So, the audit was released a little while ago (if you missed it, the important thing is at <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf>). I'm a little surprised at the general silence here - did I just miss the threads or something?
Anyway, I read through it carefully and found it of great interest. A number of points stuck out at me in particular:
# Isn't it interesting how much Google stock was donated? On top of what I hear were previous donations? Some of the Googlers must like us.
# Wow, that's quite a bit to spend on salaries. And I think the amount is only going to go way up, what with Erik Moeller abruptly going from non-paid to paid status, and all the other hires. It strikes me as odd to see employee expenses rising past equipment and hosting costs, but I suppose that just marks me as being a product of the old days where the mission of the Foundation was seen as keeping the servers running (and not whatever else the Foundation does these days).
# WOW, that's a lot to be spending on travel! I do hope I am not the only one who thinks that spending $264,361 (as compared with $140,605 in the previous year) is excessive. Firstly, I am concerned by the almost doubling in travel expenditure: I don't see any particular reason for that. Yes, I am sure Jimbo and others did an awful lot of traveling to promote Wikia and its search engine - but that obviously wouldn't be on the Foundation's dime. Yes, no doubt expenses increased with the decline of the dollar, increase in jetfuel costs and so on - but I can't see that. I have to question what good all this traveling does the community. It's eating up an impressive amount of resources (a substantial fraction of what we spend on important stuff like keeping the servers running), and strikes me as 'fat'. If people really want WMF people to give a lecture or something, what's wrong with having them pay the fare? If WMF people need to meet, what's wrong with videoconferencing? Why should donations from strapped college students and so on be going to this.
:#It may just be my overreaction, but the next time I hear the WMF is hurting for funds, I am probably not going to donate; it clearly has money to spare.
# Heh, talk about understatement:
"A substantial number of volunteers make significant
contributions of their time in the furtherance of the
Organization's projects. The value of this contributed time is
not reflected in the accompanying financial statements, since
it is not susceptible to objective measurement. Certain
contributed services requiring specialized skills are recorded
as support and expenses at fair value when determinable, or
otherwise at values indicated by the donor."
# I must be misunderstanding something, but does this really mean what it seems to me on the face of it:
"Note C - Contingencies
In the normal course of business, the Organization receives
various threats of litigation on a regular basis. In the
opinion of management, the outcome of the pending
lawsuits will not materially affect present operations or the
financial stability of the Organization."
That the reason current lawsuits don't matter is because there is nothing put aside for them? Seems kind of reckless.
# As usual, relationships with Wikia are concerningly close and ambiguous:
"The Organization shares hosting and bandwidth costs with
Wikia, Inc., a for-profit company founded by the same
founder as Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Included in accounts
receivable at June 30, 2007 is $6,000 due from Wikia, Inc.
for these costs. The Organization received some donated
office space from Wikia Inc. during the year ended June 30,
2006 valued at $6,000. No donation of the office space
occurred in 2007.
Through June 30, 2007, two members of the Organization's
board of directors also serve as employees, officers, or
directors of Wikia, Inc."
They share staff, WP favors Wikia in well-known ways, and so on - and people are surprised when the public perception is that WP is the non-profit branch of Wikia, or vice versa? I'm also troubled by the sharing of costs bit - why is Wikia using WMF resources (presumably why they are paying WMF) and isn't it awfully convenient how the two amounts cancel out? Small potatoes, but still.
----
Yeah, so those were my thoughts on the audit. Anyone else?
--
gwern
primers shell mania LHR anarchy JANET ssa RFI Internet Z-200
In a message dated 2/15/2008 10:40:08 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
taken to extremes when they
expect proof for "facts" that are a part of common knowledge. This is
not to say that all common knowledge should go by unchallenged, but real
challenges should be based on genuine doubt rather than a mere absence
of documentation.>>
---------------------------------
This is already handled in-policy. We have had long discussions about
exactly what sort of trivial deductions, observations, etc. we *can* make without
a source. Our NOR policy page does state that. If it's not clear then
perhaps it could be clarified further.
I often cite the fictitious photograph with a caption "This is a cat" in my
discussion of OR. We don't need a source to say "The sun is hot and you
can't walk on it." it's a trivial observation and deduction.
If you're being plagued with people needing sources for "John Lennon was a
man" then you could bring the specific concern to the Talk page of the NOR
policy page.
