Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Questions/3/es
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Accountability, democracy, community majority
In my opinion a structural problem WMF has is its technically absolute lack of accountability to anyone: nothing can stop WMF from going off-track, hence few trust WMF. IMHO the solution is simple: make WMF democratic (in Bobbio's very specific sense; see a one-page summary at §2). So, do you agree with ensuring community majority and why? What will you personally do on this matter if elected, or what have you done if you already served on the board? Nemo 07:30, 11 May 2015 (UTC) |
Even I endorse your statement to make WMF more democratic, so that a contributor can have his/her right for the contribution he/she did in this movement. WMF runs on community, I don't want any structural changes on WMF as it is better and will always be. It's the time that, we have to fill the gap between the community and the Foundation or it may go off-track, which will be a loss to both WMF and community.
The three members on the board will get elected by the community , so it's their prime responsibility to work for community if we follow the democracy in WMF.
If, I get elected in this election, I will put my personal effort at my level best to fill the gap between WMF and Community. Even i will try introduce this initiative Few hours with a "Wikipedia" to find the successes or failures of any language community. -- Sailesh Patnaik (Talk2Me|Contribs) 21:47, 13 May 2015 (UTC)I'd like to think though that while a Board composed primarily of community members will naturally have a more community-oriented bent, but this may not always happen. While we are one community, we are a multifaceted one, and there are many other players who are part of the community but either choose not to have a say in how the Foundation is run, or are incapable of having a say. It's one thing to have a community majority, but it's another to have a community majority that is not completely representative of our movement, and that's the hard part given the many challenges we face (gender gap, onboarding the developing world, etc.). There should be a stronger community process for selecting trustees who don't represent our core editorship before we go around talking about Board composition.
To compensate for that, I agree that having a community majority on the Board should be accompanied by having stronger external actors and stronger transparency. We need to strengthen affiliates so that they too also have a say in Foundation governance. Projects should be given a stake in major Foundation decisions through stronger consultation processes with the Foundation. We should have open, publicly accessible conversation both within and outside the Board (some affiliate boards already have committed to holding open meetings) that can be publicly observed, with mechanisms for community members to provide input. There are many ideas that the community may have to increase transparency, and we should thresh them out. --Sky Harbor (talk) 11:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Now, I assume that your actual suggestion is to have a majority o Board members elected by the community. I am in favour of that suggestion, and I would go far beyond 50%+1 if I had it my way. It is absolutely unacceptable from my point of view that the Board could
- @Pgallert: Because Nemo made a similar claim on my talk page, could you please say which decisions you are referring to, that were 'pushed through' against the opposing votes of all elected Trustees? I am seriously curious, but I couldn't find any such case. --denny (talk) 06:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- I must admit I was a bit too hasty with that one: followed Nemo's link and thought, see, there it is. Phoebe was on the 'other side' in those decisions, I have struck my comment. I'm sorry for that, I should have been more careful. That said, if I am not totally blind I did not find many such minutes, particularly from recent Board meetings, the pure possibility is scary, and the Board did not overwhelmingly operate on consensus, as you assume on the linked talk page thread.
- The possibility is indeed scary, but it just didn't happen. One possibility to avoid it in the future would be extending the bylaws with a veto right which has to be invoked unanimously and explicitly by the community-selected Board members, although that would break the principle of equality of Trustees. Still, a worthwhile consideration, and an idea which I would support. --denny (talk) 18:17, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
- Actually you cannot say it didn't happen. Most of the Board decisions are not publicly documented, you have no idea who voted for or against. I would hope that no community-elected trustee voted for the statement issued by Jan-Bart, for instance. But I don't know, and neither do you.
- @Pgallert: Sorry, I do not follow. The list of resolutions is available, including who voted in opposition and in approval of each of the resolutions. Are you talking about something else? --denny (talk) 03:34, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Denny: I cannot imagine that appointing one Board member and approving six meeting minutes (which are unspecific in the extreme) is all the Board decided in 2015. For example, [t]he Board discussed the Foundation's engineering practices (here). What was discussed? What was approved, what was rejected? Was the Board unanimous on this? We don't know. Or the example that I gave above: Can, or can't you say who was in favour of Jan Bart's statement? Call me nosey, but I would like to know. --Pgallert (talk) 19:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Pgallert: I would be surprised if they went through that particular statement in detail before it was sent. But hey, why guessing around? :) @Raystorm:, @Phoebe:, @Sj: - mind to enlighten us? Where is the list of work done by the Board in 2015 so far? --denny (talk) 03:41, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
- @Pgallert: Sorry, I do not follow. The list of resolutions is available, including who voted in opposition and in approval of each of the resolutions. Are you talking about something else? --denny (talk) 03:34, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- Actually you cannot say it didn't happen. Most of the Board decisions are not publicly documented, you have no idea who voted for or against. I would hope that no community-elected trustee voted for the statement issued by Jan-Bart, for instance. But I don't know, and neither do you.
The board's job is to embody all of those accountabilities on behalf of the organziation: to weigh them, be aware of them, and be responsible for them. We absolutely cannot do this without help: without trusting the amazing staff and volunteers of Wikimedia to raise issues, look out for problems, come to solutions, and whistleblow when necessary.
I do support adding an additional community-elected trustee to the board. as stated earlier, which might help ease discussions of whether we are community-majority or not. But believe me, regardless of how they got there, each trustee feels the responsibility to be accountable in many ways keenly.Sure, we can increase the number of elected Trustees, we could even have them all be elected. But I am unsure whether that would increase the accountability of the Wikimedia Foundation. What indication do we have that this would indeed be the case?
