Hi Heather,
Thanks for commenting.
The theme of "facts matter" seems good to me, and I generally like Victor's video. However, the way that this report comes across to me is that it advocates for certain points of view on issues which, however important they may be (I happen to think global warming is a very important issue), are not integral to Wikipedia's mission. Also, I found it strange that the "front page" of the report has a "Facts matter" section that leads off with information about refugees and the Earth's temperature trends. On the whole, that section comes across to me as being off-message. I would encourage revising the report so that it's more consistent with the themes and tone of Victor's video.
Social impact in the form of informing public dialogue is a valuable attribute to Wikipedia, and I would encourage a more neutral approach to articulating that attribute as has been discussed in this thread. It's possible to highlight social impact while remaining compatible with NPOV and staying focused on mission.
Thanks for engaging here.
Pine
Pine
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Heather Walls hwalls@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello,
This has become an interesting and important conversation. First, many thanks to everyone as they bring their intellect, experience, and thoughtfulness to this topic. And thanks to Zack for many months of work organizing a complex project, with a theme that became increasingly sensitive due to external public discourse, and especially for making a tremendous and honest effort to hear feedback and to respond quickly here. I’d also like to thank all the people who helped read, write, edit, and consider this report.
We chose this theme in October, and have used it successfully in messaging since then. It was part of the December English-language fundraising campaign, in emails and banners to donors, and received very positive response. It was the theme of a video, shared in December,[1] that became a featured video on Commons.[2] We also shared our work and development process on this report publicly when we published the Communications department’s check-in slides covering the 2nd fiscal quarter (Sep - Dec 2016).[3]
Social impact is a very important part of Wikimedia that is hard to understand from the outside, but that impact is one of the things that makes your work so meaningful, and helps us find contributors and partners around the world. As Zack mentioned, our annual reports are created for an audience that includes ongoing financial contributors and people new to us. They are intended to be timely and relevant to the interests of people who are not as deeply involved in Wikimedia as the rest of us. They tell the story of what Wikimedians have achieved in the context of the world, and are related to topics in international conversations. Some of those stories are efforts supported by the Foundation, and many are celebrations of the importance and timeliness of independent work of members of the movement. Wikimedia is rich and complex, and we revise our theme each year to share new facets. The Foundation has been making these since 2008.[4]
Yes, our report was meant to bring up relevant topics for a global audience, and to tie important facts to the work of Wikimedians. It was meant to focus on the range of things people can learn from Wikipedia, from the historical to the social to the controversial. But it was not a response to anything that occurred in recent weeks, or in any one country. We debated the relationship between the theme and public discourse as that discourse changed, but decided that Wikimedia’s relationship with facts hadn’t changed. The report is not perfect, and many people have pointed out excellent alternative directions we might have taken. We’re listening, and we will learn from your suggestions and ideas in our continuing work.
I am proud of the intentions, hard work, experience, and many difficult decisions my colleagues on the Communications team and our collaborators across the Foundation and community make every day. I hope the abridged timeline of events, below, will help make some our process more visible to you as well.
-Heather
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/27/not-post-fact-world/ [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_-_ FactsMatter2016.webm [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File% 3AWikimedia_Foundation_Communications_Q2_(Oct-Dec_ 2016)_-_Jan_2017_quarterly_check-in.pdf&page=13 [4] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
*Our fact criteria:* Global, relevant to general readers and to 2016, verifiable, related to the work of Wikimedians, surprising or interesting
*2016* 13 Oct: Meeting where “Facts Matter” was established, our deadline for a full draft was December 15 28 Oct: First design review of website mockups. 7 Nov: Design team meeting, notes include:
- “Reaffirm facts matter”
- “Reacting to present moment is antithetical to the WMF movement”
- “We care just as much about facts as we did a year ago, 10 years ago,
and will care in five years”
14 Dec: Facts final, content drafted 27 Dec: Facts matter video posted
*2017* 6 Jan: Site and content review with other departments (locked to major changes) 17 Jan: Print layout of all content 27 Jan: Communications quarterly review[3] posted Feb 7 1 Mar: Sharing the Facts Matter site
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
Risker has outlined many of the issues with the report much better than I would have been able to. While I'm happy to hear there will be some reordering and that one of the images will be replaced, the report still has many very serious problems.
How can we fix this? I can think of a few options:
- The report could be made open to edits from the community. (I was
hopeful
when the report was posted on Meta that it would be editable, but it was apparently posted primarily for translation purposes and is not
editable.)
Over the course of a few weeks much of the content could be rewritten to
be
close enough to neutral.
- We could continue discussing specific problems in tone and focus,
errors,
and general issues with the report here on this mailing list or on Meta while the relevant people implement fixes and rewrites (hopefully in a transparent manner), including the large content changes/replacements required.
- The entire "Consider the facts" section could be removed/replaced. The
rest of the report probably could stand on its own, but that may not be ideal. I don't know whether rewriting it from scratch is doable, or
whether
there may be relevant time constraints here.
I'd like to reiterate the seriousness of displaying non-Wikimedia-related political advocacy over Wikimedia projects. Many editors work very hard
at
removing any biases in articles. To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
-- Yair Rand
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in
this
discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia
mission,
vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report
it
reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented
people
who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs
unrelated
to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the
mission
and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of
the
"facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even
necessary,
part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a
single
page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE,
which
we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF
is
so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about
its
own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia,
when
you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable
refugee
children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing
iceberg
images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic)
harmful
chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to
the
prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't
be
sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate
change.
Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at
icebergs;
it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a
dying
animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year
on
record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a
few
hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're
talking
about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even
a
factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps
to
reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not
what's
in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the
scientific
consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and
dietary
habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could
cause
stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by
the
pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And
even
as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is
going
to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis
is
caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of
the
most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of
advanced
privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of
the
Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of
rangeblocks
on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of
all
California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good
example
of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain
why
the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that
it
was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature,
and
these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of
this
particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories
that
turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which
doesn't
support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point
out
the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather
than
giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And
yes,
the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized,
too.
Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was
that
it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come
to
be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps
editors
from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization,
but
it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if
not
physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is
entirely
tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of
photos.)
Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the
Annual
report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos
come
from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the
first
paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something
more
historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article,
might
have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights
some
really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF.
Entirely
on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It
does
not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to
include
when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why
there's
a
link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the
text.
But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that
was
actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the
written
message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have
illustrated
this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a
bunch
of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF
could
have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words
the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is
part
of
the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few
facts
before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news.
(Incidentally,
the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as
well
there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work
by
the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some
political
advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets
on
the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK"
fact
with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and
the
WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized
facts
skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to
WMF
activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and
its
projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were
actually
mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of
other
peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on
the
lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with
our
mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of
these
issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened
in
just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid
out
back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically
sensitive
issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into
account
that
97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate
_change>
Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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