Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/2: Difference between revisions
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|Stenberg = I outlined this eventuation in my Platform and elsewhere in these questions. I wish to open strategic dialogue for a financially sustainable Wikimedia, so your question is close to my heart. Bequests, endowments and capital preserved trusts should be foregrounded in our prospective strategic envisioning. Jeremy, all the ins and outs and variables would require further exploration and I consider it fruitless endeavour to outline them herein. I am not a specialist in the legal requirements, a benevolent endowment, fund or foundation just feels right in my heart to ensure the continuity and furtherance of Wikimedia in the fickle turning of Fortune. I do not know the USA legislation and instruments that determine the efficacy and implementation of such entities or trusts and it may even be determined at state level. Endowments may be established within the auspice or attendant to the Foundation or they may even be established by benefactors to feed dedicated funds into Foundation, Projects or programmes into perpetuity. That is what I mean as a financially sustainable model, one that does not run counter to NFP. |
|Stenberg = I outlined this eventuation in my Platform and elsewhere in these questions. I wish to open strategic dialogue for a financially sustainable Wikimedia, so your question is close to my heart. Bequests, endowments and capital preserved trusts should be foregrounded in our prospective strategic envisioning. Jeremy, all the ins and outs and variables would require further exploration and I consider it fruitless endeavour to outline them herein. I am not a specialist in the legal requirements, a benevolent endowment, fund or foundation just feels right in my heart to ensure the continuity and furtherance of Wikimedia in the fickle turning of Fortune. I do not know the USA legislation and instruments that determine the efficacy and implementation of such entities or trusts and it may even be determined at state level. Endowments may be established within the auspice or attendant to the Foundation or they may even be established by benefactors to feed dedicated funds into Foundation, Projects or programmes into perpetuity. That is what I mean as a financially sustainable model, one that does not run counter to NFP. |
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|Rosenthal = I have been in favor of an endowment for several years now. I disagree with some of my colleagues that we don't need to start working on one right a way. In fact, I believe now is the perfect time to start growing an endowment; in a down economy our fundraising efforts must necessarily be increased anyway, and by starting now and getting the setup phase and initial contacts out of the way, we are not behind the power curve when the economy recovers and organizations (as well as private individuals) resume full scale philanthropic funding. In answer to your specific questions, (i) The endowment is a long-term, ongoing goal, and should not come at the expense of short-term objectives; but that is not to say that we should fill up on short-term objectives at the expense of any endowment whatsoever. (ii) The size of the endowment required will obviously grow and adjust as the organization grows and changes focus and programming. The obvious answer is "enough that we can meet all desired programming and operational activities in a year, without significantly impacting endowment principal". (iii) Just because the endowment should be large enough to support all activities in a down year of fundraising, does not mean that we want to use it for that purpose. Distributions from the endowment should be used to partner with like-minded organizations to expand our global reach, for instance, targeted programs with OLPC for distribution of Wikimedia enabled laptops, or working with cultural organizations to acquire new content under licenses that are from the very start free (rather than with restrictive copyright and waiting until they are either released or copyright expires). These are programs that will be too expensive to pursue through fundraising, as well as time-consuming for the staff. An endowment distribution allows us to offload both of these burdens, allows our partnerships to develop, brings great publicity to us, positively impacts our fundraising in future years, and helps us to fulfill our mission. |
|Rosenthal = I have been in favor of an endowment for several years now. I disagree with some of my colleagues that we don't need to start working on one right a way. In fact, I believe now is the perfect time to start growing an endowment; in a down economy our fundraising efforts must necessarily be increased anyway, and by starting now and getting the setup phase and initial contacts out of the way, we are not behind the power curve when the economy recovers and organizations (as well as private individuals) resume full scale philanthropic funding. In answer to your specific questions, (i) The endowment is a long-term, ongoing goal, and should not come at the expense of short-term objectives; but that is not to say that we should fill up on short-term objectives at the expense of any endowment whatsoever. (ii) The size of the endowment required will obviously grow and adjust as the organization grows and changes focus and programming. The obvious answer is "enough that we can meet all desired programming and operational activities in a year, without significantly impacting endowment principal". (iii) Just because the endowment should be large enough to support all activities in a down year of fundraising, does not mean that we want to use it for that purpose. Distributions from the endowment should be used to partner with like-minded organizations to expand our global reach, for instance, targeted programs with OLPC for distribution of Wikimedia enabled laptops, or working with cultural organizations to acquire new content under licenses that are from the very start free (rather than with restrictive copyright and waiting until they are either released or copyright expires). These are programs that will be too expensive to pursue through fundraising, as well as time-consuming for the staff. An endowment distribution allows us to offload both of these burdens, allows our partnerships to develop, brings great publicity to us, positively impacts our fundraising in future years, and helps us to fulfill our mission. |
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|Klein = Wikimedia is '''8 years old'''. We have built one of the informational wonders of the world, and our [[ |
|Klein = Wikimedia is '''8 years old'''. We have built one of the informational wonders of the world, and our [[:mission|mission]] closes with the essential phrase, ''"in perpetuity"'' – yet we have hardly begun to plan for the future. |
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Yes, we need an endowment fund, and should set one up now, even before we have planned a fundraiser for it (see i.). An endowment is essential to safeguard the future of any long-lived institution. Our annual budget is now many times our basic operating expenses, with over $8M a year in recurring expenses in the current [ |
