As far as I am concerned, what was wrong with this situation wasn't that the Wikimedia Foundation paid a trained academic to edit Wikipedia. I venture that most donors and members of the general public wouldn't have a problem with that at all.
What was wrong?
1. The obvious appearance of impropriety given that the Stanton Foundation is probably the Foundation's single biggest donor, and the administrator of the Stanton Foundation's funds is married to the director of the Belfer Center (who according to the center's website has now taken on the former Wikipedian in Residence as a staff assistant). Whether this was the case or not, it *looks* like the WMF was simply used so that Mrs Harris could get Mr Harris another member of staff who would not show up on the Center's payroll.
2. The fact that the WMF appears to have departed from usual procedures (such as locating this Wikipedian in Residence in Fundraising, allowing the Belfer Center to write the job description, etc.) to please its biggest donor.
3. The fact that in his reports to the WMF the Wikipedian in Residence on more than one occasion "billed" three hours of research and *six hours* of drafting in MS Word for a 150-word insertion in a Wikipedia article that another Wikipedian could have drafted in a fraction of an hour, and that this apparently was not questioned.
4. The fact that the edits the Wikipedian in Residence made included conflict-of-interest and copyright violations, according to multiple Wikipedians.
These, to me, are the real problems. I have no problem *at all* with the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation paid an academically qualified expert to make edits to Wikipedia. In fact, I find it disheartening that the Foundation now feels it has to state that nothing like this will ever happen again. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Let's for a moment look at the practicality of the idea that a Wikipedian in Residence should not personally edit Wikipedia. If Graham Allison had physically made the edits that Tim Sandole made, would this have made any material difference whatsoever to the situation?
Clearly, it would not.
Saying that a Wikipedian in Residence will not physically click Edit, but will merely instruct experts at his institution in how to make and source edits (and perhaps even draft them for them in MS Word ...) is a very thin smokescreen.
The material question is not whether a Wikipedian in Residence will physically edit. The question is whether the edits resulting from any WiR placement will be in line with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including neutral point of view, conflict of interest, copyright, plagiarism, verifiability, and so on, and whether they will improve project content - making it more accurate, more readable, more up to date.
What is required here? It's that whichever person ultimately performs the edits receive proper training in Wikipedia policies, guidelines, editing methods, etc., so that their subject matter expertise can be leveraged to optimum effect. Standardised training courses to impart that Wikipedia-specific knowledge to subject matter experts are an area the Foundation could profitably invest in.
Saying that Wikipedians in Residence won't edit doesn't address that. It merely absolves the Foundation from responsibility - a purely cosmetic exercise if the quantity and quality of the resulting edits is the same as it was in this case.
What counts for the reading and donating public is the quality of the edits that result from a WiR placement, not who makes those edits. The Foundation should not shirk, but embrace its responsibility to use donated funds to optimum effect.
Andreas
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 04/01/2014 09:34 AM, Fæ wrote:
I am sure than the viewpoint is different for employees within the WMF like yourself, compared to unpaid volunteers outside, like me. This may be part of the reason we see this governance failure in a different light.
That's actually amusingly wrong, though I can see why you'd think that. I've been an "unpaid volunteer outside" for very many years before I've been "within"; and my job at the foundation is only technical and community-facing.
I have *zero* to do with Governance, no stake in that project, and I don't even actually interact with any of the involved departments. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comments on this thread would have been exactly the same 18 months ago.
The evidence of this case, as summarized in Sue's own published words, shows that there were multiple attempts to raise polite inquiry. These were consistently overlooked or ignored over an extremely long period.
Indeed. That was mostly a failure of oversight -- possibly combined with unjustified optimism. You know what they say: hindsight is 20/20. I still see no reason to believe that - given the same timing - a deliberate question would not have been just as effective as the less optimal way this matter was raised.
It is *much* easier to get the stakeholders to collaborate when they don't have to go on the defensive.
-- Marc
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