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<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
Hi everyone,
I’ve started my ninth official month as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Based on feedback from this list and elsewhere, I am trying to proactively
communicate every few months on my priorities and what I continue to learn.
I regularly return to the five ‘puzzles’
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…>
I identified in my original letter to you. For me, these continue to pose
big questions about our role in the world and our ways of working with each
other. I’ve mentioned that one highlight of the year so far has been
bringing colleagues together – volunteers, editors, affiliates, Foundation
staff, board members – to reconnect at a human level. Many of you have
shared with me the need for more spaces that can help us build (and
rebuild) relationships and trust.
As more communities return to in-person events, I have benefitted from
spending time with volunteers at WikiCon Brasil and at the Wikimania meetup
hosted in Cape Town. I look forward to participating in-person and
virtually at many more regional gatherings in the months ahead.
I am writing today to provide you with an update on the three priorities I
identified in January.
Priority 1: Strategy and Planning
My first priority remains focused on strategy and planning. In June, we
shared the successful adoption of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Annual Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2022-2023>.
It is now anchored in the strategic direction of our movement – knowledge
equity and knowledge as a service – and it identifies the Foundation’s
strengthened focus on regions and on projects. This plan benefited from the
contributions and feedback of hundreds of volunteers who provided input
on-wiki and through other multilingual channels of communication. We’ll
share updates on progress before the end of the calendar year on the Annual
Plan meta page and in other forums. Our intention is to continue asking for
guidance and input from volunteers, affiliates, and communities.
I mentioned in my April message that the Wikimedia Foundation has grown
very rapidly over the past 3 years as part of its medium term plan – increasing
its budget by more than 30% in the past year with the addition of more than
200 new people since 2020. This growth will not continue as we stabilize
and make sure that new resources are delivering maximum impact for our
mission. The Foundation’s approved budget represents a 17% increase, most
of this is inflationary and other year-on-year costs. Funding to other
movement entities (individual and affiliate) grew by 24% percent.
While the annual plan is an important start, it does not address all of the
significant strategic issues facing Wikimedia – none of which can be solved
in a single year. Within the framework of our movement strategy and
emerging charter, I plan to continue partnering with Foundation
stakeholders and communities in co-planning approaches to tackle strategic
issues that an annual plan cannot fully address. The Board of Trustees will
help kick this off with strategic planning engagements at the board’s
upcoming meeting in Berlin. This will be followed by important
conversations about strategy implementation at the Wikimedia Summit
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Summit_2022> (returning for the
first time since 2019).
Priority 2: Leadership
I highlighted in January that CEO transitions are disruptive for most
organisations and change often continues after a new leader has arrived. I
have been trying to build a broader leadership team at the Wikimedia
Foundation as I focus on successfully onboarding new hires, investing more
in internal talent management, undertaking succession planning for key
roles, and providing stronger communications support for the Foundation’s
senior team.
Product/Technology
My top priority when I joined was to actively step in and support the
Foundation’s product and technology teams while we recruited executive
leadership of these mission critical functions with a new Chief Product and
Technology Officer. This goal has been achieved
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2022/06/13/wikimedia-foundation-welcom…>
as Selena Deckelmann is now officially on board at the Wikimedia Foundation
after a successful nine-year career at Mozilla, most recently as the head
of Firefox. She is reaching out to learn from our technical contributors
and volunteers, and can be contacted directly at sdeckelmann(a)wikimedia.org.
Advancement
Having assessed the Wikimedia Foundation’s leadership structure, I have
decided not to create or resurrect any additional C-level roles at this
time. Instead, we will add more organization-wide responsibilities to
existing leadership roles in order to increase accountability, improve
coordination, and reduce silos. I am pleased to share that Lisa Gruwell (
lgruwell(a)wikimedia.org) will assume additional responsibilities as a Deputy
to the CEO while also remaining the Chief Advancement Officer. I believe
this will provide the Foundation with further leadership stability as well
as provide important institutional memory given Lisa’s 12+ years of
Wikimedia experience.
In that time, Lisa has delivered an unparalleled track record of results
throughout every chapter of the Foundation’s history since its inception.
She has supported communities around the globe and engaged allies in
embracing the vision of Wikimedia. Lisa is always looking to the future and
asking how we can deepen the impact of our work. She often channels the
voices of our contributors, readers and donors – I have seen firsthand how
deeply Lisa cares about this mission and the people who make it possible
from those at the Foundation, in our movement, and around the world.
Legal
Working closely with General Counsel Amanda Keton, we recently
appointed Stephen
LaPorte (slaporte(a)wikimedia.org) as Deputy General Counsel. This is a key
role that the Foundation’s legal team has had for several years. In
addition to leading the Legal Affairs and Public Policy teams for the last
decade, Stephen has built a track record of effective partnership with
communities to support our technical aspirations, while seeing around the
corners of the policy landscape to protect and expand free knowledge. We
will all benefit from Stephen’s experience and wisdom in this role.
