Dear All,
On behalf of the Foundation Board, I’m writing to share with you that Chief
Creative Officer Heather Walls and Chief Technology Officer Grant Ingersoll
will be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation, at the end of July.
We, along with the Foundation Transition Team, have been working with them
for several weeks on a smooth transition in their respective functions. We
are grateful to them for their service and dedication to the Foundation and
the movement. In their time with us, both Heather and Grant have used their
unique talents and skills to preserve and provide free knowledge to the
world while also elevating the voices of community members around the globe.
Heather has been with the Foundation for almost ten years, driving creative
and communication efforts. In that time we’ve seen a revolution in how our
projects are perceived by the world. She has played a pivotal role at the
Foundation, shaping its identity and strengthening our mission to be a
trusted and valued resource for sharing and accessing knowledge globally.
Heather brought communities around the world closer together by developing
and executing innovative means of communications and leading campaigns that
helped grow our community and elevated the voices of our community
members. Most recently, on Wikipedia’s 20th Birthday, she, with her team,
connected people in more than 70 countries so that we could celebrate “20
Years Human” and our important movement together.
In her words:
“There is nothing that can sum up nearly a decade with Wikimedians. The
joy, the conflict, the evolution, and the unchanging. I’ve seen things
change for the better; focused effort to bring more equity into our
movement including a ground-breaking global code of conduct—and I’ve seen
things stay the same in ways that matter; Wikimedians holding true to their
values in face of new challenges like censorship and misinformation. As I
reflect on the past almost 10 years, I am amazed by the pace and strength
of our growth and the evolution of our brand from an internet experiment to
one of the most trusted places on the web. It was a pleasure to see this
work reach a pinnacle during Wikipedia’s 20th Birthday celebrations, with
headlines, brand partnerships, and community events that shine a light on
how far we’ve come. My appreciation of the people I have met through this
journey and the incredible team I leave behind, is immense.”
Grant, who joined the Foundation two years ago and was based in North
Carolina, worked to strengthen Wikimedia’s online infrastructure to
increase its reliability and to ensure that people around the globe could
access free knowledge whenever they needed it. While Grant and his growing
team work largely behind the scenes, they are the reason we have the
platform and ability to elevate the voices of our community members and
provide free knowledge to the world.
In Grant's words:
“My last two years serving the free knowledge movement have been incredibly
rewarding and challenging. I’m so proud of what the Foundation Technology
team has accomplished, especially with the unique set of challenges this
year has brought. There is never a perfect time to leave, but I am
confident that this work is in the most capable hands. It’s been a
privilege to support my team as they have worked side-by-side with movement
volunteers to strengthen our online infrastructure and ensure that
Wikimedia remains a trusted source for open knowledge. Together, we evolved
and scaled our platform to ensure that people across the globe have 24/7,
uninterrupted access to our information when they need it most.”
While transitions are always challenging, they are also a natural part of
evolution and growth of organizations. The Foundation's Transition team -
Amanda, Jaime, and Robyn - is working closely with the Board Transition
Committee, as well as other relevant Board Committees, to ensure smooth
operations during this period. We remain very confident that together,
along with our communities, we can build a future for the Foundation that
will better serve our important movement goals and strategy. As we work
through the transition, including the ongoing process of identifying the
next CEO/ED, we will continue to provide relevant updates.
In the meantime, on behalf of the Board, please join me in wishing Grant
and Heather the best of luck.
Best,
Raju
--
Raju Narisetti
Home TimeZone: EST
My working day may not be your working day. Please don’t feel obliged to
reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.
*Have you considered supporting Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a non-profit website which provides free, open, reliable
knowledge to hundreds of millions of people around the world every single
day.
https://donate.wikimedia.org *
Just seeking clarity:
Is there anything wrong with expressing a political opinion on a userpage?
A lot of our badges, flags, icons might have some or the other political
history behind them, just that these are seen as more "normal" by today's
standards. At one time, slavery too was considered quite legal.
Can't this be discussed in the public domain?
