Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate
and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least
discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board,
and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step
away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have
him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog <jytdog(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the
board) in her "Why we
changed
<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_…
"
message, identified falling page
views (creating a threat of falling
donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an
"existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF
Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page,
too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was
surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up
causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating
what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and
all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas
actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan
wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside
interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests
conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into
the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That
seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole <ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your
questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our
knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of
yearly
budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less frequently,
that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no expert
on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
>Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
> >all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and,
> >consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
>
> Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate
and
> reliable. We already see that Google has a
"report a correction"
feature
> for some of its services. It's in both
Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
> interest for the underlying data source to
be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose.
Shouldn't we be
applauding
> Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
>
> As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put
> organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The Wikimedia
> Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
> issues, both in its executive team and in
its board of trustees.
>
> What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of
> yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or
> smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
>
> Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's
> page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers
> (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed that
> this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect
> of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which are
> received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site
> advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor
> reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
> recurring donations are a means of providing
accountability for the
> entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors
no
longer
trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this
money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
> frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
> then off-loading some of our hosting costs
to Google, Facebook, and
> others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we
mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the
content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
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