Following a conversation at the Signpost, I put this together as an initial draft for how an RfC on granting enwiki limited oversight over the dissemination of donor monies could be structured. Note that it is a very early draft put together quickly; there are likely to be aspects that are fundamentally flawed and need significant work.
In particular, the current section around transparency of finance likely need to be completely revised by editors who have better knowledge of WMF finances that I do. I am also concerned by aspects of the enforcement mechanism - I believe we must make it clear that we are proposing an exception to WP:CONEXCEPT, but I am not certain that the manner I am currently doing it is appropriate or likely to find consensus.
I am also of two minds over the line Enforcing this consensus is exempt from standard rules on edit warring and wheel warring. I want to give editors and admins permission to enforce this consensus in the face of active WMF opposition, but I worry that this line will be controversial and possibly unnecessary.
@Fram: Looking at some past comments you have made, I suspect you might have useful thoughts on how necessary the following paragraph is:
The English Wikipedia asserts its primacy in regards to decisions about what is presented on the English Wikipedia to readers, with the sole exception being where the Wikimedia Foundation has a legal obligation under the laws of the location it is incorporated in. A consensus here will partially curtail the current rights of the WMF under WP:CONEXCEPT.
@Rhododendrites: In the previous RfC, you spoke about it being without any attempt to turn it into something that actually benefits the community (except insofar as not running banners benefits the community). Do you feel that this is an improvement on that? It won't directly result in more funding being allocated to tasks that will contribute towards our core purpose, building an encyclopedia, but my hope is that it will indirectly do so. BilledMammal (talk) 05:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For any oversight to have legitimacy to the WMF, we either need them to willingly accept it or to have some enforcement mechanism. The one you propose looks good to me. Site-wide blackouts would be another option. I don't think the WMF will willingly accept this, however. Like with Superprotect or the Fram ban, if you want to overturn a WMF decision you need to cause a fuss, and the fiscal direction of the organisation is much, much bigger than either of those incidents. — Bilorv (talk) 08:58, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like the core idea; I would prefer if this applied to every project, but this would set precedent for other projects to make similar decisions. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]13:23, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The big problem and fix is structural/systemic. Currently WMF is essentially self appointed and also gets to write the constitution, a ridiculous structure. They need to be 100% elected by the community and the constitution has to be written by the community. But I also support the initiative above. One thing that can help in the long run is that Wikipedia (and it's images on commons) is more than the flagship, it is THE ship that the WMF and it's pet projects and beneficiaries rides on. We should never damage Wikipedia. Worst comes to worst Wikipedia should fire WMF and get something better in place. North8000 (talk) 12:25, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The enwp community cannot and should not have line item veto power over the entirety of wmf finances. There is no workable way for that to happen, and it's a terrible idea. What happens when other communities run rfcs about the same right? Then what happens when we disagree about a grant? Whichever project brings in the most money gets all the power? Yuck. There's no way wmf could go along with that, so all running an rfc will do is increase anger and conflict. Maybe that's the goal (hasten the day, justify a fork, increase bad will towards the wmf...). It would be a detriment to the project(s). If your goal is actually to see change, aim for what's in the realm of reasonability. Focus on transparency maybe? Get a commitment for a certain type of funding for enwp community needs, etc. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:51, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I want to go further then Rhododendrites. I think if you run this RfC, it will mean that the current leadership will be less likely to partner in the way that they did during last year's fundraising drive. The fact that they are now truly listening to the enwiki community about the content of fundraising banners is a huge win and is something I'm really glad to see because I too saw the harm by previous banners. But our win came at a literal cost to the foundation in terms of how much money they raised. We can debate if this is a good thing or not, but I can tell you from the perspective of foundation employees, who saw colleagues laid off (or maybe were themselves laid off) and foundation leadership (who had to do the layoffs) it was not a good thing. The foundation leadership decided that partnership with the community was worth it and so bore this cost. Previous foundation leadership would not have done that and I see no way that the foundation leadership can get to "yes" on this proposal.For enwiki members who want to see this happen, there is already community oversight of the WMF's finances in the way that this RfC contemplates. It's more indirect but still present: the community elects at least a majority of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. I would suggest the way to achieve the goals of this RfC is to elect candidates who pledge to do what this contemplates. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:27, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Barkeep49: Generally agreed; the coordination and bridge building last year was an excellent step forward and this seems like a regression. On oversight: community-selected trustees tend to be open to discussion about specific issues like how fast the org grows, priorities, features of community health. Abstract contrarian issues like "should project X get to decide Y for the movement" are hard to have discussions about, and not always well-formed [as you point out, there's an existing mechanism for decisions at this scale; how would a new mechanism be better, or work at all?] – SJ +10:13, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Barkeep49: I was actually considering pinging you to this discussion; I felt that insight from those who have experience with the communications between enwiki and the WMF might be very helpful.
To address one point: I see no way that the foundation leadership can get to "yes" on this proposal. The goal of this proposal is to give the foundation a Hobson's choice; they either say yes, or they massively scale down their activities. This is also why the enforcement mechanism would be at the center of this proposal; while the WMF could try to prevent us from blocking fundraising we have too much control over the site for them to successfully do so; I have already composed several ways that we could block or limit the WMF's ability to fundraise here, and our more technically minded editors can likely think of dozens more.
I wasn't privy to the backroom discussions that I expect you and others had with the WMF during the previous RfC, but the lesson I took from it is that the only way we can get the WMF to act is by threatening their cash flow, because we have only ever got results when their cash flow was under threat. Andreas tried for years to get the WMF to address issues with their communication, but every attempt was ignored, even when they got a clear consensus to address issues with the wording of the emails sent out - until we gave them the Hobson's choice of either addressing it, or massively scaling down their activities.
This doesn't just apply to fundraising; Andreas has tried for years to get increased transparency, and again they have been rebuffed at every turn.
It's more indirect but still present: the community elects at least a majority of the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. I would suggest the way to achieve the goals of this RfC is to elect candidates who pledge to do what this contemplates. Unfortunately, that isn't true. The board consists of 16 members; seven are appointed, and one is Jimbo. Of the remaining eight, six are elected by the community, and two are elected by the affiliates. Even if we count the affiliate-elected members as being elected by the community, that only leaves us with 50% of the board - not enough to overrule the foundation. In general, I don't have faith in the boards ability to address this; even if we did have the technical ability for a majority (I'm not sure that Jimbo is still an active board participant?), that isn't the same as a practical ability for a majority; the WMF only needs to get one community or affiliate elected board member on their side to be able to prevent any reform, even though 7 out of 8 elected members would demonstrate overwhelming support for it.
However, I am not wedded to this idea. If you believe there is a better way to curtail the mission creep and bureaucratic inefficiencies that are harming our mission, and to increase the transparency of the WMF, but that the WMF are more likely to accept, then I would be eager to propose it instead of this.
(I was saddened when I heard that the RfC I opened had resulted in layoffs; I had hoped that such a result could be avoided, and still believe it could have been had the WMF responded to our concerns years ago, and thus not had to scramble to get appropriate banners - the banners run at the end of the fundraising period were far more efficient than the ones run at the start) BilledMammal (talk) 15:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of brief responses. six are elected by the community, and two are elected by the affiliates was not true in the last election that was affiliate based. Affiliates got to do the nominations but all the community voted on those affiliate people. Also, and I admit I could be wrong here, I'm don't know if Jimmy is still a voting member of the board?The goal of this proposal is to give the foundation a Hobson's choice; they either say yes, or they massively scale down their activities. these are not the only options. We get into extreme options - WP:SUPERPROTECT came from a time where the foundation felt they had to resort to extreme measures - but the foundation does have those options. 2023 Reddit API controversy shows the way another organization which relied on volunteers chose to use extreme measures to get a decision through. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:30, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We get into extreme options - WP:SUPERPROTECT came from a time where the foundation felt they had to resort to extreme measures - but the foundation does have those options. That is true; the foundation can contest our ability to block fundraising. It's part of the reason I have already composed alternative methods of enforcing the consensus (including ones that any editor, and not just admins, can impose), and why I am considering including the line Enforcing this consensus is exempt from standard rules on edit warring and wheel warring. If they do fight us on this I believe we won't be able to fully prevent them from fundraising, but I do believe that we will be able to sufficiently restrict it that the cost will be too high for them to risk fighting.
Maybe this will go the way of the Reddit API controversy, but I believe we have to try; the WMF needs to be reined in before its excesses, bureaucracy, and mission creep does irreversible damage to our mission. With that said, this isn't necessarily the best way to try; there may be a less confrontational method, and if you or anyone else can think of it I would be eager to try it first. BilledMammal (talk) 17:03, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A couple hundred enwiki volunteers that would participate in an RfC on this are a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS over Wikimedia Foundation activities. So yes I would personally use less confrontational channels like open office hours, and working through the board, including electing board members who share your views. However, I understand why you don't find that sufficient, so if you want to do this, the RfC should be at Meta which can at least form a global consensus among volunteers. Speaking personally, I would really rather we not lose the high ground over when they try to do things like VECTOR by starting a war over something that has a more tenuous connection to enwiki, in marked contrast to last year's fundraising banners. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@BilledMammal: The ASBS Meta-Wiki page is sort of out of date. More specifically, the Board/Elections Committee has not committed to what the process will be for future elections, so it's possible that it will go back to having Affiliates vote directly on candidates, but Barkeep is correct that it didn't happen in the previous election (affiliates did one round of voting to eliminate half the candidates and the community selected two from the remainder). Legoktm (talk) 19:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Legoktm: It is worth pointing out that the current bylaws do not guarantee that the community will have a role in selecting board members. They merely say that As many as eight (8) Trustees will be sourced from candidates vetted through a Community and/or Affiliate nomination process. The "and/or" means that it could be –
just a community process without affiliate involvement (this was the case for the majority of non-appointed seats in the past),
a combined community/affiliates process like last year, or
just an affiliates process without community involvement.
Presently, this is entirely at the board's discretion. The 2020 change in the bylaws significantly weakened community influence, something that was pointed out (to no effect) by a good number of people, in particular Wikimedia NYC. AndreasJN46609:13, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhododendrites:Whichever project brings in the most money gets all the power? At the heart of this proposal is the unfortunate fact that the WMF needs oversight; mission creep and bureaucratic inefficiencies are damaging our primary purpose, to build an encyclopedia. This is exacerbated by a lack of transparency, with the WMF refusing to provide basic information on the disposition of over 100 million dollars. However, the WMF is not going to accept this oversight by choice, and unfortunately we are the only Wikimedia Project who is in the position to compel them to accept it.
Considering this, I would phrase it as Whichever project is the largest stakeholder bears the responsibility of oversight. This isn't a proposal for us to dictate to the WMF where the money goes; they will still make those decisions. All it will allow us to do is say "No" when we find the WMF has stepped beyond the confines of its mission.
With that said, I have been wondering whether we should seek to internationalize this effort and bring in a few of the larger projects, such as the French Wikipedia and the German Wikipedia. However, I am not certain we could establish a structure that would be workable, and I am also not certain what the chances of those projects joining an endeavor like this would be.
If your goal is actually to see change, aim for what's in the realm of reasonability. Focus on transparency maybe? Get a commitment for a certain type of funding for enwp community needs, etc. I actually think it will be easier to convince the WMF to go along with veto power than it will be to convince the WMF to go along with us dictating where funds go. However, I do see your point; complete veto power might be a step too far. Perhaps if we scale it back? Limit the veto power to grants (one of the most controversial aspects of the WMF budget), as well as mandating increased transparency - in other words, remove Oversight of other activities from the proposal? Is that something you could get on board with? BilledMammal (talk) 14:29, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the foundation for evolution is that Wikipedia needs to become more of an entity. For example, the structure to create and have stances and policies. We really don't have that now. It would incubate in English Wikipedia and then grow to include the other large/ stable Wkikpedia's.I'd be happy to help in such an effort. North8000 (talk) 15:30, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As contemplated, I think this would cause a firestorm and also not pass. If the community wants a greater say in WMF affairs, that's not gonna happen by threatening the nuclear option. Compliance through coercion is not a way to create a healthy cooperation, nor is it a way to create checks and balances. I know this is probably hard to hear, but if we really want a say, we're going to have to focus on building a healthy relationship between the community and the WMF. Handing governance oversight to community consensus is not a workable solution. There is a reason the WMF has a board, executives, and trustees. There is an already extant legal system of non-profit governance. If we really want something to happen, we're going to have to use that system. It'll mean talking to trustees, growing trust and relationships over time, and doing the hard work of strengthening institutions. Using the nuclear button can never achieve that, and I suggest we focus our energies into campaigning for change. To that end, there are people already working on creating positive relationships with the WMF, wherein the WMF will listen to the community. I've seen this on ArbCom: we've spent the years since Framgate growing relationships with folks at the WMF, and they increasingly listen to us, and thus the community. That is how we will achieve change, not through holding the WMF's pocketbook hostage. I sincerely ask you to reconsider posting such an RfC, as it will very likely fail, and only serve to drive a wedge between the WMF and the community. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓18:53, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF employees/ members are living off of money donated to them under false pretenses. They stopped seeing editors as partners long ago. As Guy Macon has pointed out, This profit motive still drives their annual disingenuous pleas for more money. The fact that this money is now being handed out to unrelated charities proves that the WMF is buying political capital for themselves instead of the expensive furniture they used to buy. Somehow these supposedly-improving relations with the editing community have not brought them to a saner state. The nuclear option is necessary and I'd support it. In all honesty, I doubt this measure would pass because I know how fallible our editors are. That said, the coordination of a few key editors and admins could bring a halt to the Main Page, sending a signal to the reader-base that there's a problem. I have already self-selected to stop being part of the problem and I ask that you join me. Chris Troutman (talk)19:52, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Based on some recent emails I exchanged with WMF staffers, this is not the impression I got. I mean, the relationship may be "ok", but only because it seems there is a form of truce: WMF doesn't interfere with us, we don't interfere with them. That's bad on many levels, including letting them waste "our money" (as in, money we, the Wikimedia Community, earned for them and that should be spent on the Community) with no oversight. Out of sheer curiosity, how would you propose we can make them not waste our money other than using the one and only leverage we have discussed here? Politely ask? To which they can politely reply that they'll think about it, and after a year implement some minor change that doesn't do anything , hoping we gave up? No, we need them to stop wasting money ASAP. It's ridcolous we have so many things the Community needs to have money spent on yet they are spending it on some semi-random feel-good-about-bridging-global-digital-divide ideas. They have lost sight of their mission (support Wikimedia Community projects), at least partially (I am not saying they are not doing anything good, stuff like WikiFunctions etc. shows they still do some usefull stuff). But they are also wasting money on things they should not, and they need to be corrected about this. And as a sociologist of organization, I very much doubt that asking them politely will achieve anything outside polite waste of time (at best, with simply being ignored being a close second most likely outcome). Iron law of oligarchy etc. Those who have no power can't do anything. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here01:06, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First and foremost, let's permanently dispel this idea that the revised fundraising banners led to layoffs. No such thing happened. The original (pre-December 2022) budget for 2022-2023 (the year that just ended July 31) was $175M. We don't have the final numbers yet, but as of June 30, revenue was $174M, and expenses were $167M, so they're netting $7 million, which they are going to add to their war chest of $250+M (that's in addition to the $100+M endowment). They have $7 million left over, and they only missed their target by $1 million, so they could have saved all those jobs. The truth is, the previous administration hired too much, and this administration reduced the workforce. Changes to the fundraising banners reduced their income, but not enough to require mass layoffs, that's just corporate cover. The pandemic-era growth and post-pandemic reduction of the workforce is a broad trend in the US tech industry; WMF is just going up and down along with the tide, not because of the fundraising banners.
Secondly, let's forget about board majority, elected-vs-appointed, and community-vs-affiliate; none of those distinctions matter, because the board acts unanimously and pretty much always has. Go look at the list of Board resolutions and find any board member who voted against anything ever; sometimes they abstain; almost all of the time, everything is approved unanimously. The elected board members vote the same as the appointed ones, the community-elected ones vote the same as the affiliate-elected ones. That doesn't mean that there aren't diverse opinions on the board, just that they don't let it show in public, e.g. in their votes. It's likely all the decisions will continue to be unanimous in the future regardless of who is elected.
While there are some advantages of the unanimous-Board approach, one problem is that if the community can't see the disagreements, the community can't effectively provide oversight over Board members. We have no idea who is advocating for what behind closed doors, all we see are unanimous votes. Board minutes provide little or no details.
This is the flaw in the "indirect-community-control-through-trustees" viewpoint; the community can't oversee what it can't see, and it can't see disagreements among trustees
Nevertheless, in the last election, the biggest financial transparency/reform candidate, Lego, was not elected, and IIRC, candidates that believed in less reform, more stay-the-course, were elected. Personally, that's when I gave up on this issue; if the rest of the community doesn't care, why shout into the void?
So I think the community that didn't elect Lego is not going to care about line-item veto of financials. While the community didn't like the messaging of the banner, I'm not convinced that they have a problem with how the WMF is spending its money (e.g. issuing grants, etc.). I think the people who have a problem with that (like me) are in a minority. Otherwise, Lego would have been elected. Or, the vote was rigged :-D Personally I don't trust SecurePoll and I think the WMF should be a member organization, but that's a whole 'nother discussion, and even if it were a member organization, I'm not sure the members would make any better decisions than are being made now. Also, it's hard to distinguish enwiki's voting results from the overall voting results across projects. So basically, I have no idea what anybody thinks, but the momentum of the status quo convinces me that the largest community doesn't really care much or doesn't have a big problem with WMF finances, but it's hard to tell who thinks what, among the electorate, and among the trustees
So I think the RFC is too specific, and there are unanswered preliminary questions like: Does enwiki have a problem with how the WMF is spending money? If so, what is the problem? Does enwiki want to exercise some veto or other enforcement power? If so, how? Is enwiki an outlier compared with other wikis on this?
I'm on the board of 5 non-profits and 1 for-profit. The clash / conversation of conflicting opinions, input of opinions to the process, horse trading, compromising, influence of the process by advocates results in (modifications to) what gets voted on. The final vote is the rubber stamp at the end of the process and is nearly always unanimous. So unanimous votes are not an indicator of lockstep opinions. North8000 (talk) 21:37, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
BTW I wrote the by-laws/ constitutions for 3 of them. It's incredulous to me to see a set of bylaws/ constitution where the board gets to decide who can run for the board, whether or not anyone can run, including having the option to self-appoint 100 % of itself, and where the boards even writes/rewrites the constitution/by-laws. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich:Lego is great, and their ideas should make progress. Formulating and proposing specific improvements, in an implementable way, is often the bottleneck & doesn't depend on who is on the Board. I agree that members would probably not make much different decisions; and concerns in past discussions about 'how $ is spent' have been limited + varied. But the general unease that growth has been undirected and too fast, and that foundation efforts should be more responsive to community needs + current community-led work, is real and deserves address. a) Probably not like this! b) There seems to be progress on both sides of that... worth discussing in its own space. – SJ +10:13, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First and foremost, let's permanently dispel this idea that the revised fundraising banners led to layoffs. No such thing happened. The original (pre-December 2022) budget for 2022-2023 (the year that just ended July 31) was $175M. We don't have the final numbers yet, but as of June 30, revenue was $174M, and expenses were $167M, so they're netting $7 million, which they are going to add to their war chest of $250+M (that's in addition to the $100+M endowment). They have $7 million left over, and they only missed their target by $1 million, so they could have saved all those jobs. Hello JVillagomez (WMF). Was wondering if you or someone from your team wanted to comment on this green quotation here that I took from the above discussion. Are these revenues and expenses correct? Does the "war chest" refer to money kept in the operating fund? What kind of shortfall were we looking at due to fundraising problems this year? With all this money sitting around in various places (operating fund, endowment), would pulling money from these funds have been a viable option instead of laying folks off? Please help us understand the nuances of this decision. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:06, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your question, @Novem Linguae. These numbers are broadly correct, and the net $7 million from the previous fiscal year was added to the Board-approved working capital reserves. At a high level, the Foundation’s operating budget covers day to day operations. Our working capital reserves are to help cover unforeseen problems or large one-time expenses that could arise during the year, such as a global recession. The Wikimedia Endowment is intended to support the Wikimedia projects forever as a long term source of partial funding. JVillagomez (WMF) (talk) 09:46, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding use of our working capital reserves, Charity Navigator grants four stars (the highest rating, which we have achieved) to nonprofits that have greater than 12 months or more of working capital reserve. While keeping this in mind, the Foundation does consider responsible one-time uses of the reserves. Staff are a recurring, multi-year operating expense that need to be paid for with what we can expect to raise each year.
To answer your question about fundraising shortfalls, last year our English Wikipedia banner fundraising campaign underperformed against our targets. In the second half of the fiscal year, we worked to reduce the revenue gap through major gifts and other fundraising channels. The full fundraising report for last year will be available in the next quarter (previous years here).
