Help:Table

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions

How will you vote or propose changes on the board, about the foundation reducing or offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions from flights (board meetings and wikimania), power used by hardware, etc.? -- Jeandré, 2009-07-19t17:12z

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

Offsets are wonderful, but not practical for a donor-supported foundation, as that is not what donors expect to be done with their money. I maintain the highest level of commitment to the environment, and would push the staff to find practical ways to reduce the environmental impact of the Foundation. I do not believe, however, that it is the role of the Board of Trustees to force a policy from the top down in such a bottom-up community driven project.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Jeandré, as I am passionate about sustainability, permaculture and the environment and the perpetuity of our natural systems and not only their preservation but the reinstatement initiatives of wild nature throughout our world, your question is close to my heart. I don't have a car and I ride my bike or take public transport or walk where I need to go, to live my values. Transferring this to the board, in certain situations telecommuting does not have the richness required to establish relationships where body language and interpersonal intimacy is required. Though, telecommunting and associated techniques are to be embraced wherever appropriate. Travel should only be engaged in situations of absolute necessity. I stated in my release to the Signpost that I move for a common financial accountancy and reporting model throughout the Foundation and Projects to move towards triple bottom line & lifecycle costing through all reporting of the Community and proposals for development, resource allocation and purchasing, etc. This includes triple bottom line impact statements on the necessity of travel and includes a lifecycle costing which subsumes greenhouse gas emissions. This would also necessitate retrofitting assets contained on the asset register currently in place where they are unsound, as well as a strategic aligning with all eco-friendly and sustainable technologies and processes in future. A register of preferred partnerships that require the reputable endorsement of strategic partnerships and relationships focusing on their triple bottom line statements and lifecycle costing for their core business and initiatives is The Bible. You are only green if your mates are green. Moreover, I advocate and endorse a sustainable implementation model for the abovementioned to be integrated with the Strategic Planning initiatives.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

I'd like to pursue innovative ways to reduce WMF's environmental footprint that are both ACTUALLY capable of being implemented, and within our mission. For instance, we have a small budget. Things like buying offsets or paying for expensive equipment are not smart uses of that limited income for such a small organization. What if we tried something like "green featured articles" for a period of time, presenting articles on green technologies to the world? What if we were to hold a Wikipedia Academy with environmental organizations to try and help empower them and improve our content at the same time? Or extend our efforts to support more digitzation onto Wikisource and reduce the amount of paper usage worldwide? Our mission as a foundation has us bringing knowledge to the world. That knowledge certainly ought to include how to offset emissions and reduce environmental footprint on a personal and corporate level. By spreading that knowledge around the world, we can have a much greater impact than simply shelling out cash for marginal gains (with negligible aggregate effect). That being said -- I support looking into ways we can enhance the ability to telecommute to meetings when possible, or to find more environmentally friendly locations to host our events. If we can cut down on redundancies and minimize unnecessary travel, not only will that help cut down on our carbon impact but it may help save money as well. We should be an inspiration to other organizations in our environmental efforts. If our datacenter facilities are (as I understand it) so efficient, we should be more aggressive at publicizing that information, to try and get other like-minded organizations to take these steps as well. Again, by using our global reach to present more environmentally friendly alternative solutions, we are satisfying our organizational mission as well as minimizing the cost to us, and achieving far greater results than we could by purchasing an offset or a more expensive cooling fan, or the like.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

I've said it multiple times in the past - we're running hundred or thousand times smaller datacenter facilities (respectively, hundred or thousand times smaller power and cooling costs) than other websites with similar reach, we support all the massive remote collaboration. The organization is extremely efficient at its core mission, but to properly understand it and immerse into it, volunteers, staff, board, all need high bandwidth communication channels, attainable in online meetings. This organization is very special in how the negative impact is extremely negligible, compared to all the positive impact, and I think this is what we should be doing - stay being on the pinnacle of efficiency, on the pinnacle of large scale collaboration, and our leadership in these two areas will outshine any 'green' declarations we could ever be able to make, seriously.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

This is a subject that I will have to study first. I would prefer to invest in making our code, our procedures more efficient. That reduces our costs and has a real impact on our ability to operate. As our software becomes more efficient, it will benefit all the MediaWiki installations that are out there.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Who knows what the Board might consider, but I absolutely favor organizations that address issues relating to their environmental impact. The WMF decided to hold a board meeting in Berlin, which is quite far from the point of "least cumulative distance" that could have been achieved for at least the mandatory attendees. The additional jet fuel and hotel services consumption is something to consider, with melting polar ice threatening San Francisco. A short-haul Boeing 737 flight burns about 200 pounds of fuel per passenger. A trans-continental flight, plus a trans-Atlantic leg to Berlin, likely burns at least 400 pounds per passenger. Round trip = 800 pounds of fuel. I hope each of the US-based attendees feel comfortable that their burning of 800 pounds of jet fuel (about 114 gallons) in order to attend the conference in Berlin (a conference that, as far as I can tell, had zero "dial-in" conferencing options offered) was justified.

I get the impression that there is a corporate culture afoot at the Wikimedia Foundation that stifles attempts to optimize meetings and conferences in ways that might be more economical and environmentally friendly, with innovations such as Skype and video-teleconferencing. My sense is that even more "interesting" and "exotic" places are chosen instead. I suspect it's part of the corporate culture to get the "backwater" taste of St. Petersburg out of everyone's mouth, to select all of these far-flung, non-English-speaking locales for a Board that consists mostly of North Americans who speak English, and who are funded mostly by U.S. dollars.

Here's a 100-gallon aquarium. Imagine it full of jet fuel, then setting a match to it, sucking oxygen out of the air, and replacing it with carbon-laden molecules. That's what each of the North American board members did to enable travel to Berlin to hold their meeting in their chosen location.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

That is an interesting question, indeed. I certainly think that some of these meetings do not have to be always held personally if there exist other possible and unexpensive ways of communication. Apart from this, I strongly believe that we have to be a reference in this issue. The world is facing the consequences of financial crisis and, in this sense, it would be practical not to forget our responsibility as a non-profit organization committed with knowledge. Wikimedia community is a virtual community working at home along the year. Wikimania's yearly meeting is a small price to pay for improving this community. If on the one hand I feel that international meetings are important in promoting this project, on the other I am a declared defender of taking profit of technology as much as we can. This means that we can hold virtual conferences at an agreed and convenient time for the members of the Board. Having worked as an ArbCom member for a whole year, enabled me to be in a continuing task of a solid and organized duty with other partners from different and remote countries. This obviously required a planification (IRC chats, videoconferences, e-mail list, etc). Planning is important. I am quite open-minded concerning alternative purposes.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

I would listen sympathetically to any practical suggestions and support initiatives that did not use donor money to purposes contrary or external to our mission. In my personal life I have regularly commuted by bicycle for distances of about 20 miles daily (over 30 km). That is to say 20 miles in the morning, and the same back in the afternoon. So I definitely have done my part, though I admit that I too have a carbon footprint. Even when I was not able to go by bike, I used rail commuting, which is AIUI better than busses. I also exclusively use washable cotton shopping bags, instead of plastic ones. However, there is a difference between acting responsibly and grandstanding. And thus I think the Board should take heed of suggestions that are workable and don't detract from our mission, but should avoid mere gesturing for gestures sake.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

I encourage being mindful of environmental impact without being wasteful in other ways in attempts to meet this goal. But mainly I see avoiding environmental waste as aligned with avoiding other types of waste: we want to purchase efficient hardware because wasting power is expensive, we don't want to take unnecessary trips because travel is expensive.

However, the value of face-to-face meeting, even for an online-based organization, is too great to forgo it completely: avoiding wastefulness doesn't mean eliminating costs. Most WMF business already takes place via IRC, wikis, and email, but the higher bandwidth of face-to-face interaction and the different kind of interaction it enables is something I think we should continue. The venues have largely been chosen with other considerations in mind: where the offices are, which chapter is willing to host a meeting, how it meets other goals such as outreach or meeting other stakeholders. For a global organization, yes, some people will travel a long way.

(There are measures we can take such as avoiding unnecessary printing, and purchasing from environmentally responsible suppliers, and I hope that we will do that. One thing I do not support is purchasing carbon offsets, which I think are at best ineffective, for a variety of reasons.)

Our projects are digital: they replace printed paper material for thousands and millions of people, need no shipping, require no replacement or disposal. Perhaps the greenest thing we could do is encourage more people to use them.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

With all due respect, I do not regard greenhouse gas emissions to be a serious issue confronting the Board of Directors. I'm sure we're all in favour of more energy efficient servers and the like, but considering the relatively minimal impact of what is, after all, at heart a series of websites, I would be inclined to place economic considerations ahead of making a show of "green" awareness.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

Currently I don't see the Foundation's offsets as a danger to the environment. There are both negative and positive points to keep in mind. Firstly, by looking at the number of visits our projects receive per month, imagine if we converted that number into pages of paper. Looking at this fact we are actually doing the environment a huge favour. Keeping this in mind, a few flights a year isn't a big price to pay. Another important factor to remember is, face-to-face meetings are very important for an organization such as the WMF. It doesn't matter how hard one tries to communicate electronically, it can never be as effective as a face-to-face meeting. Looking our bandwidth usage, our offsets are pretty low, it could be far higher. I conclude that, overall, the Foundation is doing the environment a great favour, despite the amount of flights each year.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

The Foundation should set a standard of sustainability that can scale up a few more orders of magnitude. There are already plans in place to limit the amount of expected travel; since the community depends on effective remote communication and collaboration, investing in tools to make this possible for large and small meetings would be a lasting improvement. For hardware, I would like to see WMF build on the model of the EvoSwitch partnership to set up carbon-neutral hosting (and identify hosts willing to donate bandwidth to the projects) for all infrastructure.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

I think the first preference should be to reduce the Foundation's actual environmental impact, especially in the area of travel. It spent more than three hundred thousand dollars on travel in fiscal 2008 (an increase for more than forty thousand dollars over the previous year), which strikes me as an absolutely enormous sum. Without seeing a breakdown and being more familiar with the organization's day-to-day operations, I cannot say with certainty that the amount is unjustified, but I would certainly want to take a careful and thorough look at this category of spending, for reasons of both fiscal and social responsibility. With that done, I would be prepared to support some sort of offset program, provided that there was significant evidence that the program in question was a good one. I believe that the carbon offset industry is a largely unregulated one, and it behooves anybody looking to buy such credits to carefully investigate claims made by the seller. And, in any event, buying a carbon offset is never as sound an approach as actually reducing your greenhouse gas emissions.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Well, I'm personally used to telephon-conferences an conferences by internet-chat, but anyway - I think, it will be necessary for the Board to meet personally. This meetings should be held only, if really necessary.

