I'd like to confirm that I am one of the community members Liam
considerately declined to name; I agree with Liam's account of what
happened; and I agree with Fae's proposed solution (a detailed, public
report from the WMF, the Belfer Center, and/or the Stanton Foundation). The
report should explicitly address the structural and ethical issues raised
on this list and on Odder's blog post.
I do have a bit more to say about this, but will leave it at that for now.
I'll probably post on my blog in the next 24 hours.
Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Myself and several other community members who are heavily involved in the
development of 'Wikipedian in Residence' and GLAM-WIKI became aware of this
project in early 2012, just before the job description was published. I
will let them speak for themselves if they wish to weigh-in. But the TL;DR
version is "we told them so".
We tried, oh how we tried, to tell the relevant WMF staff that this was a
terribly designed project, but the best we got in response was that we
could help edit the job description *after* it had already been published!
Some WMF staff 'got it' and tried to help but the process (Thank you to
those staff) was apparently already in motion and had too much momentum to
change. We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so
it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role but our suggestions that the
position be 'paused' until the community could help was rejected because of
a deadline that had been set by Stanton/Harvard apparently.
Other concerns about reporting outcomes and where the money came from/to
have already been raised. The odd financial and organisational relationship
of Stanton-Harvard-WMF is just one of them.
The original job description (here
https://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o52lWfw8&c=qSa9VfwQ) is on
the WMF's page and says that "Wikipedia, in cooperation with the Belfer
Center... is seeking applicants for a Campus Wikipedian...." with the
first task of the position being "Researching relevant topics and
improving the articles". Stanton is not mentioned anywhere as the actual
funding organisation (are we ok with that?), and since when does
"Wikipedia" hire people?
Some of the issues that we were arguing about at the time included why,
when the GLAM-focused Wikimedians have tried to ensure that WiR roles are
about facilitating a relationship between the community and an
organisation's academics/researchers/curators/etc, does this position focus
on editing articles directly, for money. Even if that wasn't the actual
primary purpose it certainly LOOKED that way according to the job
description and you'd think that of ALL groups in the community the WMF
would see the 'red flag' of posting a job on its OWN contractors page
asking for a paid editor. Furthermore, the WMF have in the past frequently
refused to directly support WiR roles on the basis that this kind of direct
outreach was not its role but more a role of the Chapters (this is before
the current 'affiliation' system and before the 'Individual engagement
grants' etc. and in that situation their position was fair enough). And
yet, this position was a direct contradiction - the WMF ITSELF advertising
for a WiR and administering the payment of the person. At the very least
that made it feel like a double standard for the rest of us.
There was no transparency with the people in the community that could have
helped facilitate the successful 'birth' of the project - what should have
been a great recognition of our projects' value - but instead felt like a
betrayal of our hard-earned trust with the cultural/education sectors.
The WMF dug themselves into this hole despite the frantic attempts, which
were largely rebuffed, of several of the GLAM-WIKI community help them fix
it - or at least reduce the number of problems. Now, it's up to the WMF to
dig themselves out again. Ironic given the current attention being given by
the WMF to paid editing...
-Liam/Wittylama
On 21 March 2014 09:23, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 20 March 2014 21:51, Anasuya Sengupta
<asengupta(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Just to be clear and follow up on Lisa's
mail: this project and process
did
not involve grants from WMF, and WMF's role
(as Lisa explained) was as a
fiscal sponsor, and thereby to provide initial advice as they began
recruiting and to inform the community as they did so.
I am sure you are technically correct, however the blog post that Lisa
linked to[1] appears to directly contradict your statement. In
particular it informed the community that:
"... the Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce ... We're seeking
an experienced Wikipedia editor for a one year,"
There is no qualification of any sort, so the blog post has been
written so that the WMF is directly claiming to be running or
responsible for the recruitment.
Further, Stephen Walling states in a comment that:
".... when we say we're looking for a Wikipedian, that means we are
looking for someone experienced as a volunteer editor of the free
encyclopedia."
This statement can only be read as the WMF running the recruitment,
there can be no other interpretation of "we" when this is on the WMF
blog and written by a WMF employee.
The post does state that "This position is funded by a generous grant
from the Stanton Foundation This philanthropic institution has
supported ... the Wikimedia Foundation in the past.." However there is
no implication that the Stanton Foundation were doing anything other
than providing a grant to the WMF and that the WMF were responsible
for .
There is no doubt that the WMF provided its name against this post and
officially promoted and endorsed it, putting the reputation of the WMF
firmly against this project. I hope that someone can provide a report
of the beneficial outcomes of this project for Wikimedia and open
knowledge showing exactly what was purchased for this generous grant
that was claimed to be provided to the WMF or for the benefit of WMF
projects.
Links:
1.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/26/can-you-help-wikipedians-collaborate-…
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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