What if we instead focused on more decentralization? If we tried to come to a stronger and smarter Balance of Power between the different agents in the Wikimedia movement? I recently had a chat with Lydia Pintscher - she is know leading the Wikidata project as my successor at Wikimedia Deutschland. We were talking about the role of the Chapters inside the movement, and she reminded me of a simple, but beautiful truth: Wikidata is as successful as it is because it was not done by the Foundation. Now, this might easily be misunderstood: the Foundation played a major role in Wikidata's conception and in the way it was eventually developed and deployed. But because Wikimedia Deutschland was an independent entity, it also could not control Wikidata as tightly as it would have otherwise. The need for consensus and compromise between these two entities, automatically opened us to external channels. We in Berlin had to talk and communicate with an external entity in San Francisco anyway, we can't just walk over to the other desk and quickly gather some handwaving agreement. We had to communicate and express our ideas constantly, and since we had to do so anyway, why not publicly? And this in turn lead to even more participants in that conversation.
Was this planned? For sure not. But can it be repeated? Yes, I certainly think so. We need more and stronger participants in the Wikimedia movement. Instead of focussing whether three, five, six, or ten members of the Board are directly elected, I'd rather focus on creating a more decentralized environment, that necessitates communication and participation, and that creates a stronger balance of power.I suggest two steps to move in this direction:
- Increase the number of community trustees to 6
- Clarify in the Bylaws that a majority of the board must be appointed through community [s]election (as opposed to the current language, "from the community", which phrase is itself defined by the Board)
Another key aspect of accountability is observability & regular monitoring of results.
Having open board meetings that interested community observers could call into (to listen, not to contribute) would be a start.thank you for your question. Experts are currently appointed to the board because of their expertise. Personally I am in favor of appointing experts as "non-voting" board members. This will keep the board at a workable number of voting members, while at the same time increase the community and chapter/user group participation in the board. Moreover, we can appoint experts to the board when needed, and not only when there is a seat available. Experts advise, and Wikimedia can use this advise to make a decision. More community participation in the board will improve the working relation with the community, and by extension the relation between the community and the WMF. As a first temporary act, I am in favor of appointing the person who comes fourth in this election as an appointed board member. I hope this answers your question.
Atentamente, Taketa (talk) 08:06, 17 May 2015 (UTC)Mejoramiento del contenido
How can the WMF most effectively devote its resources (time and money) to improving the content of the various projects? Didcot power station (talk) 17:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC) |
Other than this we can have,
- On ground development : Foundation should create a structural platform which could bring/attract new editors to the project. Communication gap is a major issue in every Wikipedia, we should create a sustainable community that they can engage or empower new editors.
- Few hours with a "Wikipedia" : We could start this project to know every successes or failures in a Wikipedia, Employee/Board/Steward/FDC person of foundation to spend few hours with a Wikipedia community.Having conversation with any random users in a talk page or social media platform and knowing; what problem they are facing ? , What solution they have? or anything else. Now we have 288 Wikipedia following these things everyday we could be able to make a good report about, What is our opportunities or drawbacks in particular.
- Outreach Programs : GLAM , QRPEDIA , even Visual editor or other star projects of Wikimedia are still unknown to several users, Foundation/Chapters should invest some money on spreading awareness on this, lot of work is needed at grass-root level. Developing better communication skill , increasing the potentiality of a Wikimedian is equally important because they represent themselves from the brand Wikipedia, For example Train the Trainer program of CIS-A2K is a similar program to groom the leadership quality of Indic Wikimedia community members. Wikipedia Education program is also an asset for spreading the value of free education among the citizen, we should work on it so, that more countries will participate in this specific program.
- Invest in editor growth, both new and old. This means that we have to invest in editors actually editing the projects, whether that be funding materials needed to expand knowledge, reasonable travel to far-flung places for documentation, better tools for our power users, or better processes for consulting veteran editors on major technical changes. One of the successes of the Philippine Cultural Heritage Mapping Project is that we directly invest in our editors, giving them reasonable support to help them write their content. Not only have we developed content, but more importantly, we've brought in promising new editors who will help grow the projects and, more importantly, the movement at large. We need to seriously support that.
- Invest in community dynamics and community health. We need to invest in understanding how our community works, researching on best practices and solutions to problems that can be replicated Wikimedia-wide, and preventing the breakdown of social relations between editors so that they can be focused on content generation and not petty politics. Whether that be through meetups and conferences, edit-a-thons and community-building sessions, a rewards program for prolific editors (something that we're currently toying with at Wikimedia Philippines) or just a couple of barnstars to motivate editors to keep on editing, we need to put time and resources in ensuring that our community is capable of producing content without distraction.
- Invest in our outreach and partnerships. We must let people know about Wikimedia and what we have to offer, whether that involves onboarding new editors, pursuing new partnerships both GLAM and non-GLAM, entrenching our place in academia, investing in promising initiatives, or helping spread our reach (and, in turn, our content) through tech partners. Some of this can be done by the Foundation itself, but we must also invest in our affiliates—who in fact do most of the groundwork for the movement to begin with—so that they can do so more effectively. Given that this is heavily dependent on local context, we must be capable of investing in multiple initiatives in different countries rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
- Asking the community members what tools they need to make their jobs easier: one great example is the Content Translation tool for editors who do translations. Different projects have different needs, maybe Wikisource needs something different in order to make contributing to it easier. Or maybe different language versions of Wikipedia need different things to improve content and increase participation and diversity.
- Work with affiliates: affiliates are the best positioned to make local partnerships with GLAM and other institutions and do collaborations to free content. We have a global network of affiliates which we can use to our (mutual) advantage.
- Access: There is a certain amount of work the WMF can do to prevent and fight hostile situations that prevent users in certain parts of the world to contribute for fear of reprisal. Suing the NSA comes under this heading. If we lose voices, our content will suffer.
