Like SJ I love the imagery and and style. As for the rest, I come here to
get away from politics, so it is a little unsettling to see the WMF get so
overtly political even though part of me revels in the sentiments. I too
worry how unsettling that would be for those who don't share the politics
presented.
I care about visa and migration rules, I cared about the subject before I
wound up with an 18 month delay from my wedding to when I was able to get
my wife a visa to join me in London, but that's irrelevant to this
movement. The concern about the Trump travel ban is a stark contrast to the
level of fuss the WMF has made in the past about the many people who have
been unable to get visas to attend Wikimania. I don't know how many WMF
staff were caught by the travel ban, but several dozen Wikimedians have
been unable to attend Wikimanias in the last few years due to visa
restrictions. It wouldn't surprise me if more Wikimedians were refused
visas to attend Wikimania in DC whilst Obama was President than are known
to have been caught by the Trump ban. If so it either looks like the WMF is
being political, or that it cares more about staff than volunteers; neither
would be a good message. One of the good things about South Africa as the
2018 venue is that it is possibly our most visa friendly venue since Buenos
Aires. If as a movement we are going to make a fuss about travel, I would
like to see that lead by a commitment to at least host every other
Wikimania in countries where almost any Wikimedian could get a visa.
Otherwise, I haven't fact checked the whole thing, but one problem with the
second sentence:
*Across the world, mobile pageviews to our free knowledge websites
increased by 170 million <http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/>.*
This needs a time element, otherwise it comes across as not really in the
same league as most stats about Wikipedia. The previous sentence was about
a whole year's activity and the following one about monthly activity. So it
reads like an annual figure or an increase on an annual figure. But the
stats it links to imply something closer to a weekly figure. From my
knowledge of the stats I suspect it could be an increase in raw downloads
of 170m a day or week or unique downloaders of 170m a week. Any of those
would actually be rather impressive.
Can I suggest that for next year there be a more community based process to
write the next version of this.
WereSpielChequers
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 00:51:04 -0500
From: Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
Message-ID:
<CAPXs8yQdJ+X+QwE3LB2XRuuKerSgMD5OKKhJJn1opLA9yyFj+w@mail.
gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Okay, so I'll say what Sam said, except in stronger language, and with some
additional emphasis.
This is a very obviously liberally biased document -- and I say that as
someone who lives in a country so liberal that it makes Californians look
like they're still back in the early 1960s. Maybe it takes an outsider to
see this.
If you're going to try to play the "facts" game, you have to have your
facts bang on - and you have to admit that there is more than one side to
the story. This "report" reads as though the authors chose their favourite
advocacy positions and then twisted and turned and did some more
contortions to make it look as though it had something to do with the
Wikimedia family of projects. (Seriously. Refugees and global warming don't
have anything to do with the WMF.) It is so biased that most of those
"fact" pages would have to be massively rewritten in order to meet the
neutrality expectations of just about every Wikipedia regardless of the
language.
And that is my biggest concern. It is not neutral by any stretch of the
imagination. And if the WMF can't write neutrally about these topics in its
annual report, there is no reason for the average reader to think that
Wikipedia and other projects will be written neutrally, fairly, based on
references, and including the significant other opinions. This document is
a weapon that can be used against Wikimedia projects by any tinpot dictator
or other suppressive government because it "proves" that WMF projects are
biased. It gives ammunition to the very movements that create "alternative
facts" - it sure doesn't help when the WMF is coming up with a few of its
own.
That does a huge disservice to the hundreds of thousands of editors who
have worked for years to create accurate, neutral, well-referenced
educational material and information. It doesn't do any good to those
editors contributing from countries where participation in an international
web-based information project is already viewed with a jaundiced eye. And
for those editors who don't adhere to the political advocacy positions
being put forward in this "annual report", or simply believe that the WMF
should not be producing political advocacy documents, it may well cause
them to reflect whether or not they want to keep contributing.
I really hope that Craig is wrong, that this can be pulled back and edited
properly, preferably by a bunch of actual Wikipedia editors who know how to
write neutrally on controversial topics. I've volunteered in the Wikimedia
movement for more than a decade at least in part because it was not a
political advocacy organization, so I find this annual report to be very
disturbing.
Risker/Anne