probably argue it was unfair that they were expected to suppress their personality or some such argument, yet the point about Wikipedian anonymity is that the editing is supposed to be such a well-proscribed process that personality should not be part of it. Presumably David Gerard would be banned because he is a walking fetish display from the pictures he displays of himself.

There is a challenge - to turn up and complain that anyone dressed in an extrovert fashion is being sexually threatening and you feel threatened by it. Somehow I think the policy would melt away then.

Of course, taking that policy wording to its Wikipedian extreme, we seem to being told that we cannot use he/she; we cannot allude to gender, we cannot talk of our spouses; we cannot discuss the problem of overtly sexual content at Wikimedia UK.

If Wikipedia anonymity really worked, then we really wouldn't be interested in editors at all because they'd just be worker drones sifting through sources to make wonderful articles, and we would not really be aware of their interests.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

To be fair, I was told (way back when) that, as an admin, I ought not be friends with anyone else who is also an admin. I believe it is formally Wikipedia policy that all Wikipedians ought to be faceless, personality-free drones with no emotional attachments to anyone or anything, except, of course, Wikipedia.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

I think Anthere was one of the driving forces behind setting up chapters. It's not just the money but the board seats. Anthere was always prickly about Wikipedia being US-centric.

Posted by: Peter Damian

Note the very emotional objections on the talk page are from WMUK directors and from John Vandenberg (WMAU). Philippe wrote the doc in his new capacity as head of Advocacy or whatsit. Summarising the doc:

1. The first bolded point is that donors prefer their contributions directly to support Wikipedia, not these weird chapters. Precisely bearing out my point about misleading advertising.

2. Central fundraising is better than 'local' fundraising, given Wikipedia's global model. True again.

3. Local payment processing is more expensive than the global model.

4. Advertising local tax-deductibility does not have significant impact on donations (I'm surprised by this).

5. Transfer of funds to local chapters no worse than the other way round.

The implication obviously is that they want to move to a global fundraising model, which WMF having discretion about funding local operations such as WMUK. They want to take power away from chapters.

That's clearly why 'The Land' (WMUK director of fund raising Chris Keating) is so pissed off.

Posted by: EricBarbour

That is a very profound, and nasty, question. And I have yet to see a proper discussion of it, anywhere.
(Especially not in public WMF documents. This is yet another aspect of the WMF that is utterly opaque
and mismanaged, I have to suspect they are abusing local chapters for their own dirty uses, such as
heeling Wikipedias that are written in languages Erik Moeller and Sue can't read.)

I defy any of you to read the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Chapters/Fundraising_Agreement and try to parse it.
It looks more like a series of threats than an "agreement".


That's another comical aspect of the WMF. It slowly grows more anti-American with every passing year,
yet is based in America, was invented by Americans, is still run by a staff that is mostly Americans,
is dominated by the English-language Wikipedia, and raises most of its donations from Americans.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

It shouldn't be surprising that the WMF would move towards clawing back the fundraising power, given the state of things at WMUK.

What are the "key agreements" MP was referring to regarding whether to finalize the payment?

Years ago (2008, maybe?) a few of us were trying to start a chapter for Pennsylvania. We were vehemently opposed because there was paranoia about there being 50 state chapters that would cause "enfranchisement issues" for the European chapters. I think it has since been swallowed up by the New York chapter.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

It is probably unenforceable. One thing I note is the attempt to claim that the only juristriction that counts is California. A legal entity in the UK is incapable of dismissing UK law by signing a contract.

The whole thing comes across that you have a bunch of idealistic chapter members who believe in The Cause, and then they discover that the WMF are actually a bunch of cynical money-grabbers. Quelle surprise.

Posted by: HRIP7

Well, at any rate, it is a new development to see Wikipedians arguing about the money. It used to be that there wasn't any to speak of.

