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@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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