Hi Micru,
On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 7:36 AM, David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Pine,
It is nice of you that you thought about including these topics in the WMF
strategy process, which I assume it is an ongoing process and not a one-off
event. However as the 2017 cycle ended, I am unable to find the way to
incorporate new ideas into the process. I would have expected to find a
discussion page where new input can be taken into consideration, but it
might not be the case.
This sounds like another good question for Nicole.
I consider that the importance of admin decline in
Wikipedias is really
high, and at the same time I understand why you or anybody else would not
like to do some tasks as volunteer. For this reason, while I do not like
the idea of employees doing project activities, I feel that by creating a
scheme where volunteers become empowered/liberated from work through direct
donations could be part of a practical way of addressing the issue. I'm
very sensitive to potential pitfalls and for this reason I consider that
the feedback given by Yaroslav is extremely important, and that any
donation to volunteers should happen only if they are committed to a
personal transformation, that involves developing the capacity for
listening, humility, and other values important for the project. I think
this is only part of the story so far, and at this point the only thing I
can do in my capacity as volunteer is to steward the conversation, and
bring it to an increasing number of people as the understanding on this
topic increases.
Thank you for your interest in this issue. I'll make a few further points.
* There are a number of people who are working on facilitating and
improving the experience for new editors. There are existing projects like
the English Wikipedia Teahouse and various help channels. During the
2018-2019 fiscal year, my understanding is that WMF intends to reconstitute
the "Growth Team" to attempt to improve the experience of new editors. Mark
Miller is the project manager for this, and I am pinging him here in case
he would like to comment. Meanwhile, I am working on the project that I
previously called LearnWiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_video_to_introduce_Wikimedia>,
which I plan to re-brand later this year for trademark reasons (eventually
I will publish a new name), and in my continuation of the project I am
making modifications to the project's original design. I hope that both
Mark and I will be able to demonstrate benefits from our work in 2018-2019.
* I am very interested in non-WMF funding for affiliate and community
projects. As you probably have noticed, I can be outspoken when I have
concerns about WMF, and I am worried that if I become financially dependent
on WMF then I would be much less willing to express my views out of fear
that WMF would eliminate my funding. So, while I want to work on my project
which I think would support the community's vision and goals, I would
prefer to obtain non-WMF funding. I hope that non-WMF funding could also be
available to other community members and affiliates to work on activities
which WMF has not funded, such as on-wiki administrative work for which
there is significant demand but too little volunteer capacity. I can't make
any promises regarding the availability of non-WMF funding for myself or
others, but I am having off-wiki conversations about these issues and I
hope to be able to report some success within a few years. In the meantime,
I think that we are stuck with the status quo, although I am hopeful that
in the context of the strategy process that WMF will be supportive of the
idea of diversifying funding sources for the community beyond WMF. I am
trying go avoid *competing* with WMF for funding, which I think would be
viewed negatively by WMF, and instead look for outside sources which WMF
has not tapped for funding. I would like to cooperate with WMF where
possible, and so I would prefer that my fundraising efforts be "parallel
with" rather than "in competition with" WMF efforts.
If you or others would be interested, perhaps we could have a
video-conference meeting at some point regarding ideas for non-WMF funding
sources.
Regards,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
These are difficult topics indeed, but only by dealing
with them we can
grow as a movement.
Regards,
Micru
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Micru )
On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 8:10 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Based on the limited information that I have, it
seems to me that there
are already numerous contribtors who are paid to engage in promotional
activity on Wikipedia, whether declared or undeclared, and the community
does not have adequate human resources to patrol and investigate all of
these. I expect that the problem will continue to get worse unless WMF
gets
more energetic about investigating TOS violations
involving undeclared
COI
and WMF becomes predictable about extracting
financial penalties that are
severe enough to deter most of the undeclared COI contributors.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, WMF has been largely passive about the
problem of undeclared COI and has not announced any plans to become more
aggressive.
As nice as it would be if everyone could afford and was willing to work
for free, this is not the case. If it was then we could safely eliminate
the salaries of the entire WMF staff. However, I think that financial
support makes sense for some paid staff to handle activities like network
operations, interface design, legal defense, and responses to safety
problems.
Some types of Wikimedia activities are better suited to volunteer work
than others. I encourage volunteers to avoid burning themselves out;
there
are some activities that I did in the past that I
would not do again as a
volunteer. Better to be an occasional and long-term contributor than to
get
burned out.
I have some ideas about how to pay people to do certain types of work
that, so far, WMF has not funded. Unfortunately these are merely ideas
and
not likely to become reality in the short term.
Perhaps later this year
or
in the next few years I will have specific
proposals with reasonable
chances for sustainable success.
I share the concern that paid participants in the Wikiverse, like staff
of
WMF and affiliates, WMF grantees, and potentially
like the paid
contributors that I have in mind, may become so numerous that they can
drown out the consensus of the volunteers. Unfortunately I do not have
easy
solutions for this issue. We could prohibit all
paid contributors from
participating in RFCs and related decision processes, but we would be
largely relying on people to self-disclose their paid status, which seems
unlikely to be adequate.
Perhaps the issues that we are discussing in this conversation should be
included in the Structures and Systems prong of the WMF strategy
process. I
am pinging Nicole to ask for her input about that
idea. However, keep in
mind that the strategy process is financially sponsored by WMF, and it is
not free of potential conflicts with the interests of WMF.
I wish that I could be more optimistic. These are difficult topics.
Regards,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
null
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