But as annual donations have increased tenfold over the past five years, now having hit $20m and rising, it seems like a few people can see a gravy train forming in front of their eyes – microgrants, grants, paid chapter jobs, paid Foundation jobs, £30,000 GLAM/Wikipedian-in-residence jobs – basically all ways to monetise Wikimedia involvement.

For a few people at least, all that unpaid volunteer work will finally pay off after all.

Posted by: Silenteditor

It wouldn't surprise me if this very concern isn't what's making the WMUK folks think twice about signing cheques/sending funds to WMF. I would imagine they want to make sure they are (individually) covered if anyone investigates. But I could be wrong.

Posted by: Rufus

So I was thinking about why they would do this. It doesn't really seem like writing it into the contract as a programmatic expense for the UK foundation saves either WMF or WMUK any actual money. The WMF wouldn't be taxed on receipt of the money anyway (they can almost certainly classify this as inside the scope of their mission, and so not a source of outside business income). I don't know UK law on this, but I doubt WMUK would lose any money by calling it a direct payment instead of a grant. They wouldn't under US law.

WMUK would, however, have to call it a fundraising expense if they made the money transfer a direct payment (again, under US law; I suspect it applies over there but I'm not sure). So WMUK would have a significantly higher fundraising expenses when various charity rating people looked at their fundraising efficiency ratio.

Wonder if that's what's up here. WMF wants to ensure payment, but doesn't want to mess with the chapter's fundraising efficiency ratio, so they end up putting an obligation to dispense programmatic funds in a fundraising contract.

Posted by: jayvdb

Not really; all it would mean is that the chapters would be funded by grants from the WMF, using the new chapters grant agreements, or something similar.

The WMF would rather that UK money flows to WMF, and then part of it goes back to the UK.

The chapters would rather that the money goes to an organisation in the same country as the donor, as that gives the donor the greatest ability to ensure their donor information and donation is used appropriately, according to local laws.

The chapters would rather that we have strong member based organisations in each country, so there isn't a single point of decision making and/or failure, and it also means that problems can be addressed by voting out the board members, or by complaints to the local authorities.

For those of you complaining about the chapters, please consider the amount of transparency in the chapter minutes compared with the WMF minutes.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:Committee_%282011-10-16%29 - ~2 hrs

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-28 - ~2 hrs

And the chapters usually report all expenditure publicly, with suitable granularity to allow the public scrutiny.

http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:2011_AGM/Financial_Report
http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Meeting:Committee_%282011-12-18%29#Finance_Report
etc

Posted by: dogbiscuit

My point really was that in the context of multi-million pound donations washing through the chapter accounts, the significant staffing looks appropriate. If the WMF simply directed grant money to the chapter to cover the local activities, the staffing overhead would be massively disproportionate. If the WMF chose only to fund the activities not the staff, because the chapter is presumably supposed to have independent local sources of income then I doubt the chapter staffing in the UK could be sustained.



I think that is a sound point. The trouble is that I think that there are likely to be two types involved in the chapters, the committed Wikipedian who believes in the mission, and the leeches. The leeches will put the time and effort into corrupting the chapters to their own ends, much as we see WMF as primarily being leeches given that it is hard to see how they are effectively supporting the mission - they are off doing whatever the WMF does while the Wikipedians are left in their cellars producing the justification for the bureaucracy. Wikipedians already don't trust the WMF, and while chapters start with Wikipedians, they will migrate to being mini-WMFs - that chapters are transparent is just a sign of the relative immaturity of the local bureaucracy.

At the moment the minutes are transparent where they reflect the committed Wikipedian, but we can already see that as the leeches look to gain control, those sections of the minutes are hidden from view. While policies on harassment can be dressed up as caring and supportive of their members in a potentially hostile environment, in the end it is transporting the Wikipedia Harassment meme into the real world, where any sustained scrutiny is simply dismissed with a cry of Harassment and then forever more, even if the accusations are well-founded, they are dismissed as the work of trolls, and the leeches can carry on their work of subverting the organisation to their own ends in peace and quiet.

