I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny
sad news to hear wish you best of luck
Mardetanha
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 10:47 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Thanks a lot Denny for your honest and inspiring mail. I kept stumm for the most part of the last month's controversy, as I merely could have +1ed a lot of stuff that has been said and that's not worth spinding bandwidth and people's time.
Now I want to take that time to say thank you, for your time on the board and for your role in Wikidata. For a return in a role that inspires you again.
/Manuel
On 04/08/2016 08:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Denny,
Thank you for your very thoughtful email. I appreciate your reasoning. Sydney
Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Manuel Schneider < manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch> wrote:
Thanks a lot Denny for your honest and inspiring mail. I kept stumm for the most part of the last month's controversy, as I merely could have +1ed a lot of stuff that has been said and that's not worth spinding bandwidth and people's time.
Now I want to take that time to say thank you, for your time on the board and for your role in Wikidata. For a return in a role that inspires you again.
/Manuel
On 04/08/2016 08:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
-- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens www.wikimedia.ch
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Lot's of respect and lot's of sadness reading your email Denny. I understand your point. Thanks for explaining. Much regrets.
Flo
Le 08/04/16 20:17, Denny Vrandecic a écrit :
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Hey Denny --
Kudos for your well-reasoned decision, and for your service on the Board during a very challenging time. One of the beautiful things about Wikimedia is how much scope you can have to move things forward without any special roles or affiliation. I very much look forward to reading your crazy-or-maybe-not-so-crazy ideas!
Erik
Denny, thanks for all the work you've put in over the years and in your time on the board in particular -- it's been rough indeed lately, and I understand the need to refocus.
Looking forward to continuing to hear from you in the future!
-- brion
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Hoi, Denny I am sorry to have lost a friend who is on the board but I am happy to welcome back a friend who can now express his ideas, his notions, his opposition, his point of view. Yes you work for Google. For me it means that you are again in an unique position to be an ambassador for both Google and WMF in either domain.
You may have gained friends while on the board, the one sad thing is that it came at a huge cost to you personally. Nevermind what you do, I trust you to do well. Thanks, Gerard
On 8 April 2016 at 20:17, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
I find this issue of Conflict of Interest exceedingly problematic.
Almost every person working and living today will have a conflict of interest somehow, especially as one becomes a contributor to any of the Wikimedia projects, gets to know people, tries to organize events or promote the value of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. Or if you work in any field that specializes in anything online or technical. It is an impossible situation.
I think that Wikimedia deals with this very badly -- and obviously at great personal cost to talented, giving people. I am sorry.
And to the bigger problem: Wikimedia loses a smart person who has loads of ideas and expertise -- and is a contributor to Wikidata (one of the best & most exciting projects to be visited upon Wikimedia) because of this arcane and quite frankly needing to be re-evaluated rule? I see this as one of the many problems of Wikimedia.
EVERYONE has conflict of interest. We need the smartest and brightest minds out there to contribute whatever they willingly can and will do on a volunteer basis. How can they not have connections to the real world as well as to online? Do we expect volunteers to be in their bunkers somewhere, siloed from the world, that these clean folks are the ones to move Wikimedia forward? It's laughable.
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want to contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
Requiring some sort of absolute clean Conflict of Interest is an impossible ideal. It is also obviously hurting the community.
There is much change happening. I think it's an opportunity for newbies such as myself as well as folks with longer views to make things better. Or these mistakes will continue to plague the Wikimedia community -- and we will all lose out.
- Erika *Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Denny I am sorry to have lost a friend who is on the board but I am happy to welcome back a friend who can now express his ideas, his notions, his opposition, his point of view. Yes you work for Google. For me it means that you are again in an unique position to be an ambassador for both Google and WMF in either domain.
You may have gained friends while on the board, the one sad thing is that it came at a huge cost to you personally. Nevermind what you do, I trust you to do well. Thanks, Gerard
On 8 April 2016 at 20:17, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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
Brill,
Speaking generally (meaning, not in regard to the specific situation of Denny), conflict of interest issues do happen on a regular basis. In my experience, we also generally handle them well.
Having numerous business relationships and interests is common in the business world. Many times when there is a conflict of interest issue, it's sufficient to recuse from particular discussions. Sometimes, the best course of action is to resign from one role or another.
Regarding Denny's situation specifically, after leaving the WMF board, he may provide valuable input and may in some ways be more effective because he will have stepped away from numerous COI issues.
I feel that Denny's decision to resign makes sense, and in no way does this decision put a cloud over his continued involvement in our community.
There are many problems in the Wikimedia universe, but I think that our COI policies are generally sound.
Pine
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 6:48 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
I find this issue of Conflict of Interest exceedingly problematic.
Almost every person working and living today will have a conflict of interest somehow, especially as one becomes a contributor to any of the Wikimedia projects, gets to know people, tries to organize events or promote the value of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. Or if you work in any field that specializes in anything online or technical. It is an impossible situation.
I think that Wikimedia deals with this very badly -- and obviously at great personal cost to talented, giving people. I am sorry.
And to the bigger problem: Wikimedia loses a smart person who has loads of ideas and expertise -- and is a contributor to Wikidata (one of the best & most exciting projects to be visited upon Wikimedia) because of this arcane and quite frankly needing to be re-evaluated rule? I see this as one of the many problems of Wikimedia.
EVERYONE has conflict of interest. We need the smartest and brightest minds out there to contribute whatever they willingly can and will do on a volunteer basis. How can they not have connections to the real world as well as to online? Do we expect volunteers to be in their bunkers somewhere, siloed from the world, that these clean folks are the ones to move Wikimedia forward? It's laughable.
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want to contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
Requiring some sort of absolute clean Conflict of Interest is an impossible ideal. It is also obviously hurting the community.