We’ve also been reviewing our fundraising model with multi-year projections, and concluded that our previous rate of growth was not sustainable. This is due to multiple factors including banner optimization with more visible trade-offs, changes in search trends, and the global economic climate. As noted in our annual plan, the Foundation reduced both staffing and non-staffing costs, while preserving our $18.7 million grants budget for Wikimedia communities. KSargatzke (WMF) (talk) 10:02, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on vacation right now so my internet time is pretty limited, hence I'm responding briefly but hopefully not too brief.
let's permanently dispel this idea that the revised fundraising banners led to layoffs. I don't think it's a direct correlation, but a definite part of the story. There was a downturn in the economy, plus the revised fundraising banners did not perform as well as they wanted them to, and the fact that the outgoing C-team had overhired, all led to layoffs. And agreed, the WMF 100% could have kept all the jobs had they wanted to and made cuts/reductions elsewhere. However, from what I understand, even internally WMF staff never learned the full extent of layoffs so it's hard to know how management is being held accountable for their decisions.
That doesn't mean that there aren't diverse opinions on the board, just that they don't let it show in public, e.g. in their votes. You might be surprised to learn this is somewhat on purpose. From the Board CoC: "Board Members should not undermine a Board decision by stating their opposition to it" and "Board members should avoid taking a public position on a matter that will (or is likely to) come before the Board." I think this is totally backwards; dissent is a very powerful tool that the board should encourage, not restrict. I think most people would want Board members to participate in discussions (being cognizant of their soft power ofc), even if it would end up at the Board's door eventually.
The one thing I haven't seen brought up yet is that most (all?) of the power the WMF was originally held by the communities and slowly ceded to them over time, whether intentionally (CHILDPROTECT stuff) or not (development resources, some global bans, etc.). Because it's the area I specialize in, it frustrates me to no end when I see people complain about languishing bugs/feature requests on VPT and then act helpless as if only the WMF can solve them. That absolutely isn't true and we need to both 1) shift power back to communities and 2) counteract said false narratives. Legoktm (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I want any board member I voted for to be free to say whether they agreed with a board decision or not. That is so I can make an informed choice whether to vote for them again or not. This rule in the Board CoC is a huge impediment to meaningful democratic participation.
My 2c: I am in general support of this, but I'd make the following modifications: I'd exempt small grants (under 1,000 USD or maybe 500 USD) from community oversight - too much micromanagement and chance for semi-trolling when someone requests something like WMF pays for something small, like newspaper subscription that they use for sourcing articles or whatever (in fact, I believe we should be spending much more money on our volunteers in such a fashion, and this process should be streamlined and as easy as possible). On the other hand, I'd require an RfC for all and any grants that are larger than this, and further, I'd stress that this has to be visible to the community - we should create a WMF grant noticeboard on meta AND en wiki, with en wiki noticeboard having just sections with redirects to meta - the point is I want to be able to watchlist things on en (I hardly check my meta watchlist). Possibly other wikis could opt in to that, and possibly there is some better solution but the point is, this needs to be visible and not hidden or meta, otherwise soon this grant oversight, even if implemented, will be forgotten (or abducted by several well-meaning folks). Lastly, I think this needs rewording: "Should the English Wikipedia become concerned by the use of donor monies in areas beyond grants it may open a Request for Comment about the use". English Wikipedia is not a sentient entity, it cannot do anything. Either we go the bureacracy mode and create some body that can do so, or better and simpler, just say that any English Wikipedia user (that is semiconfirmed to eliminate trolling) can do this. But again, I think that instead of waiting for someone to complain, we should have RfCs for each grants, running as needed. Oh yeah, we don't need to make the treshold to approve them too high - I'd be fine even with 50% support. If half of the community feels something is a good cause, let's fund it. As simple as that. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here00:57, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would highly oppose both the process and the content in play here. Process wise, it reads as no less than an aggressive moving of the goalposts from last year, and doing so in the face of drastically increased co-operation from the WMF in this fundraising vein. Co-operation I believe likely to be impaired significantly from this RfC. Content wise, it is a mass power-shift to English Wikipedia coupled with a mass increase in bureaucracy. Even putting aside what the WMF may do were this RfC to go live, this would dramatically poison the well for our relations with every sister project, individuals editors and affiliates. If we were going to demand increased financial transparency in a more concrete manner I would advice actions more like triggering a meta-RfC specifically breaking down a number of specific changes in separate proposals we want - or putting together a voting block to specifically pick trustees with a financial transparency focus. Nosebagbear (talk) 02:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion has become quite sprawling, so I've opened several sections below; they are each indirect replies to comments made here. Hopefully it will allow the discussion to be more focused and less confusing. BilledMammal (talk) 12:58, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The idea that enwiki can get a veto over all grants seems like it won't go anywhere. But the idea of letting WMF know that we want money being granted to outside organizations to instead be spent within the movement is something that could potentially gain traction. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping BilledMammal, this is something that I am very much interested in; unfortunately I am unable to get involved at this moment. I'll keep this page watchlisted, and if I am more able down the line, I'll make some contributions. I like the idea that WMF should be more transparent regarding how they spend the money people give them, especially on salaries and on gifts/grants/payments to outside agencies; I like the idea that WMF should be restricted from giving out grants without first getting the consent of the community; and I like the notion that the three next biggest Wikis should also be involved in voting - such voting should, of course, take place on the home Wikis and not be diverted to someplace else like MetaWiki. It does seem odd to me that the Foundation was formed to assist Wikipedia, but over the years it feels like the tail is wagging the dog. Well done on getting this started. SilkTork (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Constructive spin-off: what WMF should spend money on
This is semi-relevant (as an illustration of what WMF should be spending money on that it clearly has but isn't), but it has been on my mind for a while - maybe I'll write an OPED to TS on this. But I'd like to hear from others, and this forum is likely to draw some folks :) Some of my ideas:
hire staffer(s) that will look at all backlogged items at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request and explain why they (and WMF's funds) are unable to acquire sources asked. This can be tied to expanding the Wikipedia Library initative, which is excellent but does not suppoort as many databases as it could (why?). A technical link: this is a good idea, except it seems like proposals there are ignored or not discussed anywhere visible. To me, this is WMF today in a microcosm - lots of good ideas on the surface, but poor follow through. Perhaps this is a growing problem - Wikipedia Library, a great idea, is pretty old, and the system of ignoring suggestions suggests that there's nobody taking care of this at WMF anymore, and rather then buy the subscriptions to the suggested databases (there is no indication anyone over the WMF is even reading them), they are wasting our money on some stuff that does nothing for us).
hire staffer(s) to provide psychological counselling to editors affected by stress, burnout and like (as I've suggested in my academic papers several years ago)
hire staffer(s) to provide more support for struggling WikiJournals project (@OhanaUnited)
spend more $$$ on feel-good gifts for the community members (like gadgets with Wikipedia logos), tied to editors activity and various competitions or such (Polish Wikipedia, with much, much smaller funds does that - I am not as active there as here, but I've received several gifts like that from pl wiki chapter over the last few years, compared to the big fat nothing here).
provide an easy way for scholars writing about Wikipedia to apply for grants for open access publishing
Resource exchange, cool gifts (from a cooler expanded store?), and OA grants for related scholarship all sound like good ideas. I started User:Sj/Awe to gather ideas like this and start supporting them. Many of these don't actually need anyone's permission or new channels of funds to implement (WikiJournals has gotten substantial funding through the standard grants channels to organize its own support; curious to know where you see it struggling)
Counselling options are something that larger platforms do invest in for moderators, I can see it for our community but it doesn't seem like a good staff role. There are other options including sharing an existing / more general public counseling service. [we might want a bit of time across a wide range of languages] – SJ +09:35, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would hope that at the very least the WMF makes counseling available to admins that need to deal with disturbing content, such as (maybe?) ArbCom? BilledMammal (talk) 13:30, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sj Re wikijournals, a few months ago I applied to join the board of their humanities one but sadly found I don't have the time to help there much. But I've learned enough to know that even the flagship Medicine journal could use more help, and the Humanities and others are on the verge of being shelved due to next to nobody having time to help :( They are great projects, but we clearly don't have enough volunteers to handle stuff there (ex. review articles/look for reviewers/etc.). I've pinged OU above, if my description is too dire, they may correct me. But I think that great project needs help, and more funds could help. Clearly, whatever grant WJ got wasn't enough, and clearly, WMF has plenty of funds they could use to save it. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here00:45, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. What you described is quite accurate. We need to continuously recruit more Humanities individuals into editorial board (more so than Medicine and Science). Our current financial support received by WMF is insufficient. We wanted to grow quicker, but it's been hamstrung by how much WMF is willing to fund our growth. OhanaUnitedTalk page13:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Most people use phones to access the internet these days. That means, if you want greater reach for your projects, you need to have an app on the popular mobile app stores (Google and Apple), at the very least.
Wikipedia has a pretty good app these days, but it is astounding how bad the Commons Mobile app is. It needs a lot of work. But the other projects don't even have an app. Wikisource could do with an app that lets people read the texts we've proofread. Wiktionary can be quick and easily searchable dictionary that everyone carries in their pocket. Same of almost every one of our projects.
Resources would be better spent on improving mobile browser access. The "benefit" of an app is that its publisher can control use, force ads and harvest data in ways that browsers prevent, but we don't seek to do that. If we must tick the box of having an app, which we probably must, just make it point the browser at enwp or whichever other project it's an app for. Certes (talk) 11:48, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are more benefits to having an app. An app maintains state (and does it independently), so you don't have to have a dozen tabs open in your browsers for everything you're doing on different sites; I have that problem currently. You aren't forced to log in or be logged in perpetually in a browser, being forced to maintain history and cache. You can integrate apps into your OS to a much greater extent too.
I think its precisely because we don't control use, force ads or harvest user data that our apps will be more successful. People already know that it won't be adware. Ciridae (talk) 13:45, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think boring things like software developers and conference scholarships should be priorities. I'd hesitate to experiment with new things until existing things are improved to a satisfactory level. I have some ideas of things to de-prioritize, such as the equity fund, odd software like WikiStories, and AI. I listened to a talk today where the C-levels talked about how WMF is focusing internally for awhile instead of focusing on growth, and I think this is a good idea. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I often hear that a bug fix or enhancement won't happen due to lack of resources, by which I mean a few thousand rather than millions of dollars. Perhaps we could do some of that work ourselves but, because the WMF hires paid developers and not paid editors, there's a feeling that implementing software is the WMF's responsibility while the communities get on with the editing. We need to either divert WMF resources to development, or admit that the development team is inadequate (in quantity rather than quality) and ask volunteers with suitable skills and ambitions to divert their attentions from editing to coding. Certes (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Open source software development by volunteers isn't a result of inadequacy of a paid development team, and as I understand it there's a significant amount of MediaWiki development done by volunteers today. The challenge of any software base where the original developers are no longer around is how to maintain sufficient knowledge of the legacy code in order to support new development work, whether it is by paid or volunteer developers. The WMF can help support all developers by funding more code guardians to guide and review development. isaacl (talk) 20:44, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, we could use a steamlined procedure for Wikipedia:Graphics Lab, where if no volunteer makes / improves a requested image, we would reach out to one of the zillion artists out there who would do it for $$. There should be a WMF staffer taking care of the backlog (by outsourcing this using WMF funds), just like what I suggested for RESEXchange. And there are probably other backlogs like that that could be dealt in a similar manner, with a staffer+outsourcing $$ thrown on those. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here02:12, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus At this year's Wikimania, many attendees for the Community Wishlist session found it odd that the Foundation has a sizable number of developers on payroll yet they can only work on roughly top 5-10 items on the wishlist per year. At that rate, it will take more than a decade to address all of the existing items and technical debt (assuming that no new bugs or issues emerge). So unless your proposal reaches top 10, it is nearly impossible to get developer's attention. I'll give credit where it's due. The last 2 year's approach to the wishlist was handled much better and stopped being a complete popularity contest. 3 items from 2021 and 22 items from 2022 were worked on (marked as complete) despite being outside of top-10. Hope to see this continue. OhanaUnitedTalk page21:23, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@OhanaUnited It's possible we don't have enough funds for everything. The problem I am concerned about is that WMF is clearly wasting some of the funds on irrelevant projects (supporting grant ideas that have zero relevance to the Wikimedia community). So the issue is not whether to prioritize something from the CW over Wikijournals (already mentioned elsewhere on this page) or vice versa - it is that instead, WMF sometimes, at least, prioritizes effectively giving our limited funds away to feel-good-but-have-nothing-to-do-with-wikis-broadly-construed ideas. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here05:00, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've spent a long time thinking about projects the Foundation could implement that did not involve giving money directly to volunteers. (As for that idea, I'd simply like to see guidelines publicized for the current funding opportunities that proved those money can be spent on other tings beyond pizza & soft drinks for Edithons on Wikipedia.) Some include:
Provide training for doing research. In my experience, no country does a good job of teaching students how to perform research. Not only are there issues of identifying & obtaining material for articles, but there are numerous strategies for organizing that material to make writing articles.
Support for Wiki[pm]edians in Residence. Currently, there is no real support for this. If one wants to become one, one has to figure it out all for oneself, unless one knows a WiR who has successfully created one who is willing to teach.
Co-ordination between projects. For example, over the years I've seen ongoing friction between en.wikipedia & Commons simply because each doesn't understand the others ideals & goals. And I find it disappointing that non-English Wikipedias with a wealth of scholarship on a subject, instead of mining their own strength simply copies an English Wikipedia article. We content creators could talk to each other at Wikimanias, if those didn't emphasize presentations on high-level theories like "the Wikimedia Movement", whatever that is.
Creating one or more Scholar-in-Residence(s) who can help volunteers find material about topics we are weak in. Because, based on my own experience, often the reason we don't cover a topic is due to difficulty in finding reliable sources.
I was browsing Rapid Grants funds, and here's a very recent (early August) rationale for declining an OA fund request by User:Hydra Rain: meta:Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Quality of Male and Female Medical Content on English-Language Wikipedia (ID: 22187880): For the time being, the Rapid Fund is not adequately funded to equitably support OA publication needs across the movement. At the same time, there are funds for the KEF that has next to nothing to do with our movement. Something is obviously wrong with fund allocation (at least, IMHO, requests for OA funding for Wikipedia-related research should be given priority over supporting random initiatives in the broader movement, such as the ones described at meta:/Knowledge_Equity_Fund#Grant_recipients). PS. Side note to Hydra Rain: do consider submitting your paper to WikiJournal of Medicine, I just had my article published there - and one of the reasons was that like you I cannot published in pay-for OA journals, and have a choice of having my research paywalled or... usually no other choice. But in medicine, at least, we have a SCOPUS-indexed Wikijournal (sadly, for all other branches of science, there is no Wikijournal that's SCOPUS level right now). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:52, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In principle, this seems a simple way to resolve the issue; organize an advocacy group and use it to push candidates aligned with our goals. However, I see two issues:
Not enough of the board is elected. Assuming Jimbo still votes, it is impossible to gain a majority; assuming he doesn't, it is technically possible but impractical; it isn't reasonable to assume we can get every elected board member on side.
It's impossible to determine which board members are on our side, as there is no transparency in the board proceedings.
To address this, two things need to happen. First, we need to convince the WMF to increase the number of elected board members - preferably, to 100%. Second, we need to convince the WMF to publish genuine board meeting minutes, rather than publishing minutes that were prepared before the meeting even took place.
Personally, I don't see it at all likely that the WMF will agree to either of these options, although editors (Barkeep49?) with better insight into how the WMF operates may disagree? BilledMammal (talk) 12:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My experience serving on boards has been similar to @North8000. Even 3 board members would likely be enough to get a lot of what you want in terms of transparency because there is real social pressure to get to unanimous decisions and that means there is some give on priorities of other board members which you don't find objectionable but may not care about yourself. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:52, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed that just a few board members can have a lot of sway if organized properly. I'd love to see more "reform" minded candidates run and better organized voter-outreach efforts to support their candidacies. Legoktm (talk) 19:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the board being almost 50% members that are appointed by other board members is concerning. There is probably a reason for it, and it might even be a good reason, but this definitely reduces the ability of communities to influence the composition of the board, potentially increasing the disconnect between volunteers and the WMF. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My 2c. I often don't vote b/c I don't have time to familiarize myself with people and platforms. I'll try to vote next time, but, sigh, time. If anyone tells me they'll run and try to deal with the issues raised here, you have my vote. Or feel free to ping me and tell me about such a candidate. Maybe what we need is a wiki-political party focused on that issue, i.e. a systematic approach to "my" problem? I expect many folks are in similar shoes - they'd agree this is a problem, but they don't have time to figure out who to vote for or even when to fix it. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here00:49, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to vote for folks that are knowledgeable about English Wikipedia (demonstrated by high experience on English Wikipedia), so that enwiki interests can hopefully be well-represented at the top levels, where our interests have to compete with the interests of almost 1,000 other projects. Luckily it is fairly easy to identify the candidates who are active on English Wikipedia. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:00, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like what we need to do is form a Wikiproject for the purpose of coordinating Enwiki's position in WMF polls, with a particular focus on trustee elections. I imagine this would involve:
Finding suitable candidates and encouraging them to run
Getting the endorsement of Enwiki for this card, probably through an RfC
Sending this card to every editor eligible, based on their enwiki activity, to vote in the poll.
I imagine that this would be very efficient at electing board members; I'm not certain how our guidelines on canvassing apply to WMF polls, but a consensus to endorse the how-to-vote card should be enough to justify canvassing.
What I am less sure is how well this will work at actually bringing about change, given the concerns above and Legoktm's point about public dissent by board members being forbidden, but there is no harm in trying. BilledMammal (talk) 15:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is feeling kind of yucky. Have a subset of the community pick winners based on the priorities of the majority (or at least majority of people with strong enough feelings to persevere through the long processes which will generate said priorities), push the result on the minority and everyone who didn't participate, and ensure the richest, most powerful group dominates an election that's supposed to represent the world [for their own good, of course]. Granted, this objection obviously invites questions about where the lines should be between grassroots organizing and plotting a global takeover, and I don't have a solution. This specific idea, literally spamming users telling them how to vote to ensure the English Wikipedia reigns supreme just feels bad. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:33, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's politics. Nothing else, nothing more. I for one want to be asked (spammed) with guides/information on candidates, and in particular, their stance on financial things. I don't have time to research this myself but I want to vote based on this kind of information that I hope someone will analyze, digest, present and inform me of. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:00, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I think I'm with Piotrus on this matter. I do want to see reform in the WMF, better communication (which they appear to be working on), different priorities etc. But I'm not here to fight fights or politick. I'm just tryna fix articles. I did vote in the last board election (for Lego), but I remember the whole process being more than I wanted to engage with.There's probably a not inconsiderable number of people like me who will be glad to exert a smol effort to help enact positive change, without getting into multi-hundred-kilobyte pitchfork battles about it. Kind of like people who scrupulously recycle, but never pick up litter? and drive their cars to locations they could easily walk to in ten minutes? I'd be glad to be spammed with a cabal approved voting list at the appropriate time. Folly Mox (talk) 00:51, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I think some points of clarification may help here. I would also encourage you to have a read through m:Wikimedia Foundation Board Handbook - which will also help clear up other concerns/issues you have.
The majority of the WMF Board is selected through a community nomination process. Jimmy has a vote. Appointed trustees bring a lot of value to the Board through their specific expertise (e.g., finance, tech, etc.).
I think you may be mixing the issue of the minutes from the Endowment Board with those from the WMF Board - and Jimmy has already replied on-wiki about this at m:Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment#Update_on_endowment. For the latter, see wmf:Minutes:2023-03-09 as an example. Bear in mind most Board work is done in committees, and the minutes reflect that, plus there are parts of the meeting that are closed.
Hopefully you've already seen communications from the WMF changing, e.g., with the 2022 Fundraising RfC, and the discussion for this year's fundraiser has already started at Wikipedia:Fundraising/2023 banners. Also see m:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024 - in particular 'we are prioritizing established editors ... to ensure that they have the right tools for the critical work they do'. There is also a very detailed section about this year’s budget and overall finances.
The m:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee hosts regular "Conversation with the Trustees" sessions, with open calls for questions - if you have specific topics you want to know more about, these are great places for it. We just had the latest one at Wikimania, the next is towards the end of November. There's also the 'Contact the CAC' email address between meetings too, and you can always ask me and other trustees questions too.
Enwiki does have a very strong input into the WMF Board elections, due to the number of eligible voters, and it is important to remember that other Wikimedia projects and languages also have priorities and participate in the same elections.
Communication with the WMF is improving in some ways, but every month brings a surprise announcement that significant resource has been invested in some unexpected development that no one asked for nor wants. The WMF's stated mission is to "advance equity", with not a single mention of Wikipedia or any other concrete aim. I feel that the WMF has tired of Wikipedia, and we're now just a legacy product – a cash cow to fund whatever more exciting activity the WMF feels like doing today. Certes (talk) 20:41, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I’m sad to hear you feel that way (‘tired of Wikipedia’), it’s definitely not the perception I see at WMF, where supporting Wikipedia in all languages is central to the discussions that take place. The Foundation’s annual plan for this year focuses heavily on product and technology infrastructure that supports the online projects, including Wikipedia. The intention this year is to support long-standing technical challenges, and focus on the needs of experienced editors.
You’re right that advancing equity is also a focus. This language is a reference to continued support for movement strategy priorities (hubs, movement charter, global council, etc.) and the Foundation’s regional work, including community grant making.
The WMF’s stated mission is at [1] and is much more general (missions are usually very generally written, since they are high level, concrete aims are in the annual plans). I hope that communication will continue to improve, and having a welcoming environment here for WMF discussions would really help. Thanks. MPeel-WMF (talk) 10:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It’s posted in the right place for a discussion about it. It’s an operational issue, and I trust WMF staff will follow up there soon. Thanks. MPeel-WMF (talk) 10:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:MPeel-WMF, thank you for the info and for reminding people of meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024. As to the key result of improving workflows for editors with advanced permissions, have the conversations started about which workflow(s) will be improved? Given the clouds gathering here, and the fact that any conversation is likely to take months, it would probably be best for everyone if that started sooner rather than later. Apologies if I've missed the conversation. I don't hold advanced permissions. Folly Mox (talk) 01:08, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MPeel-WMFThe majority of the WMF Board is selected through a community nomination process. Surely it is half (6 out of 12 at present, or 8 out of 16 if the board is expanded to maximum size), not the majority?
As for appointees' expertise, they could equally provide this as non-voting members, or members of an advisory board (there used to be one). AndreasJN46607:52, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct, 6 out of 12 are selected through the community nomination process, sorry for the mis-statement earlier. At the moment, Nat is in an appointed seat but was originally community nominated, plus there’s Jimmy, so it’s 8/12 that come from the community right now. The WMF board doesn’t have non-voting members (everyone has a fiduciary responsibility for the organisation), and the advisory board no longer exists. Appointed members bring important insight and needed expertise into all of the discussions, and trying to exclude them from contributing to all decisions would seem very un-wiki and non-inclusive to me. Thanks. MPeel-WMF (talk) 10:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you could also argue that it is "un-wiki" to have people taking decisions on behalf of the wiki community who have never made any significant contribution to any wiki and were appointed as complete outsiders ... It's a bit like saying it would be undemocratic not to give unelected representatives a vote. AndreasJN46612:36, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A wiki is a collaboration between a community of users. Antithetical to this is the notion that certain users deserve a greater voice solely for who they are, without in any way representing that community.
Rather than jumping straight to the nuclear option, we could seek to issue a non-binding resolution, and at the same time gauge the level of opposition to the WMF's current actions, in line with Levivich's final paragraph about unanswered preliminary questions.
I am convinced that the WMF won't listen to such a resolution, but there would be benefits to it; it would allow us to show that we tried, and it would allow us to understand what aspects the enwiki community may be willing to act over, and which ones they are not willing to act over.
I'm not certain what questions should be asked, but I think they should revolve about where the WMF should focus it's money, where it shouldn't, and whether the WMF should be more transparent. For example, whether it should provide more funding to the community wishlist and less funding to external organizations who are not aligned with our primary mission. BilledMammal (talk) 12:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I expect so, but I hope not. Further, if it does come to threatening the nuclear option I want the result to be the WMF backing down, not the WMF committing to fight us over this. As part of that, I want an overwhelming consensus for any proposal like this, similar to what we had in the 2022 fundraising RfC, one that shows the WMF that the community is united on this and is not going to back down.
However, at the moment while I do expect a consensus for this proposal, I do not expect an overwhelming consensus, as based on comment from editors like Barkeep I see a significant minority that wants to try a less confrontational approach - if we try a less confrontational approach and don't get a response, I believe that many of them will recognize the need for something more dramatic. BilledMammal (talk) 09:49, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Another alternative is growing our relationship with the WMF. This is not something that can be done by RfC, and overall I am not convinced it will work in part because we haven't seen it working; the WMF didn't address the banner issues because of this relationship, but because we threatened them with the nuclear option.
Similarly, we have seen the WMF ignore consensuses that they don't like when the nuclear option is not threatened, most prominently the consensus to improve the wording of the emails and the consensus to set full width by default on new Vector. Further, we haven't seen the WMF resolve key concerns of the community that have not yet been expressed through an RfC, such as concerns about the transparency of the Wikimedia Endowment.
Perhaps what we need to see is the benefits that this approach brings; evidence that the WMF is willing to listen without the nuclear option being threatened. In line with this, CaptainEek, perhaps it would now be an appropriate time to ask the WMF to address some key concerns of enwiki that would be simple for the WMF to provide? Two that come to mind are asking the WMF to providing a statement detailing the revenue and expenses of the Wikimedia Endowment for every year of its existence, and asking the WMF to respect the consensus to set full width by default on new Vector.
There are practical reasons why large communities/organizations frequently make decisions using representatives. Many community members have views on their desired outcomes, but aren't able to invest the time needed to evaluate every decision being made. When there's a large body of affected stakeholders, it's more efficient and effective for it to delegate authority on its behalf to a smaller group who is able to spend the required effort. I think it would be better to look for more ways that the global community, which includes readers as well as editors, can be involved in setting the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation. This probably starts with electing board members with this philosophy, but can include other operation-affecting changes, such as having a standing community advisory committee that has the authority to influence the Foundation's mission and how it carries it out. I don't think having the entire community review each grant, program, or initiative above $X is a good use of its time, but it's reasonable for the community to play a significant role in setting annual goals, and evaluating whether or not they have been met. I appreciate many editors might think these should be mainly information technology and community-management goals, but there can also be room for forward-looking projects on other ways of spreading knowledge freely, or research on what would better meet reader needs. This isn't an easy change to accomplish (Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy applies), but a long-term sustainable approach is needed. Large community discussions do not scale up well to handle dozens of decisions. Some form of indirect representation will be more productive. isaacl (talk) 02:59, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One goal here is to increase the WMF's willingness to communicate with us. One impediment to that is that it wouldn't be unreasonable to call VPW WP:CESSPIT 2, and historically that has been part of the reason the WMF is unwilling to engage with us there.
I believe it may be worth applying general sanctions to that page, empowering and encouraging any uninvolved admin to deal strictly with any violations of our policy on civility. BilledMammal (talk) 09:27, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reducing the privileges accorded to the WMF under WP:CONEXCEPT
Currently, WP:CONEXCEPT states The WMF has legal control over, and liability for, Wikipedia. Decisions, rulings, and acts of the WMF Board and its duly appointed designees take precedence over, and preempt, consensus. A consensus among editors that any such decision, ruling, or act violates Wikimedia Foundation policies may be communicated to the WMF in writing.
While historically this has been all-but-impossible for the WMF to enforce and WP:IARs has typically overridden it, it is also a relic of the mid-2000's when the WMF and Enwiki relations were stronger and more productive. I think weakening it would be a good idea, and would be seen by the WMF as a warning sign that if they don't at least try to meet us in the middle on a non-binding resolution then we will take more drastic steps.
Perhaps the following wording would be appropriate?
The WMF has legal control over, and liability for, Wikipedia. Decisions, rulings, and acts of the WMF Board and its duly appointed designees that are needed to comply with legal obligations under the laws of the location it is incorporated in take precedence over, and preempt, consensus.
@Edward-Woodrow, Piotr, and Bilorv: Ping editors who have been discussing office actions at the signpost; while this is a different aspect of WP:CONEXCEPT, I believe it is one that is more relevant to any efforts to re-balance the relationship between the WMF and Enwiki. However, I may be incorrect on that, and thoughts on which one is more problematic are welcome. BilledMammal (talk) 10:24, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't read the entire discussion above (give me few weeks; I'll get there), but here's what I think about office actions and WMF rulings:
The WMF should act as the legal body representing the Wikimedia community; it should thus have the ability to react to legal, privacy, and security threats.
Such ruling pertaining to legal threats etc. can be subject to community review and rollback if necessary (but it probably won't be necessary; leave the legal stuff to the WMF and let us get on with writing an encyclopedia.)
The community should work with the WMF; the WMF is not inherently more powerful than the community
The WMF should implement office actions and other rulings ONLY regarding threats to privacy, security, and legal rulings (see bullet point one)
The WMF should not make rulings in other areas; it should leave those to the community to decide (e.g., WP:FRAMGATE = no-no)
I like the new proposed wording in that it makes clear that the WMF should only be handling the legal stuff, and keep their hands off other incidents. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]13:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than focusing on giving ourselves direct oversight, focus solely on giving ourselves indirect oversight by demanding more transparency from the WMF. This may both be less controversial - other projects, affiliates, etc can hardly complain about us giving everyone more information - and something that the WMF is more willing to accept.
I have been quizzing Jimmy Wales on the Endowment. That is clearly one area: in all the 7.5 years the Endowment has existed, we have never yet had the equivalent of a financial statement detailing its revenue and expenses (including highest-paid employees and contractors earning over $100k in any year), as is standard for the Wikimedia Foundation and indeed legally mandated for any 501(c)(3) non-profit. But judging by the only two years we have any data at all on, there have probably been something like $15 million of expenses for the Endowment since 2016 – and no public accounting for them. In particular, we don't know how much Tides were paid for hosting the Endowment (and it's worth noting that the head of Tides at one point moved across to the WMF to become WMF General Counsel).
I have long wanted to know how many full-time employees (US and non-US, if any) the Form 990 figure for "Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits" (Line 15 on page 1, most recently it was $88 million) represents – the WMF has always refused to answer, saying knowing the actual figure would be "misleading" (!).
It would also be good to have prominent and timely documentation on what the m:Knowledge Equity Fund grantees have done with their grants.
Rather than granting ourselves the ability to review and veto aspects of the WMF finances (or even just WMF grants), we grant metawiki the ability.
I see two issues with this:
I don't trust the metawiki RfC process; it appears to be overly controlled by the WMF
I don't know how willing we will be to allow a consensus on metawiki to result in action on enwiki. Ie, if metawiki decides that a grant should not be issued, and the WMF issues it anyway, we will be willing to work to block fundraising on enwiki?
Both of these can be resolved; for the first, I might be incorrect about the meta RfC process, and if I am not there is no reason we have to use it; we can compose an alternative.
For the second, it may be that the enwiki community is willing to cede this authority to the broader community; I personally would have no objection to that, and based on the discussion here it appears many other editors do not either (Barkeep49, North8000, and Piotrus - please correct me if I have incorrectly assessed your positions on this). However, the initial RfC establishing it would still, in my opinion, need to be held here; we need a consensus on enwiki granting metawiki this authority.
This would also provide a pathway to truly internationalize the effort; we could hold parallel RfC's on some of the other major Wikipedia's, who would also act to block fundraising should the WMF seek to ignore a consensus at metawiki. BilledMammal (talk) 12:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Responding on your question, the broader the community in authority the better. But it would probably need to be incubated here in enwiki first. Otherwise there are too many major challenges to tackle at once. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:25, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF doesn't feel like it controls metawiki, which has volunteer admins and is really run by the elected stewards, which is why it's moving policy and other foundation things to its own wiki it does control. Beyond metawiki, it also ocurred to me that the MCDC feedback would be a place that you could work to get some traction for these ideas. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 13:49, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is good to hear - although it's not good to hear that the WMF is currently engaged in a power grab in regards to that, which makes me less convinced that dialogue and collaboration will work.
According to [2], the four Wikipedias with the most users are, in order, English, Spanish, French, and German. I would like to see some sort of system where you would need a supermajority (maybe 60% in an RfC?) on three out of four of those Wikipedias to take any radical action like blocking fundraising ads. I don't like the idea of enwiki alone having too much power. Ideally, the fourth wikipedia would go along with the majority. It would be a lot harder politically for the W?F to overide the wishes of three or four of the largest wikipedias. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon To me such safeguards are necessary less if something is radical and more if it will have drastic negative effects on projects other than ours.
Blacking out the project is a radical action, but different projects do it at different points when they think the circumstances require it, rightly. Beyond that, if we're looking at the 4 largest projects, we might as well run a meta-rfc (as I firmly disagree that there is "WMF control") and include everybody.
There may also be exceptions if a project was facing particularly onerous consequences that were provoking the radical action, but such conditions don't apply here. Nosebagbear (talk) 04:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
^If we believe we are in a position to get multiple candidates elected, we would need to create multiple cards in order to ensure that the candidates ranked lower on our card don't get eliminated in the earlier rounds - I think this is part of the reason Legoktm didn't get elected
Just a reminder that there *are* other ways the foundation *could* raise money -- are they better for the project?
Many of these proposals are simply nonstarters, either because they won't get support here or because even if they get support they won't result in changes because those changes are unworkable. But let's say some demands are made and the WMF does not meet them. Denying them banners on enwiki doesn't necessarily mean anything has to change outside of their fundraising department. Donor emails still go out and could increase. Spam could increase. They could use advertise or underwrite. Many people will still donate even without a banner. And, the big one for the purpose of discussion, you may note above that we worked to reduce the revenue gap through major gifts and other fundraising channels (emphasis mine). Wikimedia Enterprise and major gifts could simply expand. IIRC the foundation has historically rejected most very large gifts -- that could simply stop. Is it really preferable to have tech giants, billionaires, and corporations funding operations? This is tangential to producing demands -- just something that should be kept in mind as a further reason to keep demands within the realm of reality. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have long advocated that the W?F do an experiment with 1% of the readers, replacing the banners and hard sell with a simple soft-sell "Donate" link in the upper right corner, and delivering it to all of that 1%. (with the banners, registered users can turn them off). I predict that the soft sell will bring in more money than the hard sell. So far the W?F has refused to even talk about my proposal. I wonder what they are afraid of? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:09, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody from the W?F ever replies to me in any way. As an experiment, without menioning me in any way, ask them to reveal how much a particular Wikimania cost was. You will get silence. They won't even tell you "we are not going to answer that question". This is called "stonewalling" and it the only known way to get a response (even if it is just generic PR speak) is to make a lot of noise and get the NYT or the Guardian to cover your unanswered question. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 22:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's been a "Donate" link for years; as far as I know, it's been there since I started editing 18 years ago. It's no longer as visible as it used to be because it's collapsed in the menu on the latest version of Vector. It never got much money. I do vaguely recall an experiment many years ago with one of those yellow "donate" buttons but as I recall, the community hated it and it was discontinued. I can't remember if it raised much money. Risker (talk) 06:47, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I get the impression that the fundraising folks have A/B tested a lot of things over the years, and that the banners and "hard sell" wordings were used instead of a donation button because they performed the best. The enwiki community recently pressured the WMF into changing their fundraising banner wordings to be softer, and donations went down, which supports my impression. The fundraising folks have been talking to the enwiki community and have been receptive to input recently, if anyone would like to visit them over at Wikipedia:Fundraising/2023 banners. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:41, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One would think that if such testing had been done it would be published. In particular, I have on multiple occasions asked what percentage of donations come from the donote link you see on the left of every page compared to the banners. Like my calls for the W?F to reveal the total cost of a randomly chosen Wikimania, the response has always been a stonewall of silence. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 13:19, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well we know they have A/B tested a lot of stuff, it's been discussed before. AFAIK they've never really published any results or at least not in a way targeted at editors. I don't know if they've A/B tested your particular proposal, it sort of sounds like the thing anyone with experience with donations knows won't work so I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try it but who knows. Nil Einne (talk) 11:40, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hard sell brought in money, but donations made to prevent the dog being shot were passed on to unexpected causes. "Raised more cash" may not equate to "performed the best"; there are also ethical considerations. Certes (talk) 19:56, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, FWIW I am more happy with softer sell requests for donations than the previous "Give us money! Now!! Or Wikipedia will go broke!!! And we will have to shoot this dog!!1!" requests, even if results with less money. There are limits to just how far any non-profit organization should go in soliciting funds.The "shoot this dog" is not an accusation that the Foundation would harm animals to solicit more money, but an allusion to an American humor magazine that put a similar threat on its cover. Which likely was published before most reading this were born. -- llywrch (talk) 18:10, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree wholeheartedly with the aims of this proposed RFC, could we soften the language so that it comes off less like a suicide pact ultimatum and more like a friendly and constructive requirements and collaboration specification for WMF behavior? Sandizer (talk) 01:18, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we will use much of the wording - I'm leaning towards an RfC format, rather than a letter format, but that is still up for discussion - but most of the principles, definitely. BilledMammal (talk) 18:43, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the letter format, directly addressed to the WMF and less aggressive then some of the proposals made here, may be slightly better.
One thing is sure, the signatures have a big influence on the actuel effect of the document whatever format it is. They are proof that there are many editors preoccupied about this. Although the latter fact was already proven on multiple occasions, the reiteration of this is important, and the signatures have a different, a better impression on the reader. Reman Empire (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm leaning towards an RfC for that reason, and because it will fulfill the side purpose of allowing us to determine what the communities priorities are; I think we have a good idea here, but an RfC will give us a better one.
I also think it will make more of an impact on the WMF because a signed letter only demonstrates that a certain number of editors feel strongly about something; an RfC allows editors to dissent, and if there is a consensus despite that possibility is demonstrates the community as a whole is concerned about something and suggests a specific resolution to it. BilledMammal (talk) 10:17, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I’m Kassia, the Director for the Community Resources team. It is worth noting that the current grant making process at WMF is led by regional fund committees, which are made up entirely of volunteers and make all grant making decisions at a regional level. There was recently a call for applications for new committee members in three regions: Latin America & the Caribbean, North and West Europe, and North America. The full process, as well as all grant proposals and reports, are available here ~~~ KEchavarriqueen (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you have constructive feedback on how the process (or the outcomes) could be improved, that is always welcome. I would suggest to use the appropriate talk pages on meta for this, rather than a talkpage on en.wikipedia that is in someone's private user space. It might be helpful if you can be a bit more specific what you exactly are interested in understanding better. I don't want to presume to be able to guess what your possible objections could be - is your concern related to the fact that there are no applications for new committee members in North America? I'll point out the obvious that our committee is only involved in the question how to distribute funding, and has no involvement whatsoever in how to raise funds. effeietsanders20:21, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Effeietsanders: I'm sorry for not providing a TLDR when I pinged everyone so here it is: Recent coverage from The Signpost regarding these grants indicates some wide disagreement with the program goals. KEchavarriqueen points out above that the funds allocation decisions fall to volunteers, a fact which was perhaps overlooked earlier. We would appreciate an explanation from our fellow volunteers before editors consider shutting this website down. Chris Troutman (talk)20:28, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're confusing Knowledge Equity Fund grants (what the Signpost article is about) with WMF grants (what KE is talking about, with regional fund committees)? Or maybe I'm the one who is confused. The Knowledge Equity Fund committee is listed at m:Knowledge Equity Fund. Levivich (talk) 20:32, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect the KEF committee decides how to spend the funds allocated to the KEF, not whether to allocate funds to the KEF. That's probably the person/people you want to ping, though I don't know who it is. Perhaps KEchavarriqueen (WMF) could help? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 20:55, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Right. The issue isn't how the KEF committee spent KEF funds, it's that KEF exists in the first place. The (former) CEO, with the (former) Trustees' approval, are who decided to have a KEF, and they (the current ones) are the only ones who can decide not to have a KEF.
There are two more layer to this: first, if you take as a given that the KEF should exist, then there is nothing really wrong with the KEF grants; the grants further the KEF's mission.
Second, that the KEF exists makes perfect sense... if you take as a given that the WMF's role is to lead a "free knowledge movement" (as opposed to "support a free online encyclopedia"). I don't agree with that, but that's what the WMF thinks it's doing, and it thinks that because that's what the community in the past said it wants (e.g. Movement Strategy, the "Vision 2030" or whatever they called it). Therein lies the real problem. Levivich (talk) 21:34, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The odd thing is that we were told the KEF was over. User:Victoriasaid last year,
Equity Grants were an idea of the previous CEO who is no longer with the Foundation so there isn't a chance of them recurring. The Board has done its main job - changed the CEO. Victoria (talk) 10:39, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Addendum: I think there's more to WMF mission than supporting Wikipedia, but supporting "free knowledge movement" is way to far. Support should be limited to WMF projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.). If an initiative is not related to one of those, sorry. I love Internet Archive, EFF, etc. but if people donating to Wikipedia (and let's face it, that's where 99% donations come from) are donating, well, to Wikipedia, not to IA or other worthy causes. (And frankly, having been a reviewer of one round of KEF grants, a lot of those strike me as not worthy but an attempt to squeeze money for projects of little value, with the fig leaf of "this supports free knowledge in devloping world", gives us $$ you rich first worlders and don't ask inconvinient questions). The ones that were funded in the end seem better (what I described above was just what I think of an 'average rejected project', or at least 'an average project I recommended rejecting'), but they are still not things WMF should be funding (projects that support non-profit journalism for example - nice, but the only angle to fund here would be if they were intending to work with Wikinews. Etc.). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here01:33, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it really shouldn't exist. $200K USD for a non-profit organization based in Indonesia that works on human rights and advocacy issues for indigenous people is a nice plan, but not related to the project in any way. KEchavarriqueen (WMF) described the KEF as a a limited fund of $4.5 million from the Foundations 2020-2021 budget. 4.5M is "limited"? KEchavarriqueen also said we do not see these grants as tangential to the Wikimedia movement; they are intended to find new ways of supporting knowledge creation on underrepresented topics, so that newly available knowledge resources can be used to strengthen content on the projects themselves. I have asked them how they believe the above example to be related to the project in any way, but they have not yet responded. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]14:11, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(perhaps helpful to point to the discussion that was taking place on wikimedia-l. While I am not involved with the program, I did respond to that thread (as did others). But also for the benefit of my colleagues that may or may not want to respond to this discussion: it might be helpful if you can point out exactly what your concerns are and what you would like to know. The Signpost article discusses a number of different issues, and conflating them might not be helpful. I do also suspect that if you have constructive suggestions on how to improve this Fund and its disbursements, you may want to leave those on Meta: m:Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund. effeietsanders21:00, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MassiveEartha: How did we end up with 200K going to a non-profit organization based in Indonesia that works on human rights and advocacy issues for indigenous people, for one thing. Someone seems to have interpreted the fund as Knowledge Equity instead of Knowledge Equity. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]20:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! Thank you, Guy. I wanted to pull out a few headlines from that article for use here, but it has so many shocking quotes that I'd end up in breach of copyright. Please, everyone, read it. Certes (talk) 12:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is anyone willing to contact the author of that article and ask if they would be willing to release it under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License so we could post a copy on Wikipedia? I would do it myself but am having health issues that keep me away from my computer for extended periods. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:21, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"This proposal has been approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. It may not be circumvented, eroded, or ignored by Wikimedia Foundation officers or staff nor local policies of any Wikimedia project... We urge the Wikimedia community to promote openness and collaboration, by improving communication on the projects... supporting outreach efforts... promoting a friendlier, more collaborative culture..."
