Dear Erik,
Wikimovement veterans recall your invaluable assistance in arranging the 3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation to WMF, so reading your email, we also recall these quotes from the time of the Stanton Foundation fiasco ? [1]
"The Executive Director and Chief Revenue Officer agree that in the future, any grants that are not unrestricted will receive a special high level of scrutiny before being accepted." .. "The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014."
In this context can we have a public comment from Jimmy / WMF on who exactly are the large donors funding WMF's systematic promotion of LGBT "Wiki loves Pride" type themes and Pride edit-a-thons, and can the political biases / preferences of WMF be clearly linked to when soliciting donations from Wikipedia users through banner ads along with links to full disclosure of WMF's institutional sponsors and their quid-pro-quos.
[1] https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_i.... [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070665.html [3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070670.html [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Pride
David
On 3/1/16, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-02-29 19:24 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock chris.sherlock79@gmail.com:
With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how could come to the conclusion that general Internet search was not a core component of the Knowledge Engine.
It's important to remember that this is a $250K grant, with a grant period that ends later this year. It's clear that this was done because everyone involved realized that the plans are likely to change. Knight has given grants to WMF in the past, including a $600K one with a longer grant period [1], so this isn't a particularly bold step for them or for WMF. Within the scope of a grant with these parameters, it's completely reasonable for WMF, at the end of the grant period, to go back to Knight and say: "We've done everything we committed to for the grant period [improve internal search etc.], but we won't be doing anything beyond that."
That is not to say that this process was managed well -- obviously it wasn't. But at least there are no catastrophic long term consequences for the organization or for the movement, as far as I can tell. That is, unless Larry Page read one of the early news stories and decided to send a DESTROY WIKIMEDIA memo to all Alphabet companies, in which case I expect Boston Dynamics robots to show up at New Montgomery Street any day now. [2]
Erik
[1] http://knightfoundation.org/grants/20123673/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY