Re: http://twkozlowski.net/the-pot-and-the-kettle-the-wikimedia-way/
Two questions:
1. Where can I find a response from either the WMF board or WMF funding/finance to the criticisms of a lack of transparency or the apparent failure of the project to deliver value for the donor's money as raised in this blog post?
2. Where can I read an officially recognized report for the outcomes of this project in terms of value for Wikimedia projects? Obviously we do not want to rely on second-hand analysis when reports to the WMF are a requirement for such projects.
Thanks, Fae
Hi all,
I've just met with Lisa Gruwell and Sara Lasner about it to get more of a debrief of the situation. For the purpose of clarity, I'm looking into this on Sue's behalf while she's traveling; she should be able to look into it next week. As noted previously, this isn't a project I was previously familiar with, so bear with me if I'm getting any bits wrong.
Here are some initial high level observations:
* This project was initiated by Sue Gardner in response to a request by Liz Allison from Stanton Foundation, who initially attempted to fund the project with a direct grant to Harvard. For administrative reasons, both Harvard and Stanton ended up preferring to have Wikimedia Foundation act as a fiscal sponsor for the position. (This included administrative oversight by Sara Lasner, and a minimal degree of programmatic oversight by Sara and Lisa, with a primary programmatic point of contact at the Belfer Center.) The project was overseen by Lisa Gruwell.
* WMF agreed to help recruit candidates for the position and to provide three candidates to the Belfer Center for selection. Frank, Siko and Lisa participated in the first round of interviews. The first candidate we put forward was a former Harvard librarian and active WIkipedian, but she was rejected by the Belfer Center for a lack of knowledge in the field on International Security. Then, the Belfer Center posted the JD on a list-serve of top academic programs in International Security. WMF interviewed two candidates from this pool and Belfer selected Timothy Sandole for his strong academic background in International Security. He had just completed a master's program at Columbia University.
* The Stanton Foundation has a long-standing interest in promoting awareness regarding issues of international security and nuclear security, which dates back to the founder of the Foundation, Frank Stanton (former president of CBS).
* The Stanton Foundation does not have a financial interest in these topics. With that said, Liz Allison, who heads the Stanton Foundation, and Graham Allison, who heads the Belfer Center, are wife and husband, and the Stanton Foundation funds other programs related to international security.
* As noted previously, the Wikimedia Foundation communicated about the program in a blog post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/26/can-you-help-wikipedians-collaborate-wi... Timothy Sandole also disclosed his affiliation with the Belfer Center on his user page, but did not disclose the funding relationship with WMF or Stanton in the same manner.
* Timothy's residency included training programs, but it was heavily weighted towards editing work.
* Sara Lasner acted as an administrative point of contact at Wikimedia (handling payments, vacation requests, etc.). Not being steeped in Wikimedia's culture, Sara gave minimal guidance regarding policies and practices, but forwarded instructional materials and pointed out the above conflict-of-interest issues to Timothy. There was a communications contact at the Belfer Center, James Smith, who provided subject-matter guidance.
* Timothy himself compiled a weekly report to the Belfer Center and to Sara, and a final report at the end of the project. With his permission, I've published the final report here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timothy_Sandole_-_Belfer_Center_Repo...
I have a copy of the weekly memos as well, and we've asked for his permission to release them.
In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation compiled a report to Stanton at the end of the project largely identical to the report to Timothy. We've asked the Stanton Foundation for permission to release this report, as well, for the sake of full transparency.
Edits like the following are indeed problematic:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cuban_missile_crisis&diff=pre... - potentially undue visibility for research conducted by the head of the Belfer Center
* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opposition_to_military_action_aga... - potentially undue visibility for the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship, which was funded by the same Stanton Foundation which funded the program.
In September 2012, Sara Lasner had a call with Timothy Sandole specifically asking him to be conscious of not over-representing Harvard University in his research, and Lisa Gruwell sent an email to James Smith and Timothy Sandole regarding awareness of conflict-of-interest issues in general.
Timothy's edits weren't monitored in detail by the Wikimedia Foundation. We'll take a closer look now, and appreciate the community's help in ensuring that, in light of the above potential conflicts-of-interests, that they're consistent with policies and guidelines.
At the same time, it's important to note that Stanton Foundation did not stand to benefit financially from this project. The nature of potential bias here is more subtle (e.g. over-representation of certain academic perspectives). Again, it's important to note that in this respect, the relationship with the primary potential "beneficiary" (Belfer Center) was fully disclosed on Timothy's user page.
As far as I can tell, everyone involved acted in good faith - the Stanton Foundation tried to expand the availability of freely licensed high quality information in areas that it concerns itself with; the Wikimedia Foundation sought to try to support this request (based on a longstanding positive relationship with the funder); Timothy and the Belfer Center made good faith efforts to improve the areas of content he was tasked to improve. What appears to have been missing:
* a full and honest upfront conversation between WMF and Stanton early on about any perceived or real conflicts-of-interest issues in the context of this work;
* strong follow-through in ensuring the highest standard of disclosure regarding all funding relationships, beyond the initial blog post, and continued reporting, including the final report;
* a sufficient level of training and oversight for Timothy Sandole beyond administrivia.
A lot of this can likely be traced to running this within fundraising -- it's totally fine that fundraising isn't positioned to oversee complex Wikipedia-related programs, so we underestimated the complexity of the work and situated it in the wrong place in the org.
Liam Wyatt and Pete Forsyth are right to point out that they noted the risks and issues early on, and they're also right to point out that the community-developed WiR program places emphasis on non-editing work for good reasons. Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis also provided internal feedback and criticism early on, pointing out the COI issues and the risks regarding the project. (Thank you to both of them, and others who provided internal feedback; it's appreciated.)
We're now heading into the weekend, and beyond answering questions that are easy to answer without coordination, I'll refrain from commenting much further til next week. In response to Pine's point, I agree that we shouldn't rush to conclusions and give ourselves time to more fully evaluate things, so consider all the above to be preliminary and subject to revision as we more fully understand the situation.
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi... with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
The Wikimedia Foundation did and does not intend to undertake similar efforts again (programs that include paid editing), but these kinds of issues can extend to any program that includes active work on content. So my initial take is that we should aim too ensure that content-related programs are undertaken under a clear and simple set of public guidelines, and are situated in parts of the organization well-positioned to support them with subject-matter expertise. We'll discuss this more, and follow up on this as well.
Thanks,
Erik
Thanks Erik for this clear and, as far as I can see, rather comprehensive report
There will always be mistakes done, both from us as individuals and as organizations.
Critical, though, is that we treat these mistakes with openness and tranparancies and that we learn from our mistakes
In my opinion you have now handled this issue in this correct way, and I hope we now can take in the necessary learnings in our routines
Anders
Erik Moeller skrev 2014-03-21 21:23:
Hi all,
I've just met with Lisa Gruwell and Sara Lasner about it to get more of a debrief of the situation. For the purpose of clarity, I'm looking into this on Sue's behalf while she's traveling; she should be able to look into it next week. As noted previously, this isn't a project I was previously familiar with, so bear with me if I'm getting any bits wrong.
Here are some initial high level observations:
- This project was initiated by Sue Gardner in response to a request
by Liz Allison from Stanton Foundation, who initially attempted to fund the project with a direct grant to Harvard. For administrative reasons, both Harvard and Stanton ended up preferring to have Wikimedia Foundation act as a fiscal sponsor for the position. (This included administrative oversight by Sara Lasner, and a minimal degree of programmatic oversight by Sara and Lisa, with a primary programmatic point of contact at the Belfer Center.) The project was overseen by Lisa Gruwell.
- WMF agreed to help recruit candidates for the position and to
provide three candidates to the Belfer Center for selection. Frank, Siko and Lisa participated in the first round of interviews. The first candidate we put forward was a former Harvard librarian and active WIkipedian, but she was rejected by the Belfer Center for a lack of knowledge in the field on International Security. Then, the Belfer Center posted the JD on a list-serve of top academic programs in International Security. WMF interviewed two candidates from this pool and Belfer selected Timothy Sandole for his strong academic background in International Security. He had just completed a master's program at Columbia University.
- The Stanton Foundation has a long-standing interest in promoting
awareness regarding issues of international security and nuclear security, which dates back to the founder of the Foundation, Frank Stanton (former president of CBS).
- The Stanton Foundation does not have a financial interest in these
topics. With that said, Liz Allison, who heads the Stanton Foundation, and Graham Allison, who heads the Belfer Center, are wife and husband, and the Stanton Foundation funds other programs related to international security.
- As noted previously, the Wikimedia Foundation communicated about the
program in a blog post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/26/can-you-help-wikipedians-collaborate-wi... Timothy Sandole also disclosed his affiliation with the Belfer Center on his user page, but did not disclose the funding relationship with WMF or Stanton in the same manner.
- Timothy's residency included training programs, but it was heavily
weighted towards editing work.
- Sara Lasner acted as an administrative point of contact at Wikimedia
(handling payments, vacation requests, etc.). Not being steeped in Wikimedia's culture, Sara gave minimal guidance regarding policies and practices, but forwarded instructional materials and pointed out the above conflict-of-interest issues to Timothy. There was a communications contact at the Belfer Center, James Smith, who provided subject-matter guidance.
- Timothy himself compiled a weekly report to the Belfer Center and to
Sara, and a final report at the end of the project. With his permission, I've published the final report here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timothy_Sandole_-_Belfer_Center_Repo...
I have a copy of the weekly memos as well, and we've asked for his permission to release them.
In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation compiled a report to Stanton at the end of the project largely identical to the report to Timothy. We've asked the Stanton Foundation for permission to release this report, as well, for the sake of full transparency.
Edits like the following are indeed problematic:
- potentially undue visibility for research conducted by the head of
the Belfer Center
- potentially undue visibility for the Stanton Nuclear Security
Fellowship, which was funded by the same Stanton Foundation which funded the program.
In September 2012, Sara Lasner had a call with Timothy Sandole specifically asking him to be conscious of not over-representing Harvard University in his research, and Lisa Gruwell sent an email to James Smith and Timothy Sandole regarding awareness of conflict-of-interest issues in general.
Timothy's edits weren't monitored in detail by the Wikimedia Foundation. We'll take a closer look now, and appreciate the community's help in ensuring that, in light of the above potential conflicts-of-interests, that they're consistent with policies and guidelines.
At the same time, it's important to note that Stanton Foundation did not stand to benefit financially from this project. The nature of potential bias here is more subtle (e.g. over-representation of certain academic perspectives). Again, it's important to note that in this respect, the relationship with the primary potential "beneficiary" (Belfer Center) was fully disclosed on Timothy's user page.
As far as I can tell, everyone involved acted in good faith - the Stanton Foundation tried to expand the availability of freely licensed high quality information in areas that it concerns itself with; the Wikimedia Foundation sought to try to support this request (based on a longstanding positive relationship with the funder); Timothy and the Belfer Center made good faith efforts to improve the areas of content he was tasked to improve. What appears to have been missing:
- a full and honest upfront conversation between WMF and Stanton early
on about any perceived or real conflicts-of-interest issues in the context of this work;
- strong follow-through in ensuring the highest standard of disclosure
regarding all funding relationships, beyond the initial blog post, and continued reporting, including the final report;
- a sufficient level of training and oversight for Timothy Sandole
beyond administrivia.
A lot of this can likely be traced to running this within fundraising -- it's totally fine that fundraising isn't positioned to oversee complex Wikipedia-related programs, so we underestimated the complexity of the work and situated it in the wrong place in the org.
Liam Wyatt and Pete Forsyth are right to point out that they noted the risks and issues early on, and they're also right to point out that the community-developed WiR program places emphasis on non-editing work for good reasons. Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis also provided internal feedback and criticism early on, pointing out the COI issues and the risks regarding the project. (Thank you to both of them, and others who provided internal feedback; it's appreciated.)
We're now heading into the weekend, and beyond answering questions that are easy to answer without coordination, I'll refrain from commenting much further til next week. In response to Pine's point, I agree that we shouldn't rush to conclusions and give ourselves time to more fully evaluate things, so consider all the above to be preliminary and subject to revision as we more fully understand the situation.
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi... with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
The Wikimedia Foundation did and does not intend to undertake similar efforts again (programs that include paid editing), but these kinds of issues can extend to any program that includes active work on content. So my initial take is that we should aim too ensure that content-related programs are undertaken under a clear and simple set of public guidelines, and are situated in parts of the organization well-positioned to support them with subject-matter expertise. We'll discuss this more, and follow up on this as well.
Thanks,
Erik
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I have a copy of the weekly memos as well, and we've asked for his permission to release them.
This is now done: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Belfer_Center_Campus_Wikipedian_...
I've not scrutinized or touched the reports except for converting docx to PDF (thank you, LibreOffice command line options). These are all the ones Sara has, I'll double-check with Timothy that there weren't any others.
Erik
Thank you for this Erik, we look forward to receiving on Commons the other 25 weeks (half a years worth) of reports -- especially the reports from the weeks the 3 seminars were held.
There will certainly be lots to look at, and I noted on one report:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Timothy_Sandole_Memo_Apr...
Monday, April 22 - Researched offensive realism and the concept, 'buck passing' (3 hours). - Wrote a draft on buck passing in MS Word. Coded/authored the stub, "Buck passing," on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_passing (6 hours).
Does anyone believe for one minute that https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buck_passing&diff=551697085&a... 6 hours to draft? And anywhere between 0 and 3 hours to research?
This would have taken one no more than 10 minutes to do -- research books relating to buck passing and find one (5 minutes), copy and paste a quote from the book (as was done here) (2 minutes), do wikimarkup/references (not HTML) (2 minutes), hit save (1 minute). Voila!
Seriously, this is a disgrace, particularly given this was some 7 months into the project.
There is no way that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for an entire year was spent on this full-time position, and the above is just plain evidence of that.
Comment from anyone at the WMF welcome.
Russavia
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I have a copy of the weekly memos as well, and we've asked for his permission to release them.
This is now done:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Belfer_Center_Campus_Wikipedian_...
I've not scrutinized or touched the reports except for converting docx to PDF (thank you, LibreOffice command line options). These are all the ones Sara has, I'll double-check with Timothy that there weren't any others.
Erik
Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 22 March 2014 09:40, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote: ...
Does anyone believe for one minute that https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buck_passing&diff=551697085&a... 6 hours to draft? And anywhere between 0 and 3 hours to research?
...
Correction to link (missing space): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buck_passing&diff=551697085&a...
The point made by Russavia on *extremely* poor value for charitable monies is well made, especially as it now appears that the Wikimedia Foundation had a duty of care in the form of line management or oversight of this work. There are unimpressive direct links to Google books as a source citations, against Wikipedia best practices. Were this my research student I would wonder if they were surfing Google books and as a result only reading partial quotes, rather than getting the original out of the library and ensuring they have checked the entire source material and understood what the author intended.
These are understandable beginner mistakes, but when burning $50,000+ a year grant money, I would expect WMF officially endorsed paid editing to be first class examples.
Fae
Erik,
In Liam's email to the list he mentioned:
"We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role but our suggestions that the position be 'paused' until the community could help was rejected because of a deadline that had been set by Stanton/Harvard apparently."
Can you please provide the original JDF so the rest of the community has the opportunity to look at it.
I understand this is a difficult time for the WMF, but many in the community (the number one stakeholder in our projects) will not be happy with simply getting a few reports from Sandole, a heap of spin from the WMF and then move on; as we do on Wikipedia projects, we present information and let the readers make their own minds up.
I also had a question relating to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding... but given you weren't involved in this (perhaps the only person in management at the WMF who wasn't!), I will leave my question for Sue to answer when she gets back.
Anyway, I would welcome the community being able to peruse the original JDF, that at least Liam and LoriLee was privvy too, at the earliest opportunity.
Cheers
Russavia
Russavia,
First, I write here in my capacity as a volunteer and a member of the community you claim to speak on behalf of, clearly not as a staffer of the Foundation (not that engineering has anything to do with programs like this anyways).
On 03/22/2014 09:00 AM, Russavia wrote:
I understand this is a difficult time for the WMF, but many in the community (the number one stakeholder in our projects) will not be happy with simply getting a few reports from Sandole
Whether or not you have a point about that position having been badly considered or having a been a waste of money -- and I'd be inclined to think that it was at least a little of both -- you've squarely crossed the line between "asking legitimate questions" and "pointless harassment".
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't), or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't), or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't); it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information for informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions? Because, right now, you seem more interested in stoking the fires of your vendetta by harping on what you /want/ that conclusion to be than any actual interest in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again if it was a problem.
-- Coren / Marc
Marc A. Pelletier wrote:
Whether or not you have a point about that position having been badly considered or having a been a waste of money -- and I'd be inclined to think that it was at least a little of both -- you've squarely crossed the line between "asking legitimate questions" and "pointless harassment".
Yes, think of the employees! How dare you ask very acute questions! How dare you ask any questions at all! It's harassment, and it's even worse than that! It's pointless harassment!
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't), or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't), or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't); it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
It was donors' money that was spent on this position, Marc. And if you can point me to where Russavia said he was speaking of behalf of the community, and not on behalf of himself, it would be appreciated.
Otherwise, if you think community members can only speak their mind if they have been appointed by the rest of the Wikimedia contributors, this needs to be added to our mailing list guidelines. Or maybe we should get rid of the mailing lists altogether to avoid such misunderstandings in the future.
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information for informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions?
How about you stop telling people what to do? You're not Russavia's boss, so just stop, and do it fast. Thanks.
Tomasz
On 3/22/2014 7:42 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't), or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't), or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't); it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
It was donors' money that was spent on this position, Marc.
It was one single donor's money that was spent on this position, not money from the general pool of donations, which I believe is the point Marc was trying to make. Moreover, that donor specifically wanted the money spent on this position. It's not like the Wikimedia Foundation had the option to spend the money on other, better program opportunities.
As such, it seems clear that the donor in question is in the best position to evaluate whether the funds achieved their intended purpose. We don't really have good information in this case to do that for them, and imposing our ideas of what should be done with someone else's money is just wishful thinking.
At the same time, it is clear that there are legitimate concerns with this project from the perspective of good editing practices and conflicts of interest. This is a good argument that it would have been better for the Wikimedia Foundation not to participate in the transaction, and gives reason to be leery of such pass-through arrangements in general. And in terms of organizational philosophy, it's also why the foundation focuses on fundraising from the general public rather than restricted gifts from individual donors. Looking at this from an audit committee perspective, the information so far suggests that the foundation could more carefully screen such gifts for alignment with our values, but at this point I haven't seen indications that this rises to the level of misuse of donor funds.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't), or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't), or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't); it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
It was donors' money that was spent on this position, Marc.
It was one single donor's money that was spent on this position, not money from the general pool of donations, which I believe is the point Marc was trying to make. Moreover, that donor specifically wanted the money spent on this position. It's not like the Wikimedia Foundation had the option to spend the money on other, better program opportunities.
As such, it seems clear that the donor in question is in the best position to evaluate whether the funds achieved their intended purpose. We don't really have good information in this case to do that for them, and imposing our ideas of what should be done with someone else's money is just wishful thinking.
At the same time, it is clear that there are legitimate concerns with this project from the perspective of good editing practices and conflicts of interest. This is a good argument that it would have been better for the Wikimedia Foundation not to participate in the transaction, and gives reason to be leery of such pass-through arrangements in general. And in terms of organizational philosophy, it's also why the foundation focuses on fundraising from the general public rather than restricted gifts from individual donors. Looking at this from an audit committee perspective, the information so far suggests that the foundation could more carefully screen such gifts for alignment with our values, but at this point I haven't seen indications that this rises to the level of misuse of donor funds.
Eh, that is not the point in my mind. If A wants to assist his relative B's work, and, "for administrative reasons", they want to engage WMF as a middle man to make it appear as if there is no direct financial flow, then it's not for A to evaluate whether the funds "achieved their intended pur- pose".
Organizations that distribute funds according to the deposi- tors' wishes are called banks and they have to ensure their compliance with relevant regulations. WMF should make it very clear that it doesn't engage in any fishy transactions.
Tim
On 3/22/2014 2:04 PM, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
As such, it seems clear that the donor in question is in the best position to evaluate whether the funds achieved their intended purpose. We don't really have good information in this case to do that for them, and imposing our ideas of what should be done with someone else's money is just wishful thinking. At the same time, it is clear that there are legitimate concerns with this project from the perspective of good editing practices and conflicts of interest. This is a good argument that it would have been better for the Wikimedia Foundation not to participate in the transaction, and gives reason to be leery of such pass-through arrangements in general. And in terms of organizational philosophy, it's also why the foundation focuses on fundraising from the general public rather than restricted gifts from individual donors. Looking at this from an audit committee perspective, the information so far suggests that the foundation could more carefully screen such gifts for alignment with our values, but at this point I haven't seen indications that this rises to the level of misuse of donor funds.
Eh, that is not the point in my mind. If A wants to assist his relative B's work, and, "for administrative reasons", they want to engage WMF as a middle man to make it appear as if there is no direct financial flow, then it's not for A to evaluate whether the funds "achieved their intended pur- pose".
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the Wikimedia Foundation actually done that, it would be highly improper. Depriving A of the ability to direct the use of the funds may vaguely feel like a just consequence for acting with impure motives, but we do not have the right to enforce such a result.
The correct answer is much more likely to be a set of two possibilities. Either more work should have gone into ensuring alignment with our goals, or the foundation should have declined to get involved. The former is what Liam and others have tried to emphasize, and would require having conversations along the lines of, "These are the kinds of things Wikipedians-in-Residence are expected to focus on, are you comfortable with your money being directed to those types of activities?" The latter option, meanwhile, is always an acceptable course for us to take if it's not clear that we have a mutual understanding with the donor about how to spend the money.
Organizations that distribute funds according to the deposi- tors' wishes are called banks and they have to ensure their compliance with relevant regulations.
That's a very simplistic formulation which ignores the wide variety of organizations and professions that may need to handle funds belonging to other parties. Trustees, lawyers, and agents of various kinds do this all the time without needing to be banks, although certainly they typically use bank accounts as part of the process. Nonprofit organizations effectively do this when they accept restricted gifts. For many nonprofits, private foundations in particular, this is basically what they do with all the money that comes in the door.
Compliance with the relevant regulations, meanwhile, is precisely the point. If the Wikimedia Foundation accepts such a donation, the rules require it to be distributed according to the terms set by the donor. Which again is why the fundraising emphasis is on general, unrestricted donations.
WMF should make it very clear that it doesn't engage in any fishy transactions.
No disagreement there. It's not clear if any of the staff involved were aware of the relevant facts at the time or understood their implications, but if the real motivation for the arrangement was to avoid disclosure or scrutiny of a related-party transaction on the part of either the Stanton Foundation or the Belfer Center, it suggests that the Wikimedia Foundation should have declined to participate.
--Michael Snow
On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
...
When I was getting legal advice on the issues of Wikimedia UK becoming a charity, one of the issues I had to bend my mind around was the tax implications of how the charity could provide grants to non-UK projects.
It is not possible for a UK charity to offer restricted grants without risking having to pay tax as if they were paying for a profit making commercial service, rather than gifting money. For this reason the UK charity will only offer *unrestricted* grants, based on a published proposal from the non-UK organization that will spend the grant on charitable purposes. I have little doubt that the IRS rules are just as stringent, otherwise US charities would be frequently used as container companies for tax avoidance and money-laundering. Something the WMF is extremely careful to avoid.
I have no doubt that this will be specifically explained in the detailed governance report that is being worked on by WMF Legal and will hopefully be published next week.
Fae
On 3/23/2014 1:08 AM, Fæ wrote:
On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
...
When I was getting legal advice on the issues of Wikimedia UK becoming a charity, one of the issues I had to bend my mind around was the tax implications of how the charity could provide grants to non-UK projects.
It is not possible for a UK charity to offer restricted grants without risking having to pay tax as if they were paying for a profit making commercial service, rather than gifting money. For this reason the UK charity will only offer *unrestricted* grants, based on a published proposal from the non-UK organization that will spend the grant on charitable purposes. I have little doubt that the IRS rules are just as stringent, otherwise US charities would be frequently used as container companies for tax avoidance and money-laundering.
I'm not sure why you're responding to a point about the Wikimedia Foundation in the role of receiving a grant, one that in this case did not require funds to be transferred outside their country of origin, with a hypothetical discussion about Wikimedia UK in the role of making a grant, in which the funds would be transferred between countries that would not necessarily have the same systems for taxation or charitable organizations. Are charities in the UK prohibited from accepting donations to which any form of restriction is attached?
--Michael Snow
"Are charities in the UK prohibited from accepting donations to which any form of restriction is attached?"
No. It can be quite common. On 23 Mar 2014 08:33, "Michael Snow" wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 3/23/2014 1:08 AM, Fæ wrote:
On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
...
When I was getting legal advice on the issues of Wikimedia UK becoming a charity, one of the issues I had to bend my mind around was the tax implications of how the charity could provide grants to non-UK projects.
It is not possible for a UK charity to offer restricted grants without risking having to pay tax as if they were paying for a profit making commercial service, rather than gifting money. For this reason the UK charity will only offer *unrestricted* grants, based on a published proposal from the non-UK organization that will spend the grant on charitable purposes. I have little doubt that the IRS rules are just as stringent, otherwise US charities would be frequently used as container companies for tax avoidance and money-laundering.
I'm not sure why you're responding to a point about the Wikimedia Foundation in the role of receiving a grant, one that in this case did not require funds to be transferred outside their country of origin, with a hypothetical discussion about Wikimedia UK in the role of making a grant, in which the funds would be transferred between countries that would not necessarily have the same systems for taxation or charitable organizations. Are charities in the UK prohibited from accepting donations to which any form of restriction is attached?
--Michael Snow
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 23 March 2014 08:32, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 3/23/2014 1:08 AM, Fæ wrote:
On 23/03/2014, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com
There isn't a legitimate basis for evaluating how the funds are spent other than A's desires and intentions. It's still a restricted gift, we can't pretend that this is money from general fundraising and decide it should have been spent in a way that better fits our priorities. Had the
...
When I was getting legal advice on the issues of Wikimedia UK becoming a charity, one of the issues I had to bend my mind around was the tax implications of how the charity could provide grants to non-UK projects.
It is not possible for a UK charity to offer restricted grants without risking having to pay tax as if they were paying for a profit making commercial service, rather than gifting money. For this reason the UK charity will only offer *unrestricted* grants, based on a published proposal from the non-UK organization that will spend the grant on charitable purposes. I have little doubt that the IRS rules are just as stringent, otherwise US charities would be frequently used as container companies for tax avoidance and money-laundering.
I'm not sure why you're responding to a point about the Wikimedia Foundation in the role of receiving a grant, one that in this case did not require funds to be transferred outside their country of origin, with a hypothetical discussion about Wikimedia UK in the role of making a grant, in which the funds would be transferred between countries that would not necessarily have the same systems for taxation or charitable organizations. Are charities in the UK prohibited from accepting donations to which any form of restriction is attached?
No, but they would have to be pretty badly managed not to understand if there would be later tax, criminality, or reputation damage implications either for themselves or the donating party.
Fae
Marc A. Pelletier wrote:
Russavia,
[...]
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information for informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions? Because, right now, you seem more interested in stoking the fires of your vendetta by harping on what you /want/ that conclusion to be than any actual interest in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again if it was a problem.
Yes, this. ^^^
In general, just being a bit kinder would go a long way here. Erik and others have been incredibly accommodating to your research requests and the primary response I've seen from the interrogators is "now do this!" Chill out.
MZMcBride
Coren / Marc (cc'ing to your personal email as well)
Odder's blog post was posted 3 weeks ago, and my analysis was posted 24 hours ago, and many English Wikipedia admins have said they have seen either and/or both.
Yet, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am... still there.
It's already been established that there is massive copyvio in there, and I think it is absolutely unacceptable for a copyvio to still be in this article under the circumstances.
Could you please be so kind as to:
1) Revert the article back to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am... 2) Revdel all edits going back to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am... ensure that the copyright violation is hidden from public view as is best practice 3) Perhaps you could leave a message on the article talk page, and perhaps also leave messages at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_International_relat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Russia and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_United_Statesadvisi... them that this article which is rated as top importance for 2 of these projects have had to be revdelled back to November 2012 (a year and a half) and that they may wish to work on the article given the circumstances.
I have more examples of copyvios as well, so if you like I would be happy to send them through to you for you to action. Would that be ok with you?
Cheers
Russavia
On 03/22/2014 02:45 PM, Russavia wrote:
It's already been established that there is massive copyvio in there, and I think it is absolutely unacceptable for a copyvio to still be in this article under the circumstances.
It's unacceptable under /any/ circumstances, but I don't see an obvious copyright violation, nor can I find a place where you pointed out one? Where was that established?
-- Coren / Marc
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:59 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 03/22/2014 02:45 PM, Russavia wrote:
It's already been established that there is massive copyvio in there, and I think it is absolutely unacceptable for a copyvio to still be in this article under the circumstances.
It's unacceptable under /any/ circumstances, but I don't see an obvious copyright violation, nor can I find a place where you pointed out one? Where was that established?
Responding to your second email first, a search for "copyright violation" on all emails on this list will lead you right to the relevant post, by Russavia.
Or search for copyright violations in the following page
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/443518
And in the email you quoted Russavia gave the diff where it can be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am...
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
Russavia,
First, I write here in my capacity as a volunteer and a member of the community you claim to speak on behalf of, clearly not as a staffer of the Foundation (not that engineering has anything to do with programs like this anyways).
On 03/22/2014 09:00 AM, Russavia wrote:
I understand this is a difficult time for the WMF, but many in the community (the number one stakeholder in our projects) will not be happy with simply getting a few reports from Sandole
Whether or not you have a point about that position having been badly considered or having a been a waste of money -- and I'd be inclined to think that it was at least a little of both -- you've squarely crossed the line between "asking legitimate questions" and "pointless harassment".
You have selectively quoted Russavia. His email wasnt pointless harassment.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070681.html
The email was primarily Russavia asking:
"Can you please provide the original JDF so the rest of the community has the opportunity to look at it."
That is a legitimate question in the circumstances, given this was a document that appears to have been revised after publication and it is being discussed on this list without it being public.
The tone of Russavia's email around that request had some rough edges, but so does your email. Credit where it is due : Russavia appears to have put quite a lot of time into this in the last few days, and shared an analysis that at least fairly conclusively points towards a serious problem.
I'm not expecting Erik to make it his primary task on Monday morning to find and publish this, and do appreciate that he has been personally answering questions and publishing relevant documents already, but it is a pretty simple request and he has staff who can do it.
Honestly this type of information should be publicly accessible from the get go. Why wasnt the JDF published on wiki? And discussed on wiki? It is surprising that quite a few people have known about this, and said nothing until now. It is also surprising that (afaik) the WMF didnt announce the person selected for this position to the community, to facilitate continual review of the ongoing program and its contributions, and hasnt undertaken a program evaluation of this already - one half of the Belfer position should have fallen directly in the scope of the Editing Workshops evaluation.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Editing_w...
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't),
promotional paid editing, inserting pro-U.S. POV and copyvio/plagiarism into English Wikipedia may not be 'highly disruptive', especially as there were so few edits involved, but it is far from 'just apparently very inefficient'.
or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't),
It is appropriate to distinguish between general public unrestricted donations vs 'the donor of the restricted money telling WMF what to do with it', however focusing on what was 'spent' is not appropriate. There are direct costs which may be larger than the granted amount; there are indirect costs, and there are opportunity costs. From what I have seen, I think it is fair to conclude that general public unrestricted donations will suffer from this broadly speaking.
There may be quite a bit of direct costs that arnt covered by the Stanton grant per se, including selection process, onboarding, reviewing their work, and now handling the fallout of a failed project (e.g. Erik's time and I presume Jay is also working overtime). The Stanton grant quite probably included an amount for normal overheads related to the position (selection, onboarding, monitoring), but those costs could have blown out and/or the WMF decided to absorb the costs given the size of the restricted grant for program activity.
However it is the indirect costs which will hurt.
As the WMF considers spending donor money on clamping down on paid editing to be money well spent, a whole lot more of that donor money needs to be spent achieving that goal when month after month there are revelations of the WMF staff (which Timothy Sandole was, roughly speaking) engaging in this type of editing, or the initial investment of donor dollars has been wasted if the concept of WMF policing paid editing needs to be abandoned as it has lost the high ground.
There is reputational damage to the WiR concept, WMF, and Wikimedia generally, which will be felt across the movement. While the WMF may not be going to run this type of program again, affiliates do run these types of programs. Affiliate staff and volunteer time will be spent rebuilding the WiR brand. IMO it is also a shame that this will mean more resistance to content rather than community-focused WiR. I know many people feel very strongly that a WiR should act as an enabler for the community rather than fill the gaps themselves, but in practise a lot of WiR end up writing content to some degree, and I think there are scenarios when a WiR should be more of a contributor rather than collaborator, especially in topical areas that are under-represented in major languages and in wikis in their early stages needing a major content boost rather than a minor, and maybe shortlived, boost to the number of contributors that a WiR might be able to achieve. But the community, GAC and FDC will be more shy of content-heavy WiR type programs since Belfer.
Then there is the potential for this to cause Stanton to stop giving grants to WMF, which means donor money needs to fill the void or programs need to be cut (and staff may need to be laid off.)
I cant even guess the opportunity costs, except that these types of 'special interest' projects can be headaches for pushing through large structural changes like Sue's "Narrowing the focus" which was launched in October 2012.
or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't);
Eh? No appointments necessary.
it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
Who said that there would be no further substantive information until Sue returns?
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information for informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions? Because, right now, you seem more interested in stoking the fires of your vendetta by harping on what you /want/ that conclusion to be than any actual interest in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again if it was a problem.
Which vendetta are you referring to?
Russavia was asking for more information, presumably in order to figure out what happened.
With respect to Sandole's editing of the article on [[Opposition to military action against Iran]]
The edit listed in this thread * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opposition_to_military_action_aga...
by itself would seem to show undue emphasis on one particular researcher at the center.
But looking at it in context of the entire body of his additions to the article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opposition_to_military_action_aga... shows he has also adding a long section by another scholar criticizing Kroenig. (the section dealing with three other people at the Center was there long before he began editing the article. )
I think this shows an attempt at balance, but I suppose it could be argued that it represents an attempt at further enhancing Kroenig's importance
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 4:14 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.comwrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:59 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 03/22/2014 02:45 PM, Russavia wrote:
It's already been established that there is massive copyvio in there, and I think it is absolutely unacceptable for a copyvio to still be in this article under the circumstances.
It's unacceptable under /any/ circumstances, but I don't see an obvious copyright violation, nor can I find a place where you pointed out one? Where was that established?
Responding to your second email first, a search for "copyright violation" on all emails on this list will lead you right to the relevant post, by Russavia.
Or search for copyright violations in the following page
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/443518
And in the email you quoted Russavia gave the diff where it can be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am...
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
Russavia,
First, I write here in my capacity as a volunteer and a member of the community you claim to speak on behalf of, clearly not as a staffer of the Foundation (not that engineering has anything to do with programs like this anyways).
On 03/22/2014 09:00 AM, Russavia wrote:
I understand this is a difficult time for the WMF, but many in the community (the number one stakeholder in our projects) will not be happy with simply getting a few reports from Sandole
Whether or not you have a point about that position having been badly considered or having a been a waste of money -- and I'd be inclined to think that it was at least a little of both -- you've squarely crossed the line between "asking legitimate questions" and "pointless
harassment".
You have selectively quoted Russavia. His email wasnt pointless harassment.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070681.html
The email was primarily Russavia asking:
"Can you please provide the original JDF so the rest of the community has the opportunity to look at it."
That is a legitimate question in the circumstances, given this was a document that appears to have been revised after publication and it is being discussed on this list without it being public.
The tone of Russavia's email around that request had some rough edges, but so does your email. Credit where it is due : Russavia appears to have put quite a lot of time into this in the last few days, and shared an analysis that at least fairly conclusively points towards a serious problem.
I'm not expecting Erik to make it his primary task on Monday morning to find and publish this, and do appreciate that he has been personally answering questions and publishing relevant documents already, but it is a pretty simple request and he has staff who can do it.
Honestly this type of information should be publicly accessible from the get go. Why wasnt the JDF published on wiki? And discussed on wiki? It is surprising that quite a few people have known about this, and said nothing until now. It is also surprising that (afaik) the WMF didnt announce the person selected for this position to the community, to facilitate continual review of the ongoing program and its contributions, and hasnt undertaken a program evaluation of this already - one half of the Belfer position should have fallen directly in the scope of the Editing Workshops evaluation.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Editing_w...
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't),
promotional paid editing, inserting pro-U.S. POV and copyvio/plagiarism into English Wikipedia may not be 'highly disruptive', especially as there were so few edits involved, but it is far from 'just apparently very inefficient'.
or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't),
It is appropriate to distinguish between general public unrestricted donations vs 'the donor of the restricted money telling WMF what to do with it', however focusing on what was 'spent' is not appropriate. There are direct costs which may be larger than the granted amount; there are indirect costs, and there are opportunity costs. From what I have seen, I think it is fair to conclude that general public unrestricted donations will suffer from this broadly speaking.
There may be quite a bit of direct costs that arnt covered by the Stanton grant per se, including selection process, onboarding, reviewing their work, and now handling the fallout of a failed project (e.g. Erik's time and I presume Jay is also working overtime). The Stanton grant quite probably included an amount for normal overheads related to the position (selection, onboarding, monitoring), but those costs could have blown out and/or the WMF decided to absorb the costs given the size of the restricted grant for program activity.
However it is the indirect costs which will hurt.
As the WMF considers spending donor money on clamping down on paid editing to be money well spent, a whole lot more of that donor money needs to be spent achieving that goal when month after month there are revelations of the WMF staff (which Timothy Sandole was, roughly speaking) engaging in this type of editing, or the initial investment of donor dollars has been wasted if the concept of WMF policing paid editing needs to be abandoned as it has lost the high ground.
There is reputational damage to the WiR concept, WMF, and Wikimedia generally, which will be felt across the movement. While the WMF may not be going to run this type of program again, affiliates do run these types of programs. Affiliate staff and volunteer time will be spent rebuilding the WiR brand. IMO it is also a shame that this will mean more resistance to content rather than community-focused WiR. I know many people feel very strongly that a WiR should act as an enabler for the community rather than fill the gaps themselves, but in practise a lot of WiR end up writing content to some degree, and I think there are scenarios when a WiR should be more of a contributor rather than collaborator, especially in topical areas that are under-represented in major languages and in wikis in their early stages needing a major content boost rather than a minor, and maybe shortlived, boost to the number of contributors that a WiR might be able to achieve. But the community, GAC and FDC will be more shy of content-heavy WiR type programs since Belfer.
Then there is the potential for this to cause Stanton to stop giving grants to WMF, which means donor money needs to fill the void or programs need to be cut (and staff may need to be laid off.)
I cant even guess the opportunity costs, except that these types of 'special interest' projects can be headaches for pushing through large structural changes like Sue's "Narrowing the focus" which was launched in October 2012.
or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't);
Eh? No appointments necessary.
it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information would come until Sue returns next week.
Who said that there would be no further substantive information until Sue returns?
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information for informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions? Because, right now, you seem more interested in stoking the fires of your vendetta by harping on what you /want/ that conclusion to be than any actual interest in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again if it was a problem.
Which vendetta are you referring to?
Russavia was asking for more information, presumably in order to figure out what happened.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Now that I've had time to look more closely at Mr. Sandole's contributions, I am seeing a lot of good faith effort, marred by rather a lot of typical beginner's errors. Some of the diffs are horrific when taken in isolation, but as David Goodman has pointed out, in context they're merely "very concerning". Aside from all the matters related to poor programme design and the lack of transparency that have already been canvassed in this discussion and are extremely valid points, I think that it's obvious that Sandole was just thrown in the deep end here with little or no support from either the Foundation or the project sponsors, and that has resulted in the rather modest (to be kind) return on investment. There is a valuable lesson to be learned here, and not just by the WMF, but also by affiliates and other external bodies looking to contribute content. That lesson is that if you throw a newbie editor into the deep end of the shark pool that is ENWP and tell them to write stuff, then it's probably going to end in tears.
I appreciate Erik's work in tracking down and posting information on this, and look forward to reading the Foundation's report and investigation into how this occurred and why the whole affair has been so opaque until now, and hopefully sooner rather than later. If someone can give an ETA on when this information is expected to be published, I'm sure that would be appreciated by the community.
Cheers, Craig
On 24 March 2014 09:53, David Goodman dggenwp@gmail.com wrote:
With respect to Sandole's editing of the article on [[Opposition to military action against Iran]]
The edit listed in this thread
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opposition_to_military_action_aga...
by itself would seem to show undue emphasis on one particular researcher at the center.
But looking at it in context of the entire body of his additions to the article
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Opposition_to_military_action_aga... shows he has also adding a long section by another scholar criticizing Kroenig. (the section dealing with three other people at the Center was there long before he began editing the article. )
I think this shows an attempt at balance, but I suppose it could be argued that it represents an attempt at further enhancing Kroenig's importance
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 4:14 PM, John Mark Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 6:59 AM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 03/22/2014 02:45 PM, Russavia wrote:
It's already been established that there is massive copyvio in there, and I think it is absolutely unacceptable for a copyvio to still be in this article under the circumstances.
It's unacceptable under /any/ circumstances, but I don't see an obvious copyright violation, nor can I find a place where you pointed out one? Where was that established?
Responding to your second email first, a search for "copyright violation" on all emails on this list will lead you right to the relevant post, by Russavia.
Or search for copyright violations in the following page
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/443518
And in the email you quoted Russavia gave the diff where it can be found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia-United_States_relations&am...
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 8:46 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
Russavia,
First, I write here in my capacity as a volunteer and a member of the community you claim to speak on behalf of, clearly not as a staffer of the Foundation (not that engineering has anything to do with programs like this anyways).
On 03/22/2014 09:00 AM, Russavia wrote:
I understand this is a difficult time for the WMF, but many in the community (the number one stakeholder in our projects) will not be
happy
with simply getting a few reports from Sandole
Whether or not you have a point about that position having been badly considered or having a been a waste of money -- and I'd be inclined to think that it was at least a little of both -- you've squarely crossed the line between "asking legitimate questions" and "pointless
harassment".
You have selectively quoted Russavia. His email wasnt pointless harassment.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070681.html
The email was primarily Russavia asking:
"Can you please provide the original JDF so the rest of the community has the opportunity to look at it."
That is a legitimate question in the circumstances, given this was a document that appears to have been revised after publication and it is being discussed on this list without it being public.
The tone of Russavia's email around that request had some rough edges, but so does your email. Credit where it is due : Russavia appears to have put quite a lot of time into this in the last few days, and shared an analysis that at least fairly conclusively points towards a serious problem.
I'm not expecting Erik to make it his primary task on Monday morning to find and publish this, and do appreciate that he has been personally answering questions and publishing relevant documents already, but it is a pretty simple request and he has staff who can do it.
Honestly this type of information should be publicly accessible from the get go. Why wasnt the JDF published on wiki? And discussed on wiki? It is surprising that quite a few people have known about this, and said nothing until now. It is also surprising that (afaik) the WMF didnt announce the person selected for this position to the community, to facilitate continual review of the ongoing program and its contributions, and hasnt undertaken a program evaluation of this already - one half of the Belfer position should have fallen directly in the scope of the Editing Workshops evaluation.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Library/Editing_w...
Even if Timothy has been highly disruptive rather than just apparently very inefficient (which he wasn't),
promotional paid editing, inserting pro-U.S. POV and copyvio/plagiarism into English Wikipedia may not be 'highly disruptive', especially as there were so few edits involved, but it is far from 'just apparently very inefficient'.
or if it has been donors' money that had been spent (which it wasn't),
It is appropriate to distinguish between general public unrestricted donations vs 'the donor of the restricted money telling WMF what to do with it', however focusing on what was 'spent' is not appropriate. There are direct costs which may be larger than the granted amount; there are indirect costs, and there are opportunity costs. From what I have seen, I think it is fair to conclude that general public unrestricted donations will suffer from this broadly speaking.
There may be quite a bit of direct costs that arnt covered by the Stanton grant per se, including selection process, onboarding, reviewing their work, and now handling the fallout of a failed project (e.g. Erik's time and I presume Jay is also working overtime). The Stanton grant quite probably included an amount for normal overheads related to the position (selection, onboarding, monitoring), but those costs could have blown out and/or the WMF decided to absorb the costs given the size of the restricted grant for program activity.
However it is the indirect costs which will hurt.
As the WMF considers spending donor money on clamping down on paid editing to be money well spent, a whole lot more of that donor money needs to be spent achieving that goal when month after month there are revelations of the WMF staff (which Timothy Sandole was, roughly speaking) engaging in this type of editing, or the initial investment of donor dollars has been wasted if the concept of WMF policing paid editing needs to be abandoned as it has lost the high ground.
There is reputational damage to the WiR concept, WMF, and Wikimedia generally, which will be felt across the movement. While the WMF may not be going to run this type of program again, affiliates do run these types of programs. Affiliate staff and volunteer time will be spent rebuilding the WiR brand. IMO it is also a shame that this will mean more resistance to content rather than community-focused WiR. I know many people feel very strongly that a WiR should act as an enabler for the community rather than fill the gaps themselves, but in practise a lot of WiR end up writing content to some degree, and I think there are scenarios when a WiR should be more of a contributor rather than collaborator, especially in topical areas that are under-represented in major languages and in wikis in their early stages needing a major content boost rather than a minor, and maybe shortlived, boost to the number of contributors that a WiR might be able to achieve. But the community, GAC and FDC will be more shy of content-heavy WiR type programs since Belfer.
Then there is the potential for this to cause Stanton to stop giving grants to WMF, which means donor money needs to fill the void or programs need to be cut (and staff may need to be laid off.)
I cant even guess the opportunity costs, except that these types of 'special interest' projects can be headaches for pushing through large structural changes like Sue's "Narrowing the focus" which was launched in October 2012.
or if you had /actually/ been appointed to speak for "the number one stakeholder in our projects" (which you haven't);
Eh? No appointments necessary.
it wouldn't justify your continuing harangue when you have been clearly told that no further substantive information
would
come until Sue returns next week.
Who said that there would be no further substantive information until Sue returns?
You've made your point and raised the issue, and now the information
for
informed judgment is being published. How about you let the /rest/ of the community examine it and reach its own conclusions? Because, right now, you seem more interested in stoking the fires of your vendetta by harping on what you /want/ that conclusion to be than any actual interest in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again if it was a problem.
Which vendetta are you referring to?
Russavia was asking for more information, presumably in order to figure out what happened.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- David Goodman
DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 21 March 2014 20:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote: ...
I have a copy of the weekly memos as well, and we've asked for his permission to release them.
Hi Erik,
A helpful visual table of the weekly reports is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Belfer_Center_Campus_Wikipedian_Reports and there is permission on OTRS for all reports to the managers of this project. There appear to be several weeks missing, in fact even accounting for standard holidays or additional sick leave, I estimate there are around 10 weeks with no reports.
Could these be published so that we have a complete record to review before the WMF finalizes its own final report?
Thanks, Fae
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi... with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
I want to apologize for it, particularly to Asaf Bartov, Siko Bouterse, LiAnna Davis, Frank Schulenburg, Pete Forsyth, Lori Phillips and Liam Wyatt, who tried to guide the project in the right direction and whose voices didn't get heard. We did advise the Belfer Center and the Wikipedian-in-Residence about conflict-of-interest policies on enWP, and so far we haven't seen any evidence to suggest major problems with Timothy's edits. That said, we didn't structure the program in a way that would've appropriately mitigated the risk of problematic edits, and we wish we had. We also wish we'd been better able to support our partner organizations in understanding and navigating community policies and best practices.
Thanks, Sue
Sue Gardner wrote:
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
Thank you for taking the time to put the postmortem together. I've been very impressed with and appreciate the candor and thoughtfulness that have gone into the responses to this discussion. Growing pains are still pains, of course, but I'm hopefully optimistic that the Wikimedia Foundation is learning from its experiences, good and bad, as it matures.
MZMcBride
On 1 April 2014 16:22, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Sue Gardner wrote:
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
Thank you for taking the time to put the postmortem together. I've been very impressed with and appreciate the candor and thoughtfulness that have gone into the responses to this discussion. Growing pains are still pains, of course, but I'm hopefully optimistic that the Wikimedia Foundation is learning from its experiences, good and bad, as it matures.
MZMcBride
Let me second that sentiment. Thank you Sue, Erik et al. at the WMF. While
I'm sure there will be ongoing discussions about this topic on the mailing lists and on-wiki, I too am heartened by the genuine concern, non-defensiveness (in the face of criticism - including mine), and willingness to investigate this issue.
Sincerely, -Liam / Wittylama
wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata
Thankyou from me as well, it's refreshing to see such a candid summary of the failings that occurred in this case, and to see the Foundation taking responsibility for those. I hope that the opportunity can be taken for all of us to learn from this so that it does not happen with future projects.
Cheers, Craig
On 1 April 2014 15:27, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
On 1 April 2014 16:22, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Sue Gardner wrote:
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
Thank you for taking the time to put the postmortem together. I've been very impressed with and appreciate the candor and thoughtfulness that
have
gone into the responses to this discussion. Growing pains are still pains, of course, but I'm hopefully optimistic that the Wikimedia Foundation is learning from its experiences, good and bad, as it matures.
MZMcBride
Let me second that sentiment. Thank you Sue, Erik et al. at the WMF.
While I'm sure there will be ongoing discussions about this topic on the mailing lists and on-wiki, I too am heartened by the genuine concern, non-defensiveness (in the face of criticism - including mine), and willingness to investigate this issue.
Sincerely, -Liam / Wittylama
wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Sue,
Thank you for your report at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_University_assessment.
Could you please clarify if "In the future, the Wikimedia Foundation will not support or endorse the creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus, regardless of who is initiating or managing the process" should be read by the FDC that Chapters and Thorgs should not plan to use their funds for paid editing projects, and that we will not support partnerships with other organizations where this is an expected outcome?
As well as the list of people that you thanked, I would like to add my thanks for Tomasz who took the time to research his original blog post, and to Russavia for his analysis, both invested significant unpaid volunteer time to do this research on behalf of the community. Without their work I would not have thought to ask my basic questions about the project on this list, nor would we have so much detailed evidence to support your report.
I find it disappointing that when difficult governance questions like this are raised in public, that some leading members of our community default to treating the concerned whistle-blower as a troll, or press for the question and discussion to stay secret from the main body of our community by moving it to closed channels when there are no privacy or personal issues to justify that secrecy or confidentiality. This behaviour drives whistle-blowers underground or leaves them tediously sniping on certain soap-box forums and wiki-discussion pages using anonymous accounts.
I may help for us to consider how valuable good faith whistle-blowing can be, and how we could avoid deriding or dismissing the questioner as troll or a 'drama queen' and damaging their standing within our community in the process.
Thanks, Fae (troll, drama queen, speaking from the grave, etc.)
On 04/01/2014 07:43 AM, Fæ wrote:
I find it disappointing that when difficult governance questions like this are raised in public, that some leading members of our community default to treating the concerned whistle-blower as a troll
I think, Fæ, that you will find that it's not the subject matter that is the issue so much as the manner. It is perfectly possible to express concern - even outrage - without being provocative and offensive.
That analysis and examination of that bad move would have been done just and quickly and effectively by polite inquiry than it would have with shrill cries.
We're an extraordinarily transparent movement; we don't need "whistleblowers" -- we need vigilant participants. Compare MzMcBride's approach to... that of some others on this thread, and you will see the difference between raising an issue and being needlessly provocative.
-- Marc
On 1 April 2014 14:23, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote: ...
That analysis and examination of that bad move would have been done just and quickly and effectively by polite inquiry than it would have with shrill cries.
We're an extraordinarily transparent movement; we don't need "whistleblowers" -- we need vigilant participants. Compare MzMcBride's approach to... that of some others on this thread, and you will see the difference between raising an issue and being needlessly provocative.
...
I am sure than the viewpoint is different for employees within the WMF like yourself, compared to unpaid volunteers outside, like me. This may be part of the reason we see this governance failure in a different light.
The evidence of this case, as summarized in Sue's own published words, shows that there were multiple attempts to raise polite inquiry. These were consistently overlooked or ignored over an extremely long period.
Yes, the movement certainly does need whilstle-blowers like Tomasz in order for serious failures to be opportunities to take action and learn from.
Fae
On 04/01/2014 09:34 AM, Fæ wrote:
I am sure than the viewpoint is different for employees within the WMF like yourself, compared to unpaid volunteers outside, like me. This may be part of the reason we see this governance failure in a different light.
That's actually amusingly wrong, though I can see why you'd think that. I've been an "unpaid volunteer outside" for very many years before I've been "within"; and my job at the foundation is only technical and community-facing.
I have *zero* to do with Governance, no stake in that project, and I don't even actually interact with any of the involved departments. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comments on this thread would have been exactly the same 18 months ago.
The evidence of this case, as summarized in Sue's own published words, shows that there were multiple attempts to raise polite inquiry. These were consistently overlooked or ignored over an extremely long period.
Indeed. That was mostly a failure of oversight -- possibly combined with unjustified optimism. You know what they say: hindsight is 20/20. I still see no reason to believe that - given the same timing - a deliberate question would not have been just as effective as the less optimal way this matter was raised.
It is *much* easier to get the stakeholders to collaborate when they don't have to go on the defensive.
-- Marc
As far as I am concerned, what was wrong with this situation wasn't that the Wikimedia Foundation paid a trained academic to edit Wikipedia. I venture that most donors and members of the general public wouldn't have a problem with that at all.
What was wrong?
1. The obvious appearance of impropriety given that the Stanton Foundation is probably the Foundation's single biggest donor, and the administrator of the Stanton Foundation's funds is married to the director of the Belfer Center (who according to the center's website has now taken on the former Wikipedian in Residence as a staff assistant). Whether this was the case or not, it *looks* like the WMF was simply used so that Mrs Harris could get Mr Harris another member of staff who would not show up on the Center's payroll.
2. The fact that the WMF appears to have departed from usual procedures (such as locating this Wikipedian in Residence in Fundraising, allowing the Belfer Center to write the job description, etc.) to please its biggest donor.
3. The fact that in his reports to the WMF the Wikipedian in Residence on more than one occasion "billed" three hours of research and *six hours* of drafting in MS Word for a 150-word insertion in a Wikipedia article that another Wikipedian could have drafted in a fraction of an hour, and that this apparently was not questioned.
4. The fact that the edits the Wikipedian in Residence made included conflict-of-interest and copyright violations, according to multiple Wikipedians.
These, to me, are the real problems. I have no problem *at all* with the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation paid an academically qualified expert to make edits to Wikipedia. In fact, I find it disheartening that the Foundation now feels it has to state that nothing like this will ever happen again. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Let's for a moment look at the practicality of the idea that a Wikipedian in Residence should not personally edit Wikipedia. If Graham Allison had physically made the edits that Tim Sandole made, would this have made any material difference whatsoever to the situation?
Clearly, it would not.
Saying that a Wikipedian in Residence will not physically click Edit, but will merely instruct experts at his institution in how to make and source edits (and perhaps even draft them for them in MS Word ...) is a very thin smokescreen.
The material question is not whether a Wikipedian in Residence will physically edit. The question is whether the edits resulting from any WiR placement will be in line with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including neutral point of view, conflict of interest, copyright, plagiarism, verifiability, and so on, and whether they will improve project content - making it more accurate, more readable, more up to date.
What is required here? It's that whichever person ultimately performs the edits receive proper training in Wikipedia policies, guidelines, editing methods, etc., so that their subject matter expertise can be leveraged to optimum effect. Standardised training courses to impart that Wikipedia-specific knowledge to subject matter experts are an area the Foundation could profitably invest in.
Saying that Wikipedians in Residence won't edit doesn't address that. It merely absolves the Foundation from responsibility - a purely cosmetic exercise if the quantity and quality of the resulting edits is the same as it was in this case.
What counts for the reading and donating public is the quality of the edits that result from a WiR placement, not who makes those edits. The Foundation should not shirk, but embrace its responsibility to use donated funds to optimum effect.
Andreas
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 04/01/2014 09:34 AM, Fæ wrote:
I am sure than the viewpoint is different for employees within the WMF like yourself, compared to unpaid volunteers outside, like me. This may be part of the reason we see this governance failure in a different light.
That's actually amusingly wrong, though I can see why you'd think that. I've been an "unpaid volunteer outside" for very many years before I've been "within"; and my job at the foundation is only technical and community-facing.
I have *zero* to do with Governance, no stake in that project, and I don't even actually interact with any of the involved departments. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comments on this thread would have been exactly the same 18 months ago.
The evidence of this case, as summarized in Sue's own published words, shows that there were multiple attempts to raise polite inquiry. These were consistently overlooked or ignored over an extremely long period.
Indeed. That was mostly a failure of oversight -- possibly combined with unjustified optimism. You know what they say: hindsight is 20/20. I still see no reason to believe that - given the same timing - a deliberate question would not have been just as effective as the less optimal way this matter was raised.
It is *much* easier to get the stakeholders to collaborate when they don't have to go on the defensive.
-- Marc
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Good points. Peter ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andreas Kolbe" jayen466@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2014 4:47 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53,690 of WMF funding
As far as I am concerned, what was wrong with this situation wasn't that the Wikimedia Foundation paid a trained academic to edit Wikipedia. I venture that most donors and members of the general public wouldn't have a problem with that at all.
What was wrong?
- The obvious appearance of impropriety given that the Stanton Foundation
is probably the Foundation's single biggest donor, and the administrator of the Stanton Foundation's funds is married to the director of the Belfer Center (who according to the center's website has now taken on the former Wikipedian in Residence as a staff assistant). Whether this was the case or not, it *looks* like the WMF was simply used so that Mrs Harris could get Mr Harris another member of staff who would not show up on the Center's payroll.
- The fact that the WMF appears to have departed from usual procedures
(such as locating this Wikipedian in Residence in Fundraising, allowing the Belfer Center to write the job description, etc.) to please its biggest donor.
- The fact that in his reports to the WMF the Wikipedian in Residence on
more than one occasion "billed" three hours of research and *six hours* of drafting in MS Word for a 150-word insertion in a Wikipedia article that another Wikipedian could have drafted in a fraction of an hour, and that this apparently was not questioned.
- The fact that the edits the Wikipedian in Residence made included
conflict-of-interest and copyright violations, according to multiple Wikipedians.
These, to me, are the real problems. I have no problem *at all* with the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation paid an academically qualified expert to make edits to Wikipedia. In fact, I find it disheartening that the Foundation now feels it has to state that nothing like this will ever happen again. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Let's for a moment look at the practicality of the idea that a Wikipedian in Residence should not personally edit Wikipedia. If Graham Allison had physically made the edits that Tim Sandole made, would this have made any material difference whatsoever to the situation?
Clearly, it would not.
Saying that a Wikipedian in Residence will not physically click Edit, but will merely instruct experts at his institution in how to make and source edits (and perhaps even draft them for them in MS Word ...) is a very thin smokescreen.
The material question is not whether a Wikipedian in Residence will physically edit. The question is whether the edits resulting from any WiR placement will be in line with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including neutral point of view, conflict of interest, copyright, plagiarism, verifiability, and so on, and whether they will improve project content - making it more accurate, more readable, more up to date.
What is required here? It's that whichever person ultimately performs the edits receive proper training in Wikipedia policies, guidelines, editing methods, etc., so that their subject matter expertise can be leveraged to optimum effect. Standardised training courses to impart that Wikipedia-specific knowledge to subject matter experts are an area the Foundation could profitably invest in.
Saying that Wikipedians in Residence won't edit doesn't address that. It merely absolves the Foundation from responsibility - a purely cosmetic exercise if the quantity and quality of the resulting edits is the same as it was in this case.
What counts for the reading and donating public is the quality of the edits that result from a WiR placement, not who makes those edits. The Foundation should not shirk, but embrace its responsibility to use donated funds to optimum effect.
Andreas
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 04/01/2014 09:34 AM, Fæ wrote:
I am sure than the viewpoint is different for employees within the WMF like yourself, compared to unpaid volunteers outside, like me. This may be part of the reason we see this governance failure in a different light.
That's actually amusingly wrong, though I can see why you'd think that. I've been an "unpaid volunteer outside" for very many years before I've been "within"; and my job at the foundation is only technical and community-facing.
I have *zero* to do with Governance, no stake in that project, and I don't even actually interact with any of the involved departments. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comments on this thread would have been exactly the same 18 months ago.
The evidence of this case, as summarized in Sue's own published words, shows that there were multiple attempts to raise polite inquiry. These were consistently overlooked or ignored over an extremely long period.
Indeed. That was mostly a failure of oversight -- possibly combined with unjustified optimism. You know what they say: hindsight is 20/20. I still see no reason to believe that - given the same timing - a deliberate question would not have been just as effective as the less optimal way this matter was raised.
It is *much* easier to get the stakeholders to collaborate when they don't have to go on the defensive.
-- Marc
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On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:47 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
I have no problem *at all* with the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation paid an academically qualified expert to make edits to Wikipedia. In fact, I find it disheartening that the Foundation now feels it has to state that nothing like this will ever happen again. This is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Perhaps. As I've said in the past, I think it'd be best for any such ethical paid editing work to be conducted within a completely different organizational context, with that org's sole focus being to support and enable it being done well. Organizations need focus, and this isn't ours for good reasons. In fact, nobody would stop you - or anyone - from setting up such an organization and seeking funding for it. I do think there's an inherent risk with situating paid editors within specific institutions, because there may be a tendency that comes with that to attach undue weight to that institution's work.
Erik
Erik
A quick question: was the legal department involved in this debacle prior to it becoming known?
I'm just curious as to why Geoff Brigham was involved in the production of Sue's assessment. Was it because Legal was involved, or was he simply "vetting" what is already being called a candid assessment to make sure it wasn't too candid.
Refer to Martijn Hoekstra's email and questions as to why this candid assessment isn't really that candid at all.
Russavia
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I do think there's an inherent risk with situating paid editors within specific institutions, because there may be a tendency that comes with that to attach undue weight to that institution's work.
Certainly. And it's something the Wikipedia community has an allergic reaction to, to an extent that it completely undermines the success of any editing initiative that suffers from that flaw.
Explaining how vital it is to resist that very human tendency to over-represent one's own organisation (through citations, mentions) is a key point any training for subject matter experts should make.
Perhaps the Foundation could come up with a training package for subject matter experts, outlining common pitfalls to avoid. This one would be near the top of my list.
Marc
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 9:45 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
I have *zero* to do with Governance, no stake in that project, and I don't even actually interact with any of the involved departments. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my comments on this thread would have been exactly the same 18 months ago.
This is a pretty big statement to make, so I thought it would be a good idea to engage in a little research to see if your comment stands up to scrutiny. I like research.[1]
We can see from your stats of postings to the mailing list[2], that 18 months ago you weren't active; you only really became active after you landed yourself a job with the WMF.[3] So I went back just a little further -- only by a few months, and I found this comment[4] from you to (at the time) Board member, Phoebe Ayers[5]:
<beginquote>
"I think that the first thing that should be learned -- and indeed that should have been learned /before/ this farce -- is that begging the question in a "referendum" is fundamentally dishonest.
I was oh so very pleased to learn that I get to give my opinion on insignificant implementation details of a "feature" that stands in opposition to everything Wikipedia stands for which is going to be committed against us whether we like it or not."
<endquote>
It is *much* easier to get the stakeholders to collaborate when they don't have to go on the defensive.
Really, Marc? Really?[4]
What is entirely ironic, and quite sad actually, is that we can all remember your diva rage quit of the English Wikipedia Arbcom in 2013[6], in which you accused the committee of being politicised. I call your attention to this statement by you:
"What I mean by 'politicized' was that decisions are not being argued around 'what is best for the project' but 'what will make [the committee] look good'. Add to that stonewalling, filibustering, and downright 'bullying' from those who aren't getting their way - to the point of having arbitrators being ... creative ... with ethics in order to get the upper hand".
I see no difference between what you accused the en.wp Arbcom of doing, and the way that you are bullying and needlessly attacking community members who are presenting relevant information and asking relevant questions.
To other list members, I am sorry that the above has had to be said on-list, but the way that Fae has been treated and attacked by numerous members of this list in this very thread is a disgrace, and I for one have had a gutful of it.
Russavia
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070665.html
[2] http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Marc_A._Pelletier.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Coren/disclosure
[4] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-August/067518.html
[5] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Former_Board_of_Trustees_members#Phoebe_...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-03-18/News_a...
On 04/01/2014 02:10 PM, Russavia wrote:
Really, Marc? Really?
Yes, Really. I can't recall having ever said that I never misbehave myself, nor that I ever reacted in anger before. Anyone who claims to is deluded or lying.
With, perhaps, the pointed difference that this cannot be said to be my normal modus operandi.
I see no difference between what you accused the en.wp Arbcom of doing, and the way that you are bullying and needlessly attacking community members who are presenting relevant information and asking relevant questions.
You mean, except for the niggling fact that I haven't done either of those things? I can't recall any point at which I have expressed any objection to "relevant information" and "relevant question" being presented except noting that the manner in which some participants have chosen to express them was needlessly antagonistic (yes, that includes you, and this very message).
I certainly have not theatened you in any way over any of it!
Hell, I even agree with the substance of the points you have originally made. If you imagine being "bullied" because someone disagrees with /how/ you make them, the issues lies strictly with you.
-- Marc
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 5:23 AM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
I want to apologize for it, particularly to Asaf Bartov, Siko Bouterse, LiAnna Davis, Frank Schulenburg, Pete Forsyth, Lori Phillips and Liam Wyatt, who tried to guide the project in the right direction and whose voices didn't get heard. We did advise the Belfer Center and the Wikipedian-in-Residence about conflict-of-interest policies on enWP, and so far we haven't seen any evidence to suggest major problems with Timothy's edits. That said, we didn't structure the program in a way that would've appropriately mitigated the risk of problematic edits, and we wish we had. We also wish we'd been better able to support our partner organizations in understanding and navigating community policies and best practices.
Thanks, Sue
Hi Sue et al,
tl;dr: The underlying why did this happen still goes unanswered. Can we do better?
It's great to see that the WMF put this post-mortem together, and identified the mistakes that were made in this project (or possibly that this entire project was a mistake), and especially what decisions were made. While reading the report, it strikes me somewhat as a concession to some aspects of this mailinglist (repent! publicly! now grovel! louder! like you mean it! again, but now on one leg!) which may be understandable, but not all that necessary, and possibly counter-productive in that it may create an atmosphere that mistakes are OK when you repent deeply afterwards - while in reality mistakes are to be expected, and investigating them an effective means for improvement of the movement. This is also where my concerns in the report are.
I'll immediately concede that I don't have much experience in what is customary in these kinds of reports. The important part of lessons learned to me shouldn't stop at what went wrong, but why. The current "Lessons learned" section only identifies the mistakes made, but doesn't go in to the reasons these mistakes were made. It's possible that "lessons learned" is customary corporate-speak -which I am not fluent in- for "mistakes made". This leaves out the underlying causes, which are somewhat addressed in the decisions made, but never made explicit, so I'm asking these questions here. (transparency never hurts the movement - though it can definitely sting the people involved at times, but let's rip off the band-aid completely)
1. At the point when it became clear that this project was not a simple pass-through grant but required programmatic work, the Executive Director should have transferred responsibility for it to a programmatic area. In general, it's a good practice to separate fundraising and programmatic work, because programmatic staff have programmatic expertise that fundraising staff lack. (For example in this instance, programmatic oversight would have likely resulted in regular public reporting.) Having programmatic work overseen by the fundraising department was a mistake.
So how did it end up at the fundraising department, and why didn't it get transferred? Did the fundraising department regard it as "their" programme, or did they maybe fear deteriorating relations with the donor of they didn't handle the programme themselves? Were boundries between fundraising and programmatic activities too vague, or were they deliberately overstepped in the believe it would work out? Did the fundraising staff at any point feel they were doing something outside their expertese? If so, what were the causes they didn't solicit help? If not, do there need to be clearer guidelines what is and isn't within their remit?
2. [T]he WMF acceded to that request, replacing the job description with a new version provided by the Stanton Foundation and the Belfer Center. The WMF didn't give that new version enough scrutiny before agreeing to it, and didn't inform the people who'd been advising us. This was a mistake.
So why did this happen? Were the people who accepted the replacement thinking people were "being difficult" and overstepping their boundaries? Was this discussed internally? If so, what was the outcome, and why? Did fundraising identify the concerns about the job description as an important problem, or did it get more or less dismissed as meddling troublemakers? Maybe promises or expectations were given to the Stanton Foundation and the Belfer Center that left fundraising feeling there was no way back anymore?
3. [I]t was flagged internally at the WMF that paid editing is controversial in the Wikimedia community. Despite these concerns being raised, the residency continued unchanged.
Again, how, and why? Was it something that petered out with little attention given?
When I read the decisions made, they leave little doubt that something like this in the narrow sense will never happen again. Decisions 1 to 3 take care of that very well. That's a great win, but a narrow one, it is only relevant in the realm of a very specific kind of donation. I think we can do better. Decision 4: "The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014" is a step in the right direction. Providing an effective escalation path can rectify mistakes quickly after they happen.
What none of these do however, is provide a means how such mistakes can in the future be avoided. The central question to me is unchanged, and unanswered: looking at the mistakes made, why did they happen, and once we find out that why, can we eliminate it?
--Martijn Hoekstra
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On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:27 AM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
Did the fundraising department regard it as "their" programme
No, on the contrary, fundraising actively looped in other staff. Folks like Siko and Asaf were involved early on. That's how the advice to not turn this into a paid editing role and to re-craft the JD came into play in the first place (in turn Lori, Pete, Liam got looped in, who all articulated this very clearly). In fact for some time, it was considered to run this as equivalent to a fellowship.
From my read of the situation, as the hiring process dragged on and
Belfer turned down candidates with strong Wikipedia experience, the programmatic experts ultimately disengaged (seeing that Wikipedia expertise was not a required part of the job from Belfer's perspective, so the fellowship model didn't apply). Because the project had been "held" by fundraising in the first place, it ultimately ended up solely being managed by the fundraising staff.
or did they maybe fear deteriorating relations with the donor
If you're a professional fundraiser, it's your job to build and maintain good relationships with donors - there's nothing wrong with that. We've taken on restricted grants in the past, and while these are never a slam dunk and always a bit challenging, on all of these projects, there has always been a healthy tension between "what the funder wants" vs. "what WMF thinks we should do", with programmatic experts providing direct pushback if needed. The issue here isn't that fundraising tried to maintain good relationships with a funder - the issue is that the project oversight and execution wasn't firewalled off to programs as it ordinarily should be.
Were boundries between fundraising and programmatic activities too vague
Yes.
Erik
Sue,
I, as well as others, are wondering whether you will be responding to the questions and other concerns which have been raised on this list?
Members of the BoT,
I would like to enquire as to when the Board of Trustees became aware of this issue for the first time. Could we get some statement from individual board members, present and past (at the time of the issue) as to when they became aware of it.
Given that this issue was basically common knowledge at the higher echelons of the WMF, and it was actively ignored by not only the WMF but also the wider community, I find it improbable that the Board, or at the very least individual board members, were in the dark on the issue
Cheers,
Russavia
On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
I want to apologize for it, particularly to Asaf Bartov, Siko Bouterse, LiAnna Davis, Frank Schulenburg, Pete Forsyth, Lori Phillips and Liam Wyatt, who tried to guide the project in the right direction and whose voices didn't get heard. We did advise the Belfer Center and the Wikipedian-in-Residence about conflict-of-interest policies on enWP, and so far we haven't seen any evidence to suggest major problems with Timothy's edits. That said, we didn't structure the program in a way that would've appropriately mitigated the risk of problematic edits, and we wish we had. We also wish we'd been better able to support our partner organizations in understanding and navigating community policies and best practices.
Thanks, Sue
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All:
I have added my own timeline to the page set up to debrief the Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence project: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
I also published a response to the WMF report: http://wikistrategies.net/belfer1/
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
I want to apologize for it, particularly to Asaf Bartov, Siko Bouterse, LiAnna Davis, Frank Schulenburg, Pete Forsyth, Lori Phillips and Liam Wyatt, who tried to guide the project in the right direction and whose voices didn't get heard. We did advise the Belfer Center and the Wikipedian-in-Residence about conflict-of-interest policies on enWP, and so far we haven't seen any evidence to suggest major problems with Timothy's edits. That said, we didn't structure the program in a way that would've appropriately mitigated the risk of problematic edits, and we wish we had. We also wish we'd been better able to support our partner organizations in understanding and navigating community policies and best practices.
Thanks, Sue
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Aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnd queue crickets.............................
On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 6:49 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
All:
I have added my own timeline to the page set up to debrief the Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence project:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
I also published a response to the WMF report: http://wikistrategies.net/belfer1/
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi...
with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above. Suffice to say here that we implemented the Belfer Wikipedian-in-Residence project with editing as a core activity of the WIR role, despite internal and external voices strongly advising us not to. That was a mistake, and we shouldn't have done it.
I want to apologize for it, particularly to Asaf Bartov, Siko Bouterse, LiAnna Davis, Frank Schulenburg, Pete Forsyth, Lori Phillips and Liam Wyatt, who tried to guide the project in the right direction and whose voices didn't get heard. We did advise the Belfer Center and the Wikipedian-in-Residence about conflict-of-interest policies on enWP, and so far we haven't seen any evidence to suggest major problems with Timothy's edits. That said, we didn't structure the program in a way that would've appropriately mitigated the risk of problematic edits, and we wish we had. We also wish we'd been better able to support our partner organizations in understanding and navigating community policies and best practices.
Thanks, Sue
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Article on the matter in The Daily Dot, April 14:
http://www.dailydot.com/business/wikipedia-paid-editing-scandal-stanton/
Apparently, Tim Sandole complains of not having been managed properly by anybody, saying, "The person I dealt with at Wikimedia didn't seem to know anything about Wikipedia."
Also from April 14, news that the Stanton Foundation have given the Wikimedia Foundation another grant of $1.39 million to support programmatic activities of the Wiki Education Foundation.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Foundation/Press_Release_14_A...
On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 2:49 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Russavia wrote:
Aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnd queue crickets.............................
I believe you want "cue" here.
MZMcBride
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On 16 April 2014 15:19, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote: ...
Apparently, Tim Sandole complains of not having been managed properly by anybody, saying, "The person I dealt with at Wikimedia didn't seem to know anything about Wikipedia."
I believe it was clear from Sue's frank report and Pete's more detailed report, that knowledge of Wikipedia was not required by the manager within the Foundation that Sandole was reporting to. It is no surprise that someone within the Funding department might not be an expert in English Wikipedia policies or guidelines for editors.
Does anyone know of any positive action taken yet by the Foundation as a result of this governance failure, beyond Sue's report?
Fae
The press release, signed by LiAnna Davis, Head of Communications and External Relations, that Andreas links to in his comment says, "The program, in which students write Wikipedia articles in place of traditional term papers, created the equivalent of more than 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term of 2013 and the equivalent of more than 36,000 printed pages of content since its start in 2010."
Can anybody point to a source for the 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term - particularly the evidence for the high quality of that content?
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 16 April 2014 15:19, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote: ...
Apparently, Tim Sandole complains of not having been managed properly by anybody, saying, "The person I dealt with at Wikimedia didn't seem to
know
anything about Wikipedia."
I believe it was clear from Sue's frank report and Pete's more detailed report, that knowledge of Wikipedia was not required by the manager within the Foundation that Sandole was reporting to. It is no surprise that someone within the Funding department might not be an expert in English Wikipedia policies or guidelines for editors.
Does anyone know of any positive action taken yet by the Foundation as a result of this governance failure, beyond Sue's report?
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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Sorry. I just realised what the heading of this thread is. I'll email LiAnna directly.
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 10:12 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
The press release, signed by LiAnna Davis, Head of Communications and External Relations, that Andreas links to in his comment says, "The program, in which students write Wikipedia articles in place of traditional term papers, created the equivalent of more than 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term of 2013 and the equivalent of more than 36,000 printed pages of content since its start in 2010."
Can anybody point to a source for the 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term - particularly the evidence for the high quality of that content?
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 16 April 2014 15:19, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote: ...
Apparently, Tim Sandole complains of not having been managed properly by anybody, saying, "The person I dealt with at Wikimedia didn't seem to
know
anything about Wikipedia."
I believe it was clear from Sue's frank report and Pete's more detailed report, that knowledge of Wikipedia was not required by the manager within the Foundation that Sandole was reporting to. It is no surprise that someone within the Funding department might not be an expert in English Wikipedia policies or guidelines for editors.
Does anyone know of any positive action taken yet by the Foundation as a result of this governance failure, beyond Sue's report?
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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Bear in mind her email address has now changed as she's moved to @wikiedfoundation.org
E.g. this link re: quality http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/10/04/spring-2012-wikipedia-education-program... but I've seen more recent stuff
Simon
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Cole Sent: 19 April 2014 15:15 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Timothy Sandole and (apparently) $53, 690 of WMF funding
Sorry. I just realised what the heading of this thread is. I'll email LiAnna directly.
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 10:12 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
The press release, signed by LiAnna Davis, Head of Communications and External Relations, that Andreas links to in his comment says, "The program, in which students write Wikipedia articles in place of traditional term papers, created the equivalent of more than 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term of 2013 and the equivalent of more than 36,000 printed pages of content since its start in 2010."
Can anybody point to a source for the 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term - particularly the evidence for the high quality of that content?
Anthony Cole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 16 April 2014 15:19, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote: ...
Apparently, Tim Sandole complains of not having been managed properly by anybody, saying, "The person I dealt with at Wikimedia didn't seem to
know
anything about Wikipedia."
I believe it was clear from Sue's frank report and Pete's more detailed report, that knowledge of Wikipedia was not required by the manager within the Foundation that Sandole was reporting to. It is no surprise that someone within the Funding department might not be an expert in English Wikipedia policies or guidelines for editors.
Does anyone know of any positive action taken yet by the Foundation as a result of this governance failure, beyond Sue's report?
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 10:12 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Can anybody point to a source for the 7,000 printed pages of new, high-quality content during the fall term - particularly the evidence for the high quality of that content?
Replying on-list since you asked on-list. :) We've done two quality studies on articles written by students participating in the Wikipedia Education Program in the U.S. and Canada, one covering the first two terms of the pilot (fall 2010 and spring 2011) and then again a year later, in spring 2012.
Here's the 2010-11: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Student_Contributions_to_Wikipedia
Here's the spring 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Research/Article_quality...
As you might imagine, hand-assessing two versions of an article (the version immediately prior to the student's first edit and the version it was at their last edit) is an extremely time-consuming process. Given we found pretty similar results (the vast majority of students significantly improve articles through our program), we have stopped doing these studies because they take up so much valuable volunteer time. If there were an automatic way to gauge article quality that didn't involve volunteer time, I'd love to repeat the study every term, but I haven't seen any good way of gauging article quality that doesn't involve hand assessment of articles.
In terms of the 7,000 printed pages, we use WikiMetrics ( https://metrics.wmflabs.org/) to determine how much content students add to the article namespace each term.
Hope this helps. LiAnna
Pete Forsyth wrote:
I also published a response to the WMF report: http://wikistrategies.net/belfer1/
This is an absolutely fantastic blog post, and a must-read for anyone interested in making sure this... controversy never happens again.
Thanks so much for taking the time to post that, Pete.
Tomasz
Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Universi... with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_i... said:
The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for "2015", or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
Nemo
Hi Nemo,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. You are correct -- this did not make my "to do" list, but I believe honoring commitments made by the WMF is important and therefor I've been looking this issue. Here is what I found and what we will do:
- This issue was a clear oversight error. - To prevent issues like these in the future two paths are important: 1. ability to highlight issues through escalation 2. improved clarity on which programs or grants qualify for funding (through training) and the process by which that is done - The first point will be addressed this quarter by HR in the employee handbook through the modified escalation policy and escalation channel. - The second will be addressed through changes to grantmaking program, which we proposed to open for discussion this spring/summer (Q4/Q1) starting with the FDC-level grants https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Advisory_Group/Recommendations/2014/ED_Response. In short, we are looking to be very clear on goals, parameters, and focus of grants we distribute to ensure they are handled and validated consistently and accurately.
The two aspects together should help avoid these types of issues. I am also asking to include some "'guardrail" items in employee training. No system is perfect however, and we will continue to tune it to avoid problems.
Finally, while I sincerely appreciate you bringing up the issue, I would also appreciate if this is done without snark or disparagement in the future. This would ensure everyone is more productive in their solutions. We will respond in kind.
Thank you, Lila
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_ Residence/Harvard_University_assessment with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_ Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program#Decisions_made said:
The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for "2015", or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
Nemo
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Lila, and all,
I am glad to hear this will be revived. I read your message with interest and appreciation, up to the final paragraph: in this instance, WMF is in a very poor position to chide anybody for snark. Nemo's "snark" was lighthearted and minimal, and doesn't even register next to the WMF's damaging and disrespectful actions on this issue now spanning more than three years. Let me be direct, though -- I'll take care to lay things out in a snark-free manner here.
Last spring, WMF found itself in a bit of a bind, of its own making: this list, the blogosphere, etc. were making a lot of noise about how the WMF had actively undermined the efforts of Wikipedians to guide organizations in ethical engagement with the project. One action above all others served to quiet that noise: the announcement of specific reforms quoted by Nemo above.
Now, many months overdue and apparently forgotten, it appears that the announcement was made *for the purpose* of quieting the noise, as opposed to being made out of actual concern for how universities interact with Wikipedia, or how the WMF interacts with knowledgeable members of the Wikimedia movement. An oversight, in general, is understandable and human. But overlooking something that was *specifically undertaken to correct past mistakes* is something different. That kind of oversight, I contend, provides a clear view of the level of interest the organization actually has in addressing the problems under discussion. The WMF is clearly not very interested in undoing the damage it wrought.
The Wikimedia movement, and English Wikipedia, have worked hard over many years to establish guidelines and policies that frame an ethical approach and guide volunteers toward producing high quality and consistent content. The GLAM sub-movement in particular has worked to bridge that framework and the operations of mission-aligned organizations like museums and universities. But that work -- which the WMF enjoys talking about in its annual reports, etc. -- was ignored by the WMF the moment it became inconvenient. The moment it interfered with a grant. At precisely the moment when the WMF had a chance to positively influence a leading university, it instead gave that university license to disregard the relevant ethical concerns.