I find it difficult to reconcile the lofty goals of the above resolution with the reality of the Wikimedia Foundation refusing to answer reasonable questions or engage in any conversation with the volunteers. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 01:16, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia should focus on content creation – not social justice campaigns
That article echoes many of the complaints that we volunteers have had -- although it overlooks the fact that there are a lot of volunteers who have been raising the same questions for years. (I'd really like to be able to sit in on one of the Board meetings -- or maybe a few -- just to determine whether they are well-meaning but clumsy at public relations, or they are pursuing a different set of goals than what we would expect.) And it raises the usual questions about the Endowment: I for one thought it was the rainy-day fund to keep the servers running should the volunteer community collapse & the only solution was to put all of the websites in read-only mode so that the contributed content is available for ever. (Or at least as long as there are web servers & an Internet.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:52, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to [3], one of the things unwitting W?F donors are paying for is to "match racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics, and economic justice". That "genetics" bit means that the W?F is funding efforts to stop law enforcement from using DNA databases to catch criminals. Donors to the W?F are also funding efforts to ban ankle bracelets, gang databases, and police use of body-worn cameras. Which I find strange. The BLM movement seems to be in favor of police body cameras. See [4] from the ACLU. Yet for some reason the W?F is funding a group that is against police body cameras.
I have updated the draft to make it into a series of non-binding resolutions. It is currently structured as an RfC, but can be changed to a request for signatures if editors belief that would be more effective.
Currently, there are six resolutions; I believe I have addressed most of the concerns raised here, but there may be concerns that are not currently addressed in a resolution, or that are currently expressed that should not be. I encourage editors to boldly edit the draft, including by adding proposed resolutions, and we can discuss here if there is a point of contention.
I feel like I'd want to hear from the board about this and how they understand these restrictions. I suspect this privacy functions at least in part to ensure that people can vote in the manner they think best serves the mission, even if it's unpopular. If you're on record taking an opinion that proves unpopular, you're now open to be harassed. In general, a lot of these changes may encourage populist board candidates. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:19, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The 501(c)(3) will be legally required to publish these disclosures in its Form 990 in order to maintain its nonprofit status. That means we shouldn't really have to ask for that to be done going forward ... but I'm not sure whether it's worth tweaking the wording.
At any rate, the problem is that the Endowment probably (judging by the $1.8M per annum figures for the last two years that have now come to light) had a low eight-figure expenses total over the past 7.5 years, without any public annual reporting of where that money went. --AndreasJN46613:29, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia community is concerned about the distribution of grants related to activity on the English Wikipedia that will either not contribute to our goals of building an encyclopedia or will actively hinder those goals. We request that the Wikimedia Foundation informs the English Wikipedia of all non-trivial grants that will result in activity on the English Wikipedia through the opening of a discussion at the Village Pump (WMF) prior to the grant being issued. We also request that the Foundation considers comments made in the discussion and does not proceed with the grant if the English Wikipedia is not convinced of its utility.
I think it would be better to be involved earlier in the screening process and in setting direction on the type of grants, rather than only being involved at the end. I think having some type of standing committee representing the global community would be more efficient and thus more effective. (I have the same view for all grants, regardless of which areas they may affect.) isaacl (talk) 03:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that engagement earlier in the process would be beneficial, but I'm not sure how that work would - a single standing committee, giving the general direction for all grants, would be an option but we already have a number of standing committees (meta:Grants:Committees and meta:Knowledge Equity Fund#The Knowledge Equity Fund Committee, among possibly others) and they don't appear to be doing a good job at aligning the issuing of grants to the communities priorities.
Perhaps a single, well-advertised and elected committee that these lesser committees are made subordinate to would be more representative? BilledMammal (talk) 04:09, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The community needs to provide feedback to its representatives, and be more involved in selecting ones that they trust to represent its wishes. It needs to understand what problems may exist with the current committees, and figure out how to make them work better (replacing or restructuring them being an option). isaacl (talk) 04:20, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. This needs to be worded better. I was not aware of the Nigerian mess of a grant - effectively 20k for a few poor articles, "nice". Ugh. But in theory, that project aimed to "contribute to building an encyclopedia", so while it was a bad project / bad grant, it is not a good example for what you write. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here14:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The intent of this section is to discuss grants that have the stated intent of contributing to building an encyclopedia, but fail to do so because of reasons that should have been obvious during the grant request process - these are unfortunately common. Grants that don't have the intent of contributing to building an encyclopedia are intended to be addressed in #Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects.
activity on the English Wikipedia - This could probably use some tweaking. If someone creates a meetup page, do you really want to be notified? A grant to an affiliate probably means a nonspecific series of events that may have activity on enwp. Do you want to know about all of them? That would be hundreds of notifications, and most of them are already visible on-wiki. Be as specific about what you mean as possible, bearing in mind there are a whole lot of grant-funded events every year that involve activity on enwp but aren't like the deforestation project. Maybe e.g. something to the effect of "notify us/consider feedback before giving content improvement grants to groups/individuals that do not have an established track record of constructive contributions to enwp and which will involve large numbers of new contributors/contributions" (though doesn't this already exist on meta? it's just less common for people to express objections to grants rather than to endorse or abstain). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects
The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has found itself engaged in mission creep, and that this has resulted in funds that donors provided in the belief that they would support Wikimedia Projects being allocated to unrelated external organizations, despite urgent need for those funds to address internal deficiencies.
We request that the Wikimedia Foundation reappropriates all money remaining the Knowledge Equity Fund, and we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community.
Discussion (Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects)
I'm not convinced that the double-majority is necessary, and I'm less convinced that the WMF will agree to it, but I believe it may be useful in terms of ensuring more WMF engagement with the concerns of its "flagship products". Either way, I think the option of including that in the proposed resolution is worth discussing. BilledMammal (talk) 03:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A proposal challenging the KEF is certainly something it seems many want, but three points: (1) Just to clarify something from discussions above, in case I was not the only one confused: the KEF was funded with 4.5 million in 2020. It was controversial, with some statements that it will not be renewed. In fact, it was not renewed. The 4.5 million was just being distributed over multiple years. When I add up the figures at meta:Knowledge Equity Fund I come to 2,305,000. So that's about 2.2m left in the fund. (2) There are multiple separate proposals here: cancel the KEF without spending the rest, or finishing the KEF experiment and declining to fund it again. It's not realistic to think we can dictate exactly what that 2.2m would be reallocated to -- it would just be returned to the foundation coffers or potentially the endowment. It makes more sense to use this as an example when arguing to increase spending on community needs rather than think we can just seize control of it. (3) Hard pass on "major projects" supremacy. We're the largest -- we already have the most people and a lot of leverage -- we don't need to form an alliance of majorities to demand we call the shots for the rest of the world (though yes, I appreciate this time that the scope of calling the shots is limited to a particular type of grant in this case -- that's progress :) ). — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In regards to (2), my intent with this proposal is that we are asking the WMF to cancel the KEF without spending the rest, with the remainder to be reallocated as the WMF sees fit. Does that intent not come across?
Related to this, KEchavarriqueen, is there any reason, aside from the lack of will to do so, that this could not be done?
In regards to (3) and an alliance of majorities calling the shots for the rest of the world, these communities already do that; I ran some queries on Quarry and my estimate is that they collectively include around two-thirds of all active editors. The additional influence it will give them in that regard is minor, and my hope is that by making the WMF need approval from specific communities it will incentivize the WMF to engage directly with them, rather than expecting those communities to come to them - and in the process, make the entire system more representative. However, as I said above, I'm not convinced that the double-majority aspect needs to be included and would welcome further discussion on the positives and negatives of that aspect. BilledMammal (talk) 14:57, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest adding Commons to the list of examples of "major projects". Otherwise, it may appear that we believe only Wikipedias are worthy of having a say about these grants: the more varieties of volunteers we appeal to, the more endorsements this may get. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Llywrch (talk • contribs)
The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has neglected critical areas of the project, and that continued neglect of these areas may endanger the project.
To improve the resilience of the project, we request that money be reallocated to hiring more technical staff, whose role will be to fulfill requests from the community such as those expressed on the Community Wishlist, as well as restoring access to tools such as grapher extension.
Are there other areas we should explicitly call on for the WMF to provide increased support to? In a current ARBCOM case WugapodessaidSomewhat of a tangent: there was a year where the "]" key on my laptop didn't work. Contributing was an absolute pain. Wikipedia destroys keyboards. I genuinely believe keyboard damage is a problem that we don't acknowledge enough. I think the WMF should have some kind of keyboard fund for contributors. Obviously don't go making fun of people with broken keyboards---that's so petty---but if the WMF gave contributors money to repair damaged equipment we would probably could have avoided at least one negative interaction (or that's what I'd tell them at least).
I don't know if that was a serious comment, or if it was if we should be encouraging the WMF to provide resources to keep key contributors online, but it may be worth considering adding a line related to it. BilledMammal (talk) 03:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I was serious. As an aside, I think this is a good list. As a practical matter, I would recommend reframing this in terms of one or two Movement Strategy Principles. For example, the request for more technical support could be framed in terms of "resilience": the lack of resiliency in our code base led to major problems with our graph extension including a wide-spread outage that impacted readers. Funds for acquisitions could be framed in terms of knowledge equity: high quality content often relies on access to esoteric or expensive resources and providing funds to acquire long-requested resources lowers the financial barrier to contributing for many. I'm just spitballing here, so feel free to take a look and think about how they might apply. The Foundation and global movement in general have come up with ways to talk about strategic priorities, and using that language will make it easier to convince those unfamiliar with the work or problems faced on EnWiki. — Wug·a·po·des05:47, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is the only one on the list that I know I would support, and which I think there would be broad support for. I'd encourage someone (touches nose) to put some thought into how this could be transformed into something more concrete. It's easy enough to say "ok" to this, hire a part-time coder, and say it's been satisfied (not saying that would happen -- just illustrating that it would help to be more specific). At some point someone (maybe it was Guy Macon) suggested securing a commitment to spend 1% of revenue on community tech projects. Something like that. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suggested the 1%, though I wouldn't be surprised if others had the idea too. Really it should be 100% spent on Wikipedia and sister projects and 0% squandered on politics, but that is an unrealistic aim with current management and 1% going in the right direction is a start. Certes (talk) 17:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced that we should be issuing a resolution in regards to this. However, I have included it to give us a chance to discuss if it is appropriate. BilledMammal (talk) 03:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A fairly straightforward question, though I would just personally disagree that a board where fully half are community representatives underrepresents the community. I don't know that I'd support it, but one specific way to change it rather than the vague "request ... reorganizing" is to suggest simply increasing the size of the board by one and having the affiliates elect a third. IMO it would be better to increase the affiliate-selected ones because that election requires talking to lots of stakeholders around the world to secure votes rather than just appealing to the largest group. YMMV. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:59, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the fundamental fix would be for the board to be 100% elected by the community (except Jimbo's position) and for the constitution/bylaws and any change to them requiring ratification by the community. EnWiki stating it's position on this (= a wide-participation RFC with a clear cut result) is a fine step one. We don't have to chart out the next 10 steps in order to take step 1. North8000 (talk) 18:02, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I feel the community needs to be involved earlier to make most efficient use of everyone's time and the WMF's financial resources. I think more community discussion is required to form a proposal, though. I would like the global community to consider a way to select representatives to collaborate with WMF management on setting annual goals and organization objectives, and on evaluating whether or not they have been achieved. isaacl (talk) 03:34, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that that is what the board is supposed to do, with the community elected members being our representatives. Unfortunately, due to the structure of the board, it does not operate that way. BilledMammal (talk) 04:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what goes in in the WMF, but in typical companies/organizations, senior management plays a big role in developing the company's mission, annual goals, and strategy for implementation. The community would benefit from a greater partnership with WMF management to set goals and review them at an operational level, below the board level. To save everyone time, the community needs to steer the organization on a desired path earlier on, rather than trying to redirect it later. isaacl (talk) 04:15, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I have understood you correctly, you are suggesting that the community would select representatives to sit in on, among others, Wikimedia Technology strategy meetings, and work with them to ensure that their goals align with the goals of the community? For example, with Technology, our representatives could work to get more resources directed to community priorities like the wishlist and less resources directed to projects that the community doesn't consider beneficial?
I imagine that this would result in increased transparency, as our representatives would be in a position to inform the community about the current priorities of the department at a much earlier stage than we currently become informed about it. I like the idea, but I'm not sure how we could propose it, and I'm not convinced the WMF will be receptive to it. BilledMammal (talk) 04:27, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am suggesting that the community have representatives sitting in strategy meetings to decide on direction and implementation approach. This is more efficient than WMF management trying to figure out what might attain community approval later and then having a poll. If (big if) the community can figure out how to make its representation effective, and not deadlock discussion, then I think WMF management should be open to it. However, the real wildcard is setting the mission and allocating the budgets. If, for example, the global community consensus is to narrow the WMF focus to supporting Wikipedia and closely related resources, and it wants to turn the WMF into mostly a tech company (with perhaps a bit of research and government lobbying in support of this focus), I expect there will be push back. This is why I feel board support is also needed to support more community involvement in WMF direction. isaacl (talk) 04:42, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is having six resolutions and thus six discussions and six surveys, apart from general comments, really necessary? Splitting them into six separate RfCs isn't ideal either, but at least then all that discussion isn't put in the hands of one unlucky closer. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]12:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think splitting it into six individual RfC's (rather than sub-RfC's) would be worse; it would make it harder for editors to see the "big picture", and probably drive down overall turnout.
What I wanted to do is to allow the community to consider each resolution separately; while they are related, they each deal with distinct concepts and splitting them will enable us - and the WMF - to better understand the communities position, and will ensure that less controversial resolutions do not have their support damaged by more controversial resolutions.
However, I am concerned that this structure will make it difficult for the community to participate and drive down turnout; I am hoping we will be able to merge a couple of the resolutions, and I am considering adding "Support" and "Oppose" sections - since there is very little Wikipedia policy that is relevant to these discussions weight of argument will have minimal impact on the consensus and thus it will come down to the level of community support making votes - as opposed to !votes - appropriate, and we may avoid turnout issues by structuring the RfC in such a way to encourage editors to submit votes rather than feeling obligated to provide an argument for or against every resolution. BilledMammal (talk) 22:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a conclusion on the number of notifications we would recieve each year yet, but from an initial review of the data I am concerned about the number of grants going to individuals who have very little activity on any Wikimedia Project.
Note that I did not review any of these grants in depth, and so there may be inaccuracies in my summary as well as my assessment of whether they are active on Enwiki or any Wikimedia Project. BilledMammal (talk) 21:42, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Build an online training program to support digitization history/culture in Libya, this program will support spreading knowledge about Libya, that keeps pace with the rapid changes have occurred in the last couple of years and guaranteeing free and equal access to information.
Build a community of researchers and editors through partnerships to form a nucleus for the Wikipedia user group, which will also focus on digitizing information about different Libyan groups.
The objective of the project is to connect Wikipedia communities with cultural organizations to contribute to the development of more diverse and inclusive Wikimedia platform. Through trainings constituencies will develop the capacity to generate more open knowledge content about African culture, communities and people while also expanding content in African languages. This approach will increase the relevancy of Wikipedia to underserved African communities and youth.
Co-create with Wikimedia a guide to the use of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons with a gender and human rights perspective, disseminate it and hold workshops to enhance its reach. Publish news articles on individuals for the purpose of generating new profiles for Wiki articles.
This project aims to update and enrich the historical infrastructures database that is accessible to the public with the help of youth. Partnering with Wikimedia Movement helps to achieve this goal because using the Wikimedia platform would guarantee the accessibility of the database is open to all. Wikimedia platform would also enable the participation of the community, especially youth, to update, enrich, and utilize the historical place database. Editors note: The platform referred to is OpenStreetMap. While it is a Wiki project, it is not a Wikimedia project
This project aims to increase Indonesians content creators’ capability to develop higher quality & more entertaining Internet contents that provide high-value knowledge in Indonesia’s national & local languages, and gain their commitment to consistently producing contents even after completing the program.
Wikimedia Movement will be an invaluable partner to enhance efforts in substance development and supporting ecosystems to sustain creator’s commitment.
By August 2023, we want to improve, enrich and evaluate the content (existing and future) of French-speaking Quebec and Canadian writers, including Indigenous and cultural diversity writers, as well as their literary works, on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. To do this, we plan to reach at least 100 people through our events and build a community made up of volunteers and institutional partners of at least 30 members.
Through the main problems that are addressed in the different Wikimedia projects, the following initiative will seek to conceptually and didactically train approximately 500 teachers in Argentina in critical and reflective skills on the management and consumption of information in digital environments. The project will be carried out in partnership with Wikimedia Argentina and its Education and Human Rights team.
Educate Indonesian educators about Open Educational Resources (OER)
Raise educators’ awareness of Wikimedia Commons & Wikibooks as OERs that they can benefit from
Produce OERs in Indonesian that can be contributed to Wikimedia Commons & Wikibooks
Address common misconceptions on copyright & open licenses.
Partnering with Wikimedia is important because Wikimedia projects are the best platform for the application of the 5R OER principles (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute)
Train 200 African librarians from at least 20 African countries on how to effectively open up and link knowledge by making their library collections more visible through Wikidata, and step-down skills learned to their user communities through at least 20 edit-athons across Africa.
The movement in defense of human rights, indigenous communities and peoples, and the environment in Peru knows and uses Wikipedia tools to expand content relevant to environmental justice, and increase, diversify, and articulate the base of editors among grassroots organizations and indigenous students. CooperAcción and Wikimedia share values such as the disclosure of reliable and neutral information, and the need to incorporate perspectives that have been historically excluded.
Ensure that the Copyright Amendment Bill is gazetted into law Organise in 9 provinces and 10 constituencies to build a social movement for free access to knowledge. Promote public awareness of how copyright exceptions benefit the public good. Promote the broader objectives of the Wikimedia Movement including broadening participation in knowledge creation and access. Produce a best practice guide for Wikimedia chapters engaged in copyright reform efforts.
By partnering with Wikipedia, we hope to expand and diversify user groups in order to fill knowledge gaps, grow content libraries for communities living under authoritarian or transitional contexts, and develop organisational capacity of Wiki user groups to recruit and train new editors as well as manage outreach activities for future expansion.
We will build an engagement path for Movement Organizers from the open tech community to engage with climate action movements. Through free culture, open tools, and community building, we will promote a collaborative in which information, solutions and strategies to address climate change are publicly accessible. The work of Wikimedia communities will benefit from dialogue with other organizers, and our stakeholders will benefit from the “hands-on” solutions of Wikimedia communities.
The objective is to improve the presence of valuable policy and research material and coverage of important policy issues in Wikimedia. This will be achieved by using APO’s database to verify the most reputable and prolific publishing organisations as sources, feeding in APO metadata into Wikidata, and conducting an edit-a-thon on First Peoples public policy. This can be achieved within a year (by 12 June 2023) by collaborating with Wikimedia Australia.
Teach 60 journalists from Mexico to combat disinformation, through training workshops where they will learn verification tools and learn about the Wikimedia ecosystem. We believe that Wikimedia + local journalism can contribute to the fight against disinformation, without forgetting the value of independent journalism that allows the expansion of wikipedia information sources with quality information, by covering knowledge gaps in underrepresented communities and topics.
Our main objective is to address this gap in local history resources by improving the quality of Auckland suburb and region articles on Wikipedia. Our research has shown that teachers and students regularly use Wikipedia, so we want to contribute towards it being a more trusted educational resource for teaching local histories and local contexts. It also allows the Museum to engage at scale with the curriculum, making open access collections and knowledge available to a vast online audience.
The proposed action aims to expand the current Wiki Digital Volunteering Club - Palestine community and its capacity to contribute to the global knowledge ecosystem by providing information on the Palestinian society, particularly in Israel. Additionally, it aims to contribute to the digital literacy development of young Palestinians in Israel by preparing the foundation for the design and implementation of an large-scale educational program.