Yes, we need an endowment fund, and should set one up now, even before we have planned a fundraiser for it (see i.). An endowment is essential to safeguard the future of any long-lived institution. Our annual budget is now many times our basic operating expenses, with over $8M a year in recurring expenses in the current [//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a3/2009-10_Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan_FINAL_July2.pdf 2009-2010 financial plan] (for comparison, $8M is roughly the annual upkeep of the [[w:Clinton Presidential Library|Clinton Presidential Library]]). Moreover, the plan calls for Foundation spending next year to grow faster than revenue - this is short-term planning. We must prepare for the long term at the same time. |
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:(i) - Some donors, particularly larger individual donors, may give to an endowment what they would not to a general fund. The endowment should be supported through careful outreach to large donors, and through policies allocating a portion of major unrestricted gifts to the endowment. The greatest investment required to set up an endowment is the definition of what it would support, something that we must do regardless as part of strategic planning. (Some people have questioned whether grantors would give money to an organization with an endowment. Most grants are project based, and not for general planning or support - Universities and other entities with large endowments receive some of the largest grants in the world.) |
:(i) - Some donors, particularly larger individual donors, may give to an endowment what they would not to a general fund. The endowment should be supported through careful outreach to large donors, and through policies allocating a portion of major unrestricted gifts to the endowment. The greatest investment required to set up an endowment is the definition of what it would support, something that we must do regardless as part of strategic planning. (Some people have questioned whether grantors would give money to an organization with an endowment. Most grants are project based, and not for general planning or support - Universities and other entities with large endowments receive some of the largest grants in the world.) |
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|question = As a member of the Board of Trustees you would apparently have the power to take "office actions" with respect to content. Current policy states that "office actions" are edits intended "to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user." Jimbo Wales has stated that [ |
|question = As a member of the Board of Trustees you would apparently have the power to take "office actions" with respect to content. Current policy states that "office actions" are edits intended "to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user." Jimbo Wales has stated that [[:w:en:Wikipedia:Office_actions|WP:OFFICE]] may be used in "cases involving a threat of legal action, but in other cases it may be simply as a courtesy". Would you support restricting this power to WMF's General Counsel? If not, do you see any conflict between satisfying an article subject who is complaining of "harm" and maintaining a neutral POV? How high a priority to you is "personal harm" avoidance?[[User:Bdell555|Bdell555]] 03:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC) |
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|Koenigsberg = It seems that in this particular instance a bot could be modified to do the dirty work pretty quickly. Whether to allow a bot needs to be up to the communities themselves. When it comes to enforcing the law, however, there needs to be action taken, and if the administrators on a particular wiki are not up to the task, it may be necessary to take a top-down step to enforce the laws of the United States, where the servers are based. If it came to a head, I would not oppose such an action. |
|Koenigsberg = It seems that in this particular instance a bot could be modified to do the dirty work pretty quickly. Whether to allow a bot needs to be up to the communities themselves. When it comes to enforcing the law, however, there needs to be action taken, and if the administrators on a particular wiki are not up to the task, it may be necessary to take a top-down step to enforce the laws of the United States, where the servers are based. If it came to a head, I would not oppose such an action. |
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|Stenberg = Nemo, ello <nowiki>:-D</nowiki>. If Administrators in suite do not engage a policy we need to take pause and consult. If select Administrators due to laxity or ideology do not fulfill their function that renders the Administrator function questionable. Coaching is a constant in such a dynamic information Community. Administrators must maintain continued vigilance in apprizing themselves of changing policy. I foreground consultation over proscription: as a necessity guidelines and directives need to be in place. I prefer a sapiential circle of seasoned Administrators in consultation with the Community to implement deletion in answer to your question. If this Circle is undecided, or if the matter compromises the integrity of the Foundation and Projects then it needs to be flagged for engagement and action by appropriate forums, also sapiential circles in consultation with legal counsel and other specialists, or amongst the remunerated tenures if required. We need to have a rigorous campaign to reinforce the function of Psyops: there is no hierarchy there is only role and function difference. I have had a rich and textured experience with Psyops and hold the quality of those invested |
|Stenberg = Nemo, ello <nowiki>:-D</nowiki>. If Administrators in suite do not engage a policy we need to take pause and consult. If select Administrators due to laxity or ideology do not fulfill their function that renders the Administrator function questionable. Coaching is a constant in such a dynamic information Community. Administrators must maintain continued vigilance in apprizing themselves of changing policy. I foreground consultation over proscription: as a necessity guidelines and directives need to be in place. I prefer a sapiential circle of seasoned Administrators in consultation with the Community to implement deletion in answer to your question. If this Circle is undecided, or if the matter compromises the integrity of the Foundation and Projects then it needs to be flagged for engagement and action by appropriate forums, also sapiential circles in consultation with legal counsel and other specialists, or amongst the remunerated tenures if required. We need to have a rigorous campaign to reinforce the function of Psyops: there is no hierarchy there is only role and function difference. I have had a rich and textured experience with Psyops and hold the quality of those invested with such privilege widely divergent. It is my experience of heavy-handed administration that foregrounded my candidature. Everpresent in the mindstream of the Administrator is to be from whence of which and by whom are they invested authority and power. My experience is some Psyops are elitist, politicking, power-hungry and they forget their mandate. |
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|Rosenthal = Should someone? Sure. Incompatibly licensed material should go. But it's not the board's job to be doing that. This is something that the community should decide on how to implement. I don't like the precedent that would be set if the board started meddling in something like this and telling the community how to do its job at one of the most basic levels (like, how to delete content). |
