An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it starts off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are school-age", followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities, and their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique, but every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision and how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have an entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly written in a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian Andreas Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting statistics about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and not politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to assume good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago specifically calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does not accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it starts off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are school-age", followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities, and their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique, but every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision and how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have an entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly written in a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian Andreas Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting statistics about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and not politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to assume good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago specifically calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does not accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian Andreas Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and not politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
It seems to be in line with the new Values statement: "we seek to continually improve ourselves, our projects, our communities, our world". Of course that's political.
"Rogol"
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 8:15 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com
wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a
rather
bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic:
"That
means 10 million children are away from their homes, their
communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is
unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's
vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we
have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,”
he
says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the
world,
followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF
does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block
CentralNotices,
avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/
mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hoi, Please explain.. To me it is not politica but Common sense. Thanks, GerardM
Op wo 1 mrt. 2017 om 22:18 schreef Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com
It seems to be in line with the new Values statement: "we seek to continually improve ourselves, our projects, our communities, our world". Of course that's political.
"Rogol"
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 8:15 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com
wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com
wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a
rather
bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic:
"That
means 10 million children are away from their homes, their
communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is
unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years.
Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages
and
cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's
vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we
have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,”
he
says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the
world,
followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices,
and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF
does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block
CentralNotices,
avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly
fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/
mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I must say I also find the political message behind this a bit too heavy. It lets me a bit unconfortable.
That most of the themes reported here are not Mr Trump cup of tea is quite obvious. That the whole page is a message against the president, I get it.
But in some cases, I think it is really lacking subtility or a bit too manipulative. And that is not so cool.
For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban. Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released. Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from "immigrating".
I think the choice of picture inappropriate.
Florence
Le 01/03/2017 à 21:15, Lodewijk a écrit :
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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-- Seddon
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It's an unambiguously political statement. Not political in the sense of "everything we do is political" - but in the sense of opposing the policies of a single national government as promulgated by a head of state and supported by one political party in a deeply polarized and contentious political environment. I expect that any WMF official responsible for this report will acknowledge this is true, as there appears to be no way to honestly claim otherwise. In that case I hope they can provide a well reasoned and passionate defense of this decision and why the WMF should continue in this vein.
Florence -- Trump's executive orders also involved the revocation of non-immigrant visas. I don't think the choice of picture is inappropriate at all. In fact, I think it highlights just how poorly planned and executed the executive order was in the first place.
Whether the sitenotice is a good idea in the first place, separate question.
Dan Rosenthal
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
It's an unambiguously political statement. Not political in the sense of "everything we do is political" - but in the sense of opposing the policies of a single national government as promulgated by a head of state and supported by one political party in a deeply polarized and contentious political environment. I expect that any WMF official responsible for this report will acknowledge this is true, as there appears to be no way to honestly claim otherwise. In that case I hope they can provide a well reasoned and passionate defense of this decision and why the WMF should continue in this vein. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Why should that feature in the WMF's annual report, though?
I also agree that this has been over-politicised, whether intentionally or not. :-(
Thanks, Mike
On 1 Mar 2017, at 21:13, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Florence -- Trump's executive orders also involved the revocation of non-immigrant visas. I don't think the choice of picture is inappropriate at all. In fact, I think it highlights just how poorly planned and executed the executive order was in the first place.
Whether the sitenotice is a good idea in the first place, separate question.
Dan Rosenthal
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
It's an unambiguously political statement. Not political in the sense of "everything we do is political" - but in the sense of opposing the policies of a single national government as promulgated by a head of state and supported by one political party in a deeply polarized and contentious political environment. I expect that any WMF official responsible for this report will acknowledge this is true, as there appears to be no way to honestly claim otherwise. In that case I hope they can provide a well reasoned and passionate defense of this decision and why the WMF should continue in this vein. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Indeed, I have to agree too. I don't disagree with the notion that the themes covered (providing educational materials to vulnerable young people, providing our information in many languages, and are important, but the way they come across is pretty preachy and overtly political. We're not here to directly solve the problem of climate change or fight visa revocations, we're about providing free and neutral information to people in their own languages. This sort of thing can be pretty exclusionary and disempowering if you do not agree with the rather unsubtle political stances being taken. It also just provides more fuel for those arguing that Wikipedia is a left-wing advocacy organisation rather than a credible, neutral, and trustworthy source of bias-free information.
In this case, I'm afraid that if the Communications team wanted to highlight the interesting work being done by Wikimedians, they have gotten it wrong, because they've highlighted the causes rather than the individuals. I suspect that it is too late to change the 2016 report, but I hope that they are a little more mindful for the 2017 report.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
On 2 March 2017 at 10:31, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Why should that feature in the WMF's annual report, though?
I also agree that this has been over-politicised, whether intentionally or not. :-(
Thanks, Mike
On 1 Mar 2017, at 21:13, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Florence -- Trump's executive orders also involved the revocation of non-immigrant visas. I don't think the choice of picture is inappropriate at all. In fact, I think it highlights just how poorly planned and executed the executive order was in the first place.
Whether the sitenotice is a good idea in the first place, separate question.
Dan Rosenthal
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:54 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
It's an unambiguously political statement. Not political in the sense of "everything we do is political" - but in the sense of opposing the
policies
of a single national government as promulgated by a head of state and supported by one political party in a deeply polarized and contentious political environment. I expect that any WMF official responsible for
this
report will acknowledge this is true, as there appears to be no way to honestly claim otherwise. In that case I hope they can provide a well reasoned and passionate defense of this decision and why the WMF should continue in this vein. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:44 PM, Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban. Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released. Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from "immigrating".
The caption is in fact misleading because it uses the phrase "immigration ban", which is a mischaracterization of the ban. The Executive Order was not an immigration ban; it (temporarily) banned people from those countries from entering the United States, even for visits, with some exceptions. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/31/us/politics/trump-immigration... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#Visitors.2C_immigrants_a...
If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia article.
Erik
Le 02/03/2017 à 01:15, Erik Moeller a écrit :
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:44 PM, Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban. Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released. Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from "immigrating".
The caption is in fact misleading because it uses the phrase "immigration ban", which is a mischaracterization of the ban. The Executive Order was not an immigration ban; it (temporarily) banned people from those countries from entering the United States, even for visits, with some exceptions. See:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/31/us/politics/trump-immigration... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#Visitors.2C_immigrants_a...
If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia article.
Erik
Nod. Erik and Dan, what you say make sense.
Florence
Dear reporters,
I really like the streamlined layout, the background video and the non-linear presentation online. Lovely work; you are wonderful.
If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia article.
Yes.
The one starkly political message in the Report is the choice of a protest photo from the US for the story about travel. On the nose, but reasonably on topic (with a corrected caption).
In general, I like the spirit and content of this report. A lead-in to the facts putting them in context would be nice; the implied context is "Facts Matter!" However I feel this claim and the report could be even more powerful if it were presented with another half-step of remove. The most unparalleled success of Wikipedia is not that it summarizes topics like "scientific consensus on global warming" — that, one can find elsewhere. It is that you can find thorough coverage of *all* aspects of such important and difficult topics: fledgling + disputed theories, major controversies and factions, and both begrudgingly + enthusiastically accepted conclusions.
My one concern: The highlighted fact about travel is wrong. As far as I can tell it's closer to 1 in 20 people. "International tourism arrivals" passed 1.2B this year, but the average tourist "arrives in another country" 3+ times per year.[1][2] If the publishers find a way to retract this mote of misinfo, I will be duly awed :)
Wikilove, SJ
[1] http://www2.unwto.org/press-release/2017-01-17/sustained-growth-internationa... http://stats.areppim.com/glossaire/ita_def.htm https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/visa-everywhere/documents/visa-global-t...
[2] A quick round of community review (say, of any reputed facts!) and even citations might not hurt, for statements of fact that are going out to a large audience. You have access to plentiful world-class fact checkers, you don't have to limit yourself to those in the office.
Okay, so I'll say what Sam said, except in stronger language, and with some additional emphasis.
This is a very obviously liberally biased document -- and I say that as someone who lives in a country so liberal that it makes Californians look like they're still back in the early 1960s. Maybe it takes an outsider to see this.
If you're going to try to play the "facts" game, you have to have your facts bang on - and you have to admit that there is more than one side to the story. This "report" reads as though the authors chose their favourite advocacy positions and then twisted and turned and did some more contortions to make it look as though it had something to do with the Wikimedia family of projects. (Seriously. Refugees and global warming don't have anything to do with the WMF.) It is so biased that most of those "fact" pages would have to be massively rewritten in order to meet the neutrality expectations of just about every Wikipedia regardless of the language.
And that is my biggest concern. It is not neutral by any stretch of the imagination. And if the WMF can't write neutrally about these topics in its annual report, there is no reason for the average reader to think that Wikipedia and other projects will be written neutrally, fairly, based on references, and including the significant other opinions. This document is a weapon that can be used against Wikimedia projects by any tinpot dictator or other suppressive government because it "proves" that WMF projects are biased. It gives ammunition to the very movements that create "alternative facts" - it sure doesn't help when the WMF is coming up with a few of its own.
That does a huge disservice to the hundreds of thousands of editors who have worked for years to create accurate, neutral, well-referenced educational material and information. It doesn't do any good to those editors contributing from countries where participation in an international web-based information project is already viewed with a jaundiced eye. And for those editors who don't adhere to the political advocacy positions being put forward in this "annual report", or simply believe that the WMF should not be producing political advocacy documents, it may well cause them to reflect whether or not they want to keep contributing.
I really hope that Craig is wrong, that this can be pulled back and edited properly, preferably by a bunch of actual Wikipedia editors who know how to write neutrally on controversial topics. I've volunteered in the Wikimedia movement for more than a decade at least in part because it was not a political advocacy organization, so I find this annual report to be very disturbing.
Risker/Anne
On 1 March 2017 at 23:23, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Dear reporters,
I really like the streamlined layout, the background video and the non-linear presentation online. Lovely work; you are wonderful.
If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia article.
Yes.
The one starkly political message in the Report is the choice of a protest photo from the US for the story about travel. On the nose, but reasonably on topic (with a corrected caption).
In general, I like the spirit and content of this report. A lead-in to the facts putting them in context would be nice; the implied context is "Facts Matter!" However I feel this claim and the report could be even more powerful if it were presented with another half-step of remove. The most unparalleled success of Wikipedia is not that it summarizes topics like "scientific consensus on global warming" — that, one can find elsewhere. It is that you can find thorough coverage of *all* aspects of such important and difficult topics: fledgling + disputed theories, major controversies and factions, and both begrudgingly + enthusiastically accepted conclusions.
My one concern: The highlighted fact about travel is wrong. As far as I can tell it's closer to 1 in 20 people. "International tourism arrivals" passed 1.2B this year, but the average tourist "arrives in another country" 3+ times per year.[1][2] If the publishers find a way to retract this mote of misinfo, I will be duly awed :)
Wikilove, SJ
[1] http://www2.unwto.org/press-release/2017-01-17/sustained- growth-international-tourism-despite-challenges http://stats.areppim.com/glossaire/ita_def.htm https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/visa-everywhere/ documents/visa-global-travel-and-tourism-study-infographic.pdf
[2] A quick round of community review (say, of any reputed facts!) and even citations might not hurt, for statements of fact that are going out to a large audience. You have access to plentiful world-class fact checkers, you don't have to limit yourself to those in the office. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Agree that citations are needed. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Risker Sent: Thursday, March 2, 2017 7:51 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
Okay, so I'll say what Sam said, except in stronger language, and with some additional emphasis.
This is a very obviously liberally biased document -- and I say that as someone who lives in a country so liberal that it makes Californians look like they're still back in the early 1960s. Maybe it takes an outsider to see this.
If you're going to try to play the "facts" game, you have to have your facts bang on - and you have to admit that there is more than one side to the story. This "report" reads as though the authors chose their favourite advocacy positions and then twisted and turned and did some more contortions to make it look as though it had something to do with the Wikimedia family of projects. (Seriously. Refugees and global warming don't have anything to do with the WMF.) It is so biased that most of those "fact" pages would have to be massively rewritten in order to meet the neutrality expectations of just about every Wikipedia regardless of the language.
And that is my biggest concern. It is not neutral by any stretch of the imagination. And if the WMF can't write neutrally about these topics in its annual report, there is no reason for the average reader to think that Wikipedia and other projects will be written neutrally, fairly, based on references, and including the significant other opinions. This document is a weapon that can be used against Wikimedia projects by any tinpot dictator or other suppressive government because it "proves" that WMF projects are biased. It gives ammunition to the very movements that create "alternative facts" - it sure doesn't help when the WMF is coming up with a few of its own.
That does a huge disservice to the hundreds of thousands of editors who have worked for years to create accurate, neutral, well-referenced educational material and information. It doesn't do any good to those editors contributing from countries where participation in an international web-based information project is already viewed with a jaundiced eye. And for those editors who don't adhere to the political advocacy positions being put forward in this "annual report", or simply believe that the WMF should not be producing political advocacy documents, it may well cause them to reflect whether or not they want to keep contributing.
I really hope that Craig is wrong, that this can be pulled back and edited properly, preferably by a bunch of actual Wikipedia editors who know how to write neutrally on controversial topics. I've volunteered in the Wikimedia movement for more than a decade at least in part because it was not a political advocacy organization, so I find this annual report to be very disturbing.
Risker/Anne
On 1 March 2017 at 23:23, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Dear reporters,
I really like the streamlined layout, the background video and the non-linear presentation online. Lovely work; you are wonderful.
If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either "travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia article.
Yes.
The one starkly political message in the Report is the choice of a protest photo from the US for the story about travel. On the nose, but reasonably on topic (with a corrected caption).
In general, I like the spirit and content of this report. A lead-in to the facts putting them in context would be nice; the implied context is "Facts Matter!" However I feel this claim and the report could be even more powerful if it were presented with another half-step of remove. The most unparalleled success of Wikipedia is not that it summarizes topics like "scientific consensus on global warming" — that, one can find elsewhere. It is that you can find thorough coverage of *all* aspects of such important and difficult topics: fledgling + disputed theories, major controversies and factions, and both begrudgingly + enthusiastically accepted conclusions.
My one concern: The highlighted fact about travel is wrong. As far as I can tell it's closer to 1 in 20 people. "International tourism arrivals" passed 1.2B this year, but the average tourist "arrives in another country" 3+ times per year.[1][2] If the publishers find a way to retract this 3+ mote of misinfo, I will be duly awed :)
Wikilove, SJ
[1] http://www2.unwto.org/press-release/2017-01-17/sustained- growth-international-tourism-despite-challenges http://stats.areppim.com/glossaire/ita_def.htm https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/visa-everywhere/ documents/visa-global-travel-and-tourism-study-infographic.pdf
[2] A quick round of community review (say, of any reputed facts!) and even citations might not hurt, for statements of fact that are going out to a large audience. You have access to plentiful world-class fact checkers, you don't have to limit yourself to those in the office. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of which came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not one of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully reflect on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them. If they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine to engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt is a strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
Pine
Pine,
Recall that the Foundation have rewritten their values to include "we seek to continually improve ourselves, our projects, our communities, our world.", see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Synthesis
The previous version https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Values&oldid=16352103 was all about knowledge.
But now, "Our vision is about more than providing universal access to all forms of knowledge. It’s about creating an inclusive culture"
WMF has taken on an explicitly political mission, to improve the word not merely by the dissemination of knowledge, but by direct intervention. I do not recall that being discussed with the Community, and I wonder what the donors think?
"Rogol"
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 6:26 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of which came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not one of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully reflect on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them. If they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine to engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt is a strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I would guess that about 90% of the donors have never been aware of the values, but have no data to support that guess. Do you have better data? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rogol Domedonfors Sent: Thursday, 02 March 2017 9:23 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
Pine,
Recall that the Foundation have rewritten their values to include "we seek to continually improve ourselves, our projects, our communities, our world.", see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Synthesis
The previous version https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Values&oldid=16352103 was all about knowledge.
But now, "Our vision is about more than providing universal access to all forms of knowledge. It’s about creating an inclusive culture"
WMF has taken on an explicitly political mission, to improve the word not merely by the dissemination of knowledge, but by direct intervention. I do not recall that being discussed with the Community, and I wonder what the donors think?
"Rogol"
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 6:26 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of which came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not one of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully reflect on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them. If they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine to engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt is a strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
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Hi Rogol,
While the values changed, my understanding is that the mission statement did not.
I think that the entirety of the values statement is educational read ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Synthesis), and I mean that mostly in a positive way. I am OK with the new values statement, and not with the annual report.
I would prefer not to be in the position of feeling like 3/4ths of my emails on this list are criticizing WMF, because I think that the organization has a noble purpose and that at its best it does a lot of good for the world. Unfortunately, I am feeling strained in my relationship with WMF, and this kind of drama is a distraction from other things that all of us could be doing that would be more beneficial.
Pine
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:22 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Pine,
Recall that the Foundation have rewritten their values to include "we seek to continually improve ourselves, our projects, our communities, our world.", see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Synthesis
The previous version https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Values&oldid=16352103 was all about knowledge.
But now, "Our vision is about more than providing universal access to all forms of knowledge. It’s about creating an inclusive culture"
WMF has taken on an explicitly political mission, to improve the word not merely by the dissemination of knowledge, but by direct intervention. I do not recall that being discussed with the Community, and I wonder what the donors think?
"Rogol"
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 6:26 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of
which
came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not
one
of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully
reflect
on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them.
If
they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine
to
engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt
is a
strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hello everybody,
I want to thank everyone for offering their considered thoughts. I mean that genuinely. There are many legitimate views expressed in this thread, many by generous, constructive, wise, and delightful members of our communities. That's good.
And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
Now some here may not care about that. Some of us think there is no point to the foundation anyway, so it's great that talent wants to walk.
Others may believe that I am saying that "we should all just be kind" and that I am terribly polyannish (of course I am, I work in HR) and that I am saying that we should not tell each other difficult truths. But that's a forced false choice. I'm decidedly not saying that we should not tell one another difficult truths. I'm saying that when we add it all up the way we tell each other the truth has damaging effects on many people I talk to—employees, volunteers from around the world, board members... and it hits women and minorities particularly hard. No one single person intends for it to be so. Of course they don't. But add it all up, put it out in public, everyone chimes in, and overall morale goes down the toilet.
What do we do? How can we find ways to tell each other difficult truths while remembering that we are talking about and to *people *in public and in large groups?
--- As a separate issue and a different interpretation on how this report likely came about...
In this report 3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized. (Yes, sadly I included some facts about biographies of women political). If travel is also a political issue now, I think I’m glad they legalized cannabis in this state.
But imagine it is October. Sure, Brexit has happened and large portions of the world are closing, not opening. There is a turn away from a global mindset and a turning toward clamping down on freedoms. But a good portion of Americans believe that we don't really have anything to worry about.
The Comms team begins writing a report. If Hillary Clinton had won, it's likely that these would not have looked so terribly much like political statements. It may have looked like a normal affirmation of acceptable values (because, 3/11). But America went another direction and now things that could have been considered normalish suddenly look like a shot fired round the world.
I'm not saying that this makes any of the legitimate views expressed here invalid. I'm just saying that the context has changed radically. Some of that change now makes acceptable values (valuing the scientific method / valuing climate science, valuing people of other nations, particularly those in distress, valuing biographies about women), look fringe.
/a
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 10:26 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of which came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not one of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully reflect on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them. If they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine to engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt is a strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Oh, and if you'd like to review the values process that has been out in the open and on meta since the very beginning, with explicit calls for participation, you should read not just the synthesis, but how we arrived at our conclusions. Start with the framing https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Framing.
/a
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:46 PM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello everybody,
I want to thank everyone for offering their considered thoughts. I mean that genuinely. There are many legitimate views expressed in this thread, many by generous, constructive, wise, and delightful members of our communities. That's good.
And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
Now some here may not care about that. Some of us think there is no point to the foundation anyway, so it's great that talent wants to walk.
Others may believe that I am saying that "we should all just be kind" and that I am terribly polyannish (of course I am, I work in HR) and that I am saying that we should not tell each other difficult truths. But that's a forced false choice. I'm decidedly not saying that we should not tell one another difficult truths. I'm saying that when we add it all up the way we tell each other the truth has damaging effects on many people I talk to—employees, volunteers from around the world, board members... and it hits women and minorities particularly hard. No one single person intends for it to be so. Of course they don't. But add it all up, put it out in public, everyone chimes in, and overall morale goes down the toilet.
What do we do? How can we find ways to tell each other difficult truths while remembering that we are talking about and to *people *in public and in large groups?
As a separate issue and a different interpretation on how this report likely came about...
In this report 3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized. (Yes, sadly I included some facts about biographies of women political). If travel is also a political issue now, I think I’m glad they legalized cannabis in this state.
But imagine it is October. Sure, Brexit has happened and large portions of the world are closing, not opening. There is a turn away from a global mindset and a turning toward clamping down on freedoms. But a good portion of Americans believe that we don't really have anything to worry about.
The Comms team begins writing a report. If Hillary Clinton had won, it's likely that these would not have looked so terribly much like political statements. It may have looked like a normal affirmation of acceptable values (because, 3/11). But America went another direction and now things that could have been considered normalish suddenly look like a shot fired round the world.
I'm not saying that this makes any of the legitimate views expressed here invalid. I'm just saying that the context has changed radically. Some of that change now makes acceptable values (valuing the scientific method / valuing climate science, valuing people of other nations, particularly those in distress, valuing biographies about women), look fringe.
/a
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 10:26 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I've written several drafts today in response to this thread, all of which came out as as rather energetic.
There are some reputable organizations for which I like and for which the tone of the "main page" of this report would be appropriate. WMF is not one of them. I would ask the people who approved the final version of this publication (particularly those in senior management) to carefully reflect on whether they are working for the organization that is right for them. If they want to continue to work for WMF, I would ask them to carefully read and focus on the WMF mission, and be religious about staying on that mission when making decisions on behalf of WMF. Outside of WMF it's fine to engage in many kinds of advocacy, but inside of WMF, this kind of tilt is a strategic liability both to WMF and to Wikipedia.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik i/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Anna,
Thanks for chiming in.
As someone who is personally feeling a lot of strain between myself and WMF -- and I think I'm not the only one -- I would like to figure out how to do something so that all of us can get on with mission-aligned work instead of having conversations about what's wrong for the nth time.
I think that problem will take some effort to solve, and it probably won't be solved in this thread. It's certainly a ripe issue for discussion, and I'd like to see that happen.
I'd like to hear suggestions about how to make that happen. I can't continue to participate here tonight, but perhaps others will. When I loop back here -- hopefully tomorrow, and certainly within a few days -- I'd like to hear suggestions about how to get better alignment between WMF and the community. This has been a problem for a long time, and I find it really frustrating. I know we can do better, and I'm glad you're giving some thought to this.
Thanks,
Pine
Pine, You and I have a call scheduled and we can begin to think together on this issue. Thank you. /a
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Anna,
Thanks for chiming in.
