Meeting:Board (2025-06-17)
See also the list of all meetings.
Introduction
Meeting details
Date and time: 17 Jun 2025 17:00 AEST/16:30 ACST/15:00 AWST
Meeting start time: 5:09 pm AEST
Meeting end time: 6:40 pm AEST
Meeting objectives
Meeting objectives: To make decisions in relation to and to discuss Budget, Partner Projects, the Craig Franklin Award and WikiCon 2025.
Record of attendance
Attendees: Elliott Bledsoe Peter Neish Emily Mierisch Kassi Hays Shravan Rao
Apologies: none
Absent: Jeremy Ludlow
Moved: Peter Neish; seconded: Emily Mierisch; outcome: passed
Reports
Executive Officer’s report
Please find below a summary of key activities and updates:
Programs and engagements
- The ESEAP Strategic Summit was very successful with six Australians representing WMAU. The post event feedback shows 88% of participants found it extremely relevant and aligned to their needs on issues including: the ESEAP Hub Governance structure and Annual Plan, Public policy and advocacy, the pilot Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC), Community skills mapping and especially cross-country collaborations and projects. We also had productive conversations with WMF including Lorenzo Losa and Maciej Nadzikiewicz from the Board of Trustees, and Jacqueline Chen, Senior Program Officer for ESEAP. Reports available here.
- With the WMF grant providing limited increase in our funding we are reviewing plans for WikiCon 2025, focussing on location and venue selection. Decision needs to be made soon regarding running our own conference or whether to partner with another organisation for increased reach. See Matters for Discussion.
- Planning our AGM for 2025 with a draft timeline now available. See Matters for Discussion.
- Many successful edit-a-thons and workshops over the past month including Gilead Sciences, National Communications Museum (NCM) and Art Gallery of South Australia.
- The Ian Peter archive project is almost complete. The final report will be uploaded to APNIC Fluxx platform by 30 June, and include recommendations for the Phase 2. Huge thanks to Caddie and Cameron for their dedication and fantastic work on this project.
Operations and governance
- Initiating plans and documentation for the Partner Projects 2025–2026.
- Finalised the 10 year Strategic plan, and responded to questions from WMF Regional Grants Committee on our triennial grant application, including a short Zoom call to discuss our long term plans.
- Preparing the Draft Learning Report for Year 3 of our triennial WMF Grant. This needs to be completed and uploaded to Fluxx by 30 July. Will circulate by email when it is closer to completion for feedback and input.
Opportunities
Meetings
Met with a range of organisations, including:
- University of NSW
- SA Museum
- History Trust of SA
- State Library Victoria
- Wikimedia Taiwan (WMTW) and Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM)
Grants
Australian Communities Foundation (ACF) grant: No update at this time.
Communications Report
Social media - May analytics
| Total network size by platform as of May 2025 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | May 2024 | Annual change |
| X (formerly Twitter) | Followers | 4,209 | 4,137 | Up by 49 | 3,733 | Up by 476 |
| Followers | 2,036 | 2,036 | 0 | 1,929 | Up by 107 | |
| Followers | 752 | 740 | Up by 22 | 543 | Up by 209 | |
| Threads | Followers | 167 | 160 | Up by 7 | 0 | Up by 167 |
| Followers | 420 | 406 | Up by 14 | 248 | Up by 172 | |
| Mastodon | Followers | 261 | 254 | Up by 7 | 176 | Up by 85 |
| YouTube | Subscribers | 263 | 251 | Up by 12 | 140 | Up by 123 |
| Cumulative network size | 8,108 | 7,984 | Up by 124 | 6,769 | Up by 1339 | |
Website - Content
3 news stories were published on the website in May 2025
- My Wikipedia page could be better
- Celebrating Volunteers
- Announcing Wikimedia Australia’s 10-Year Strategic Plan (2025–2035)
Website - May analytics
Analytics gathered using Matomo (stats.wikimedia.org.au).