Posted by: Peter Damian

To be fair, it seems as though the £30,000 is from the British Library, although your general point is absolutely right: involvement in Wikipedia = money. Also, the BL grant has essentially been arranged by a Wikipedian who is working within the Library, and apparently has to authority to organise this (via friendship with Van Haeften, it seems).


That may be true of WMAU, but I don’t see that with WMUK. Their ‘harassment’ discussion was held in camera, and their mailing list is now private (see https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l).



Quite the reverse. Philippe’s research showed, and common sense suggests, that people donate to Wikipedia to support Wikipedia, not these dubious self-elected characters working in the ‘Chapters’.



The process of election for board members has many obstacles attached, notably objections about ‘harassment’. Complaints to local authorities may work, of course.

Posted by: lilburne

The tax issues may come into play. If they are claiming back tax on the donations via the UK gift aid scheme and then passing that money to the US there is likely to be a problem, as I don't think that the Gift Aid scheme is meant to apply to UK tax payer donations to foreign charities.

Posted by: jayvdb

Why do you say self-elected? I assume you are referring to WMUK. Did they report on how many votes were cast in the trustee election?

For the last WMAU committee election, WMAU had 47 members. 19 members were involved in nominating people to be on the next board, with a total of 70 nominations. (i.e. each of those 19 members nominated people for 3.6 of the 6 available seats.) 18 members then voted in the election. I don't consider that to be a great turn out, but it isnt 'self-selecting'. p.s. I don't think WMAU has ever refused membership to anyone (yet), and the existing board has no influence over who can nominated or elected to be on the board.

Posted by: jayvdb

I dont disagree that this is possible, and a natural progression. However the current situation is that most of the chapters (if they participated in the annual fundraiser) would receive very little at all, so this isnt a significant problem for the majority of chapters.

See for e.g. the 2010 fundraiser results for countries (sort by amount, and look at the list in $ asc order to better see my point below).

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Report#Top_countries_donating_directly_to_WMF
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Report#Chapters.27_fundraising

Of the countries which donated to the WMF directly, Poland is #10 with $60,651.

Of the countries which donated to the chapter directly, Israel is #10 with $80,021. Because of the fundraising agreement at the time, WMIL (Israel) only keeps half ($40,000) and half went to the WMF.

That annual income does not allow for a very large organisations; they couldn't employ staff full time on that amount of money. It is going to be hard to leech from an organisation that size without the corruption being very blatant.

Your point is very important with regards to the chapters which receive very large amounts of money via the fundraiser. However the chapters which have been permitted to continue to be part of the annual fundraiser in 2011 are the same ones you are worried about: the very large ones (DE, FR, GB,...). It is all the small chapters and small countries which have been excluded from the fundraiser.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

I think that the process of how the Wikimedia UK was set up was to a certain extent self-selecting, so I'd agree with Peter. A small number of people wanted to sort it out - the previous clique which included David Gerard had failed to make a go of it. Only a handful of people ever involved themselves. At the AGM 30 people were involved electing 8 out of 9 candidates, so it was self-selecting for all practical purposes. 30 people hardly represents either the editorship of Wikipedia (many thousands presumably), or the UK users of Wikipedia (many millions). Edit: Perhaps the true electorate should be the donators - how many of the 30 were donators to Wikimedia UK and how many were friends or relations of the candidate committee members?

One of the issues is that in the UK, the editors are geographically diverse, but as is often the case, Wikimedia UK is London based. The physical location and the lack of interest in bureaucracy and the fact that on a day to day basis nobody would interact with Wikimedia UK so they are a hidden organisation in practice even though they are not hiding means that they simply are not practically accountable as there is no meaningful electorate.

That doesn't mean that there are not well-meaning individuals trying to run Wikimedia UK, but it does mean that there is no real accountability. Then when you consider that Peter has attempted to hold them to account and the instant reaction is to bar him from their meetings, they have fallen at the first hurdle.