As someone who is personally feeling a lot of strain between myself and WMF -- and I think I'm not the only one -- I would like to figure out how to do something so that all of us can get on with mission-aligned work instead of having conversations about what's wrong for the nth time.
I think that problem will take some effort to solve, and it probably won't be solved in this thread. It's certainly a ripe issue for discussion, and I'd like to see that happen.
I'd like to hear suggestions about how to make that happen. I can't continue to participate here tonight, but perhaps others will. When I loop back here -- hopefully tomorrow, and certainly within a few days -- I'd like to hear suggestions about how to get better alignment between WMF and the community. This has been a problem for a long time, and I find it really frustrating. I know we can do better, and I'm glad you're giving some thought to this.
Thanks,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
My two cents.
I agree with the sentiments in the statement/report.
I don't feel comfortable seeing them from the WMF. I would not be comfortable seeing them from a PBS mission statement or report, a Humane Society report, the Red Cross, ... ok, the ACLU has about said as much. But I feel that the Foundation let "We are good people, these are good ideas" get a bit out of hand.
It's not political context. It stands out a bit more but that's not the nature of the problem.
I don't want the WMF as ACLU-lite, or advocating for health like Medcin Sans Frontieres or the Red Cross, or doing everything for internet freedom the EFF does.
These things become contextually controversial, and attract negative attention. Each one may individually be morally or mission justifiable, but you end up with a pattern generating controversy and attacks that are totally off axis to WMF's actual point of existence. As Pine and others mentioned, it's ultimately not mission aligned, and that does add up and hurt us.
When we take mission aligned stances we have to and should and we are owning that value and any criticism that comes back. That's our point. That's our community fight and point of existence. But we don't own human rights or immigration policy. We may consensus agree on a good moral platform but we don't own the problem or solutions.
I understand that the planning process for this may have been open and public (have not looked myself yet but believe you). But WP and WMF are *immense* and have more corners with stuff going on than any human can comprehend and follow even dedicated to it full time, which frankly most can't be. Many unfortunate things are done in the open but practically escaping wide enough audience to get the peer review they really needed. This is a community problem mostly but hit the Foundation here.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 2, 2017, at 12:00 AM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Pine, You and I have a call scheduled and we can begin to think together on this issue. Thank you. /a
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Anna,
Thanks for chiming in.
As someone who is personally feeling a lot of strain between myself and WMF -- and I think I'm not the only one -- I would like to figure out how to do something so that all of us can get on with mission-aligned work instead of having conversations about what's wrong for the nth time.
I think that problem will take some effort to solve, and it probably won't be solved in this thread. It's certainly a ripe issue for discussion, and I'd like to see that happen.
I'd like to hear suggestions about how to make that happen. I can't continue to participate here tonight, but perhaps others will. When I loop back here -- hopefully tomorrow, and certainly within a few days -- I'd like to hear suggestions about how to get better alignment between WMF and the community. This has been a problem for a long time, and I find it really frustrating. I know we can do better, and I'm glad you're giving some thought to this.
Thanks,
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hi Anna,
Thanks for offering your thoughts on this (and I mean that sincerely). Lord knows that sometimes the temperature on this list and in other venues rises to a point where no communication of substance can occur, and all that is achieved is that everyone walks away with bruised egos and hurt feelings. Obviously this is not good.
But, let me turn around your email; it's also pretty demoralising for us on the other side of the equation when we're described as a bunch who 'wants great talent to walk' because we see 'no point to the foundation anyway'. Especially in this particular thread where I see naught but respectful yet widespread criticism of the tone of some of the annual report. I *know* you're not trying to shut down the discussion here, or retreat into a defensive position with your fingers stick in your ears, but that is what it *felt* like reading your email, and that is just as much a problem.
I concur with you that the way that the community communicates with the Foundation needs to improve. But from the Foundation's side, you need to make it easier for us to communicate in a constructive way. That includes not having discussions around things like values sequestered away on some corner at Meta in a densely written essay that might be difficult for non-English speakers or those not familiar with the philosophical issues around values and corporate ethics to engage fully.
To make this email not all doom-and-gloom, I want to agree with something that SJ said; the actual visual presentation and layout of the report is fantastic. Very striking, easy to read, minimalist without being sparse. My hat is off to whomever in the Communication team was involved with that side of things.
Cheers, Craig
On 2 March 2017 at 17:46, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
I just wanted to add one last thing; thanks to Zachary McCune as well for coming and engaging with the community on this. I imagine that it may have felt like marching into the jaws of the beast to come and deal with the criticism, so I have to give him much respect for coming and engaging. I hope to see more of this rather than less in the future.
Cheers, Craig
On 2 March 2017 at 19:09, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
Hi Anna,
Thanks for offering your thoughts on this (and I mean that sincerely). Lord knows that sometimes the temperature on this list and in other venues rises to a point where no communication of substance can occur, and all that is achieved is that everyone walks away with bruised egos and hurt feelings. Obviously this is not good.
But, let me turn around your email; it's also pretty demoralising for us on the other side of the equation when we're described as a bunch who 'wants great talent to walk' because we see 'no point to the foundation anyway'. Especially in this particular thread where I see naught but respectful yet widespread criticism of the tone of some of the annual report. I *know* you're not trying to shut down the discussion here, or retreat into a defensive position with your fingers stick in your ears, but that is what it *felt* like reading your email, and that is just as much a problem.
I concur with you that the way that the community communicates with the Foundation needs to improve. But from the Foundation's side, you need to make it easier for us to communicate in a constructive way. That includes not having discussions around things like values sequestered away on some corner at Meta in a densely written essay that might be difficult for non-English speakers or those not familiar with the philosophical issues around values and corporate ethics to engage fully.
To make this email not all doom-and-gloom, I want to agree with something that SJ said; the actual visual presentation and layout of the report is fantastic. Very striking, easy to read, minimalist without being sparse. My hat is off to whomever in the Communication team was involved with that side of things.
Cheers, Craig
On 2 March 2017 at 17:46, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 2:46 AM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello everybody,
I want to thank everyone for offering their considered thoughts. I mean that genuinely. There are many legitimate views expressed in this thread, many by generous, constructive, wise, and delightful members of our communities. That's good.
And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
Now some here may not care about that. Some of us think there is no point to the foundation anyway, so it's great that talent wants to walk.
Others may believe that I am saying that "we should all just be kind" and that I am terribly polyannish (of course I am, I work in HR) and that I am saying that we should not tell each other difficult truths. But that's a forced false choice. I'm decidedly not saying that we should not tell one another difficult truths. I'm saying that when we add it all up the way we tell each other the truth has damaging effects on many people I talk to—employees, volunteers from around the world, board members... and it hits women and minorities particularly hard. No one single person intends for it to be so. Of course they don't. But add it all up, put it out in public, everyone chimes in, and overall morale goes down the toilet.
What do we do? How can we find ways to tell each other difficult truths while remembering that we are talking about and to *people *in public and in large groups?
As a separate issue and a different interpretation on how this report likely came about...
In this report 3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized. (Yes, sadly I included some facts about biographies of women political). If travel is also a political issue now, I think I’m glad they legalized cannabis in this state.
But imagine it is October. Sure, Brexit has happened and large portions of the world are closing, not opening. There is a turn away from a global mindset and a turning toward clamping down on freedoms. But a good portion of Americans believe that we don't really have anything to worry about.
The Comms team begins writing a report. If Hillary Clinton had won, it's likely that these would not have looked so terribly much like political statements. It may have looked like a normal affirmation of acceptable values (because, 3/11). But America went another direction and now things that could have been considered normalish suddenly look like a shot fired round the world.
I'm not saying that this makes any of the legitimate views expressed here invalid. I'm just saying that the context has changed radically. Some of that change now makes acceptable values (valuing the scientific method / valuing climate science, valuing people of other nations, particularly those in distress, valuing biographies about women), look fringe.
/a
I have a really hard time accepting on good faith that the themes of the annual report were etched in stone in October, or that refugees, freedom of travel and immigration and "true facts" were the main thematic elements at that time with no additional emphasis added since. Even if that were completely true in all respects, the report was not issued in October, it was issued in February/March. These themes are political now; there is no space for claiming otherwise, and Zach's post did not try.
I totally understand that people at the Foundation who are working hard and doing their best to always do the right thing, to serve the right mission and to please the right people feel attacked by criticism and complaints that they have failed. But the Foundation courts controversy when it jumps into political debates and involves itself in subject matter that is further and further from its core educational mission, and I hope that your leadership isn't surprised that criticism and complaints from some quarters are the result.
I think your insinuation that people objecting to political statements by the WMF object to the values of the scientific method, climate science, "valuing people" etc. verges on insulting. We can share those values without believing that the WMF is the right vehicle or context for expressing them or that doing so benefits the WMF's core mission as we understand it.
Would your objections have been as strong if the controversy was created by a politician in a different country? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Sent: Friday, March 3, 2017 3:58 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 2:46 AM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello everybody,
I want to thank everyone for offering their considered thoughts. I mean that genuinely. There are many legitimate views expressed in this thread, many by generous, constructive, wise, and delightful members of our communities. That's good.
And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that. *And* the cumulative impact of the way people at the Foundation get this feedback begins to feel like public, collective punishment. And that dynamic, one that we all tend to participate in, is driving talented people away from the foundation.
Now some here may not care about that. Some of us think there is no point to the foundation anyway, so it's great that talent wants to walk.
Others may believe that I am saying that "we should all just be kind" and that I am terribly polyannish (of course I am, I work in HR) and that I am saying that we should not tell each other difficult truths. But that's a forced false choice. I'm decidedly not saying that we should not tell one another difficult truths. I'm saying that when we add it all up the way we tell each other the truth has damaging effects on many people I talk to—employees, volunteers from around the world, board members... and it hits women and minorities particularly hard. No one single person intends for it to be so. Of course they don't. But add it all up, put it out in public, everyone chimes in, and overall morale goes down the toilet.
What do we do? How can we find ways to tell each other difficult truths while remembering that we are talking about and to *people *in public and in large groups?
As a separate issue and a different interpretation on how this report likely came about...
In this report 3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized. (Yes, sadly I included some facts about biographies of women political). If travel is also a political issue now, I think I’m glad they legalized cannabis in this state.
But imagine it is October. Sure, Brexit has happened and large portions of the world are closing, not opening. There is a turn away from a global mindset and a turning toward clamping down on freedoms. But a good portion of Americans believe that we don't really have anything to worry about.
The Comms team begins writing a report. If Hillary Clinton had won, it's likely that these would not have looked so terribly much like political statements. It may have looked like a normal affirmation of acceptable values (because, 3/11). But America went another direction and now things that could have been considered normalish suddenly look like a shot fired round the world.
I'm not saying that this makes any of the legitimate views expressed here invalid. I'm just saying that the context has changed radically. Some of that change now makes acceptable values (valuing the scientific method / valuing climate science, valuing people of other nations, particularly those in distress, valuing biographies about women), look fringe.
/a
I have a really hard time accepting on good faith that the themes of the annual report were etched in stone in October, or that refugees, freedom of travel and immigration and "true facts" were the main thematic elements at that time with no additional emphasis added since. Even if that were completely true in all respects, the report was not issued in October, it was issued in February/March. These themes are political now; there is no space for claiming otherwise, and Zach's post did not try.
I totally understand that people at the Foundation who are working hard and doing their best to always do the right thing, to serve the right mission and to please the right people feel attacked by criticism and complaints that they have failed. But the Foundation courts controversy when it jumps into political debates and involves itself in subject matter that is further and further from its core educational mission, and I hope that your leadership isn't surprised that criticism and complaints from some quarters are the result.