This grant proposal will extend the work of the previous WikiCredibility Initiative campaign. The objective here is to continue helping communities of new editors, readers, technologists and other ecosystem members who rely on Wikipedia for verified information, sourcing, understanding and creating better processes and frameworks for content creation and information provenance with the help of Wikimedians
The primary goal of the project is to improve the visual content of Wikipedia which will be done by a diverse group of 20 students who will gain visualization and design skills. As part of their practical learning, they will visualize the 200 most viewed educational articles of the Armenian Wikipedia (September 2020 - October 2021). This project will lay the foundation for the formation of a new community of Wikigraphers who will contribute to the visual development of Wikimedia projects.
Our project main objective is to expand local Wikipedia usage through enhancing its educational values and to involve more wider communities into this effort.
We want to travel and while traveling, we could also capture street-level images for OpenStreetMap editing, and also contribute to Wiki Commons by selecting images from viewpoints and attractions to upload to Wiki Commons. We can combine forces together to benefit both OpenStreetMap and WIki Commons projects.
Integrating Wikipedia into the teaching and research of history majors: Focusing on the Department of History of Chengda University and Taiwan's local medical history as the core
The main objective is to increase the number and diversity of contributors on the Wikimedia projects which in turn will lead to increased content, images, and videos in English and Swahili languages.
To improve articles on Wikimedia Foundation project websites and promote free and open access to knowledge locally in Kinyarwanda, French & English and investing in projects that sensitize and train different communities in Rwanda about Wikipedia with much emphasis on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia.
To bring wiki-projects and tools used for education, teaching, and learning to all regions of Armenia: to schools, organizations, and every individual.
Increase the number of actively involved and contributing members and volunteers of Wikimedia Armenia.
Develop new ideas and projects to sustain and expand wiki movement in Armenia,
Promote knowledge and innovation exchange through collaboration, joint projects and representation.
Setswana Wikipedia Challenge - one of the events where we train the community to create more articles about Botswana and notable people in our native language Setswana. Hence with the great relation we have with University of Botswana Librarians we believe that we will be able to edit more articles in Setswana language especially with the great qualification background of the Librarians to edit quality articles.
WikiGap, WLW, Artfeninism edit-a-thons - The Botswana community members have close relations with other established Wikimedian communities such as the Wikimedia Uganda Community user group who have hosted several events in the gender gap diversity and inclusion are, therefore we believe we would be able to get support and guidance on best practices to host such events and have the best outcome by also engaging more female editors.
The Wiki Loves events gives the chapter a chance to enhance coverage of Botswana topics on Wikipedia by generating photographic content to illustrate relevant articles. We have been hosting these events since 2019.
Increase community health and group cohesion within the diverse South African Wiki community
Increase diversity within the South African Wiki community; both demographic and geographic diversity
Increase coverage of African and South African content on Wikipedia - currently African, and even South African, topics are under represented on Wikipedia and the Wikis generally
Increase public awareness - currently the general public in South Africa is still relatively unaware of Wikipedia and how it works
Make South Africa a friendlier place for open/free knowledge
Preserving and promoting Africa’s rich cultural heritage through African culture, festivals, cuisines, quotes, language, and various African-related information/content while also contributing to global free knowledge on the world’s largest free encyclopedia; Wikipedia, and her sister projects.
Provide more than 40 online and in-person workshops by 2025, with the aim of training over 1,000 participants across their local and international partnership hubs in the Caribbean and African regions.
Wikisource: We will continue to support Indian language Wikisource projects and the Wikisource communities in India.
Partnership: We have been putting effort to connect and work with like-minded partners, and we would like to further focus.
Content creation: Creation of high-quality content has been a top priority of CIS-A2K's work-plan and strategy. We will conduct and support a series of Wiki-events which will help to produce high quality content in different Indic Wikimedia projects. Other than Wikisource proofread-a-thon and content relicensing
Leadership development: The Wikimedia movement has been able to grow and sustain due to excellent community leaders and their leadership. We would like to continue working on conducting/supporting activities to enhance leadership skills.
Develop a knowledge base of identified dances that includes dance name, custodians, history/origin, in the form of high quality audiovisuals that will be properly described and archived on wikimedia commons, US Library of congress, internet archives and possibly other open license platforms.
Produce not less than 56 videos of Igbo dances focusing on history, significance, performance, costumes, demography, and period of performance in a format (WebM, .ogg) that is acceptable on wikimedia commons
Organize Edit-a-thons every last Saturday of every month to use uploaded audiovisual contents on wikimedia commons on relevant articles on Wikipedia.
Write articles about the dances on Igbo wikipedia, as notability standards as less strict there; Kindly note that the clause "This knowledge will likely fail Wikipedia's notability criteria” is applicable to only English Wikipedia which form one out of 300+ wikipedia projects where this content will be used.
Organizing a series of contests, with prizes, to create and improve biographies of Ghanaian parliamentarians through our parliament of Ghana contest series
Organizing online and offline workshops, edit-athons and hack-a-thons on various projects we will be embarking on to equip volunteers with the requisite skills necessary for contributing to Wikimedia projects
Organizing Edit-a-thons to add existing images to articles created
WMROMD is making continual efforts to diversify the pool of new editors, enhance content and invest in training editors to better understand and use the wikimedia platforms.
Wikimedia UK will continue to focus on KNOWLEDGE EQUITY and INFORMATION LITERACY as our key strategic themes, whilst also developing work in response to the CLIMATE CRISIS. Our objectives under each of these themes are listed in our three year Strategic Framework. Our Partnerships Paper also gives an indication of the scope and scale of the work we hope to deliver.
Produce a total of 2 hours’ worth of video content in 6 critically endangered Jewish languages/dialects. These videos will be transcribed, translated, and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Using these authentic language samples, we will coordinate members of our team — for whom these languages are parts of their heritage — to edit and improve the Wikipedia pages for each language/dialect (= 8 in total) as well as their entries in Wikidata.
Improve the quality of content available in Wikipedia Romania and grow the Wikipedia Romania community.
I suppose it'll depend on what you want notifications for. If "[$$] to [affiliate] to do a variety of unspecified events that will involve activity on enwp" is sufficient, it probably won't be hundreds. If you want notifications of every grant-funded activity, it certainly would be (and I don't think it's a reasonable expectation). Just for example, Wikimedia NYC runs maybe 30-60+ events/year which involve some kind of activity on wiki (even if it's just creating a meetup page). Those events aren't specified in the grant application. I don't think the annual grants to the big chapters (WMNYC, WMDC, WMUK, WMDE, etc.) are the kinds of grants that make on-wiki folks nervous, though, which is why I threw out the bit about "established track record" above. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:38, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you want notifications of every grant-funded activity, it certainly would be (and I don't think it's a reasonable expectation). No, I don't want that; it would both be an unreasonable expectation and, I believe, unhelpful in achieving the aims of that resolution - to prevent the WMF from issuing grants that are intended to benefit us that will fail to do so, or worse will actively be a negative to our project like the Nigerian deforestation grant.
If that isn't currently clear I will need to reword the resolution; I will think on how to do that, though other editors are of course encouraged to copy-edit as they see best. BilledMammal (talk) 14:50, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just doing a spot check of the "double Xes", which I think illustrate that this sort of task defies simple binary classification.
This project is a project at the intersection of OpenStreetMap and Wikidata. Wikidata is a Wikimedia project, of course, and even OSM, while not being under the Wikimedia umbrella, is ubiquitous on Wikipedia. There's a lot of overlap between the communities, when we use maps in articles they are OSM maps, there's a lot of integration with Wikidata, etc.
ReCreate South Africa is marked as unrelated, but it's a project co-founded by a Wikimedia chapter focused on copyright in South Africa. How is "related" being defined here? I know there are many in the community who think Wikimedia shouldn't be involved in policy/advocacy, but to call it unrelated? Doesn't the Signpost relatively often report on copyright issues [because they're related to the Wikimedia community]?
"Related" is defined as activity on Wikimedia platforms, as best as I can determine. Given that I could only spent a few minutes reviewing each grant, and some of them I was reading only with the help of Google Translate, some of my assessments might be incorrect.
Further, just because a project is unrelated by that definition doesn't mean it isn't beneficial to the project; conversely, just because a project is related doesn't mean it is beneficial. All they are is a way to sort the grants and get an overview of what is going on.
What I want is more community oversight; more ability for the community to say "no, don't do that" to the WMF.
Rather than looking for the ability to veto initiatives at the back end, it would be more effective to be involved at the start and nix the overall program, or shape its objectives to align with community desires. Given the difficulties in getting a broad segment of the community participating on a regular basis over an extended period of time (witness the editors on this talk page expressing the desire to limit their engagement, or to avoid multi-part discussions), having dedicated community representatives be involved is a practical approach. I understand why some editors would prefer to ignore community representation groups (I am in a lot of ways one of those editors), but if the community wants to have a say in overall mission and goals, being engaged at the front end is the most efficient way to do it. isaacl (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment from the Wikimedia Foundation on draft content
These proposed resolutions cover a range of questions that some English Wikipedia community members have regarding the work of the Foundation and the Board of Trustees. You can expect more detailed responses to some of the specific issues mentioned below, but I would also suggest talking about whether there are ways to improve discussion and problem-solving.
The Foundation has tried to directly address some of the topics you’ve raised here, particularly in this year’s annual plan, which prioritises the needs of established editors and increases financial transparency. While we can always improve how we do things, with this annual plan we engaged with communities on and off-wiki in several ways: (1) a one-month community feedback period, the summary can be found here;. (2) responding directly to volunteer questions about the Foundation’s budget, including funds for grants and for addressing product and technology needs; (3) an invitation to participate on the English Wikipedia Village Pump, as well as a local draft summary; (4) regular “Conversations with the Trustees'' through the Community Affairs Committee, where volunteers are invited to join live or submit questions in advance about issues they would like addressed by the Board; and (5) finally, in the last year both our CEO Maryana Iskander and our Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann conducted listening tours with hundreds of volunteers to understand community concerns on the ground, and hear from a broad range of people about what is’s important for our movement and for the Foundation. All of these practices will continue, so it would help to reflect on how to engage differently, if you have suggestions, in addition to the specific issues listed below. Thank you. --KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 13:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that none of these discussions took place on the English Wikipedia. To improve discussion, problem-solving, and relations between enwiki and WMF, this has to change; you have to engage with us in the same way we engage with each other: here on enwiki, through text. Off-wiki activities can complement these on-wiki engagements, but they cannot replace them.
For instance, my understanding is that the Listening Tour was conducted entirely off-wiki, which was a considerable barrier to most of our community's involvement. Ideally, an open-ended discussion would have also been initiated at WP:VPW in parallel with these off-wiki events, which would have encouraged community members to participate in the process and given Iskander and Deckelmann a more complete understanding of the situation and what must be done if they wish to repair the breach between us and the WMF.
Discussions on metawiki are an improvement over these off-wiki activities but they still exclude a substantial portion of our community; while many are concerned about the activities of the WMF it is an added burden to ask volunteers – who are primarily here to enhance the encyclopedia – to consistently monitor other projects with only peripheral relevance. For example, instead of merely inviting participation on metawiki, starting a discussion on the draft annual plan at WP:VPW, with WMF staff actively participating, would have been beneficial. BilledMammal (talk) 14:43, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has found itself engaged in mission creep, and that this has resulted in funds that donors provided in the belief that they would support Wikimedia Projects being allocated to unrelated external organizations, despite urgent need for those funds to address internal deficiencies. We request that the Wikimedia Foundation re appropriates all money remaining the Knowledge Equity Fund, and we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community..."
...the WMF responded with a link to a statement[5] that starts with this:..
"For the second consecutive year, the Wikimedia Foundation is anchoring its annual plan in the Movement's strategy to advance equity."
"The Wikimedia Foundation will continue to support the Equity Fund, which was established in 2020 to specifically advance knowledge and racial equity goals, recognizing the need to create additional pathways and collaboration opportunities for people working on these issues to contribute to our Movement."
If the WMF really wants to "talk about whether there are ways to improve discussion and problem-solving" I suggest that, right here on this page, they initiate a real, human-to-human conversation on the reasons why they think "advancing knowledge and racial equity goals" is needed, why so many editors think that it is mission creep, and whether anyone reading the fundraising banners would get the message that this is what their donations are supporting. Just talk to us like humans trying to do the right thing instead of shoveling public-relations-speak at us as you did above.
Just to address the inevitable objections to what I just wrote, racial equity is very much a desirable goal. So are environmental issues. And human rights. And religious tolerance. There are many, many issues in this world that we could support financially at the expense of creating an encyclopedia.The question is whether they are issues we should support. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 15:19, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They just don't get it, do they? What part of "mission creep" is hard to understand? As you said, there are many noble goals the WMF can fling its money at. But we are still and will continue to be an attempt to be the sum of human knowledge through encyclopedias, free image repositories, dictionaries, and databases, not the Wikimedia Philanthropic Foundation. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]15:39, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; please let donors decide for themselves what causes to support. There is currently no way to support Wikipedia financially, because any money sent to the WMF gets split between unrelated causes that the donor might not prioritise or even condone. If people want to do good but can't decide which causes are most deserving, there may be a niche for a general fund which forwards their money to a diverse range of specialised charities, but that is not the WMF's purpose. Certes (talk) 15:47, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually easy to accomplish. US non-profits can have "restricted funds" (also known as "donor-restricted" funds/gifts/donations) and "unrestricted funds" (Google it to find out more). Almost all of WMF's donations are unrestricted (restricted/unrestricted assets are broken down as such in their annual financials).
We could launch an RFC that, if the WMF wants to run donation banners on enwiki, they need to allow donors the option of restricting their donations. This can be accomplished with a drop-down menu at donate.wikimedia.org that says "Restrict funds to..." and then a list of WMF wikis, with an option for "unrestricted."
Truth is, most donors anyway give unrestricted funds, even when given the option of restricting, and this is probably what would happen with the WMF, but at the very least, donors should have the option of restricting their funds to be used on a particular wiki or for a particular use. Other examples of restrictions could be "software development," "web hosting," or other cross-wiki uses, it doesn't have to be a per-wiki restriction. But this would allow donors to donate specifically to enwiki, or frwiki, or commons or whatever, or specifically donate for software development or web hosting, rather than making all small-donations unrestricted (which I believe is the default).
Let's not. Earlier in the WMF's history, they did accept donor-restricted funds for large donations; this led to some of the most unhelpful and disruptive situations on this project. Think about it: if the restriction is that you must have X software implemented by Y date in order to get my $1 million - that would create a situation where software is likely to be released whether or not it is in good enough condition for content creators/managers to use. We've been there. I for one never want to go back to that. Risker (talk) 07:05, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what happened years ago that you're referring to, but what you're talking about is not what I'm talking about. For one thing I think you missed where I said "small donations," not large donations (or large grants, which I think is what you're talking about).
More to the point, restricted donations aren't conditional donations -- the donor can't put a time limit on a software rollout. The donor can't just put whatever restriction they want in it (well, technically they could try, but the non profit can decline the donation if the restriction isn't something they want to abide by).
Rather, this would be a drop-down menu where the small donor could choose from a list of restrictions. To see an example, look at the Red Cross donation page, the drop-down menu where it says "I want to support" and then it gives a menu of options, same thing at United Way ("Use my donation to suppport:") and Mayo Clinic ("Designate my gift to..."), all with drop-down menus with options for restrictions. It would be like that. Nothing like "you must have X software implemented by Y date" would be on the drop-down menu. The options could be geographical, by wiki, by use (software, hardware, hosting, recruitment, WikiMania, whatever), or whatever else the WMF/community decide to list on the drop down menu. Levivich (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@KStineRowe (WMF): re responding directly to volunteer questions about the Foundation’s budget, including funds for grants and for addressing product and technology needs. I have some questions I'm hoping the WMF can respond directly to:
How many full-time equivalents (FTEs) does the WMF currently employ, and how many were there last (fiscal) year?
When is the graphing extension expected to be restored? How many FTEs are working on this?
When will the phabricator backlog be cleared (or reduced below X tickets, however the WMF defines it)? How many FTEs are currently working on clearing phab tickets, and how many last year?
When will the next version of Visual Editor be released, and what new features will it have? How many FTEs are currently working on Visual Editor, and how many last year?
What is the total number of FTEs working on all software, and how many last year?
Is there anybody besides FTEs working on any of the above (e.g., third-party contractors)? If so, who is working on what, and how big are their teams?
What is the total number of FTEs not working on software, and how many last year?
Shall of the following be the official position of the English Wikipedia?
The English Wikipedia believes that the fundamental problem and the fundamental fix for various Wikimedia Foundation issues involves the fundamental structure of the WMF organization. It is our position that a series of changes should be developed to evolve to the following:
The By-Laws are the highest authority for the organization. The By-Laws would require approval by the Wikipedia communities and changing them would require approval by the Wikipeda communities. Persons operating in non-Wikipedia communities would participate in this process through Wikipedia communities. The scope of the by-laws would be similar to the scope the current bylaws, defining the largest scale structures, procedures and rules such as the particulars of the WMF board
With the exception of the founder position, all WMF board positions are to be directly elected by the Wikipedia communities.
This sets the general direction for development of a process to implement this. It is recognized that this process and evolution will be complex and take a few years.
You're on the right lines. I don't see the WMF voluntarily scrapping its gravy train short of either a fork or an all-out editors' strike, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Certes (talk) 20:43, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I think that EN Wiki saying "this is what we should head towards" would be very influential to affect the course of events via zillions of possibilities. "Ask" and getting cooperation from the current board is merely one of them. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:29, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we could reword #Board Composition to address these points. With regards to the second point, my decision to make it "by replacing some or all of the appointed seats with community-elected seats", rather than the more ambitious "With the exception of the founder position, all WMF board positions are to be directly elected by the Wikipedia communities" was because there are some in the community who support the affiliate seats, and I didn't want to lose there support. I also think that a more limited request is more likely to get results.
I'm not wedded to any wording either. But I did think this through ......saying that we should set a course for an ambitious goal is more likely to provide the necessary shift needed. Even if it ended us as a compromise to merely get a few crumbs from the ivory tower. North8000 (talk) 00:35, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@BilledMammal:Yours looks pretty good. I've had an idea on how to steadily evolve a finalized version. Once it is near-finalized, make it a draft which can be modified (edited in place) with anything that two editors agree on. We can use yours as the starting point. North8000 (talk) 13:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Words cannot express how much I support the spirit of this. The more I study and contemplate the issues on Wikipedia, the more I come back to the WMF. @North8000's proposals are common sense. If I can constructively contribute to this in any way, please inform me. Philomathes2357 (talk) 20:04, 1 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the distinction between community and affiliate seats was abolished over two years ago. The bylaws now merely say that As many as eight (8) Trustees will be sourced from candidates vetted through a Community and/or Affiliate nomination process. Note the "and/or" – it is compatible with the present bylaws wording for the community not to have a vote at all, or for all future selections to have last year's format (community only allowed to vote for candidates selected by the affiliates). AndreasJN46606:26, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I propose a new policy page which defines the position of English Wikipeda. It would contain (only) the results of RFC's where all of the following conditions have been met:
The RFC had widespread advertising and participation within Wikipeda.
The RFC was a single proposal (not multiple choice) with an inherently binary answer.
The result was a consensus to approve the original single proposal.
The topic is limited to English Wikipedia or things substantially directly affecting English Wikipedia
This creates the ability of English Wikipedia to have a position on something. Including the results from the above discussions. North8000 (talk) 19:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Folks, this may look a bit esoteric/wonky/gnomish, but IMO provides an important piece of a structural foundation for the operation of EN Wiki as an entity. North8000 (talk) 00:37, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I love the idea. The key word is "results." We don't want a clone of Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), but a central place where anyone can look and see what has already been decided would be great. Maybe we should include a sub-page about off-topic discussions, and when someone tries to derail the discussion you can move the thread there rather than deleting it. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 22:02, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to clarify that these positions relate to the WMF. Perhaps "Consensus positions of the English Wikimedia on the Wikimedia Foundation"? BilledMammal (talk) 08:58, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'm coming at this from a bit wonkier / "foundation" angle. Like making the foundation to make it possible for English Wikipedia to have a position on something and thus be a bit more of an entity. But I'm cool with your idea too. North8000 (talk) 13:19, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oy, Andreas. The WMF had NOTHING AT ALL to do with the content of that document. I can say this definitively, because I am one of the 13 people who DID develop the content of that document. Any WMF staff involved were there in purely supportive roles. The lawyers answered the questions we asked. The project manager kept us on task based on the actions the MCDC decided needed to be done. The note-takers took notes at full committee and sub-group meetings. We determined the timelines. The WMF leadership saw those drafts for the first time at the same time as the rest of the community. Thanks for the pointer: we'd love to get a lot more feedback on the Global Council proposal - not just the one we put forth, but some of the other proposals that have been put forward. My sense is that English Wikipedia community members haven't followed this process very much, whereas some other communities have extensively discussed it to the point that they've developed counter-proposals. Kind of sad that the largest project has had so little to say about it. Risker (talk) 07:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Risker. It was my impression from the complaints on that page – including from some former WMF board members – that the WMF legal review had a-priori limited the basic scope of the Global Council. Quoting WMDE's Nicola Zeuner:
Extended content
The review clearly states that from the WMF perspective the Global Council should not be a “legal entity”. It should be an advisory committee to the WMF Board of Trustees, and the WMF should retain power and authority over most of the functions it currently fulfills.
The current MCDC draft on the Global Council aligns with this perspective, in that it creates an advisory committee without its own decision-making authority, with very few exceptions.