FN
On Wed, 30 Jun 2021 at 03:34, Gereon Kalkuhl <gkalkuhl(a)freenet.de> wrote:
> Dear 4nn1|2,
>
> Thank you for informing us about the incident. But to be clear: You write
> that it's about a Palestinian flag. Yet actually it's about a flag with a
> statement: free Palestine. There's a difference. And a member of the
> Persian Wikipedia removed the deletion request on Commons and kept the file
> on the same day. I'm not judging anything here, but please be more precise
> in your accusations.
>
> Thank you,
> Gereon
>
> Am 29.06.2021 um 20:34 schrieb Amir Sarabadani:
>
> If anyone is interested to know about this incident. Send me a private
> message and I can explain better.
>
> Best
>
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 8:17 PM 4nn1l2 <4nn1l2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Wikimedians,
>>
>> Persian Wikipedia has reached a new level in their arbitrary and
>> nonesense adminship. They have blocked me for placing a Palestinian flag on
>> my userpage (of course they have already removed it from my userpage and
>> you need to see a previous revision of my userpage).
>>
>>
>> https://fa.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%DA%A9%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%B1…
>>
>> Another user has nominated the file for deletion on Commons!
>>
>> I am admin on Commons myself and I'm fed up with how fawiki is managed.
>> They block users for the most friviolous reasons.
>>
>> What does this mean?
>>
>> Yours faithfully,
>> User:4nn1l2
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> --
> Amir (he/him)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org…
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave(a)lists.wikimedia.org
--
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ FN * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا +91-9822122436
_/ See a different Goa here, via
_/ https://youtube.com/c/frederickfnnoronha
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Hello, all.
Apologies for the rather late Friday notice. We had hoped to get details on
this out earlier today, but it has taken rather all day for us to get the
technical details ironed out!
***
The Wikimedia Foundation is hosting an office hour featuring Chief
Financial Officer Jaime Villagomez
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/jaime-villagomez/> and General
Counsel Amanda Keton <https://wikimediafoundation.org/profile/amanda-keton/>,
two of the transition team guiding the Wikimedia Foundation during its
executive transition. It will also feature guests from the Wikimedia
Foundation’s Board of Trustees (BoT), to be determined over the next few
days, and Community Resilience & Sustainability Vice President Maggie Dennis
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mdennis_(WMF)>. The main purpose of
the call is to discuss questions related to Wikimedia Foundation executive
transition, including the retention of María Sefidari
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm> as an advisor to Movement
Strategy and supporting and onboarding the expanding BoT. Come with your
questions or feedback, and let’s talk! You can also send us your questions
in advance.
This office hour will be on June 29 at 15:00 UTC — see
https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1624978855 for your local time.
We will officer live interpretation for German, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
To be able to listen to the interpretation, you need to join the Zoom room
(and therefore register via answers(a)wikimedia.org; <answers(a)wikimedia.org>see
below). The Youtube live-stream will be only in English.
Details
This call will be streamed and available on demand at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQTND98b_Yg
We will be fielding questions from Wikimedians in good standing (that is,
not Foundation or community banned). In order to be as efficient as
possible, we are encouraging people to send questions in advance. Please
send all questions to answers(a)wikimedia.org, by Monday June 28 (midnight,
whatever time zone you may be in). We may aggregate similar questions or
truncate them for length. Questions can also be asked live on Zoom for
in-room attendees, in Zoom chat, Telegram and YouTube.
Language support
We will offer automated closed captioning for English, and live
interpretation for German, Spanish, French, and Arabic. This is the first
time we offer such a service for an office hour, and we would like to
experiment with it and see how it works. To be able to listen to the Zoom
interpretation, you need to join the Zoom room (and therefore register, see
below), as live-streaming interpretation channels to Youtube is not
possible.
How to register
For security reasons and specifically to avoid Zoombombing
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombombing>, we will be sending the Zoom
link only to people who have registered in advance close to the meeting and
only to Wikimedians in good standing. In order to register, please send an
email to answers(a)wikimedia.org, indicating your name, username, affiliation
if you have any. The title should be “Registration for Office Hours”. The
link will be shared with any Wikimedia in good standing (not Foundation or
community banned) who requests it within the hour before the meeting.
