Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-31/In the media

Hunter Biden

 * Interesting that there was no discussion of the administrators being "in kahoots" with article subjects when Vivek Ramaswamy was revealed to have hired people to scrub his Wikipedia page a couple weeks ago. I wonder what the difference could possibly be for such esteemed sources like The Federalist to bring this issue up. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 11:37, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The edits on Vivek Ramaswamy's biography were reversed, the edits on Hunter Biden's biography were not reversed. Here is the difference you wondered about. BookNotion (talk) 12:01, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Orlowski

 * The Orlowski piece is pretty spot on. Regardless of how much you may support a social or political cause, readers who support it too should donate to that cause. What people are donating to here is this cause, with the reasonable expectation this is what their money will be used for. Even paying zillion dollar golden parachutes for high level employees can at least somehow be connected back to the project, even if it's not the most responsible use of funds.This right here, increased access to free knowledge, is supposed to be the social justice cause. Many people don't have access to a library. Even in developed parts of the world like the US, we've got people banning books and even banning libraries. So who fills that gap? I dunno, probably the first friggin thing that shows up when you google basically anything.  G M G  talk  10:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * This is one of the reasons why I advise people to not give money to the WMF anymore. They are better off donating time by editing any of the projects. However, I disagree with Orlowski about contributors being paid; that's a terrible idea. Ciridae (talk) 08:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Paying editors is one of those ideas that seems "fine" (barely) in theory but would be virtually impossible to implement in any kind of equitable way. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 11:45, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
 * We could still hire a bunch of extra programmers if nothing else. Just because content needs to be volunteer to ensure neutrality, doesn't mean WP:PHAB needs to be the same way.  G M G  talk  12:07, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
 * GreenMeansGo, ThadeusOfNazereth, Ciridae: It is worth noting that even today, some volunteers do get paid by the WMF, both for committee jobs and for certain types of editing.
 * See discussion at User_talk:BilledMammal/2023_Wikimedia_RfC for examples and thoughts about spending priorities. Andreas JN 466 12:18, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Please note that The Telegraph column linked here contains numerous inaccuracies. For background, before the article was published, our team provided a detailed response to questions from the reporter. Unfortunately, no part of the Foundation's statement was included in the published piece. This is not the first time that, despite providing the author with information and answering their questions, they have misrepresented how the Foundation works. Since the piece was published last Monday, our team has contacted The Telegraph requesting an immediate correction on several points related to the Foundation, including (in summary):
 * - 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.
 * - Comparing Wikipedia's operating expenses now with 2010 numbers is a false equivalent, given we now have the same (if not higher) levels of traffic as many other for-profit internet companies at a fraction of the budget and staffing.
 * - The Knowledge Equity Fund is not funded through the Wikimedia Endowment. It is a one-time fund of $4.5 million that is still being allocated.
 * - The Wikimedia Endowment is a permanent safekeeping fund, and the full value of the fund is not available for use.
 * - The Foundation does not apply fundraising overruns intended to support Foundation operating costs to the Endowment.
 * - The article mischaracterizes Foundation spending and accountability, misrepresenting the facts. As we told the reporter before the article was published, our annual operating budget in FY 2022-23 was $175 million. The Board of Trustees sets our annual budget. The Wikimedia Foundation has long-followed industry best practices for nonprofits and has consistently received the highest ratings by nonprofit groups like Charity Navigator for financial efficiency and transparency.

LDickinson (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2023 (UTC)


