On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I want to point out something that stands out to me. This is not an outright contradiction, but it's a puzzling contrast. In an unrelated thread on this email list, Executive Director Sue Gardner recently said:
"Editorial policies [for WMF staff] are developed, and therefore also best-understood and best-enforced, not by the WMF but by the community." [1]
That is the WMF policy as it applies to WMF staff: essentially, no special rules, use your own judgment in interpreting how to best comply with community standards. But here, in the report Sue authored, it seems there is a very different standard for movement partners who seek funding or endorsement from the WMF:
"In the future, the Wikimedia Foundation will not support or endorse the creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus, regardless of who is initiating or managing the process." [2]
Again: this is not a direct contradiction, and it is entirely within the rights of the WMF to apply different standards to its own staff vs. to other organizations. But I do think it deserves some careful consideration, as to *why* such different standards would be appropriate.
Decision point #1 in the Belfer Center report is not something that is based in any Wikipedia policy. It does have a basis in the Wikipedian in Residence page on the Outreach Wiki.[3] That is an important page, and I believe many in the movement consider it to have the weight of a formal policy; but I don't. Elevating it from a best practice recommendation to an absolute rule is a significant step, and one that I don't believe should be taken lightly.
Hi Pete,
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, and I hope you can clarify for me so that I can follow your position. I don't see the contradiction at all between the two policy-related statements. In the first case, the WMF says that the editorial policies that apply to its employees are promulgated by specific projects and their communities, not the WMF. In the second, it says effectively that the WMF will not sponsor paid editing. The presumption in the first instance is that the WMF already does not pay its employees to edit, so Sue was not referring to "paid editing" at all. Russavia's question was about editing with a conflict of interest, not payment.
I'm not seeing any conflict between those two statements, and the WMF does not appear to me to be applying different standards to others than to itself. In fact, the only time paid editing by an employee has come up as an issue, the employee was quickly dismissed. Perhaps you can explain?