Dear Wikimedians,
As Tim has already written, with effect from today I have stepped down from
the position as Executive Director and handed over the business to Abraham.
Tomorrow I will take the oath in my new position.
I am looking back today at an incredible exciting, busy and funny time and
I am proud to see what we were able to achieve together. I also want to
thank you for all the warm and cheering messages I received after Tims
announcement.
WMDE is in very good hands with Abraham, with a great team and solid
structures and processes in place. Therefore I am leaving with a tear in
one eye and a smile in the other.
Congratulation Abraham (!) and good bye,
Christian
Am 08.12.2016 15:52 schrieb "Tim Moritz Hector" <
tim-moritz.hector(a)wikimedia.de>:
Dear Wikimedians,
Earlier this week I informed you that Christian Rickerts might become the
Undersecretary of State for the new Berlin ministry of economy, energy and
enterprises. This has been confirmed today and Christian has stepped down
from his WMDE role.
I am very pleased to announce that the WMDE Supervisory Board appointed
Abraham Taherivand as Interim Executive Director as of 8 December 2016.
Abraham has joined WMDE in March 2012 and is the Head of our Software
Development department. He has been on the transition team during the last
ED search, has headed our works council and has been appointed deputy of
the Executive Director recently. In his multiple roles, Abraham’s decisions
have always been made in the sense of the Wikimedia Deutschland as a whole.
With immediate effect, he has the full rights and duties of the Executive
Director and will also continue to lead the Software Development Department.
This solution allows us as a board to approach the next steps with the
necessary calmness and deliberate thought. On 28-29 January 2017, we will
meet for our regular board retreat and discuss all questions regarding the
permanent filling of the ED position.
Christian, once again a big thank you for your work with us.
Congratulations and a good start in politics. I would like to thank you,
Abraham, for your agreement to take on this crucial task and look forward
to the further, close cooperation with you!
I will keep you posted on future updates in the transition process.
For the Supervisory Board
Tim Moritz Hector
Chair
--
Tim Moritz Hector
Chair of the Board
Wikimedia Deutschland
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James Heilman wrote:
>
> I personally invest in stuff that gives 1.5% to 1.7% returns....
Whether you call it fake news, disinformation, public relations,
manufactured consent, astroturfing, propaganda, or simply clever
advertising campaigning, bankers are thrilled when people think such
returns are reasonable, because they make so much money by turning
around those investments into payday loans, overdraft fees, student
loans, and high credit card interest rates to the vast majority of the
population which has already depleted their savings:
https://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance/data-americans-savings/
However, that such returns are reasonable is a false narrative which
only serves to increase economic inequality. Many nonprofits (and some
people) are in a precarious financial condition and therefore should
invest in government bonds (or cash accounts.) But the WMF is among
the most financially solvent nonprofits in the history of
civilization, and certainly beyond the level of the wealthiest
educational institutions because of the lack of physical plant
overhead. For what such institutions with competent financial
management typically earn, please see e.g. Figure 1 on page 2 of:
https://institutional.vanguard.com/iam/pdf/EndowmentPerformanceResearch.pdf
Individuals should be earning the same high rates too, and easily can,
but bankers and fund managers hate it when their customers are savvy
enough to ask for endowment-grade returns. Please see:
https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/s342.pdf
Disclaimer: I have no financial, familial, or other ties to Vanguard,
but I like them more than their competitors, in part because of the
"number two tries harder" effect, and in part because of the fact
Renaissance was behind the effort, which shows to me that they have
lost focus on fundamental value investing because arbitrage over
politicians is (temporarily?) more lucrative, shown here:
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7090/5653
> Why is it assumed we should be investing in stocks?
I am not recommending stocks. I recommend managed endowment-grade
mutual fund(s) with divestitures using short sales with limit orders
to remove the short sale risk.
> And where is the evidence that "brilliant minds" do better at
> stocks than random chance?
Again, unless one has the resources to keep current investigations on
the fundamental financial conditions of stocks such as the top
performing endowment fund management fund companies do, I am not
suggesting one should be picking stocks. However, the evidence that
those funds are superior to what a small team (such as the Wikimedia
Endowment Advisory Board) is completely clear; see:
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/EndowmentsPaperPartI.pdf
and
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/EndowmentsPaperPartII.pdf
> The endowment is under separate management from the WMF, with
> the people running the endowment specialized in that area.
While my questions are about the Foundation's primary investments for
which an endowment-grade fund is most appropriate, but not the nascent
endowment itself, I have been trying to follow the Endowment news. Has
its Board even met yet? I have absolutely no confidence that they have
the resources necessary to outperform a top-5 endowment-grade mutual
fund. If you don't agree, please see for yourself:
http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/133/133947823/133947823_…
Annette Campbell-White's Kia Ora Foundation made $73K interest,
dividends, and capital gains on $2.8 million cash, savings, and
investments, only 2.6%.
Peter Baldwin's Arcadia Fund doesn't even disclose their endowment financials:
http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/media/10233/Arcadia-triennial-report-2013-201…
Nor have they ever. They are also not listed in GuideStar UK, Charity
Financials, nor
http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/regist…
While they are listed at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/IC000448
their financials are missing, and the referral has no information at
all: https://register.fca.org.uk/shpo_nosearchresultpage?search=IC000448
In any case, the thought that Wales, Campbell-White, and Baldwin have
the resources to investigate the fundamentals of tens of thousands of
investment choices is absurd, and the thought that they have any hope
of outperforming any of the top-5 endowment mutual fund is even less
likely. If there is any evidence to the contrary I would like to read
it.
Best regards,
Jim
Over the past decade, the Foundation's low rate of return on
investments has been dismal and embarassing, in part because it
reflects poor choices in the use of donors' money and sets a terrible
example. The ease with which the Foundation can raise funds is simply
not compatible with purchasing 1.5% certificates of deposit on which
bankers easily earn 10% or more that we could earn by cutting out the
banking middlemen. It's time to set a better example.
Please see pages 9 and especially 10 the Audit Report released in October:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Audit_Report…
In particular, Foundation investments increased from $38 million in
June 2015 to $54 million in 2016, and investment income increased from
$445,000 to $813,000.
1. Why is Foundation, which presumably has the benefit of the most
brilliant volunteer minds in the world, during years of record high
stock market prices, with income so secure that detractors have to beg
every year on this list for fundraising to be halted when it reaches
its goal, only earning 1.5% interest for its donors?
2. Are there any practical reasons not to liquidate 90% of the
Foundation's stock, bond, fund, and REIT investments over the next
quarter and deposit the balance in a top-5 nonprofit foundation
endowment-grade fund? E.g.:
https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutional/clientsolut…
3. How does the Foundation intend to convince donors that the
endowment is a good idea when investment stewardship is so poor?
4. What proportion is invested in fossil fuel interests?
5. Should we divest from fossil fuel interests?
6. Does the Foundation have any strategic investments in sustainable
technologies such as wind and solar power, power-to-gas,
gas-to-liquids, underground compressed air and pumped hydro power
storage, and composite lumber?
7. Should we divest from interests opposed to single payer health care?
8. Should we divest from interests in support of the payroll tax?
9. Should we divest from educational interests which have not shown a
firm commitment to public school class size reduction?
10. Should we divest from interests opposed to increasing public
school teacher salaries?
We can offset mutual fund holding investments in such interests with
short sales (while there is a risk with doing so, that risk can be
completely offset with limit orders.)
Best regards,
Jim Salsman
Hello everyone,
As many of you know, over the past couple of years the Wikimedia Foundation
has taken a focused look at community health—particularly in regards to
harassment. The Foundation's Board has been monitoring and discussing this
issue over the past year with great interest. We have prepared a statement
offering our thoughts on this topic, and providing a clear mandate for the
Foundation’s leadership to fully engage on this issue.
Our statement is below and has been posted on Meta-Wiki, where it is set up
for translation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/Nove…
Since the Foundation was established, we have been invested in building a
positive community culture. As part of these efforts, we have monitored the
projects for instances of harassment, escalating our capacity to respond in
recent years. Thanks to the work of the Foundation's Support and Safety
Team, we now have data in the form of the 2015 Harassment Survey[1] about
the nature of the issue. This has enabled us to identify key areas of
concern, and step up our response appropriately. This research shows that
harassment has a negative impact on participation in our projects. This has
implications for our ability to collect, share, and disseminate free
knowledge in support of the Wikimedia vision. Our statement speaks to the
Board's duty to help the Foundation fulfill its mission.
The Board is committed to making our communities safer and will not accept
harassment and toxic behavior on Wikimedia projects. We believe this matter
deserves the Foundation's attention and resources, and have confirmed this
responsibility at our latest Board meeting on November 13th. The questions
that lay before us all now are how to best address this threat, rather than
if we should attempt to do so.
The Board especially appreciates and applauds the work being done to
address this important issue by many community leaders across the movement
and teams within the Foundation. We look forward to seeing this cooperative
work not only continue, but expand. Finally, we encourage everyone who is
interested in helping the Foundation address this threat to our vision and
mission to engage in the upcoming discussions around this issue.
On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees,
Christophe Henner, Board Chair
María Sefidari, Board Vice Chair
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015
Statement by the Wikimedia Board on Healthy Community Culture, Inclusivity,
and Safe Spaces
At our Board meeting on November 13, and in Board meetings in September and
June, we spent considerable time discussing the issues of harassment and
hostility on the internet generally, and more specifically on the Wikimedia
projects.
This is an important issue. Approximately 40% of internet users, and 70% of
women internet users, have personally experienced harassment.[1] Of people
who have reported experiencing harassment on Wikimedia projects, more than
50% reported decreasing their participation in our community.[2] Based on
this and other research, we conclude that harassment and toxic behavior on
the Wikimedia projects negatively impacts the ability of the Wikimedia
projects to collect, share, and disseminate free knowledge. This behavior
is contrary to our vision and mission.
Our communities deserve safe spaces in which they can contribute
productively and debate constructively. It is our belief that the Wikimedia
Foundation should be proactively engaged in eliminating harassment,
promoting inclusivity, ensuring a healthier culture of discourse, and
improving the safety of Wikimedia spaces. We request management to dedicate
appropriate resources to this end.
We urge every member of the Wikimedia communities to collaborate in a way
that models the Wikimedia values of openness and diversity, step forward to
do their part to stop hostile and toxic behavior, support people who have
been targeted by such behavior, and help set clear expectations for all
contributors.
[1] 2014 Pew Research Center Study, found at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/
[2] 2015 WMF Harassment Survey, found at:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassment_Survey_2015_…
Christophe HENNER
Chair of the board of trustees
chenner(a)wikimedia.org
+33650664739
twitter *@schiste* skype *christophe_henner*
Hi all,
It's coming close to time for annual appointments of community members to
serve on the Ombudsman commission. This commission works on all Wikimedia
projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy,
especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, and to mediate between
the complaining party and the individual whose work is being investigated.
They may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the
Board of Trustees in investigations of these issues. For more on their
duties and roles, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission
*This is a call for community members interested in volunteering for
appointment to this commission.* Commissioners should be experienced
Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the
CheckUser/Oversight tool OR who have the technical ability to understand
the CheckUser/Oversight tool and the willingness to learn it. They are
expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and
to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause
conflict. (In the past, commissioners have retired from other roles that
could cause conflict.)
Commissioners must be willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation and
to comply with the appropriate board policies (such as the access to
non-public data policy <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy> and
the privacy policy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy>). This
is a position that requires a high degree of discretion and trust.
*If you are interested in serving on this commission, please drop me a note
(kbrown(a)wikimedia.org <kbrown(a)wikimedia.org>) detailing your experience on
the projects, your thoughts on the commission and what you hope to bring to
the role.* The commission is deliberately quite small, so slots are
limited, but all applications are appreciated. The deadline for
applications is January 2. Any timezone. :)
Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think
may be interested.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Karen Brown
--
Karen Brown
Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation
kbrown(a)wikimedia.org
Dear all,
It is with great sadness that I must share the news of the passing of
User:Coyau, a pillar of the francophone Wikimedia community.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coyauhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Coyau
He joined our community over a decade ago, and had become an active
editor on several French-language wikis (Wikipedia, Wikisource,
Wiktionary), as well as a prolific contributor to Commons and
Wikidata. He had made over 1.5 million edits across Wikimedia
projects. We learned of his death on Tuesday; he was 38.
He was deeply committed, delightfully absurd, and absolutely genial.
You may have met him if you've ever had drinks with Wikimedians in
Paris. He also had a blog in French where he wrote about Wikimedia
projects and shared tutorials about topics like photo processing for
other Wikimedians to learn:
http://coyau.blogspot.com/
He was a genuine and soulful human being, whose sudden death has left
many of his wiki friends and colleagues heartbroken. His loss is felt
profoundly among the communities, where people have been expressing
their grief and condolences on his talk page:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Coyau#Bip_bip_bip...
He had uploaded thousands of files on Commons, among which a photo of
a deflated yellow balloon in a tree (which has become emblematic of
him), and a stitched 360° panorama assembled from 219 photos of a
seemingly random Parisian street:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quai_de_la_Seine_(Paris),_baudruche…https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris,_Rue_Watt.jpg
As an homage, you are invited to browse his photos on Wikimedia
Commons and add them to articles and pages in need of relevant
pictures:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Files_by_User:Coyau
--
Guillaume Paumier
Hello All!
So originally we were going to send an update after the first two weeks but
with so much going on and following feedback, I'll cover as much as I can
in as brief a form as possible and more regularly than planned:
-
Banners limited: We have already begun limiting the number of times a
reader will see a banner within a single browser if they choose to not
dismiss the banners. For the moment, dismissing a banner or viewing a
banner *up to 10 times* will result in the banners being suppressed for
a period of 1 week.
-
Big messaging update [1]: We've been playing heavily with the ideas of
“fake news” and “facts matter”. In addition for first time since 2013, we
have returned to an appeal coming from a specific individual, in this case
Jimmy. Much of the inspiration for both came from interviews Fundraising
did with both Jimmy and Katherine back in October.
-
Big design update & in-line banners: We've moved away from the dark navy
blue (seen as black by many people), which was considered by the community
to be too mobid and foreboding, to a white background banner with red
border. Following extensive testing we also moved to inline banners over
the weekend replacing the top header banners.
-
Promising Numbers: Currently we believe that we have raised around
$13,000,000 (accounting for payments to be cleared). This has been helped
enormously by both gains found in our banner campaigns that is allowing us
to keep pace with the decline of desktop, as well as a brilliantly
performing e-mail campaign.
-
Awesome E-mail: November 30th 2016 saw our biggest day for email
fundraising ~$950,000 (2016) vs ~$550,000 (2015) raised in a 24 hour period
with approximately a similar number of e-mails.
-
Stable Tech: This year has been extremely stable from a technical
standpoint compared to other years, with the most perplexing issue being an
odd dip that occurred in our donations and traffic [2] on December 1st for
one hour. This occurred during the quietest period in a day for 2 days but
then appeared to stop. Low impact but naturally could be a bigger issue if
the problem occurred during peak fundraising hours or was more prolonged,
investigations continue.
-
Major gifts going great: Our major gifts team have been very busy, and
have seen double the number of Major gifts donations during this period of
the year compared with last year which means this page [3] getting a lot of
updates recently.
-
A brilliant social media team: In short awesome work has been done by
them but I will send a separate more detailed update on this :)
[1] -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein?banner=B1617_1117_en6C_dsk_p1…
[2] - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T152122
[3] - https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors
--
Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
Hi Seddon,
I can understand a few anomalies where people give when they don't have
funds to cover it, and for a difference between estimated exchange rates
and the actual exchange rate that applied when the transaction was
processed (currencies float and are quite capable of moving between the
moment you are aware of a donation and the moment it is converted into one
of the currencies you bank in). But I'd expect such anomalies to be a tiny
fraction of a percent. OK one of these days we will have a record breaking
donation day in a currency that then devalues by half before we convert
that money into dollars, but I don't recall any spectacular devaluations in
the last two weeks.
Is it worth checking to see why these numbers in the frdata dump are only a
rough guide?
If its something as innocent as our estimates still working on say 2012
currency conversions and the actual currency conversions are based on the
day rate, then meh. But if one set of figures is gross before credit card
and other transaction costs and the other figures are net, or one set
assumed a UK Gift Aid sign up as high as Wikimedia UK could have got and
the reality was much lower, then I'd be alarmed at such a difference.
Jonathan
> > > Hey Andreas
> > >
> > > A very quick email just noting I don't know the method by which
> > > that
> > frdata
> > > dump is created (its very old and not maintained) but it would
> > > seem
> that
> > > numbers in the frdata dump are only useful as a rough guide.
> > >
> > > We are basing our numbers on internal accounting figures which is
> > > more representative of the actual cash flow since it is more
> > > closely based
> on
> > > actual cleared payments.
> > >
> > > Seddon
We are looking for ideas to build on the success of the fact matters series
of banners based on the importance of wikipedia in the media world we live
in today.
Go to this form: https://goo.gl/forms/eOHRvlSeZVPwI3KJ3
Answer the question!
There will be more.
--
Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)*
*Wikimedia Foundation*
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