 * @LDickinson (WMF) Let's have a look at these complaints, taking each in turn.
 * It's not "misleading" to report the precise figure given for "Internet hosting" in the WMF's own audited financial statements. Moreover, the Telegraph article clearly distinguishes between staffing and hosting costs. It says:
 * The WMF was a top-10 website operator in 2010. The increase in page views since then has hardly been earth-shattering, according to stats.wikimedia.org, especially given the reduction in bandwidth costs since then – from 13.8B in August 2010 to 24.7B in August 2023.
 * The article does not claim that the Knowledge Equity Fund is funded through the Wikimedia Endowment. It separates them quite clearly, describing the Knowledge Equity Fund as "another recipient" of WMF money, in addition to the Wikimedia Endowment.
 * You say, Again, the article does not claim otherwise, but specifically points out that the WMF intends to grow the pot further.
 * You say, The Foundation made annual donations of $5 million to grow the Endowment, in addition to millions of dollars in donations it passed through to the Endowment. (Since 2021, this has included all money left to the WMF in someone's will.) The WMF has also donated significant staff resources financed through Wikipedia donations. As for the Knowledge Equity Fund, the WMF itself announced the Knowledge Equity Fund as a way to use a fundraising overrun.
 * You have failed to address one of the key points of the article: that after more than seven years, We learnt from Jimmy Wales last month that over the past couple of years, the Endowment seems to have had annual expenses of around $2 million, but that raises as many questions as it answers. All questions since have remained unanswered. Regards,
 * Andreas JN 466 08:51, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * From User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC:
 * "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."
 * --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 15:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @LDickinson (WMF), you claimed "The Wikimedia Endowment is a permanent safekeeping fund, and the full value of the fund is not available for use", part of which which you copied from . That page goes on to say "This policy will be reviewed by the Investment Committee annually". Do you have a shred of evidence that supports the above claim? It sure looks like "permanent until we decide to change it".
 * And, BTW, what's the deal with people from the W?F making statements and then not participating in the discussion they started? Are you being pressured by management to never have any back and forth interaction with the volunteers? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 07:24, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
 * (...Sound of Crickets...) --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 10:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * You're quite familiar with that sound now, aren't you? Andreas  JN 466 18:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The Foundation treats editors like Reddit treats mods. You're all imminently replaceable.  G M G  talk  19:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It appears that a W?F "Senior Communications Manager" has the same relationship to communication that a fireman has to fire. Feel free to add a polite comment to those two talk pages saying that you would also like an answer to the above questions. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 21:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @Guy Macon Alternate Account: Candidly, your comments here (beginning "There is a word that I choose to avoid that describes someone…") on 10 September made me feel uncomfortable. You may have chosen to avoid calling me a name because you know it is against project guidelines, but the comment is unkind and unconstructive, especially towards someone you are interacting with for the first time. My feelings of discomfort were reinforced by your later comment here (beginning "It appears that W?F Senior Communications Manager…"), which also links to my personal Meta profile. In recent days, I have seen your many messages requesting a response from me, including comments on my personal talk pages and the Communications Department's talk page. I've also seen your comment encouraging others to comment on my talk page, and I received your email requesting that I respond. I feel that I am not being engaged in an appropriate way. I hope this provides clarity on why you have not seen further responses from me in this space.  LDickinson (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I care very little about your discomfort, . Please don't think that your passive manner is going to fix this problem. Guy Macon and others have made points about what could seem to be deliberate financial mismanagement. If you're not up to representing the WMF then this might be the sign that it's time for you to move on to other projects. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 21:07, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Chris, if you have or know of any allegations of "deliberate financial mismanagement" I urge you to bring them directly to me, and not attack staff in this way. What on earth are you talking about? Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:53, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * And yet when direct allegations that the WMF is giving money from donors to community banned editors with serious safeguarding issues - to run events where vulnerable people would be present, you didnt indicate you were paying it any attention given your action of sweeping it out of sight. Perhaps you would like to earn some trust by indicating what due diligence the WMF did before handing over cash, what safeguarding checks were done, what discussion was had over the optics of giving money leveraged through the community to someone who has been very much, repeatedly, rejected by multiple projects. Did you in fact act on that report? Did you in your position on the board exercise your duty of oversight to find out why the processes for grants went so very wrong? Did you ask for any lessons learned? A report? Did you even fire off a 30 second email to someone about it and ask them to look into it given the seriousness of the allegations? Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:59, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah......I'm inclined to agree with the above, at least in some measure. The stewardship of large sums of money is a very serious issue, and I think it behooves the Foundation to communicate openly and promptly about it. This is especially so when accusations are appearing in print in a national paper of record. To not respond to community concerns for some three weeks, and then replying that it makes you uncomfortable, I could understand how someone might interpret that as flippant and dismissive.
 * At the very least, it seems to show a disconnect between cultures. This is the factory floor where the sausage making is done. We're mostly quite used to being called on the carpet, even for something as small as a hyphen or a dash in prose. Hopefully you can understand how it might seem out-of-sorts for a communications manager to not want to...well...communicate.  G M G  talk  23:15, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a lot of words that fail to actually answer the question asked. Translation: If you DON'T aggressively push for an answer, I will simply remain silent and not answer the question. If you DO aggressively push for an answer, I will claim that I am not required to answer because you aggressively pushed for an answer. Either way, I get to avoid answering. Please note that other editors have asked the same question without any hint of the "unkind and unconstructive" behavior that I am being told is the reason why I did not get an answer. They too have not recieved an answer. Here is a bold idea: try answering when people ask reasonable questions. Even a small amount of actual communication will reduce the frustration editors feel when you stomewall them. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Guy this kind of pile-on abuse of a staff member is extremely unfortunate and saddening to everyone. Please stop it immediately.  You want to heap abuse on someone, bring it to me.  The question you are asking is not sensible and/or has already been answered.  Let me give you the relevant quote: "The purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment is to serve as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. The following investment policy is meant to guide the long-term investment strategy of the Wikimedia Endowment; this policy is reviewed by the Investment Committee annually."  That's it, that's the whole story, there is nothing further that can be added by anyone.  This isn't stonewalling, it's just facts.