I think the WMF can have the biggest impact by improving tools that are used to work on content: curation, rating, bulk import from other free sources, anti-vandalism, draft spaces, translation, etc. So many of our core systems (like AfD on English Wikipedia, checking texts on Wikisource, or reviewing photos on Commons) are hacked together on top of MediaWiki, and aren't that easy to use -- and can be totally impenetrable for new editors who want to help out. We can improve the whole stack of tools to make things easier on both current editors and new editors that want to get involved; Denny has a really interesting perspective here.
Next, supporting editors who work on content is important: everything from funding conferences to edit-a-thon support (swag!) to legal and PR support, as well as funding innovative projects (projects like the medical translation efforts DocJames has been putting together, which are fantastic). But also more in-depth on-wiki support -- for example, helping deal with deeply problematic people is something that other questioners have raised, and is clearly an issue for many current contributors.
Every time I go to Wikipedia -- as a librarian working in the world's largest academic library system, and a long-term Wikipedian -- I am reminded of how much we have to do. After a decade or so, we have only just barely scratched the surface. We have hundreds of languages that don't yet have a proper encyclopedia, for one thing. We have tens of thousands of articles that are highly read but could be improved to be more readable, better cited, more comprehensive; we have millions of articles that are more obscure that also need work. We have entire swaths of types of knowledge that aren't yet fully realized: from the data in Wikispecies to the sources in Wikisource, as well as whole areas of human endeavor that aren't well represented (from practical agricultural engineering to fashion, we have gaps in coverage in every language). And we have huge remix challenges and opportunities: making summaries of articles that can be read on feature phones around the world in every language. Linking citations up to libraries so researchers can find what they need. A tooltips overlay that help new editors understand what they're looking at and what's missing. And on and on; these are just ideas off the top of my head. I think the way to get there in a scalable manner is through better software and making the projects more accessible and exciting to all contributors: enabling people to realize their ideas, in other words, and contribute effectively.I am not against continuing to spend resources into trying to increase the number of active editors. We need to experiment with that, and we need to continue spending significant grants and funds into this question. But I suggest we stop being completely fixated on this one number (I have suggested a new metric for success in August last year). More than half of our Wikipedia projects have less than 10 active editors. Even if we double their numbers, we still won't get enough community engagement to seriously achieve the goal of completing and maintaining an encyclopedia in the given language.
Instead of single-mindedly aiming to increase the number of active editors, I would strongly reposition towards increasing our effectivity. Wikidata is a mere first step in this direction. Thanks to Wikidata, more than 240 million lines of wikitext have been removed from the projects - without any loss of functionality. 240 million lines that don't have to be maintained anymore, that cannot be vandalized anymore, that allow every single contributor to be more effective. Look at the graph "Wikipedia edits per month" (you have to scroll down): you will find a spike in March 2013, which was the introduction of Wikidata, but after that the number of edits on average was reduced from about 12 million to about 9-10 million edits per month. And that's a good thing! Those edits are not needed anymore, they were done mostly by bots and caused a lot of confusion and grief. Wikidata reduced the workload for the communities dramatically, and opened up resources to get other things done. And that's not only a technical thing: it has strong social effects too. On smaller Wikipedias, the histories of many articles are basically just a list of bots who passed there to fix language links. This prevented one major component in community building: recognition of other contributors through seeing the history, and an effective knitting together of the community. Now these projects are getting room to breath, and the article histories are becoming significant again.
The next key is supporting already existing collaborations which we know are working well. For example Wikimedia Taiwan has a very effective collaboration with a medical school in Taipei. This model could potentially be adopted by other chapters with other medical school in other languages.
Finally working with the communities to trial efforts to increase editor numbers is important. Creating long term editors is the holy grail of the movement but will not be an easy problems to solve. But by spending time considering what other NGOs have done and through trial and error I believe we can achieve at least a few successes. To achieve this we will need to give people room to experiment with at the same time making sure all changes are reversible if not effective. To determine effectiveness we will need to have clear metrics as part of all experiments. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:19, 12 May 2015 (UTC)WMF needs to survey, survey, survey, and then to listen, listen, listen. That's the key to editor retention and content improvement.
I read an interesting blog post today that suggested that another key to editor retention involves the experience to which new editors are subjected following their first few edits. It suggests that WMF-sponsored intervention in various ways happen after first edits and the responses to these interventions on editor retention be monitored and summarized. Again: this is a matter of study, study, study. That's what the Board should be actively pursuing. The Board must push the tech/software oriented San Francisco Office towards social sciency research efforts. "Fixing" what ails Wikipedia isn't a matter of writing better code, it is much broader than that alone.
- We need to be bolder in how we position ourselves in the world of cultural archives. The Wikimedia projects are one today. And our communities know a robust, distributed way to manage an digital archive - the sort of archive that billion-dollar institutions would like to set up but have difficulty sharing online. That will start to open up collections on the scale of the tens of millions of texts and hundreds of millions of other records in public archives.
- We need to think longer term, and champion digitization more seriously. All material will eventually be freely licensed: let's be sure that it is in formats and with partners who integrate nicely with our model for free knowledge. There Is A Deadline applies to getting things digitized in the first place; not sort out licensing details.
- Josh and James put it well: we have many current partnerships that work at a smaller level. The WMF can help identify, promote, and scale those efforts through local communities around the world. In particular, we have a few examples of cutting-edge grad students and professors in a field developing their subject in tremendous detail. Some have done it on Wikipedia, others on single-purpose wikis which could easily be incorporated into the sister projects. This is exactly the spirit we need to realize our mission in the current generation. By promoting and honoring that work, we can find scholars in other fields to take up the cause.
thank you for your question. The community is responsible for the content. The board can best help improve content, by helping the editors. Help increase the number of editors. Help when editors asks for software. Help editors initiate new ideas for improvement. I hope this answers your question.