| Total network size by platform as of May 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | May 2024 | Annual change |
| Visits | 2069
[Add “All visits” this month] |
1690
[Add “All visits” last month] |
[Add change in visits since last month] | [Add “All visits” same month last year] | [Add change in visits since last year] |
| New visitors | 1705
[Add new visitors this month] |
[Add new visitors last month] | [Add change in new visitors since last month] | [Add new visitors same month last year] | [Add change in new visitors since last year] |
| Returning visitors | [Add returning visitors this month] | [Add returning visitors last month] | [Add change in returning visitors since last month] | [Add Instagram returning visitors same month last year] | [Add change in returning visitors since last year] |
| Page views | 3311 | 2971 | 340 | - | - |
| Average visit duration | 1 min 27 seconds | 1 min 44 seconds | - | - | |
| Most visited page | 121 visits
From Archives to Wikipedia: Documenting Australian Feminism Through Radical Acts (May) Guest blog post by SLV Wikimedians in Residence Kerrie Burns and Ellie Watts |
158 visits
Wikimedia Australia and Terri Janke and Company to scope a First Nations Protocol (April) |
|||
Email - May analytics - Announce newsletter
| Total subscribers and unsubscribes to the Announce monthly newsletter in May 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | May 2024 | Annual change |
| Open rate | [Add total opens this month] | [Add total opens last month] | [Add change in total opens since last month] | [Add total opens same month last year] | [Add change in total opens since last year] |
| Subscribers | 509 | 507 | +2 | 480
[Add subscribers same month last year] |
[Add change in subscribers since last year] |
| Unsubscribes | 0 | 0 | 0 | [Add unsubscribes same month last year] | [Add change in unsubscribes since last year] |
Ticketing
| Total followers of Humanitix account in May 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | May 2024 | Annual change |
| Followers | 77 | 77 | No change | 52 Eventbrite
0 Humanitix [Add Eventbrite & Humanitix followers same month last year] |
[Add change in followers since last year] |
President’s report
Please read this report in addition to joint activities with the EO as outlined above.
Agenda template
We continue to refine the new agenda template for the Board meetings. We can add a discussion of the template to Matters for discussion if anyone has any feedback on the template.
Triennial Grant outcome
Funding outcomes for Round 2 General Support Fund were released on Friday 23 May 2025. We thank the members of the WMF Regional Grants Committee for ESEAP for their time and effort to assess the grants, and their consideration of our ambitious grant plan for 2025-2028. We recognise and respect that the Committee does this in a volunteer capacity.
We knew the ask we were making was big, but we were surprised and disheartened by the offer. In real terms, the offer was only a nominal increase in our current funding levels. While the offered amount is approximately AUD$80,000 increase on our current 2024–25 allocation, in real terms it is just over AUD$70,00 once CPI and increased costs of doing business are factored in.
If we accept the offer as made we will be unable to activate any of the new initiatives that were outlined in our application. Additionally, we were concerned about the ability to deliver the ICIP & IDSov Protocol project given the offer includes less than one quarter of the quoted amount by TJC.
We expressed our concerns to Jacqueline Chen, Senior Program Officer for ESEAP, in an in-person meeting while we were all in Manila for the ESEAP Strategy Summit. Based on that meeting, we prepared and submitted an updated budget. We are awaiting further information.
ESEAP Strategy Summit
It was great to attend the ESEAP Strategy Summit – and to be joined by such a significant Australian cohort.
I had the pleasure of participating in a session on regulatory trends for advocacy in the ESEAP region. I provided an overview of recent government policy and regulation in Australia. In particular, I discussed significant policy areas relevant to Wikimedia Australia and the Wikimedia movement. I focused specifically on the social media minimum age, including the potential that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms could fall within the scope of the definition of an age-restricted social media platform. I also mentioned other highly active policy and regulatory areas in Australia, including:
- digital duty of care
- other online safety matters
- Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) and the stand-alone legislation to protect ICIP
- copyright, including areas of reform identified by the Attorney-General’s Department and the Ministerial Roundtable on Copyright
- artificial intelligence (AI), including the proposed mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings
- Towards a Recommendation of Open Cultural Heritage (TAROCH)
Attendance was particularly important for strategic planning, networking and fostering stronger regional collaboration within the Wikimedia movement.
Policy and regulatory matters
Social media minimum age
Belinda has drafted a letter to be sent to Communications Minister Anika Wells. We will finalise it in the next few weeks and send it to Wells’ office.
We have not been informed if we were successful in being invited to take part in the roundtables run by the eSafety Commissioner’s consultation on the implementation of social media age restrictions.
Wikimedia Foundation’s case in response to the UK Online Safety Act
The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging a recent amendment to the UK Online Safety Act (OSA) primarily because of the Categorisation Regulations. The Foundation’s concern is that these regulations are drafted so broadly that they could classify Wikipedia as a ‘Category 1 service,’ which is intended for platforms posing the highest risk to the public. This category was designed to hold large commercial social media platforms accountable for harmful content yet the definition as drafted could see the Wikimedia-run platforms fall within Category 1, Wikimedia Foundation argues.
Belinda and I have requested a briefing on the matter from the Wikimedia Foundation. We will continue to monitor it.
For further information see the following posts on Diff and the Wikimedia Foundation Policy Medium blog:
- Wikimedia Foundation brings legal challenge to new UK Online Safety Act requirements
- Wikipedia’s Nonprofit Host Brings Legal Challenge to New Online Safety Act (OSA) Regulations
Children's Online Privacy Code Issues paper released
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has released OAIC Childrenʼs Online Privacy Code Issues paper and is seeking comment from industry, civil society, academia and any other interested parties in response to the paper. Belinda and I will review the Issues paper but it is very likely we will recommend that WMAU make a submission. Submissions are due by Thursday 31 July 2025.