The meeting will be governed by the Friendly Space Policy
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy>. We are
committed to tackling hard questions bravely in a manner that reflects the
values of our Universal Code of Conduct
<https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct>.
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hello, all. :)
I hope and trust that everyone is keeping well during these times!
I’m Maggie Dennis, Vice President of the Community Resilience &
Sustainability group of Wikimedia Foundation, within the Legal department.
I wanted to announce with pleasure that Maria Sefidari has agreed to
consult with the Foundation on Movement Strategy and the ongoing Board
evolution for the upcoming year. Many of us know María from her role as the
chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, from which she
provided invaluable leadership in governance, oversight, and fundraising.
Others may know her from her volunteer work as User:Raystorm
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raystorm>, in which she has a broad
range of experience.
María, based in Spain, commenced her assignment with the Foundation this
week. We intend to tap into her expertise and knowledge of the Foundation
to support a successful implementation of the Movement’s Strategy and to
tap into new opportunities. (With her Board work, she will be supporting
Quim Gil’s team with the Board election and helping Margo Lee in improving
onboarding, documentation practices, and training.) María will report to me
as part of our Community Resilience & Sustainability group. I’m excited
that she accepted our offer for a more hands-on assignment, particularly
given how important all of the work she’ll be supporting is. :) With more
than 15 years of Wikimedia experience, her contributions in the next phase
will be a tremendous benefit to me and my team as we continue settling into
our own work on Movement Strategy.
Those of you who are involved with Movement Strategy are used to seeing her
at related meetings and still will. :) I anticipate María will be joining
one or more of the Movement Strategy global conversations
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Updates/June_15,_2021>
this weekend. Advertisement alert: maybe you can, too? Here’s more detail
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Updates/June_15,_2021>!
I myself will be attending at least one of those sessions and look forward
to seeing some of you there.
Warm regards,
Maggie
--
Maggie Dennis
She/her/hers
Vice President, Community Resilience & Sustainability
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Hello,
This is something I have been thinking about for some time. This June–July
we will see a couple of elections/selections. I think wherever a voting is
in process, an effective canvassing/promotion policy should be there. We
may need to notify our friend Wikimedians about our candidacy, that is
understandable, but there should be behavioral guidelines on what is
appropriate and what is inappropriate promotion/canvassing.
This email thread is about the process, and I won't mention any specific
example, however during every election/committee formation we see different
votestacking attempts and efforts. In such a situation there is a
possibility that if a candidate has many social media or contacts and
friends (Wimimedian), they will end up getting more votes than someone who
entirely relied on their nomination and performance.
There is a behavioral guideline on a Wikipedia project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing
I don't think this is globally applicable, and I am note sure if we have
one global policy.
Hence,
1) We can work on "Canvassing guidelines", discussing appropriateness,
inappropriateness etc.
2) These guidelines should be effectively used and it would be great if the
candidates/contestants read and acknowledge that they will adhere to the
protocol/policy.
Kind regards,
ইতি,/Regards
টিটো দত্ত/User:Titodutta
(মাতৃভাষা থাক জীবন জুড়ে)
Hello Christophe
Thank you for your email, and always good to hear from you as I very much
appreciate your questions, and the spirit in which they’re always asked of
the Board. And you rightly pointed out that there has been a lot of change
in senior leadership at the Foundation.
Underlying these planned transitions at the Foundation (also playing out in
many organizations globally, I might add) is that they come at a time when
we are all going through a period of disruption brought on by the global
pandemic, and the toll it’s had on individuals, the Foundation, and the
movement. Most organizations are feeling this, even as we all
simultaneously work to make sure we are fully prepared with the right
leadership for the next normal of a post-pandemic world.
Amid this, a few have left citing deeply personal reasons, some in
response to changing needs, reassessment of roles, and emerging
organizational or individual work/life priorities. There have been a myriad
of factors that have led to these planned departures but, taken together,
we know they can be, at the minimum, be perceived as concerning and even
related.
On behalf of the Board, I want to reassure you and the communities that the
Transition Team is working closely with department and team leaders to
ensure that these departures will not distract from our mission and our
support of the movement. There is strong interim leadership in place to
provide continuity and support to staff, and address any questions or
concerns they may have, including in the affected teams. And the Board is
very actively engaged with Foundation leadership, and will continue to be
both available and participative, as we purposefully move toward filling
the Foundation’s leadership roles, starting with the CEO/ED.
Members of the Board are also meeting this month with full Foundation staff
to provide continuity and support to the entire team, in addition to many
of us having made ourselves fully available to the Foundation’s leaders,
realizing this is a transition period for all.
The Wikimedia Foundation today is very different from the one 10 years ago
or even two years ago, but it is still laser focused on moving our mission
forward with the help of movement leaders such as yourself. We are
optimistic about emerging from this time, with the Foundation
well-positioned to support the growth of the movement and achieve the goals
we set out with communities in our movement strategy process.
Best,
Raju
--
Raju Narisetti
Email: rnarisetti(a)wikimedia.org
Home Time Zone: EST
My working day may not be your working day. Please don’t feel obliged to
reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.
*Have you considered supporting Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a non-profit website which provides free, open,
reliable knowledge to hundreds of millions of people around the world
every single day.
* https://donate.wikimedia.org <https://donate.wikimedia.org>
Dear all,
We hope this email finds you well and safe. The COVID 19 situation
continues to affect many of us across the globe and our thoughts are with
everyone affected. We are also aware that there are several processes
currently in progress that demand volunteer time and we do not want to add
more work to anyone's plate.
We do want to draw your attention to our new Regional Committees for Grants
though as they are an opportunity for you to have an active say in the
future of our Movement!
📣 So today, we invite you to join our new Regional Committees for Grants!
📣
We encourage Wikimedians and Free Knowledge advocates to be part of the new
Regional Committees that the WMF Community Resources team is setting up as
part of the grants strategy relaunch [1]. You will be a key strategic
thought partner to help understand the complexities of any region, provide
knowledge and expertise to applicants, to support successful movement
activities, and make funding decisions for grant applications in the region.
👉Find out more on meta [2].
Regional Committees will be established for the following regions:
- Middle East and Africa
- SAARC [3] region (Includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka)
- East, Southeast Asia, and Pacific (ESEAP) region
- Latin America (LATAM) and The Caribbean
- United States and Canada
- Northern and Western Europe
- Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
👉All details about the Committees and how to apply can be found on meta
[4]. Applications have to be submitted by *June 4, 2021*!
If you have any questions or comments, please use the meta discussion page
[5].
Please do share this announcement widely with your Network.
Best wishes,
Julia on behalf of the Community Resources Team
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[3] https://www.saarc-sec.org/index.php/about-saarc/about-saarc
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Relaunc…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Resources/Grants_Strategy_Re…
--
*Julia Brungs*
Senior Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Dear all,
My intent is contributing to drafting a text of the Movement Charter which will be ratified by the communities, the affiliates, and the WMF. IMHO this will have to be an iterative process of community consultations. The committee will produce texts and gather feedback from the communities - and other stakeholders - in multiple rounds. This will be an open consultative process, based on consent decision making. In the feedback rounds anyone is allowed to raise objections against parts of the text. For the Charter to be ratified in the end, the drafting committee will have to have resolved any blocking objections, before asking anyone to ratify the text. A succesfull committee will gather feedback frequently, and resolve issues swiftly.
To come up with a workable first draft it would be convenient to have "the whole system in the room", to be inclusive of the perspectives of all major types of stakeholders involved. The composition of the committee, and the method of selection of committee members should be without prejudice for the composition of the Global Council, and the method of selection of Global Council members. The major types of stakeholders within the Wikimedia Movement are IMHO volunteer contributors to online content project wikis (aka editors, users, or community members), members of small affiliates, members of large affiliates, board members of affiliates, staff of affiliates, board members of the Wikimedia Foundation, and staff of the WMF.