Communications
The Foundation’s communications department is led by Vice President Anusha
Alikhan (aalikhan(a)wikimedia.org) to support strategic efforts for external,
movement, and Foundation audiences. Anusha joined Wikimedia in 2019 from
the Knight Foundation and has prior experience as a freelance journalist,
editor and lawyer. Her leadership of the communications team recognizes
Anusha’s capabilities as a consummate communications professional, her
embodiment of Wikimedia’s values, and her unwavering commitment to equity
and inclusion.
Finance & Administration
Jaime Villagomez (jvillagomez(a)wikimedia.org) remains our Chief Financial
Officer, very capably overseeing the Foundation’s finance and
administration teams to steward our finances, strengthen the operational
infrastructure of our movement, and enable the Foundation to better meet
its strategic objectives.
Talent & Culture
Alongside an experienced team of leaders, I am temporarily heading up our
Talent & Culture department in order to learn more about what is needed at
this time – I plan to make further leadership decisions by the end of the
year.
Chief of Staff
Finally, I have redefined the Chief of Staff role to support the broader
organization and movement, not only the CEO. Communicating regularly and
effectively, not just to relay information but to create shared
understanding across diverse stakeholders, is one of the most important
capabilities we need at the Foundation, and this role is intended to help
us all. Nadee Gunasena (ngunasena(a)wikimedia.org) recently became Chief of
Staff after four years of executive communications support at the Wikimedia
Foundation. Many of you may already know Nadee as someone who stands ready
to help affiliates and community members with communications and other
needs.
Priority 3: Values and Culture
Strategy, planning and leadership are necessary ingredients for success. My
experience has taught me that values and culture often matter more. I have
been on a journey seeking to understand how the Wikimedia Foundation’s
organizational values
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Values> are lived in
practice. And how values can clarify what others should expect of us. This
feels like an important question now, especially given how much has changed
at the Foundation since these were first penned in 2016. We are beginning
those conversations between now and December following input from employee
groups, our Board of Trustees, as well as data from a recent all-staff
survey. I am always interested to hear from others who also think about
values and how they shape organizational culture and performance.
I haven’t stopped asking for time to keep learning from all of you - thank
you to those who have reached out for more conversations and to share
perspectives. I can always be reached directly at miskander(a)wikimedia.org.
Maryana
Maryana Iskander
Wikimedia Foundation CEO
Hello everyone,
Wikimedia is participating in the winter edition of this year's Outreachy <
https://www.outreachy.org/> [1] (December 2022–March 2023)! The deadline to
submit projects on the Outreachy website is September 30th, 2022. We are
currently working on a list of interesting project ideas. If you have some
ideas for coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation,
outreach, research) projects, share them here: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T313361> [2].
*About the Outreachy program*
Outreachy offers three-month internships to work remotely in Free and Open
Source Software (FOSS), coding, and non-coding projects with experienced
mentors. These internships run twice a year–from May to August and December
to March. Interns are paid a stipend of USD 7000 for the three months of
work. Interns often find employment after their internship with Outreachy
sponsors or jobs that use the skills they learned during their internship.
This program is open to both students and non-students. Outreachy expressly
invites the following people to apply:
* Women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people.
* Anyone who faces under-representation, systematic bias, or discrimination
in the technology industry in their country of residence.
* Residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are
Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American/American Indian,
Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.
See a blog post highlighting the experiences and outcomes of interns who
participated in a previous round of Outreachy with Wikimedia <
https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2021/06/02/outreachy-round-21-experiences-an…>
[3]
*Tips for mentors for proposing projects*
* Follow this task description template when you propose a project in
Phabricator: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects> [4]. Add
#Outreachy-Round-25 tag.
* Project should require an experienced developer ~15 days and a newcomer
~3 months to complete.
* Each project should have at least two mentors, with one of them holding a
technical background.
* Ideally, the project has no tight deadlines, a moderate learning curve,
and fewer dependencies on Wikimedia's core infrastructure. Projects
addressing the needs of a language community are most welcome.
* If you don't have an idea in mind and would like to pick one from an
existing list, check out these projects: <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/> [4]
* To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of mentors, visit our
resources on MediaWiki.org: <
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors> [5].
We look forward to your participation!
Cheers,
Srishti
[1] https://www.outreachy.org/
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T313361
[3]
https://techblog.wikimedia.org/2021/06/02/outreachy-round-21-experiences-an…
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/outreach-programs-projects/
[5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreachy/Mentors
*Srishti Sethi*
Senior Developer Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
A poll at the English Wikipedia’s “Village Pump” – one of the prime meeting
places for the volunteer editors who write and curate Wikipedia – has
overwhelmingly concluded that Wikimedia Foundation fundraising emails due
to be sent to donors shortly are unethical and misleading. It is the first
time there has been a structured community poll to review the Foundation’s
fundraising emails ahead of a major fundraising campaign.
The “Village Pump” thread, advertised on the community’s “Centralized
discussion” noticeboard for the past three weeks, reviews three sample
emails the Wikimedia Foundation has made available on its Meta-Wiki
website. They are very similar to emails used in previous campaigns,
including the recent campaign in India.[1]
These emails ask past donors for more money to keep Wikipedia online, to
keep Wikipedia ad-free and subscription-free, and to keep Wikipedia
independent.
In fact, however, the Wikimedia Foundation is richer than ever. Its assets
and reserves (including an Endowment with the Tides Foundation now holding
well over $100 million) have increased fivefold since 2015, and stood at an
estimated $400 million at the end of March 2022.
For comparison, in 2007, the year Wikipedia first became a top-ten website
serving the world, the Foundation reported total annual expenses of $2
million.[2]
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, this latest set of fundraising
emails will be sent out to past Wikimedia donors in Australia, Canada,
Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US from September 6 to November 20,
2022. Email campaigns account for about a third of Wikimedia revenue.
A WMF Community Relations Specialist briefly contributed to the “Village
Pump” discussion two weeks ago (to confirm that the licence information for
one of the pictures used in the emails would be corrected). Other than
that, there has been no comment from the Foundation on the poll to date.
The RfC can be viewed here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28propos…
Below are some representative quotes from the poll.
40 respondents expressed their objection to the use of these emails in
terms like the following:
“These manipulative emails make us little different than an evil
corporation. We should do everything in our power to change this.”
“Deeply misleading.”
“Misleading and unethical.”
“Misleading, and I'm choosing a very mild word here. …”
“… These recurring emails with their appearance of being reluctantly
written in a crisis degrade the benevolence which is the core of the
project. …”
“The percentagewise breakdown is galling, because the categories aren't
even distinct. …”
“These fundraising messages are (nearly) unrelated to reality. …”
“… the usual distortions and half-truths …”
“… untrue, and possibly a deliberate and fraudulent lie. …”
“… at best misleading, and that's being generous.”
“The language used is highly misleading. That something is effective does
not make that something ethical.”
“The %s are incredibly misleading. …”
“The percentages are misleading and inspecific, for one. …”
“… I suspect that messages like these are, indeed, effective. If I stuck a
gun in someone's face, that would probably also be a very effective way of
getting them to give me money. The question in both cases, however, is
whether doing so is *ethical*. These messages in the most charitable
reading distort the truth, and in a more realistic one flat out lie. …”
“… What I do object to is when an oganisation whose product is based on
claims of accuracy, honesty, and neutrality, resorts to a fundraising
campaign based on lies and deception. …”
“It is really important that a charity's marketing be in accord with the
core values of that charity and a serious risk if they undermine them. Our
core values are in providing factual information. …”
“… too disappointing to put into words really.”
“… the revelation that several people end up contributing money they can't
afford because of the pressing tone of these emails is genuinely horrifying
to me.”
“… misleading, vague, emotionally pressing statements that lead people to
part with their money under circumstances that are not honest.”
“… Running a scaremongering campaign risks that people will give money to
the WMF and then not give money to causes that are much more in need of
money … It is disgusting to see a charity sitting on fat stacks of cash
that still tries to get a bigger slice of the donation pie.”
“These spams are just toxic and horrible. …”
“… deceptive to the point of dishonesty … inappropriate pressure put on
previous donors to give more money.”
“The Wikimedia Foundation is at odds with the ethics and values of the
Wikimedia community.”
Three respondents endorsed the emails. They said,
“… I think this is fine. There are a few fundraising ‘tactics’ used but
nothing remotely unethical. …”
“When you hire someone to raise funds and they succeed in raising funds,
this is generally seen as a good thing, except on Wikipedia for some
reason.”
“I spent most of my working life in not-for-profit organisations and, if
you want income to achieve your mission, then you need to employ
experienced marketeers and fund raisers and let them do their job using
their expertise. …”
All three of these respondents have past or present associations with
Wikimedia affiliates wholly or partly funded by the Wikimedia Foundation,
and/or have taken Wikimedia-funded employment in the past. None of them
mentioned the fact.
Another six respondents placed themselves in a neutral or, more aptly
named, “Mixed” category, differentiating between parts of the emails they
thought were fine, and others to which they objected. Quotes:
“The $ breakdown made me raise an eyebrow, but I think that's more about
the debate over allocation of funds than the wording of these emails, so
I'm ambivalent.”
“I would be quite happy if email 3 were used, and emails 1 and 2 were
replaced with a similar style (ie, without misleading content, unnecessary
alarmism, blatantly false statements about spending, etc). I hope this is
achievable.”
“The WMF won't suddenly stop asking for donations and that means being
persuasive during fundraising. Not bad in itself. However, it is a problem
to state erroneous claims that Wikipedia may go offline, or not saying that
WMF is not volunteer-run, etc. A little honesty is needed.”
Is the Wikimedia Foundation planning to make any changes to the emails in
light of the community feedback received?
Best,
Andreas
[1] For more details, including source links and data on the Wikimedia
Foundation’s current financial status, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-06-26/Speci…
[2]
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_2007_fs…