Will Johnson
**************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy
Awards. Go to AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565)
A while ago, I started experimenting with the idea of an interactive tour:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Eloquence/Tour_01&oldid=1915…
Not so much a tutorial how to edit Wikipedia, but what's in there (a
broad selection of content), how to use categories/portals, how the
community collaborates, what Wikipedia _is_, etc.
This kind of thing would be really useful for the orientation of new
staff, as a resource for autonomous exploration. But I think it would
be generally a cool thing for Wikipedia (and other projects) to
showcase what they are at their best.
Is there any volunteer interest in building such a thing?
I know - web site tours often suck and are kind of a thing of the 90s
- but I think this could be different: it would be more of a living
slideshow with captions.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
G'day folks,
Deutsche Welle reports that Germany's Brockhaus encyclopedia will go online
and be supported by advertising.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3125497,00.html
The German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus said it would place its
reference works on the Internet to offset falling revenues. Unlike popular
reference work Wikipedia, it will be ad-sponsored and professionally edited.
It's the paper death of a classic. The German publisher Brockhaus has been
printing its encyclopedias for nearly 200 years, and anyone who's had the
money has boasted a collection of the handsome works on their bookshelves
for all the world to admire.
But the Internet has been a thorn in Brockhaus' side years now, forcing the
company to reevaluate its strategy. The German version of the democratic
digital reference work Wikipedia has been seen as cutting into Brockhaus'
profits.
"Though official figures are not yet out for 2007, we can expect losses of
around several million euros," a Brockhaus spokesperson said earlier this
week.
(more in link)
Regards
*Keith Old*
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:05:57 -0800, "George Herbert" <george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Forcibly outing people who fall into disfavor with our critics,
> however, seems like a short road to destroying the project. A large
> number of editors and admins I otherwise respect have happily run to
> do Bagley's bidding on this one, and that's highly disturbing. If
> we're going to enforce all the policies equally, then a number of
> people have met the policy definition of "acting as proxy of banned
> user" in this, in addition to attempts to reveal the real-life
> identity of a Wikipedia user in public.
A totally ridiculous policy, amounting to "thought crime"; the theory seems to be that once a
user is banned, all ideas he espouses, true or not, are banned with him, and become a "third
rail" that no other users had better touch. Better not say that 2 + 2 = 4 if a banned user has
said that first! The policy makes no sense under the best of circumstances, and can be
horribly abused in the worse circumstances that actually prevail, where powerful admins and
their friends can win arguments by getting their enemies banned and then use "acting as a
proxy for banned user XXXXX" as an all-purpose trump card to play in future arguments.
--
Dan
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Twenty-six editors have agreed with pretty compelling evidence that
Samiharris is a sock of Mantanmoreland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Mantanmoreland#…
Meanwhile, it appears that several prominent users have suspected the
real-world identity of Mantanmoreland since September. We've banned accounts
for suggesting it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Stop_s…
I've expressed by disappointment elsewhere.
http://www.wikback.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2762#Post2…
I hope not to say anything intemperate, but I'm seething and tired at the
moment.
My only hope is that something good comes of this. Perhaps we should
seriously rethink the concept of pseudonymous editing. At minimum it might
be wise if all admins could view IP addresses themselves--this whole
allowing-open-proxies-until-we-discover-them policy is an invitation to
abuse.
Cool Hand Luke
WP:LEAD seems to be giving me some cause for concern.
The guideline is not completely horrible by any means, but it doesn't
seem to be improving.
My concerns are:
- the article is completely unreferenced
- there's a lot of simple reverts going on to apparently well meaning
edits on grounds of 'lack of consensus'
- the people reverting are defining consensus
- taking it to the talk page doesn't seem to help much
- they are trying to define the guideline independently from usage
both elsewhere as well as within the wikipedia (I would have thought
that guidelines for writing encyclopedia article introduction/leads
would exist elsewhere, today a reference to one was added, but it
lasted only a few hours and then was removed for 'lack of consensus')
- given the lack of references, the editors involved seem to be
defining the relative importance of things without reference to
anything at all (not even the core values of the wikipedia as far as I
can see)
I don't know, perhaps I'm making mountains out of molehills, as I say,
it's not a completely horrible article, and if you read it quickly it
sounds very reasonable, but less so when you read it very carefully,
it's more the activity surrounding it.
--
-Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
imperfect world things would be a lot better.