I think your insinuation that people objecting to political statements by the WMF object to the values of the scientific method, climate science, "valuing people" etc. verges on insulting. We can share those values without believing that the WMF is the right vehicle or context for expressing them or that doing so benefits the WMF's core mission as we understand it. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources you expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and responsive that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and scope of our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it being a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no new resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what you have already?
"Rogol"
I want to express respect for this discussion and re-iterate two favorite points:
Erik says:
"I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world."
And Risker points out that scientific consensus changes and offers some great examples (too long to paste, timestamp on the message is Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM).
We are part of a small group of people that's figured out how to document human consciousness and awareness, as dynamic as it is. I think it's a lot to ask to capture this fairly in the annual report, but it seems we're giving it an honest try. I'm really honestly in awe of this collaborative effort. And I had similar initial reactions to the annual report as others on this thread.
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources you expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and responsive that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and scope of our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it being a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no new resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what you have already?
"Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hello Rogol,
I think the process on this particular count already took place. We wrote a report in good faith. We responded to critique in good faith. We're making actual changes in good faith.
Have a lovely weekend. I really need a break. Warmly, /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get feedback. We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And I actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources you expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and responsive that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and scope of our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it being a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no new resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what you have already?
"Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Anna
I'm glad to hear that everything is all right and that you don't need our help after all. When you return from your break, it would be of value to the community for you to let them know what those "actual changes" were. That way we can help you even better next time.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:58 AM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello Rogol,
I think the process on this particular count already took place. We wrote a report in good faith. We responded to critique in good faith. We're making actual changes in good faith.
Have a lovely weekend. I really need a break. Warmly, /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance) that I don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get
feedback.
We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that. And
I
actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources you expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and
responsive
that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and scope of our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it
being
a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no new resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what you have already?
"Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that also has problems.
Pine
On 4 March 2017 at 18:38, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that also has problems.
Indeed. I have to say that for the most part this conversation has been *exactly* how I think these sometimes difficult discussions should take place. Everyone has been respectful, everyone has been willing to give up a little ground, and we're moving towards a situation that more people are happy with. Anna and the Communications folks deserve credit for that.
Cheers, Craig
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but everything we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
Have a good weekend everyone.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 4, 2017, at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that also has problems.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George William Herbert Sent: Saturday, 04 March 2017 10:47 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but everything we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
Have a good weekend everyone.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 4, 2017, at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that also has problems.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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A little late into the discussion I just want to note that aside from the factual reservations, which seem to make sense, the overall tone, context and setting of the WMF Annual report is something I wholeheartedly agree with, and I feel that it conveys a sense of urgency on a few fronts that could benefit from more truthfulness.
The world looks quite different when you're contributing to Wiki projects just kilometers away from the bloody civil war in Syria, in a country where freedom of speech is continuously threatened. I for one am happy to be a part of a Movement that will not stay silent in the face of "post-truths" and the growing impediments to basic civic (and other) freedoms.
If this is considered a political statement, so be it.
Ido
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George William Herbert Sent: Saturday, 04 March 2017 10:47 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but everything we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
Have a good weekend everyone.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 4, 2017, at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that
also has problems.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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+1
On 4 March 2017 at 10:17, Ido ivri ido@wikimedia.org.il wrote:
A little late into the discussion I just want to note that aside from the factual reservations, which seem to make sense, the overall tone, context and setting of the WMF Annual report is something I wholeheartedly agree with, and I feel that it conveys a sense of urgency on a few fronts that could benefit from more truthfulness.
The world looks quite different when you're contributing to Wiki projects just kilometers away from the bloody civil war in Syria, in a country where freedom of speech is continuously threatened. I for one am happy to be a part of a Movement that will not stay silent in the face of "post-truths" and the growing impediments to basic civic (and other) freedoms.
If this is considered a political statement, so be it.
Ido
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George William Herbert Sent: Saturday, 04 March 2017 10:47 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but everything we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
Have a good weekend everyone.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 4, 2017, at 12:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that
also has problems.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 3:46 AM, George William Herbert < george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but everything we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
I truly hope no one takes any discussion here as indicating anything approaching “universal consensus.”
Wikimedia-L is a self-selected set of participants who are wiling to tolerate the culture on the list. It should not be assumed to be a representative slice of community sentiment.
-Andrew
Andrew, I somewhat agree. This is a discussion list. The people who are here tend to be especially well-informed, and discussions can be very informative and useful. RfCs and surveys have their own limitations, so getting a "representative slice of community sentiment" is a bit of a challenge, especially given the number of RfCs and discussions that take place around the wikiverse.
Pine
On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 3:41 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 3:46 AM, George William Herbert < george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that the idea of taking the weekend off from the topic is excellent. We may not have reached universal consensus yet but
everything
we needed to have said was, and it's been acknowledged as received and under consideration.
I truly hope no one takes any discussion here as indicating anything approaching “universal consensus.”
Wikimedia-L is a self-selected set of participants who are wiling to tolerate the culture on the list. It should not be assumed to be a representative slice of community sentiment.
-Andrew _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Pine
We were asked for help. I posted a message asking how we could help in this process. We got a reply saying the process "already took place". I interpret that as meaning that our help is not needed after all. Perhaps you read it differently. I don't think that makes my response, or yours for that matter, "inflammatory and unhelpful". I think it shows that there is a need for clarification, which no doubt will come at some future time.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 8:38 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol,
I don't get the impression that Anna's position is that "everything is all right and that (WMF doesn't) need our help after all". That comment comes across to me as inflammatory and unhelpful.
It seems to me that Anna is interested in improving the situation rather than having a battle with the community. I'd like to let the improvement process happen. Please have some patience, and let's be grateful that WMF is trying to make the situation better. I would rather see a thoughtfully re-designed report in 2 weeks than pour gasoline on the fire and have another report come out on Monday that also has problems.
Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hey Rogol, I think Zach's email (above / March 2nd) describes the changes. /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 11:35 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna
I'm glad to hear that everything is all right and that you don't need our help after all. When you return from your break, it would be of value to the community for you to let them know what those "actual changes" were. That way we can help you even better next time.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:58 AM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello Rogol,
I think the process on this particular count already took place. We wrote a report in good faith. We responded to critique in good faith. We're making actual changes in good faith.
Have a lovely weekend. I really need a break. Warmly, /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Rogol Domedonfors <
domedonfors@gmail.com>
wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance)
that I
don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get
feedback.
We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that.
And
I
actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources
you
expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and
responsive
that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and scope
of
our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it
being
a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no new resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what
you
have already?
"Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Anna
Thanks.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hey Rogol, I think Zach's email (above / March 2nd) describes the changes. /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 11:35 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna
I'm glad to hear that everything is all right and that you don't need our help after all. When you return from your break, it would be of value to the community for you to let them know what those "actual changes" were. That way we can help you even better next time.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:58 AM, Anna Stillwell <astillwell@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello Rogol,
I think the process on this particular count already took place. We wrote a report in good faith. We responded to critique in good faith. We're making actual changes in good faith.
Have a lovely weekend. I really need a break. Warmly, /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Rogol Domedonfors <
domedonfors@gmail.com>
wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance)
that I
don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing
me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get
feedback.
We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want that.
And
I
actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what resources
you
expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and
responsive
that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and
scope
of
our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of it
being
a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no
new
resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above what
you
have already?
"Rogol" _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/
mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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You're welcome, Rogol. Smiley face, /a
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 10:23 AM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
Anna
Thanks.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Anna Stillwell astillwell@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hey Rogol, I think Zach's email (above / March 2nd) describes the changes. /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 11:35 PM, Rogol Domedonfors <
domedonfors@gmail.com>
wrote:
Anna
I'm glad to hear that everything is all right and that you don't need
our
help after all. When you return from your break, it would be of value
to
the community for you to let them know what those "actual changes"
were.
That way we can help you even better next time.
"Rogol"
On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 6:58 AM, Anna Stillwell <
astillwell@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello Rogol,
I think the process on this particular count already took place. We wrote a report in good faith. We responded to critique in good faith. We're making actual changes in good faith.
Have a lovely weekend. I really need a break. Warmly, /a
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Rogol Domedonfors <
domedonfors@gmail.com>
wrote:
Anna,
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:46 AM, you wrote:
[...] And I'm struggling with a process problem (not one of substance)
that I
don't know how to solve. I truly don't. And it's kind of killing
me.
We (people who work and volunteer at the WMF) need a way to get
feedback.
We need a way to be accountable and responsive. We all want
that.
And
I
actually believe that we are all working in good faith toward
that.
It would help us all to help you if you could indicate what
resources
you
expect to be able to devote to this way of being accountable and
responsive
that you are working towards, so that we can match the scale and
scope
of
our suggestion to what you will make available. When you write of
it
being
a matter of process not substance, does that mean that you have no
new
resources to allocate to this new way of working tover and above
what
you
have already?
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Refugees ... don't have anything to do with the WMF
Someone forgot to tell that to the Foundation volunteers working on
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/24/refugee-phrasebook/
which is directly linked from that section of the Annual Report.
messages like this "empower" only those who agree with them
Should the Mission be amended to exclude those who government officials have decided are no longer allowed to have freedom of movement across borders?
This sort of thing can be pretty exclusionary and disempowering if you do not agree with the rather unsubtle political stances being taken.
Is there any actual evidence of this? People said the same thing about the SOPA/PIPA protest, but there was no change to editing levels and the responses from the community and donors were very strongly positive when they were asked directly. There was just a familiar vocal minority who were adamantly complaining that the Foundation's purity of essence had been corrupted.
It also just provides more fuel for those arguing that Wikipedia is a left-wing advocacy organisation rather than a credible, neutral, and trustworthy source of bias-free information.
On the contrary, the left-wing is the only source of credible, trustworthy, and bias-free information on a wide variety of topics such as climate change. Equating neutrality with credibility and trustworthiness is a clear mistake, because political bias is not orthogonal to factual bias.
imagine it is October.... The Comms team begins writing a report. If Hillary Clinton had won, it's likely that these would not have looked so terribly much like political statements. It may have looked like a normal affirmation of acceptable values.... But America went another direction and now things that could have been considered normalish suddenly look like a shot fired round the world.
Exactly; well put, Anna!
it's ultimately not mission aligned
This, again, is the real dispute, whether the word "empower" in the Mission means anything about actual power beyond mere facilitation.
On Mar 2, 2017, at 1:14 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
On the contrary, the left-wing is the only source of credible, trustworthy, and bias-free information on a wide variety of topics such as climate change. Equating neutrality with credibility and trustworthiness is a clear mistake, because political bias is not orthogonal to factual bias.
I think there's an excellent argument to be made as to the underlying factual validity of the stance(s).
None of which addresses the point that it's off mission and a distraction from the mission, and will attract even further off-mission criticism and attacks and resentment.
Someone out there (and not just a tiny minority) is going to disagree strongly with the position; I don't. But I care that we made them our enemies here and in this manner. I donate to and support the ACLU and immigration lawyer groups when I want to make those points. The WMF picking this fight hurts the WMF.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
Hoi, Visiting the United States is no longer an option for many people. The current situation is absolutely not only about immigration it is also about visiting. When a nationalised person of Iranian ancestry has family in Iran. Can he or she still visit his family and come back? Can his family still visit him? The situation is reminiscent of what happens in North and South Korea.
Really, people do not appreciate half of what is happening in the USA. I seriously ask myself if I could visit the USA and not be harassed. I am Caucasian, from the Netherlands and I am a Muslim. When we do not see that a large part of our community can no longer visit "the land of the free" and call this political, we do not appreciate what we stand for. When people find that the position they take is one where the notion that America is no longer the land of the free, where white extremism is free to burn mosques and kill based on the difference in the colour of their skin is acceptable, they are welcome to find a problem with what Wikimedia as a worldwide movement stands for. Thanks, GerardM
On 2 March 2017 at 00:44, Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com wrote:
I must say I also find the political message behind this a bit too heavy. It lets me a bit unconfortable.