|Rosenthal = Should someone? Sure. Incompatibly licensed material should go. But it's not the board's job to be doing that. This is something that the community should decide on how to implement. I don't like the precedent that would be set if the board started meddling in something like this and telling the community how to do its job at one of the most basic levels (like, how to delete content). |
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|Mituzas = The only legal entity, for which board resolutions are legally binding, is Foundation itself - so there has to be work done at foundation level, to assist projects with EDPs, or deletion. Of course, foundation is free to recruit volunteer committees for such tasks. As with Privacy and data retention policy, it is Foundation job to act accordingly. |
|Mituzas = The only legal entity, for which board resolutions are legally binding, is Foundation itself - so there has to be work done at foundation level, to assist projects with EDPs, or deletion. Of course, foundation is free to recruit volunteer committees for such tasks. As with Privacy and data retention policy, it is Foundation job to act accordingly. |
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We shouldn't just ignore problems as these. Even if you are just an editor, you are just as valuable to the Wikimedia Foundation as an administrator. Be bold and contact someone for help regarding the problem. I believe the board should encourage administrators to keep up to date with policies and help the small wikis that are in need. |
We shouldn't just ignore problems as these. Even if you are just an editor, you are just as valuable to the Wikimedia Foundation as an administrator. Be bold and contact someone for help regarding the problem. I believe the board should encourage administrators to keep up to date with policies and help the small wikis that are in need. |
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|Walsh = Yes, someone should be doing this—but the idea is that admins on individual projects should feel empowered to do it, that it is part of their shared responsibility as enforcing any other project policy should be, and that the deletion of such images should not be up for debate. The date was a goal: so that people would not panic that everything had to be done immediately and rush into poor methods of achieving it, but still understand that it was something we thought was important enough to be done soon. Where the goal date was missed we should look at why, and how to remedy that. Probably, there is not enough communication between these small projects and the more active ones; surely the language barrier is a big issue. I wonder how much the sysops on some of these projects who are not fluent in a more popular language (particularly English) and do not participate in the lists share in the project culture, and how much they are left floundering on their own; this is the big issue that needs to be resolved. Because it shouldn't be someone from WMF swooping in and doing it; it should be that someone lets those sysops know why and how they need to. |
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|Mituzas = Huh, *shrug*, I shouldn't point out any preferential treatment, but simply because of its size English Wikipedia has been getting most attention from operations and development than any other project. Problems arising within English Wikipedia have pushed all development into certain paths, which are limiting features for lots of smaller wikis. It is somewhat obnoxious to throw such statements around - most of developers are or were volunteers, and have spent way too much time helping these exact communities, with way more dedication and accountability, than any editor has ever had... |
|Mituzas = Huh, *shrug*, I shouldn't point out any preferential treatment, but simply because of its size English Wikipedia has been getting most attention from operations and development than any other project. Problems arising within English Wikipedia have pushed all development into certain paths, which are limiting features for lots of smaller wikis. It is somewhat obnoxious to throw such statements around - most of developers are or were volunteers, and have spent way too much time helping these exact communities, with way more dedication and accountability, than any editor has ever had... |
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Emotions aside, we try to put more and more resources to actively handling request queues, and making as easy as possible to file technical requests (ever tried [ |
Emotions aside, we try to put more and more resources to actively handling request queues, and making as easy as possible to file technical requests (ever tried [//bugs.wikimedia.org/ bugzilla]?). |
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Of course, the top goal for any organization is having all expectations managed and delivered, and WMF isn't anywhere close that path. It is amazing (and scary, considering what they are aiming for), that very same people who say that Foundation is a bloat, and doesn't need people to work in it, are suggesting close deadlines, and expulsions of volunteers and staff. As someone, who has been trained in ITIL (thats the "best practice for service organizations"), I sure see how we differ from the 'Real Service', but on the other hand, that has allowed us to be where we are now. |
Of course, the top goal for any organization is having all expectations managed and delivered, and WMF isn't anywhere close that path. It is amazing (and scary, considering what they are aiming for), that very same people who say that Foundation is a bloat, and doesn't need people to work in it, are suggesting close deadlines, and expulsions of volunteers and staff. As someone, who has been trained in ITIL (thats the "best practice for service organizations"), I sure see how we differ from the 'Real Service', but on the other hand, that has allowed us to be where we are now. |
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One consideration is, do the developers focus too much on the English wiki? I believe that each developer should help his own wiki, rather than just the English one. We could even start a project called Adopt-A-Wiki. Developers could then support the smaller wikis during times of need. When I've checked something on the Afrikaans wiki the other day I realised just what major difference there is. Because of this difference people would rather contribute to the wiki that has more tools and is more user friendly. |
One consideration is, do the developers focus too much on the English wiki? I believe that each developer should help his own wiki, rather than just the English one. We could even start a project called Adopt-A-Wiki. Developers could then support the smaller wikis during times of need. When I've checked something on the Afrikaans wiki the other day I realised just what major difference there is. Because of this difference people would rather contribute to the wiki that has more tools and is more user friendly. |
