Hi folks,
I'd like to ask for your thoughts about (1) whether it would be a good idea, and if so (2) how, to get non-WMF funding sources for community work which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund, and could benefit from paid human resources.
Two areas that I have in mind that could benefit from paid human resources for community work are
(1) the *Signpost*, which seems to me like it requires enough skilled work to produce on a weekly basis that its staff should be paid in a manner similar to the staff of US college weekly newspapers. (For a time I was a regular *Signpost* contributor, but no longer. I know how much work was involved in doing a good job with creating and publishing the *Signpost* weekly.)
and
(2) conflict of interest work, in three domains: (a) education of COI editors, particularly those who express interest in abiding by community norms and policies; (b) reviews of changes that have been made or proposed in a manner consistent with the spirit of community norms of policies; and (c) investigations of potential COI problems such as undisclosed paid editing.
Perhaps there are other areas which would also benefit from additional paid human resources, but which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund.
Let me repeat the questions that I asked at the top of this email. (1) How would people feel about non-WMF funding for these kinds kind of work, if funding can be found? (2) If funding for these kinds of work would be beneficial, how might the funding be possible to obtain it without WMF involvement?
A third question which will need some thought, if there aren't a lot of objections to the concept and if funding can be found, is "who should administer the funding?" WMF shouldn't, and my initial thought is that setting up a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization would be a good way to go. I suggest waiting to think about this question for the moment, and first focusing on the two other questions.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Pine
1) We do have decent funding mechanisms within the Wikimedia movement. Why could the Signpost not be funded by a movement grant? One would just want the oversight to be from a community run entity rather than from the WMF. Here are the members of the project grants committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Quarterly/Committee
2) With respect to COI work. There was support to set up a group of functionaries to take on some of this work on EN WP. The big push for this is to allow concerns regarding off WP evidence to be mostly dealt with privately to balance our support of the right to anonymity for good faith editors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Milieu_3
Additionally legal already does a fair bit of COI follow up but is fairly quiet about the work they do. So we do have some paid staff on this right now.
By the way neither of these comments are in opposition to third party indepedent funding to support more work in these topic areas :-)
Best James
On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 12:24 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi folks,
I'd like to ask for your thoughts about (1) whether it would be a good idea, and if so (2) how, to get non-WMF funding sources for community work which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund, and could benefit from paid human resources.
Two areas that I have in mind that could benefit from paid human resources for community work are
(1) the *Signpost*, which seems to me like it requires enough skilled work to produce on a weekly basis that its staff should be paid in a manner similar to the staff of US college weekly newspapers. (For a time I was a regular *Signpost* contributor, but no longer. I know how much work was involved in doing a good job with creating and publishing the *Signpost* weekly.)
and
(2) conflict of interest work, in three domains: (a) education of COI editors, particularly those who express interest in abiding by community norms and policies; (b) reviews of changes that have been made or proposed in a manner consistent with the spirit of community norms of policies; and (c) investigations of potential COI problems such as undisclosed paid editing.
Perhaps there are other areas which would also benefit from additional paid human resources, but which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund.
Let me repeat the questions that I asked at the top of this email. (1) How would people feel about non-WMF funding for these kinds kind of work, if funding can be found? (2) If funding for these kinds of work would be beneficial, how might the funding be possible to obtain it without WMF involvement?
A third question which will need some thought, if there aren't a lot of objections to the concept and if funding can be found, is "who should administer the funding?" WMF shouldn't, and my initial thought is that setting up a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization would be a good way to go. I suggest waiting to think about this question for the moment, and first focusing on the two other questions.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
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 don't think that WMF project grants would be a suitable funding source for *Signpost *work, for multiple reasons. I consider the *Signpost *to be "content", and WMF shouldn't fund content if it wants to maintain its immunity to lawsuits regarding user-contributed content. Also, there would be a conflict of interest between the journalistic role of the *Signpost *and the WMF; the *Signpost *should have significant financial, legal, and managerial independence from WMF.