Posted by: jayvdb

The number of candidates may not be the only measure. Was there a nomination round?


Was there IRC or teleconference participation in the AGM? Did they accept proxy votes?


What questions has Peter asked?

Did he become a member first?

According to the meta page, they have ~220 members
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters

As a member organisation, it usually takes ~5% of the membership to force a general meeting and a motion, which means getting about 10 members to agree. Surely if there is a problem, 10 members will agree and start issuing demands of the board.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

See http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=35640 for a good bit of it.

I was actually going to ask you if you felt that the WMUK's shenanigans were going to have a negative affect on the ozzie chapter. I'm vaguely familiar with your work down there because Wikiversity is mostly populated by your members lately, and it seems to be a far more positive and ethical organization compared to what we hear about the UK org.

Posted by: jayvdb

Ugh. I got as far as reading http://www.examiner.com/wiki-edits-in-national/wikimedia-uk-stonewalling-effort-to-see-documents and
a) MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#logicmuseum.com.
b) puked at


Save me from reading the rest...
Did WMUK provide the requested documents, or has a FOI request been lodged?
I'd really like to know whether any of you have joined and asked for these documents as a paid up member; you'll have a lot more rights as a member of the organisation.

I think that Wikimedia chapters can/should be eligible to be charitable as I believe the Wikimedia projects are a public service which is very beneficial to the public (it has problems, of course..), and the chapters can and should be providing organisational support to prevent failures of WP processes affecting living people.(better support for volunteers who can find & fix these problem; better communication processes for WP subjects to use to seek resolution; etc) The German and UK chapters have been providing training for OTRS volunteers. I haven't yet seen a good reason to believe that Wiki UK shouldn't have been approved as a charity (provided they were honest to the authorities; see question above about the FOI request..).

Here in Australia we could immediately become a charity if we only supported Wikisource ;-) We're unlikely to easily obtain tax-deductible status otherwise, as the regulators of the current system will be evaluating the impact of the organisation rather than the impact of the Wikimedia projects .. i.e. we need to show a direct relation between chapter activities and improvements to Wikimedia content / system.

To answer your question, if the UK chapter is delisted as a charity, it would hurt the WMAU chances of being declared charitable, even if we were a very different organisation undertaking different types of activities..

Posted by: Peter Damian

After obtaining one document from the Charity Commission under FOI and threatening to embarrass WMUK by getting the rest via that route – thus forcing an organisation committed to ‘open knowledge’ to concede that state-controlled institutions are actually much more open, WMUK relented and published all the correspondence here http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Charity_status/Correspondence . Of particular relevance is their final submission,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/uk/f/f9/CCR07_2011-09-26_Final_submission_letter_WMUK_to_Charity_Commission.pdf especially section 13.

My submission to UK Charity Commission (UKCC) focused on section 13. UKCC required that Wikipedia have certain controls over content in order for WMUK to support it under the charity umbrella. WMUK made all sorts of claims in their section 13 that are in my view a gross misrepresentation verging on the fraudulent. Read it yourself. For example, claims that malicious editing can no longer be made to BLPs (I cited at least 3 current examples in my submission to UKCC), that 144,000 editors have articles on their watchlist, that there are 1,500 administrators on enWP, and so on.

After I questioned whether WMUK had misrepresented information, I was blocked from the WMUK wiki. Shortly after that I was banned from attending any public event hosted by WMUK, thus my name was removed from the guest list at the visit to Royal Collection of manuscripts at the British Library, despite my reasonably extensive knowledge of and interest in this collection.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

That actually makes a lot more sense than whatever their purpose is supposed to be in the UK. I know there have been some Australian conferences and get-togethers announced on WV related to "open source learning" and such that sounded interesting and productive, though tbh I don't recall if they actually had anything to do with WMAU. Organizing for transcription or even updates of older (and now open source) texts is an entirely different thing from getting together at the pub to talk about the popculturepedia.
That's my guess too, and it could certainly be a problem for any of the US chapters if they tried to incorporate (though the non-profit laws are a bit looser here than they seem to be in the UK).

