On 20 March 2014 17:49, Jan-Bart de Vreede &lt;jdevreede(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Wikimedia Foundation. Your email (and Fae's) seems to imply that they work directly for you, which is of course not the case (because they really only need one person to be their manager :) Hi Jan-Bart, Unless you are joking, you have put me in a position of feeling obliged to defend myself for raising basic questions. My email was directed to this list as an open request about where I could find information. For all I knew the information was published but hard for me to find. It was directed at the Wikimedia Community, not employees of the WMF. There was no implication otherwise. Thanks for replying so quickly with your personal commitment on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, that there will be official responses to the detailed questions in raised here and in the original blog post. I have no doubt that as further information is published, the community will have more questions, I hope you will continue to fulfil your track record for insisting on reasonable transparency and full accountability. PS If the board of trustees believes that I should be directing employees, then this is flattering, though please do consider paying me for it. I'm always good value. ;-) Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

I am happy to chime in here. WMF served as a fiscal sponsor for the Stanton Foundation and the Belfer Center at Harvard University in this project, which started in 2012 and lasted one year. Stanton, a trusted supporter of ours for many years, had asked us to do so. This was reported to the community here. [1] The Stanton Foundation covered all of the costs associated with it (approximately $50,000). While WMF provided advice and posted the position on the Wikimedia Blog, Belfer made the final hiring decision, which is customary in fiscal sponsorship arrangements. Harvard University is now considering similar positions for other centers.[2] WMF was not asked to fiscally sponsor for this new project at Harvard. Best, Lisa Gruwell *[1] ** https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/26/can-you-help-wikipedians-collaborate-… < https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/26/can-you-help-wikipedians-collaborate-… * *[2] ** http://www.latimes.com/nation/shareitnow/la-sh-harvard-job-wikipedian-in-re… < http://www.latimes.com/nation/shareitnow/la-sh-harvard-job-wikipedian-in-re… On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Fæ &lt;faewik(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: work only > need one person to be their manager :) > Hi Jan-Bart, > Unless you are joking, you have put me in a position of feeling > obliged to defend myself for raising basic questions. My email was > directed to this list as an open request about where I could find > information. For all I knew the information was published but hard for > me to find. It was directed at the Wikimedia Community, not employees > of the WMF. There was no implication otherwise. > Thanks for replying so quickly with your personal commitment on behalf > of the Wikimedia Foundation, that there will be official responses to > the detailed questions in raised here and in the original blog post. I > have no doubt that as further information is published, the community > will have more questions, I hope you will continue to fulfil your > track record for insisting on reasonable transparency and full > accountability. > PS If the board of trustees believes that I should be directing > employees, then this is flattering, though please do consider paying > me for it. I'm always good value. ;-) > Fae > -- > faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l(a)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 Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Just to be clear and follow up on Lisa's mail: this project and process did not involve grants from WMF, and WMF's role (as Lisa explained) was as a fiscal sponsor, and thereby to provide initial advice as they began recruiting and to inform the community as they did so.

