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_….
[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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2016-02-29 19:24 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock
<chris.sherlock79(a)gmail.com>om>:
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