Atentamente, Taketa (talk) 08:15, 17 May 2015 (UTC)Technical oversight
Do you believe that the Board has, or will have, sufficient technology expertise to adequately oversee and advise on technical aspects of the work of the WMF? If not, how would you enable the Board to develop that capacity: for example, would you support the Board establishing a Technology Committee, composed of members of the Board together with outside experts? Didcot power station (talk) 20:43, 12 May 2015 (UTC) |
Having said that, I think I might be the Board candidate with the deepest expertise in how our technical infrastructure works, how MediaWiki and its numerous extensions work, and how our communities interact with these features and our infrastructure. I also have worked together with many of our technical contributors, both working for the Foundation and outside of it, and have actually hired a few of them. I have repeatedly pushed what is possible with MediaWiki (see my work on Semantic MediaWiki and Wikidata), and I definitely plan to continue pushing that frontier in order to get closer to realizing our vision.
Access to nonpublic information policy
What is your view of the current status of the Access to nonpublic information policy? Do you believe that the current state of affairs is satisfactory? Didcot power station (talk) 06:07, 13 May 2015 (UTC) |
I hope that this question will serve as a reminder in order to get the work unstuck. If not, I am confident that the new Board will be asking for a status update on this.
Murder of Meredith Kercher Article
What about the Murder of Meredith Kercher article in the English language Wikipedia? Most of the other questions are quite general but I believe examination of a specific topic is sometimes necessary. The Kercher article is probably the most troubled entry in Wikipedia's history and one that has caused profound harm to living human beings. In the words of Jimmy Wales the article was "highly biased because one side was taken out." He also identified "systematic exclusion of reliable sources" and "censorship to promote an agenda." It strikes me that in a highly contentious criminal case that lack of inclusion of reliable sources who have heavily criticized the trial and police investigation raises grave BLP issues. For more information Google "Amanda Knox Wikimania" and see my Groundreport article. The problem is worse today than ever. About a dozen editors were blocked because of their POV. The harm caused to Knox and Sollecito by Wikipedia's irresponsible coverage of the case is far worse than anything ever faced by John Seigenthaller. The RS banned from the article include four CBS documentaries, three retired FBI agents, an American Judge, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and many other respected journalists. These people are all breathing fire. Is there a place for the WMF to act in this case and others where there appears to have been a breakdown of Wikipedia's system? What happens when apparent "consensus" about violations of policy is different from what an impartial finder of fact would conclude? Do you agree or disagree with the statement that many editors were blocked as part of an effort to expel those with a POV opposed by the administrators who controlled the page? Is the article in its current form a BLP violation against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito? Thanks in advance. PhanuelB (talk) 14:18, 13 May 2015 (UTC) |
- I also endorse Pundit's point that, libelous material after published should get verified by legal department. This step could make articles reader friendly. -- Sailesh Patnaik (Talk2Me|Contribs) 11:16, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
As I stated in several other answers, I am a supporter of the autonomy of the individual projects. There are mechanisms in place if the individual processes fail. As far as I can tell, you have explored these exhaustedly. I understand that you remain convinced that the result the English Wikipedia community came up with in this case is not good, but there are plenty of people who think so about plenty of content in the Wikimedia projects. The Board of Trustees cannot and must not directly partake in the discussion about a single topic on a single project - remember, we have more than 700 projects. But in general, I trust and respect the communities (which does not mean I always agree with them).
Accurately measuring the reliability of Wikipedia
I read the first few days' responses to the 2015 Strategy/Community consultation and - at least from the unregistered respondents who I assume to be readers rather than community members - there was a clear theme emerging: they don't - but would like to be able to - trust Wikipedia. In its 2015 Call to Action the foundation listed a number of objectives reflecting its commitment to excellence, community, and innovation. Among those objectives was: "Improve our measures of ... content quality..." Do you think the fact that our readers can't trust us is a problem, and do you support the foundation's commitment to improve our measures of content quality? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:09, 14 May 2015 (UTC) |
- Reader metrics will vary from project to project and from culture to culture. Global metrics attempts to resolve this, but we can't reduce differing cultural contexts of encyclopedia reading (if I may put that way) to just a couple of data points. Understanding the specific cultural context of reader trust and reliability can't be gleaned from numbers alone.
- Trust is wavering. As pointed in some of the other answers, trust is a poor indicator of reliability: some will think Wikipedia is unreliable even if the information being presented is well-source and comprehensive, and vice-versa.
Wikipedia is not the sum of all human knowledge and will never be, because knowledge is personal (belief+truth of the fact+justification for the belief). All we can hope for is to become the sum of all important information from which knowledge could be derived, offering several interpretations for the facts we collect and present. For now we concentrate on presenting facts: Who did what, when, how. A good encyclopaedia also offers interpretations, something that is still lacking in most of the Wikipedia articles: Why did it happen at this time, why was it done by this particular entity, why was it this particular action and not something else? For these explanations, largely absent as they are, Wikipedia has a big advantage: We don't rely on one particular point of view. We can offer a 'controversy' section outlining parallel explanations. This should be strengthened.
For content quality there is exactly one universally accepted measure: The result of a double-blind peer review, assuming that both author and reviewers are seasoned academics. This measure does not apply to the movement just yet: Neither are all of our authors academics nor could we convince the entire scientific fraternity to do 35 million peer reviews, only counting Wikipedia articles in various languages. Our reliability will have to be measured differently, and that measure is not yet in place.
As for whether it’s a problem that readers trust us: of course I want our readership to be able to trust our content. I also, simultaneously, want readers to understand us as a continual work in progress. I think a lot about this as a librarian and an educator. I believe that the cultural perception of Wikipedia has shifted, at least for certain demographic groups, which poses a problem for gaining new engaged editors. Every year, I ask a class of freshman university students that I teach (in the US, at a California university) whether they were told not to use Wikipedia in high school. Each year for the past 4-5 years, every hand in the room has gone up. At the same time, these students, who are usually around 18, have been using or aware of Wikipedia for their entire school careers. But how they perceive Wikipedia has been deeply shaped by the admonition that it’s untrustworthy that they’ve been hearing for years, often since middle school. (Of course, this is an English-centric perspective; for other languages, the issue for students may be that content is simply lacking in that language).
