There has been a lot of discussion about the official wiki and who should be able to edit it. This is in response to the whole debate, so I have not kept any other comments.
This wiki is the official wiki. It is how we present ourselves, not just to members, but to prospective members, to regulatory bodies, to Glam institutions who we hope to work with, with a range of other bodies and with the general public. It is the only place where our rules are displayed, where minutes of general and committee meetings are recorded, and a host of other official stuff. We are incorporated. We are a legal entity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We need to apply for fund raising approval to all other States and Territories, except the NT. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. All this has to be reflected in our official pages. We are trying hard to relate in a professional manner with a large range of GLAM institutions across the country. They will look to our official wiki for reliable information about us. They will judge how serious we are by how professional we present ourselves. The issue is not really about vandalism, but the integrity and professionalism of the whole official wiki. Vandalism with certainly destroy that, but so will edits that discuss ideas that are not officially approved, and edits that are inappropriate. If readers find information that they find to be inaccurate or inappropriate, they will conclude that we are not a serious professional body that they can work with, and they may doubt the accuracy of material on what are clearly official pages. This does not mean that we have to restrict editing to the committee, but we have to make sure that integrity and professionalism is preserved and indeed enhanced. It is not just a question of removing vandalism. There are some pages that must never be allowed to be vandalised. Karl has suggested that the committee does not need to be involved in removing vandalism, but this misses the point. Certainly non-committee members can assist with improving and preserving the wiki, but the committee has to be involved. That is what the committee is elected for. The committee is responsible for the integrity and professionalism of our official presentation outside the association. As a wikimedian, of course I am in favour of opening up the wiki as much as we can, but as a member of the committee and as Public Officer responsible for reporting on our work to Consumer Affairs Victoria, I am very conscious of the responsibility to preserve the integrity and professionalism of the official wiki. If we decide to open it up, we must be quite open about what we are doing. We can not just protect some pages, or restrict editing of some pages to certain groups. We must be clear to the readers. I therefore propose that all pages be clearly tagged with a statement of their status. Pages of rules, minutes, etc. should be tagged with something like "This page is an official page of Wikimedia Australia Inc. and is approved by the association. Editing is restricted to members of the committee". Other pages might be tagged with something like "This page is for the development of ideas by members and supports. Editing is open to all. The page does not necessarily reflect the official views of Wikimedia Australia Inc." We might have a whole series of different tags. The idea is that the reader will not be mislead about our official views and will be quite clear where authentic information is to be found. The committee, because it is responsible, must have the total right to tag any page on the wiki with the first tag above and to restrict editing of that page to the committee. There can be no debate about this. The committee is responsible. Of course these tags will be criticised as being ugly, but to me they are essential. I can only support opening up editing on the official wiki, if we do clearly tag all articles to make their status absolutely clear. Cheers, Brian. -- Brian Salter-Duke [email protected] [email protected] Committee member and Public Officer, Wikimedia Australia Inc. Active on English Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, and others. [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