Ting Chen (Wing)

My answer to this question had not changed since last year. At first we are a green organization. We offer knowledge, and knowledge is the best way to understand why green, knowledge is the best way to know how to be green. We offer our content in the most green way that is possible: mostly online, in a way that neighther destroy forests nor substancially produce CO2. Our policy in travel and in other things is always very responsible. We are a non-profit organization. Our money are donated by our users, supporters and community who want to see us do our job efficiently. It is in our basical interest to cut travel cost, power cost etc. Naturally, we are also an international organization, and it is necessary for us to keep in contact with our community. Thus sometimes it is inavoidable for us to travel internationally. I for myself can say that in the past I had always traveled in awareness of green. If possible I had always traveled by train, for example to the Berlin board meeting in April or to the EU Chapters Intellectual Properties Lobbying meeting in Brussels. I never traveled with car. On the other hand. Our mission and goal is not to be green. Our goal and mission is free knowledge. We use the money that are donated to us for this goal and for this mission. So, if there is a real conflict between the two, I vote for our mission and our goal. I will repeat the example I used for last year: If it can help us cut cost, e.g. travel cost, cost for electricity, I am with it. If it is a costly extravagancy, e.g. super efficient hardware but costs double or trippel than less efficient ones, I am against it.

Ads?

How will you vote or propose changes on the board about paid ads on Wikimedia sites?

1. ads
   1. pop-ups/flash/banners/graphics
   2. flash/banners/graphics in skin whitespace or at bottom
   3. company logos in site notices
   4. prominent text ads
   5. company names in site notices
   6. text ads in skin whitespace or at bottom
   7. opt out
   8. opt in
2. maybe
   1. only for a huge amount of money
   2. only during budget emergencies
   3. only if editors support it
3. never
4. other

-- Jeandré, 2009-07-19t17:21z

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

I certainly hope ads never become necessary, as I think they would severely hurt the projects. I believe that my fundraising experience and business training can help ensure that they never will.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Once triple bottom line reporting and life-cycle costing and impact statements are in place, then and only then, if our Community support it, let's approach reputable, sustainable 'advertising' that is sensitive to its context and does not obstruct readability. Models of advertising would only ever be implemented after a process of deep consultation with the Community and for the express purpose of leading the Foundation and Projects to financial independence or as a contingency for a budget emergency. I hold that advertising, if it is ever implemented, is for an express purpose and bound by a limited tenure: advertising is never to be standard business.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

Short answer first, then I'll explain more: I do not want ads until we absolutely need them -- if we were facing a situation where we would have to cease operations otherwise, that would certainly cause me to re-evaluate.

One thing that I sometimes think about when the ad question comes up is this: "If Wikimedia were to suddenly become ad supported, what would be the effect on our ability to form strategic partnerships with other like-minded organizations." Every time I ask myself that question, I find it extremely difficult to conclude that it would help. First, advertising will turn off a large number of our users. There are significant portions of our users who simply do not want to see ads on Wikipedia, and will find other sites to visit if we were to implement them. It compromises our neutrality, and that has a shattering effect on our credibility -- and public perceptions of our credibility are critical to our success. They hurt us on usability -- just another thing to go wrong, taking up screen real estate, confusing users about what is our content and what belongs to the advertiser, etc. It would massively expand the size and scope of the foundation with the revenues it would bring in, meaning a rapid growth in hiring that we may not be prepared for (nor do we know that is necessary yet after doubling in size already). As I mentioned before, it will hurt our chances for partnerships. There are organizations, especially in the free culture community and many governmental organizations, who will find themselves restricted either administratively or ideologically from working with us if we use ads.

On the plus side, they have the potential to bring us a lot of money that could be used for good. We could have 50 man teams doing usability studies, offices full of developers and teams bringing knowledge to the world. We could make huge differences in developing countries and help educate generations of workers to build infrastructure and change lives. These are lofty goals, not to be dismissed lightly.

When balanced against each other, I do not believe that the ads are a suitable or feasible solution for us. The harm that they will likely cause to the project and our goals outweigh the considerable good that they would enable. In the long run, they are just a means to an end - financial empowerment for the foundation to perform its mission. We will be better off finding other ways and other revenue streams to achieve that end.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

Talking about ads is like talking about doomsday scenarios - you never want it to happen, but still it is an intellectual exercise, allowing to understand way better who you are and why you are here :) Ads have one very important flaw, that contradicts with very core of what we are doing - they are not neutral. Of course, there are plenty other topics, where we can have neutrality at stake, but in this case sacrifice would shatter our basis way more.

On the other hand, if all volunteers wanted to make much greater impact on the world (ship offline Wikipedias? establish more projects? support translations? support other organizations?), it would be certainly a job for WMF to consider such shift - as our job is to facilitate people in their quest of spreading knowledge. For now we are not seeing such signals, but eventually shifts in minds of our community can happen.

And again, if it is doomsday, sure unpopular decisions have to be made, but on the other hand, we really don't want to see it happening, and this is why we're trying to build mature and sustainable organization to do the work, where volunteerism does not scale.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

The question is not relevant at the moment. It is highly unlikely to be an issue at all in the comming two years.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Probably 1.6 and 1.8, but let's not trivialize this important matter. With all due seriousness, the Wikimedia Foundation has an opportunity to change the lives of many, many people who are desperately struggling in life, in ways that we who engage in "edit wars" and "indefinite blocks" can't even imagine. So, while the Board and this community tut-tut about whether there ever should be advertising on this epic project's pages, just remember that while we debate, we're flushing millions of dollars -- dollars that could have helped people who really, honestly need them -- down the drain. Are Wikimedians this selfish, that the principle of anti-commercialism is more important than the fate of a young girl in a Third World country who would be meaningfully changed by a dozen LifeStraws and a paperback encyclopedia in her language? Why is everyone inclined to think so small, so selfishly? Advertising could default to "not shown", and it would be seen only by registered users who opt in as an expression of their willingness and eagerness to support the Wikimedia Foundation in this way. I suppose even if 10% of registered users elected to do this, it would still be a multi-million dollar opportunity for the Foundation -- and imagine the goodwill if half this revenue went to the Foundation, but the other half went to build a specific new school in sub-Saharan Africa?

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Paid ads on Wikimedia projects? I do not contemplate this possibilty as feasible right now. I am definitely opposite to this idea because it goes against the immediate principles of this non-profit organization. I must recognise that I am quite meticulous in not admitting any kind of ads. I have been dealing closely with this issue since 2007. Furthermore, we have discussed this topic more than once in several meetings along the last two years. There is a general sense of unanimity among administrators on the Spanish and Catalan wikipedia projects. On the Spanish wikipedia, for example, we have strict rules as for avoiding entreprises to promote their goods and services through WP. Perhaps in the future things may be different. However, from a present-day perspective, it must be our last option.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

My vote is "Other". Ads in any contact with Wikimedia content directly served by Wikimedia servers is simply not on. Not now, not in any realistic timeframe for the future.

I am happy to discuss the pragmatic logic for this any time any place, but most of the relevant arguments have been presented by others. Personally I have no ideological objection to commercialism, but I do have a very high personal annoyance factor for any ads in web content, no matter how modest they are, and even if not animated, but just quietly occupying space on my screen.

This comes from having always had very low-end hardware for use, because of my financial situation, and I can well imagine that people in developing countries trying to access Wikimedia can hardly have it better than I do. That is enough for the matter to be quite open and shut for me.

However there is an interesting concept called Click-to-donate which might be profitably added to the ways that people do support us, even though the engine driving it is adverts. The essential thing with it is of course, that it would be completely external and not in any shape or form interspersed with actual encyclopaedic or other content hosted by Wikimedia.

To embellish on my answer in terms of opt-in against Click-to-donate, I think opt-in suffers from the fact that you are accepting an "annoyance factor" in order to further a goal you support; whereas in the case of Click-to-Donate, you choose when you want to "feel good fuzzy feelings" about helping the finances of the foundation, many times when you would not have the financial wherewithal to help. If the advertisers know their beans, they would in my view chose to be presented to the potential customer, not as an annoyance - even if consented to - but as a feel-good thing chosen deliberately and ever felt so warm and fuzzy about, as being that much better a person to even look at adverts, just so that wikipedia could be upkept.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

I propose no changes on this subject at the board level. Which is to say: without overwhelming community support for it I'm not in favor of advertising on the projects. I'm not fundamentally opposed to advertising, and I think the question is worth considering, but I don't currently come out in favor of it.

I know we are potentially leaving millions upon millions of dollars on the table, and that good things could be done with that money; I don't think "nonprofit" has to be synonymous with "small budget" or mean unbusinesslike management. On the other hand, if we got $100 million tomorrow, I don't think we would be ready for it. The organization can only scale up so fast. Right now we have enough money coming in to accomplish almost everything we're ready to handle.

Ignoring the legal and accounting implications of advertising, philosophically I think we ought to be publicly-supported. One reason is that if we cannot get public support in the form of donations, that tells me that we're failing to be valuable enough to them that they think we ought to be supported (an idea I've heard from other nonprofit leaders). For another, it makes a statement to the world that we don't have advertisements: it reinforces the idea that we're trying not to be influenced by advertising and commercial considerations over other goals.

The other question is how much ads would really help us: what if we ran ads, and editors and readers flocked to an ad-free fork? The value of the work that people are putting in to the projects, voluntarily, for whichever reasons they choose to participate, is staggering: it's possible that ad money could leave us no better off. Certainly the nature of the project's development would be very different if volunteer editors left and were replaced by hired staff.

I have no opposition to opt-in though I think the effects would be so small as to be not worth it. I also would rather see ads than, say, the project shutting down. But I don't think we will be forced into that choice.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

The only way I would ever consider refraining from vigorously opposing any proposal to seek commercial advertising revenue, would be in the event of an imminent financial collapse of the Foundation. Once you accept corporate largess in exchange for allowing them to showcase their lies (in my experience, approximately ninety percent of advertising is an attempt to persuade people, through various forms of deception, to harm their own interests, so that others will be enriched at their expense), you become dependent on them for financial sustenance, as it were. That lifeline can then be withdrawn at will, and the threat of so doing, hanging over the an institution's head like the proverbial sword of Damocles, can be used to transform that institution into a marionette for biased corporate interests. I do not want to see Wikipedia, for example, risk being reduced to the online reference equivalent of FAUX News.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

To summarize my opinion, there are more negative points than positive points in implementing paid advertising on the Wikimedia projects. Nobody likes ads, so adding them to the Foundation's projects could scare many users away. The Foundation's main goal is to provide the world with knowledge free of charge. Some of our current partners would change their opinion of the Foundation if we implemented ads.

As soon as we permitted ads, we would no longer neutral, and that is one of the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. So by doing this, we would not only create problems between us and our partners, but we would also break one of our own policies. Thinking on the positive side, we could make large sums of money. So technically we should decide which route would have the greatest positive effect in the long term.

I thought of a solution that would be less damaging. We could say that, once someone registers an account, the ads would be removed whilst the user was logged in. This would also have the effect of more registered users. The problem still remains; we would be breaking our own policy. We would still lose some users, but less than in the original scenario. We should only implement ads if it is financially essential. I believe that the board shouldn't make the decision, the community should, because it would mainly affect them. So from the above statement, I would go with 2.3, and 2.2 in case of an emergancy.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Ads would detract from the utility of the projects, and they would feed a spiral of dependence on advertising revenue. The WMF is already experiencing a similar spiral: it is taking in significantly more money than is needed for basic maintenance of the projects, but has not begun to set up an endowment to insure against a financial crisis. We must not wake up day to find that we are pressed for resources and must pursue 'last resort' measures - we can make certain this does not happen. This should be a top priority before taking on new initiatives and recurring costs. As a Trustee, I would work to ensure that we are never pressured into adopting ads.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

I think the notion of paid advertising is sufficiently anathematic to the Foundation's purpose that I can say that I would virtually never support it. I would support cutting back staffing levels, putting off hardware upgrades, and all manner of other things before I would support the adoption of advertising. You can put me as close to option 3 as a reasonable man can be, I think.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Well, I think this would be like "ringing the end of the idea of wikipedia". I personally would first ask the Community, while showing them the real facts and asking them for their opinion. If the Community would agree (but I think, they dont't!) - why not. But this would never be my own choice.