Making all of that right, the WMF told us last year, was a priority. But apparently it was not.
I am glad to learn that the remedies then under discussion will be picked back up. The WMF will be a healthier organization because of it. But I emphatically request that you refrain from scolding those of us who are frustrated by the need for non-WMF staff to repeatedly, over a span of over three years, remind the WMF that important things need doing.
A little snark, in this case, should be the very least of your concerns. Pete -- Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Nemo,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. You are correct -- this did not make my "to do" list, but I believe honoring commitments made by the WMF is important and therefor I've been looking this issue. Here is what I found and what we will do:
- This issue was a clear oversight error.
- To prevent issues like these in the future two paths are important:
- ability to highlight issues through escalation 2. improved clarity on which programs or grants qualify for funding (through training) and the process by which that is done
- The first point will be addressed this quarter by HR in the employee
handbook through the modified escalation policy and escalation channel.
- The second will be addressed through changes to grantmaking program,
which we proposed to open for discussion this spring/summer (Q4/Q1) starting with the FDC-level grants < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Adv...
.
In short, we are looking to be very clear on goals, parameters, and focus of grants we distribute to ensure they are handled and validated consistently and accurately.
The two aspects together should help avoid these types of issues. I am also asking to include some "'guardrail" items in employee training. No system is perfect however, and we will continue to tune it to avoid problems.
Finally, while I sincerely appreciate you bringing up the issue, I would also appreciate if this is done without snark or disparagement in the future. This would ensure everyone is more productive in their solutions. We will respond in kind.
Thank you, Lila
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_ Residence/Harvard_University_assessment with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_ Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program#Decisions_made said:
The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for "2015", or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
Nemo
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Just as a postscript to the Belfer Center affair, regular readers will remember that Russavia wrote in March 2014[1] that –
*The Stanton Foundation has been a long-term donor to the Wikimedia Foundation [...] Stanton has no website, and apart from several high-profile grants to the Wikimedia Foundation, it has made grants to the Council on Foreign Relations, MIT's Department of Political Science, the Rand Corporation, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in addition to the Belfer Center. All of these organisations operate in the arena of international relations.*
*The trustee of Stanton and contact point for the Wikimedia Foundation is Elisabeth (Liz) K. Allison [...] From the outset, it should be noted that Liz Allison (Stanton) is married to Graham Allison (Belfer).*
In December 2014, the $500,000 award Jimmy Wales received from the UAE government proved controversial among Wikipedians; see for example William Beutler's summary titled "Jimmy Wales and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Prize Money", published on his blog, "The Wikipedian"[2].
In the wake of the UAE award, it transpired that Wales had previously been reported[3] on the World Economic Forum website to have contributed to a "Guide to Good Government and Trust-Building" compiled "in cooperation and with the support of the Government of the United Arab Emirates".
When Wales was pointed to the UAE government's human rights violations and asked why he had lent his name to the effort, given the UAE government's signal lack of credentials in this field, Wales said that he had been asked to contribute by Prof. Nye of Harvard.[4] According to the Harvard website, Prof. Nye, too, works at the Belfer Center.[5]
Some Wikipedians also raised Wales' 2011 "Wikipedian of the Year" award for the Kazakh WikiBilim organisation in the discussion of the UAE award.[6][7] William Beutler referred to this part of the discussion in his piece, saying that the "Kazakh situation [had] always struck [him] like a misstep on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wales both—seemingly a partnership entered into without a clear understanding of the situation".[2]
Jimmy Wales commented in a 2013 discussion, "As far as I know, the Wikibilim organization is not politicized." This always struck me as strange. Quite apart from WikiBilim's state financing, the Kazakh Prime Minister's photograph appears on every page of WikiBilim's website, which says that "In order to increase the attention of society and especially young generation of internet users Wikibilim started to administrate Kazakh Wikipedia."[7]
Just to put this in perspective: does it not seem inconceivable that Jimmy Wales would give a "Wikipedian of the Year" award to a Russian Wikipedia organisation that had Putin's or Medvedev's face on every page of its website, where it claimed to "administrate" the Russian Wikipedia? How is Kazakhstan different? I still do not understand it.
It came to my attention some weeks ago that Graham Allison, the Belfer Center's director, is not just the husband of the Stanton Foundation's Liz Allison, but also a past recipient of a special medal of friendship from Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, for his "contribution to strengthening friendship and cooperation between Kazakhstan and the United States."[9]
Allison also authored the introduction to President Nazarbayev's book, "Epicenter of Peace".[9]
Given the above past instances of Wikimedia Foundation leaders obliging Belfer Center staff by acceding to their requests, do people think that this reported friendship between the Belfer Center's Director and the Kazakh government may in some way have influenced dealings between Wikimedia Foundation board members and WikiBilim?
I would further recall here that in July 2012, Kazakh media reported that Jimmy Wales had "thanked the Kazakh government for creating conditions for significant achievements in the development of the Kazakh language Wikipedia".[10] This was half a year after "A [Kazakh] law that took effect in January 2012 required owners of internet cafés to obtain users’ names and monitor and record their activity, and to share their information with the security services if requested," as noted by Freedom House in its 2013 report on freedom of the press in Kazakhstan, among many other issues.[11]
If the quote in the Kazakh media report is accurate, wasn't this a strange statement to make for a self-declared champion of free speech? How does it fit with the movement's goals and values?
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070665.html [2] http://thewikipedian.net/2014/12/26/uae-prize-money-human-rights/ [3] http://www.weforum.org/news/global-agenda-council-launches-guide-good-govern... [4] https://archive.today/Ui7PK [5] http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/3/joseph_s_nye.html [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_179#Congratulati... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-12-17/In_the... [8] http://wikibilim.kz/index.php/english/about-foundtion [9] http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19468/graham_allison_awarded... [10] https://web.archive.org/web/20130114222103/http:/caspionet.kz/eng/general/Ka... [11] https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/kazakhstan
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 5:39 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Lila, and all,
I am glad to hear this will be revived. I read your message with interest and appreciation, up to the final paragraph: in this instance, WMF is in a very poor position to chide anybody for snark. Nemo's "snark" was lighthearted and minimal, and doesn't even register next to the WMF's damaging and disrespectful actions on this issue now spanning more than three years. Let me be direct, though -- I'll take care to lay things out in a snark-free manner here.
Last spring, WMF found itself in a bit of a bind, of its own making: this list, the blogosphere, etc. were making a lot of noise about how the WMF had actively undermined the efforts of Wikipedians to guide organizations in ethical engagement with the project. One action above all others served to quiet that noise: the announcement of specific reforms quoted by Nemo above.
Now, many months overdue and apparently forgotten, it appears that the announcement was made *for the purpose* of quieting the noise, as opposed to being made out of actual concern for how universities interact with Wikipedia, or how the WMF interacts with knowledgeable members of the Wikimedia movement. An oversight, in general, is understandable and human. But overlooking something that was *specifically undertaken to correct past mistakes* is something different. That kind of oversight, I contend, provides a clear view of the level of interest the organization actually has in addressing the problems under discussion. The WMF is clearly not very interested in undoing the damage it wrought.
The Wikimedia movement, and English Wikipedia, have worked hard over many years to establish guidelines and policies that frame an ethical approach and guide volunteers toward producing high quality and consistent content. The GLAM sub-movement in particular has worked to bridge that framework and the operations of mission-aligned organizations like museums and universities. But that work -- which the WMF enjoys talking about in its annual reports, etc. -- was ignored by the WMF the moment it became inconvenient. The moment it interfered with a grant. At precisely the moment when the WMF had a chance to positively influence a leading university, it instead gave that university license to disregard the relevant ethical concerns.
Making all of that right, the WMF told us last year, was a priority. But apparently it was not.
I am glad to learn that the remedies then under discussion will be picked back up. The WMF will be a healthier organization because of it. But I emphatically request that you refrain from scolding those of us who are frustrated by the need for non-WMF staff to repeatedly, over a span of over three years, remind the WMF that important things need doing.
A little snark, in this case, should be the very least of your concerns. Pete -- Pete Forsyth [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Nemo,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. You are correct -- this did not make my "to do" list, but I believe honoring commitments made by the WMF
is
important and therefor I've been looking this issue. Here is what I found and what we will do:
- This issue was a clear oversight error.
- To prevent issues like these in the future two paths are important:
- ability to highlight issues through escalation 2. improved clarity on which programs or grants qualify for funding (through training) and the process by which that is done
- The first point will be addressed this quarter by HR in the employee
handbook through the modified escalation policy and escalation
channel.
- The second will be addressed through changes to grantmaking program,
which we proposed to open for discussion this spring/summer (Q4/Q1) starting with the FDC-level grants <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Adv...
.
In short, we are looking to be very clear on goals, parameters, and focus of grants we distribute to ensure they are handled and validated consistently and accurately.
The two aspects together should help avoid these types of issues. I am
also
asking to include some "'guardrail" items in employee training. No system is perfect however, and we will continue to tune it to avoid problems.
Finally, while I sincerely appreciate you bringing up the issue, I would also appreciate if this is done without snark or disparagement in the future. This would ensure everyone is more productive in their solutions. We will respond in kind.
Thank you, Lila
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
nemowiki@gmail.com>
wrote:
Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_ Residence/Harvard_University_assessment with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_ Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program#Decisions_made said:
The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for
"2015",
or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
Nemo
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Wikimedians,
Per my commitment, we have now added this escalation process/whistleblower policy to the WMF staff handbook to address the issues discussed in this thread:
"To serve the WMF Guiding Principles of shared power and stewardship, it's important that our work reflects community policies. If you feel that some of your work is not consistent with key community policies, you should feel free to escalate the matter to your manager, the Deputy Director, or the Executive Director, as appropriate under the circumstances."
We will also do work around staff training as I previously mentioned, including adding this to our on-boarding.
Thanks to everyone who have provided input on this issue.
~~~~Lila
On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Nemo,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. You are correct -- this did not make my "to do" list, but I believe honoring commitments made by the WMF is important and therefor I've been looking this issue. Here is what I found and what we will do:
- This issue was a clear oversight error.
- To prevent issues like these in the future two paths are important:
- ability to highlight issues through escalation 2. improved clarity on which programs or grants qualify for funding (through training) and the process by which that is done
- The first point will be addressed this quarter by HR in the employee
handbook through the modified escalation policy and escalation channel.
- The second will be addressed through changes to grantmaking program,
which we proposed to open for discussion this spring/summer (Q4/Q1) starting with the FDC-level grants https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Advisory_Group/Recommendations/2014/ED_Response. In short, we are looking to be very clear on goals, parameters, and focus of grants we distribute to ensure they are handled and validated consistently and accurately.
The two aspects together should help avoid these types of issues. I am also asking to include some "'guardrail" items in employee training. No system is perfect however, and we will continue to tune it to avoid problems.
Finally, while I sincerely appreciate you bringing up the issue, I would also appreciate if this is done without snark or disparagement in the future. This would ensure everyone is more productive in their solutions. We will respond in kind.
Thank you, Lila
On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We will update the wiki page at https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_ Residence/Harvard_University_assessment with more information and details. I encourage others to participate in this as a collaborative process.
Thanks Erik.
For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link from Erik above.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_ Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program#Decisions_made said:
The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for "2015", or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
Nemo
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On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
- The Stanton Foundation does not have a financial interest in these
topics. With that said, Liz Allison, who heads the Stanton Foundation, and Graham Allison, who heads the Belfer Center, are wife and husband, and the Stanton Foundation funds other programs related to international security.
A little bit more detail: As per [1], the Allisons helped care for Dr. Stanton before his death in 2006. Frank Stanton was a member of the Harvard board and a long-time Harvard supporter. [1] [2] The Stanton Foundation was set up in Frank Stanton's name after his death and is a private foundation. We don't have reason to assume that there's anything untoward about the relationship between the Stanton Foundation and Graham Allison / the Belfer Center, and our assessment focuses solely on WMF's mistakes in taking on this project.
Erik
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/business/media/26stanton.html?_r=0&pag... [2] http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/02/ksg-community-pays-tribute-to-...
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