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.org
Year: 2012 Week: 53 Number: 133
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An independent internal news bulletin
for the members of the Wikimedia community
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
=== Technical news ===
[Wikidata] - the new sister-project Wikidata is growing fast. By year's
end the will get up to 2 million records. In the works is now the
interwiki language information, later on infoboxes and lists will follow.
At present the data of Wikidata is not yet used on any of the projects.
The plans are to switch over the Hungarian language Wikipedia over to
Wikidata for the use of there interwiki language links on January 14th
2013.
What will that actually mean in practice? - When this function is enabled
on a wiki the interwiki language links will be augmented with sitelinks
injected in the Wikipedia article. It is unclear what happen in the
future for sitelinks in non-wikipedia articles. At least if there are
sitelinks available at Wikidata about that topic. The current local
language links must be removed otherwise they will override the Wikidata
sitelinks. You will be able to edit these sitelinks on the local wiki with
JavaScript. Changes made on the Wikidata sitelinks that effect a local
Wikipedia will propagate to them, and also show up in the recent changes
of that wiki. If for some reason a local wiki does not want that the
injected interwiki language links show up on a specific page the parser
function {{noexternallanglinks}} can be used. When this function is active
the net result is that the interwiki links will show up as usual if set,
but the maintenance of sitelinks in the Wikipedia-projects will go away.
http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction -- overview of Wikidata
[Visual Editor (Alpha!)] The wikisoftware that the projects are using
MediaWiki has come far from the basic wiki it started with. But when you
click on the "edit" button is still looks very the same, at least on not
to complicated pages. Since very long there is talk about getting on the
Wiki a so called WYSIWYG editor, like MS Word. Maybe not a function for
everybody but it could get the less technical minded people on the wiki.
At he English language Wikipedia and only there an early version of a
Visual Editor that does that can be switched on in the users preferences.
If you go to your "Preferences" screen and click into the Editing"
section, it will have an option labeled "Enable Visual Editor". Please be
careful, it is still buggy and you are not allowed to use it on the
sandbox page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor
[Mobile WP] the version of the website for use on phones is getting more
functionality. As a logged in user you can edit pages if you enable the
"beta" options. And if you enable the "Here be dragons mode" you can
upload an image if you use a "webkit browser" like Google Chrome.
http://en.m.wikipedia.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit
[Translate] Translation of MediaWiki and documentation, policies,
newsletters and any sort of page on our multilingual wikis is powered and
made easy for thousands of translators by the Translate extension, born on
translatewiki.net. A translation memory feature was recently enabled on
all Wikimedia wikis after a long work. The translation interface is now
being rebuilt to meet translators' needs: test it and give feedback!
http://laxstrom.name/blag/2012/09/07/translation-memory-all-wikimedia-wikis/https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Translation_UXhttp://translatewiki.net
=== Offer ===
[Wikizine.org] this domain name is available to be used for a new
project. If you have an idea for what this domain name can be useful for
contact [[user:Walter]]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Walter
=== Proposals ===
[Wikimania 2013] The already 9th Wikimania will be in Hong Kong next
year. It will be from 7 to 11 August 2013. The call for participation is
open now! So, if you an idea for doing some sort of presentation at
Wikimania then it is now the time to enter you proposal.
http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions
=== Policy ===
[Uploads] It is proposed to start a new RfC to approve a new Local uploads
policy. Local uploads need a big policy and template infrastructure; most
wikis don't and can't have it, and at least a hundred wikis are currently
breaking the WMF licensing policy. Additionally, only Commons has the
UploadWizard. It's proposed to make uploads more effective and legal by
switching them to Commons-only by default, so that only the wikis which
have an EDP will keep or get local uploads.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Local_uploads_policy
=== Foundation ===
[WikiVoyage] "the free, worldwide travel guide that anyone can edit."
