Meeting:Board (2026-02-17)
See also the list of all meetings.
Meeting Details
Date and time: 17 Feb 2026 AEDT/18:00 AEST/17:00 ACDT/17:30 AWST/15:00
Meeting channel: Zoom
Meeting start time 06:06 pm AEDT
Meeting end time 07:49 pm AEDT
Meeting objectives
Meeting objectives:
Record of attendance
Attendees: Elliott, Kerry, Jeremy, Kassi, Peter
Apologies: Emily
Moved: Kerry Raymond; seconded: Kassi; outcome: Passed
Reports
Executive Officer’s report
Please find below a summary of key activities and updates from the past month:
Programs and engagements
- Partner Projects 2025–2026 Alice will be heading to Newcastle/Hunter region in early March working with AMaGA. Dean Foley/Baymaral is adapting and developing the “Introduction to Wikipedia” online course to assist with training and mentoring of Indigenous editors. Awaiting update from Pengo.
- WikiScience competition, our collaboration with WANZ, has concluded and was a great success. 161 images entered from 28 people, including new and experienced contributors. Cash prizes (AU$150 each) are being sent to the four Australian winners, and WANZ will send to their two NZ winners. The winners are now progressing through to the international Wiki Science competition for the final round.
- WikiCon Canberra 2026 the program is nearly finalised with just a few sessions to be confirmed. Please use this link to register and share widely with your networks. If you are arriving on Friday 10 April there are some pre-conference events including a short tour of the NLA around lunchtime, and Terri Janke GLAM & Wiki communities information session at AIATSIS later that afternoon. Reminder that Monday 13 April will be our Strategic Planning Day for Board and staff. Advise Belinda your travel dates ASAP so flights can be booked.
- Following on from last month’s Board meeting, WANZ Aotearoa New Zealand have formally invited Elliott, Belinda and Ali to attend their WikiCon 2026 in Wellington in early May. WANZ will fund or contribute to the travel costs of one person. Belinda has been advised that six Australians have received scholarships to attend the ESEAP Community Conference 2026 in May, The ESEAP conference is now fully booked with no Australians on the waitlist, so WMAU does not need to fund any places. This leaves us with a good amount in our ESEAP budget line. Suggest that this could be used to fund Belinda and Ali to attend the WikiCon in Wellington, as it is in the ESEAP region. Then any remaining funds are directed to our WikiCon Canberra.
- Our contact at Melbourne Convention Bureau advised that she is leaving, and has introduced us to her replacement. We will have a call with them next week to update on Wikimania, and the seeking of hosts for 2028 and beyond. Additionally Belinda and Elliott have a call lined up with Lisa McCabe, Senior Manager, Movement Communication (WMF) to discuss the possibility of an Australian application.
- Belinda and Elliott attended the FACT Symposium in Melbourne at ACMI. Significant connections made with GLAM staff (QAGOMA, Sydney Theatre Company, Victorian Indigenous Research Centre, ALIA, ACMI, etc). Belinda ran a Wiki Workshop on Friday 13 Feb at SLV with support from Pru, Alex and Kerrie, followed by a Melbourne Meetup.
- Meeting with Terri Janke and team on Tuesday 17 February for an update on progress, and to plan WikiCon session requirements.
- APNIC / Ian Peter archive: No update
Operations and governance
- The Australian editor who received threats is in contact with WMF Legal team, as well as Trust & Safety. They declined the offer of support from WMAU, but Belinda has advised that we are here if that situation changes.
- Reminder - Please leave a birthday message on our Australian virtual birthday card.
Opportunities and Meetings
Met with:
- Julie Baird (Director of Museum Archive Libraries & Learning City of Newcastle, President Australian Museums and Galleries Association) and David Hampton (Head of Exhibitions & Cultural Collections)
- eSafety Commission (Minutes) Kelly Tallon, Ahram Choi, Zia Khan and Catherine Rewha
- Belinda presented at Friends of Parks & Nature (SA) Board meeting (~150 organisations collaborative with 5000 members)
- Dean Foloey (Barayamal)
- Bisi Alimi - Executive Officer Wikimedia LGBT
- Program Subcommittee for WIkiCon Canberra
- Judging panel (WMAU & WANZ collab) for Wiki Science Competition - Gnangarra, Geoff, Sophie, Tom
- Tea Tree Gully LIbrary
- Paul Duchesne NFSA
- Dianne WM Aotearoa New Zealand
- Regular ESEAP and ECC calls and meetings
- Grants
- The Australian Cultural Fund facilitated the payment from the Australian Communities Foundation.