In a time of a theatening bankruptcy I would ask the Community (and I think most users wouldn't be disturbed by it) if a special Button in the left frame named "supported by" (or so) would be tolerable, where all persons or even business companies were listed which support wiki.

But that is really a good question - where to cut down the expenses in such a hard time? ... just one answer "where it's least aching" (according to the opinion of the Community).

Ting Chen (Wing)

Also this question was asked last year. For me the answer remain unchanged: The community should decide.

Fundraising increase

The Board of Trustees has recently released its 2009-2010 Annual Plan regarding finances and other such matters. Quoting from that report, "In 2009-10, the Wikimedia Foundation will increase revenues by 43% compared with 2008-09, for a total of $10.6 million." Do you feel that raising that much money is feasible, and if so, how can the Foundation accomplish it? NuclearWarfare 21:51, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

Absolutely. $10.6 million, in all honestly, is not that much money. It's the capital improvement budget for a medium sized church. The foundation will have to step up in direct marketing for fundraising (i.e. email, direct mail) if it hopes to raise this kind of money. I have experience from both a non-profit and 2 political campaigns in this area, and look forward to leveraging my experiences to help the Foundation in the future.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

I uphold the professionalization of funding capture in the Community with the budgeting for remunerated tenures. These roles are excellent initiatives to ensure revenue is secured in our constrained global economic climate. If anything, the Global Fiscal Crunch (if it exists) necessitates creative engagement and pointed focus of our Community with activities directed through the lens of the remunerated tenures. As stated to Signpost, these fundraising skills should be captured in the Community and there should be programs of community capacity building where grant application writing and benefactors are prospected and groomed throughout the Community. Making all Community members aware of a bequest as part of their last will and testament should flow into Communications' directives. Moreover, hardcopies of WikiBooks and Wikiversity syllabus and other Project resources should be made available throughout our World where there is currently minimal access to the Internet. We should actively engage a sense of ownership of the Projects in all of our Earth's children, to empower them and to equalize our Global Community and to commandeer children into the sustainable growth and support of the Wikimedia Projects.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

Yes, this is certainly feasible. A 43% increase in revenue coming to $10.6 million is far more feasible for us than an organization with a $400 million budget. We could achieve that with one nice big grant. The Foundation has been quite proactive about pursuing new partnerships and opportunities over the past year, and I think it is entirely possible that we reach that goal. As a board member, I hope to help expand these opportunities. As I mentioned in my candidate statement, I've been working to help build relationships and opportunities with like-minded organizations. I intend to continue this work as a board member, to achieve growth in accordance with our mission. More grants equals more programming, and more opportunities for us to bring knowledge to the world.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

Yes, it is feasible. We're not in big parent organization, fixing guaranteed and immutable budgets, so we can raise more, we can raise less, we have to base operational decisions on that too. Still, when it comes to fundraising, one has to understand, that we have huge audience, and only minor part in it gets who we are - a non-profit, a charity, everyone else thinks we're yet another dot-com house with huge staff. Fundraisers are not just trying to grab money from our visitors, fundraising is way more concentrating on making people understand us, and believe in us. So if we see it not as monetary goal, but as a mind-share goal, we sure want it to be much higher. There are also other sources of revenues - foundations will give us, because we can prove how great the impact can be. Commercial organizations will give us, because their customers want us. Decline in trust, in mind-share or in impact are nothing we should aim for - though of course, any of that may happen (as well as people simply having less money to share).

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

When you consider that in addition to the funding raised through the fundraiser large extra amounts have been raised, it demonstrates that the money is there. I would like to see more money raised outside of the Anglo-American world; ideally we would raise 50% of our revenues elsewhere.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Yes, it is feasible. No, it is not necessary or prudent at this time. According to the most recent released Form 990, the Wikimedia Foundation spends only 31.6% of its incoming revenues on the "program services" that are the reason-for-being of any non-profit charity. More credible charities like Doctors Without Borders and the United Way and the Red Cross spend 80% to 100% of their revenues on program services. The Wikimedia Foundation lacks credibility in my eyes, because it is squirreling away excess capital into a bank account, and simply expanding staff for the sake of expanding a personnel empire that cyclically feeds back a sense of "legitimacy" for those who have spawned the empire. I believe it was two years ago, the WMF needed to spend only $900,000 on server and bandwidth technology in order to keep the projects running. We should be choking on our own vomit when we see it forwarded that the WMF needs over $10 million to safely operate and assure its future security. Voters who are sickened by these facts are welcome to vote for me, to send a message to the bloated Foundation.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Even if this increment does not fit with my expectations, there are two things which we must not ignore: 1) WMF is growing all the time. New users are joining this project daily. As a result of the global interest that WM has awaken in people, more software and hardware are required. This obviously demands more investments. Change is unavoidable. Three years ago we were a relatively small community and now we have doubled our resources and we are receiving more attention from the Media. 2) We can cope with this situation without forgetting, however, that economy is facing hard times worldwide. Perhaps, I would lower the quantity of the planned donations. How would I achieve this goal? For instance, in the Catalan wikipedia project we are discussing with other cultural entities about the possibility of joining forces and work side by side. The purpose is promising. I would suggest entering into agreements and long-term negotiations with other projects as one possible solution.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

We are in the midst of a global recession. A 43 percent increase in fund raising during the 2009-10 period is almost certainly not a plausible goal, alas. Charitable donations of all kind are at something of a historical nadir here in the USA, and I suspect similar conditions prevail around most of the industrialized world. Such an ambitious target is, I fear, sorely in need of revision. A ten percent increase would, in my view, constitute a substantial success, given the dreadful financial climate that prevails at present.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

Yes, anything is possible, if we work effectively together. By creating more partnerships and reaching out to under-represented geographical regions it would be more attainable. As I have mentioned in my candidate statement, by expanding to Africa I think that we could get a large amount of fresh financial support. Africa not only has large industries, it also has Wikimedia users who could donate. Another important factor to consider is, we are currently in a global recession, and users may cut back their spending on non-essentials, such as donations. Last year, we would not have reached our fund-raising goal if Jimbo didn't make that last minute appeal, so what would make this year any different?

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Yes, it is feasible today to raise this much money. We should not rely on this being true forever, and should recognize public goodwill and participation as the most important resource we can cultivate.

We should know what we intend to use funds for and put funds raised to good use. When people see how their support can make an impact on the problems that they care about, they will have reason to donate time and money to the Foundation.

As to ways to raise more funds : we have only received contributions from a small portion of the billion readers who enjoy Wikimedia and use it daily. We need to show our audience that they share ownership of this collaboration, and can work through the Projects to make their own dreams a reality. Non-editors need ways to participate over time. Editors struggling with a limitation of the site or community need ways to express these limitations as challenges to overcome, and to help realize the solutions needed.

Many recent priorities and grant proposals have been developed with minimal public input - this does not scale, and detracts from the sense of shared ownership of the direction of the projects. And while we have drawn in a few million in grants, that is small compared to the scope of our mission. Outreach to potential supporters, and the organization of community priorities and needs, should be encouraged at the chapter and individual level.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

As I mentioned in my candidate statement, I am very concerned by this figure. The WMF had trouble making its fundraising goal during last year's campaign (remember the last minute appeal from Jimbo?) and on its face this seems extraordinarily optimistic. In the previous question many of the candidates, including me, have expressed resistance to the idea of paid advertising, but I can think of no surer way to drive the WMF towards accepting such advertising than through overoptimistic revenue projections that then become structurally part of the budget in such a way that either paid advertising or serious disruption to operations is inevitable. I cannot state categorically at this point that the projection is an unreasonable one, but I would not be an easy sell to convince me otherwise.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Well, I'm not a Board-member, yet, so I didn't have to work with that. It sounds realistic. If You glance at the statistics ist's most important to motivate the normal user to make a Donation for wiki to survive. But anyway, when You are are a "non-profit"-organisation, You have to work with the money You have, and not with the money "You hope to get"!!!

Ting Chen (Wing)

To be honestly. When I ran for the election last year I didn't think that we would be able to collect so much money. When last year we set the goal of 6M I doubted that it is achievable. I am happy that I am wrong. I think our gaol this year is again very ambigious and I hope that we will arrive it. I know that in the financial planning the Foundation has a fallback plan. There are certain projects that are scheduled after this year's donation campaign, and can be reduced if we don't arrive our goal.

Spending increase

The Board of Trustees has recently released its 2009-2010 Annual Plan regarding finances and other such matters. Quoting from that report, "We plan core operational spending of $8.1 million (up 53% from 2008-09), and additional spending of $1.3 million on non-recurring priority projects. Total planned spending in 2009-10 will be $9.4 million." Do you feel that increasing spending by about 50% is wise? Please elaborate. NuclearWarfare 21:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

Yes, I believe it is. Spending should be dictated first by the goals of the project and second by realistic assessment of fundraising capabilities. If we believe that we can raise the money, and I believe that we can, than it is reasonable to plan to spend that money.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

NuclearWarfare (biting nick btw), honestly I need coaching to really comprehend the Annual Plan, Financial Statement and Form 990. Though I have experience with such documentation, the process flows and the real hidden and obscured things to query are still unknowns to me. When I was reading through the Q & A which forms an engaged Executive Summary, I felt full confidence in the mindful decisions the Board has endorsed and sealed in the Annual Plan. The Plan itself is high-level intelligible to me but I would like the capacity to interrogate and critically penetrate it further. Spending money wisely to ensure the integrity and sustainability of the Foundation and Projects is sagely sound even in this constrained financial climate.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

The question is meaningless without knowing what the spending is on. If the spending is in line with our mission, and is supported by our income, and the focus is on efficient ways that we can fulfill our goals, what would be unwise about it? If the intent of the question was to worry about whether we will be spending too much money, this is a forward looking annual plan, that can be reevaluated by the staff and board as needed. If our revenues decrease in the future, we can adjust spending down. We can defer purchases of hardware as much as possible, delay plans for expansion and growth, implement a spending freeze -- all of these are ways we can compensate if we have budgetary problems. However, you should also look at the benefit we get from the increased spending. Increases in programming and outreach both fulfill our goal (which it is the board's responsibility as trustees to ensure that we do) and increase our visibility and credibility with our partners, and spur greater grants and more income streams for us. In short, by spending money on programming, we'll be both performing our mission and working towards ensuring future financial stability for the foundation. That's the wise road to take.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

This question can be split into multiple ones - Should we do more work? Is it worth the costs? Can we raise resources needed for that? If you answer yes to all of those three questions (and, we did), the spending increase is wise. This is quite agile organization, and we may reduce some of our activities, depending on project or fundraising effectiveness. Do note, there are simply mandatory spending increases, and lots of areas where people crave for more attention. Now, if we're able to be better, we should try that, that is certainly wise too.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