There is much change happening. I think it's an opportunity for newbies such as myself as well as folks with longer views to make things better. Or these mistakes will continue to plague the Wikimedia community -- and we will all lose out.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, Denny I am sorry to have lost a friend who is on the board but I am happy to welcome back a friend who can now express his ideas, his notions, his opposition, his point of view. Yes you work for Google. For me it means that you are again in an unique position to be an ambassador for both Google and WMF in either domain.
You may have gained friends while on the board, the one sad thing is that it came at a huge cost to you personally. Nevermind what you do, I trust you to do well. Thanks, Gerard
On 8 April 2016 at 20:17, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to
act
extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my
considerations
openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of
interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to
deal
with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case,
and
refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by
Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the
feeling
of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither
was
the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his
advice,
but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee
I
could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read
as
"it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had
lunch
with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that
only
you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to
the
creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade
later,
realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not
in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest
will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do
see
that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures
against
exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier
by
the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a
wikibreak.
Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and
implement
them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will
be,
again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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
I feel that Denny's decision to resign makes sense, and in no way does
this
decision put a cloud over his continued involvement in our community.
Pine, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you are doing a very common mistake in the Wikimedia world: you are not taking into account people's emotions. Making an hard decision always takes its toll, and it's all but granted that someone wants to stay in the same community that lacked trust in him and stressed him out for weeks. I personally trusted him, I felt the pain in his messages to this list in the last months, and I'm sad he has to leave from what I thought was an important decisive role.
Aubrey
On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 9:12 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Brill,
Speaking generally (meaning, not in regard to the specific situation of Denny), conflict of interest issues do happen on a regular basis. In my experience, we also generally handle them well.
Having numerous business relationships and interests is common in the business world. Many times when there is a conflict of interest issue, it's sufficient to recuse from particular discussions. Sometimes, the best course of action is to resign from one role or another.
Regarding Denny's situation specifically, after leaving the WMF board, he may provide valuable input and may in some ways be more effective because he will have stepped away from numerous COI issues.
I feel that Denny's decision to resign makes sense, and in no way does this decision put a cloud over his continued involvement in our community.
There are many problems in the Wikimedia universe, but I think that our COI policies are generally sound.
Pine
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 6:48 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
I find this issue of Conflict of Interest exceedingly problematic.
Almost every person working and living today will have a conflict of interest somehow, especially as one becomes a contributor to any of the Wikimedia projects, gets to know people, tries to organize events or promote the value of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. Or if you work in any
field
that specializes in anything online or technical. It is an impossible situation.
I think that Wikimedia deals with this very badly -- and obviously at
great
personal cost to talented, giving people. I am sorry.
And to the bigger problem: Wikimedia loses a smart person who has loads
of
ideas and expertise -- and is a contributor to Wikidata (one of the best
&
most exciting projects to be visited upon Wikimedia) because of this
arcane
and quite frankly needing to be re-evaluated rule? I see this as one of
the
many problems of Wikimedia.
EVERYONE has conflict of interest. We need the smartest and brightest
minds
out there to contribute whatever they willingly can and will do on a volunteer basis. How can they not have connections to the real world as well as to online? Do we expect volunteers to be in their bunkers somewhere, siloed from the world, that these clean folks are the ones to move Wikimedia forward? It's laughable.
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want to contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
Requiring some sort of absolute clean Conflict of Interest is an
impossible
ideal. It is also obviously hurting the community.
There is much change happening. I think it's an opportunity for newbies such as myself as well as folks with longer views to make things better.
Or
these mistakes will continue to plague the Wikimedia community -- and we will all lose out.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, Denny I am sorry to have lost a friend who is on the board but I am
happy
to welcome back a friend who can now express his ideas, his notions,
his
opposition, his point of view. Yes you work for Google. For me it means that you are again in an unique position to be an ambassador for both Google and WMF in either domain.
You may have gained friends while on the board, the one sad thing is
that
it came at a huge cost to you personally. Nevermind what you do, I
trust
you to do well. Thanks, Gerard
On 8 April 2016 at 20:17, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order
to
avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to
act
extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of
being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my
considerations
openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of
interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my
current
employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to
deal
with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my
Best
Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case,
and
refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the
FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived
as a
potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I
had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being
merely
Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by
Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and
experiences,
would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the
feeling
of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither
was
the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his
advice,
but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards
my
actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a
Trustee
I
could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be
read
as
"it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a
goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had
lunch
with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me
an
advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that
only
you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to
the
creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted
to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed
and
smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik
was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to
happen
anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade
later,
realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not
in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest
will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do
see
that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata
as a
member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of
actual
conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful.
It
bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures
against
exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier
by
the events in the last few months. I understand that I will
disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes
an
effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a
wikibreak.
Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and
implement
them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will
be,
again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I
can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable
to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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 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
Just for the record, I raised the conflict of interest issue with Denny in more than one venue - a Signpost discussion and (I think) here, and I discussed it in other places. I never suggested he was a mole for Google and I'm not aware of anyone who did - though I may have missed or forgotten.
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, we're all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers. This was described by Jimmy as an existential threat to the movement recently. Denny is involved in those aspects of Google's operations. This is a profound conflict of interest.
Denny is also a main thought leader behind Wikidata, and will have serious biases concerning its priority.
These interests and involvements (Wikidata and Google) are a good fit with each other and we're lucky to have someone with Denny's ability and integrity bridging the two. But it's just untenable for him to sit on the board of trustees while he's in those roles.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:59 AM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
I feel that Denny's decision to resign makes sense, and in no way does
this
decision put a cloud over his continued involvement in our community.
Pine, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you are doing a very common mistake in the Wikimedia world: you are not taking into account people's emotions. Making an hard decision always takes its toll, and it's all but granted that someone wants to stay in the same community that lacked trust in him and stressed him out for weeks. I personally trusted him, I felt the pain in his messages to this list in the last months, and I'm sad he has to leave from what I thought was an important decisive role.
Aubrey
On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 9:12 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Brill,
Speaking generally (meaning, not in regard to the specific situation of Denny), conflict of interest issues do happen on a regular basis. In my experience, we also generally handle them well.
Having numerous business relationships and interests is common in the business world. Many times when there is a conflict of interest issue,
it's
sufficient to recuse from particular discussions. Sometimes, the best course of action is to resign from one role or another.
Regarding Denny's situation specifically, after leaving the WMF board, he may provide valuable input and may in some ways be more effective because he will have stepped away from numerous COI issues.
I feel that Denny's decision to resign makes sense, and in no way does
this
decision put a cloud over his continued involvement in our community.
There are many problems in the Wikimedia universe, but I think that our
COI
policies are generally sound.
Pine
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 6:48 AM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com
wrote:
I find this issue of Conflict of Interest exceedingly problematic.
Almost every person working and living today will have a conflict of interest somehow, especially as one becomes a contributor to any of the Wikimedia projects, gets to know people, tries to organize events or promote the value of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. Or if you work in any
field
that specializes in anything online or technical. It is an impossible situation.
I think that Wikimedia deals with this very badly -- and obviously at
great
personal cost to talented, giving people. I am sorry.
And to the bigger problem: Wikimedia loses a smart person who has loads
of
ideas and expertise -- and is a contributor to Wikidata (one of the
best
&
most exciting projects to be visited upon Wikimedia) because of this
arcane
and quite frankly needing to be re-evaluated rule? I see this as one of
the
many problems of Wikimedia.
EVERYONE has conflict of interest. We need the smartest and brightest
minds
out there to contribute whatever they willingly can and will do on a volunteer basis. How can they not have connections to the real world as well as to online? Do we expect volunteers to be in their bunkers somewhere, siloed from the world, that these clean folks are the ones
to
move Wikimedia forward? It's laughable.
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want
to
contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
Requiring some sort of absolute clean Conflict of Interest is an
impossible
ideal. It is also obviously hurting the community.
There is much change happening. I think it's an opportunity for newbies such as myself as well as folks with longer views to make things
better.
Or
these mistakes will continue to plague the Wikimedia community -- and
we
will all lose out.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* <
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, Denny I am sorry to have lost a friend who is on the board but I am
happy
to welcome back a friend who can now express his ideas, his notions,
his
opposition, his point of view. Yes you work for Google. For me it
means
that you are again in an unique position to be an ambassador for both Google and WMF in either domain.
You may have gained friends while on the board, the one sad thing is
that
it came at a huge cost to you personally. Nevermind what you do, I
trust
you to do well. Thanks, Gerard
On 8 April 2016 at 20:17, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order
to
avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have
to
act
extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of
being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think
would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too
many
constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my
considerations
openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of
interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my
current
employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to
deal
with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my
Best
Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the
previous
decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this
case,
and
refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the
FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived
as a
potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer,
and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I
had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being
merely
Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by
Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had
the
feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and
experiences,
would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the
feeling
of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is,
neither
was
the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his
advice,
but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step
towards
my
actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a
Trustee
I
could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be
read
as
"it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a
goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had
lunch
with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me
an
advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that
only
you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead
to
the
creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I
wanted
to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed
and
smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik
was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to
happen
anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade
later,
realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least
not
in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest
will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I
do
see
that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata
as a
member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of
actual
conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful.
It
bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures
against
exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of
the
Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the
first
option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the
third
option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any
easier
by
the events in the last few months. I understand that I will
disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am
sorry,
honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now,
or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that
makes
an
effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a
wikibreak.
Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and
implement
them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I
will
be,
again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I
can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable
to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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 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 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
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, we're all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate and reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" feature for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and re-users' interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we make our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The Wikimedia Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing management issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed that this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which are received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small and recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors no longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're theoretically then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, exactly as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the data on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in perpetuity.
MZMcBride
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] is problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising capacity, I doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no expert on these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, we're all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate and reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" feature for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and re-users' interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we make our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The Wikimedia Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing management issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed that this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which are received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small and recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors no longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're theoretically then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, exactly as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the data on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why we changed https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_changed" message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] is problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising capacity, I doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no expert on these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate and reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" feature for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and re-users' interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The Wikimedia Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing management issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed that this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which are received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small and recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors no longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're theoretically then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, exactly as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why we changed < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] is problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising capacity, I doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no expert
on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate
and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The Wikimedia Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed that this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which are received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors
no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why we changed < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] is problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising capacity,
I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate
and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The
Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed
that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which
are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors
no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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
Ugh. Sorry. I mean: should involvement in and advocacy for a particular movement initiative disqualify one from voting on motions related to that initiative?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why we changed < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers]
is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising
capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being
accurate and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The
Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed
that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which
are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential
donors no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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
Hello Anthony,
in my opinion a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects. The WMF board members are leading a global movement. When everyone of them are fosting their own pet projects other projects may suffer. The board members should be beyond the single projects and give directions, like do more for the small projects, instead of single out the Swahili Wikipedia (just as an example).
This does not mean that the board members should not continue their involvement in the projects, but then as community members, not having more power or say than other community members.
Greetings Ting
Am 04/12/2016 um 01:03 PM schrieb Anthony Cole:
Ugh. Sorry. I mean: should involvement in and advocacy for a particular movement initiative disqualify one from voting on motions related to that initiative?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why we changed < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers]
is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising
capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote: > Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
> all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, > consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers. Google and others have a direct interest in their data being
accurate and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The
Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed
that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which
are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential
donors no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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 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
Hi Ting.
You say, "...a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects."
It's just one vote out of ten (normally). If they can't persuade their colleagues, the motion won't pass.
In the case of community-selected trustees, they were put there by people who know their enthusiasms and expect them to do what they can to allow those initiatives to flourish, and who trust them not to do that at the expense of the overall shared mission.
Shouldn't a discussion affecting an initiative include the very trustee who is (likely) the best informed and best placed to explain things to the other trustees?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 7:09 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello Anthony,
in my opinion a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects. The WMF board members are leading a global movement. When everyone of them are fosting their own pet projects other projects may suffer. The board members should be beyond the single projects and give directions, like do more for the small projects, instead of single out the Swahili Wikipedia (just as an example).
This does not mean that the board members should not continue their involvement in the projects, but then as community members, not having more power or say than other community members.
Greetings Ting
Am 04/12/2016 um 01:03 PM schrieb Anthony Cole:
Ugh. Sorry. I mean: should involvement in and advocacy for a particular movement initiative disqualify one from voting on motions related to that initiative?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why
we changed <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers]
is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising
capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote: > >> Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, >> > we're
> all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, >> consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers. >> > Google and others have a direct interest in their data being > accurate and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" > feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and > re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and > correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we > make
> our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be > applauding
> Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world? > > As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put > organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The > Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing > management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees. > > What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of > yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or > smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia > chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting > Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers > (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed > that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect > of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which > are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site > advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor > reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small > and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the > entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential > donors no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this > money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise. > > If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit > less
> frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're > theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and > others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, > exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the > data
> on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in > perpetuity.
> > MZMcBride > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > 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 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 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 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 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
Hello Anthony,
in my opinion, the board should not discuss individual projects, at least when I was on the board we decided not to. The board looks at policies that are more general and global. The resolutions that the board issued, which do impact the projects, are (or at least were) always formulated in a way that it applies to all projects. And they always only state the principle, and let the individual projects room to implement the principles into their own policies.
That said. Naturally every single board member bring their own experience, and in discussions we did use our individual experiences to explain our position. But when we formulated a resolution or made a decision we always tried to avoid to set up a principle or a decision on one project.
There is no clear boundary for COI, as someone else had already said. Everyone of us has our own personal red lines. I am not someone who would comment other people's red line. Actually generally I tend to accept the fact that other people have a different red line.
I would like to give you an example to show you my red line: Back in 2009 when we were working on the strategic planning I decided to not be member of the workshop that deal with China, instead of that I took part in the movement roles workshop. And I didn't take part on the discussion when it came to the decision if China should be a hot spot or now. The reason for that is exactly because as a board member I may be put a special emphasis on the topic China, and there is potentially a bias of my opinion which may lead the Foundation do a wrong decision (in that case it may mean waste a few tens of thousands of dollars). Naturally there were community members who were not happy with this. And there were some critics when the board decided in favor of India, Africa and Middle East. I was quite confident that there were many people who can better examing China than me, and looking back, it was a right decision.
Generally speaking, my principle is if there is a possible COI then avoid it. Defending a COI suspect (even if it is wrong) costs more energy than avoid get into that situation.
Beside of that, you also need to think that the best involved and engaged trustee may also have a single point of view, which may differ with the rest of that community. I know that in many things other zh-wk community member have a different opinion than me.
Greetings Ting
Am 04/12/2016 um 01:30 PM schrieb Anthony Cole:
Hi Ting.
You say, "...a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects."
It's just one vote out of ten (normally). If they can't persuade their colleagues, the motion won't pass.
In the case of community-selected trustees, they were put there by people who know their enthusiasms and expect them to do what they can to allow those initiatives to flourish, and who trust them not to do that at the expense of the overall shared mission.
Shouldn't a discussion affecting an initiative include the very trustee who is (likely) the best informed and best placed to explain things to the other trustees?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 7:09 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello Anthony,
in my opinion a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects. The WMF board members are leading a global movement. When everyone of them are fosting their own pet projects other projects may suffer. The board members should be beyond the single projects and give directions, like do more for the small projects, instead of single out the Swahili Wikipedia (just as an example).
This does not mean that the board members should not continue their involvement in the projects, but then as community members, not having more power or say than other community members.
Greetings Ting
Am 04/12/2016 um 01:03 PM schrieb Anthony Cole:
Ugh. Sorry. I mean: should involvement in and advocacy for a particular movement initiative disqualify one from voting on motions related to that initiative?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why
we changed <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
> " > message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions: > "Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our > knowledge with the world?" > > Yes. > > "What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of > yearly > budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller > should
> the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?" > > It depends on what we want them to do. > > "...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting > Wikipedia's > page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] > is
> problematic?" > > I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned. > > "If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit > less frequently, > that actually saves us money, doesn't it?" > > If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising > capacity, I
> doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no > expert on
> these things. > > > Anthony Cole > > > On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote: > > Anthony Cole wrote: >>> Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, >>> >> we're >> all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, >>> consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers. >>> >> Google and others have a direct interest in their data being >> > accurate and > reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" > feature > for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and > re-users' > interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and > correct. > Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we > make > >> our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be >> > applauding > >> Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world? >> >> As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put >> organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The >> > Wikimedia > Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing > management > issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees. >> What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of >> yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or >> smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia >> > chapters? > Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting > Wikipedia's > page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers >> (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed >> > that > this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect >> of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which >> > are > received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site >> advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor >> reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small >> > and > recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the >> entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential >> > donors no > longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this >> money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise. >> >> If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit >> > less > >> frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're >> > theoretically > then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and >> others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, >> > exactly > as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the > data > >> on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in >> > perpetuity. > >> MZMcBride >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines >> 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 > 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 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 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 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 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
When a board member has special 'enthusiasms', it can be normal for the board to seek their view as an inside expert, however it can easily turn out to be a mistake if a trustee vote includes their vote, especially if the community wishes to see trustee voting becoming more transparent.
This is because the same trustees with special passions and interests for a resolution may be hard to stand against for fellow trustees who have neither special interest nor knowledge for a resolution, beyond what is presented to the board at that time. Just having a especially interested trustee participate in the vote may sway the outcome far more than their single numerical vote. It is fairly obvious that trustees like Jimmy with interests in Wikia, ex-trustee Denny with interests in Google or ex-trustee James with interests in the medical field, have interests to be managed and should be a reason for them to recuse from votes touching on those same interests, or where they may be later *seen* to touch on those interests. This should not be a reason for the board to fail to benefit from expert knowledge that some trustees happen to have.
Of course there is *plenty* of outside expertize amongst the Wikimedia community that could be provided to the board at minimal cost, especially if video conferencing were used, rather than flying people around the world to talk. I find it sad that we see few of these types of board presentations being solicited from expert and enthusiastic community members, with a default of using WMF employees or consultants to give board presentations (based on what we see from the ridiculously sketchy board meeting minutes). Getting varying views from non-Trustee experts in snapshot/10 minute briefing presentations would be an excellent way for Trustees in Denny's position to recommend sources of expert information while avoiding being compromised, and remaining comfortable that the issues and benefits for improvements to the WMF strategy, and best use of funding, were being properly explored.
Fae
On 12 April 2016 at 12:30, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Ting.
You say, "...a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects."
It's just one vote out of ten (normally). If they can't persuade their colleagues, the motion won't pass.
In the case of community-selected trustees, they were put there by people who know their enthusiasms and expect them to do what they can to allow those initiatives to flourish, and who trust them not to do that at the expense of the overall shared mission.
Shouldn't a discussion affecting an initiative include the very trustee who is (likely) the best informed and best placed to explain things to the other trustees?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 7:09 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Hello Anthony,
in my opinion a board member should not foster his or her own pet projects. The WMF board members are leading a global movement. When everyone of them are fosting their own pet projects other projects may suffer. The board members should be beyond the single projects and give directions, like do more for the small projects, instead of single out the Swahili Wikipedia (just as an example).
This does not mean that the board members should not continue their involvement in the projects, but then as community members, not having more power or say than other community members.
Greetings Ting
Am 04/12/2016 um 01:03 PM schrieb Anthony Cole:
Ugh. Sorry. I mean: should involvement in and advocacy for a particular movement initiative disqualify one from voting on motions related to that initiative?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:55 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
jytdog, regarding:
"Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role."
When you say "relevant outside interests" what do you mean?
I'd love to hear Denny's thoughts on this. Also, Denny, I'm interested to hear you were concerned about a conflict of interest with Wikidata. I'm just now rethinking the question of internal conflicts of interest. Are they necessarily a bad thing? You were elected by a community who, I think, expected you to create an environment where Wikidata could flourish. Is it a bad thing to have advocates for movement initiatives on the board?
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why
we changed <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
> " > message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as an "existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk page, too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened. Debating what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever areas actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions: > > "Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our > knowledge with the world?" > > Yes. > > "What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of > yearly > budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller > should
> the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?" > > It depends on what we want them to do. > > "...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting > Wikipedia's > page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers] > is
> problematic?" > > I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned. > > "If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit > less frequently, > that actually saves us money, doesn't it?" > > If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising > capacity, I
> doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no > expert on
> these things. > > > Anthony Cole > > > On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote: > > Anthony Cole wrote: >> >>> Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results, >>> >> we're > >> all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, >>> consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers. >>> >> Google and others have a direct interest in their data being >> > accurate and
> reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction" >> > feature
> for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and >> > re-users'
> interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and >> > correct.
> Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we >> > make > >> our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be >> > applauding > >> Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world? >> >> As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put >> organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The >> > Wikimedia
> Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing >> > management
> issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees. >> >> What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of >> yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or >> smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia >> > chapters?
> Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting >> > Wikipedia's
> page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers >> (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed >> > that
> this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect >> of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which >> > are
> received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site >> advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor >> reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small >> > and
> recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the >> entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential >> > donors no
> longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this >> money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise. >> >> If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit >> > less > >> frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're >> > theoretically
> then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and >> others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web, >> > exactly
> as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the >> > data > >> on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in >> > perpetuity. > >> >> MZMcBride >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines >> 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 > 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 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 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 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 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
Hoi, I do appreciate Denny. However, your notion that "we're lucky to have him" flies in the face of him leaving the board. He now does no longer a COI working at Google. Have you considered that he might have been more worthwhile to us having remained on the board and having been more outspoken even given this COI? Thanks, GerardM
On 12 April 2016 at 11:07, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Good points worth repeating, though, jytdog.
We're learning as we go here. COI is notoriously difficult to anticipate and manage. None of us, that I'm aware of, thought about - or at least discussed - the implications of his Google role when he ran for the board, and when it became too onerous to manage, Denny had the wisdom to step away.
He's an enormous asset to this movement; as I said, we're lucky to have him, and I'm very grateful for all he's contributed.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 4:44 PM, jytdog jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why
we
changed <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_c...
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as
an
"existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk
page,
too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened.
Debating
what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever
areas
actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting Wikipedia's page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers]
is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit less frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising
capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert
on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and, consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being accurate
and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The
Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers (citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed
that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which
are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential donors
no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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 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
On 4/9/16, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want to contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
That is so true, and I am reminded by a remarkably curious incident today regarding the disclosed Conflict of Interest editing by the legal firm of Carter-Ruck representing a high profile financier of global terrorism (per Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yassin_Kadi#Outstanding_Edit_Requests
A member of the article subject's international coordinating legal team based in London, Carter-Ruck, had repeatedly "threatened" to make live edits to his client's article, and has just made a series of controversial changes to his client's article on Wikipedia after community editors were unwilling to accommodate his tendentious (and poorly sourced) demands.
However, and strangely, the editor who reverted this lawyer's vandalism to uphold site policy was instead immediately indefinitely blocked by Risker. The blocked editor had also approached an ARBCOM member seeking guidance on dealing with the situation.
Is it therefore now the official Wikimedia / ARBCOM policy that conflicted editors and especially lawyers editing on behalf of their (global terrorist sponsor) clients are preferred over community editors throughout the Wikimedia publishing empire ?
Can we get a full explanation from the Arbs involved in this block citing the WMF / community policies they applied ?
Toby
On 4/9/16, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
I find this issue of Conflict of Interest exceedingly problematic.
Almost every person working and living today will have a conflict of interest somehow, especially as one becomes a contributor to any of the Wikimedia projects, gets to know people, tries to organize events or promote the value of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. Or if you work in any field that specializes in anything online or technical. It is an impossible situation.
I think that Wikimedia deals with this very badly -- and obviously at great personal cost to talented, giving people. I am sorry.
And to the bigger problem: Wikimedia loses a smart person who has loads of ideas and expertise -- and is a contributor to Wikidata (one of the best & most exciting projects to be visited upon Wikimedia) because of this arcane and quite frankly needing to be re-evaluated rule? I see this as one of the many problems of Wikimedia.
EVERYONE has conflict of interest. We need the smartest and brightest minds out there to contribute whatever they willingly can and will do on a volunteer basis. How can they not have connections to the real world as well as to online? Do we expect volunteers to be in their bunkers somewhere, siloed from the world, that these clean folks are the ones to move Wikimedia forward? It's laughable.
One thing Wikimedia seems to do quite well is torture people who want to contribute by rules and policies that I think, quite frankly, are unworkable.
Requiring some sort of absolute clean Conflict of Interest is an impossible ideal. It is also obviously hurting the community.
There is much change happening. I think it's an opportunity for newbies such as myself as well as folks with longer views to make things better. Or these mistakes will continue to plague the Wikimedia community -- and we will all lose out.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Hi Denny Your email is very interesting to understand the conflict you were experimenting to introduce innovation and good ideas in Wikimedia projects.
In my opinion the biggest problem is the overlapping between direction and execution. Do you think that your action would be less efficient operating outside the board of trustees?
Your opinion would be very appreciated because you are a good example of a member who can really address the decisions in an innovative direction but blocked by a strict definition of COI.
Kind regards Il 08 Apr 2016 20:17, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org ha scritto:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
Hi Denny,
Thanks for explaining your reasoning, which hints towards a lack of tolerance and understanding towards people wearing several hats. It doesn't have an easy solution, as there is too much lack of trust.
The only thing I wish is that your decision enables you to participate in the movement more effectively, and without any concern.
Looking forward to your new ideas!
Regards Micru
On Sat, Apr 9, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Denny Your email is very interesting to understand the conflict you were experimenting to introduce innovation and good ideas in Wikimedia projects.
In my opinion the biggest problem is the overlapping between direction and execution. Do you think that your action would be less efficient operating outside the board of trustees?
Your opinion would be very appreciated because you are a good example of a member who can really address the decisions in an innovative direction but blocked by a strict definition of COI.
Kind regards Il 08 Apr 2016 20:17, "Denny Vrandecic" dvrandecic@wikimedia.org ha scritto:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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
Here is a response to Denny's resignation; his email has been sticking to me. To provide some context for what follows, I work a lot on COI and advocacy issues in Wikipedia, and worked on COI issues professionally at a university for the past 15 years.
The limitations created by managing or eliminating Denny's various conflicts of interest, appear to have been surprising to Denny, and were definitely frustrating for him.
Surprising and frustrating. This is perhaps the result of a lack of process.
The WMF might want to consider putting in place a system of disclosing and managing conflicts of interest for Trustees, before they actually join the board, so that conflict management issues are both clear and acceptable to the new Trustee and the Board at the start.
The process could be the same as it is in many sectors - a confidential disclosure of relevant interests, identification of possible and perceived conflicts between those interests and the obligations of a Trustee, and then creation of a plan to manage those conflicts (and identification of areas where the conflicts can't be managed but need to be eliminated by recusal). All done before the person actually joins the board.
Once the person joins, the relevant external interests could be disclosed at the board member's profile on the WMF board webpage. The additional step of publishing an outline of the management plan (at the same location) would be something very useful in light of the high value that WMF staff and the movement places on transparency.
Please consider that. And please pardon me if this is already done, but something went awry with Denny.
Thanks.
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being able to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would align very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests - regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and even though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had to refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google. I would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not appropriate to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler writing that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to do myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough - someone will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was back then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I cannot take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will be regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one deciding on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential Conflict of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint many of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or that the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the profile that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can do. I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to the movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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
For denny I see the situation simple and I am only able to write it as I read his clear email.
First he is able to influence projects and general direction with his judgement and expertise.
Second he has the expertise to get projects done.
While I find it a real pity that we have less of first when he resigns I must admit that I consider second even more important. Choosing amongst proposals is easier than properly proposing. Especially if nobody steps up for something he feels should get done. For my part, I trust his expertise.
I admire and find exemplary denny showing backbone here, something we see not enough. Deciding on this trade off should be possible at any time appropriate, I do consequently *not* see something went awry with denny, nor a problem with the process.
One hole in the process seems to be there though. Should a replacement be voted now or just the old result be taken. As the situation is new for every participant I tend to favour a vote.
Rupert On Apr 11, 2016 07:56, "jytdog" jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
Here is a response to Denny's resignation; his email has been sticking to me. To provide some context for what follows, I work a lot on COI and advocacy issues in Wikipedia, and worked on COI issues professionally at a university for the past 15 years.
The limitations created by managing or eliminating Denny's various conflicts of interest, appear to have been surprising to Denny, and were definitely frustrating for him.
Surprising and frustrating. This is perhaps the result of a lack of process.
The WMF might want to consider putting in place a system of disclosing and managing conflicts of interest for Trustees, before they actually join the board, so that conflict management issues are both clear and acceptable to the new Trustee and the Board at the start.
The process could be the same as it is in many sectors - a confidential disclosure of relevant interests, identification of possible and perceived conflicts between those interests and the obligations of a Trustee, and then creation of a plan to manage those conflicts (and identification of areas where the conflicts can't be managed but need to be eliminated by recusal). All done before the person actually joins the board.
Once the person joins, the relevant external interests could be disclosed at the board member's profile on the WMF board webpage. The additional step of publishing an outline of the management plan (at the same location) would be something very useful in light of the high value that WMF staff and the movement places on transparency.
Please consider that. And please pardon me if this is already done, but something went awry with Denny.
Thanks.
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic dvrandecic@wikimedia.org wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to act extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my considerations openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to deal with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case, and refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the feeling of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither was the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his advice, but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee I could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read as "it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had lunch with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that only you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to the creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade later, realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do see that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures against exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier by the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a wikibreak. Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and implement them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will be, again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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
This is one inherrant problem with COI those who get stuff done are forced to sit out discussions in preference for those who spend all their time talking and producing nothing. What we end up with is not leadership, its not project experience, its bureaucracy with out any true direction where every idea that sounds good, that is well presented gets the go ahead with no understanding of what it takes to make a project work. Because of that we have KPI or metrics that satisfy the bureaucracy, force the organisors to run by the numbers rather than focus on producing real impact results over the longer term.
High impact long term projects take considerable investment of time over time the dont happen in 3, 6, 12 month cycles, look at WLE & WLM its be year in year out commitments by volunteers to build and expand but every year they waste time seeking funding for the year this is where the Grant process should take the lead and just assign a long term budget to be managed by WMF financial staff and let the volunteers concentrate on having impact. Wikidata is in the same boat, its the bureaucratic begging processes that cost most of our volunteers time and produce the least impact.
Denny's loss should be awake up call otherwise it'll be repeated continously especially from community selected seats, some where along the way we have created a bureaucracy at the expense of trust and assuming people are acting in good faith for the betterment of the projects
On 11 April 2016 at 15:55, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
For denny I see the situation simple and I am only able to write it as I read his clear email.
First he is able to influence projects and general direction with his judgement and expertise.
Second he has the expertise to get projects done.
While I find it a real pity that we have less of first when he resigns I must admit that I consider second even more important. Choosing amongst proposals is easier than properly proposing. Especially if nobody steps up for something he feels should get done. For my part, I trust his expertise.
I admire and find exemplary denny showing backbone here, something we see not enough. Deciding on this trade off should be possible at any time appropriate, I do consequently *not* see something went awry with denny, nor a problem with the process.
One hole in the process seems to be there though. Should a replacement be voted now or just the old result be taken. As the situation is new for every participant I tend to favour a vote.
Rupert On Apr 11, 2016 07:56, "jytdog" jytdog@gmail.com wrote:
Here is a response to Denny's resignation; his email has been sticking to me. To provide some context for what follows, I work a lot on COI and advocacy issues in Wikipedia, and worked on COI issues professionally at
a
university for the past 15 years.
The limitations created by managing or eliminating Denny's various conflicts of interest, appear to have been surprising to Denny, and were definitely frustrating for him.
Surprising and frustrating. This is perhaps the result of a lack of process.
The WMF might want to consider putting in place a system of disclosing
and
managing conflicts of interest for Trustees, before they actually join
the
board, so that conflict management issues are both clear and acceptable
to
the new Trustee and the Board at the start.
The process could be the same as it is in many sectors - a confidential disclosure of relevant interests, identification of possible and
perceived
conflicts between those interests and the obligations of a Trustee, and then creation of a plan to manage those conflicts (and identification of areas where the conflicts can't be managed but need to be eliminated by recusal). All done before the person actually joins the board.
Once the person joins, the relevant external interests could be disclosed at the board member's profile on the WMF board webpage. The additional step of publishing an outline of the management plan (at the same
location)
would be something very useful in light of the high value that WMF staff and the movement places on transparency.
Please consider that. And please pardon me if this is already done, but something went awry with Denny.
Thanks.
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Denny Vrandecic <
dvrandecic@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
I exchanged a walk on part in the war for a lead role in the cage.
I find myself tied and limited in my actions and projects. In order to avoid the perception or potential for Conflict of Interests I have to
act
extremely carefully in far too many parts of my life. Instead of being
able
to pursue my projects or some projects at work - which I think would
align
very well with our mission - I found myself trapped between too many constraints. I feel like I cannot offer my thoughts and my
considerations
openly, since they might easily be perceived as expressions of
interests
regarding my previous work, regarding my friends, regarding my current employment.
This hit home strongly during the FDC deliberations, where I had to
deal
with the situation of people deliberating a proposal written by my Best Man, around a project that has consumed the best part of the previous decade of my life. Obviously, I explained the conflicts in this case,
and
refrained from participating in the discussion, as agreed with the FDC.
This hit home every time there was a topic that might be perceived as a potential conflict of interest between Wikimedia and my employer, and
even
though I might have been in a unique position to provide insight, I had
to
refrain from doing so in order not to exert influence.
There were constant and continuous attacks against me, as being merely Google’s mole on the Board, even of the election being bought by
Google.
I
would not have minded these attacks so much - if I would have had the feeling that my input to the Board, based on my skills and experiences, would have been particularly valuable, or if I would have had the
feeling
of getting anything done while being on the Board. As it is, neither
was
the case.
I discussed with Jan-Bart, then chair, what is and what is not
appropriate
to pursue as a member of the Board. I understood and followed his
advice,
but it was frustrating. It was infuriatingly limiting.
As some of you might know, Wikidata was for me just one step towards my actual goal, a fully multilingual Wikipedia. I hoped that as a Trustee
I
could pursue that goal, but when even writing a comment on a bug in Phabricator has to be considered under the aspect that it will be read
as
"it is a Board-member writing that comment" and/or “It’s a Googler
writing
that comment”, I don’t see how I could effectively pursue such a goal.
It was at Wikimania 2006 in Boston, when Markus Krötzsch and I had
lunch
with Dan Connolly, a co-editor of the early HTML specs. Dan gave me an advise that still rings with me - to do the things worth doing that
only
you can do. This set me, back then, on a path that eventually lead to
the
creation of Wikidata - which, before then, wasn't something I wanted to
do
myself. I used to think that merely suggesting it would be enough -
someone
will eventually do it, I don’t have to. There’s plenty of committed and smart people at the Foundation, they’ll make it happen. Heck, Erik was
back
then a supporter of the plan (he was the one to secure the domain wikidata.org), and he was deputy director. Things were bound to happen anyway. But that is not what happened. I eventually, half a decade
later,
realized that if I do not do it, it simply won't happen, at least not
in
a
reasonable timeframe.
And as said, Wikidata was just one step on the way. But right now I
cannot
take the next steps. Anything that I would do or propose or suggest
will
be
regarded through the lense of my current positions. To be fair, I do
see
that I should not be both the one suggesting changes, and the one
deciding
on them. I understand now that I could not have suggested Wikidata as a member of the Board. It takes an independent Board to evaluate such proposal and its virtues and decide on them.
I want to send a few thank yous, in particular to the teams at the Wikimedia Foundation and at Google who helped me steer clear of actual conflicts of interests. They were wonderful, and extremely helpful. It bears a certain irony that both organizations had strong measures
against
exactly the kind of things that I have been regularly accused of.
I only see three ways to stay clear from a perceived or potential
Conflict
of Interest: to lay still and do nothing, to remove the source of the Conflict, or to step away from the position of power. Since the first option is unsatisfying, the second option unavailable, only the third option remains.
So I have decided to resign from the Board of Trustees.
It was not an easy decision, and certainly not a step made any easier
by
the events in the last few months. I understand that I will disappoint
many
of the people who voted for me, and I want to apologize: I am sorry, honestly sorry, but I don’t see that it is me the Board needs now, or
that
the movement needs me in that position. What I learned is that the
profile
that allows someone to win an election is not the profile that makes an effective Trustee.
But be warned that you will continue to hear from me, after a
wikibreak.
Expect crazy ideas, project proposals, and requests to fund and
implement
them. I will return to a more active role within the movement. I will
be,
again, free to work on things that are worth doing and that only I can
do.
I think that in that role I can be more effective and more valuable to
the
movement, the Foundation, and for our mission.
Be bold, Denny _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines 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 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 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
Thanks for the response, Pine. I don't know if I agree with your assessment re: resigning being the solution, but I am as not fully versed in many of the details as you are obviously. I see this resignation as a real loss to the community, and hope that possibly going forward there might be alternatives to what seems to be a very torturous experience for well-meaning, smart and talented folks who have only helped our community.
You bring up the business world, which is rife with conflicts of interests. I have a background working in investment banking so I found that sort of funny. They do a pretty terrible job of this -- see #PanamaPapers, people sitting on boards, etc.... :-) So self-recusing seems sort of inadequate and impractical...
I am obviously very new to all of this, but as I have come to learn more about the Wikimedia family of projects, I have noticed that there is at least one high profile public figure who "makes his living" off his connection to Wikipedia -- Jimmy Wales -- which if that's not a conflict of interest, well I don't know what is....
And then there are various chapters that have paid staff, as well as Wikimedia Foundation staff, who all what, stop editing once they become paid?
Our local chapter here in New York City is starting to work with the WMF to have annual grant-funded project positions, and as someone who is active in the chapter's organization and event administration as well as a person who is going to apply for one of the positions, this issue of conflict of interest is a real stumbling block.
The issue is: Do I do a massive amount of free digital labor as a volunteer (COI free) or do I get paid to do this work (COI rife)? Being paid seems only fair, especially in contrast to country chapters who have as many events as we do, and can rely upon paid staff to implement programming, planning, and events. But being paid is a minefield of nightmarishness if COI is applied harshly. It will completely affect the outcome of what can be accomplished and done. Will pretty much completely handicap many of the ideas I have to improve much of our work process.
But more on topic: I agree with Gnangarra here.... VERY well said.
This seems to be very true, which I have noticed on our chapter level as well as on the larger WMF level. Denny realized he couldn't wait to start and create Wikidata. If he didn't do it then it wouldn't have gotten done. Without his expertise and skillsets -- which come from his professional experience -- this would not have come to fruition. It is all inextricably entwined. Quite frankly, to focus on bureaucracy over innovation is a sure path towards death of all the great stuff that is possible around here. It is riskier, because it relies upon people sticking their neck out and being bold, but it's much better for our community than all of these flipping rules and regulations weighing us down.
Fascinating discussion.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle Secretary, Wikimedia NYC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC
On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 4:17 AM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
This is one inherrant problem with COI those who get stuff done are forced to sit out discussions in preference for those who spend all their time talking and producing nothing. What we end up with is not leadership, its not project experience, its bureaucracy with out any true direction where every idea that sounds good, that is well presented gets the go ahead with no understanding of what it takes to make a project work. Because of that we have KPI or metrics that satisfy the bureaucracy, force the organisors to run by the numbers rather than focus on producing real impact results over the longer term.
High impact long term projects take considerable investment of time over time the dont happen in 3, 6, 12 month cycles, look at WLE & WLM its be year in year out commitments by volunteers to build and expand but every year they waste time seeking funding for the year this is where the Grant process should take the lead and just assign a long term budget to be managed by WMF financial staff and let the volunteers concentrate on having impact. Wikidata is in the same boat, its the bureaucratic begging processes that cost most of our volunteers time and produce the least impact.
Denny's loss should be awake up call otherwise it'll be repeated continously especially from community selected seats, some where along the way we have created a bureaucracy at the expense of trust and assuming people are acting in good faith for the betterment of the projects
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org