Mike,
On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 1:42 PM Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
While it is generally true that what happens in
Croatian Wikipedia
normally affects the whole world instantaneously (constrained only by the
speed of light!), this may have been one of the rare instances in which
Croatian Wikipedia problems didn't ignite a universal outcry in all places,
everywhere, about disinformation.
Well, I wouldn't expect it to make the evening news in Korea, Madagascar or
Argentina, but in my view it should at least have sounded a few alarm bells
in WMF offices, given that these distortions were published under their
brand name. If you don't agree ... and you obviously don't ... then I'm not
sure any further discussion is going to be of help here.
But unless I am totally misreading you, your attitude sounds a lot like
"Why should anyone care (or have cared) about Croatian and all these other
languages spoken in some countries at the other end of the world?" If that
does reflect your sentiment, then your mindset seems very much out of tune
with WMF thought today.
The costs of doing this now will hardly have been
prohibitive.
Commissioning a report like this would have been
well within the WMF's
means in 2013 as well. (The WMF reported a budget surplus of $13 million in
2013.) So I stand by my assertion: the WMF could have done then what it has
done now, but lacked the will, or courage.
And when you were working for the Wikimedia Foundation those years, or
serving on the WMF board, how did your own exercise of moral courage
persuade people to adopt your point of view? I'm certain, given your
convictions, that you didn't just stand idly by on the sidelines, hurling
the occasional moral critique on mailing lists!
I am not sure you are actually interested in an answer here, but what I did
do, for what it's worth, was to make sure that the WP Signpost and WP
Kurier covered the story when it first broke, mention it repeatedly over
the years in my writing on WO and in the Signpost, as well as in
correspondence with journalists and academics, and submit the
aforementioned idea to the WMF – to have experts review human rights
topics' coverage in Wikipedia language versions that may be subject to
undue political influence, and publicly report the results. I think that's
about all you could have reasonably expected me to have done here.
Now you say, further,
On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 4:24 PM Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In general, the preference for moral condemnation in
second-guessing WMF's
decisions is directly proportional to the distance of the morally righteous
critic from actual hands-on policymaking or decisionmaking by WMF board and
staff. This is just something I've observed over time. But with Andreas I
inferred from the depth of his knowledge of the Croatia "fake news" problem
(before it was called "fake news") that he must have been deeply involved
in WMF's decisionmaking to be so authoritatively judgmental about it.
The fact of the matter is that for about a decade, one of Wikipedia's
top-50 language versions promoted extremist content, with the WMF's full
knowledge. That is Not A Good Thing, whether you work for the WMF or not,
and you have given no discernible reason why what was done this year could
not have been done years ago, when the WMF was first made aware of the
situation.
But you know what? Let's just agree to be glad that something was finally
done, let's hope the Croatian Wikipedia manages to recover, and let's hope
that similar problems in other WMF projects are successfully surfaced and
addressed as well.
In the meantime, I salute all volunteers, journalists and academics who
research and draw attention to these problems, and everyone at the WMF who
takes them seriously.
Andreas
On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 1:42 PM Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 8:22 AM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Mike,
>>
>> The corruption of the Croatian Wikipedia began in 2009 and became front
>> page news in Croatia in September 2013. The term "fake news" hadn't
been
>> invented yet, but the Croatian Education Minister issued a public warning
>> to the country's youth in 2013 that they should avoid the Croatian
>> Wikipedia, as much of its content was "not only misleading but also clearly
>> falsified".
>>
>> So I can't agree that this "was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as less
of
>> a problem" at the time. It's hard to imagine how it could have been
more
>> prominent.
>>
>
> Your initial paragraph contradicts your conclusion. ("The term 'fake
news'
> hadn't been invented yet....") While it is generally true that what happens
> in Croatian Wikipedia normally affects the whole world instantaneously
> (constrained only by the speed of light!), this may have been one of the
> rare instances in which Croatian Wikipedia problems didn't ignite a
> universal outcry in all places, everywhere, about disinformation.
>
>
>> So it was all the more welcome that the WMF finally did something this
>> year and commissioned an expert to write a report, after a decade of
>> complaints from media and the volunteer community.
>>
>
> I love your interpolation of the word "finally" -- never let an
> opportunity for moral criticism go unexploited!
>
>
>
The costs of doing this now will hardly have been
prohibitive.
Commissioning a report like this would have been
well within the WMF's
means in 2013 as well. (The WMF reported a budget surplus of $13 million in
2013.) So I stand by my assertion: the WMF could have done then what it has
done now, but lacked the will, or courage.
And when you were working for the Wikimedia Foundation those years, or
serving on the WMF board, how did your own exercise of moral courage
persuade people to adopt your point of view? I'm certain, given your
convictions, that you didn't just stand idly by on the sidelines, hurling
the occasional moral critique on mailing lists!
>
> Mike
>
>
>