According to the WMF review, the GC as an entity would result in complex legal relationships and overlapping responsibilities. That may be true, however, it is not an unprecedented situation, and there are examples of US nonprofits having effectively regulated relationships with their international movement partner organizations. This can be done through written agreements, as well as through strategic integration of governance bodies. The WMF has just structured a similar relationship between itself and the Wikimedia Endowment.
Clearly there are functions that must remain with the WMF, and under its full authority, such as trademarks, including the enforcement of their responsible use, the WMF’s own budget, and much of the technical infrastructure. Other movement functions, such as resource distribution, capacity building, and movement strategy, to name a few, in our opinion are better positioned with an international decision making body representing and working for an international movement.
The establishment of a global council in the form of a General Assembly, supported by an International Secretariat would be most faithful to the intention of equity in decision making and democratically legitimized decisions about movement-wide matters. We would suggest that ultimately, it would lead to better decisions and less conflict than our current situation.
We would urge the stakeholders, and at the forefront the MCDC in the governance design process not to take the WMF legal review as the last and only source of legal information. Instead we should do our due diligence and further investigate legal scenarios and precedents that make the collaborative structure possible with minimum legal risk to the parties.
The authors of Recommendation 4 of Movement Strategy had anticipated a situation such as this. Therefore the text states :
Design an independent and transparent process, along with an independent legal assessment, to transfer those responsibilities and authorities to the appropriate Movement-led bodies.
So far, as movement stakeholders we have not determined how and when the independent legal assessment should take place. It should probably take the form of a legal briefing, including the review of precedents and possible scenarios. There are reputable law firms in the US that bring the necessary expertise in designing inter-nonprofit legal relationships, and that have not had WMF as a client previously. WMDE suggests that it may be time to figure out together how we can commission this expertise, so that we can have a fuller and more neutral understanding of what is actually possible – to ultimately arrive at a governance structure that does justice to our movement and its diverse stakeholders and lets us move towards the strategic direction. Nicola Zeuner (WMDE) (talk) 10:50, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
I will differentiate between Nicola the person (with whom I have had a long-time collegial relationship) and Nicola the WMDE employee whose job is to present the position of her employer. There is far more background that goes behind this statement than would make any sense to post here. WMDE, the first and largest affiliate within the Wikimedia movement, has made a major investment of time, energy and money to develop their positions, which have been widely disseminated on Meta, within their own membership, in Wikimedia Summit presentations, and most recently at Wikimania. They have published multiple documents containing their own research. I have read it all (and I believe many of my fellow MCDC members have as well).
I believe that the position presented by WMDE representatives, that dealing with the legal issues would not be difficult and could follow the models of several other international charities and/or non-profits, is fundamentally flawed. In their research, and our own research, I have yet to see a model that doesn't depend on national chapters, and only those national chapters have a say at the international level. I am well aware that Wikimedia affiliates make valuable contributions to the content of our projects (some more than others), but only about 20% of Wikimedians belong to a recognized affiliate (most of which are not national chapters), and based on my discussions at Wikimania (mainly with individuals and groups from the Global South), I do not think that there is as wide a degree of support for this proposal as perhaps WMDE would like us to think. Many of those groups and individuals will not post on Meta because they feel they will be attacked or belittled. I had several people point to a specific post on one of the Meta talk pages that they identified as a clearcut attack. I don't have a good solution here, but I do know that the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion mean that if an individual or group feels that a forum is unsafe, it is up to us as the people who are seeking opinion and commentary to go to them. Risker (talk) 18:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it seems to me you are not actually denying Nicola's assertion that the WMF has sort of restricted the scope of power-sharing; you are merely arguing that there are sound reasons for doing so (a matter I am not presently qualified to have an opinion on).
I note there are other people voicing similar opinions to Nicola's on that talk page: Wikimedia Netherland's User:Jan-Bart, for example, a former WMF trustee, says, One of the most important aspects of the recommendations was the equity in decision making within our movement. Reducing this by (for example) reducing the global council to an advisory body is not something that I had expected to read here.
Yeah, Jan-Bart asked me about that in person at Wikimania. I'll say the same to you that I said to him: The WMF had nothing to do with the drafts that MCDC has published. We got some basic support from staff, but it was administrative support and not content creation. The WMF did not tell us what to write. The WMF Board of Trustees didn't tell us what to write. The lawyers didn't tell us what to write. The lawyers read what we wrote and commented on it, but ironically there were very few content changes as a result of those legal consultations. The outside lawyers don't report to the WMF, they report to us; the WMF carried out the contract with them (naturally, since the MCDC doesn't exactly have a checking account), but the MCDC is the client. The underlying issue is that the Movement Strategy document was written in NYC as the Covid-19 pandemic first hit that city (and they actually stopped early so people could escape the city), and it was written by a very small group of people trying to hammer together nine very disparate and contradictory sets of recommendations which received even less community feedback than the charter drafts have. One of the recommendations that made it through that maelstrom was that there should be a charter, and another said there should be a global council and also some hubs. None of it received any broad-based community support. I was on one of those groups working on strategy too, and we were told to "dream big", not to worry about cost or legality or any other real-world constraints. So...the MCDC is charged with coming up with a charter, including a global council, that will be supported by individual editors, the projects, the affiliates, and the WMF. We've put forward a sort of middle ground when it comes to the global council: there are plenty of people who want a huge General Assembly, and plenty of people who see the concept as a waste of resources and even more bureaucracy. Based on the feedback I've seen and heard, I have an increasingly strong sense that we managed to make everyone pretty much equally unhappy. Well, not quite. We actually haven't received any feedback from the WMF or the WMF BoT at this stage, although we've been told to anticipate it. Risker (talk) 23:20, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I commiserate. It's not an easy job.
I am trying to get up to speed here ... Am I correct in assuming that –
your drafting work was informed by the unsigned legal review the WMF published here,
the law firm you mention as having advised you was the same firm that authored this review, and
you and your colleagues are not at liberty to tell us the name of that law firm?
To be honest, so many councils, committees, boards and groups just seem to appear out of nowhere and claim the right to control English Wikipedia that I've given up trying to keep track of them. My policy is to ignore them unless and until they impact my ability to edit, at which point I'll retire and keep my eyes open for a credible fork. Certes (talk) 13:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Certes, I appreciate and understand your position here. Your response here is just as valid as the responses on Meta, and I'll work to flag it for those summarizing the comments. Risker (talk) 18:48, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for understanding. I'm not just here to oppose the WMF – it does a great job of keeping the servers running and the lawyers off our backs – but I find it difficult to appreciate much of their other work. Certes (talk) 19:01, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I so know what you mean. Earlier today I saw an invitation to "Review the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee". This invitation informed me that The Enforcement Guidelines require a Building Committee form to draft a charter that outlines procedures and details for a global committee to be called the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). Over the past few months, the U4C Building Committee worked together as a group to discuss and draft the U4C charter. The U4C Building Committee welcomes feedback about the draft charter now through 22 September 2023. After that date, the U4C Building Committee will revise the charter as needed and a community vote will open shortly afterward.
What the WMF is building here is a type of bureaucracy that in its soul-destroying magnificence can only be described as Kafkaesque. AndreasJN46619:50, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few good quotes at en:wikiquote:bureaucracy ... FWIW, I am operating largely (and semi-humorously) on the assumption that all these committees are primarily there to satisfy hat collectors, create the illusion of power sharing, and place buffers between the community and the WMF, so complaints can be directed away from the WMF to some committee powerless to address them. In other words, they're a way of neutralising community initiatives, and of managing rather than empowering the community. The community had far more "power" fifteen years ago than it has today.
I really hope that article gets as wide an audience as it deserves. It's obviously one for the Signpost, but it may raise a few eyebrows beyond Wikipedia too. Certes (talk) 22:01, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Kafkaesque might be going a bit too far, but bureaucratization and loss of efficiency is a normal occurrence, sadly. I can see this in my own experience with WMF vs Polish chapter. I applied for newspaper subscriptions at both places (I use newspapers as sources in my own editing and in teaching my students about reliable sources on Wikipedia). I got Polish newspaper subscription from the Polish chapter within a week of applying. The English request is still under review, with the expected review times of "several months". In another example, I have been much more impressed with Polish Wikipedia support for volunteers through 'thank you gifts' (mailed parcels with Wikipedia stickers and small gifts) - if such a system exists for English Wikipedia, I have yet to stumble upon it. Instead what we get is loss of vision through KEF and like. PS. I need to get around to writing the article on professionalization (social movements) which is related to the issues we are facing with WMF (nothing is white and black, of course). But it is inevitable. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here02:36, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So volunteers involved with grants process can get paid?
As we all know, writing or otherwise maintaining core content of the project (Wikipedia articles, etc.) is not something WMF pays for. But talking about who to give grants to is paid for?
From meta:Grants:Committees: Stipend: The regional committee members may receive a stipend of $100 every 2 months to offset costs of participation. Stipends can be used to pay for childcare, internet, transportation and other costs that make volunteering possible
Another example of such a stipend is the Leadership Development Group (also $100 every 2 months). Now as was mentioned at the recent AN/I thread on the $20,000 Deforestation in Nigeria project, $100 may not be much in the US, but it's quite a lot in a place like Nigeria. (Speaking of Nigeria, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos is another $20,000+ Nigerian project.)
A new approachLack of volunteer participation in developing countries has been a longstanding problem for the WMF. The WMF clearly has decided to throw some money at it. On the one hand it's great that some money is flowing in that direction (I have in the past commented on how small that spending is compared to the rhetoric). What I find troublesome is that it creates a class of semi-professional volunteers and a large number of Wikimedia affiliate officials who are financially beholden to the WMF. That means money increasingly becomes the glue that holds the international movement together. I guess I'd rather see the WMF provide support in ways that avoid WMF money becoming people's main source of income ... But it is difficult, and to be fair, people at the WMF are aware of some of the problems around motivation and are trying a new approach. Fingers crossed. AndreasJN46610:58, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466Global digital divide is obviously a problem, and one that WMF should tackle. But financial support for dispriviliged contributors is a slippery slope. I'd rather see rewards for activities without background checks on contributors nationality (gender, disability, whatever...). If we were to award a $100 prize for every FA, for example, this will still be more valuable incentive for someone from a developing country than someone in the developed one, but will not create any feelings of jealousy or such.
Btw, I talked to a contact at WMF about the grant committee stipend, and their TL;DR reply was that it is needed because 1) not enough vounteers want to help and 2) those decisions have to be made on a timely basis, which is not possible because of 1). That's fair, but I still think it is weird we are rewarding volunteers for this type of technical support, but not for core project activities. Why not just hire staffers here (they can come from community, why not)?
I still can't shake the feeling of unfairness that volunteers doing core tasks (like creating content) are not rewarded, but those who instead help with meta stuff like grant reviews will be rewarded. It seems like some sort of perverse incentive to stop doing what the project is primarily about and focus on much less important bureaucratic spin off side projects. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:41, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
People volunteer to write articles because they like it and find it rewarding. Do you enjoy reviewing random grants? People volunteer to write articles on a schedule that works for them, and there's no requirement to get anything done by a particular date. Grant review requires a commitment to review the grant on a specific schedule. They're completely different, and I see no problem giving people a tiny (even if it's not tiny in some geographic areas) stipend to help ensure people can stick to that commitment. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:54, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Rhododendrites: Maybe, but I find there is something compelling about Piotrus' idea of rewarding an FA on an Africa topic with a $100 prize (or even more), as opposed to spending $20,000 on a project that aims for an output of 60 new and 120 improved articles on an Africa topic, with a criterion like "Each participant is expected to create at least one article of not less than 750 words with at least 6 references." (Note that $20,000/180 is in fact slightly more than Piotrus' $100.)
I find there is something compelling about Piotrus' idea of rewarding an FA on an Africa topic with a $100 prize Completely agree that this would be worth funding. But the two aren't in opposition. The WMF can fund one, both, or neither just as easily. The reason there's so much funding for quantity rather than quality is because there's so much research and press about content gaps and participation gaps. It's an easy sell to external funders, and easy for the WMF to justify per its mission and values, to throw a lot of money at bringing in a lot of articles and a lot of new people. Nonprofits in general put a lot more value on metrics: quantitative rather than qualitative measures of success. WMF isn't as bad as some others as far as that goes, but they're certainly going to be more likely to fund something that brings in new people and new content than a project that funds existing contributors to improve existing articles. It would be good to mix it up, and they can afford to. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:50, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Paid editing is a tricky issue: it requires disclosure, and some editors feel that even a nominal amount paid from the WMF would require declaring a conflict of interest whenever discussing anything to do with the WMF. Plus the reward board, where payment for things like Featured Articles has been done, has always struck me as making it harder for the community to explain to newcomers why paid editing is discouraged. Another program to pay for Featured Articles would exacerbate this problem. isaacl (talk) 20:00, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My concern about these stipends is that they will tend to make the committees unrepresentative. Editors from countries where it is a significant sum of money and encouraged to participate, while editors from countries where it is not are not.
Piotr, you say the WMF says there are not enough volunteers want to help, but do we know if the WMF has tried? I'm not convinced we can't find editors who would enjoy doing that sort of thing; we have managed to find editors for all sorts of tasks that would exhaust most of the community, including ARBCOM and NPP. BilledMammal (talk) 01:18, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. And is the grant reviewing volunteers performance measured and reviewed? If not - bad, if yes - bad as well as it means someone has to get paid now to do this. I believe those reviews should be done by WMF staffers, with some optional volunteer input. If volunteers don't care to review and let bad projects be funded, well, it's frankly not volunteers fault - it means WMF needs better staffers :P But paying volunteers for this keeps striking me as unfair. Again, core activities get not as much as a thank you, and side activities get paid for? This does not compute, no matter how much I think about it. And perhaps the worst is that it demotivates core contributors, at least some of them. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here13:03, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
After reading some of the history of those projects mentioned above (e.g. Deforestation in Nigeria), what struck me was that there were participants enticed to contribute in hope of getting money on one hand, yet on the other hand unpaid volunteers were forced to manage their contributions: to provide further training, perform editing or polishing of these contributions, & handle removing unsatisfactory ones. Volunteers were diverted from their usual work to handle this project, with little or no prior warning, nor compensation for going out of their way to help.
When projects like these get a green light, it would greatly help their success if:
Their existence was announced to the community. Somehow. Right now, there is no easy way to learn about funded projects like these. (I spent a couple of hours poking around the links at the Meta Grants page, trying to find some announcement of awarded grants. Partly to see if there were any others, partly just to find out which grant proposals are accepted -- in case I should ever be bold enough to submit one.) In too many cases, volunteers learn about these projects the moment when participants start putting the content on Wikipedia, with the usual surprise, confusion, & frustration.
Because in almost every case contribution projects like these are going to require assistance or support from established &/or experienced editors, why not include an honorarium for these volunteers? One reason for this is -- as I mentioned above -- they are being distracted from the work they actually are on Wikipedia to do. I can't think of why anyone would regularly come to Wikipedia just to find projects like these & teach the participants & clean up their contributions; we come here to scratch our own itches. (Any who do that deserve some kind of renumeration.) And without some serious form of encouragement, volunteers who start to help with pedestrian tasks like these are likely to vanish at any moment: the offer of a bit of cash might be enough of an incentive to stay the course.
These desirable points were included as requirements before a grant was approved. The people running these kinds of projects had to publicize them, & attempt to recruit dedicated helpers from the volunteer community. (Offering an honorarium would help convince people to help.)
Yes, I know the Wiki Education Foundation handles some of this, but I suspect these kinds of contribution projects are not usually coordinated with them. And I bet their volunteers would appreciate these two points put in effect. -- llywrch (talk) 05:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to [7], one of the things W?F donors are paying for is to "match racial justice leaders with machine learning research engineers to develop data-based machine learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics, and economic justice". I wondered what that "genetics" bit was about. I suspected that this might be our old friend anti-GMO, but according to [8] the W?F is funding efforts to stop law enforcement from using DNA databases to catch criminals. Donors to the W?F are also funding efforts to ban police use of body-worn cameras, ankle bracelets, and gang databases. Again I ask anyone associated with the W?F to please respond explaining what any of this has to do with building an encyclopedia. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 03:28, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That Telegraph article is a right-wing source but it still cites important facts. A casual reader might conclude that the WMF has more money than it can spend and is throwing the excess at every vaguely left-wing cause it can think of. That's going to alienate potential donors. Since everyone else has been too polite to do so, I'll point out just one of the herd of elephants in the room. Many of our donors are white, and many of the groups to which the WMF passes money openly and proudly help only non-white beneficiaries. There are arguments in favour of positive discrimination, but not everyone agrees with them, and it may cause some people who would like to fund an encyclopedia to keep their wallets shut. Certes (talk) 12:25, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good points. Although I think secondary to the issue of WMF spending money on things that have nothing to do with Wikimedia projects (i.e. the "every vaguely left-wing cause", although I don't want to go into the political rabbit hole of defining left-wingness). Same principle applies - why should people donate to WMF if WMF is going to simply move those funds to random stuff like improving literacy in Africa? A worthy cause, yes, but folks donating to WMF presumably want to see improvements to Wikipedia website and such more than support literacy in Africa, for which there are dozens of dedicated NGOs for them to chose from if they want to give their money that that cause. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strawpoll: Which proposals should we look at moving forward with?
I'm leaning towards removing at least the two related to the board; while that is an important issue, they aren't closely related to the general theme of donor money being used inappropriately and thus are likely better left for a different discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 09:03, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. For now, I think the Endowment's lack of financial transparency (which sets a very bad precedent for the movement) and the Knowledge Equity Fund issues are the most promising candidates. --AndreasJN46609:05, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
2 and 5. 3 doesn't make a lot of sense: you want a notification.. after a grant has been issued? Or when someone applies? Isn't there already a process of posting to meta and soliciting feedback? Is it a notification that someone has applied for a grant involving activity on enwp? That may make more sense, I suppose. As I think I mentioned above, 4 is really multiple proposals -- you willing to let the first part (which would probably pass) fail because of [any of]: appropriating the funds, running a vote, prioritizing "major projects", defining major projects, etc.? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 15:41, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, I think we should focus on the first paragraph of 4. The second paragraph is perhaps alright up to "seeks approval from the community", but everything after that may end up diverting attention from the main point that most people (both in the community and in the general public and media) are likely to agree on. AndreasJN46612:43, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed #1 and #6, and I've cut out the potentially contentious parts of #4; let me know if you think the rest of the second paragraph should also go, but I do believe we should at least request the WMF reappropriates the remaining funds from the KEF - and I don't think that request will be contentious?
I've also adjusted #3; the intent is to ask for a notification prior to the grant being issued so that we have time to provide our own opinions. However, I think additional editing may be required; we don't want to be notified of grants that the WMF is already disinclined to grant. BilledMammal (talk) 00:05, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My #1 priority is dealing with the waste of funds through KEF. I am less familiar with others, and I have no strong feelings on whether to include them in one RfC or in separate ones. But I'd suggest keeping focus on similar issues, such as finances and grants. The wider we make the scope, the less clarity (and consensus) there'll be. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:27, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that there is interest in this initiative. This thread poses a pretty complicated question that only those deep in can answer so I wouldn't interpret lack of response as a lack of interest. North8000 (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm partial to the proposals I made...fundamental structural reform, and creating a place where En Wiki can state it's official positions so that it can start being more of an entity. But I applaud the other proposals and will support whatever y'all decide. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:46, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree on fundamental structure reform, but I think we need to leave that for a different debate, per the comments about removing #1 and #6.
Regarding the "place where enwiki can state its official positions", perhaps we should boldly create a WP:5P-style page where consensus-positions of our community would be listed? 5P doesn't fit well with our policies and guidelines "structure", but it does have considerable influence and weight - and I think your place would be in a similar position. BilledMammal (talk) 00:05, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Proposed WP:AN discussion on applying general sanctions to WP:VPW
The Village pump (WMF) and its talk page are placed under general sanctions. Uninvolved admins are encouraged to strictly enforce policies on civility, and are empowered to strike or remove any comments that violate these policies, as well as to page or topic ban any editor who violates those policies for a period of up to three months.
At the discretion of uninvolved admins, this protection may be extended to discussions in other locations that involve communication between the Wikimedia Foundation and the English Wikipedia community.
Part of the reason the WMF is reluctant to engage with us on enwiki is the degree of hostility that their employees can face in such discussions. While it is understandable for the community to be hostile to the organization, we need to be careful not to take it out on its employees and to abide by our own policies on civility, particularly those related to personal attacks.
This proposal is an attempt to address this situation, and address some of the objections the WMF has to engaging with us here. 09:15, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
Thoughts on this proposed general sanctions text/preamble? While this won't take part in the same discussion as the RfC, I think it is an important parallel discussion to have and appropriate to draft here. BilledMammal (talk) 09:15, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I try to not double dip when it comes to GS discussions - my thinking is I get a very large say over Contentious Topics and the GS system is the community's check and parallel and I should respect that. That said I think we see that the foundation does communicate with people at Village Pumps just not VPWMF. That, for me, and I'm saying this because I've said it on the talk page, suggests shutting down that forum rather than trying to save it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I echo Barkeep and want to add that conflicts often proceed in escalating cycles. Resolving a conflict means stopping the cycle of escalation. Trying to break the ConflictCycle through more conflict might work, but it might create new issues or push old ones elsewhere. I don't know enough to give my opinion on the merits, so I'll just leave you with that food for thought on how I tend to approach these kinds of enforcement issues. — Wug·a·po·des05:59, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we - the Enwiki Community - can resolve the overall conflict; there is a conflict between the desires of the foundation and the desires of the community, and we can't stop that until the two sides can come to a mutually acceptable agreement, likely through more conflict.