Posted by: jayvdb

WMAU has supported the last two RecentChangesCamps with travel grants.
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC2011
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC2012
The 2011 RCC had a strong education theme, with lots of academics. Unfortunately the 2012 RCC was less productive as it had more Wikipedians than academics and professionals from other sectors. We'll need to be more careful about how WMAU awards travel grants to the next RCC, so we dont create an imbalance like that again.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

It amuses me that having too many Wikipedians at a Wikipedia-related conference is counterproductive. Says a lot about Wikipedians, I think.

Posted by: EricBarbour

It disgusts me that "Wikipedian", and "academic" / "professional", are mutually exclusive.

Posted by: jayvdb

Well, umm, not disagreeing with you, but RecentChangesCamp is intended to be a much broader unconference. We achieved a really good mix in 2011, but the recent 2012 conference was too Wikipedia centric for my liking, and I suspect it will have put off a few attendees that were expecting a repeat of the 2011 unconference. The recent RCC was good, including a few really interesting sessions that had no relation to Wikipedia, and most of the non Wikipedians attending have since joined WMAU, and I know of one new project (unrelated to Wikimedia) that has been initiated. However many of the sessions ended up focused on English Wikipedia, as English Wikipedians tend to think only of English Wikipedia unless they are moderated to stay on topic, and moderation at an unconference is a bit antithetical. So in future the WMAU committee will need to be more careful about ensuring that our support doesnt skew the RCC attendence in a way that means the unconference doesnt stay true to the RCC concept.

Posted by: jayvdb

That isn't true, and I didnt even imply that. WMAU is largely comprised of 'Wikipedians' who are "academic" / "professional", or retirees who fit that bill. We do have some members that are still on their path to being either, and a very small number that WRers would consider to be basement dwellers. High membership fees tend to put off that sort of person. My limited knowledge of the other chapters is that they also have a high proportion of academics and professionals in their membership, but I could not comment on what proportion.

Posted by: Peter Damian

We need to distinguish between 'free source', which is Stallman's idea which I broadly endorse. That's making quality content free under some form of license that incorporates the 'four freedoms'. And 'open source' which is not Stallman, and which is the idea that anyone can get involved. It's the latter idea that has ruined Wikipedia.

John, you have just kindly got involved to remove the block on outward bound links to Logic Museum. You say "The Logic Museum is scholarly work (kindly hosted by Wikipedia Review), of exceptional quality and utility to Wikipedia, and moreover it was and is free content and as such is no different to http://en.wikisource.org/ (see www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/The_Logic_Museum:Copyrights) and shouldnt be treated any differently from any other website which provides scholarly work. "

And look at the reply that Mr Katz is giving you. Your intervention is pointless when there are people like him running Wikipedia. He does not care about material that is of "exceptional quality and utility to Wikipedia". That's because he does not understand what the material is. He is a change patroller.

If you allow 'anyone to edit', you need people like Katz. If you allow people like him to dominate the project, you will get absurd results like the ban on Logic Museum. All he understands is that I am a banned user, that I operate a site outside Wikipedia, and that therefore all links to that site must be blocked. The block on this content is a direct result of the 'anyone can edit' policy. Why can't you see that?

I predict your intervention will go absolutely nowhere. Katz and those like him run the project now, not people like you.

Posted by: Eppur si muove

What I find disgusting is the type of content jayvdb was trying to get deleted from multiple projects earlier this week. This makes him a lot more acceptable as a front man for WMAU than certain people who give evidence to parliament on behalf of WMUK. I doubt he would ever describe a picture of prostitutes in the Reeperbahn as educational or claim that Commons need more out of focus penises than Nelson's Columns.