What’s our role in all this? I think having a very clear understanding of what the current state of Wikipedia’s quality is would be a start, and making this kind of information much more visible for the sake of people learning how to use the encyclopedia. We need to work with educators much more to help them understand us. And, we need to do some deep work on figuring out what ensuring reliability might mean in a variety of contexts. Right now in the English Wikipedia, for instance, we rely heavily on citations to outside sources, including scholarly sources. But access to those sources is restricted by the closed scholarly publishing industry, and we know (anecdotally at least) that few readers bother going to them even if they are able to. So does having sources really ensure reliability? How do we know, and how do we check? What kind of sourcing is appropriate for a tertiary source like ours (a question that only a few subject areas, like medicine, have tackled to date)? There are many epistemological questions like this that as a community we need to move forward on figuring out for the future of the project.I actually doubt your premise that readers do not trust Wikipedia. I mean, yes, if you ask them "Do you trust Wikipedia?", I am convinced that many people would think about it and say no. But asking people such questions is not a reliable method. Look at where they go if they need information. Imagine instead a quiz show with options to help you answer questions, e.g. asking the audience, calling someone you know, etc. If they would offer an option "use Wikipedia for a minute", I am pretty sure that would become a very valuable option. Bismarck said, that most people who know how laws or sausages are made, would stop respecting them. And I think a similar effect happens when you ask people "Do you trust Wikipedia?". They think about how the sausage is made, and answer accordingly.
In short, the question of trust in Wikimedia projects is not a question I see for the Trustees. It is indeed a question of the individual projects and lies in their autonomy. I would not want to impose rules of reliability and sourcing developed by the English Wikipedia community of 30,000 active editors on a small project, which is just starting to develop and blossom. Each of these projects need, especially in their early phases, the freedom to explore and grow by their own heartbeats. An article like this one would be frowned upon on the English Wikipedia today, but it might still be an improvement for the Burmese Wikipedia today.
(And sorry for the wordplay in the beginning, but I think everyone who made it so far reading the answers deserves a smile. Also, if you actually followed the link for Bismarck, you will learn that he did not say such a thing. At least, if you trust Wikiquote.)We have also started a peer reviewed open access journal medical on Wikiversity here. There is still a fair bit of work required to get the articles pubmed indexed, however this will hopefully one day be another way to get our best content published in static form / make it more trustworthy (at a lower cost).
I think it is wise counsel not to trust any source completely, including Wikipedia. We want our readers to be skeptical. I am surprised how much people actually do trust Wikipedia per this survey. We must also keep in mind that both the formally peer reviewed literature and textbooks may contain errors. For example a major medical textbook from the Oxford University Press was recently caught copying and pasting from Wikipedia.[2] The amazing thing is that they changed the references so that the new references no longer supported the text. So they not only copied our text but made it worse while doing so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:59, 14 May 2015 (UTC)Long-term vision for Wikipedia's direction?
Which of the following two directions would you prefer as a long-term vision for Wikipedia? Why?
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To answer this question, I would like to share one of my experience :
In my state/province, we have very few historical drafts reserved over the internet. If i search for an important person of my state , i get no/less results. Through Wikipedia we are able to draft our past or the present, it is a revolution for the free knowledge. I can assure that only for Wikipedia, my future generation will find their history on their hand and will not face problem like us.-- Sailesh Patnaik (Talk2Me|Contribs) 22:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)We can't deny that the Wikimedia movement today provides more knowedge in more languages than many, if not most, other movements and institutions. Millions of people rely on Wikimedia projects to get the information they need. Those millions also look up to Wikimedia as a platform for people to share the knowledge that they know or have been able to glean off what they've seen or read. In that sense, our respectibility as an educational, cultural and informational institution, and the dynamism and mutual trust that defines our community, are what gives us legitimacy.
On the other hand, we must also consider that our community is not only composed of editors and content contributors. What about those who share their programming knowledge for the development of MediaWiki? What about those whose efforts to help the movement through the release of data, either online or offline? We must consider that they too are helpful for the movement, that they too are part of what we're building, and we have to take them into account as well. Without MediaWiki, there'd be no Wikimedia, for example. Sure, they don't contribute actual Wikipedia edits, for example, but without them we wouldn't be able to run as we've been able to.
That being said though, the Foundation will probably never be a software company. We don't necessarily have anything profitable to offer people. What we do have is knowledge: knowledge that we've committed to being free. That is where our primary focus is, but we should focus on the whole, and that means focusing on software development, open data and community organizing too, among others. --Sky Harbor (talk) 07:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Responsibility for content dissemination
The WMF mission statement has a major point of unresolved grammatical ambiguity regarding whether the Foundation has the responsibility to disseminate free education content, or to empower and engage people to disseminate said content. Currently, either reading fits well with the general behavior of the Foundation (maintaining the Wikimedia projects could be considered as aiding the communities in disseminating content, or disseminating content itself), but they could be conflicting at some point in the future, if there is a dispute between the Foundation and its partners as to how content should be disseminated. In your opinion, does the Wikimedia Foundation itself hold direct or indirect responsibility for disseminating free content effectively and globally? --Yair rand (talk) 17:23, 14 May 2015 (UTC) |
If you ask me, the answer to this question lies in our vision, to which our mission supplements. Remember that our vision is to "imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge" (emphasis mine). While we can debate on the finer points on what this "sharing" implies, this means that the Wikimedia Foundation exists not only to facilitate sharing knowledge at a largely individual level, but also for its spread both by itself and by the community at large. This is something that is clearly enabled by our mission as is currently written, and is something that the Foundation ought to continue supporting.