Ian Peter archive
I would like to second Belinda’s vote of thanks to Caddie and Cameron for their dedicated work on the Ian Peter archive project.
Secretary’s report
Membership
One new membership application in May.
May membership statistics
| Total members of WMAU in April 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | May 2024 | Annual change |
| Financial members | 84 | 84 | No change | [Add new financial members same month last year] | [Add change in new financial members since last year] |
| Lapsed memberships | 0 [Add number of lapsed memberships this month] | 3 [Add number of lapsed memberships last month] | 0 [Add change in lapsed memberships since last month] | [Add lapsed memberships same month last year] | [Add change in lapsed memberships members since last year] |
| Member applications | 1 [Add number of new membership applications this month] | 1 [Add number of new membership applications last month] | 0 [Add change in new membership applications since last month] | [Add new membership applications same month last year] | [Add change in new membership applications since last year] |
Membership renewal invoices
Approx 18 invoices remain outstanding for annual membership renewals. Belinda has been checking with members to ensure they are fully paid and financial before the AGM in September.
Treasurer’s report
Financial statements
Financial statements tabled:
- Profit and Loss Statement May 2025
- Balance sheet May 2025
Grant expenditure
A high level summary this year’s Grant expenditure as at 12 June 2025:
| Budget vs actual grant expenditure for WMAU as at Thursday 12 June 2025 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy/category | Allocated ($) | Expended ($) | Remaining budget ($) |
| Strategy 1: Engagement | 56,000 | 61,895 | -5895 |
| Strategy 2: Equity & Inclusion | 24,800 | 24,295 | 505 |
| Strategy 3: Capacity Building | 31,000 | 34,863 | -3863 |
| Staff & Administration | 291,680 | 266,937 | 24,743 |
| Total | 403,480 | 387,990 | 15,490 |
* Refund received AUD$3468 on Elliott’s travel to Europe for TAROCH and Wikimedia meetings.
Moved: Emily Mierisch; seconded: Kassi Hays; outcome: passed
Matters for discussion
AGM 2025 planning
Belinda has drafted the 2025 AGM Planning document which outlines timeline, key stages and documentation. We need to review which Board members are staying on and who is either required to or chooses to step down.
Belinda can also work with Shravan on preparing the Secretary’s emails advising members of the AGM and requesting new Board members. Note that some announcements on “Saving the AGM Date” have been included in our regular newsletters, but formal notifications to members are still required.
Are there any major changes, proposals or information we need to share with our membership at the AGM? For example, the update of the Rules of Association. What else requires input, consultation and a vote from our membership?
2025/26 Partner Projects
We can offer 3 grants of AUD$10,000 each, or less if smaller amounts are applied for. We will need Board members and Community members in the subcommittee to evaluate applications. Consider Conflict of Interest if the organisation you work for (or have close connections with) is going to apply.
Craig Franklin Award and other recognition for our community
As raised at last month’s Board meeting we are now calling for a subcommittee to look at the Craig Franklin Award and consider other forms of community recognition and acknowledgement. Seeking two Board members to join a Community representative on a Sub-Committee to select Craig Franklin awardee, consider other awards/scholarships and selection process of the recipients.
WikiCon 2025/26
In response to our triennial grant funding from WMF we may not be able to offer a significantly expanded WikiCon event with international speakers over a number of days, as originally planned. WikiCon 2024 was achieved on a budget of just under AUD$20,000. We now have AUD$30,000 for WikiCon. Considering the increase in costs for travel, accommodation, and insurance for scholarships much of this will be used. We will only be able to stretch to two days if we can obtain a venue at little or no cost. As discussed at the last Board meeting we could consider whether to partner with an existing conference (eg, FACT 2026 or AMaGA) to maximise value and increase reach, or continue to have our own WikiCon but keep it relatively small scale, bearing in mind costs. We also need to consider the next WMAU Strategic Planning day, as an aside to WikiCon.
August Board meeting
Elliott is going on annual leave 25 July - 25 August and we will need an Acting President (usually Vice President) during this time. They would Chair the 19 August Board meeting, unless we postpone it to a later date when Elliott has returned.
Moved: Peter Neish; seconded: Kassi Hays; outcome: passed
Drafting of Year 3 Grant Learning Report for WMF
As mentioned in the EO matters for noting, Belinda has commenced the Draft Learning Report to summarise our achievements, outcomes and lessons learnt during Year 3 of our WMF Grant. If you have any suggestions for significant items that should be included please advise. The Learning report is to be completed and uploaded to Fluxx by 30 July 2025. Will circulate by email when it has more content and needs input and feedback.
Policy and procedure
Policies due for review:
- HR Policy (scheduled for annual review, last reviewed April-May 2024)
- Finance Policy (scheduled for biannual review, last reviewed March 2023)
- Communication Strategy (scheduled for biannual review, last reviewed January 2025)