That most of the themes reported here are not Mr Trump cup of tea is quite obvious. That the whole page is a message against the president, I get it.
But in some cases, I think it is really lacking subtility or a bit too manipulative. And that is not so cool.
For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban. Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released. Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from "immigrating".
I think the choice of picture inappropriate.
Florence
Le 01/03/2017 à 21:15, Lodewijk a écrit :
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe
"empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and
cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice
declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I agree with Florence.
This WMF Annual Report has imho a obvious political connotation. Wikimedia should remain politically neutral in any regard. WP:POV;
--Steinsplitter
________________________________ Von: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org im Auftrag von Florence Devouard fdevouard@gmail.com Gesendet: Donnerstag, 2. März 2017 00:44 An: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
I must say I also find the political message behind this a bit too heavy. It lets me a bit unconfortable.
That most of the themes reported here are not Mr Trump cup of tea is quite obvious. That the whole page is a message against the president, I get it.
But in some cases, I think it is really lacking subtility or a bit too manipulative. And that is not so cool.
For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban. Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released. Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from "immigrating".
I think the choice of picture inappropriate.
Florence
Le 01/03/2017 à 21:15, Lodewijk a écrit :
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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-- Seddon
*Advancement Associate (Community Engagement)* *Wikimedia Foundation* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On 2 March 2017 at 12:07, Steinsplitter Wiki steinsplitter-wiki@live.com wrote:
This WMF Annual Report has imho a obvious political connotation. Wikimedia should remain politically neutral in any regard. WP:POV;
In 2017, literally the concept of factual information is an active matter of political dispute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts
I note this discussion is leaning "I totally am not offended myself, but unspecified others might be." I think some posters need to own their own discomfort more.
The trouble with liberality is a tendency to shy away from wishing to assert oneself even when actually it's quite important.
- d.
On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:22 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I note this discussion is leaning "I totally am not offended myself, but unspecified others might be." I think some posters need to own their own discomfort more.
The trouble with liberality is a tendency to shy away from wishing to assert oneself even when actually it's quite important.
*I* an engaged and asserting myself on these issues and in support of appropriate organizations in each area.
The WMF is not the appropriate organization to do that. It detracts from what the WMF is chartered to do for it to go rolling in the mud with the pigs on specific issues not related to creating and maximally sharing neutral encyclopedic knowledge.
We have enough problems in the core mission, communities, and Foundation that we're no good at solving yet. I do not want the Foundation going off mission. We haven't got the mission solved yet, and going off mission into politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
No matter how much I agree with all the specific positions implied, it was wrong to go there.
It may feel good, but it's a net negative to neutral and conservative readers and our position in the US social and political spectrum to move off organizational neutrality. Liberals don't need us patting them on the head saying we agree with their views. It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our community and organizational motives.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
Such as how? This assertion keeps being made without any evidence supporting it.
It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
Perhaps we could refer this question to the Advancement department. Does appealing for money for one thing and spending it on another damage the Foundation's ability to raise funds in the future?
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:13 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
Such as how? This assertion keeps being made without any evidence supporting it.
It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our
community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
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On Mar 2, 2017, at 11:13 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
Such as how? This assertion keeps being made without any evidence supporting it.
It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
Surely you haven't missed the spectrum of external criticism of Wikipedia which in no small part claims we have a left bias.
We are always able to come back and point to (usually) functional neutrality. But then we go and do this.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
My 2¢ The avoidance of politically sensitive issues is not the same as being politically neutral.
Political neutrality isn’t about shifting your politics to wherever your local Overton window currently sits. It involves a longer, broader, global view of what accepted political norms are.
Political neutrality also sits in relation to your movement’s or organisation’s other values, which shouldn’t be compromised or undermined for the sake of maintaining it.
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
And child refugees. They are politically sensitive in light of the current situation of various government’s policies on accepting them. But the rights of the child are internationally agreed upon and have been for decades, in treaties such as UN Convention on the Rights of the Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child there is consensus on basic things like a child’s right to education, with a special focus on child refugees. Omitting to talk about your work on the above topics accepts a narrative of controversy about the issues that is quite extreme.
Our movement values neutrality, but it also values evidence and consensus. If following the two latter principles leads WMF to a position where it is not politically neutral, I’d suggest it is not WMF that has adopted an extreme or partisan position. Thinking longer term, and more globally, seems sensible here.
S
On 2 March 2017 at 20:08, George William Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Mar 2, 2017, at 11:13 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
Such as how? This assertion keeps being made without any evidence
supporting it.
It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our
community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
Surely you haven't missed the spectrum of external criticism of Wikipedia which in no small part claims we have a left bias.
We are always able to come back and point to (usually) functional neutrality. But then we go and do this.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
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On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
Hi Eric,
Speaking generally, I think that telling stories about Wikimedia content and platforms, and how content is created, delivered, or used, are all likely to be compatible with WMF's mission when the stories are written in an NPOV way. I must have missed the link to Andreas' arctic photography, but I can imagine how a story about a Wikimedian's work taking photos of icebergs and arctic wildlife could be written in such a way as to be compatible with the WMF mission to share knowledge of factual information (as opposed to analyses of that information or advocacy to take political action based on that information). Similarly, a story about the use of Wikimedia resources to assist refugees could likely be written in a way that is NPOV and compatible with the mission to share knowledge.
WMF, the affiliates, and the communities do good work that is not advocacy, and informs discussions of public interest, and contributes to the public good. I think that sharing those stories can likely be done in a way that is compatible with the WMF mission.
Pine
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 4:12 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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I agree with Pine's comments. Lots of good things happening and great content, and that should not be minimized in all this. If I left that impression then my apologies to the content creators and annual report staff on those points.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 2, 2017, at 5:10 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Eric,
Speaking generally, I think that telling stories about Wikimedia content and platforms, and how content is created, delivered, or used, are all likely to be compatible with WMF's mission when the stories are written in an NPOV way. I must have missed the link to Andreas' arctic photography, but I can imagine how a story about a Wikimedian's work taking photos of icebergs and arctic wildlife could be written in such a way as to be compatible with the WMF mission to share knowledge of factual information (as opposed to analyses of that information or advocacy to take political action based on that information). Similarly, a story about the use of Wikimedia resources to assist refugees could likely be written in a way that is NPOV and compatible with the mission to share knowledge.
WMF, the affiliates, and the communities do good work that is not advocacy, and informs discussions of public interest, and contributes to the public good. I think that sharing those stories can likely be done in a way that is compatible with the WMF mission.
Pine
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 4:12 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in this discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia mission, vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report - it reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented people who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs unrelated to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the mission and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of the "facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even necessary, part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a single page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE, which we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF is so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about its own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia, when you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable refugee children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing iceberg images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic) harmful chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to the prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't be sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate change. Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at icebergs; it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a dying animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year on record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a few hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're talking about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even a factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps to reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not what's in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the scientific consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and dietary habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could cause stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by the pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And even as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is going to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis is caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of the most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of advanced privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of the Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of rangeblocks on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of all California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good example of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain why the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that it was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature, and these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of this particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories that turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which doesn't support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point out the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather than giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And yes, the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized, too. Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was that it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come to be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps editors from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization, but it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if not physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is entirely tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of photos.) Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the Annual report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos come from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the first paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something more historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article, might have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights some really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF. Entirely on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It does not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to include when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why there's a link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the text. But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that was actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the written message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have illustrated this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a bunch of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF could have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words - the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is part of the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few facts before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news. (Incidentally, the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as well there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work by the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some political advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets on the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK" fact with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and the WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized facts skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to WMF activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were actually mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of other peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on the lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with our mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of these issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened in just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid out back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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Risker has outlined many of the issues with the report much better than I would have been able to. While I'm happy to hear there will be some reordering and that one of the images will be replaced, the report still has many very serious problems.
How can we fix this? I can think of a few options: * The report could be made open to edits from the community. (I was hopeful when the report was posted on Meta that it would be editable, but it was apparently posted primarily for translation purposes and is not editable.) Over the course of a few weeks much of the content could be rewritten to be close enough to neutral. * We could continue discussing specific problems in tone and focus, errors, and general issues with the report here on this mailing list or on Meta while the relevant people implement fixes and rewrites (hopefully in a transparent manner), including the large content changes/replacements required. * The entire "Consider the facts" section could be removed/replaced. The rest of the report probably could stand on its own, but that may not be ideal. I don't know whether rewriting it from scratch is doable, or whether there may be relevant time constraints here.
I'd like to reiterate the seriousness of displaying non-Wikimedia-related political advocacy over Wikimedia projects. Many editors work very hard at removing any biases in articles. To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
-- Yair Rand
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in this discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia mission, vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report - it reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented people who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs unrelated to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the mission and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of the "facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even necessary, part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a single page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE, which we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF is so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about its own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia, when you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable refugee children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing iceberg images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic) harmful chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to the prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't be sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate change. Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at icebergs; it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a dying animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year on record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a few hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're talking about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even a factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps to reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not what's in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the scientific consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and dietary habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could cause stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by the pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And even as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is going to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis is caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of the most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of advanced privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of the Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of rangeblocks on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of all California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good example of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain why the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that it was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature, and these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of this particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories that turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which doesn't support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point out the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather than giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And yes, the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized, too. Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was that it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come to be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps editors from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization, but it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if not physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is entirely tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of photos.) Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the Annual report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos come from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the first paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something more historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article, might have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights some really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF. Entirely on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It does not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to include when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why there's a link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the text. But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that was actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the written message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have illustrated this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a bunch of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF could have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words - the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is part of the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few facts before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news. (Incidentally, the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as well there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work by the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some political advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets on the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK" fact with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and the WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized facts skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to WMF activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were actually mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of other peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on the lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with our mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of these issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened in just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid out back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account
that
97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate
_change>
Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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Yair,
Would you please explain what you mean by damaging?
To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
My opinion remains that 43pt blatant advocacy in support of both personal freedom of movement and scientific consensus disputed by fossil fuel interests is extremely helpful to the Foundation, its Mission, and in attracting additional volunteers, especially because those issues have been disfavored by recent political trends brought about by political leveraging of xenophobia and lobbyist money.
Why do people think it is reasonable to claim that such advocacy is damaging without presenting any evidence in support of their opinion? Clearly many people do, but why?
Equally James, how is this advocacy "extremely helpful"? How does it help the building and maintainence of Wikimedia projects? How does it help the many volunteers who work on these projects?
________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 4:53:29 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
Yair,
Would you please explain what you mean by damaging?
To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
My opinion remains that 43pt blatant advocacy in support of both personal freedom of movement and scientific consensus disputed by fossil fuel interests is extremely helpful to the Foundation, its Mission, and in attracting additional volunteers, especially because those issues have been disfavored by recent political trends brought about by political leveraging of xenophobia and lobbyist money.
Why do people think it is reasonable to claim that such advocacy is damaging without presenting any evidence in support of their opinion? Clearly many people do, but why?
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On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 5:49 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
Equally James, how is this advocacy "extremely helpful"? How does it help the building and maintainence of Wikimedia projects? How does it help the many volunteers who work on these projects?
Taking a stand for personal freedom attracts volunteers in support of free culture, just as supporting scientific consensus opposed by money in politics attracts those who value accuracy.
I can see how it can attract AND repel volunteers overall, just as we see it attractive and off-putting to people discussing on this list.