Project grants could be a good source of funding for some work that addresses COI, although I think it would be good to keep in mind that WMF shouldn't be creating (or editing) content directly. I would be wary of using WMF funds to pay people to decide whether or not certain edits are appropriate. I think that training materials, and software tools to detect edits that look promotional or controversial, could be developed with WMF funds. I'd want someone who isn't reporting to WMF to make the decisions about the appropriateness of edits that are flagged for review (whether flagged by humans or technical tools, and whether or not self-reported by COI editors who request review). If a process leads to a community (i.e. not WMF and not COI editor) decision that edits are incompatible with community policies and norms, then at that point the matter could be (1) addressed directly by the reviewer such as by declining a proposed edit or reverting an edit, (2) referred to site administrators for community interventions such as warnings or blocks, and/or (3) referred to WMF for legal action using WMF resources. That's a long way of saying that I think that there are important technical and legal roles that WMF can have in helping to identify and deter COI editing, but WMF's roles should be be carefully separated from and in alignment with the community's roles.
Pine
My point was more that these are ethically movement funds rather than WMF funds. Yes I realize that legally the matter differs. The Signpost produces reviews of issues of interest to Wikimedias rather than forward facing content for our readers. I do not see it as different than funding the WMF blog.
James
On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 5:49 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think that WMF project grants would be a suitable funding source for *Signpost *work, for multiple reasons. I consider the *Signpost *to be "content", and WMF shouldn't fund content if it wants to maintain its immunity to lawsuits regarding user-contributed content. Also, there would be a conflict of interest between the journalistic role of the *Signpost *and the WMF; the *Signpost *should have significant financial, legal, and managerial independence from WMF.
Project grants could be a good source of funding for some work that addresses COI, although I think it would be good to keep in mind that WMF shouldn't be creating (or editing) content directly. I would be wary of using WMF funds to pay people to decide whether or not certain edits are appropriate. I think that training materials, and software tools to detect edits that look promotional or controversial, could be developed with WMF funds. I'd want someone who isn't reporting to WMF to make the decisions about the appropriateness of edits that are flagged for review (whether flagged by humans or technical tools, and whether or not self-reported by COI editors who request review). If a process leads to a community (i.e. not WMF and not COI editor) decision that edits are incompatible with community policies and norms, then at that point the matter could be (1) addressed directly by the reviewer such as by declining a proposed edit or reverting an edit, (2) referred to site administrators for community interventions such as warnings or blocks, and/or (3) referred to WMF for legal action using WMF resources. That's a long way of saying that I think that there are important technical and legal roles that WMF can have in helping to identify and deter COI editing, but WMF's roles should be be carefully separated from and in alignment with the community's roles.
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
A distinction that I see between funding the WMF blog from funding the *Signpost *is that the former is WMF corporate communications and the latter is community journalism. It would be difficult to maintain journalistic integrity and independence at the *Signpost *if its staff feel like their paychecks (which would probably be similar to what part-time reporters make at US college newspapers) are in any way dependent on pleasing WMF. (I'm not saying that the *Signpost *should go out of its way to be critical, but it should be as independent as realistically possible.)
Pine
I do not think that WMF funding would be the best solution for the Signpost, as it would raise questions about their journalism independence and integrity. There are many other options to explore, though, like grants from Knight Foundation https://knightfoundation.org/programs/journalism and MacArthur Foundation https://www.macfound.org/info-grantseekers/grantmaking-guidelines/media-grant-guidelines/ if we are really going to go with paid contributor as Pine suggested.
But I would also suggest the option to integrate Signpost with its sister publications in other Wikipedia edition, such as Der Kurier in German Wikipedia and Correio da Wikipédia in Portuguese Wikipedia. I think it would be beneficial to integrate all community news publication that currently exists, but also retains its multilingual edition.
Salam, Ramzy.
*Ramzy Muliawan* Reporter, LN North Star http://northstaronline.org/staff/?writer=Ramzy%20Muliawan Editor and administrator, id.wp - min.wp - meta.wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Muhraz Blog http://ramzym.blogspot.com/ / Medium https://medium.com/@ramzym / Twitter https://twitter.com/ramzymuliawan / Public PGP Key https://keybase.io/ramzy/key.asc
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 2:28 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
A distinction that I see between funding the WMF blog from funding the *Signpost *is that the former is WMF corporate communications and the latter is community journalism. It would be difficult to maintain journalistic integrity and independence at the *Signpost *if its staff feel like their paychecks (which would probably be similar to what part-time reporters make at US college newspapers) are in any way dependent on pleasing WMF. (I'm not saying that the *Signpost *should go out of its way to be critical, but it should be as independent as realistically possible.)
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
Well, before we talk about funding the Signpost through the WMF or through a non-WMF source, lets ask if that is what the folks who actually work on the Signpost would like? There's a pretty big assumption here that the writers there would like to be paid in the manner of a college newspaper, with all the responsibility that goes with that.