will be joining the Wikimedia Foundation family officially on Wikipedia
Day, January 15th 2013. The have there origin at Wikitravel.org, also a
project with the same mission. The German language Wikitravel split off in
2006 and became Wikivoyage. The Wikimedia Foundation Wikivoyage will be
the "fork" Wikivoyage in German and Italian and the content and most of
the userbase of Wikitravel's remaining language editions. This results in
the following languages that are supported in the new WMF-project;
English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian and Swedish. The
interwiki link to link to Wikivoyage is "voy:". Example; the link for the
page about "Bolivia" on the Dutch language Wikivoyage is
[[voy:nl:Bolivia]]
http://www.wikivoyage.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage
[WMF annual audit 2011-2012] The annual audit of the Wikimedia
Foundation, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 and the corresponding
FAQ have been posted on the financial reports page of the Wikimedia
Foundation web site. The report shows that from a financial POV it goes
very well with the WMF. Cash increased from $12 million to $21.8 million.
Investment in technology has gone up by $2.6 million and net assets
increased by $10.7 million. Expenses for the fiscal year increased from
$17.9 million to $29.3 million. The total assets of the WMF are now over
$ 37 million.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports
[Chapters comm. vacancy] The "Affiliations Committee" formerly known
as Chapters Committee is searching for 6 new members. Deadline for
candidacies is January 12th. Inform yourself very well in advance; there
is actual work involved with it.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committeehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Call_for_Candidates_2…
[Fundraiser] The last fundraiser already the 9th was once again a
great success. The Wikimedia Foundation received 25 million US-dollar in
donations from 1,2 million individuals. 25 million dollar is exactly the
goal the WMF did set at the start of the campaign. This campaign did only
run on the flagship wiki, the English language Wikipedia. The other
languages and projects will get a fund drive presented on there wiki in
April 2013.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/12/27/wikimedia-foundation-raises-25-million…
[WMF annual plan 2012-2013] is published. It is fairly extensive and
summarizing it in 3 sentences does not does it justice. Anyhow; focus will
be in getting more people to edit and to keep the current editors. This by
making it more easy for potential editors to do it, like the VisalEditor.
The WMF also will continue to push to get access to Wikpedia by means of
mobile data networks in developing country's free of charge. That is the
"Wikipedia Zero" program.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reportshttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero
=== Community ===
[Commons contest] Commons will start again with there yearly "Picture
of the Year" contest, the 7th edition. Round one will start the day
after Wikipedia Day.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2012/Introduc…
[Wikipedia almost 12-years old] Currently we are in the middle of the
Christmas & new-year holidays. But once again the most important holiday
of the calender is coming up; Wikipedia Day. On January 15th 2012
Wikipedia turned eleven years old. So it comes at no surprise that
Wikipedia will now turn twelve. And do not forget, at January 25th there
is also of course "Magnus Manske Day". Wikipedia day is the day the first
Wikipedia the English one started. Magnus Manske Day celebrates the
launch of the Phase II wikisoftware; a Wikipedia specific wiki, a very
early version of MediaWiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Dayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Magnus_Manske_Day
[Project proposal] Wikifocus; "to describe everything related to Wiki
technology (wikis and their members, wiki softwares and their
capabilities)." The proposal to add this project to the WMF family is open
for discussion at Meta. Interesting about this is that there is already a
small active Russian group of 20 users running a Russian independent
Wikifocus wiki. Communication between these Russian speakers and English
language users at Meta seems to be problematic.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFocus -- join in and maybe help out
with the Babel problems
http://wikifocus.org/ -- active wiki in Russian
[Wikizine] At the end of 2005 a news newsletter was started. The
intention with it was to inform the community of all the projects across
all languages about what was going on. To break the language barriers. For
this a network of volunteers across the projects and languages was
envisioned to make of Wikizine an information exchange hub. The years up
to 2008 where the most successful years of Wikizine. There was a weekly
publication rate and frequently extra editions. Wikizine existed also in
German, Spanish and Indonesian.