The method of selection of Movement Charter Drafting Committee members will be different for each group of stakeholders, of which there are three: the WMF, the affiliates, and the community. IMHO I do belief the WMF board and staff to be well capable through their internal decision making processes to appoint to the Committee one or two board members, and a couple of staff. Nobody outside WMF has any business in trying to influence or determine who the WMF will appoint from their ranks. IMHO I do belief the affiliates are well capable of through their method of liking, select, elect, or appoint to the Committee some affiliate members, some affiliate board members and some affiliate staff. Nobody outside the affiliates has any business in trying to influence or determine who from the affiliates will be on the Committee.
So, what about the community members on the Community. IMHO neither the WMF nor the affiliates should even think of trying to influence which community members will be on the Committee. How will the community make such a movement wide decision? That is a problem to be solved by the ratified Movement Charter, which we are about to create.
Lacking such a defined process to select community members to the committee, there are IMHO two options (which have been discussed many times):
1 Hold elections
2 Appointments
And I do assume both options to be based on self-nomination.
The objection to 1 is mainly that it takes too much time. This whole discussion is going around in circles for six months, which would have been sufficient time for two rounds of elections. To resolve this objection, people who dislike elections propose appointments. Who will appoint? Only recently Pharos proposed the community sourced board members to act as electoral college for the community members of the committee. That is, the people who are going to be elected in the upcoming elections. That will necessarily take more time than starting an elections for the community members to the Committee right now. However, elections are only necessary if there is anything to choose for the voters, that is (many) more candidates than room in the committee. Another option is to delegate the screening of candidates, and selecting to for example to the members of the Roles and Responsibilities Working Group, or the Election Committee as someone proposed in the Telegram channel. What I would like to see is how the committee matches the diversity matrix and expertise matrix as presented in the Global Conversations on June 12 and 13.
On the weekend of June 26 and 27 there will be another round of Global (and local) Conversations about how to form a committee. A third option is that anyone who would like to be on the committee as community member (and not selected by the affiliates nor the WMF) express their interest publicly, either by replying to this mail, or on meta before June 26, so all present at the Global Conversations in the weekend of June 26 and 27 can screen candidates and raise objections if necessary to the size, or composition of the committee, or raising doubts against individual candidates, or make proposals towards their preferred composition of community members on the committee, or maybe nominate themselves to remedy a problem they see.
In case we can't reach consensus or consent in the weekend of June 26 and 27 who of the community will be on the committee, maybe because there are too many people who have expressed their interest, than a resolution could be to hold elections, starting with a call for candidates through a central banner.
In case you don't want to express your interest - assuming you don't want to be on the committee and you do want to participate in the Global Conversations on June 26 and 27, please start participating in the discussion now, by replying to this mail, state your intent for participating in the Global Conversation, and what you do want to achieve, or accomplish in this process. If you do participate to block the creation of a Movement Charter, please state your objections against a Movement Charter. If you do participate to block the creation of a Global Council, please state your objections against a Global Council. If you do participate out of fear this process will intrude the autonomy of local community of the content project wikis, please state so, and come up with ways to resolve this issue, or, what should in your opinion be explicitly in the Movement Charter to reduce this fear.
The stakes are high, and there are multiple competing interest in the movement, while we all do serve the same mission. Given this complexity I do expect robust (but amical) debate within the committee, and I will not exclude harsh criticism - or outright rejection - from multiple community members to whatever text the committee produces as their first draft. To deal with this, we need a committee consisting of members willing to deal with this complexity, and willing to process, and digest any feedback given by the community, with an eye on resolving objections raised.