Communications
Social media January analytics
| Total network size by platform as of January 2026 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | January 2026 | Annual change |
| X (formerly Twitter) | Followers | 4367 | 4365 | +5 | 4063 | +304 |
| Followers | 2254 | 2208 | +8 | 2019 | +235 | |
| Followers | 838 | 827 | +4 | 675 | +163 | |
| Threads | Followers | 181 | 179 | +2 | 151 | +30 |
| Followers | 504 | 501 | +4 | 387 | +117 | |
| Mastodon | Followers | 296 | 290 | +6 | 234 | +62 |
| YouTube | Subscribers | 309 | 301 | +8 | 219 | +90 |
| Cumulative network size | 8749 | 8,671 | +78 | 7748 | +1001 | |
Website January analytics
5 news stories were published on the website in January 2026
- Announcing the Winners of the Wiki Science Competition 2025 for Australia and New Zealand
- 12 must-see Australian Big Things
- Wikipedia Turns 25
- 2025 A year in review
- Public Domain Day 2026
| Total network size by platform as of January 2026 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | January 2025 | Annual change |
| Visits | 3834 | 6210 | -38.3% | 1937 | +97.9% |
| New visitors | 3447 | 5717 | -39.7% | 1561 | +120.8% |
| Returning visitors | 387 | 493 | -21.5% | 376 | +16.8% |
| Page views | 4989 | 8410 | -40.7% | 2999 | +66.4% |
| Average visit duration | 34s (new visitors)
2 min 26s (returning) |
44 seconds | +2.3% | 1 min | -25% |
| Most visited page | 413
(WMAU help/info page) |
507 | 258
(WMAU help/info page) |
||
Email analytics - Announce newsletter
| Total subscribers and unsubscribes to the Announce monthly newsletter in January 2026 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | January 2025 | Annual change |
| Subscribers | 529 | 527 | +2 | 503 | +26 |
Ticketing
| Total followers of Humanitix account in January 2026 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | January 2025 | Annual change |
| Followers | 105 | 89 | +16 | 77 | +28 |
President’s report
Future of Arts, Culture and Technology (FACT) Symposium
- Belinda and I attended the Future of Arts, Culture and Technology (FACT) Symposium at ACMI again this year, Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 February. The event attracted approximately 400 participants from the GLAM and arts and culture industries.
- Belinda and I had a number of highly productive conversations with representatives of organisations including QAGOMA and South East Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Fever. It was also an important opportunity to reconnect with colleagues from State Library Victoria, ACMI, ALIA, Swinburne University and others.
- As part of FACT I was accepted to participate in an invite only one day forum on Creative Industries and AI hosted by Creative Victoria on Friday 13 February.
Supporting the Open Heritage Statement
- I have been invited by Creative Commons to speak at an event centering on the Open Heritage Statement taking place on Wednesday 29 April 2026 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Creative Commons will cover my travel and accommodation.
- Belinda and I also facilitated an introduction between Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy and Open Culture at Creative Commons and staff at the Australian National Commission for UNESCO and the Office for the Arts.
- Belinda and I will also be meeting with a representative of the Office for the Arts to brief them on the Open Heritage Statement when we are in Canberra for WikiCon.
Regulatory updates
- As Belinda mentioned, we met with representatives of the Office of the eSafety Commissioner about the social media minimum age and about other regulatory schemes under the Online Safety Act. We provided feedback to the agency about the process leading up to the launch of the scheme and inquired about how organisations are listed on the services eSafety considered were not age-restricted social media platforms. Staff from eSafety also discussed other regulatory schemes in their purview that we should be aware of and will provide further information.
- The Copyright Amendment Bill 2026 which proposes to introduce a scheme for orphan works is progressing through Parliament.
Other
- Elliott received an invite from ALIA to speak about orphan works at their national conference in May 2026.
Secretary’s report
Membership
The four membership applications for which we required additional information (see January Board minutes) have not replied or come back at all. Will wait another month but will then ignore these.
Three applications from early January 2026 were approved at the January Board meeting.
No further applications received.
January membership statistics
| Total members of WMAU in January 2026 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric | This month | Last month | Monthly change | Sept 2024 | Annual change |
| Financial members | 99 | 94 | 5 | Not available | Not available |
| Lapsed memberships | 0 | 0 | 0 | Not available | Not available |
| Member applications | 3 | 6 | 3 | Not available | Not available |
NOTE: Some new applicants yet to pay their membership invoice
Treasurer’s report
Financial statements
Financial statements tabled:
- Profit and Loss Statement January 2026
- Balance Sheet January 2026
As mentioned at last Board meeting we have received the $5000 grant through the Australian Cultural Fund which shows in January’s P&L.