But it could not truly deliver the universal projects news as was
intended. Wikizine was not able to attract and maintain the necessary
people to make that happen. Due to the staff shortage quality could not be
guaranteed. And from 2009 on also not the publication rate. It became more
monthly then weekly. The other language editions where closed. The
publication of Wikizine became an exception. Since 2010 Wikizine is
virtually a dead newsletter. In August-September 2011 it suddenly came
back to life under the direction of a new editor-in-chief with many
different Wikizine versions. The new editor disappeared and so also the
revival.
And Wikizine continued in zombie mode until now. Wikizine 133, this
edition, will be the final Wikizine. Thank you. [[User:Walter|Walter]]
http://wikizine.blogspot.com -- Notice; new location for the blog, the
domain name "wikizine.org" will not longer be supported
[Wiktionary] is one of these projects of our WMF family that gets less
space in the sun then others, the dictionary project. But it is more then
a dictionary. It is a community building the absolute, the final
dictionary. Offering translations from all languages to all languages is
only a small part of its mission. There are around 150 active Wiktionary
languages editions but the contain words in many more languages.
Wiktionary has at least some words in 1029 different languages out of the
over 6900 that exist.
And Wiktionary has just celebrated its 10th anniversary as a project on
December 12th. The full report and scope of the celebrations can be found
at the link below. Media coverage of these celebrations could not be
found unfortunately.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Wiktionary_Day
[Wiktionary logos] 56 Wiktionaries who never had one got a localised
logo enabled, thanks to the work by Casey Brown, Odder and many
translators. More work is coming for dozens of Wikipedias and other
projects without a localised logo; everyone can help.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2012-December/002193.html
=== Media ===
[Jimmy Wales & Kazahkstan] In August the WMF awarded by means of Jimmy
Wales the first ever "Global Wikipedian of the Year" award to Rauan
Kenzhekhanuly, a Wikipedian from Kazakhstan who founded a non-profit
organization WikiBilim. With help of this organization the Kazakh
Wikipedia grew from 7000 articles to 70,000 in 3 months time. (currently
the are over 200,000 articles). Concerns are now raised that this
Wikipedia of year is actually a government puppet of the dictatorial
government of Kazakhstan. This because of the previous functions in the
government service, especially in the propaganda department. And because
the WikiBilim organization is funded with the money of state oil.
Jimmy Wales responded with; "The Wikimedia Foundation has zero
collaboration with the government of Kazakhstan. Wikibilim is a totally
independent organization. And it is absolutely wrong to say that I am
"helping the Kazakh regime whitewash its image." I am a firm and strong
critic. At the same time, I'm excited by the work of volunteers, and I
believevery stronglythat an open and independent Wikipedia will be the
death knell for tyranny in places like Kazakhstan."
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/05/class-assignment-inspired-wikipedian-o…
-- Wikipedian of the Year
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/wikipedia-kazakhstan-dictatorship/ --
WikiBilm, the WP of the year and the Kazakh dictatorship
http://tinyurl.com/cm5pdwm --- talk page of Jimmy Wales about this , it
contains an extensive responds of Jimmy about this
[Why did you donate] the question is raised "Are People Who Donate to
Wikipedia Just Better People in General?"
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/12/wikipedia-donors-better-people…
[Wikitube] no, there is not (yet) a project Wikitube. But the WMF does
have an account at Youtube. You can find some video's about how to edit.
And also videos of users who explain what Wikipedia mean form them in
there live. Those are interesting to watch because it gives a face behind
the recent changes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/WikimediaFoundation
=== Stats ===
* Wikimedia Commons has reached 15,000,000 files, 73 days after reaching
14,000,000.
* The Low German/Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 20,000 articles.
* The Turkish Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles
* The Tamil Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
* The Romanian Wikibooks has reached 500 book modules.
[Wikiquote books and booklovers] - The Italian Wikiquote continues its
expansion on the main booklovers social network of Italy: its group on
aNobii has 1300+ members (one of the biggest groups). ISBNs of quoted
books were extracted from it, en, fr.quote and experimentally added. The
Italian has about 4500 ISBNs and 10 thousands books identified in total,
English and French about 2500 ISBNs. Italian seems to quote all the books
that English does, plus many more; a third of fr.quote's books are quoted
also on en and it.
http://www.anobii.com/groups/0105f4f6d9a205e8a9/ -- IT Wikiquote at a
social network for booklovers
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikiquote-l/2012-December/000146.html
=== Other news ===
[New Gopher server] At this new Gopher-hole you can find a list of
Wikipedia articles created last month/week/day with most users
contributing to article within the same period. Updated hourly.
gopher://gopher.conus.info/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/overbiteff/ -- add support
for Gopher to FireFox
[WMF shop] since a while there is WMF webshop. You can buy a T-shirt and
other clothing, stickers and pins and quality bags. Shipment is from the
US but the are offering a flat fee of $10 for the shipping costs to all
destinations. Nevertheless if you only wanted to buy a key-chain it gets
very expensive. When a local wikimeet is coming up you could do a group
order and divide the costs that way.
http://shop.wikimedia.org/
=== Did you know ... ===
... that the edits of experts make an article harder to read?
"The reason is clear, they say: articles on difficult topics are written
by experts who sacrifice readability for accuracy and that is compounded
as other experts weigh in with further accuracy-obsessed edits that remove
simplifications, generalisations or intuitive explanations that might
have served to aid readability."
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/12/study-the-expert-editors-of-wikipedia-make…
=== Quote ===
"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
-- Last message of the dolphins to the people of Earth before leaving it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long,_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Editor(s): Walter, Nemo
Corrector(s):
Thanks to: Amgine, Jeblad, hoo
Sources-Attributions:Jeblad,Lydia Pintscher
Support:
Website: http://wikizine.blogspot.com
Gopher: is down and probably will not come back
Contact: [[meta:user:Walter]]
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//// ///
//// Happy new-year, good fortune and health in MMXIII ///
//// ///
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Wikizine.org makes no guarantee of accuracy, validity and
especially but not limited to, correct grammar and spelling.
Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Some content can be highly
inspired or directly copied from other sources.
Those sources are listed above at "Sources-Attributions".
Wikizine.org is published by [[meta:user:Walter]].
Content is available under Creative Commons
Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Hello,
A week ago, as I found out now, a new association has been found in
New York: "Wiki Med Foundation, Inc." (!). We have the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., we have some other Wikimedias, we have MediaWiki...
how is the ordinary man on the street supposed to have the slightest
chance to understand the Wikimedia movement? He even confuses
"Wikimedia" with "Wikileaks"...
I know that that is not the case, but sometimes it even seems that
Wikimedians do want to make the movement a terminogical labyrinth. The
WMF came with a simple scheme for national chapters, with the formula
"Wikimedia X" (with X being the name of the country). I wish something
similar for thematic organizations and Wikimedia user groups, and not
the advice to even avoid the term "Wikimedia". Confusing terms are a
serious barrier for participation, on Wikipedia and in the larger
movement.
Kind regards,
Ziko
If I could talk to the wiki folks, just imagine it
Chatting with a chick on IRC
Imagine talking on a talk page, buzzing from a banner
What a neat achievement that would be.
If I could talk to the wiki folks, learn their languages
Maybe take a data dump degree.
I'd study mastodon and diesel, camel case and weasel,
Interwiki, vandal and IP.
I would converse in C++ and Python,
And I would curse in fluent wikify.
If people asked me, can you speak sock puppetry,
I'd say, 'Of coursery, but why?'
If I conferred with our fuzzy friends, man to editor,
Think of the amazing repartee
If I could talk to the wiki folks, fork to the wiki folks,
Diff and rev and link with the wiki folks,
And they could diff and rev and link with me.