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|Walsh = I think "hostility" isn't an accurate description (and probably some of the developers are a bit offended by it!). I don't know that anyone who is really hostile to the projects would continue to put in the kind of time and effort that they do. Part is stress over demands on their time; maybe all you ask is that someone spend 15 minutes on your problem. But 100 other people have a similar request, and that adds up to a lot of time. Part is that when you have already thought through a problem and know why it's harder or less reasonable to do some things than it seems, you get impatient with repeated requests from people who are asking something very difficult or unreasonable who don't know how difficult or unreasonable those requests are. Part is that interpreting what the community wants, and what is only wanted by a small group of people who might be strongly opposed if anyone else knew, is hard even for the editing community to decide. We've had limited staff resources, and each person has been responsible for too much at once; I hope some of the recent hiring will alleviate that problem; I do think it is resources rather than attitude. |
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<noinclude>[[Category:Board elections 2009]]</noinclude> |
<noinclude>[[Category:Board elections 2009]]</noinclude> |
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|Kohs = I believe that over approximately the past two years, Jimmy Wales has brought the Wikimedia Foundation and its project into a light of disrepute, thanks to his handling of the Essjay scandal; the Rachel Marsden affair; the expense receipt reimbursement allegations; accepting a rental agreement for office space where Wikia, Inc. was extended a bidding advantage (matching the "average" bid) that was not extended to other bidders; and the continued petty framing of the "sole founder" label and that Wikia is "completely separate" from Wikipedia, when clearly neither are wholly true. Truth (especially in light of verifiability) is of paramount importance for a knowledge-based project like a global encyclopedia. Therefore, I feel that the Board's most urgent mistake was to not say "enough is enough" and publicly rebuke Wales for failing to comport himself in a manner that brings honor and respect to the Wikimedia Foundation. |
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|Smith = I'm going to identify a couple of things, prefaced by something that the WMF did right. Its 2008 board restructuring was a good thing insofar as it allocated four seats to people with "specific expertise" without any connection to the community being required. This is the WMF's best chance to ensure that stakeholders other than community members—our readers, our donors, our subjects, etc.—are represented in high-level decision-making. Unfortunately, only two of those four seats have been filled thus far. The WMF Board's failure to take the opportunity that it gave to itself to become less insular must surely rank as among its greatest failures. |
|Smith = I'm going to identify a couple of things, prefaced by something that the WMF did right. Its 2008 board restructuring was a good thing insofar as it allocated four seats to people with "specific expertise" without any connection to the community being required. This is the WMF's best chance to ensure that stakeholders other than community members—our readers, our donors, our subjects, etc.—are represented in high-level decision-making. Unfortunately, only two of those four seats have been filled thus far. The WMF Board's failure to take the opportunity that it gave to itself to become less insular must surely rank as among its greatest failures. |
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|Pieterse=Easy question. We should not even discuss it, the Foundation should stay being charitable organization. |
|Pieterse=Easy question. We should not even discuss it, the Foundation should stay being charitable organization. |
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|Walsh =I don't think this question is directed at me. As should be obvious from my history I think we should continue to be a non-profit. There are a host of reasons, not least being signaling what our priorities are, but there has never been a serious consideration to change this. |
|Walsh =I don't think this question is directed at me. As should be obvious from my history I think we should continue to be a non-profit. There are a host of reasons, not least being signaling what our priorities are, but there has never been a serious consideration to change this. |
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|Klein = The Foundation is strengthened by being a profoundly charitable organization, and should always remain so. |
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<noinclude>[[Category:Board elections 2009]]</noinclude> |
<noinclude>[[Category:Board elections 2009]]</noinclude> |
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|Kohs = Your question seems focused on the English Wikipedia, which while the grand-daddy of Wikimedia wikis, is not the Wikimedia Foundation. I think that the disjointed, unfair techniques of lording over guidelines via close-knit, sycophantic cabals is probably the best that Wikipedia can hope for, since the Foundation shows no interest in becoming a more professional, accountable body. |
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|Góngora = The answer to this question deals closely with what each community decides about those topics. Every Wikimedia project has its own policy (e.g.: fair use is forbidden on the Spanish wikipedia while generally allowed on en.wiki). However, I believe in the ability of each community to decide what it best suits its interests; consensus is one option out of many. There should exist some dialogue within the community. In fact, there are certain things which can be better sorted out without the Board's assistance (speedy deletions, relevance of some articles, etc.). When it comes to projects at a higher level, usually affecting or involving more than one community, other measures can be considered. One of my aims is to support rules based on consensus, making sure that they are "watertight", organized, approved by a considerable majority and only if WM sister projects really take benefit from it. |
|Góngora = The answer to this question deals closely with what each community decides about those topics. Every Wikimedia project has its own policy (e.g.: fair use is forbidden on the Spanish wikipedia while generally allowed on en.wiki). However, I believe in the ability of each community to decide what it best suits its interests; consensus is one option out of many. There should exist some dialogue within the community. In fact, there are certain things which can be better sorted out without the Board's assistance (speedy deletions, relevance of some articles, etc.). When it comes to projects at a higher level, usually affecting or involving more than one community, other measures can be considered. One of my aims is to support rules based on consensus, making sure that they are "watertight", organized, approved by a considerable majority and only if WM sister projects really take benefit from it. |
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|Pieterse=The question is related to the English Wikpedia, not the Wikimedia Foundation. The situation you are talking about is different in each project. The board should not decide on a solution, the particular community should. |
|Pieterse=The question is related to the English Wikpedia, not the Wikimedia Foundation. The situation you are talking about is different in each project. The board should not decide on a solution, the particular community should. |
