WikiVolunteers User Group (proposed)

The WikVolunteers User Group is a user group for the volunteer Wikimedia community and those professionals who support this community through GLAMs, the Wikimedia Foundation and other Wikimedia affiliates, whom we consider allies.

Proposed WikiVolunteers User Group logo

Objectives

• Support and encourage the volunteer community on Wikimedia projects including the exchange of ideas across projects.
• Providing a space for volunteers and our allies to collaborate on projects, discuss issues, offer and receive advice and socialize with each other.
• Oppose the encroachment of commercial editing on Wikimedia projects, support the current (or stronger) policies that regulate paid-editing, and encourage the enforcement of these policies.

Activities

• Sharing news, advice, and resources via talk page discussions. We encourage all Wikimedians to start discussions at Talk:WikiVolunteers User Group (proposed) if they would like to:
  • Help organize and promote volunteer-centered activities, programs, and events
    • Communicate the results and lessons learned from volunteer activities on one Wikimedia project to other projects
    • Help organize volunteer activities going on simultaneously in various language editions.
    • Recognizing excellence in volunteer contributions especially in smaller projects which lack such organized recognition
    • Advise on funding applications to further volunteer projects.
  • Organize a listing of current volunteer opportunities available to editors.
  • Advise volunteers on how to best work with the WMF, chapters, and other affiliates.
• A monthly email newsletter or mailing list
• Otherwise communicating within and across Wikimedia projects and with external media about the importance of volunteers to Wikimedia and the need to oppose the encroachments of paid editing.
• When asked by a member and with the consensus of the User Group,
  • Help represent an editor's concerns to the WMF or affiliate in a constructive manner
  • Help represent volunteer views in discussions and planning when individual volunteers don't have the time to follow the often lengthy discussions
  • Note that we cannot represent all Wikimedia volunteers in these efforts, only those who join this user group, and even then only when there is a clear consensus for doing so.
  • Note also that we are not a complaint board to be used against the WMF or our other allies. Discussions about difficulties with our allies must be civil, and recognize that volunteers need the WMF and our allies, and that they need us as volunteers.
• Help stop the abuses by paid editors on any Wikimedia project
  • Gather data on the problems caused by paid editing
  • Discuss how to best alleviate these problems
  • Advise volunteers on all WMF projects on how to work with non-volunteer editors
  • Advise volunteers how to best enforce the Terms of Use and their home project's policies
  • Note that this advice and discussion is not meant to replace or take over the functions of projects such as en:Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest/Noticeboard

Safe space policy

Providing a safe space for volunteers to express their views is one of our key goals. We support civil discourse and the WMF Friendly space policy and will enforce these policies on WVUG pages and in our meetings.

Membership

Volunteer Wikimedians and allies who support our objectives are invited to become members of WVUG.

Editors with newly registered accounts are welcome to join in our discussions, but should wait until they have been registered for at least 6 weeks and made 50 edits before joining the user group as a full member.

Paid editors may join as associate members if:

• they support our objectives
• they declare their paid status here and on other Wikiprojects as required by the Terms of Use. For the convenience of members, paid editors should also declare on their Meta user page every client and employer that they've worked for on any Wikimedia project.

Paid editors are defined for the purposes of WVUG as:

• anyone who has made a commercial paid edit in the last two years
• anyone who owns, manages, or works for a commercial paid editing firm
• anyone who has made an undeclared paid edit since June 2014
• any administrator, arbitrator, steward or other user on any Wikimedia project who has held a position of trust within the project and made a paid edit or been the employer, client, or affilate of a paid editor, while in that position of trust.
• This definition does not include users such as Wikimedians-in-Residence, Wikimedia Foundation or chapter employees editing as part of their employment, or others excluded from the definition of paid editors in the Terms of Use or the Terms of Use FAQs.

Note that this proposed user group submitted its application to the Affiliations Committee for user group status on September 6, 2017. Users who share our objectives may sign up as members now, and propose modifications of the above text on the talk page.

Members

1. Smallbones (talk) 16:24, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
2. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
3. GastelEtzwane (talk) 22:20, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
4. Nattes à chat (talk) 22:41, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
5. Kudpung (talk) 01:06, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
6. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:10, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
7. LaMèreVeille (talk) 06:04, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
8. SarahSV ^talk 20:15, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
9. Johnuniq (talk) 04:51, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
10. DGG (talk) 05:20, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
11. Rentier (talk) 09:14, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
12. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:27, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
13. Coretheapple (talk) 16:57, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
14. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
15. Robert McClenon Robert McClenon (talk) 06:18, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
16. Bri (talk) 00:09, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
17. Happybluemo (talk) 03:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)