[Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

[James Salsman]

>>... I have reason to believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia
>> administrators are living below the poverty line, ...
>
>... citation desperately needed for this stat.

In February I performed a survey of over 300 inactive English
Wikipedia administrators based on a survey which had been approved on
the Strategy Wiki more than two years prior. I added financial
demographic questions to the survey. Steven Walling, who I thought had
agreed to act as the Foundation point of contact for the survey during
a public IRC office hour (he disagrees) has access to all of the
original data I collected as a Google Forms document available to his
Google Drive account.

Shortly afterward, I was told that the survey was a violation of
policy (two months later I was told it was not), and that I was
violating the privacy policy because I asked for contact information
to follow up. I was banned from Meta and told to contact the Legal
Department if I had further questions. I did, and I am still waiting
for their response. After several weeks without reply from the Legal
Department, I followed up with some of the respondents, and performed
an additional survey which I do not wish to describe in detail until I
have an answer to my questions from the Legal Department.

If the statistic is in doubt, I suggest that the Foundation perform
their own survey of long term contributor financial status. As of May,
by the way, more than 30 of the original survey respondent
administrators had returned to active status, having made more than 50
edits each after having gone at least six months without editing.

Sincerely,
James Salsman