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|Walsh=This is a question for the project communities to answer, rather than the Board. (If you dug through my enwiki editing history enough you might find out what I think, but I won't answer it here.) |
|Walsh=This is a question for the project communities to answer, rather than the Board. (If you dug through my enwiki editing history enough you might find out what I think, but I won't answer it here.) |
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|Klein = This is a decision for projects to make, not something for the Board to have any say in at all. |
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Personally, I find the loose structure of the projects encourages flexibility over time, and has its advantages - while any given decision is bound to offend the sensibilities of some editors, the overall guidelines for notability have gradually relaxed as the Wikipedia has grown. Work could be done to keep the process friendly and orderly while allowing individual WikiProjects to develop distinct rules of thumb, and without mandating once and for all a rigid set of guidelines. }} |
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== Can one be a candidate for the WMF if they have a checkered editing history? == |
== Can one be a candidate for the WMF if they have a checkered editing history? == |
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|question = A late question for the candidates, but how do each of you feel about a WMF candidate who was [ |
|question = A late question for the candidates, but how do each of you feel about a WMF candidate who was [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User%3AKevinOKeeffe recently blocked] on enWiki for edit warring? Can someone with such a recent block for disruptive editing be a viable candidate? [[Special:Contributions/76.178.200.245|76.178.200.245]] 13:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC) |
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|Kohs = Of course a blocked user can be a suitable candidate for the Wikimedia Foundation board. Many reputable professionals have been blocked for any number of ridiculous reasons on different WMF projects. If you're looking for more reputable professionals to serve on the WMF board of trustees, then you may be doing yourself a disservice by disqualifying blocked editors from board eligibility. |
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|Góngora = Actually, that's a very personal question. Everyone may have their opinion on what you are asking. Some people might agree with a particular candidate just because s/he represents their interests and ideology. For the same reason, |
|Góngora = Actually, that's a very personal question. Everyone may have their opinion on what you are asking. Some people might agree with a particular candidate just because s/he represents their interests and ideology. For the same reason, another group of individuals may disagree and then vote against a particular candidate for multiple causes. My scheme of how a desirable and reliable candidate must be doesn't contemplate neither disruptive behaviour nor lack of transparece. I am also in favour of free speech built over the basis of tolerance. Since I believe that we must advocate for free knowledge worldwide, we have to be able to respect others as much as we would like to be respected. Summarising, an ideal candidate is that who is supported at least by his/her local community/ies; that who has been able to show his/her interest for the project's sake no matter what his/her personal beliefs may be. A good candidate has to show himself honest towards others and recognise his/her mistakes as well as his/her accomplishments. |
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|Smith = It's not a big deal in itself, and needs to be considered as part of the larger package. If I'm listing the reasons that I ranked Kevin last on my ballot, his belief that "[http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:wB2-4HinchAJ:www.caglepost.com/comments.aspx%3Fid%3D27098 anti-Semitism is part and parcel to informed patriotism] and his [http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/11441/dad-of-alsjcc-hate-call-suspect-could-see-it-coming/ past arrest for making threatening phone calls to a Jewish community centre] rank much higher. |
|Smith = It's not a big deal in itself, and needs to be considered as part of the larger package. If I'm listing the reasons that I ranked Kevin last on my ballot, his belief that "[http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:wB2-4HinchAJ:www.caglepost.com/comments.aspx%3Fid%3D27098 anti-Semitism is part and parcel to informed patriotism] and his [http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/11441/dad-of-alsjcc-hate-call-suspect-could-see-it-coming/ past arrest for making threatening phone calls to a Jewish community centre] rank much higher. |
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|Chen = |
|Chen = |
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|Klein = A recent block is not in itself reason to keep someone from being a candidate for the Board. |
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|Pieterse=We should never prejudge someone on the fact that he or she was blocked, but in the current case we should look deeper. All I have to say is, after reading Steve's response I immediately changed my vote. |
|Pieterse=We should never prejudge someone on the fact that he or she was blocked, but in the current case we should look deeper. All I have to say is, after reading Steve's response I immediately changed my vote. |
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|Walsh = Yes, I think someone who has been disruptive can be a viable candidate—or, at least, having been blocked at some point shouldn't be a bar. The voters should be able to be aware of it and make the decision for themselves, rather than candidates being prescreened. I think people who are truly unable to resolve disagreements without becoming disruptive are not going to be a good board members, nor are people holding some views—but that should be for the voters to decide. |
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Latest revision as of 08:18, 28 February 2022
Foundation Endowment[edit]
What are your thoughts about the establishment of an endowment for the Foundation? More specifically: (i) How should establishment of an endowment be traded off against shorter-term objectives? (ii) What size endowment should be targetted? (iii) What operations should be supported by distributions from the endowment, and why? Jeremy Tobacman 21:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Also, we're still quite agile organization, which may scale down certain projects in case of financial problems. We are in somewhat uncharted lands, and endowment would commit us to certain way of financial planning way too early.
Of course, we may consider endowment as restricted funding option - if any grant makers are ready to switch from institutional funding to endowment building.An unfortunate but true side-effect of having a large endowment (no giggling, children) is that the WMF may be criticized for having one, or too large of one. Annual giving could erode if too many potential donors begin to view the endowment as alleviating the need for more funds. Smaller non-profits (like Wikimedia) are often criticized for not spending the lion's share of funds on current needs. Grant-making organizations might even pass over an organization that already has significant endowment capital.
Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but the Wikimedia Foundation needs to stop practices like underspending the Technology budget by 65%, and dealing Stanton Fund gift money directly to the privately-held company (Wikia, Inc.) of the Foundation's founding trustee, before it even dares consider launching an endowment fund campaign!An another intermediary step that can be taken right now, is to regularize the handling of the current financial cushioning strategy. It clearly was impossible in the previous term or the one before that, and it won't be implementable in the current accounting term either, because of the explosive growth of the size of our operations in terms of staff and office space. But once the move to an alternative location in SF is out of the way in terms of one time financial outlay; I think it only prudent that there is a clear strategy on how the cushion is handled. This would be prudent in itself, and since hopefully it would be a strategy that can be publicly expressed, as a completely serendipitous bonus, it should alleviate all the unnecessary foaming of the mouth from our more excitable critics :-) If that is ever possible :-/
To be clear, my feeling is that an endowment is useful if and only if the amount of money coming in as donations is an order of magnitude larger than currently. Specifically it would be useful if there was a sudden donation of an order of magnitude beyond our current revenues. It is conceivable that we might be able to grow in easy stages into a size where our revenues are even several orders of magnitude larger than currently before an endowment would be near inescapable. I have to say that in terms of future planning, when and if our revenues continue growing, it would be wise to begin the endowment sooner than it is absolutely indispensible, to give it time to grow.
It will be a glorious day when we are in a situation where all the money to run the servers can be scraped off the interest on the endowment. May I live to see that day!I'll share a few thoughts on why. First of all, the main reason for an endowment is to increase stability (and the impression of stability). We don't require an endowment to assure people that we will be around for the long term; instead we make it possible for someone with the available resources to take everything we have and start over. If we for some reason ran out of money, the project wouldn't die out.
We're also not attracting the sorts of gifts that would fund an endowment. Our large gifts are mainly from foundations who are giving funds expecting it to be spent, not from individuals, and I don't expect this to change. Wikimedia does not get many major individual donors (the exceptions are very much appreciated). We don't have gala events or naming opportunities (no, no one is interested in naming rights to servers; people just look at us funny). Major donors do not routinely get board seats. No one yet has left an estate to Wikimedia. Building up the kind of fundraising strategy to build an endowment would be very different than what we are doing now.
If we were to be getting individual gifts of large sums of money at once, then I would say we should be working on this. It is a thought to keep in mind and something to talk about with potential major donors, but for now it is not a priority for me.Yes, we need an endowment fund, and should set one up now, even before we have planned a fundraiser for it (see i.). An endowment is essential to safeguard the future of any long-lived institution. Our annual budget is now many times our basic operating expenses, with over $8M a year in recurring expenses in the current 2009-2010 financial plan (for comparison, $8M is roughly the annual upkeep of the Clinton Presidential Library). Moreover, the plan calls for Foundation spending next year to grow faster than revenue - this is short-term planning. We must prepare for the long term at the same time.
- (i) - Some donors, particularly larger individual donors, may give to an endowment what they would not to a general fund. The endowment should be supported through careful outreach to large donors, and through policies allocating a portion of major unrestricted gifts to the endowment. The greatest investment required to set up an endowment is the definition of what it would support, something that we must do regardless as part of strategic planning. (Some people have questioned whether grantors would give money to an organization with an endowment. Most grants are project based, and not for general planning or support - Universities and other entities with large endowments receive some of the largest grants in the world.)
- (ii) - This is a topic for discussion with the Foundation's finance team. The endowment should be large enough to sustainably support the basic operation of the Projects (see iii. below), able to grow with inflation while supporting any needed central server farms and technical support with its interest, and of a size that we can raise. An initial target of $10M would match current expenses. One of the goals supported by the endowment would be to reduce the future maintenance cost of core services, so the endowment would not need to grow as rapidly as the projects. (While expenses have grown geometrically in years past, there has been no focus on separating core services from research, experiments, and other expenses.)
- (iii) - First we need to work together to definine a core set of services that define our mission. I would include:
- Reliable read/write access to the projects through the Wikimedia domains, and the hardware and bandwidth this requires;
- Reliable access to dumps and statistics
- Reliable backups of private and public data
- These services should be supported as robustly as possible : making it easier for third parties to help support them in-kind with their own time, money, and hardware; having someone keeping the infrastructure involved up and running - either with a dedicated team or with some other effective supporting network; maintaining and improving ways to find and access dumps, from a fileserver and mirrors to actively-seeded torrents of large files; and regularly generating statistics from available sources while protecting private data [which makes this a difficult task to let others share].
- Distributions from the endowment should support all of this, as well as efforts to reduce the future cost of maintaining them.
"Office actions" and BLP issues[edit]
As a member of the Board of Trustees you would apparently have the power to take "office actions" with respect to content. Current policy states that "office actions" are edits intended "to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user." Jimbo Wales has stated that WP:OFFICE may be used in "cases involving a threat of legal action, but in other cases it may be simply as a courtesy". Would you support restricting this power to WMF's General Counsel? If not, do you see any conflict between satisfying an article subject who is complaining of "harm" and maintaining a neutral POV? How high a priority to you is "personal harm" avoidance?Bdell555 03:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
As a completely unrelated to the question above, but intimately entangled with the rationale I offer why consolidating the OFFICE power back into single hands would not be a good idea, I note as a sidebar that the reason that having a single Executive Director is not in violation of this doctrine is precisely because the staff is thoroughly insulated from having any influence on editing activity, apart from situations where legal matters are not in play. And that insulation should be further enhanced rather than creating a breach across it directly connected to the General Counsel.
On the separate issue of "harm"...