The spirit of Wikimedia is inherently collaborative and predisposed to sharing: a spirit that we've built over these last fourteen years. If anything, should there be any ambiguities that could result in the Foundation going the other way, it's our responsibility as the community to keep the Foundation in check. --Sky Harbor (talk) 11:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)The question now might be, is empowering people to disseminate the content on other means, to people and situations where the Web is not so readily accessible, is this also covered by the Mission statement? And I would say yes, absolutely. But the most important parts to achieve this goal are already core pillars of our movement: free licenses or public domain, and disseminating the content through the Web. Even if there would be a conflict in the sense that the Foundation would for some reason choose the other reading and regard disseminating content as it own exclusive mission instead of helping others to do so, the Foundation could not stop anyone from doing so thanks to our licensing choices. I think the right to fork, and the freedoms everyone enjoins with our content, are fundamental freedoms that ensure that the work of our contributors endures well beyond the life of the Wikimedia Foundation.
We make it easy for anyone to download and build upon our content by using open licenses. This for example has allowed the company Boundless.com to take Wikipedia content and turn it into 25 university level textbooks which are used by million.
We provide Wikipedia via our own website and work with cellphone companies to provide Wikipedia content through Wikipedia Zero. By letting go of control we facilitate innovation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:14, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Skills and capacities for working with others on the Board
I am concerned that certain current debates have the potential to threaten the Wikimedia enterprise as a whole, due to apparent divergence of opinions about the relevance of different frames of reference (us in relation to Facebook or Twitter; Board in relation to Editors; balance of focus on people vs. focus on technology for examples). Such tensions can become exacerbated by interpersonal conflicts related to personal style and manner of interactions. What skills and capacities would you bring to the Board that would help keep debates constructive and avoid avoidable conflict? What principles or outlooks do you think are necessary to keep current debates from driving the Wikimedia enterprise as a whole off the rails? Cclowe (talk) 01:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC) |
I have a very long history of working together with Wikimedians of different stripes: editors, administrators and persons in authority, people in affiliates, WMF employees and even the current Board of Trustees, and perhaps I should say that I am proud of the relationships that I have built with the movement's actors at large. I have never been blocked on any Wikimedia project, and people both within and outside the movement perceive me as being opinionated but gregarious and very friendly. I work easily with everyone, no matter how hard it is to work with them, and while I will push for my opinions, I will always listen to others first. In fact, at the closing ceremony of Wikimania 2011 I was heavily applauded when a video of me showed up on the screen. This attests to how I really try to be friends with everyone, and how I intend to work with the people I will interact with: always with respect, always with honesty, and always with kindness.
While I have gotten into lively debates with other Wikipedians, this has never descended into the usual wiki-drama that defines interaction between many Wikimedians, and I remain friends with the many Wikimedians I have interacted with over the years. I enjoy cooling down debates and putting them back on track, and this is really important when things get heated. The Board will strongly benefit from an added Asian perspective on corporate culture, where in negotiation we highly value honesty, consensus and patience rather than intimidation, restlessness and under-the-table dealing. At the same time though, we need to reinforce a Board culture where we work together to solve problems according to consensus, not fight one another to get what we want. --Sky Harbor (talk) 12:07, 18 May 2015 (UTC)I think that working with others is one of my great strengths on the board: I am quite good at helping us discuss issues fully, considering alternate points of view, and coming to resolution and consensus. I speak my mind but also try to speak for people not at the table, and do a lot of facilitation to make sure everyone is heard. I am also totally willing to change my mind in response to arguments (and do!), which I think is an important quality. I bring Wikipedian values of consensus and openness, combined with an awareness that we have limited time, scope and energy to work on issues.
The board aims for consensus, but a few years ago decided we didn't need to aim for perfect consensus -- a few people voting "no" is sometimes OK, versus spending many more weeks trying to hammer out an unhappy consensus or compromise. During this shift in attitude we had a few split votes that were divisive and uncomfortable; one has been highlighted by other questioners. At this point, though, I think we've come to a happy medium: we aim for consensus, not split votes, but occasionally someone will want to oppose an issue for various reasons, and that is fine. Typically when this happens though we have spent enough time in the consensus process that everyone has agreed the majority outcome is OK (if not ideal). I have helped with many of these discussions, and I think what we have now is good. The current board works well together, but it has taken some time to get there.
I've also volunteered over my four years on the board to be the public face of a number of heated issues [by posting emails, replying to comments, etc.], some of which issues I believed in strongly and some of which simply needed someone to step up. Doing this has required working with and trusting my fellow trustees in a deep way, and being deeply open to community discussion as well.
In other areas, I use the same techniques and qualities in endless committees and projects at work. As a Wikipedian, I've been editing [and running events and real-life activities] for over ten years with no disagreements becoming serious disputes.I have been an active Wikipedian longer than any other candidate, and in all that time, I never got blocked. I never had to deal with ArbCom or the German Schiedsgericht. At my first job after university, I was elected to be the person of trust for several years in a row, the go-to person of my colleagues when they had problems with anyone else, and I would usually resolve these issues. I secured the donations for Wikidata, hired and lead the team, and we deployed Wikidata without much drama. We listened to and engaged in conversations with the communities.
One requirement for board members should be an ability to facility effective conversions among the members of the movement. I believe that I have shown this ability through such discussions as our welcoming Wikivoyage as a Wikimedia sister site and my involvement in Wikiproject Medicine.
I additionally see an analytical mind as being critical. We must make decisions based on small scale experimentation followed by analysis of their effects. Only once we have favorable results should we proceed to wider rollout of major changes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)Diversity and scope
Hi! Thanks for volunteering as a candidate for the Wikimedia Board. I have two questions. This one is about diversity and scope. Various projects by various Chapters and individuals had been funded during the last few years. I would like to ask you about your opinion on their diversity.