Donations are still strong, with some increases coming through Intelligent Foundation in partnership with Goodstack, an employee planned giving platform based in the UK, that facilitates donations from employees at companies such as Atlassian and Canva.
Out-of-session decisions
Documenting out-of-session decisions (sometimes called flying minutes).
3 February 2026 MOTION BY EMAIL: Approval for Travel funding applications for WikiCon Canberra 2026
Staff have completed the first (and ultimately straightforward) review of the Travel Funding applications for WikiCon Canberra 2026.
We received 12 valid applications (13 submissions, with one duplicate). Two were from overseas applicants who are not active in the Australian editing community (Uzbekistan and Morocco), and we recommend politely declining those.This left 10 eligible applications, all of which we can comfortably support.
Summary
We recommend funding 10 community members for travel, accommodation and some incidentals.
- Participants are based across WA, SA, VIC, NSW and QLD.
- After allocating this funding, $1,150 will remain in the travel budget, providing flexibility for airfare changes or unforeseen costs.
- If any funded applicant is unable to attend, we can either:
- reallocate funding to other community members to attend WikiCon, or
- redirect funds to other WikiCon costs (e.g. printing, promotions, Saturday night Wiki birthday celebration), or
- return funds to broader community/volunteer support general budget.
Applications were assessed using a simple points-based system (see spreadsheet). The remaining applicants scored between 3–5 points (ascending order).
Belinda will also forward the list to WMF Trust & Safety to confirm there are no blocked or banned users; none are anticipated, as these are trusted, regular community members.
Motion
Matters for discussion
WikiCon Wellington 2026 invitation
As mentioned in the EO report, WANZ have formally invited Elliott, Belinda and Ali to attend their WikiCon Wellington from 2-3 May, and meet their Board and staff in a collaborative meeting. The WANZ Board and community are particularly interested in the process that WMAU went through (such as commissioning reports, information from key people, talking with our community and members, etc) to reach the point of engaging Terri Janke and Company. Additionally, staff could meet and plan for future joint projects, growing on the success of our #1lib1ref, Wiki Science competition and various other small scale pilots. Dianne has indicated that they could provide funding for one of us. As outlined in the EO report, we do have ample funding to support this visit, from the unspent ESEAP budget line.
Offer an Expression of Interest for our community to apply for travel funding to WANZ WikiCon Wellington conference. WMAU will fund one participant each year to attend WANZ WikiCon. Also include call out for ideas for Pasifika engagement.
Moved: Jeremy; seconded: Mylee; outcome:
Strategic planning day invitation
Jacqueline Chen, Senior Program Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation and our key contact for WMF grant reporting (ESEAP and South Asia), has registered to attend WikiCon Canberra and has confirmed she’ll be there in person. WMF will fund her travel, etc.
While Elliott and I have met her personally a few times, it is a great opportunity for our Board and staff to meet Jacqueline, and for her to connect with our Australian community. She’ll also be able to meet and hear directly from Terri Janke about the ICIP and IDSov Protocol project.
Elliott and I have discussed whether to invite Jacqueline to join our Strategic Planning Day on Monday 13 April, either for the full day or part of the day.
We’ll provide some talking points and questions to be provided to Jacqueline prior to WikiCon Canberra.
Advice from WMF Legal
Belinda received an email update from Chuck Roslof, Principal Legal Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation regarding our questions on changing to a Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) structure and impact on our WMF grant. Information in this email from Chuck indicates that there are no immediate concerns from WMF as long as we remain a Not-for-profit organisation, but to keep the WMF Legal team apprised of progress in this area. Chuck also suggested advising Jacquline Chen of our intentions, and that if we determine we need additional funding to cover costs then she is our first point of contact.
Technology solutions for WikiCon Canberra
Ali and staff to review technology that would better support hybrid engagement with WikiCon and the Strategic Planning Day. Provide a list of recommendations, such as OWL Labs.
Wikimania
Melbourne Convention Bureau will provide a short submission outline details for a future Wikimania bid. This will be circulated to Board and community members for discussion. Jeremy will also provide information on a possible Perth venue, and will join the call with Lisa McCabe, Elliott and Belinda next week.
Policy and procedures
Belinda and staff are still working on updating Policies.