However, conflict against individual employees of the Foundation is something that should not be happening, and is I believe something we can prevent. Following WWT's announcement of stepping down from ArbCom I noticed the header at the top of that page; Behaviour on this page: This page is for discussing announcements relating to the Arbitration Committee. Editors commenting here are required to act with appropriate decorum. While grievances, complaints, or criticism of arbitration decisions are frequently posted here, you are expected to present them without being rude or hostile. Comments that are uncivil may be removed without warning. Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or the clerks, will be met with sanctions.
That said I think we see that the foundation does communicate with people at Village Pumps just not VPWMF Even then, it communicates less than perhaps it should; I think the idea of a dedicated location is a good one, and even the location becoming a nexus for complaints about the WMF is a positive as it is important for the WMF to understand our collective position, but what is not good is it becoming a location for hostility against WMF employees; this is what I hope to change. BilledMammal (talk) 07:58, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IMO this one is pointless. The people who are most hostile towards the WMF have been around long enough not to know how to word things to avoid bright lines, and I cannot imagine anyone stepping in to issue sanctions for civility when the target of incivility was the foundation (can you imagine how much backlash there would be for that?) or a foundation employee short of something truly egregious, which doesn't require anything other than a single admin action. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:39, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, but I want at least to throw a bone to the WMF; I want us to say "we know that you consider this a problem, and we are willing to try to address it; can you do the same with the areas that concern us?" BilledMammal (talk) 01:52, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As part of this discussion, the idea was raised to create a WikiProject that would seek to advance the priorities of the English Wikipedia's community, particularly through electing sympathetic representatives to the Board of Trustees.
I've created a simple draft overview of that WikiProject:
This WikiProject aims to provide a location for interested editors to organize to identify the priorities of the community in relation to the Wikimedia Foundation and advocate for those priorities.
These will be determined through discussions such as the 2023 Wikimedia RfC. An initial draft list is:
Push the priorities of the community at the highest level, by seeking to elect candidates to the Board of Trustees who support those priorities
Ensure that fundraising communication is moral and accurate, and reflects the consensus of the 2022 Fundraising RfC
Work to give the community greater oversight of the grants process, and limit the number of grants going to organizations unrelated to any of the various WikiMedia Projects as well as preventing grants that would be a net-negative to our community.
Seek to make communication with Wikimedia Foundation more accessible to the community, by convincing the Foundation to engage more on the English Wikipedia
Seek to democratize the Wikimedia Foundation, by convincing the Foundation to increase the number of community-elected representatives on the board
The best way to address issues within the Wikimedia Foundation is likely to be through the Board of Trustees. To do this, every election year this project will focus on electing suitable candidates. This will involve:
Discussions with the community to identify community priorities. The identified priorities will also be reflected in our goals.
Identifying editors who support those priorities and have the requisite competencies to be effective on the Board of Trustees, and encouraging those editors to run
I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but one thought I've had is that there is no reason we can't create a trans-wiki ticket. If a foreign project shares our priorities then we should coordinate with them - it will both increase the pool of candidates we can draw from, and increase the number of editors we can mobilize to vote for our candidates. BilledMammal (talk) 23:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know if I'd join. Depends on its final form, I guess. Very wary, though, in part due to my above comments (This is feeling kind of yucky...). Call me pessimistic, but it seems like this could easily just turn into the Anti-WMF Club, either by membership or by loudness of voices, while claiming to be The Voice of the English Wikipedia. I would like to be wrong, though, as it's not impossible that something along these lines could be useful on occasion. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:15, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My essay at WP:CANCER directly contradicts certain claims made by the W?F, and if I can verify their claims I clearly need to correct my essay. I find it odd that in the six years since I published my essay this is the very first time anyone at the W?F appears to have questioned my numbers for Internet hosting.
Please help me fact check these claims. I want every fact in my essay to by 100% correct.
In this statement A W?F spokesperson makes the following claims:
"It is misleading to say that just 2% of Wikipedia's revenue goes to hosting costs. Data centers and technical infrastructure require significant staffing to operate and maintain, in addition to other equipment and operating costs. Nearly half (48.7% or $86.1 million) of our budget is spent directly on technical infrastructure."
These claims directly contradict the following claim I made at WP:CANCER:
"The WMF spends roughly $2 million USD per year on Internet hosting and employs some 300 staff. The modern Wikipedia has 11-12 times as many page views than it had in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much to serve up these pages to the readers. This seems reasonable given that they have improved reliability, redundancy and backups. More concerning is the fact that since 2005 the WMF has hired hundreds of extra employees and is now spending 1,250 times as much overall, which seems rather excessive considering that the actual amount of work they have to do is pretty much the same. WMF's spending has gone up by 85% over the past three years."
At first I thought that maybe we were not talking about the same thing, but no. "It is misleading to say that just 2% of Wikipedia's revenue goes to hosting costs" is crystal clear. We are both taking about hosting, not hosting plus something else.
"The Wikimedia Endowment is a permanent safekeeping fund, and the full value of the fund is not available for use."
...which directly contradicts my claim that ...
"We appear to be building up our endowment, but it is unclear whether the WMF has structured the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad. Without this we have no protection from a sudden drop in revenue while the WMF maintains the current spending levels in the hope that revenue will recover. It is also unclear whether the endowment is legally protected against a large payout as a result of a lawsuit."
I have asked again and again for a copy of the legal document that says that the W?F cannot drain the endowment principle to continue spending if things go bad. So far, nothing but the usual W?F silence when asked reasonable questions.
I have been a trustee of a charity that had an endowment fund. OK my experience is from the UK and US law and language may be different. But I get the difference between funds that you can only disburse the income, and ones where you have to plan to maintain the longterm value of the endowment but where you accept that there will be years in the economic cycle where you use the funds as a cushion. As for "whether the WMF can dip into the principal when times are bad" that may be the wrong question. Is the WMF setting it up so that the endowment is managed as a separate entity, but the WMF can request money from it if needed? If so, if the WMF is sued out of existence, could the endowment ponder its options, including potentially setting up a successor to the WMF to take over hosting the projects? Not expecting the WMF to comment on the second half of that.
In the UK there is a difference between reserves that have been designated for a particular purpose by a charity and could be redesignated by that charity, and monies that are held for specific purposes and can only be redesignated with permission from the donor or the relevant regulatory body. So it is possible that some of the money held in the endowment has been donated specifically to create a permanent endowment of which only the annual surplus can be disposed of. It is also possible that some or all of the money the WMF has been given can only be spent on the purposes that it was raised for. But those purposes may have some flexibility - I'd be happy to argue that giving money to an organisation to digitise its archives and make them freely available on the internet would be a valid way to spend money. Provided those archives were publications that we'd consider a reliable source in an area of knowledge where we lack sources. I think that the grants they have talked of so far don't look much like that in the way the WMF describes them, and they look very expensive compared to the GLAM program. But I'm not sure how much that's the WMF not understanding how best to describe a grant to the community, and how much it is the WMF not understanding how best to spend donor money. ϢereSpielChequers19:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, some of the grants may well have been restricted (i.e., some donors may have said, "You may only invest this money and only ever spend the interest"). I am not aware of the WMF having provided any comprehensive information about this. Absent such transparency, all of these matters do remain "unclear", as Guy says in the passage he would like fact-checked.
It occurs to me that the WMF's statement the full value of the fund is not available for use lacks specificity. What does "use" mean? Clearly all of the money – which if memory serves included at least $30 million ordinary Wikipedia donations, not counting donated staff time etc. – was "used" to create a fund with Tides, "used" to generate an investment income, "used" to cover what by now is probably an (entirely undocumented) eight-figure sum of expenses (we know it was about $2 million per annum in the last couple of years, but we still know nothing about prior years) ... and now it is "used" to form the assets of the new 501(c)(3).
The WMF itself has a constantly growing pot (around $250 million) of cash and investments that it never really has to dip into, because each year it raises far more money than it spends – even while constantly growing its headcount. The Endowment is just an additional piggy bank.
Note that https://wikimediaendowment.org has been updated in the past few days. It no longer refers to Tides but instead now (finally ...) says: The Wikimedia Endowment is a nonprofit charitable organization providing a permanent safekeeping fund to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. Tax ID number: 87-3024488.
Before, it used to say: The Endowment has been established, with an initial contribution by Wikimedia Foundation, as a Collective Action Fund at Tides Foundation (Tax ID# 51-0198509). Tides is a public charity with a 40-year track record of holding and managing charitable funds for nonprofit organizations. The purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment is to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. An Advisory Board, nominated by the Wikimedia Foundation and appointed by Tides, makes recommendations to Tides related to the Endowment. Tides or the Wikimedia Foundation may choose to transfer the Endowment from Tides to the Wikimedia Foundation, or other charities identified by the Wikimedia Foundation that are engaged in activities that further the Wikimedia Endowment’s purpose. Following any transfer, the Endowment would continue to act for the purpose of being a permanent, income-generating fund to support the Wikimedia projects.AndreasJN46612:19, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. Would you say that "The purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment is to support Wikimedia projects in perpetuity" and "Your contribution helps ensure that Wikimedia’s free knowledge resources remain accessible and valuable for generations to come" are legally binding promises never to drain the endowment to continue spending should contributions tank for some reason? If so I should change WP:CANCER to reflect this. I am still looking for a link to an actual legal document that says what the endowment can and can not be spent on. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 16:01, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the 2% and the 48.7%, it seems you are talking about different things. With the 2% you are talking about direct technical costs; primarily server hosting and internet connection. With the 48.7%, it seems that LDickinson is talking about everything related to the technical aspects of Wikipedia, which would include hosting the servers but also things like the Vector 2022 project and other improvements. (Personally, the fact that this work is only 48.7% concerns me, but that's a different topic).
I think the "real" figure is somewhere between the two - and far closer to the 2% than to the 48.7%. There will be additional costs essential for hosting beyond the 2%, including I expect personnel costs, but not much - perhaps 5%? However, in the absence of increased transparency from the Wikimedia Foundation, I think it is reasonable to say 2%. BilledMammal (talk) 23:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is a word that I choose to avoid that describes someone who writes "It is misleading to say that just 2% of Wikipedia's revenue goes to hosting costs" and then goes on to "refute" the claim by telling you what was spent on something other than hosting costs. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 06:21, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon Alternate Accountfoundation:Endowment_Spending_Policy, put on-wiki a few weeks ago, touches upon this. It says, Spending Rate The target spending rate for the Endowment is 4.0% of the ending market value of the Endowment’s investment portfolio in a given fiscal year. At no point will the spending rate exceed 4.0%. The Finance Committee has the ability to adjust the spending rate down to 2.5% and up to 4.0%. I don't know how legally binding it is, but at any rate the principal could not be spent without first changing this policy. (Also note that Jimbo has joined us below.) AndreasJN46616:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
RfC on reducing the privileges afforded to the WMF under WP:CONEXCEPT
In WP:CONEXCEPT, should The WMF has legal control over, and liability for, Wikipedia. Decisions, rulings, and acts of the WMF Board and its duly appointed designees take precedence over, and preempt, consensus. A consensus among editors that any such decision, ruling, or act violates Wikimedia Foundation policies may be communicated to the WMF in writing. be changed to The WMF has legal control over, and liability for, Wikipedia. Decisions, rulings, and acts of the WMF Board and its duly appointed designees that are needed to comply with legal obligations take precedence over, and preempt, consensus.
As planned, the discussions would involve four parts; an RfC on the non-binding resolutions, a proposal to impose general sanctions of WP:VPW, the creation of a WikiProject on coordinating efforts to sway the WMF, and the holding of an RfC on reducing the privileges held by the WMF under WP:CONEXCEPT.
In many ways it would be symbolic change, as the WMF has found it difficult to use these privileges without significant backlash, but I have felt it is both necessary to establish us as an equal partner to the WMF, not a subordinate, and I feel it would send a strong message to the WMF to take the non-binding resolutions seriously.
It's a big change, but I'd support it. The existing wording allowing "decisions" and "acts" authorises the WMF to do whatever it likes regardless of consensus, which is neither part of a healthy relationship nor in readers' interests. Certes (talk) 12:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The WMF's public position is that it does not write or curate any of the content found on the projects. This would make the text consistent with that. AndreasJN46613:37, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, this one came out much longer than I thought it would when I started. TLDR: "under the laws of the location it is incorporated in" could be problematic because that location is Florida, but there are other potential problems that may suggest a different approach altogether (recognizing the WMF as "the Host," and having CONEXCEPT define the relationship between the Host and the community).
The phrase "under the laws of the location it is incorporated in" could be unintentionally problematic. WMF, Inc. is incorporated in Florida, and Florida law is, in a word, nuts. I don't think the intent is to narrow this to Florida law? If we mean to say US law, maybe we should say "United States federal laws", or "under the laws of the country it is incorporated in" rather than "location."
Although I don't like the "of the country it is incorporated in" formulation much, either. It's not unreasonable to imagine the WMF incorporating outside the US someday, and I'm not sure I'd feel the same way about the laws of a place like, say, Turks & Caicos, as opposed to US law. Why not just go broader and say "legal obligations" without narrowing them? When the WMF chooses not to follow some country's laws, e.g. UK Online Privacy Act, I don't think this language would prohibit them from doing so (just like the current language does not prohibit them from doing so).
However, there's another, bigger problem, I've always had with CONEXCEPT. Even if it were narrowed to "that are needed to comply with legal obligations" without limiting it to location or nation, imagine the scenario where the WMF decides to comply with some law that the community does not want to comply with. We already refuse to comply with some laws in Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and other countries -- sometimes those governments shut Wikipedia down in their countries in response. What happens if the WMF decides to go the other way someday, to enforce those laws, over the objection of the community? Like, say, requiring Wikipedia to call the war in Ukraine "special military operation" instead of "war," as Russia demands? Then WMF Legal could say "it has to be 'special military operation' because that's the law in Russia" and invoke CONEXCEPT. Now, in reality, they wouldn't do this because it'd be so unpopular in the west, they'd lose donors, it'd be a major constitutional crisis on enwiki, etc. But while the community and the WMF are on the same side when it comes to legal pressures from Russia or some of these other countries, imagine a scenario where it's some US law that the community doesn't want to abide by, and the WMF -- not wanting to be shut down in the US -- forces the community to abide by it, invoking CONEXCEPT. What then?
I think rather than trying to give the WMF some kind of community-authorized power to comply with the law -- which seems reasonable but only so long as the community agrees with the laws with which the WMF complies -- maybe it's better to re-frame the issue as one about the relationship between "the Community" -- the collection of individual volunteers who create the content (and much of the software) -- and "the Host" -- the legal entity that hosts the content by owning/leasing/operating the the web servers on which the content resides. The Community has the power to choose the Host, and it has chosen the WMF for that role so far. The Community can recognize that the Host -- whoever it is -- will always have the ultimate power to decide what it does and does not Host. The Host can shut down the servers; any Host can always shut down the servers, by definition. From this power to shut down the servers comes the derivative power to decide what is and what is not going to be on the servers -- this is what we call "CONEXCEPT". The Community's recourse, if it disagrees with a Host's decision, is to choose another Host.
And maybe this is where BM's idea about a policy that governs the WMF-Community relationship (the policy that would let the Community take positions on issues, as BM put it) comes into play. Maybe we need a "Hosting Policy" (we could repurpose WP:HOST for this; currently it's the same as WP:NOTWEBHOST) that says, essentially: the Community chooses the Host; the Community recognizes that any Host will have final say over what is hosted on its servers; if the Host does something the Community doesn't like, the Community will petition the Host [include some mechanism for the petition process that would allow the Community to take a position vis-a-vis the Host], and if the Host ignores the Community, the Community will choose a new Host. The current Host is the WMF. This would essentially be the old "Right to Fork," codified into a policy.
All that said, if folks didn't want to go this other long "Host policy" route, I'd still support adding "that are needed to comply with legal obligations" to CONEXCEPT. Levivich (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The phrase "under the laws of the location it is incorporated in" could be unintentionally problematic. WMF, Inc. is incorporated in Florida, and Florida law is, in a word, nuts. I don't think the intent is to narrow this to Florida law? If we mean to say US law, maybe we should say "United States federal laws", or "under the laws of the country it is incorporated in" rather than "location." The intent is to narrow it down to the laws that the WMF has no choice but to follow. Given that it is incorporated in Florida, I believe it is required to follow Florida law? If I am incorrect, I have no problem changing it to specify United States law. (Incidentally, I always assumed it was incorporated in California; maybe Florida made more sense twenty years ago?)
I didn't originally use that are needed to comply with legal obligations, because there are legal obligations outside the location the WMF is incorporated in that we certainly don't want the WMF complying with; one example is the UK law you mentioned, another recent one was this request from the Indian government. I'm not overly concerned though - after all, if it proves problematic later we can always change the wording again - so I'm happy to change to that are needed to comply with legal obligations.
maybe it's better to re-frame the issue as one about the relationship between "the Community" -- the collection of individual volunteers who create the content (and much of the software) -- and "the Host" -- the legal entity that hosts the content by owning/leasing/operating the the web servers on which the content resides. I like that idea, but I think that will be opening a large and controversial bag of worms, particularly since in no circumstances can I see the WMF letting us take the en.wikipedia.org domain name with us. BilledMammal (talk) 23:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The WMF manage the servers and their costs, and thus have the responsibility for the scope of content being deployed. This can involve technical considerations, or alignment with mission (for example, should it become a web site archivist). It also is better suited to bring sustained focus to many types of initiatives and perform research studies. This includes the software: in theory, with it being open-sourced, there doesn't have to be any paid developers, but having a full-time paid staff helps ensure that projects are completed on a more regular, predictable basis. There could be models where the mission is narrowed considerably, and there is less reliance on paid staff to drive certain initiatives. I feel that needs to be worked out with the community and the WMF, though, and paid expertise is needed to ensure ongoing staffing and continuity in certain roles, such as network engineering, security, testing, and software guardianship. Thus I don't think it would adequately reflect what the community needs from the WMF to express that it must be governed by community consensus in absence of legal obligations to the contrary.
Also consider that the global community encompasses many different viewpoints, and decisions based on English Wikipedia's version of consensus can still dissatisfy a very large number of people. Trying to account for minority positions is important in finding a best way forward (possibly out of all somewhat bad options). (From a parochial standpoint, English Wikipedia's community could hold a minority position within the global community; making it unhappy would affect many editors.) Thus trying to govern everything solely by community consensus agreement is overly restrictive. isaacl (talk) 17:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Isaacl: I think you may have misunderstood the proposal; apologies if I am incorrect. The proposal only affects the first bullet point of WP:CONEXCEPT. The remaining bullet points, including Some matters that may seem subject to the consensus of the community at the English-language Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) are in a separate domain. In particular, the community of MediaWiki software developers, including both paid Wikimedia Foundation staff and volunteers, and the sister wikis, are largely separate entities. These independent, co-equal communities operate however they deem necessary or appropriate, such as adding, removing, or changing software features (see meta:Limits to configuration changes), or accepting or rejecting some contributions, even if their actions are not endorsed by editors here., remain in affect - I believe the quoted bullet point addresses your concerns? BilledMammal (talk) 22:40, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It partially addresses concerns about maintaining the software base. It does not cover prioritization of feature development, deployment infrastructure, alignment with mission, initiatives requiring sustained focus or research, or any of the roles I listed as examples of areas that need ongoing staffing and continuity. isaacl (talk) 22:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The intent is to say that the WMF can't tell us what to do, with rare legal-related exceptions; it isn't to say that we can tell the WMF what to do. I'm not sure how we can word it to make that more clear? BilledMammal (talk) 23:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The last word in your proposed change, "consensus", doesn't specify a scope. Thus it appears to say that the WMF can only override community consensus to meet legal obligations. Our methods of evaluating community consensus are unreliable and highly dependent on whatever persons are able to invest more effort during a given period of time. For organizations to be effective, it needs to be able to set direction for some period of time, develop a plan, and execute on that plan. Making this direction subject to the consensus of the day would slow down progress. I appreciate some people want progress slowed for some initiatives, but without a specified scope, everything would have to proceed more cautiously. isaacl (talk) 23:44, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I think it's rather self-evident that our consensuses are limited in scope to the English Wikipedia; we can't make a consensus beyond that scope in relation to the Foundation any more than we can make a consensus beyond that scope in relation to the German Wikipedia. BilledMammal (talk) 00:00, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, by its nature, a consensus made by the English Wikipedia community is a consensus of that community only. That still has an effect on WMF planning and operations. isaacl (talk) 00:04, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's the point; we're saying that the WMF can't tell us what to do any more than we can tell the WMF what to do, and if they want to do something on Enwiki they need to talk to us and get our agreement rather than imposing it from on high. However, I'm not seeing how it will affect feature development, deployment infrastructure, alignment with mission, or initiatives requiring sustained focus or research, as none of those are directly related to the English Wikipedia; the most it might affect is the deployment of new features (although that, for the most part, is covered by bullet point 4). BilledMammal (talk) 00:15, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The English Wikipedia community might reach a consensus to allow for a given feature to be configured by anonymous users. This affects deployment infrastructure. It might want reach consensus for a new content editor, while other communities see no reason for it and reject its deployment. Thus the WMF needs to devise a new testing strategy instead of deploying first on wikis with fewer edits and gradually ramping up. The WMF might engage in long-term tracking studies on editor behaviour, and the communities might change their minds on the goals of the studies. The point is if the change achieves its objective of influencing what the WMF does, then of course what it does will be subject to that influence. But with that influence being changeable, then planning has to take that into account, which slows progress down and weakens commitment. isaacl (talk) 01:47, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In circumstances where approval from two communities is required, then rejection by either of those communities constitutes a veto. For a different example, imagine the English Wikipedia reaches a consensus to transwiki an article to Wiktionary, but Wiktionary says no; this causes our consensus to become irrelevant. The same is true if we reach a consensus to allow for a given feature to be configured by anonymous users; if this requires development work by the Wikimedia Foundation and they decide not to, then our consensus becomes irrelevant.