If I could speak CC-BY-SA
The advantages any sandbox noob could plainly see!
Discussing worldwide GLAM and drama
With oh so witty llama
That’s a big step forward you’ll agree!
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by multivariate analysis
I mean as in the tests done May 16, September 20, and October 9
reported at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough
without adjusting the best performing pull-down delivery combined
banner/landing page from the beginning of this month (although I don't
think we will need the one that follows vertical scrolling. It may
produce 30% but that will be nothing if the remaining ~300 appeal
messages are tested, unless they don't fit the lognormal distribution
that they appear to.)
> That would be complex, and could be a disaster...
What are the possible failure modes?
On Dec 28, 2012 9:46 PM, "James Salsman" <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How about for the April fundraiser, instead of setting a dollar value
> goal, we agree to use multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing to
> optimize the messaging from volunteer submissions in advance, then run
> the whole thing for a fixed time frame, say three weeks, and then use
> the actual amount raised to decide whether salaries should be
> competitive with area tech firms, whether Fellowships should be
> jettisoned, how much personnel to put into the Education Program and
> engineering, and how much of a reserve to invest, preferably with low
> risk instruments which pay above the rate of inflation?
James,
On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 2:11 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I mean as in the tests done May 16, September 20, and October 9
> reported at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2012/We_Need_A_Breakthrough
> without adjusting the best performing pull-down delivery combined
> banner/landing page from the beginning of this month
>
I obviously cannot speak for what Zack will end up doing but let's talk
shop for a moment on how this would be implemented.
The tests you indicated play banner, landing page impressions, and donation
amount against each other. It appears that everyone saw a collection of
random banners (ie: the test was not bucketed.) Are these the same
variables you want to test?
Regardless of the answer to the above; how do you propose we normalize our
tests across time of day, day of week, and day of month factors - we've
seen evidence that these all play a role. I don't know how many banner
variations we actually have to test but it's likely we won't be able to
test them all at the same time (In fact with the current weighting setup we
can only test 30 banners at a time). Do we just take each group as it
stands -- find the best performers in the group and then test the winners
against each other?
An additional considering is that we have four buckets to play with;
buckets are independent so we could potentially test 120 banners at a time
to four different groups. Presumably if we did this we would want a couple
of control banners in each to normalize with?
An additional something to consider is how long do we have to run these
tests to gain statistical significance? At least a day I'm guessing. Are we
going to account for banner fatigue at all? IE: show banners during only
the first 10 visits like we just did with this most recent campaign?
--
~Matt Walker
Sj,
I'm addressing this question to you because you seem to be the most active trustee in the areas where I checked for trustee activity, and also because you were one of the authors of the “Building a lasting movement” workshop submission to Wikimania 2012. I would also be interested in hearing comments from other trustees.
This information is from April 2012 to present, showing the number of posts and edits by each trustee.
Trustee Meta username Wikimedia-l Meta Combined
Kat Walsh Mindspillage 8 13 21
Jan-Bart de Vreede Jan-Bart 16 47 63
Stu West Stu 0 4 4
Bishakha Datta Bishdatta 30 34 64
Jimmy Wales Jimbo Wales 0 3 3
Ting Chen Wing 0 2 2
Samuel Klein Sj 107 751 858
Matt Halprin Mhalprin 0 5 5
Alice Weigand Lyzzy 12 241 253
Patricio Lorente Patricio.lorente 7 26 33
I would appreciate hearing your comments about these statistics and about trustee activity levels in general. Do each of the trustees demonstrate a strong personal interest in the health and direction of the Foundation and the volunteer community? Do each of the trustees participate actively at Board meetings? Do each of the trustees proactively and regularly communicate with Foundation staff, volunteer contributors, and/or organizations which have significant interactions with the Foundation or the content projects?