Please take a moment to pick any relevant points from the above and comment, and ignore the ones which are less important. Thanks. --Gryllida 01:56, 17 May 2015 (UTC) |
As for language diversity, I think that the language committee had done an excellent work those years. There is even a linguistic project called Crudaban that is using the available data for the endangered languages supported by Incubator in creating a corpus for them. more than 286 languages are supported nowadays by WMF Incubator... This didn't exist in the past... However, the existence of this great quantity does not mean quality... Many of the languages supported are not standardized and this can cause some important problems within the projects created in these languages... As for the small WMF wikis, it is normal that smaller wikis are not funded as important wikis because Wikimedia Foundation is not obliged to spend money on failing projects. Wikimedia Foundation supports only the wikis that are bettering the overview of the movement of wiki. If smaller wikis would like to be efficiently funded, their communities have to work more to ameliorate their output and effect.
As for the support for wiki software, I think that this is an excellent idea. Inspiring ideas from new contributors from all over the world will give the structure of wikis more adaptability to societies. For example, developers from India will add some tools to the software that let it adapted to all Indian People... --Csisc (talk) 16:18, 27 May 2015 (UTC)- On funding distribution: Particularly in developing countries with existing affiliates, there is the perception that WMF funding is out of reach. Users in these areas who would strongly benefit from WMF funding either don't know that they exist, or they aren't equipped with the skill set required to write grant applications. We need to be more proactive with actually offering available funding for our users to avail of in order to pursue meaningful programmatic work, even lowering barriers to entry so that there would be a greater incentive to apply.
- On language diversity: The fact that we have 280+ languages is a very good thing as it shows that we are committed to empowering communities throughout the world to share and spread information in their own languages. I believe however that Wikimedia is also an effective tool for language preservation: smaller languages that may only have thousands of speakers, for example, may still find our projects useful in preserving information in their own tongues, and we need to enable that whether through changing the language proposal policy or enabling the creation of content that is not necessarily limited to Wikipedia or, alternatively, Wiktionary and Wikisource. (The latter is especially the case for oral cultures.)
- On funding of smaller wikis: If we're talking about funding as in keeping the servers running, then yes, they are well-funded. However, growing smaller wikis entails more than just spending on server space. We need to invest in growing our editor communities—something that we still fail in. We need to invest in enabling those communities to generate content—something we're also still failing in. We also need to invest in understanding these communities better so that we know which community building process would work best for them. While we're seeing some traction in studying our communities (mostly through private efforts), we're not there just yet. If anything, funding for the communities that run our smaller wikis is still inadequate, as I pointed earlier.
- On breadth of impact: This is actually one area where we're doing really well, whether that be through ensuring that more people in the developing world get access to Wikipedia Zero, or we enable the impactful work of affiliates in some of the regions of the world that need this support the most. But this is something that the Foundation can't do alone, and so it must take the appropriate action to allow for a wider dissemination of the projects. Certainly in terms of depth and coverage, this is something that is also enabled by investing in breadth.
- On software development: I agree that Foundation-led software development has a mixed track record, but this is something that can be resolved through enabling our communities to once again give meaningful input on software development, if not developing tools outright, just like the olden days. However, the Foundation can and should play a role in overseeing how our software architecture serves the best interests of readers, working with editing communities who know the best interests of editors, and working to make sure that we meet halfway.
- Funding: WMF needs to take a proactive position towards funding: Of course it is nice to wait for activists to write grant applications, but for the key questions, both in research and in engineering, solutions need to be actively solicited by the WMF. I don't see that happening in the current situation, and I would wish that to be more en vogue.
- Language diversity: I wouldn't like to see the Foundation encroach further on the resuscitation of dying languages. That's far beyond its mission. Suppose we had the major areas of knowledge covered in a few 'world languages', it would be easy to translate that. However, there are currently many languages where there is a sustainably large speaker base. For some reasons there is no editor base in these languages, content is being supplied by expatriates, tourists, and students of ethnology and anthropology. We need to ask the question why this is happening, or, as a Board member hopeful, we need to ask that question to academics that have a track record of answering such riddles, be they Wikimedians or not, and we need to develop incentives to answer them.
- Funding of smaller projects: From my perspective smaller projects lack active editors more than money. Heck, even of English Wikipedia, surely the flagship of our movement, we have no idea if it is possible to convert a non-contributor into an editor by means of outreach, barnstars, Tea House, and whatnot. The ethnology of Wikimedia contributors needs to be investigated.
- Breadth of impact: Many local-language projects in my region have no impact at all. This is of course a vicious circle: Below a certain amount of articles a project is not useful because one generally would not find what one was looking for. For Wikivoyage or Wikiquote that number might be a few thousand, for Wikipedia it is probably much more. To form a community that puts up this initial work is challenging, even more so as editors want to get some recognition out of their donated spare time. I think the Foundation can do a lot more to give local activists some form of official recognition (Something like "This person is WikiX's representative for country Y", with business cards, appointment letter, and the like) that they could use to spread the word.
- Wiki software: Respectfully, the Engineering team has developed a rather shaky track record. I see a lot of changes recently under the new Executive Director, but we still need to ask the question whether putting software projects on tender would not actually be cheaper than developing everything in-house. As an open content project, Wikimedia should be supported by the free/open source developer communities, something that is currently not happening. This needs to be investigated, and ties to that community need to be developed, strengthened, funded.
- I think the biggest challenges are related to getting a pipeline of good, fundable ideas and the people to make them happen, and to distributing those funds in a way that is both effective (measurable things happen that benefit Wikimedia projects as a result of the funding) and non-bureaucratic (it's easy to apply and receive grants). I am very much in favor of micro-grant programs with very little paperwork associated, for instance. Overall we know that money does not fix everything: money is not a motivator for most editors, for instance. So what can funding do that is effective? We need to really focus on the question of "what is money good for in our movement", and then apply it appropriately.