I feel that additional spending is necessary. We have projects that are disfunctional because of technical issues. There is a lot of work that would help us realise our aim. In the amount of money to be raised there is also the question what amount of money can we absorb. The projected growth is ambitious, but so are our ambitions.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

As I mentioned above, according to the most recent released Form 990, the Wikimedia Foundation spends only 31.6% of its incoming revenues on the "program services" that are the reason-for-being of any non-profit charity. More credible charities like Doctors Without Borders and the United Way and the Red Cross spend 80% to 100% of their revenues on program services. A huge portion of the revenues (alluded to by another fellow Board candidate) are being squirreled away into a savings bank account, ostensibly for some amorphous "rainy day" sometime in the future. As far as I know, this money is not even earmarked for an official "endowment" fund. A savings account in a bank is not what today's donors want their money going toward. The Wikimedia Foundation needs to address this lack of credibility in their spending ratios before we ever support or endorse an increase in such lopsided spending priorities.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

As I have already said above, new times require new measures. If saving is important, having a good administration is essential. If we are growing that fast it is evident that more money investments may be needed with the coming of the years. I will not talk about cyphers because it is something that has been treated before by other fellow candidates. On the contrary, I will focus on alternative ways of management. More transparence would be desirable. If there were a considerable reduction in donations, we always have the chance of lessening some of our doings. By way of illustration, the Enciclopèdia Catalana is written in Catalan, a language spoken just by 7 million people, and they have an annual revenue of more than 60 M€. All in all, I believe that budgets are growing at a quite logical rate if we bear in mind some factors that have been quoted out in previous paragraphs.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

No, I don't think such a level of increased expenditures would constitute a wise course at this time. The next couple of years, at least, are almost certain to be lean times, in so far as fund raising is concerned. Overly optimistic projections for increased revenue should be scaled back, and new planned expenditures similarly reduced in scope, in light of the financial climate we face with regard to the reality of a global economic recession.

One of my fellow candidates has noted how only 31.6 percent* of Foundation expenditures are directed towards the actual "program services." I find it very difficult to understand how that can be considered reasonable by any person, and would like to see that percentage doubled (at least), primarily at the expense of non-"program services."

• Please note: In actuality, out $3,207,599 in total expenditures (as reported in 2008: please see that year's Form 990) $2,128,862 were spent on "program services," which is well over sixty percent of the total. Thus that 31.6 percent figure, which I made the error of citing, is not very useful, and certainly not as damning as I'd been led to believe. I've chosen to leave my original remarks intact, so as to call attention to the decidedly questionable relevance of that 31.6 percent figure being cited by one of my fellow candidates.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

I have three major concerns with the spending projections.

First, I can't recall any public discussion about the priorities behind these changes, the implications for the projects (since they have implications for everything from content to community governance), or whether there were other key issues being left out. As a Board member, I would make facilitating that type of discussion about impact and opportunity costs part of every major new project.

Second, these projections are growing faster than the projected fundraising increase, and most of the increases are permanent - they are recurring costs for staff and infrastructure. If they global economy were to tank further next year, this would put the Foundation in the position of being overcommitted with nothing in the bank. We should be basing permanent increases on projections more than a year out.

Third, there is no plan at all for an endowment or long-term financial insurance, and only a brief assessment of what to do in case of a significant shortfall. As a community, we have talked about an endowment for years, and now have the funds and public interest to begin one. And yet, we continue to put off planning for the future.

The Foundation should be planning to offset new costs in the future through partnerships, distribution of work, and improved effectiveness of community efforts. In particular, it should identify a set of core services that must be maintained no matter what (including hardware, bandwidth, dumps and backups), and work to minimize the recurring costs related to them.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

This goes hand in hand with your previous question, which I suspect was your intention. Overoptimistic revenue projections are dangerous in themselves, but they don't become deadly until you start basing your spending plans around them. Ideally, I would like to see as close to a one year lag as possible between revenue and expenditure levels (at least at this stage of the organization's growth), such that money is not budgeted to be spent until we have some track record indicating that we can raise it. As with the last question, I'm not in a position to make any categorical statements, but I share what I interpret to be your concern on the matter.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Well, I'm not a Board-member, yet, so I didn't have to work with that. It sounds realistic. If You glance at the statistics ist's most important to motivate the normal user to make a Donation for wiki to survive. But anyway, when You are are a "non-profit"-organisation, You have to work with the money You have, and not with the money "You hope to get"!

Ting Chen (Wing)

Yes, it is. Actually, if we have the resources, we can use double, trippel or ten fold of that. The following are just a few of the points that are urgently needed to be done: We need a redundant fall back data base center, as soon as possible. We need to further improve our software. We need to further develop our software for mobile use. We need resources to facilitate and help organizational growths in areas where we are weak at the moment. We need resources to increase support of the community we already have in areas where we are now strong. We need more resources to globally secure our brand (just as an example of how urgently this is, a chinese company had tried to or had already registered the Chinese Name of Wikipedia 维基百科). We need more resources to protect our content from being stolen by companies who don't care at all about free content or copy right. This list can go on for a long while. So, yes, we definitely need more money. The most important thing is that the increase in our budget would result in better community and project benefit.

Paid editing

Is there a place for paid editing on Wikimedia projects? If so, should the WMF play a role in ensuring that material from paid editors benefits the projects? Warofdreams 13:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

No. However, I do not believe that this is an issue that should fall under the purview of the Board of Trustees, and I would prefer to use Community Consensus to solve this issue.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Warofdreams thank you. If editors are being paid or given kickbacks from Third Parties extraneous to the Community to progress certain articles, well that is an arrangement of which we may not be directly privy unless it is discoverable through inuitive engagement of reporting, for example. If paid editing is within the auspice of the Community, then I uphold the necessity for the process driver to focus the completion of a Triple Bottom Line impact statement and Lifecycle Costing as part of the process. This process subsumes a declaration of conflict of interests, risk management statement particularly in the social and financial aspect of the triune. If articles have been iterated through the services of a paid editor, this should be clearly evident and benefactor clearly identified and branded and the reading community, our audience, made aware of this. Audit trails and smoke signals: rigorous transparency is the key to integrity. Administrators or any editor with special privileges in the Community should not be a paid as a golden rule: this should be the sole preserve of the bread & butter editor.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

I do not believe that paid editing will be achieved en masse without sacrificing NPOV. While it "could" be done, and possibly has already been done, it has been on a small scale that I do not believe is representative of what would occur in a larger-scale environment. However, that being said, I do not believe that it is the board's decision to make. This is a community level decision, and while the board has an interest in ensuring that our projects maintain credibility, the implementation of that belongs to the community and the staff.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

In plenty of fields, where intellectual property is primary value (including technology), being paid by one company and volunteering on another project even off working hours can still be seen as a paid contribution (there exist 24/7 IP agreements, etc). There is a line of 'paid editing', that traverses domains of having a job and being a volunteer, doing such activities during spare hours at work or of course, having it as primary cash-bringing job activity. These different levels of paid contributions can have way different pressures on the rest of community and either improve or distort the balance of overall project.

I think our communities so far managed to handle self-regulation quite well, and allowing them to do that further is quite possible. Of course, WMF should follow and understand the situation and balance, and have arguments for both sides ready, but definitely, nobody wants to destroy our current active editor world, just to watch power-gaming by cash-based shops. I wouldn't support outright ban on paid editing, but having way more elaborate code of conduct in such cases would be welcome, as well as decent conflict of interest declarations. Once conflicts of interest are way better handled, there'd be way more space for better collaboration and communication.

Even though it can be seen as project decision, organization gets to deal with interested parties (they do call office, they do write emails), so of course, organization should take part in disclosing such needs and discuss them with editing community.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

Paid editing is happening. So by condemning it you run it underground. It is best when it is required that people have to indicate what payments they receive to do what. This allows for an analysis for a bias that is entered. I have been involved in editing for money, the intent and the procedures involved were known to the people that needed to be aware of this.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Most agitators who weigh in on either side of this issue don't quite understand how small the market actually is. The volume of "formal" contracted paid editing is extremely small, as evidenced by the Reward Board, where simple requests for content-for-pay go unheeded all the time. More pernicious within Wikimedia projects are the thousands of casual "spammy" links that help to juice the marketability of outside sites run by self-promoters.

I happen to be an experienced paid editor of content. When I was under contract with a person or corporation to write a new article about said person or corporation, I had very little interest in presenting an "advocacy" position on their behalf. Rather, success is measured in durability within Wikipedia, so my highest priority was...

How do I write (and publish) this article in such a way that it passes WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, etc., while simultaneously NOT DRAWING THE ATTENTION of paid editing critics?

Once I mastered this technique, the articles that resulted were bland, not puff pieces, quite encyclopedic, and 100% durable -- with surprisingly little follow-up maintenance, plus lasting appreciation of my clients.

That's why I believe paid editing critics are prone to frame such workers as "paid shills" and other likewise pejorative terms. In order to rally the mob, critics of paid editing demonize the paid editing effort -- because it is potentially, in fact, so non-sinister in its undetectability. My paid content was and remains virtually indistinguishable from the other content found on Wikipedia, except for the fact that, perhaps, it is of a higher encyclopedic and "neutral" quality than some other new articles might be.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Again, it is something I do not contemplate right now. I know it is quite difficult to avoid people asking if we are paid for working here because it is a job like any other in life. Nevertheless, we are volunteers. I personally took this as a hobby at the very beginning. Then, I felt that I was doing something which must be useful for other people. For example, I have written eleven featured articles in two different languages. I did it because I liked it and that is the point we must not miss in the way. There is no better payment that someone sends you a message saying that you helped him/her in school by writing a good article. Therefore, offering payment to the editors is risky and undesirable. Apart from this, there are many editors who nowadays invest their time in the Wikimedia projects. That means that all of them should be paid for doing what they do? I think it should be the opposite. Maybe, some unpaid editors would leave the project. I repeat, priority must be given to the contents, not to the editors.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

I don't think this is the board's role to decide, though I'll give some comments on it. The main problem with paid editing is that it introduces bias (on top of whatever bias you began with); it's not just the money itself but the fact that the relationship between the editor and the subject is different, leading to a conflict of interest. Can you engage honestly with other community members having a different perspective when you're acting as a proxy for a party that has a great interest in presenting a particular view? It is possible, but it would require near superhuman impartiality.

In practical terms, I think there is no way to know in most cases the amount of paid editing that goes on; should the projects act more harshly toward those who have been honest (or foolish) enough to be open about it? I don't know, and it's not the board's decision to make. Decisions like this should be made by the community of editors. The WMF role should be to insist that neutrality remain a core principle of the projects; how the editing community chooses to implement that is a task separate from WMF.

