I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe