Kevin, I am intrigued by your comments in relation to Belfer.
Whilst your paid position at Berkeley is a great opportunity, and
congrats on that, I can't help but think that you haven't been exactly
forthcoming with the media. Or you are in denial about numerous
things.
I see at
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Kevin_Gorman&oldid=5957…
you present your views on paid editing, with an interesting caveat at
the bottom:
"Nothing in this section is intended to apply to Wikipedian in
Residence-type programs, and similar collaborations between Wikipedia
and cultural and educational institutions. I think that our missions
match up with cultural institutions quite well, and I think that
collaborations between us and them are likely to be quite fruitful."
I, and many in the community, couldn't disagree more. If anything, the
ethical standards for a paid Wikipedian-in-Residence are higher than a
commercial outfit. The very reputation of the WiR program depends on
it.
Unfortunately, the Belfer Wikipedian in Residence was anything but
ethical, and since Odder's blog post I have done some research on
this, and I am gob-smacked at what I have found. Kevin, you are part
of the in-crowd of the WMF, perhaps you could ask them for their
report on the Belfer position. It is required for all grants I
believe. As someone who is so vocal on the ethics of paid editing
(
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/wikipedia-editors-locked-in-batt…)
you will surely want to see the report. Perhaps it will answer why, in
your words, the position, and everything surrounding it, was "so under
the radar".
Cheers
Russavia
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 11:32 PM, Kevin Gorman <kgorman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Tomasz is right that Belfer was first... but Belfer
was done so under
the radar that I actually had never even realized that someone had
been hired for the position until I stumbled across Tomasz's blog
about it, some time after the initial announcement of my position at
Berkeley. I had a conversation about the matter afterwards with
Berkeley's news people and with most of the journalists who have
contacted me about it since the initial NewsCenter posting, and the
general feeling has pretty much been that Belfer's practices were
different enough from the norm of what a Wikipedian-in-Residence is
that people have been comfortable running the story without a bunch of
caveats to explain Belfer. There's also Arild Vågen's previous
position at SLU, which is why most places are going with "first US
university" rather than "first university."