I can see a limited role for paid projects sponsored by WMF, but very limited—it changes the community dynamics when paid people and unpaid people are working side-by-side (there is plenty of literature on this) and anything that reduces the motivation of volunteers should be handled with extreme caution. Experiments in prizes or bounties such as the Greenspun illustration project have been disappointing. I can see offering money for work that volunteers aren't motivated to do in the first place, or niche projects, but these are probably better done at a local level by chapters.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

If an article is good, I don't care whether someone got paid to write it. If an article is garbage, it likewise doesn't interest me that the person who wrote it, did so for free. I'm interested in quality. Concern over motives strikes me as quaint. I have never been paid to write and/or edit an article, but I still write and/or edit articles for reasons that are less than entirely altruistic; I focus on articles that are of interest to yours truly. How is that objectively different from focusing on articles that are of interest to a client? With that said, I do believe that when a person rises above the level of an editor, and becomes an admin, or otherwise a formal cog within the bureaucracy at any of the WikiMedia Foundation's projects, it would then constitute a conflict of interest for such a person to continue to write and/or edit articles on behalf of paying clients. I am in favour of the WMF Board of Trustees enacting a formal policy to that effect, and seeing to it that such a policy would be vigorously enforced.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

Yes, these contributions should be handled just like any other contribution. We might get knowledge added to our projects never had before, and current knowledge could be improved. But we should also remember that paying people to contribute to any of the Wikimedia projects will result in a conflict of interest. The Wikimedia community should decide on this subject, not the Foundation. I suggest that we should only pay experts who contribute knowledge that no other editor has, because Wikimedia is all about volunteering, to create a world of free knowledge.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Dealing with conflicts of interest and keeping them from imposing a systemic bias on the projects is an important topic, but it is a community decision. The WMF mission does not say much about the mechanisms used to help people develop and disseminate educational material, and individual community projects have tried variations on the theme of sponsorship, bounties, and content-specific grants, all of which skirt the boundaries of paid editing. The Foundation does not have a role beyond ensuring that its core principles are supported by the projects, and that individual communities remain empowered to make these decisions for themselves. This implies a possible mediating role as well: If a grantor (such as Beck or Greenspun) wishes to sponsor a contest or bounty system to encourage contribution to a specific community, the Foundation should be willing to serve as a financial intermediary, but only if the project has the support of that community.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

First, I don't think that this is properly a Foundation-level decision. I would much rather see this resolved at the community level. Second, in a pseudonymous community any restriction on paid editing is nigh on impossible to enforce, as is virtually any other type of editing under a conflict-of-interest. In fact, I don't see any reason to treat paid editing any differently from other editing under a conflict-of-interest: best practice is, if you're going to do it, make sure you're upholding core content policies, and if material you add becomes contentious step away and let non-conflicted editors deal with it. But, in summary, unless we're going to completely revamp our approach to anonymity and pseudonymity, any effective restriction on paid editing - especially one set out from the Foundation - is a non-starter.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Well, I already answered similar questions. If You want to introduce such really news things, You have to ask the Community. - Otherwise You loose the most valuable good of wiki - the Community!

Ting Chen (Wing)

If some individual or some organization pay someone to edit Wikimedia projects, we have no possibility to prevent them to do so, and in most cases we probably would not be able to find out that this is done under payment. The community had until now controled the quality of the content that are contributed to our project, paid or volunteered. The community had done a great work here and I don't see the reason why the Foundation should change this.

Functions of the Foundation

Right now the Foundation (at the very basic level) does the following: (1) hosts all websites; (2) helps to develop the software; (3) raises money to pay for hosting; (4) organizes Wikimania. How do you see this list, say, three or five years from now? Renata3 00:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

I hope it does not change. I think any increases in scope will serve to hurt the heart of the project, community consensus.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Renata3, I would like further clarity regarding this question to fully comprehend your intention. That said, I interpret your question to be asking for additional areas of growth and/or consolidation of programs of the Foundation and Projects. I value the integrity of keeping these activities in house as we do them, and are seen to do them, well. I would like though to reinforce a model of financial independence for the Foundation as I have intimated elsewhere. So as not to compromise the NFP nature of the Foundation, I recommend we establish a committee to investigate the establishment of a Benevolent Society or Bequest that specifically feeds financial injections into the Foundation, Projects and specific programmes and leaves the Community to focus upon other activities.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

The list is already significantly larger than that. The foundation, in addition to supporting the website and wikis, also participates in offline actions. For instance, last week I helped participate in a Wikipedia Academy event at the National Institutes of Health, to encourage more medical experts and scientists to improve our coverage of medical articles. It was an outstanding event, and our projects will be much stronger for it. So, the Foundation does programming things like that. They also provide legal support for the projects through the general counsel (Mike Godwin), as well as communications management through Jay Walsh, both activities I've been honored with the privilege of assisting with. These are things that in the implementation of the foundation's core mission, I do not see changing. Things like software development, Wikimania organization, hosting etc., all will still be there in five years, though certainly with evolving technology and a growing organization they may be presented differently.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

I'd classify foundation activities in other way - it supports communication, legal and technology needs of collaborative communities, and lets the world to know about it.

Fundraising is not primary foundation goal, and Wikimania is just one way to provide better volunteer communication. So yes, technology includes both infrastructure/platform (which can still improve into many directions - reliability, performance, processing power for new features), as well as actual software changes (infinite development paths :).

Then we have few more areas, internal communication (ranging from mailing lists to chapters to meetings), and as well, external communication (or outreach) - besides sustaining and growing our communities, we definitely want to have the product used everywhere. And one more area, is mixture of multiple ones - technology, internal, external communication, with a flavor of legal - is what can we do to nurture the overall quality of content (and perception of quality as well).

Our major vehicle to achieve anything we want or dream of is by having the world understand what we do and why we do it (it is what makes us special), and I think in next five years we'll see foundation and chapters being key in that role.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

As it is this list is incomplete. In five years I see more involvement with educational and GLAM organisations. I also expect collaboration with other types of organisations that share our ideals.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Honestly? Unchanged.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

I do not envisage substantial changes. Apart from the basic categorizations you have wisely proposed, I think that making decisions is also among the main duties of the Board of Trustees. However, since technology evolves too fast, we may consider the fact of introducing new contents in alternative ways of production. On the other hand, printed materials have been largely discussed within the Hispanic community as one possible solution to people who lack of enough resources.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

(4) Wikimania is not run by Foundation. (3) Unsurprisingly fundraising is going to remain Foundation business. (2) This is a field of activity relating to Wikimedia, which has significantly evolved with time passing. I see that evolution continuing, in ever surprising directions. Being by nature surprising, these developements are not ones I can anticipate, but of course they will bear to be carefully scrutinized. Historically a significant decision not to claim ownership of the MediaWiki software for the Foundation was taken very narrowly (not many people know just how narrowly). It is natural that the Foundation would perpetually have a strong interest in ensuring that questions of licencing, format encumbrance and/or functionality of software favor the Foundations mission being accomplished. That will stay a constant, and should guide all decisions. As long as the needs and limitations stemming from that mission are taken into accord, the question of who precisely administers the developement work of software is a secondary one. (1) Wikimedia only hosts the "production" websites and only the majority of those. It is conceivable (though not near term at all likely) that at some stage with the coming of the GRID, much hosting shall be more distributed. We should never turn away free hosting which is offered, if the evaluation is made that the hosting is reasonably stable and can not be used as leverage in any way. The mere "display" of Wikimedia content is increasingly going to be worked by semantic search engine etc. like powerset.com, Answers.com and Wolfram(pipe)Alpha. -- Cimon Avaro 07:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

That is a very basic level and I don't know that I would agree with your categorization, so it's hard to answer this question. You didn't include one that I consider important enough to be in the basic category, which is making strategic decisions. On one level it doesn't seem like much, but as it turns out the answers to "who are we?" and "what do we do?" are not easy to agree upon. I think that's going to continue to be important in the next several years, which is part of the reason for the strategic planning process. It also maintains the organizational infrastructure -- legal, accounting, etc. -- which I'm not sure you count under another category or not.

To try to answer the question in the spirit that you asked it, I think figuring out how we reach people beyond the website will be a large category. Already we've been figuring out how we can get onto mobile devices, DVDs, and other ways that don't require reliable internet access; if we're serious about reaching more people, especially people not well-served by currently available materials, that should be part of it. The implementation may end up being largely by partners of the WMF but forming and managing those relationships still should be a major category of thinking and planning.

However, I think the basic structure will not change much.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

I don't envision substantial changes in this regard.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Let me look five years out, as that is a good timeframe for reflection. I agree with Domas that the Foundation has a role supporting the projects with communication, a legal entity, technology and facilitation, somewhat different from your proposed list. It also shares development of long-term planning with the community.

Legal support : The WMF provides a non-profit framework for accepting donations and responding to legal challenges. It engages in global agreements such as grants and partnerships on behalf of the projects. It owns and maintains physical infrastructure.

In five years, I hope to see the establishment of additional safeguards on top of the protection provided by the Foundation, from an endowment to long-term partnerships with international bodies.

Communication : the WMF communicates the mission of the projects, makes materials available for local PR, and amplifies the work of smaller projects so that it becomes better known. It also organizes internal communication about the Foundation's work

In five years, I hope to see the local communication networks of chapters expanding to cover most regions and languages of the world; a thriving community of public speakers and event planners for Wikimedia, helping to organize events at every university and conference about global knowledge; a network of wiki clubs for students of all ages who want to help contribute their research, news, photography, scanning and proofreading, and translation efforts to make human knowledge more accessible.

All of the above should serve to take on some of the role of today's press releases and publicity efforts. I hope to see a stronger focus by the WMF on communicating what it does directly, and facilitating conversations and feedback around that.

Technology: The WMF today supports Wikimedia hosting, MediaWiki development, new features for individual Wikimedia projects, and maintains the primary data center used to store, update, backup, and provide dumps and snapshots of the Projects.

In five years, I hope to see the WMF supporting an independent MediaWiki foundation or technical body, as that platform already has a life of its own equal in scope almost to Wikimedia; a more redundant hosting model the majority of which is not primarily paid for by the Foundation and hosted in a single data center; a widely distributed dump, backup, and research network with active Wikimedia Project archives at major libraries around the world; and more active effort put into expanding and enriching the technical community, with full-scale testbeds for independent groups to test the impact of new code on a large wiki, active classification and review of extensions, and ways to visualize major competing priorities so they are recognized even when they don't yet have a place in the official roadmap.

Facilitation: The WMF today serves as a facilitator for large-scale community work, prioritizatio and planning, from technical coordination to mission building to communication and outreach.

In five years, I would like to see this sort of facilitation supported more explicitly within the communities, and made part of the process of becoming an effective community. Today there is no obvious place or style guide for smaller projects to organize their list of needs and potential data and community partners. Unless someone can guide a new tool or collaboration from beginning to end, obviously good but large-scale ideas can sit without serious attention for years at a time. (e.g., designing tools and interfaces to support the structured-data needs of a major Project such as Wiktionary)

(As an aside, as others have noted, the Foundation does not run Wikimania; it provides significant support for it, but it also supports many other regional events, as a way to improve outreach and communication. I expect the number of such events will continue to grow, and their organization to slowly become more independent.)

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

I'm afraid that I have to reject the premise of the question, as I think your list of what the Foundation does is far narrower than the actual list, which includes (to throw a few random items that you missed on there) dealing with all legal issues related to its projects, setting out the objects of the projects, managing the OTRS teams, etc. But, in any event, I don't see any major change in the WMF's role in the next three to five years.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Chapters

What has each of you done to organize, develop or promote a national chapter in your country of residence? US based candidates should read "national" as a relevant portion of the country. Eclecticology 18:07, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

Since I joined Wikipedia, I have lived in 4 different cities in three different US States, and I'll be moving again next year, most likely to another state. So I unfortunately have not been able to focus my efforts on joining a local Wiki organization.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Eclecticology, not a bloodly lot I tell you. I have been focused on editing. Didn't you notice? *heheheheh* I was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Australian Chapter but I did not really appreciate what it was or what it meant or its function and purpose. In my naivette, I envisioned it as a social networking activity and though I contemplated going, I got all hesitant and didn't attend. I am going to repair my ignorance and seek to establish a relationship with my Chapter forthwith. Thank you for the chastening.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

I have been developing the Washington D.C. area chapter, and have helped to coordinate some of the D.C. area Wikimeetings, which we're now up to our 8th meeting. After some attempts to set it up as it's own organization, the D.C. area Wikimedians have generally expressed the opinion that a formal chapter with organized activity (in the vein of the NY chapter, for instance) is not really our "thing". We're much more of a social group, and many of us are already active in the NYC chapter. I've spoken with John Broughton as well as some of the DC Wikimedians, about the feasibility of forming a broader Northeastern U.S. chapter, that would include the entire region from D.C. and Northern Virginia, up to Boston. I'll be continuing to explore that concept at the next D.C. area chapter. As far as chapter-like activities, I've met with educational organizations and museums in the area to replicate the successes that other chapters (such as WM DE) have had in acquiring free content for the foundation, and have been largely successful so far.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

I participated in a tiny meeting (3h of train ride from our capital) where few relatively fresh community members were talking about establishing a chapter. Me and another old-timer noted that to form a chapter, one has to have plans what to do first, then talk about raising money, and not vice versa. So, effectively, we 'delayed' the initiative, until there's more volunteerism around non-editing activities. Of course, it was sad to see lack of real activities happening, but so it goes.

I have, though, talked a lot to media, parliament committees and party leaders, local student groups and activists about Wikimedia and collaboration at large (I had pro-bono PR company assisting with some of higher-profile activities).

So, I ended up doing plenty of chapter-like activities here, though I didn't see a chapter as mandatory vehicle at that time - and I'd believe it is better to have no chapter and plenty of volunteers, rather than failing chapter damping down activities.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

I have been been involved in setting up the Dutch chapter. I am involved in encouraging Dutch GLAM to partner with us.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

I have done nothing to support an official Wikimedia chapter in my area. However, I was moved to action by my disappointment with various unethical practices that permeate the Internet, and frequently the Wikimedia Foundation itself. So, I rallied a group of four founding trustees, and we established the Internet Review Corporation, a Florida non-profit. We now publish the weekly blog called Akahele, and it probably does as much to call attention to the need for improvements at the Wikimedia Foundation as any chapter organization might. I'm very proud of Akahele's output thus far, and I invite any interested Wikimedians to contribute by way of comments on existing blog posts, or writing your own post which we will make every effort publish if it is in line with our mission.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

I have been involved with more than one local chapter here in Spain. Even if we regrettably have not formalized one yet, it is true that this aim is alive and expecting to find its moment. You know, I am quite optimistic in this sense. I believe that we will have one national chapter if people keep on working on it. Furthermore, on the Catalan Wikipedia project, there have been many discussions about creating a local chapter for Catalan-speaking territories. We have entered into negotiations with neighbor chapters such as Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Italy. Following this line, positive results have been achieved as to cooperate one with each other. Agreements in this area are still under discussion but we are trying to do our best in order to surpass the present conditions. For instance, we are now evaluating the results of the Associació d’Amics de la Viquipèdia, a non-profit organization that aim to promote Wikimedia projects where Catalan is spoken as a first or second language. This is just the beginning but the premises over which we are working are very promising.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

I for a long time resisted acting in any way at all. Despite urgings from neighbouring region chapters activists that a Finnish Chapter should be organized "to support" the activities of the chapter in a neighbouring country. My objection to forcibly organizing such a chapter was entirely based on the perceived need to have the requisite critical mass. Now that there seems to be at least a credible possibility that a Finnish chapter will be a real organisation with a number of members sufficient to support a real functioning chapter - rather than an auxiliary body for some other countries chapter, or a mere playground of a handful of people who like to play big fish in a little pond - I have (dragging my heels <j/k>) consented to help them in every way, including joining the Board of Directors of the nascent chapter, and doing a sizeable amount of work in helping translate the bylaws of the chapter into an english version that can help admission by chapcom and the Foundation as a whole. As I said to the person who wanted a chapter to support the one they were involved with, I prefer the role of a facilitator, rather than one who forcibly drives things which don't have a solid foundation to build upon.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

I have been to most of the meetings of the New York chapter, and some events—I have also offered help and advice on the organizational side, though I may have to let the chapter's leadership speak to whether or not it has been of any use! (And as a member of the WMF board, I was very much in favor of approving the chapter, and subnational entities in general.) The Washington, DC area has a semi-active local meetup group, but no one has really made significant moves toward chapter formation rather than social events; however, as there is significant overlap in attendees and relatively easy travel, we may become part of the NY group. Several of us assisted with the recent Wikipedia Academy at the National Institutes of Health and we hope to do followup with them and other similar events in the future.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

I have had no involvement with any local chapter organizations, unfortunately.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

I founded the Boston Wikipedia meetup group, which has met regularly for the past 4 years. We tend to take part in fun social outreach events that engage the local community and remind them that Wikipedia makes the Internet not suck: we have run local campus and library events to promote Wikipedia and draw in new participants, and provided guest speakers for local library, law, and business classes. We have organized a few large local talks and events, and planned and staffed Wikimania 2006. The idea of a New England chapter comes up regularly, but we have not yet needed the formal structure or non-profit status. We have developed a broad base of support for Wikimedia projects with regional universities, student free culture groups, and non-profit advisors; and have been able to find sponsors and hosts for our projects around Boston.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

Very little. I "attended" an organizational meeting for Wikimedia Canada on Skype, but shortly after that I took a break from all things Wikimedia for a couple of months, and I haven't really delved back into it. I am still on the mailing list, though, and I'm following the discussions there. I may yet get back involved, if I see doing so as useful.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Age restrictions

What is your view on age restrictions, both at a foundation-wide and a community level? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 18:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 is the relevant law in this case, as the Wikimedia servers are based in the United States. The act prohibits a number of interactions over the internet with children under 13, and it effectively means that people under 13 can not edit Wikipedia, and certainly can not have a user page. Beyond that, I believe community consensus should be the deciding factor on this issue, although I hope no age restrictions ever occur, as I believe that everyone has something to add.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Juliancolton, I do not really understand the nature of your question in truth. All age restrictions would be legally determined, but any person regardless of age may edit anonymously. I do uphold a supported foray of Projects into schools, particularly through Wikiversity curriculum and syllabus to help children learn how to learn, learn how to research and learn how to determine quality and reputable sources from the questionable and those with covert agenda, employing the Projects as the substance of their endeavour.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

On a foundation level, age restrictions are a legal concern and thus fall under the General Counsel and Executive Director, not the board. On a community level, so long as any restrictions or rules required by the General Counsel are followed, they ought to be decided by the individual communities. Personally, I am in support of age restrictions for any flag or position involving sensitive or private data, or those that involve implied representation of the foundation (such as OTRS or the Communications Committee). This is not a concern since many of these positions require identification to the staff. For things like administrators, or positions created by the community not involving the above, I don't see the need. But as I have mentioned above, the decision is not within the purview of the board.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

There are legal reasons for some (especially when it comes to accessing private data, but even then, in certain cases exceptions could be made, if legalese allows it).

I don't see other reasons for age restrictions - there're lots of other factors contributing to maturity or sanity, and merits are way easier to judge in wiki-environments.

I can't imagine myself more enthusiastic about changing the world than at my teens - and I would never want to suggest that we should turn our backs to exactly that kind of participant, and I would always have preferred mentorship instead of bans. Gladly, I had amazing mentors in my past :-)

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

There are legal reasons for age restrictions. When people are of age, it does not make them necessarily any better suited.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

The Foundation should adhere to every letter of the law regarding age requirements for formal participation within the Foundation's board, staff, or volunteer system. Likewise, I assume that the Foundation must abide the various laws pertaining to how websites collect information about youngsters and distribute information to minors, such as COPPA and COPA. I defer to Mike Godwin, Wikimedia Foundation attorney, on these matters. At the community level, it is very important not to imagine that even precocious youth have the social and emotional development needed to thrive in a healthy way among adult strangers, just because they can proficiently edit wiki markup narratives about manga and video games. However, as long as the communities embrace this cancerous "anonymous editing, at all costs" policy, there is not much we can do about taking care around juveniles, in the way we might in the non-digital world.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

I have a clear position regarding age restrictions at a foundation level. Since there are many administrative tasks that have to be carried out by adults – as stipulated by law – there seems necessary to have a control on it. There are also other trusted charges such as that of being a checkuser. Access to privileged data requires a legal frame of guarantee that usually adults must endeavor. However, when talking about age restrictions at a community level, I am more comprehensive. For example, on the Spanish Wikipedia we have excellent administrators and bureaucrats who have not reached "legal" adulthood yet. Most of them are teenagers who have demonstrated that they are fully capacitated to mediate during a conflict of interests between other users and even take part at the Arbitration Committee.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

Laws are one thing, and have their field of application. But if a 10 year old has a bright idea about what the Foundation should do about some issue, and comes to the Board of Trustees with it; the Board would frankly be idiotic to not take it on board. Personally I have interacted quite healthily amongst adults from about the age of 8-9 onwards, happily having moved in circles where the adults around me haven't had any problems with accepting me as their equal or giving my insights fair consideration. Specifically I remember being present at the founding meeting of the first commercial radio station in Finland, being just barely over 18 years old, but still through the soundness of my thinking, perhaps affecting the way the company was structured in some ways, large or small. So having been there myself, I would certainly try to approach ideas as ideas, and not the messenger bringing them forth, or their seniority or lack of same. I think anyone who knows the first thing about how our communities operate, appreciates how egalitarian and blind to the factors that normally structure hierarchical layering in human society wikimedian communities are. Age is no exception. I think that is all that need be said.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

At a Foundation level, I support restrictions on certain positions, as I think people with access to privileged data and other such information need to be able to enter into agreements as adults and be held to consequences as adults. I have nothing against exceptionally precocious minors (particularly as I once was one myself!), but as there are very few restrictions on what they can do I don't see it as a problem. On a community level, my opinion here doesn't matter; it's up to the communities. (Though my personal opinion is that for most activity, going by claimed identity rather than observed behavior is pointless. On the internet, no one can tell for sure how old you are, but everyone can tell who is acting childish...)

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

I don't view age as a relevant consideration, other than with respect to a narrow handful of specific legal issues (I believe, for instance, that it would be unlawful, here in the USA, for a member of the WikiMedia Foundation Board of Directors to be less than 18 years of age).

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

I support allowing people to participate according to the merit of their work - their ability, maturity, and interest - and not their age. Within the Foundation, there are legal reasons for certain age restrictions. But aside from these I do not see a reason for them - we have much better ways to identify good contributors. At a community level, communities can set their own policies. But the best contributors to the projects have always included some who are quite young and some who are quite old.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

At the Foundation level, I'm all about age restrictions. Obviously Trustees are required by law to be eighteen, and I think that any position that involves the disclosure of a real life identity should require somebody able to accept the consequences of their actions (not merely from a moral/maturity perspective, which is not perfectly correlated with age, but from a legal perspective, which is). At the community level, as long as we're functioning pseudonymously, any age restrictions are going to be pointless. If I were to design the Wikimedia projects all over again I would probably require confirmed identities and proof of adulthood for positions of on-wiki trust, for the same reasons of accountability as I would for Foundation-level ones, but at this point that's obviously a non-starter.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

One more about Foundation income

What would you say if: 1) this Foundation could make a non-commercial deal with Google for, say $15 million a year to sustain itself and its goals, 2) make a deal with some of the world's micro-financing corporations in order to further the $100 dollar-laptop idea? - Art Unbound 20:07, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

I believe that the first idea is not necessary at this time. I believe that the second idea goes beyond the core competencies of the organization, and is best left to the groups who can specialize in laptop distribution.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Art Unbound, if Creative Commons have as yet been unable to define “non-commercial” I would require more substantive context to make an informed opinion as to what “non-commercial deal” constitutes. I personally favour the synchronicity of Google and Firefox as conduits of my iteration of Projects and favour strategic alliances and partnerships with collectives and communities of shared values and like minds.

Sternberg, thank you very much for your answer. What if our partnerships, that I favour alike with you, would be favourable to our partners in two or three years while letting Wikimedia down, and now I mean that it would prove impossible for us to keep up with voluntary action only? Would you agree with some sort of sponsorship? - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

There is not enough data to answer these questions. For instance, in question 1, what are we giving up for this deal? Google will not simply give us $15 million dollars and ask nothing in return. And even ignoring the contractual give-and-take, what are the hidden costs? Do we want to be associated with Google? From my time on OTRS, I can say we have floods of emails from people who don't understand that Wikimedia does not control Google's search process - they just assume that we do because we are at the top of many results. Would a deal with them further these misconceptions? What would be the end cost to our volunteer staff in man-hours spent combating that? So you can see there are many issues in this question that need further information to decide (and the ones I raised were just the first few that came to mind in about 30 seconds of thought.) Similarly while you describe a situation where we "gain" in the first example, (at least monetarily) the second is a mirror image. What would these micro-financing corporations want in return from us? They are for-profits, how do they make a return on our investment? How do we vet them? What are the tax implications of associating with for-profit organizations like that? Who safeguards that the money actually furthers the idea? Does this fit in line with our mission? Are there more effective ways we could achieve the goal? What are the PR implications? As you can see, there are too many questions to answer with not enough information provided. This is why negotiations on strategic partnerships are often a long, drawn-out process -- this is to ensure that all of these (or as many as possible) questions are answered. My experience in building these partnerships will allow me to consider these questions as a trustee, and raise them. I will ask the tough questions, to ensure that we're doing the responsible thing for our mission and not simply jumping into a deal without considering the long-term consequences.

Thank you for your answer, Rosenthal. You raise the questions that I meant to raise. Strategic partnerships is what I'm talking about, and tough questions is what I think are needed. On the other hand, what we have to offer must not be underestimated and has a price and value, do you agree with that? - Art Unbound 21:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

As stated in Foundation gift policy, the Foundation intends to operate as a publicly supported charity under Internal Revenue Service regulations, and financial support should come from a diversity of sources.

Diversity of income is very much needed for long-term organization sustainability - we, as organization, definitely want and have to remain independent. It may be much easier for us to absorb bigger grants in future, but now we have to make sure, that our ideals are preserved in longer than one or two year timeframe.

As for other projects and partnerships - we have to stay on our path, and if there are partnerships that makes us stronger on it - of course we should consider it. We have to be perfect citizen of open content environment, and if there are other like-minded organizations, of course we should help each other, or at least not build walls and borders in between.

Thank you very much for your answers, Mituzas. I think you have answered my question of longer-term sustainability. Now I have one further question to you: how would you retain independence of Wikimedia/Wikipedia with your policy? - Art Unbound 21:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

I am a candidate for the board of the WMF. As such I will consider what will best achieve our aims, what helps our communities and what is strategic in the medium to long term. Fifteen million Euro is a lot of money to absorb and I would hesitate to grow too fast. At the same time there are plenty of projects that would benefit both the WMF and the OLPC if the money was available.

Thank you, and I appreciate your answer. You hesitate to grow too fast, what would you do if WMF does not meet the budget 2010? - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

A question like this almost certainly cannot be answered intelligently without more details. What would a "non-commercial deal" with Google look like, if $15 million were on the line? To be "non-commercial", wouldn't that constitute an outright gift from Google? Are there strings attached?

You see, an organization will qualify as publicly supported if it passes the one-third support test, which means that it normally receives at least one-third of its total support from governmental units, from contributions made directly or indirectly by the general public, or from a combination of these sources. An organization will be considered as "normally" meeting the one-third support test for its current tax year and the next tax year if, for the four tax years immediately before the current tax year, the organization meets the one-third support test on an aggregate basis.

So, I think you can immediately see the complex tax-status implications of a $15 million gift from any organization, Google or not.

Thank you, Kohs, and yes, I mean an outright gift from Google to us. I mean that Google has profited so much for the past four years - by Google Earth, by all of our geographic information that Google has implemented to their profit, that they are due some to our organization, and enough to keep us alive and kicking. Is that worth something from us or isn't it? That's my question. - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

I think that I cannot give you a detailed answer without having access to the terms of such contract agreements. Nevertheless, if I am elected member of the Board I will obviously try to do the best for the purpuses of this Foundation. Of course I believe that having support not only from Google but from other organizations can really help Wikimedia to achieve some of its goals (the laptop idea also being included within this criterion). I would search that support in diversity since I am aware that there is more than one company that would like to enter into partnership agreements with Wikimedia.

All in all, it would depend on the situation and before signing any contract we must be completely sure that it is the best option for us and that we can eventually take profit from it.

Thank you Góngora, my question to you is the same as to Kohs above. Would you agree to compromise with Google, if they are willing not to interfere with our internal policy and still guarantee our long-term goals? - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

With all due respect, I'm not sure I understand your question. Is "non-commercial deal" a euphemism for a charitable donation, or does it hold some other meaning? I'd love to see cheap laptops & wireless internet access for, well, everyone on Earth, but I don't really see the WMF as playing a major role in so massive an endeavour. Such a huge undertaking is outside the scope of the Foundation.

Thank you for your answer, O'Keeffe. What I mean, is that Wikipedia and Wikimedia as a whole, has given a massive support to worldwide knowledge. All of our efforts have been free. But, spreading it is not free. We're at the brink of our efforts. Can we accept offers to further spread our knowledge by commercial means, or can we not? - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

That's a very difficult question to answer without seeing details of these deals. I'd be leery of the Google one for the same reason as I oppose advertising: once we become reliant on a single source of revenue, it's very easy to become beholden to that source, and I'd much rather be beholden to our readers and community members and granting agencies functioning in the public interest than to a private corporation, even one with an avowedly non-evil corporate culture. As for the $100 laptops, I think we'd need to look carefully at what risk we were assuming and to what extent it would be part of our core purpose. I'd be pleased to elaborate on either or both given more details.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer, Smith. You are very scary to become dependant of one donor, and so am I. But, Google is already very dependant of us, and they will very much want to become less dependant of our power.

I think that the Board of Trustees need to be very aware of the power they have, and make good use of it. They can be distrustful of their power and get scared, or they can get too proud and blow the whole thing up in two years. Also they can blow the chances that they have in reality, if they are too cautious. This is not a question for you, but for all candidates. So, thank you so much for the opportunity you gave me here. - Art Unbound 01:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Censorship & Suppression of information

In light of the David Rohde/censorship situation, do you agree with how it was handled, and how should similar decisions be handled in the future? Mblumber 02:32, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

I have no issues with what happened. There were no reliable sources for the addition of said information at the time. Issues such as this should be handled on a case by case basis by Jimbo Wales and the WMF legal team. I have full confidence that Jimbo Wales puts openness at the top of his priority list, as he has shown repeatedly over time.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Mblumber, the 'B9' in my username denotes how important the discipline and value of benevolent compassion and kindness are in my worldview and lived and living spirituality. This was a specific situation with specific constraints. I endorse how Wikipedia adminstrated the media blackout (in line with blogging sites of note and other media sources) through "trusted" Administrators, though I affirm that my knowledge of the actual handling and parameters of the situation is cursory. The way Wikipedia embraced the David Rohde censorship situation and mediablackout request is, in my humble opinion, an example of sound censorship. I would value our Community taking stock of this happening and institute a protocol for future eventuations so response is not reactive and ad hoc, but appropriately finessed and responsive.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

The result was a good one, and the issue is certainly complex. I have been privately critical of the principle behind the decision and would not have made the same choice, but I cannot fault Jimmy for making that choice. I think it sets a dangerous precedent for situations where precedents should not be set. As Jimmy correctly said, we were able to do it this time, but what about next time? Jimmy does not believe that it would be as easy to do next time, and I agree. Lets say we were to try, and fail. The PR implications of such a move would be disastrous, leading to a loss of credibility in the foundation as an accurate knowledge bringing organization. It's not a transparent action, and non-transparent actions always lead to friction within the community And let's also consider that whatever lengths we go to to keep the information secret, one slip from a third-party news source and all is for naught. Those are my criticisms. With all that being said, actions taken to protect human life should not be subject to "monday-morning quarterbacking." Having such a critical decision placed in front of you is an enormous burden. I should know, as a infantryman in Iraq, I was placed in situations many times where I had to make life-or-death decisions. I'm extremely sympathetic to the difficulties of such decisions and I do not wish to second-guess anyone who has had to make them. While I may not agree with the reasoning behind the decision, I can't fault someone 'ex post facto' for having made such a difficult and frankly emotional choice. That is not a fair thing to do, and I have enormous respect for Jimmy for confronting the implications of what would happen should this situation occur again in the future.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

It was crisis management, and however it was done, in final result, human life was saved. When crisis comes, tough decisions and sacrifices have to be made. Of course, we have to stay alert and avoid slippery slopes, but having community or staff able to do sensible decisions, based on internal or external guidelines is something what should be done. Strict policies can't really handle such situations - common sense can, and where needed, organization has to be able to take decisions.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

I am not familiar with this situation. In my opinion the board of the WMF does not concern itself that much with individual cases. I am equally sure that there are cases in other projects that are as relevant that do not get the same attention.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

I believe the Rohde case revealed that Jimmy Wales (as he himself has admitted) is not fully prepared to handle the wide array of possible conflicts of interest that may arise when real lives are impacted by what's published on Wikimedia reference sites. I certainly think that the Board should consult with experts in news journalism, ethics, mass communication, and privacy, in order to formulate some more hard-line rules that should govern future cases. In any event, the Board should be shielded from these sorts of one-off episodes. When Wales was approached by the New York Times, it was not for him or OTRS to resolve -- it should have been immediately deferred to the Foundation's Executive Director and/or Deputy Director. Staff handle operational decisions, especially the life and death ones, not Board members. When Board members act on their own, charity trustees could find themselves personally liable for breach of their charitable trust. As a rule, trustees should never by-pass the Executive Director's organizational channels in dealing officially with outside agents or entities. Whatever the case, the Board ought to develop a more mature "emergency plan" than lamenting that there's no way to reach out and say, "Dude, stop and think about this."