While I haven't had to participate in OFFICE actions, and I suspect there are very few office actions that are operated on any but some of the largest language projects, but have had to witness a few cases where there have been "complaints" of harm, libel and the like (the most bizarre perhaps being the case of a lady Video Jockey who made a complaint to the police so they could see if it was illegal to edit her article in a way that made her feel "uncomfortable"; specifically quoting catty words she had uttered in a major newspaper against another female political candidate in a race she was running in etc.) My attitude is that we should be skeptical about one-sided claims of harm. Investigating the issues behind such ought to be done with a huge amount of diligence, as interfering with the normal procedures of a project is something that shouldn't ever be lightly done, and never never never with fear or favor.Asking for a hard, bright-line rules on this is understandable but bound to lead to dissatisfaction; it's intended for exceptional situations which tend to present challenges to bright-line rules. (If Mike is out of town and unreachable, can no action be taken? No, that would be nonsensical.)
That said, of course there are competing concerns: if it were so easy to make these judgment calls, this wouldn't be a question. But they're not unique to the office; everyone who deals with articles on these topics should be aware of them. I think there are some cases in which it is appropriate for the office to act, and yes, risk personal harm is one. My opinion on what the office should do depends largely on how action by Wikimedia affects the outcome of the situation, but I trust their judgment.Wikimedia's Counsel may request such an action, but would not need to do so through the Board. Thankfully this is rarely done - it is generally an ineffective way to get things done, and an unnecessary imposition on community processes.
Yes, there is a central conflict between satisfying an article subject who is complaining of harm and maintaining a neutral POV; and it is one that community editors and OTRS respondents must cope with every day - independent of whether or not the Foundation feels an additional legal reason to respond to such a complaint.Should someone enforce Board resolutions?[edit]
(Should be a quick side-question.) Licensing policy is an example of policy which affects all projects. It states: «By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted». We have a number of small projects where sysops don't know this policy and need "coaching", but some simply don't care, even when advised. Should someone delete such images? Who? --Nemo 08:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
- In some cases the problem is that we do not disseminate these decisions very widely, or in very many languages. To begin with, we should define an organized way to share these rare project-wide decisions with small projects in their local language.
- I would like to see a community-selected group whose role is to help small projects carry out these tasks. Stewards can do this if needed, but that is not really their role. There has been some discussion of creating a small-wiki-admin flag for such editors, and asking smaller projects to opt into this policy, similar to the opt-in global bot policy. Communities that don't opt into this could identify a place where one should post notice of new global policies, or requests for implementation.
Developers-community relationship?[edit]
It is my impression that the relationship between the Mediawiki developers, the system administrators and wiki communities is rather dysfunctional. It is extremely difficult for a wiki community to request even minor changes in the software, setup or locally installed extensions. Proposals that require technical changes are dead in the water. Many developers appear outright hostile towards the community and especially the English Wikipedia. Do you think there is a problem, and if so what do you want to do about it? --Apoc2400 09:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
Emotions aside, we try to put more and more resources to actively handling request queues, and making as easy as possible to file technical requests (ever tried bugzilla?).
Of course, the top goal for any organization is having all expectations managed and delivered, and WMF isn't anywhere close that path. It is amazing (and scary, considering what they are aiming for), that very same people who say that Foundation is a bloat, and doesn't need people to work in it, are suggesting close deadlines, and expulsions of volunteers and staff. As someone, who has been trained in ITIL (thats the "best practice for service organizations"), I sure see how we differ from the 'Real Service', but on the other hand, that has allowed us to be where we are now.
We could involve ten different managers to do triage of requests, rebuild our IT strategy over and over, so that hundreds of engineers and managers would have something to gnaw on, but we wouldn't be anywhere close to our current achievements. There always are tradeoffs - more people in staff is way more difficult to manage, and more procedures based decision making is also way less agile.
Developers have to deal with multiple communities - sometimes efficient dealing with requests has caused community uproar (some said it was consensus, some said it wasn't), sometimes telling 'no' is considered to be more hostile, than 'not saying yes', sometimes it is less hostile. The request queue that is in there has quite a lot of vague spots and problem areas - certain improvements for some people can be regressions for others - and that has to be always considered.
Our environment at the moment is the absolutely most permissive around, no any web shop is giving that much power into hands of their users - part of that because simply there is no way to do that with in-house development resources - thus leading to constant 'arms race' where developers try to keep pace with how community is using those features and resources given. Certain changes require way way more thought, than is usually included in initial discussions, and technology issues are quite often thought to be not important ("thats development issue").
So, does this problem exist? Of course, in certain cases there may be miscommunications, leading to wrong expectations. Overall, development process hasn't stalled, plenty of community requests get fulfilled, new stuff gets developed, old is still up and running. One can just look at our bugs/features tracker, and see that it isn't "dead in the water", nor "difficult to request". Foundation should always ensure, that it does best job to handle those needs, and adjust resources it has for that - but as that costs money and requires time (no sudden engineering team growths bring the desired outcome too fast), we have to assume good faith instead of hostility.This is ludicrous. Flagged revisions should have been mandated by the Board in 2007 or so, and implemented within 60 days of the Board's decree. Any paid developer who dragged their feet on such an important improvement to Wikimedia projects should have been fired, and any non-paid developer who delayed implementation should have been shunned.
I hope that I have made myself clear enough, without it sounding like a rant. Without trying to point blame at any developers, it is painfully obvious to me that they have not been professionally-enough guided by senior management. I don't blame "the community" for this dysfunction.- "Many developers appear outright hostile towards the community and especially the English Wikipedia." - I point blank refuse to acknowledge this as an accurate representation of reality, without some evidence. This is certainly not something I have experienced.