 * You appear to be asking for something that doesn't exist, that no one claimed or suggested in any way exists, and accusing people of lack of transparency for either not knowing what the hell you are asking about, or not being able to produce a non-existent document. If you are trying to ask, is there any separate legal requirement that is imposed or could be imposed on the Wikimedia Endowment such that the principle could never be touched under any circumstances, then the answer is no, there is not, and there could not be.  The Wikimedia Endowment is now a 501(c)(3), the purpose of which is, to again quote what you've already been told, "to serve as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to support the operations and activities of the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity."  In normal times, that means, as a matter of policy set by the endowment board (in particular the investment committee makes recommendations to the wider board) that we have no intention of touching the principal, we intend to make grants at a level that's consistent with ongoing growth in the fund, etc.  It also means that, in some kind of existential crisis or whatever, that principal could be available for safekeeping.
 * What appears to be happening here is that you've got some idea in your head that something nefarious is going on and so you are asking about a legal document that doesn't exist and can't exist, and that no one has ever implied has existed.
 * Let's be realistic here. If someone points to the endowment fund and says "See, look, they could just cancel fundraising this year, and spend that money instead" they are simply wrong.  In order to do so, the WMF would have to ask the endowment for a huge grant to cover annual expenses, and I can tell you as a board member of the endowment, I think that would be viewed incredibly negatively.  That is not the purpose of the endowment fund.  It's one of the big selling points that I very often talk to potential major donors about - that the endowment is not just a really big bank account for some future profligate CEO to spend through, it is a fund set up - expressly and clearly and transparently - "to serve as a permanent safekeeping fund."  When staff respond by pointing that out, they are giving you the exact full and correct answer.  End of story. Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I see it as a totally illegitimate line of questioning. The community has largely been lukewarm to outright resistant at attempts to address larger issues that don't trace quickly back to content, editors, and readers. In the case of the blackout discussion a few years back, even resistant to things that arguably do. From memory, these argument mainly centered on the necessity of being above suspicion and the risk of being seen as overtly partisan.
 * Not to say that any of these causes aren't worthy goals. Just to say that the community has a pretty steady track record of trying to partition between the core mission, and other goals that we may all agree are honorable, but yet remain separate in scope.  G M G  talk  12:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure which line of questioning you mean in particular? I think there are few lines of questioning that would ever be totally illegitimate, but casting aspersions on good staff who have given a complete answer by implying that they are not doing their job properly isn't going to be part of very many legitimate lines of questioning.  Your original question was fine, although calling the Orlowski piece "spot on" isn't something I would endorse - it was typical of him, he's been gunning for me and for Wikipedia for many years.  (Once wrote a piece with a headline comparing us to the Khmer Rouge.)
 * As for me, I fully and completely agree that if someone wants to donate to some other worthy goal (let's say, famine around the world, they should donate to those causes, and we should stick to what we're good at. I don't know of anyone at the WMF, nor any grants that we have made, that don't adhere to that 100%.  What someone like Orlowski wants to do is paint us as some kind of deceptive left wing front organization funding causes that have nothing to do with our mission - I understand that, that's Andrew Orlowski, he's not an honestly interested party, he's a troll and always has been.
 * Our goal is, and always has been, to create a high quality encyclopedia written with a neutral point of view, a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. And we know, and have widespread consensus through huge community processes, that one of the ways we haven't succeeded yet is that Wikipedia tends to be written by a certain type of person (a person very much like me, to be clear), and that as a result, we have weak coverage of many topics that are important, and we have biases that are hard for us to spot because they aren't issues that we know about or have considered.
 * I think it is of course possible, and desirable, for us to have thoughtful conversations about particular grants, or particularly types of grants, to ask ourselves whether they are working. I don't think we should respond in a fearful or knee jerk fashion to low quality tabloid newspaper trolling. Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The basic details of the Equity Fund don't really seem to be in dispute. It's stated purpose is to provide grants external to WMF projects in pursuit of broader social/political aims. Again, not disagreeing with the causes but the methods.
 * Meta has never been an extremely accurate way to gauge the views of the community at large. Meta has always been an enclave. That's likely part of the disconnect, having a group of contributors the size of...umm...the Norwegian Wikipedia making high level decisions.  G M G  talk  17:07, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I purposely waited three days before responding to any of the above. As is my policy, when someone asks me to stop doing something I stop doing it whether or not I agree. Jimbo asked, so I am stopping. Unless there is a compelling reason to respond to something I intend this to be my last post in this discussion.

There are times when I agree that I was out of line and in those cases I apologize as well as stopping whatever I was asked to stop doing. This is not one of those cases. It is a verifiable fact that a certain individual wrote "It is misleading to say that just 2% of Wikipedia's revenue goes to hosting costs" and then went on to "refute" the claim by telling us what was spent on something other than hosting costs. It is a verifiable fact that within a day another editor attempted to politely engage in a civil discussion regarding that claim. It is a verifiable fact that for the next 23 days the only response was silence, then a post refusing to actually answer the question asked as editor after editor asked for a response. 

Refusing to engage in any sort of communication when that is your job title is not OK. Refusing to engage in any sort of communication with multiple editors because one of them made you feel uncomfortable is not OK, especially when the other editors tried to engage with you for many days before the offending editor did anything to make you feel uncomfortable.

This is (I hope) my final word on this matter. I believe the diffs above speak for themselves and will not comment further. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 19:02, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Katherine Maher
I'm glad for her, but... world tour early 2022? In the middle of COVID?! Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.5% of all FPs. 08:30, 4 September 2023 (UTC)