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

That's an interesting question. My answer is clear: I am against censorship of any kind except when there are lives in danger. What Jimmy Wales did was quite ethical and reasonable given the circumstances. It is pretty obvious that many people will disagree with how the situation was handled at the very beginning. On the Spanish wikipedia he have been discussing this topic so far at the Café. Here is when two principles come against one to each other. On the one hand, who decides what content should be censored and what information can be added? I have read that many people thought of the idea as being imprecise. On the other hand, I am not aware of many cases as the one that we are now commenting on. Perhaps, it is just an isolated and particular case where free information was sacrificed for the sake of life. However, if we are to face something similar in the future - and I am sure we will - it is not something that we can always control. Even if policy were "watertight" in this case, there are several things that require common sense, this being not an exception.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

I do not agree with with how the David Rohde case was handled. I can understand why it was done, and sympathize with the motive to aid in a sincere effort to protect the lives of Mr. Rohde, and that of his translator, Mr. Ludin, but I never-the-less oppose a deliberate policy to conceal the facts at Wikipedia, or at any of the other Foundation projects. I believe that Wikipedia is what it claims to be ie., an encyclopedia, and that an encyclopedia can not be used as an instrument for the deliberate concealment of factual knowledge, and long remain an encyclopedia in any meaningful sense.

"There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world." --Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, 3rd President of the United States (1801-1809)

Furthermore, I am bothered by the notion that through assisting Mr. Rohde and Mr. Ludin, Wikipedia was, in effect, working to undermine the Taliban. I do not believe that any project associated with the WikiMedia Foundation should be in the business of deliberately aiding or undermining per se, the interests of various global, national, regional, and local political factions (including nation-states, private organizations deemed to be criminal and/or terrorist in nature, etc.) Through its role in the David Rohde affair, Wikipedia (and by extension, the Foundation as a whole) has essentially allied itself with the Anglo-American Globalist elite, and against the transnational Islamist insurgency which is presently arrayed against that elite. While I know that sounds dramatic, it is objectively accurate, and I do not think that is a course we should have embarked upon.

In the article to which I link below, New York University professor Joseph M. Reagle writes "the idea of a pure openness...is a naïve one."

I do not agree.

• LINK to New York Times article on the David Rohde affair

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Sexual content on WMF

The Wikimedia Foundation hosts explicit media depicting various sexual activity. This area is growing steadily, and now contains examples across a wide spectrum, from bog standard nudity, through various fetishistic media, to full sexual activity including 'cum shots' and penetration. Other large commercial sites, such as Google Images, and Flickr, carry similar material, however the practice seems to be to use a 'safe search' option to allow browsers to 'opt in' to view such material. It remains an open question as to the desirability and utility of explicit freely licensed material on a project with no child safety measures or options. From my perspective, this is an area where the WMF can provide sensible leadership, direction and ultimately software development / support - do you agree? For disclosure's sake, I should add that I've made some proposals for the management of sexual content both on the english wikipedia, and on wikimedia commons, which have been very strongly rejected. This has led me to feel that some positions are rather entrenched as points of principle above pragmatism. I further believe that this is an area with the potential to cause great harm to the project's utility and reputation, hence would welcome foundation input :-) Privatemusings 00:29, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

This is not an issue for the Board of Trustees, it is an issue for the communities, in my opinion. While I oppose censorship of any kind, I do not oppose a feature that allows users to "turn off" content, but I prefer to leave the issue to the community at large.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Privatemusings, how glorious. I was not privy to our Community’s cache being so broad. Educational resources, whether pornography and/or art, that inform sexual practice and give pleasure are to be prized. We should ensure that there are safeguards, but legislatures, proprieties and social mores differ. I uphold the exploration of technology as a safeguard if it provides for the integrity of our children’s knowledge but not a censure of adult lawful activity. We need to affirm that the viewer always needs to be informed where possible of the nature of the content.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

Though better media tagging in general could allow better content repositories in multiple senses, we should discourage shocking juxtapositions, and always try to place information where appropriate. Though inclusion of various content is usually subject to community guidelines, it would be community action to use any implemented tagging or filtering measures.

Wikipedia and other projects by itself are not that shocking, and one has to research and dig to get into problematic material - so this may seem bigger issue only after considerable time investment into it.

On the other hand, I believe that in lots of adult topics, Wikipedia can be way milder and neutral, than most of other internet media around. There're always at least 5 entries of adult topics in our top-100 most visited articles, and we rank highest on search engines for lots of adult keywords. Once we look at that context, information we carry is needed, educational and way better than the surrounding environment. Being compendiums of knowledge, our projects do great job, and instead of running away from the audience interest, we should just always try to do better job on how we structure our information or media.

Something what can be shocking juxtaposition in one case, can be something needed and useful in another - and balancing at that is one of many issues we have to solve.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Of course, you are correct, Privatemusings. There is great potential for harm to the project's legal safety and its grant-winning abilities with the kind of unfettered garbage that is increasingly populating the site. Fortunately, the Board would have in me an agent for change, such that this sort of content might be better managed and not be so "in your face", with no regard to the age or national laws of the browser.

Voters may not realize, but the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation has a privately-held company that as recently as January 2008 hosted online a web menagerie of freely-licensed images of innocent children juxtaposed with depraved images of children being mercilessly spanked until purple, along with photos of various sexual-enhancement toys. I led an urgent campaign that challenged this Spanking Art Wikia wiki. The founder of the Wikimedia Foundation became quite ruffled under the collar, irritated that we had not "made a complaint through the proper channels".

Imagine, sexually-charged images of deviant abuse against children, and the man hosting it on his company's servers was more upset that the complaints against his site weren't filed properly. So, you see, this is going to be quite an uphill battle.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Being consistent with my previous answer, I do not perceive a real problem regarding this issue. Sexual content can be instructive depending on the usage we want to give it. Even if it should be accepted as something natural and normal, it is true that there must be a mechanism of control. To start with, a balance is important. However, this applies not only to sexual contents but also to everything else in general. Excessess should be avoided (e.g.: abuse against children, unnecessary pornographic galleries, irrelevant links to pornographic websites where no additional textual information is to be found, etc). In other words, an article and/or a category about sex is likely to have related images. Again, I do not see something we should really take care about if we find it in its right place. For that purpose we already have a system of categorization.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

Anyone who thinks there is added utility to content advisory tagged versions of our content, or other of the various forms that have been perennially floated, with a snowballs chance in hell of being implemented on our projects; are welcome to implement them on their own finances, and see how much of a demographic there really is clamouring for such options in the display of content. I think that is just about as much of a reply that the question merits.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

While I am not familiar with sexually explicit depictions on other Foundation projects, I believe that there presently exists a severe over-representation of human sexuality-themed material at Wikipedia. And as the questioner suggests, this is not helpful in the creation of a serious and well-regarded encyclopedia. I'm just going to come right out and say what I suspect many people already know, which is that even in the year 2009, the internet is disproportionately populated by youthful and/or socially maladjusted males who, due to their lack of experience in the world of adult sexual behavior, are often rather preoccupied with the topic. This is particularly true within the relatively minuscule subset of internet users who choose to become involved in the somewhat esoteric practice of editing Wikipedia. As a married father, with all that is implied by such a status, I believe Wikipedia, and quite probably the Foundation's other projects, are sorely in need of some adult supervision. It is time we told the kiddies & other (unwilling) chronic celibates "No, you can't post a photograph of a human penis engaged in the act of ejaculation to an article at this site. No, we don't need several hundred (if not over a thousand) articles detailing the lives and times of pornographic actors & actresses. This is an encyclopedia, and if you wish to peruse such material, I suggest you find a porn site."

With that said, I do believe that some photos depicting human nudity (including genitalia) have a valid, medical or otherwise educational, scientific, or artistic purpose at this site. Articles on some sexually transmitted diseases, or on human childbirth, are two very good examples of where this would tend to be the case. Yet I find it almost impossible to imagine how photographic depictions of "cum shots" and "penetration" could ever be permitted to find a home at this site.

• LINK to a non-photographic image depicting both ejaculation and penetration in a manner that is both educational, and inoffensive

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Chapter-foundation relationship

Hi, could you please elaborate how you see : a) the current chapter-foundation relationship and b) what (if at all) should be changed on that? Effeietsanders 23:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

no response yet.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

no response yet.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

no response yet.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

no response yet.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

no response yet.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

No, frankly I couldn't elaborate either a) or b). As I understand it, each chapter is its own animal, and there is no one-size fits all model for their relationship with the foundation. As to changes in a situation that is quite naturally in a huge flux all the time? Gimme a break. There is very little that can be directed by will in these matters. It is more like riding the proverbial tiger. Each matter has to be tackled. Just no way at all to make the tiger go where you want it to go; just have to keep on top of it.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

no response yet.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Usability projects

What is your reaction to the announcement of the creation of the Wikipedia usability initiative sponsored by the Stanton Foundation and the Commons usability project sponsored by the Ford Foundation ? Teofilo 10:11, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

no response yet.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

no response yet.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

no response yet.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

no response yet.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

no response yet.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

no response yet.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Privacy policy

As mentioned on the French Wikipedia's Bistro, 20 May 2009, a javascript on image description pages there sends every image description viewer's IP to a non-wikimedia website called pacli.appspot.com . Which reaction is yours :

• A - It's fine with me.
• B - Unfortunately Wikimedia's current privacy policy allows this sort of things. If I am elected I'll see what we can do in order to make Wikimedia privacy policy more protective of people's privacy, so that the problematic javascript is eventually removed.
• C - The current privacy policy does not allow this. If I am elected I'll see what we can do so that the current privacy policy is effectively enforced and the problematic javascript is removed. Teofilo 10:15, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

no response yet.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

no response yet.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

no response yet.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

no response yet.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

no response yet.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

no response yet.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Licensing and Terms of use

Do you feel that the creation of the new "Terms of use" page on the Wikimedia foundation's website, dated 15 June 2009 in the history tab, increases or decreases the reading comprehension of what outside users are allowed and not allowed to do with the contents created before that date ? Should we not focus instead on the licensing terms agreed by the licensors at the time they gave their agreement ? Isn't there a risk that the Wikimedia Foundation is understood as being the sole licensor and copyright owner of all the text contents ? Teofilo 10:24, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

no response yet.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

no response yet.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

no response yet.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

no response yet.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

no response yet.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

no response yet.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.

Wikimedia chapters' legitimacy and power

• A- Are you comfortable with the prospect that the Wikimedia chapters might be able to appoint members on the Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees, while they have no community-elected members on their own board, or no requirement to do so ?
• B- Do you think the German chapter's decision to act out of consensus, by not consulting Wikimedia Commons' community before starting to upload the Bundesarchiv pictures, was a good decision ?
• C- Do Wikimedia chapters have a "right" to override community procedures or decisions ?

Teofilo 10:28, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

no response yet.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

no response yet.

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

no response yet.

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

no response yet.

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

no response yet.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

no response yet.

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

no response yet.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

no response yet.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

no response yet.

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

no response yet.

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

no response yet.

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

no response yet.

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

no response yet.

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

no response yet.

Samuel Klein (Sj)

no response yet.

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

no response yet.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

no response yet.

Ting Chen (Wing)

no response yet.