It seems to me that the Signpost has a lot of problems, but they're not the sort of problems easily fixed by throwing money at them.
Cheers, Craig
On 8 May 2017 at 16:28, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
A distinction that I see between funding the WMF blog from funding the *Signpost *is that the former is WMF corporate communications and the latter is community journalism. It would be difficult to maintain journalistic integrity and independence at the *Signpost *if its staff feel like their paychecks (which would probably be similar to what part-time reporters make at US college newspapers) are in any way dependent on pleasing WMF. (I'm not saying that the *Signpost *should go out of its way to be critical, but it should be as independent as realistically possible.)
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
During my time at the *Signpost*, there were large fluctuations in the supply of people who had the time, willingness, and skills to write regular features for the *Signpost* and work on the publication process. As far as I know, the labor supply is still the biggest problem. The discussion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost supports that view, although there is also some discussion about technical problems with the publication process.
I think that the labor supply problem could be partially addressed by making at least some Signpost work into part-time paid work.
However, I'm not sure that anyone with the required financial resources would be willing to fund this work. I think that is the biggest step that would need to be addressed.
If work on the *Signpost* isn't funded and if volunteer availability continues to be limited at best, then unfortunately the *Signpost* may become a shadow of its former self, or fade into memory indefinitely. I would be sorry to see either of those outcomes. I think that the *Signpost* performed a valuable community service as a reliable weekly or semi-weekly publication with a variety of informative and interesting content.
Pine
A paid position to take care of the coordination of the publication might help. If such a position was not involved in content I would see less issue with the funds for it coming from a movement grant.
Translation of more from the German Kurier could also be another good source of content. And such a position could also involve setting up content for translation into other languages.
J
On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 11:54 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
During my time at the *Signpost*, there were large fluctuations in the supply of people who had the time, willingness, and skills to write regular features for the *Signpost* and work on the publication process. As far as I know, the labor supply is still the biggest problem. The discussion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost supports that view, although there is also some discussion about technical problems with the publication process.
I think that the labor supply problem could be partially addressed by making at least some Signpost work into part-time paid work.
However, I'm not sure that anyone with the required financial resources would be willing to fund this work. I think that is the biggest step that would need to be addressed.
If work on the *Signpost* isn't funded and if volunteer availability continues to be limited at best, then unfortunately the *Signpost* may become a shadow of its former self, or fade into memory indefinitely. I would be sorry to see either of those outcomes. I think that the *Signpost* performed a valuable community service as a reliable weekly or semi-weekly publication with a variety of informative and interesting content.
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
Le 07/05/2017 à 20:24, Pine W a écrit :
Hi folks,
I'd like to ask for your thoughts about (1) whether it would be a good idea, and if so (2) how, to get non-WMF funding sources for community work which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund, and could benefit from paid human resources.
Two areas that I have in mind that could benefit from paid human resources for community work are
(1) the *Signpost*, which seems to me like it requires enough skilled work to produce on a weekly basis that its staff should be paid in a manner similar to the staff of US college weekly newspapers. (For a time I was a regular *Signpost* contributor, but no longer. I know how much work was involved in doing a good job with creating and publishing the *Signpost* weekly.)
and
(2) conflict of interest work, in three domains: (a) education of COI editors, particularly those who express interest in abiding by community norms and policies; (b) reviews of changes that have been made or proposed in a manner consistent with the spirit of community norms of policies; and (c) investigations of potential COI problems such as undisclosed paid editing.
Perhaps there are other areas which would also benefit from additional paid human resources, but which WMF can't, won't, or shouldn't fund.
Let me repeat the questions that I asked at the top of this email. (1) How would people feel about non-WMF funding for these kinds kind of work, if funding can be found? (2) If funding for these kinds of work would be beneficial, how might the funding be possible to obtain it without WMF involvement?
A third question which will need some thought, if there aren't a lot of objections to the concept and if funding can be found, is "who should administer the funding?" WMF shouldn't, and my initial thought is that setting up a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization would be a good way to go. I suggest waiting to think about this question for the moment, and first focusing on the two other questions.
I would rather advise not starting an organization from scratch, but rather to see if the project might not be hosted by an already existing non profit with suitable mission and values.
None come to my mind because I know little about the community journalism, but cutting down the administrative crap seems like potentially good idea to me.
Florence
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
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
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org