Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recent changes and watchlists broken on the WMUK Wiki

[Charles Matthews]

> On 01 December 2018 at 09:30 Jonathan Cardy  
> wrote:
> 
> More radically, you could move the UK wiki to be a project on Meta. 
> 
> 



> I can’t think of anything we have ever gained from having our own 
> independent Wiki as opposed to a project on Meta, unless you count 
> independence and seperation from the rest of the movement as a positive.
> 

As a matter of history, independence was a big motivation, rightly or wrongly.

There is fundraising to consider, naturally. There is more than that one wiki 
hosted, even in terms of MediaWiki instances. 

In terms of fundraising, I spoke in 2010 (as WMUK staff) to someone then 
working in online fundraising as CE of a charity. Who told me that Wikimedia as 
a whole undershot what could be done in terms of raising funds, by an order of 
magnitude; and that you had to cater for the needs of the savvy donor, who 
researches charities online. The point is obviously not to rely entirely on 
impulse giving.

Now, that cannot be done on meta, clearly.

Does there need to be a wiki involved? There an element here of business logic 
versus open logic. Certainly one argument is "a report on the charity's 
activities is under professional control, and that is what should be online". A 
counter-argument is that it would convey nothing distinctive, everyone knows 
that glossiness can be purchased, and the WMF set its face some time ago 
against the plusher models of charity and NGO development.

A colleague told me not long ago that the trend for corporate sites is to make 
them leaner. The rationale is that people will anyway use other sources of 
information about corporation C, researching it elsewhere. Part of this 
discussion should be whether that would actually be a good thing for chapter's 
comms. There is a familiar debate here about who are the stakeholders and so 
on, and honestly anyone who brings up rationalising the wiki out of existence 
really needs to have their own version of that to hand.

Actually the UK wiki seems to me to have suffered from a couple of things. 
These really shouldn't have to be spelled out. They are:

(a) That it has been treated as an appendage to the office system; and

(b) A division of labour that is familiar from WP, that everyone should muck in 
on the scutwork, some people develop substantive content, and others do 
maintenance work like tagging with templates and effectively archiving old 
content, has not been understood by the office. And that none of this should be 
confused with the developer time cost, though there is certainly a cost to not 
having the site run like a dog and suffering periods of downtime.

For heaven's sake, a way to engage volunteers familiar with wiki editing is to 
have a wiki they'd want to edit. Not some sort of obsolescent filing cabinet. 
In these terms, beware the stakeholder analysis that simply ignores the group 
of people who, wait for it, actually write Wikipedia.

Charles
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Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recent changes and watchlists broken on the WMUK Wiki

[Jonathan Cardy]

More radically, you could move the UK wiki to be a project on Meta.

This would end much of your costs for maintaining the wiki, other than any 
domain names which you could point there. But more importantly it would include 
you into Single User Login and cross wiki notifications. So if you pinged 
someone in a discussion they would know about it next time they were on 
Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. It would also help lower the barriers against 
involving that rather large group of Wikimedians who are in the UK but who have 
had little or no contact with the chapter.

I can’t think of anything we have ever gained from having our own independent 
Wiki as opposed to a project on Meta, unless you count independence and 
seperation from the rest of the movement as a positive.

Jonathan



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From: Wikimediauk-l  on behalf of 
John Lubbock 
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2018 5:48 pm
To: UK Wikimedia mailing list
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recent changes and watchlists broken on the WMUK 
Wiki

I support Andy's proposal. Some consolidation of communications formats is a 
very good thing from my point of view. We have so many it's hard to keep track 
of them all.

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

+44 (0) 203 372 0767

 
[https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download=0B-NnTyZV24WTVXhLeDIxSWs2d28=0B-NnTyZV24WTc29aKy9VK2ovTDlrWDdMZCtzNk5GTFp2cThjPQ]

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, 
Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1, Ground Floor, 
Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge 
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make 
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate 
here.

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 Fri, 30 Nov 2018 at 16:39, Andy Mabbett 
mailto:a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk>> wrote:
On Fri, 30 Nov 2018 at 15:42, mailto:leu...@fabiant.eu>> 
wrote:

>  Engine Room

> water cooler

I suggest re-merging those pages. The level of traffic is not high and
the benefits of splitting them were never clear.

--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

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