Myself and several other community members who are heavily involved in the development of 'Wikipedian in Residence' and GLAM-WIKI became aware of this project in early 2012, just before the job description was published. I will let them speak for themselves if they wish to weigh-in. But the TL;DR version is "we told them so". We tried, oh how we tried, to tell the relevant WMF staff that this was a terribly designed project, but the best we got in response was that we could help edit the job description *after* it had already been published! Some WMF staff 'got it' and tried to help but the process (Thank you to those staff) was apparently already in motion and had too much momentum to change. We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role but our suggestions that the position be 'paused' until the community could help was rejected because of a deadline that had been set by Stanton/Harvard apparently. Other concerns about reporting outcomes and where the money came from/to have already been raised. The odd financial and organisational relationship of Stanton-Harvard-WMF is just one of them. The original job description (here https://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o52lWfw8&c=qSa9VfwQ) is on the WMF's page and says that "Wikipedia, in cooperation with the Belfer Center... is seeking applicants for a Campus Wikipedian...." with the first task of the position being "Researching relevant topics and improving the articles". Stanton is not mentioned anywhere as the actual funding organisation (are we ok with that?), and since when does "Wikipedia" hire people? Some of the issues that we were arguing about at the time included why, when the GLAM-focused Wikimedians have tried to ensure that WiR roles are about facilitating a relationship between the community and an organisation's academics/researchers/curators/etc, does this position focus on editing articles directly, for money. Even if that wasn't the actual primary purpose it certainly LOOKED that way according to the job description and you'd think that of ALL groups in the community the WMF would see the 'red flag' of posting a job on its OWN contractors page asking for a paid editor. Furthermore, the WMF have in the past frequently refused to directly support WiR roles on the basis that this kind of direct outreach was not its role but more a role of the Chapters (this is before the current 'affiliation' system and before the 'Individual engagement grants' etc. and in that situation their position was fair enough). And yet, this position was a direct contradiction - the WMF ITSELF advertising for a WiR and administering the payment of the person. At the very least that made it feel like a double standard for the rest of us. There was no transparency with the people in the community that could have helped facilitate the successful 'birth' of the project - what should have been a great recognition of our projects' value - but instead felt like a betrayal of our hard-earned trust with the cultural/education sectors. The WMF dug themselves into this hole despite the frantic attempts, which were largely rebuffed, of several of the GLAM-WIKI community help them fix it - or at least reduce the number of problems. Now, it's up to the WMF to dig themselves out again. Ironic given the current attention being given by the WMF to paid editing... -Liam/Wittylama On 21 March 2014 09:23, Fæ &lt;faewik(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

This project was not funded through the individual donations of the general public but rather through a third party foundation that had an interest in seeing this happen, so from an ethical perspective, it's reasonable that the standards of accountability differ

[3] Contributions welcome, and I hope we can avoid personalizing things as I'm sure Timothy worked in good faith and did his best to meet the expectations of the project. :)

Erik, you are a senior manager within the WMF. If you cannot resist offensive schoolboy sarcasm in your responses

wrote:

Erik Moeller wrote: You tend to add a drama factor of 10x to any discussion I've ever seen Why are you making this issue unnecessarily personal, Erik? This isn't about Fae, you, or even Timothy Sandole -- so give it a rest, okay? Tomasz

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:55 PM, Fæ &lt;faewik(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: No, that's not the point. The point is that a grant given to us goes through a different process than, say, a grant from us to WMFR, and that necessarily leads to different practices -- the grant-giver has their own expectations on how to do accounting, reporting, etc. The project was publicly announced through a blog post, the responsibilities for the Wikipedian in Residence were publicly posted, and the user in question publicly disclosed their affiliation (that disclosure didn't, but should have, included more details including the WMF sponsorship). The edits are, as any, a matter of public record and easily scrutinized, criticized, and corrected or reverted if needed, to fully expose Harvard's evil agenda and the secret workings of the reptilian order which most WMF senior staff are part of. Timothy noted [1] hat there's a report which he compiled as part of his residency. I've reached out to Lisa, and we're looking into publishing the report at the earliest opportunity. Hopefully this will make it possible to collectively draw some more conclusions about the project. I've added [2] the residency to the public directory and also created a holding space for capturing observations and conclusions. [3] Contributions welcome, and I hope we can avoid personalizing things as I'm sure Timothy worked in good faith and did his best to meet the expectations of the project. :) Cheers, Erik [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Timothysandole&dif… [2] https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedian_in_Residence&am… [3] https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence/Harvard_Univers… -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

... The Stanton Foundation covered all of the costs associated with it (approximately $50,000). While WMF provided advice and posted the position on the Wikimedia Blog, Belfer made the final hiring decision, which is customary in fiscal sponsorship arrangements.