Other examples you provided don't appear to require our approval; for example, long-term tracking studies on editor behaviour would appear to only involve observing, and not involve action on the English Wikipedia; as such we have no more control over it than we do over the University of Washington doing the same study.
I'm not really understanding your position, either. I'm not trying to figure out full examples, just giving pointers, because of course the exact details matter, but I'm not trying to build full project proposals in a few minutes. The WMF makes plans to address what the communities need. If the communities can override the WMF at any time, then those plans will have to adapt to the reality of that uncertainty, and that has a cost for all projects. Since having an effect on WMF planning seems to be the point of the proposal, I don't understand why you're arguing it won't affect WMF planning. WMF's global roles are driven by the individual community needs. isaacl (talk) 02:37, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, I'm saying that it will affect their planning only as it relates to activities on the English Wikipedia. For example, take VisualEditor. The WMF wanted to make it opt-out; this change would give us a basis in policy to reject their preference and make it opt-in - currently, we have to rely on WP:IARs to do so, which isn't an ideal situation.
It may influence them beyond that, just as their choices may influence us, but it won't control them. Personally, I see that as a positive; they should be working with us and seeing us an equal partner, not dictating to us. BilledMammal (talk) 02:50, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I know you see it as a positive, which is why I don't get why you seem to deny that it will affect the WMF's operations in their global roles. I agree the communities should work together with the WMF (and I've discussed this already). To me, this doesn't mean that the WMF must only use legal considerations in establishing the best way to balance the tradeoffs across all members of the community, including readers. isaacl (talk) 03:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My interpretation of your comments was that you believed it would give us control over what the WMF does in its global roles.
In theory, it may influence them in that regard, and I would like to see that as I believe the WMF has become too disconnected from the communities it is supposed to serve and started to see itself as a superior rather than a partner, but they can easily reject that influence.
I've not used the word control. I expressed concerns of how the ensuing limitations of the proposed change would diminish the effectiveness of the WMF to support the communities. isaacl (talk) 04:37, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, I misunderstood; comments like I don't think it would adequately reflect what the community needs from the WMF to express that it must be governed by community consensus in absence of legal obligations to the contrary made me think you believed that the WMF, in its global roles, would be bound by our consensus.
In general, I don't see how this would diminish the effectiveness of the WMF to support the communities; if the WMF believes something would support the communities they are free to pursue it, all this would do is require them to convince us of the benefit before implementing it on the English Wikipedia. BilledMammal (talk) 05:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't changing the language of this ... fall under the rule it's attempting to change? Also, could you provide a full accounting of all of the things that fall under needed to comply with legal obligations, all of the things that the legal department does which aren't quite "obligations", all of the gray area this would leave, etc.? Global bans, presumably, can be trumped by some !vote given this, unless there's a "legal obligation" to ban someone (does such a thing even exist?). What about the range of practices at the gray area of legal obligation? There's a ton here that's unclear, and ultimately feels like picking a big fight that's been fought a hundred times before, sacrificing huge amounts of volunteer time (and huge amounts of paid staff time) and generating lots of bad will to support the rhetoric of "principles". — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:52, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In general, we don't consider a policy to apply to a debate about changing the policy; I would expect the same to occur here.
Also, could you provide a full accounting of all of the things that fall under ""needed to comply with legal obligations", all of the things that the legal department does which aren't quite "obligations", all of the gray area this would leave, etc.? My thinking is that we would trust the WMF when they tell us that we need to do X to comply with legal obligation Y; I don't think we need to go into more detail than that, and I also don't think our relationship is so poor they would outright lie to us, and if they do I am sure we have enough lawyers among our membership to catch them out. BilledMammal (talk) 01:43, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In about a week, I intend to open a discussion at VPI inviting comment from the broader community; after that discussion has died down the current plan is then to open three discussions, as well as create the discussed WikiProject. These three discussions will be:
When opened, my intention is to create a single project-space page linking all the discussions, and then link that page at WP:CENT under the header "Discussions on the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the English Wikipedia Community". BilledMammal (talk) 11:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The various discussion of the Wikimedia Endowment above and its finances prompted me to look for their Form 990 filings online. You can go to the IRS search website and search by organization name for "Wikimedia Endowment" to pull up the record (no direct link to the result is possible, unfortunately). Wikimedia Endowment (a California non-profit corporation created in 2021) filed for tax years 2021 and 2022; but instead of a Form 990, it filed a Form 990-N, which is for small organizations with less than $50k in revenue per year, and Wikimedia Endowment reported in both years that it received less than $50k per year. The Form 990-N does not require any of the detailed financial disclosures in a full Form 990 (compare Wikimedia Endowment's Form 990-N's on the IRS website to the WMF's 2021 Form 990 to see an example of the difference in level of disclosure).
So from this I have two take-aways: 1) We're not getting financial info so long as Wikimedia Endowment is filing Form 990-Ns and not Form 990s. 2) We don't really care about Wikimedia Endowment's financials right now because it doesn't have the actual endowment money yet. If it had taken possession of the actual $100+ million endowment, it wouldn't be able to file a Form 990-N; thus, the money is still with the Tides Foundation (or somewhere else?), and not in the hands of the Wikimedia Endowment corporation. Also, Wikimedia Endowment has been in existence for two years now ... so, two years after creating the corporation that was supposed to administer the endowment (and would have had to report a full Form 990), the money still apparently hasn't been moved over. What is the delay?
Jimmy Wales had said last month in the discussion linked above that Most of the endowment is moved. (I have fixed the link to the slide deck above; Jimmy Wales actually uploaded it on Meta.) AndreasJN46619:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich Could you please have a look at this as well: A February 2021 board resolution decreed that any money people had left to the Wikimedia Foundation in their will would instead go to the Wikimedia Endowment. Now I was told back in April 2021 by Caitlin Virtue: Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation as a pass through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation. Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets.
To me this sounds like all legacy gifts have been treated as pass-through since February 2021. This would mean that there has been no public accounting at all for what happens to the money people have left Wikipedia in their wills. Also pinging User:Guy Macon Alternate Account. Cheers, AndreasJN46608:31, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Almost no public accounting. It does seem that, per that Feb 2021 resolution, all such gifts (what the board calls "planned gifts") are passed-through to the Endowment. For FY2022 (July 2021 - June 2022), the 990 FAQ explains that the planned gifts transferred to the Endowment (Tides) was $516,650, and this was reported on the 2021 990 (p. 43 of the PDF) as a grant to Tides. There is no further breakdown of the $500k (like who it came from).
Presumably, if the $500k planned gifts grant is reported on the 990, then it's part of the total grants reported on the same 990, and if it's reported as an expense, then the income is probably also reported, I would imagine (or else it wouldn't balance?). So I'm guessing that the $500k planned gifts income is part of the total income reported on the 990 (and the financial audit), and the $500k planned gifts grant is part of the total grants (and thus expenses) reported on the 990 (and the financial audit). But I'm not sure about that.
Their actual reporting would seem contradict what Virtue wrote in April 2021 in response to your question, but at the time she answered the WMF may not have known/decided how/whether they were going to report the planned gifts. It's possible (I'm speculating) that the WMF didn't think they were going to include it in their financials when they answered your question in April 2021, but the auditors later advised them to report it and list it as a grant.
For the prior year, FY21 -- the year in which the Feb 21 resolution was made -- the FAQ doesn't mention planned gifts, but the 2020 990 (p. 43 of the PDF) lists a $5.5 million grant to Tides Foundation. It's unclear to me whether that is all planned gifts or not, but essentially, the amount reported in that spot for the following year ($500k on the 2021 990) was identified by the WMF as planned gifts to the Endowment, so it's possible the $5.5 million in the prior year was also all planned gifts. If they got a $5 million planned gift that year, that would also explain why they made that resolution that year.
But this is the extent of the public accounting of planned gifts that I've been able to find (I didn't see anything in the audited financials or their FAQs). Levivich (talk) 16:20, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Levivich. I remember now that I actually asked about the amount in the 2020 Form 990 once, here:
Like you I subsequently concluded that as these planned gifts showed up in the WMF expenses they must also have been included in the WMF revenue (i.e. I concluded they were not pass-through, as the pass-throughs don't show up anywhere at all).
The WMF could do themselves, us and the world a huge favour by being clearer and more open about their income and expenditure. A reasonable person could easily conclude that something is being hidden, and might even suspect fraud where none has occurred. Certes (talk) 10:55, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It also just sets a bad precedent. For the past two years (2023, 2022), Endowment expenses appear to have run at $1.8 million per annum. This coming January, the Endowment will be eight years old, so total expenses to date have probably been well in excess of $10 million. This sort of amount of donors' money being spent without public audited accounts is something that should never happen again. AndreasJN46619:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly dumb question (I really don't know enough about accounting to know whether I am making sense): In [9] KPMG (independant autitors) say
"We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc and its subsidiary (the Foundation), which comprise the consolidated balance sheets as of June 30, 2022 and 2021, and the related consolidated statements of activities and cash flows for the years then ended, and the related notes to the consolidated financial statements.
In our opinion, the accompanying consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Foundation as of June 30, 2022 and 2021, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the years then ended in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles."
How do I reconcile the above claim by KPMG with $10 million of donors' money being spent without a publicly accessable audit? Isn't that the sort of thing an independent audit is supposed to catch? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 22:37, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon Alternate Account See Caitlin Virtue's post quoted above: The money held in the Endowment is not included in the net assets of the Wikimedia Foundation, as those funds are held by the Tides Foundation. Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation as a pass through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation. Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets.
The Endowment has never been part of the WMF. It has never been audited by KPMG. It was a Collective Action Fund at Tides until recently, and as Jimmy Wales confirmed in this discussion when I asked him where we could see the Endowment's revenue, expenses, grants and highest paid contractors, You can't find that information in Tides audited financials - it isn't broken out that way and there's nothing that I can do about that. Again, Tides is a separate organization and we can't do anything about how they are audited or report their financials.AndreasJN46623:01, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(By the way, you'll note that this discussion on Jimbo's talk was another discussion that ended with crickets. In the end, he simply stopped responding.) AndreasJN46623:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I am an engineer, not an accountant. Is the definition of "planned gift" in [10] correct? To my untrained eyes it looks like if I just send a check it isn't "planned" but if I put a gift to the Wikimedia Foundation in my will it is. But that page also says "nonprofit organization can choose to offer simple planned giving vehicles such as outright gifts". Does that mean that sending a check might be "planned"? And what if I donate and the foundation later spends part of that money on a grant to the endowment? Does that make that portion of my donation a planned gift?
To the layman it sure looks like the statements by KPMG "We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Wikimedia Foundation" and "In our opinion, the accompanying consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Foundation" are bold faced lies. I am really hoping that I am getting this wrong.
I have been studying the Wikimedia Foundation's financials for years and this is the first time it ever occured to me that when someone donates it might not be listed in the financials I studied or it might be siphoned off to some other entity controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation so they can spend it on who knows what without it ever showing up in the financial report that claims to be "in all material respects the financial position of the Foundation".
(Prior to this year) The Wikimedia Endowment is not part of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Endowment's financial statements and position are not part of the Foundation's financial statements or position. The Foundation is one company, the Endowment is not even a company, it's a fund held by a separate company (Tides). (Again, this all changed this year.) The auditors aren't lying. (And you can rest assured a powerhouse like KPMG is not going to put their professional licensure at risk by making any false statements in their audits of a non profit...they'd only do that for a for-profit company. Nobody outside the WMF is making or losing any money based on what the WMF's financials state, so there's no point in anyone outside the WMF lying about it [unlike publicly traded compnies].) Levivich (talk) 14:05, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So are are saying that this separate company never gets any money that was donated to the Wikimedia Foundation? And that the Wikimedia Foundation has no control over how the money the separate company holds is spent? Otherwise, the claim "in all material respects, the financial position of the Foundation" really looks like a lie. Granted, it may be a perfectly ordinary and allowable lie that is completely legal and follows all of the laws auditors have to follow, but to the ordinary donor it would still be deceptive and misleading. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The audited financial accounts summarised fairly, truly, accurately and honestly everything they wanted us to know about. The rest was in the fund. Certes (talk) 14:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen it claimed that some WMF staff get a separate salary for their work for the Endowment. I don't know whether this is true, but it would be good to know, given that the file Jimbo uploaded did show a "Personnel Expense" of $875,000 in 2022-2023. Would someone other than me like to have another go asking Jimbo what exactly that $875k Personnel Expense relates to? (When I asked him for more info on the personnel expenses, professional service expenses etc. shown in his doc he stopped replying to me.) AndreasJN46614:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
9. Does the Endowment have its own employees and contractors?
No, the Wikimedia Endowment does not have any employees nor has it had its own contractors. Wikimedia Foundation staff work in support of the Endowment. Beginning in FY2022-23 (after the fund reached the initial $100 million goal), the Endowment began reimbursing the Wikimedia Foundation for the cost of the time that WMF employees work on the Endowment as well as the other expenses that WMF incurs on its behalf. In FY22-23, the Endowment reimbursed WMF $1,297,620 for expenses as well as $420,177 in payment processing fees for the donations that WMF received on the endowment’s behalf, which were deducted at the point of sale. In FY23-24, the Wikimedia Endowment is budgeting to reimburse the WMF $2.09 million.
The sentence "Beginning in FY2022-23 (after the fund reached the initial $100 million goal)" has me scratching my head a bit: the Endowment passed $100 million on June 30, 2021 according to m:Fundraising/2020-21_Report#Wikimedia_Endowment, i.e. a whole year before the July 2022 beginning of the 2022–23 fiscal year.
The figures in that edit don't exactly match Jimbo's slide but are in roughly the same ballpark.
Note I was wrong above when I said there were public figures for two years of $1.8 million expenses: The $1.8 million here are the proposed expense budget for 2022–23, and the slide shows the actual expenses for the same year, 2022–23. Mea culpa.
Even so, we seem to have no expense figures at all for the period from January 2016 to June 2022 (including Tides' charges alluded to in a couple of board meeting minutes), and Guy's questions on Jimbo's talk as to whose payroll the various people are on that are mentioned as working for the Endowment on Jimbo's slide are still unanswered.
If they are all, without exception, Foundation staff who were paid exclusively by the Foundation and who did not derive any other financial benefit from their work for the Endowment, surely it would be easy enough to say so ... AndreasJN46622:05, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what Lisa said, as far as I can see, but for avoidance of doubt: They are all, without exception, Foundation staff who were paid exclusively by the Foundation and who did not derive any other financial benefit for their work for the Endowment. Foundation employees particularly in the fundraising team spend time on fundraising for the endowment, and keep track of their time, and the endowment reimburses the WMF for that. It would not be reasonable or cost-effective at the present time (and foreseeable future, in my opinion) for the endowment to have separate staff, if for no other reason that confusion and competition between the WMF and the endowment for donor funds would be bonkers, of course. Some major donors may want to donate to the endowment or the WMF or not be sure which is the best fit for them - it wouldn't make sense for there to be two different people selling two different things to that donor, better if we have a unified approach that can fairly assess what the donor wants to do.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:03, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jimbo Wales Thank you. Could you please explain why foundation:Endowment Delegation of Authority Policy#Schedules of Financial Delegations Authority, marked DATED AND EFFECTIVE AS OF 27 January 2022, contains phrases such as Financial delegations of authority are the mechanisms by which the Endowment enables its Staff to commit funds on behalf of Endowment. Delegations provide formal authority to Endowment Staff to financially and legally commit Endowment and to incur liabilities on behalf of Endowment.?
The page also lists various Endowment Senior Staff Positions and the money amounts up to which they are able to –
transfer funds and manage the accounts for payroll,
sign legally binding contractual arrangements up to $1,000,000
sign grant agreements up to $2,000,000
exercise a General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000
etc. Why does the Endowment have accounts for payroll if does not pay any personnel, and why do its Senior Staff have the ability to sign contractual arrangements if the Endowment has no contractors? Similarly, foundation:Endowment_Gift_Policy (dated 27 January 2022, published on-wiki 31 August 2022) contains several explicit references to Wikimedia Endowment employees, contractors, and interns. I don't understand. Regards, AndreasJN46615:07, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon Alternate Account Well, Lisa said the Wikimedia Endowment does not have any employees nor has it had its own contractors. Yet the Foundation documents I linked to above refer explicitly to Endowment employees with various job titles and associated rights to manage Endowment finances, as well as to Endowment contractors.
The numbers we were discussing were the Endowment's operational budget figures here, right? Are you saying that the Endowment did have a payroll for personnel but the Endowment budget figures shown on the slide don't include that compensation? If true, that would be even more confusing.
Hmmm. Perhaps I am the one who is confused. Looking at [13] as an example, and knowing that all fundraising for the endowment is done by people working for the WMF, not by people working for the endowment, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that all of the pages of that document (including the page 11 we have been discussing) are talking about things the WMF is doing to build and manage the endowment -- not things that any endowment employees or contractors are doing. So of my assumptions are correct, "Endowment Staff" are employees of the WMF who work on the endowment and the endowment itself doesn't have employees. Or I could be completely misunderstanding the situation. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 01:53, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This has been answered elsewhere, but I wanted to put it directly here in response to your question, Andreas. The Schedules of Financial Delegations of Authority is set up to be longstanding and a matter of governance. Therefore, it addresses various things by giving the legal authority needed even in cases where the current situation is that the number is zero. So, there are references there to things that might exist in the future, that do not exist today and have not existed in the past. I hope this is helpful to your understanding. Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:03, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The claim that some WMF staff get a separate salary for their work for the Endowment (added above) is entirely false. WMF staff who support the Wikimedia Endowment do not receive any compensation from the Endowment. Beginning in FY 22-23, the Wikimedia Endowment began reimbursing WMF for the cost of staff time spent on the endowment. However, that does not result in any additional compensation for the staff. To be clear, they do not receive two paychecks. Would you mind please telling me where you read this false rumor so that I can correct the record there as well? JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 06:41, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@JBrungs (WMF) It was a Reddit post by someone who claimed they'd been told that in person. They started the thread as follows:
The Wikimedia Foundation set up an endowment a few years Ago which funnels money from Wikipedia donations to the endowment. The endowment has a separate board, but select members of the Foundation are running it and get paid from it (in addition to their WMF salary). I am curious what people generally think about this arrangement. Any opinions here?
And in reply to someone saying essentially what you just said they added:
That is untrue. She does get a separate salary as do some others on her staff. She told me this herself, so I do not have a source in writing but it is first hand knowledge.
Chief Finance Officer, Endowment; General Counsel, Endowment; Chief Fundraising Officer, Endowment; or other delegate named by the President
In the event of a documented absence of the President and notice via email of express delegation, all authority of the President.
Chief Finance Officer, Endowment
All authority granted by the Board of Directors as Chief of Finance & Administration.
Authority to transfer funds and manage the accounts for payroll and accounts payable up to $1,000,000.
General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000 USD.
Authority to sign legally binding contractual arrangements up to $1,000,000
Authority to sign Grant Agreements up to $2,000,000.
General Counsel, Endowment
General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000 USD.
Authorization to settle lawsuits up to $100,000 USD.
Grants Program Officer, Endowment
General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000 USD.
Grant making authority up to $50,000 USD.
Chief Fundraising Officer, Endowment
General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000 USD.
Endowment Fundraising Director
General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $10,000 USD.
Schedule of Special Financial Delegations Authority
Position
Delegation Level (Per Transaction)
Legal Counsel, as expressly delegated in writing by the General Counsel, Endowment
General Contractual Authority for non-monetary contracts.
Senior Staff, as expressly delegated in writing by the Chief Finance Officer, Endowment
Authority to transfer funds and manage the accounts for payroll and accounts payable up to $1,000,000.
So do these delegations of financial authority relate to payments made from Endowment funds or not? And what payroll is being referred to? I'd be grateful for any clarification. --AndreasJN46611:38, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a hub page for these RfC's; this is the location to which we will link the WP:CENT link, and to where we will ping editors who were engaged in similar discussions in the past.
It was my impression from the complaints on that page – including from some former WMF board members – that the WMF legal review had a-priori limited the basic scope of the Global Council. Quoting WMDE's Nicola Zeuner:
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