- We need more language diversity, absolutely, both in applications (i.e. global diversity of applicants) and in types of projects: I would love to see more proposed translation and recruitment projects in minority languages, for instance. This is a huge and needed area, and one where I think there's a lot of opportunity for partnerships. I would love to see us working closely with native-language organizations, for instance. Often their knowledge and publications should be free, but they may not know how to make this happen; we can help. I want to see us work with language teachers and students all over the world, too. There are many such small-scale partnerships where a granting program could aid individual projects through existing granting mechanisms, whether it's buying a scanner or funding a volunteer to work in classrooms.
- This is a tricky question because I think we need to reconsider small-wiki lifecycles in general. Historically I think we've assumed that small wikis would get bigger organically: that more content would attract contributors, which would attract other contributors. Is that true? We've had many projects that have been dormant or stagnant for many years, and it's not clear what will kickstart growth. Are the big wikis anomalies? I think we need to do more intensive research, both in terms of academic research into growth patterns and in terms of surveying contributors about what they need, to answer this question fully. That said, this is related to languages: I think we can imagine lots of amazing translation and recruitment work that might need funding to get off the ground (I'm thinking of things like the WikiAfrica contests, or Mayalam outreach work, for instance). And in general, if a small wiki does want to have a project funded, I think we should absolutely prioritize it. This is a crucial area for removing the bureaucracy around grants; if we can only make grants accessible to English speakers with a tolerance for paperwork, we won't serve our whole movement.
- I think in terms of breadth we've only scratched the surface; we could be much more collaborative with other organizations (even our own sister projects!) and much more imaginative in the types of programs we fund. There is a point of tension right now over whether we fund types of projects that have worked elsewhere, or whether we try new things. Both are important, of course, but I very much do not want to see the FDC, IEG, et al penalize entities trying brand-new ideas that may fail. We all have to be bold enough to try new things.
- I'd love to see decentralized technical development; the challenge is breaking out pieces that can be worked on separately without causing a huge overhead in code review, adoption, etc. But: absolutely these projects exist, and I think if we can have shared to-do lists of tasks and wanted tools, building these is a great role for groups and individuals doing development outside the WMF.
- Key challenges in funding distribution: I think we are still at the beginning of figuring out Funding distribution. The FDC, the GAC, the IEG - they all need to be evaluated, and we also need to experiment further, in order to find the most effective ways to use the available funds. The key challenge for the Board will be to find an evaluation method to compare the outcomes of the different programs.
- Language diversity: The language diversity is one of the most fascinating and miraculous aspects of the Wikimedia movement. Supporting 280+ languages is just an insane goal - and yet, we are doing it. I don't want to speak for the Language Committee - because it is ultimately their decision - but I hope to see them continue their open approach towards language diversity. But we also need to honestly think and discuss what the goals for many of these languages can and should be.
- Funding smaller wikis: The Board should not engage in funding specific projects or languages. We have more than 70 chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. I think these are the right channels to fund these projects, and it is often the case that we do not lack funding, but actual ideas and proposals to be funded. Having said that, there is important centralized work to be done in language engineering and multilingual content creation from which the smaller languages could benefit especially well. But this would not be funding in order to support any specific wiki, but rather to support the whole ecosystem.
- Breadth of impact opposed to depth: I don't think that breadth of impact can be achieved without sufficient depth. It is pretty clear that a Wikipedia in Cherokee with its 600 articles cannot have the impact we would hope it to have. We have to make the contributors working on the Cherokee Wikipedia much more effective.. What we also need to figure out is which languages would have the most impact if supported, i.e. which languages do we need to support better in order to unlock the sum of all knowledge for every human. I heard that the Language Committee has such a knowledge base, and I recently (actually, just the day before yesterday) asked a member about that, and I am looking forward to the answer.
- Decentralized development: Considering my role in Wikidata, which is easily the most prominent chapter-lead software development project, I know that many software projects can be successfully developed without centralizing all the development effort in San Francisco. With my experience I would support the Foundation in continuing to decentralize more and more of its development effort.
The WMF does not have a huge amount of money. What they raise in a year would be barely sufficient to run my small emergency department. We need to be careful how we spend the little money we have, making sure that (1) it goes to what the movement see as most important (2) we apply due diligence and verify that projects are having an effect
None of the wikis are adequately funded as we give away what we produce for free. Thus this poor state of funding is unlikely to change. I view language as key and thus one of my major efforts is to improve medical content in as many other languages as possible throught the Translation Task Force.
We have already had large successes that organizations a hundred times our size have not been able to match. We at Wikipedia for example have Ebola content in more than 110 languages and our content was the top viewed source in the three countries most affected countries in Western Africa.
With respect to software development, we definitely need to expand the number of people involved. More than the nuts and bolts of writing code thought we need to expand the involvement of the community in determining the direction the software is taking. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)So here are some slogans that I will push:
- Survey, survey, survey. Then listen, listen, listen.
- Spend money on things that work. Don't spend money on things that don't work.
- San Francisco exists to serve the community, not the other way around.
Rather than identifying the long-term value of a project to our mission, and encouraging many different groups to support and realize that goal, our movement (largely the WMF, but others taking leads from it) currently waits for proposals and judges them on how they are written. The recent Inspire Campaign is a counterexample where a specific focus was encouraged, but that was quite small compared to the bulk of project support and funding. We tend to focus support on institutions and organizations, because they have the capacity to ask for funds and write proposals. Most awesome community projects that stall, in comparison (stats.grok.se comes to mind), need very little to make them more successful: but the organizers usually may not be interested in filling out forms and reports or asking for specific help.
Many of the great improvements to collaborative tools (including wiki tools but not limited to that) have come from distributed development. We should dedicate much more energy to highlighting and supporting this work: with strong support for the non-wm MediaWiki community, reviewing patches within days, helping community devs find interesting problems to tackle, and helping great ideas find external partners and sponsors.