________________________________ From: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org on behalf of James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 6:17:19 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 5:49 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
Equally James, how is this advocacy "extremely helpful"? How does it help the building and maintainence of Wikimedia projects? How does it help the many volunteers who work on these projects?
Taking a stand for personal freedom attracts volunteers in support of free culture, just as supporting scientific consensus opposed by money in politics attracts those who value accuracy.
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Hello,
This has become an interesting and important conversation. First, many thanks to everyone as they bring their intellect, experience, and thoughtfulness to this topic. And thanks to Zack for many months of work organizing a complex project, with a theme that became increasingly sensitive due to external public discourse, and especially for making a tremendous and honest effort to hear feedback and to respond quickly here. I’d also like to thank all the people who helped read, write, edit, and consider this report.
We chose this theme in October, and have used it successfully in messaging since then. It was part of the December English-language fundraising campaign, in emails and banners to donors, and received very positive response. It was the theme of a video, shared in December,[1] that became a featured video on Commons.[2] We also shared our work and development process on this report publicly when we published the Communications department’s check-in slides covering the 2nd fiscal quarter (Sep - Dec 2016).[3]
Social impact is a very important part of Wikimedia that is hard to understand from the outside, but that impact is one of the things that makes your work so meaningful, and helps us find contributors and partners around the world. As Zack mentioned, our annual reports are created for an audience that includes ongoing financial contributors and people new to us. They are intended to be timely and relevant to the interests of people who are not as deeply involved in Wikimedia as the rest of us. They tell the story of what Wikimedians have achieved in the context of the world, and are related to topics in international conversations. Some of those stories are efforts supported by the Foundation, and many are celebrations of the importance and timeliness of independent work of members of the movement. Wikimedia is rich and complex, and we revise our theme each year to share new facets. The Foundation has been making these since 2008.[4]
Yes, our report was meant to bring up relevant topics for a global audience, and to tie important facts to the work of Wikimedians. It was meant to focus on the range of things people can learn from Wikipedia, from the historical to the social to the controversial. But it was not a response to anything that occurred in recent weeks, or in any one country. We debated the relationship between the theme and public discourse as that discourse changed, but decided that Wikimedia’s relationship with facts hadn’t changed. The report is not perfect, and many people have pointed out excellent alternative directions we might have taken. We’re listening, and we will learn from your suggestions and ideas in our continuing work.
I am proud of the intentions, hard work, experience, and many difficult decisions my colleagues on the Communications team and our collaborators across the Foundation and community make every day. I hope the abridged timeline of events, below, will help make some our process more visible to you as well.
-Heather
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/27/not-post-fact-world/ [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_-_FactsMatter2016.webm [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File% 3AWikimedia_Foundation_Communications_Q2_(Oct-Dec_ 2016)_-_Jan_2017_quarterly_check-in.pdf&page=13 [4] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
*Our fact criteria:* Global, relevant to general readers and to 2016, verifiable, related to the work of Wikimedians, surprising or interesting
*2016* 13 Oct: Meeting where “Facts Matter” was established, our deadline for a full draft was December 15 28 Oct: First design review of website mockups. 7 Nov: Design team meeting, notes include:
- “Reaffirm facts matter” - “Reacting to present moment is antithetical to the WMF movement” - “We care just as much about facts as we did a year ago, 10 years ago, and will care in five years”
14 Dec: Facts final, content drafted 27 Dec: Facts matter video posted
*2017* 6 Jan: Site and content review with other departments (locked to major changes) 17 Jan: Print layout of all content 27 Jan: Communications quarterly review[3] posted Feb 7 1 Mar: Sharing the Facts Matter site
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
Risker has outlined many of the issues with the report much better than I would have been able to. While I'm happy to hear there will be some reordering and that one of the images will be replaced, the report still has many very serious problems.
How can we fix this? I can think of a few options:
- The report could be made open to edits from the community. (I was hopeful
when the report was posted on Meta that it would be editable, but it was apparently posted primarily for translation purposes and is not editable.) Over the course of a few weeks much of the content could be rewritten to be close enough to neutral.
- We could continue discussing specific problems in tone and focus, errors,
and general issues with the report here on this mailing list or on Meta while the relevant people implement fixes and rewrites (hopefully in a transparent manner), including the large content changes/replacements required.
- The entire "Consider the facts" section could be removed/replaced. The
rest of the report probably could stand on its own, but that may not be ideal. I don't know whether rewriting it from scratch is doable, or whether there may be relevant time constraints here.
I'd like to reiterate the seriousness of displaying non-Wikimedia-related political advocacy over Wikimedia projects. Many editors work very hard at removing any biases in articles. To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
-- Yair Rand
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in this discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia mission, vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report -
it
reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented
people
who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs unrelated to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the mission and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of
the
"facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even necessary, part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a
single
page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE,
which
we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF is so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about its own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia,
when
you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable refugee children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing
iceberg
images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic)
harmful
chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to
the
prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't
be
sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate
change.
Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at
icebergs;
it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a dying animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year on record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a few hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're
talking
about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even a factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps to reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not what's in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the
scientific
consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and
dietary
habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could
cause
stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by
the
pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And
even
as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is
going
to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis
is
caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of
the
most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of advanced privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of
the
Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of rangeblocks on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of
all
California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good
example
of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain why the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that it was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature, and these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of this particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories
that
turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which
doesn't
support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point
out
the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather
than
giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And yes, the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized, too. Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was
that
it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come
to
be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps editors from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization, but it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if not physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is
entirely
tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of
photos.)
Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the
Annual
report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos
come
from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the
first
paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something
more
historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article,
might
have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights some really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF.
Entirely
on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It does not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to
include
when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why there's
a
link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the text. But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that
was
actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the written message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have
illustrated
this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a
bunch
of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF
could
have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words - the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is part
of
the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few facts before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news.
(Incidentally,
the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as well there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work
by
the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some
political
advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets on the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK" fact with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and
the
WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized
facts
skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to WMF activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were
actually
mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of other peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on
the
lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with our mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of these issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened in just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid
out
back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically
sensitive
issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account
that
97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate
_change>
Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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Hi Heather,
Thanks for commenting.
The theme of "facts matter" seems good to me, and I generally like Victor's video. However, the way that this report comes across to me is that it advocates for certain points of view on issues which, however important they may be (I happen to think global warming is a very important issue), are not integral to Wikipedia's mission. Also, I found it strange that the "front page" of the report has a "Facts matter" section that leads off with information about refugees and the Earth's temperature trends. On the whole, that section comes across to me as being off-message. I would encourage revising the report so that it's more consistent with the themes and tone of Victor's video.
Social impact in the form of informing public dialogue is a valuable attribute to Wikipedia, and I would encourage a more neutral approach to articulating that attribute as has been discussed in this thread. It's possible to highlight social impact while remaining compatible with NPOV and staying focused on mission.
Thanks for engaging here.
Pine
Pine
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Heather Walls hwalls@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello,
This has become an interesting and important conversation. First, many thanks to everyone as they bring their intellect, experience, and thoughtfulness to this topic. And thanks to Zack for many months of work organizing a complex project, with a theme that became increasingly sensitive due to external public discourse, and especially for making a tremendous and honest effort to hear feedback and to respond quickly here. I’d also like to thank all the people who helped read, write, edit, and consider this report.
We chose this theme in October, and have used it successfully in messaging since then. It was part of the December English-language fundraising campaign, in emails and banners to donors, and received very positive response. It was the theme of a video, shared in December,[1] that became a featured video on Commons.[2] We also shared our work and development process on this report publicly when we published the Communications department’s check-in slides covering the 2nd fiscal quarter (Sep - Dec 2016).[3]
Social impact is a very important part of Wikimedia that is hard to understand from the outside, but that impact is one of the things that makes your work so meaningful, and helps us find contributors and partners around the world. As Zack mentioned, our annual reports are created for an audience that includes ongoing financial contributors and people new to us. They are intended to be timely and relevant to the interests of people who are not as deeply involved in Wikimedia as the rest of us. They tell the story of what Wikimedians have achieved in the context of the world, and are related to topics in international conversations. Some of those stories are efforts supported by the Foundation, and many are celebrations of the importance and timeliness of independent work of members of the movement. Wikimedia is rich and complex, and we revise our theme each year to share new facets. The Foundation has been making these since 2008.[4]
Yes, our report was meant to bring up relevant topics for a global audience, and to tie important facts to the work of Wikimedians. It was meant to focus on the range of things people can learn from Wikipedia, from the historical to the social to the controversial. But it was not a response to anything that occurred in recent weeks, or in any one country. We debated the relationship between the theme and public discourse as that discourse changed, but decided that Wikimedia’s relationship with facts hadn’t changed. The report is not perfect, and many people have pointed out excellent alternative directions we might have taken. We’re listening, and we will learn from your suggestions and ideas in our continuing work.
I am proud of the intentions, hard work, experience, and many difficult decisions my colleagues on the Communications team and our collaborators across the Foundation and community make every day. I hope the abridged timeline of events, below, will help make some our process more visible to you as well.
-Heather
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/27/not-post-fact-world/ [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_-_ FactsMatter2016.webm [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File% 3AWikimedia_Foundation_Communications_Q2_(Oct-Dec_ 2016)_-_Jan_2017_quarterly_check-in.pdf&page=13 [4] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
*Our fact criteria:* Global, relevant to general readers and to 2016, verifiable, related to the work of Wikimedians, surprising or interesting
*2016* 13 Oct: Meeting where “Facts Matter” was established, our deadline for a full draft was December 15 28 Oct: First design review of website mockups. 7 Nov: Design team meeting, notes include:
- “Reaffirm facts matter”
- “Reacting to present moment is antithetical to the WMF movement”
- “We care just as much about facts as we did a year ago, 10 years ago,
and will care in five years”
14 Dec: Facts final, content drafted 27 Dec: Facts matter video posted
*2017* 6 Jan: Site and content review with other departments (locked to major changes) 17 Jan: Print layout of all content 27 Jan: Communications quarterly review[3] posted Feb 7 1 Mar: Sharing the Facts Matter site
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
Risker has outlined many of the issues with the report much better than I would have been able to. While I'm happy to hear there will be some reordering and that one of the images will be replaced, the report still has many very serious problems.
How can we fix this? I can think of a few options:
- The report could be made open to edits from the community. (I was
hopeful
when the report was posted on Meta that it would be editable, but it was apparently posted primarily for translation purposes and is not
editable.)
Over the course of a few weeks much of the content could be rewritten to
be
close enough to neutral.
- We could continue discussing specific problems in tone and focus,
errors,
and general issues with the report here on this mailing list or on Meta while the relevant people implement fixes and rewrites (hopefully in a transparent manner), including the large content changes/replacements required.
- The entire "Consider the facts" section could be removed/replaced. The
rest of the report probably could stand on its own, but that may not be ideal. I don't know whether rewriting it from scratch is doable, or
whether
there may be relevant time constraints here.
I'd like to reiterate the seriousness of displaying non-Wikimedia-related political advocacy over Wikimedia projects. Many editors work very hard
at
removing any biases in articles. To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
-- Yair Rand
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in
this
discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia
mission,
vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report
it
reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented
people
who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs
unrelated
to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the
mission
and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of
the
"facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even
necessary,
part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a
single
page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE,
which
we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF
is
so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about
its
own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia,
when
you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable
refugee
children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing
iceberg
images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic)
harmful
chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to
the
prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't
be
sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate
change.
Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at
icebergs;
it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a
dying
animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year
on
record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a
few
hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're
talking
about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even
a
factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps
to
reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not
what's
in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the
scientific
consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and
dietary
habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could
cause
stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by
the
pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And
even
as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is
going
to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis
is
caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of
the
most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of
advanced
privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of
the
Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of
rangeblocks
on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of
all
California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good
example
of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain
why
the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that
it
was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature,
and
these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of
this
particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories
that
turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which
doesn't
support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point
out
the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather
than
giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And
yes,
the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized,
too.
Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was
that
it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come
to
be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps
editors
from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization,
but
it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if
not
physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is
entirely
tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of
photos.)
Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the
Annual
report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos
come
from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the
first
paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something
more
historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article,
might
have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights
some
really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF.
Entirely
on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It
does
not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to
include
when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why
there's
a
link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the
text.
But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that
was
actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the
written
message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have
illustrated
this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a
bunch
of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF
could
have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words
the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is
part
of
the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few
facts
before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news.
(Incidentally,
the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as
well
there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work
by
the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some
political
advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets
on
the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK"
fact
with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and
the
WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized
facts
skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to
WMF
activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and
its
projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were
actually
mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of
other
peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on
the
lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with
our
mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of
these
issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened
in
just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid
out
back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically
sensitive
issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into
account
that
97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate
_change>
Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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Pine,
Which facts do you think the "facts matter" theme should have emphasized?
Do you think remaining politically neutral is compatible with remaining accurate?
To what extent does staying focused on mission involve pointing out issues with freedom and accuracy in society, in your view?
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 11:16 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Heather,
Thanks for commenting.
The theme of "facts matter" seems good to me, and I generally like Victor's video. However, the way that this report comes across to me is that it advocates for certain points of view on issues which, however important they may be (I happen to think global warming is a very important issue), are not integral to Wikipedia's mission. Also, I found it strange that the "front page" of the report has a "Facts matter" section that leads off with information about refugees and the Earth's temperature trends. On the whole, that section comes across to me as being off-message. I would encourage revising the report so that it's more consistent with the themes and tone of Victor's video.
Social impact in the form of informing public dialogue is a valuable attribute to Wikipedia, and I would encourage a more neutral approach to articulating that attribute as has been discussed in this thread. It's possible to highlight social impact while remaining compatible with NPOV and staying focused on mission.
Thanks for engaging here.
Pine
Pine
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Heather Walls hwalls@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello,
This has become an interesting and important conversation. First, many thanks to everyone as they bring their intellect, experience, and thoughtfulness to this topic. And thanks to Zack for many months of work organizing a complex project, with a theme that became increasingly sensitive due to external public discourse, and especially for making a tremendous and honest effort to hear feedback and to respond quickly here. I’d also like to thank all the people who helped read, write, edit, and consider this report.
We chose this theme in October, and have used it successfully in messaging since then. It was part of the December English-language fundraising campaign, in emails and banners to donors, and received very positive response. It was the theme of a video, shared in December,[1] that became a featured video on Commons.[2] We also shared our work and development process on this report publicly when we published the Communications department’s check-in slides covering the 2nd fiscal quarter (Sep - Dec 2016).[3]
Social impact is a very important part of Wikimedia that is hard to understand from the outside, but that impact is one of the things that makes your work so meaningful, and helps us find contributors and partners around the world. As Zack mentioned, our annual reports are created for an audience that includes ongoing financial contributors and people new to us. They are intended to be timely and relevant to the interests of people who are not as deeply involved in Wikimedia as the rest of us. They tell the story of what Wikimedians have achieved in the context of the world, and are related to topics in international conversations. Some of those stories are efforts supported by the Foundation, and many are celebrations of the importance and timeliness of independent work of members of the movement. Wikimedia is rich and complex, and we revise our theme each year to share new facets. The Foundation has been making these since 2008.[4]
Yes, our report was meant to bring up relevant topics for a global audience, and to tie important facts to the work of Wikimedians. It was meant to focus on the range of things people can learn from Wikipedia, from the historical to the social to the controversial. But it was not a response to anything that occurred in recent weeks, or in any one country. We debated the relationship between the theme and public discourse as that discourse changed, but decided that Wikimedia’s relationship with facts hadn’t changed. The report is not perfect, and many people have pointed out excellent alternative directions we might have taken. We’re listening, and we will learn from your suggestions and ideas in our continuing work.
I am proud of the intentions, hard work, experience, and many difficult decisions my colleagues on the Communications team and our collaborators across the Foundation and community make every day. I hope the abridged timeline of events, below, will help make some our process more visible to you as well.
-Heather
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/27/not-post-fact-world/ [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_-_ FactsMatter2016.webm [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File% 3AWikimedia_Foundation_Communications_Q2_(Oct-Dec_ 2016)_-_Jan_2017_quarterly_check-in.pdf&page=13 [4] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report
*Our fact criteria:* Global, relevant to general readers and to 2016, verifiable, related to the work of Wikimedians, surprising or interesting
*2016* 13 Oct: Meeting where “Facts Matter” was established, our deadline for a full draft was December 15 28 Oct: First design review of website mockups. 7 Nov: Design team meeting, notes include:
- “Reaffirm facts matter”
- “Reacting to present moment is antithetical to the WMF movement”
- “We care just as much about facts as we did a year ago, 10 years ago,
and will care in five years”
14 Dec: Facts final, content drafted 27 Dec: Facts matter video posted
*2017* 6 Jan: Site and content review with other departments (locked to major changes) 17 Jan: Print layout of all content 27 Jan: Communications quarterly review[3] posted Feb 7 1 Mar: Sharing the Facts Matter site
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
Risker has outlined many of the issues with the report much better than I would have been able to. While I'm happy to hear there will be some reordering and that one of the images will be replaced, the report still has many very serious problems.
How can we fix this? I can think of a few options:
- The report could be made open to edits from the community. (I was
hopeful
when the report was posted on Meta that it would be editable, but it was apparently posted primarily for translation purposes and is not
editable.)
Over the course of a few weeks much of the content could be rewritten to
be
close enough to neutral.
- We could continue discussing specific problems in tone and focus,
errors,
and general issues with the report here on this mailing list or on Meta while the relevant people implement fixes and rewrites (hopefully in a transparent manner), including the large content changes/replacements required.
- The entire "Consider the facts" section could be removed/replaced. The
rest of the report probably could stand on its own, but that may not be ideal. I don't know whether rewriting it from scratch is doable, or
whether
there may be relevant time constraints here.
I'd like to reiterate the seriousness of displaying non-Wikimedia-related political advocacy over Wikimedia projects. Many editors work very hard
at
removing any biases in articles. To have a huge banner placed over every article on the whole project linking to 43px-font blatant political advocacy which can't be reverted, is really damaging.
-- Yair Rand
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 1:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, Erik...I really don't think my personal beliefs have a role in
this
discussion, except as they very narrowly apply to the Wikimedia
mission,
vision and "values". That's actually one of my issues with this report
it
reads as though it's been written by a bunch of well-paid, talented
people
who've been given rein to express personal and cultural beliefs
unrelated
to Wikimedia. And my personal belief in relation to that is that this annual report has positioned political advocacy far ahead of the
mission
and vision of the movement, starting with the selection and ordering of
the
"facts". Let's go through them one by one.
The focus on the value of education is an entirely valid, even
necessary,
part of the annual report; it is entirely central to our mission. The focus on refugees is out of place, though. The fact that there is a
single
page on one WMF-hosted site that links to a refugee handbook created by other groups that include some Wikimedians (and the support of WMDE,
which
we all know is NOT the same thing as the WMF) isn't justification for making "REFUGEES!1!!!11!" a big headline. It's peripheral to the educational activities of the WMF, and ignores or downplays many of the actual WMF-supported initiatives. There's something wrong when the WMF
is
so busy touting someone else's project that it forgets to talk about
its
own. But why show a bunch of Uruguayan kids actually using Wikipedia,
when
you can make a political statement using a photo of very adorable
refugee
children who, generally speaking, aren't accessing any WMF projects?
Am I impressed by Andreas' images? of course! Look at the amazing
iceberg
images [featured image example at 1] - which illustrate climate change issues much better than the photo of a starving polar bear. We don't actually know why that bear is dying - is he sick or injured, the most common cause of wild animal deaths? Has he consumed (anthropogenic)
harmful
chemicals or materials such as plastic wastes - increasingly common in arctic animals? Or did he miss the ever-narrowing migration window to
the
prey-rich northern arctic ice fields (due to climate change)? We can't
be
sure. But we can be a lot more sure that the iceberg images are illustrating something that can be linked more directly to climate
change.
Of course, nobody is getting a lump in their throat by looking at
icebergs;
it's not any where near as good an emotional button-presser that a
dying
animal is. There's also the trick of referring to "the hottest year
on
record" instead of giving the *whole* truth, which is it is the hottest year since these types of records started being kept beginning just a
few
hundred years ago - and it's that long only if you count all types of record keeping. Yes, it's much more impressive to imply that we're
talking
about all of history rather than just the last few centuries. A lot of people reading this list have been creating articles for years; we know those tricks too. And none of this explains why climate change is even
a
factor in the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report. It would be worth including if the WMF was a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change (I am quite sure it isn't!), or was taking major, active steps
to
reduce its carbon footprint and talked about that. But that's not
what's
in the report.
A brief word about scientific consensus. In my lifetime, we have seen plate tectonics go from being considered complete nonsense (the
scientific
consensus!) to being routinely taught in schools. We have seen the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and
dietary
habits deprecated by the evidence that most gastrointestinal ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori; the theory that micro-organisms could
cause
stomach ulcers was long derided as being promoted only by those paid by
the
pharmaceutical industry. (Oops!) There was a mercifully short-lived consensus that AIDS was caused by the lifestyle habits of gay men. And
even
as I write, the long-held scientific consensus that has led to the recommended dietary intake in western countries is coming into serious question, at least in part because of the discovery that the baseline research was funded by an industry that greatly benefited from these guidelines - although it has taken researchers years to make headway against a theory so ingrained. I have no doubt that the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is directly linked to lung cancer is
going
to hold, and I am certain that the scientific consensus that asbestosis
is
caused by inhaling asbestos fibers will outlive me by many generations. But, just like on Wikipedia, consensus can, and does, change - and it should be routinely re-examined and reconsidered. (Incidentally, the climate change topic on English Wikipedia has historically been one of
the
most contentious, resulting in several Arbcom cases, removal of
advanced
privileges, blocks, bans, sockpuppetry and trolling, mass violations of
the
Biography of Living Persons policy, and the largest number of
rangeblocks
on any Wikimedia project before 2010 - at one point about a quarter of
all
California IPs were blocked from account creation. It's not a good
example
of how to deal with a contentious subject.)
I like that a "fact" was included about the rate of edits on Wikipedia, although it would be helpful to provide a bit more context to explain
why
the Paris attack was the article highlighted. My gut instinct is that
it
was the current event that had the most edits on the largest number of Wikimedia projects - in which case it was a great choice to feature,
and
these would be really interesting facts to have included. (If another article met that definition, I'd hope it would have been the one featured.) I'm a lot less comfortable with the "fake news" part of
this
particular "fact" - it lists media that have reported "major" stories
that
turned out to be flat-out wrong in just the last two months, which
doesn't
support the case being made. It would probably be more useful to point
out
the methods by which editors keep fake news out of our projects rather
than
giving the appearance of lauding specific media organizations. (And
yes,
the selection of the media organizations identified is politicized,
too.
Why the Washington Post (perceived to be "liberal") instead of the more editorially conservative Wall Street Journal ?)
The "Fact" about Indic languages is really good. My first thought was
that
it might have been an opportunity to talk about how new Wikipedias come
to
be, but on reflection that would have been a distraction. Perhaps
editors
from the Indian subcontinent might find some level of politicization,
but
it's not visible to me with my limited cultural knowledge.