- "It is extremely difficult for a wiki community to request even minor changes in the software, setup or locally installed extensions." - Again, I would have to question the accuracy of this statement. My experience has been quite different.
- "Do you think there is a problem, and if so what do you want to do about it?" - Well it is definitely a problem that you have an impression of dysfunctionality. I think I would like to know more about what led you to that impression, to get a better handle on whether there is any reality basis for your impressions.
- One very very very *important* thing is that people who wish for the developers or "system administrators" to act as _imposing_ a solution where the community has failed to internally reach a consensus, is something that is quite dangerous, and if your perception of developers being "hasty" or "hostile" is due to this feature of their way of acting, it is in fact important to note that developers forcing things through is never a good idea, except when there are real dangers to the integrity of the site.
As the Foundation employs core Mediawiki developers and helps guide its roadmap of most essential features, it should actively clarify that it is not creating bottlenecks to independent community work. Developers in every community should feel they have support to develop tools to meet their own needs. The availability of toolservers has been a good step in this direction. The rest of the issue you raise is something for the community to address, but I am happy to share my thoughts.
There is often a communication breakdown between identifying a problem, proposing a technical solution, and seeing it to completion. I would like to see
- good models for organizing local priorities and improving them over time.
- a mechanism simpler and more general than bugzilla for defining technical needs and drawing attention to them (with one or more bugzilla tickets opened for each such need; but sometimes it is not clear what the specific ticket should look like, and widespread discussion and clustering of these discussions is essential)
- community facilitators who can find issues that local groups (editors and developers) think are important, help move them to a resolution, and raise awareness about them when needed (I support something like this on the English Wikipedia).
Worst mistake made by WMF?[edit]
In your estimation, over the past 24 months, what has been the most urgent or catastrophic error, mistake, or miscalculation that you feel the Wikimedia Foundation has committed? This may apply to the Board, the Staff, or both. Feel free to briefly list all of the mistakes that may come to your mind, but please focus the most attention on what you perceive to be the worst of the batch. -- Thekohser 17:17, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Another awesome feature of our workings is how resiliently even that plan was adapted to deal with the facts on the ground. Things were slowed down and there was after the fact consultation. There is a great and wonderful self-correcting nature to this whole thing we are involved with.
The results of that restructuring are still not clear, but I have abiding faith that the structure can be ever adjusted to deal with any percieved shortcomings.
I could write a lot about what I thought was the deeper backround of the decision, that caused it to be such a spectacular flop, but it genuinely serves no purpose to dwell on the past. We must concentrate on what to fix in the future.Charitable status[edit]
At least one of the candidates has tried to use legal means to have the Foundation's charitable status rescinded. What is your view of the Foundation's charitable status - should it continue, or should the Foundation become a for-profit organisation capitalising on the strength of the brands it controls? JzG 08:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Should everyone have a say in the guidelines or not?[edit]
At present, the overwhelming majority of people have never stated their opinions on the ever changing wikipedia guidelines, which are now totally different than what they were in the early years of wikipedia, and are often used as excuse to mass delete long held articles. Would you support a general election to determine the rules of notability, and what type of articles should be kept or deleted? According to the rules, simply being on the bestsellers list doesn't make a book notable, and sometimes they are erased, while at other times people say ignore the rules and keep them. Some believe in wiping out all character articles, episodes that had millions of viewers but didn't get reviewed in mainstream media, and many other things, and usually succeed in deleting them, depending on who is around at the time to participate in the AFD, and the opinions of the closing administrator. The exact same types of articles are kept or deleted, based on who shows up to argue, it all random. The constant debates raging on the AFDs could be eliminated by a general vote, and a specific set of rules. The current system has all guidelines pages edited by whoever camps there and argues constantly, to get their way, knowing most people aren't going to spend every day in constant conflict, and will just give up and let them have their way. Dream Focus 14:51, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
There are two different approaches in this question. The first is to implement a regid rule for everything. The positive side of this is you can avoid a lot of conflicts just by pointing to the rules. The negative side is that rules are something that is very unflexible, sometimes a situation happens where a rule doesn't acquire that good, or is even contradictory to our mission. So in such cases you have either to avoid the rule, which makes rules quite useless if it happens too often or to amend the rules, to make them more precise, but also more complicated, so that at the end you have so heavy a set of rules that only a professional jurist know every detail of it. The second approach is to search for consensus through community discussions. The positive of this approach is that it is in our tradition, it is with the basics of our philosophy. The drawbacks are what you pointed out, it can be quite abitrary, and discussing the same point again and again can be very tiresome.
In general every of our projects had evolved in their history its own approaches, mostly a combination of the two solutions illustrated above. The problem must be solved in the community, it cannot be ordered from above, from the board.
Personally, as a normal community member, I usually advocate in discussions about this question for the second approach. At first I think we are community driven projects and the community, everyone in the community should have the chance to take part in discussions and decision makings. I also admit that I have personnally an aversion against very regid, unflexible rules. While our projects evolve, old rules can become less suitable. But as all these things it is always difficult to change an old rule, even if everyone see that it is outdated. And thus they tend to become some ugly conservative ideology that prevent the projects develop further.
Can one be a candidate for the WMF if they have a checkered editing history?[edit]
A late question for the candidates, but how do each of you feel about a WMF candidate who was recently blocked on enWiki for edit warring? Can someone with such a recent block for disruptive editing be a viable candidate? 76.178.200.245 13:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)