Fae: if you didn't know, US chapters don't have any permanent paid employees whatsoever, and only one temp contractor between either chapter - and he was only hired a few days ago, and to help manage one specific project. So no chapter employees from the US attended as employees, since none exist. I'm not sure if any overseas chapter employees attended, but even if they did, it would be a bit unusual for them to have directly participated in planning the conference. I'm sure there was some WMF staff overhead involved in handling the grant for the conference and for those that attended, but doubt it was that hugely significant. I'm not sure where you would get the idea that a high proportion of registered attendees were WMF or chapter employees, let alone why you would think they handled most of the conference prep.
----- Kevin Gorman -sent from my mobile
On Saturday, June 7, 2014, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 7, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Fæ <faewik@gmail.com javascript:;> wrote:
- What proportion of attendees were Wikimedia Chapter or Foundation
contractors or employees and attending the conference could be considered part of their employment? *
- At least one email here claimed that volunteers broke their backs
running the conference, which seems to overlook that a high proportion of registered attendees were employees and probably did most of the preparation. I asked this question last year about another conference, it was never answered properly, as it was never measured. Again, this ought to be *a good thing* to report on, as our values are to keep the volunteer at the centre of everything we do and driving our movement rather than paying Executives six-figure sums to tell us what we should believe in.
I would like to answer this question first, as it has a really simple answer.
There were exactly 0 employees on the organizing committee, and exactly 0 employees who did the preparation.
This was an entirely volunteer-run conference.
Thanks, Pharos
On 07/06/2014, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com javascript:;> wrote:
Craig Franklin wrote:
I think there's something of a lesson here for people: don't trust the press.
The part of the piece I found most striking was that the author
readily,
and almost boastfully, admits to speaking to "a minority of the
minority
of the minority," but she seems to have no issue using this very
limited
sample size to evaluate Wikipedia on the whole. Even if we assumed that there are 22,000 registered Wikipedians, is a sample size of five or
six
appropriate? If she meant 22,000,000, it seems like an even crazier
leap.
After re-reading the piece, I'd probably stand by a lot of it. It's
not a
great reflection of Wikipedia, but I also wouldn't call at least many parts of it inaccurate, per se, just crudely distorted and manipulated.
The author used the tactic where you mention that Mandela was a
convicted
criminal that spent 27 years in prison, but fail to mention that he won the Nobel Peace Prize and was the revered president of South Africa.
This tactic is an easy way to create a distorted, but technically accurate, impression. Some of the fine folks at Wikipediocracy are very good at employing this tactic as well. :-)
MZMcBride
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:;
?subject=unsubscribe>
-- faewik@gmail.com javascript:;
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:;
?subject=unsubscribe>
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; ?subject=unsubscribe>