Carol, I think you're missing something important here. Aside from the
fact that this would cost about $2 million a year, the structure you are
proposing would only be providing support for English Wikipedia. (That is
a lot more than the budget for the entire global Community Advocacy
department. Just to keep things in perspective.)
Now there are a couple of questions to consider here. The first is: What
problem, exactly, are we trying to solve? Next would be: is this a problem
that is endemic on all projects? (I think we all know the answer is "no".)
So then we move to: Where all is it a problem? Large projects? Small
projects? Old projects? New projects? Wikipedias only? And the corollary:
Where is it *not* a problem? what are the characteristics of those
projects where Problem X is not considered a significant problem? And
finally: Will this actually fix the problem?
I'm not convinced this is the best way to spend about 3% of the total
budget of the entire Wikimedia Foundation, especially when less expensive
solutions, and ones that do not involve the WMF essentially taking over its
biggest, most active community, have not really been tried. Sarah has made
some interesting proposals in another thread that have the chance to
develop some momentum if nurtured carefully. This...well, that's an awful
lot of money.
Risker/Anne
On 22 October 2015 at 19:08, Carol Moore dc <carolmooredc(a)verizon.net>
wrote:
It seems like every time I ask this question I get
vague answers regarding
"legal issues" "liability" "can't determine content"
"community backlash"
etc. Yet under
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use it looks
like there is more than enough room for the Foundation to propose and make
it VERY clear it supports things like:
a) Make Wikimedia mediation training a requirement for applying as admin.
And term limit admins (say, one year off for every two years on). Make an
informal quota of 25% plus women and continuously encourage women to apply.
b) Change structure so 10-20 (as needed) mediators are hired and trained
to be professional. They'll also be given admin powers and will take on
harder cases volunteer admins and other dispute resolution processes can't
handle. (Structured processes for dealing with alleged abuses will be
implemented.) The Foundation will set a firm goal of at least 50% women
hirees.
c) Change structure so 4-6 arbitrators are hired but only used for most
intractable or original issues. (Structured processes for dealing with
alleged abuses will be implemented.) The Foundation will set a firm goal of
at least 50% women hirees.
d) Change structure so editors who step out of line too often will have to
phone verify who they are and register with a verified account. Enforcing
this will be another job for "arbitrators".
e) Foundation advertises new policies far and wide so that editors fed up
with the nonsense will come back in such numbers that losing the 50-100
chronic editor and admin abusers of the system will be no great loss.
(Wales has invited such people to quit, and said more users would come back
if they did, but still doesn't want to make necessary Foundation policy
changes to make this happen.)
Without these changes decent editors will continue to stay away or be
driven away in droves.
In the last week I've read at least 10 articles - biographies and factual
articles on countries and policies - that were severely outdated, with
2012-13 seemingly the last time most were updated. I'd hate to see what
happened if I checked references for various assertions. It's pretty sad...
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