Similarly, the "fact" about biographies of women is good, too. I think there's perhaps an over-emphasis on the low percentage - a pretty significant percentage of biographical articles are of men who became notable at a time when women were much more socially restrained (if
not
physically prevented) from making the same mark as men - but I believe that the focus on our outstanding contributors in this area, and their excellent work, makes this a really important addition to the report. There is a political element to this issue, but its exploration is
entirely
tied to the content, the activities of the editing community, and the seeking out and sharing of knowledge - all within scope.
I am rather ashamed that the "fact" about photos starts off with a grammatical error. (It's the NUMBER of photos, not the AMOUNT of
photos.)
Otherwise this is an on-topic section worthy of highlighting in the
Annual
report. Missing a lot of information though - such as how many photos
come
from mobile phones and similar platforms, which are the focus of the
first
paragraph. Given that focus, including a smartphone photo of something
more
historic, or at least an image that was actually used in an article,
might
have been a better choice.
The languages "Fact" is well written and informative, and highlights
some
really important means of knowledge sharing, enabled by the WMF.
Entirely
on-topic and mission-related.
I can't see any reason at all why the "Travel" fact was included. It
does
not include, for example, a link to Wikivoyage, the logical link to
include
when talking about travel. There's no reasonable explanation why
there's
a
link to Wikimania 2016, which isn't even vaguely referred to in the
text.
But we do have a very big political statement with the image - one that
was
actually quite off-topic; in fact, the photo shows a bunch of people actively seeking to disrupt travel, which is the opposite of the
written
message. We have thousands of photos on Commons that could have
illustrated
this theme better, if we had to include it at all. Even a shot of a
bunch
of people hiking with backpacks would have been more appropriate.
The harassment fact ("OK")...very important message. I think the WMF
could
have done much better in labeling this fact; this title is almost deceptive, because it doesn't actually talk about "OK" or common words
the subject isn't what the title implies. This kind of deception is
part
of
the "fake news" motif, and it's unfortunate to use when just a few
facts
before the same report is decrying fake facts and fake news.
(Incidentally,
the claim that OK is the most widely understood word, globally, is referenced in English Wikipedia to a personal opinion piece. Just as
well
there's no link to the article.)
The new internet users fact is really good, highlighting important work
by
the WMF, filled with facts, and sharing the longer-range vision with readers. But this is one area where the WMF could have done some
political
advocacy that was entirely within scope; shame to have missed this opportunity.
So....I disagree with what Anna said (that "3/11 fact stories are about issues that have become politicized"). I count 6/11 facts that are politicized (refugees, climate change, the selection of media outlets
on
the "rate of edits" fact, biographies of women, travel, and the "OK"
fact
with the misleading fake-news style title that was actually about harassment), only one of which logically links the politicization effectively with both the topic of the fact (biographies of women) and
the
WMF mission. And starting off with two of the three most politicized
facts
skews the entire presentation. The strain to include this political advocacy cluttered the useful and informative discussion and links to
WMF
activities. It took the focus away from the Wikimedia Foundation and
its
projects, omitting obvious connections. If the WMF wanted to be more political in its annual report, there were opportunities that were
actually
mission-focused. To be honest, given the level of politicization of
other
peripheral topics, the absence of an effort to really increase focus on
the
lack of online accessibility - something that dovetails strongly with
our
mission - is a glaring omission. On this point, I agree with John Vandenberg. And I'm sorry, Zack, but given the fact that so many of
these
issues are directly linked to real-world activities that have happened
in
just the last few weeks, I'm not buying that this was more or less laid
out
back in late 2016.
Risker/Anne
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_look_inside_an_ iceberg_(2),_Liefdefjord,_Svalbard.jpg.
On 2 March 2017 at 19:12, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior stuart.prior@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically
sensitive
issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into
account
that
97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence ? [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate
_change>
Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.
It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.
If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately conservative about its own role.
I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.
I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?
Erik
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James
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 7:10 AM, you wrote:
Do you think remaining politically neutral is compatible with remaining accurate?
I would say yes. Let me put two converse questions to you. Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief? Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
"Rogol"
We are not taking a stand in different positions each party is taking on economical matters. No one here wearing a donkey hat. Problem begins when a party takes inhumane stance, fighting against it should not be considered a political move. Trust me, that's exactly what happened in Iran.
Best
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017, 10:50 AM Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
James
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 7:10 AM, you wrote:
Do you think remaining politically neutral is compatible with remaining accurate?
I would say yes. Let me put two converse questions to you. Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief? Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
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Fighting against an inhumane stance is entirely a political move. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Amir Ladsgroup Sent: Wednesday, 08 March 2017 9:33 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
We are not taking a stand in different positions each party is taking on economical matters. No one here wearing a donkey hat. Problem begins when a party takes inhumane stance, fighting against it should not be considered a political move. Trust me, that's exactly what happened in Iran.
Best
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017, 10:50 AM Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
James
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 7:10 AM, you wrote:
Do you think remaining politically neutral is compatible with remaining accurate?
I would say yes. Let me put two converse questions to you. Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief? Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
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Some political philosophies are more amenable to truth and accuracy than others. Facts about how the world is do not have any necessary connection to beliefs about how the world should be. Beliefs are not constrained by reality, facts are. Any overlap is coincidental. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rogol Domedonfors Sent: Wednesday, 08 March 2017 9:20 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
James
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 7:10 AM, you wrote:
Do you think remaining politically neutral is compatible with remaining accurate?
I would say yes. Let me put two converse questions to you. Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief? Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
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Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief?
There is a very strong correlation which has, since November, become much stronger. Compare for example:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ (16% "True" or "Mostly true") with
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/ (48% "True" or "Mostly true.")
Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
No, but if people around the world are misled because we fail in our mission to collect, develop, and disseminate educational content effectively, then they are likely to have much different goals than if they were able to access accurate information.
Hi all -
Wanted to follow up on my message from last Thursday, March 2nd.[1] As detailed, we are making changes to the Annual Report site that should be reflected today.[2]
Per suggestions we are exploring randomization of the facts displayed in the index page carousel. The ordering on the Consider the Facts page will be updated to begin, as discussed, with "Wikipedia is updated almost 350 times a minute". [3]
I also want to share that in adding citations to the "One in six people visited a foreign country in 2016" fact, I followed SJ's advices and emailed the UNWTO to explicitly confirm their 1186 million international tourist statistic.[4] This morning I received a response from Ruth Gomez Sobrino, Media Officer stating "Yes, this is true….and it will be 1,800 in 2030." So we are keeping this fact as is, and adding a citation note to add proper context.
Thanks,
Zack
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-March/086699.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T151798
[3] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
[4] http://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284418145
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 11:47 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief?
There is a very strong correlation which has, since November, become much stronger. Compare for example:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ (16% "True" or "Mostly true") with
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/ (48% "True" or "Mostly true.")
Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
No, but if people around the world are misled because we fail in our mission to collect, develop, and disseminate educational content effectively, then they are likely to have much different goals than if they were able to access accurate information.
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The UNWTO report you link to refers to 1186M "torist arrivals". That is not the same as 1186M diffeent people. Did your correspondant explicitly address that difference, or are you assuming that every tourist makes just one trip abroad in a year, and if so, why, since it is patently not correct?
"Rogol"
On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 11:42 PM, Zachary McCune zmccune@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all -
Wanted to follow up on my message from last Thursday, March 2nd.[1] As detailed, we are making changes to the Annual Report site that should be reflected today.[2]
Per suggestions we are exploring randomization of the facts displayed in the index page carousel. The ordering on the Consider the Facts page will be updated to begin, as discussed, with "Wikipedia is updated almost 350 times a minute". [3]
I also want to share that in adding citations to the "One in six people visited a foreign country in 2016" fact, I followed SJ's advices and emailed the UNWTO to explicitly confirm their 1186 million international tourist statistic.[4] This morning I received a response from Ruth Gomez Sobrino, Media Officer stating "Yes, this is true….and it will be 1,800 in 2030." So we are keeping this fact as is, and adding a citation note to add proper context.
Thanks,
Zack
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017- March/086699.html
[2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T151798
[3] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
[4] http://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284418145
On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 11:47 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
Do you believe truth and accuracy are to be found only at one ppint on the spectrum of political belief?
There is a very strong correlation which has, since November, become much stronger. Compare for example:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ (16% "True" or "Mostly true") with
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/ (48% "True" or "Mostly true.")
Do you believe that facts about (how the world is) are identical with beliefs about (how the world ought to be)?
No, but if people around the world are misled because we fail in our mission to collect, develop, and disseminate educational content effectively, then they are likely to have much different goals than if they were able to access accurate information.
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-- Zachary McCune Global Audiences Wikimedia Foundation
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It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
Surely you haven't missed the spectrum of external criticism of Wikipedia which in no small part claims we have a left bias.
We get the exact same thing from both sides:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/wikipedia-accused-of-us-centric-bias-3039292772...
http://www.beggarscanbechoosers.com/2012/05/how-right-wingers-took-over-wiki...
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-battle-for-wikipedia/
Do you think the side vociferously opposed to scientific consensus makes the more compelling case?
If you stand far enough to the right, everyone has a left bias. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George William Herbert Sent: Thursday, March 2, 2017 10:08 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
On Mar 2, 2017, at 11:13 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
politics damages our brand in real and serious ways.
Such as how? This assertion keeps being made without any evidence supporting it.
It's more ammunition for everyone else's distrust and fear of our community and organizational motives.
Are there any actual reasons to believe that such distrust and fear exists apart from those upset about being on the losing end of some Wikipedia content dispute?
Surely you haven't missed the spectrum of external criticism of Wikipedia which in no small part claims we have a left bias.
We are always able to come back and point to (usually) functional neutrality. But then we go and do this.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
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Haven't seen the banner, but i think it is: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_South_Africa/SOPA&...
________________________________ Von: Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org im Auftrag von Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org Gesendet: Mittwoch, 1. März 2017 21:15 An: Wikimedia Mailing List Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"
I didn't see the banner, but the page definitely looks... 'funny'.
I'm especially confused on what the purpose of the campaign/page is, even after reading the different sections. It mostly feels either like a political statement about refugees (which takes very clearly center stage) or an 'unfinished' page which is work in progress. The landing page is confusing (why am i taken there? What am I supposed to discover?), the 'refugees' banner is repeated on each page (which seems to emphasize it should be the focus) and there's a few (minor) errors to be improved (visible paragraph separator characters in the sustaining donor list, the balance sheet is claiming to span a whole year).
Is this perhaps still work in progress?
On the visual end, it looks great though. I love the chatting group of Wikipedians as a background.
Best, Lodewijk
2017-03-01 20:59 GMT+01:00 Joseph Seddon jseddon@wikimedia.org:
Hi James.
You can find out more about the Endowment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
Seddon
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 7:54 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf
Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet?
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it
starts
off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are
school-age",
followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities,
and
their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique,
but
every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many
of
them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision
and
how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have
an
entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly
written
in
a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian
Andreas
Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting
statistics
about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and
not
politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to
assume
good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago
specifically
calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does
not
accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
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-- Seddon
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Yair is right because messages like this "empower" only those who agree with them. Taking sides in the name of the Foundation, which has the money and therefore power, is not inclusive.
Sent from my iPhone
On 01/03/2017, at 12:58 p.m., Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it starts off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are school-age", followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities, and their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique, but every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision and how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have an entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly written in a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian Andreas Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting statistics about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and founder linked.
So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and not politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to assume good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago specifically calling for a change in refugee policy.
Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does not accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave.
This is a serious problem.
-- Yair Rand
[1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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