Personally, I feel that a vibrant, engaged, and proactive board is important for the health of any public nonprofit organization, and for “building a lasting movement” for the near future and for future generations. I think of Wikipedia as a digital “wonder of the world” and a remarkable work of civilization. I hope that the trustees take a strong personal interest in the health and future of Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the foundation and people that sustain and build them.
Thank you,
Pine
> people are not contributing in the English language markets this
> year as opposed to last
What is the evidence for that?
> because of trends when the English Wikipedia's popularity has not
> significantly changed.
English projects per http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/pageviews
November 2010: 7.6 billion
November 2011: 8.3 billion or +9%
November 2012: 9.6 billion or +15%
Along with my questions about lowered fundraising expectations which
Zack specifically asked to re-post to this list, I would also like
answers to my earlier questions about why multivariate testing can't
be used to measure donations, because all of the multivariate tests
published so far were used to measure donations. There is no doubt in
my mind from the distribution of message performance that if we tested
the remaining volunteer-submitted appeals from 2009-10, we could do
twice as well per day as we did at the beginning of this month, and
not just during these last days of the year when we are probably
sacrificing $7 million to slashed growth rates, jettisoned Fellowships
without community consultation, and salaries pegged well below that of
other Bay Area technology employers.
As for the reserve fund investment, I would like to point out that
investment in securities which are expected to return less than
inflation are a guaranteed risk that the purchasing power of donors'
funds will diminish before they are spent. As far as I can tell from
messages off list at Garfield's request, all reserve investments were
expected to perform below the rate of inflation when they were
purchased.
Sincerely,
James Salsman
> The question this list would need to find agreement on is: should the Uzbek
> Wikipedia be set up in a way that makes access via the HTTPS protocol the
> canonical one?
Certainly. There is already widespread agreement on supporting HTTPS
in the archives, and no question that it should be canonical when ISPs
or governments seek to block the HTTP access. Any government taking
those measures is likely to take other measures which might put
editors using HTTP instead of HTTPS at risk, so it makes abundant
sense to do this if we have any respect for our editors' safety at
all.
I wish that http://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa and
https://208.80.154.225/wiki/Bosh_Sahifa would work, too, but the
foundation apparently can't or chooses not to afford separate IP
addresses for each language's Wikipedia.
The Foundation in years past would take advantage of the end of the
annual fundraiser to write a thank you letter to donors which included
other less well funded charity foundations and organization which the
leadership would recommend endorsing. One of those foundations, the
EFF, publishes this page with helpful background information:
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
One of the reasons that donor response was so strong this year is
because this past January, the Foundation decided to join with the EFF
and others in support of what turned out to be a very popular activism
campaign against the proposed U.S. SOPA/PIPA legislation, primarily in
the interest of the Foundation's legal and office actions staff which
would have been substantially burdened with the task of removing links
to external sites deemed infringing in ex parte court applications had
the legislation become law. Can you imagine what would happen if the
Foundation decided to support more than just their own staff and take
action to support the nearly one fifth of long time editors who toil
in near-poverty or impoverished conditions by with an activism
campaign based on Chart 4 of
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/berg.htm or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Employment_growth_by_top_tax_rate.jpg
or https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yz3W7LVnwne79wiwxdqKiRuFRAyQX-JXIAb…
?
Best regards,
James Salsman
Another thing I want to point out, because I just noticed it. The
recent years' yields on bond funds has been slightly higher than
equity (stock) mutual funds, but with only a very small fraction of
the volatility:
http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/FundReturns.html?category=$FOCA$HY
I'm not sure what the current thinking among fiduciaries is on
diversified high grade bond funds is, but the statistical distribution
of those long-term returns looks as if a variety of them for a portion
of the reserves would have a far better risk-to-return ratio than
sticking with certificates of deposit and treasury securities (which
currently pay negative real interest rates, i.e., less than inflation)
as we have been.