Regards,
Ad Huikeshoven
About me: Economist - graduated in 1992 from University Maastricht, civil servant, certified Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSP I), certified Prince2 Foundation projectmanagement, experience in Theory U and hosting u.lab, trained facilitator, trained in Art of Hosting, Wikipedian since 2005, former Audit Committee member, former board member of Wikimedia Nederland, presenter of Virtual Friendly Space Policy at Wikimania Hong Kong 2013, former election facilitator of the 2019 Affiliate Selected Board Seats process (I drafted the initial version of the Resolution 2019, amending the previous Resolution), facilitator of the discussion tools consultation 2019 at the Dutch Wikipedia, member of UCoC enforcement drafting committee of Wikimedia Nederland, father of two kids - one in university, one about to start. My native tongue is Dutch. Fortynine languages have globally more native speakers than Dutch.
Also posted on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Movement_Charter_Drafting_…
Dear Wikimedians,
Persian Wikipedia has reached a new level in their arbitrary and nonesense
adminship. They have blocked me for placing a Palestinian flag on my
userpage (of course they have already removed it from my userpage and you
need to see a previous revision of my userpage).
https://fa.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%DA%A9%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%B1…
Another user has nominated the file for deletion on Commons!
I am admin on Commons myself and I'm fed up with how fawiki is managed.
They block users for the most friviolous reasons.
What does this mean?
Yours faithfully,
User:4nn1l2
Dear Lisa, Megan and all,
The current issue of the Signpost contains an interview about my recent
Daily Dot article on WMF fundraising.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
The piece has sparked quite substantial discussion, and there is a pretty
good consensus on the fundraising issue in the comments. Here are
representative excerpts of what people have said:
"I agree with Smallbones that one should raise funds before the situation
becomes dire, but they should be raised *honestly*. Portraying the
situation as dire when it isn't is dishonest and unethical."
"I also feel that the WMF is too pushy with its donation advertising, and I
am far from the only OTRS (VRT) agent who hates December because of some
distinctly distressing emails we get along these lines. I have also talked
to a number of WMF staffers on the topic, though I suspect they'd struggle
to go on the record on the issue, who share the concerns."
"'The WMF is asking [readers in India] for about US $2.00' - the median per
capita annual income in India is $616."
"If I thought it had any chance of passing, I would start an RfC on the
English Wikipedia to ban all fundraising banners"
"I was certaily under the impression that WP was under financial duress
because of the banners."
"I do think the daily dot article raises some fair questions; namely, *why* is
the WMF doing all of this?"
"I find Andreas's point about the (unwarranted) urgency implied by the
language of fundraising banners very compelling (though I think the US
politics tangent is one that's liable to create more heat than light).
Another turn of phrase that stuck out to me in a recent banner was "Show
the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work
matters." (example banner
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fundraising-Banner-India-2020.jpg>). As
one of those volunteers who has spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours
editing Wikipedia, I was disappointed that WMF would presume to speak for
me in this way."
"I have always found the fundraising banners annoying at best and downright
pandering and hypocritical at worst."
"It is very sad that even in 2020s there are not many promising open
knowledge and free content projects. So please stop criticizing them for
raising funds, rather make them focus on solving issues of Wikimedia
projects."
"I've long believed that were the WMF to fire half its staff, the average
volunteer to any project -- the people who contribute content, not those
who regularly interact with the Foundation -- would not notice any
difference. [...] I believe it is a significant cause for resentment
towards Foundation fundraising. (The aggressive fundraising tactics is, of
course, another cause.)"
A contributor to the discussion has pinged you and asked for your comment:
@Lgruwell-WMF <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lgruwell-WMF> and
MeganHernandez
(WMF) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MeganHernandez_(WMF)>: - it's not
quite obvious who the fundraising leads are, so please feel free to ping
someone who may be more appropriate. If you've got 15 minutes, could you
have a read of the interview
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum>,
and then the discussions/concerns above. As you can see, while many of us
don't agree with everything claimed by Kolbe, concerns about the aggressive
tone, as well as claims about editors, are common. Your thoughts and
participation would be appreciated
I'm not sure how often you log into Wikipedia, so I thought I would notify
you here.
Your participation in the discussion would be welcome.
Andreas
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/
