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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (WMF). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

< Older discussions · Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Did you vote in the WMF Board Election? Voting closes September 6

While people are paying attention to this page, I want to remind everyone that voting in the WMF Board Election is open for a few more days. Regardless of our opinions of the WMF, it plays a key role in the operation of Wikipedia and this is one of the few ways that community members can have a significant impact on how the WMF operates. A lot of people have not voted yet - this year the English Wikipedia has a turnout rate of 5.852%, last year it was 7.947% (about 500 votes).

I encourage you to:

Legoktm (talk) 15:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

  • The drop in response to the election is probably due to the community being resigned to 'Plus ça change.'
Some current board members have possibly implied that the needs of individual Wikipedias' volunteer editors communities are not only not a priority, but are not within the board's remit, suggesting also for example, that the volunteers should do technical MediaWiki repairs themselves. Support from a genuinely motivated board would obviate the need for heavily subscribed appeals such as these, and fundraising based on stark misinformation. The current situation does not instill trust in the BoT.
I wonder just how many voters have actually bothered to read these short videos.
With only 2 seats directly elected by the community from a pre-selected short list, and the rest of the members 'appointed', a Board of any kind will only ever be a mere semblance of a system of checks and balances on the Foundation. The electoral system itself should be a top priority for radical change and kept as simple as possible while primarily representing the communities and not just the WMF and the affiliates.
There is a common misunderstanding that salaried staff (and affiliates) are more qualified and competent than people among the hundreds of editors whose voluntary content work is the source of the funds that maintains the WMF and the BoT. It seems fair that these volunteers without whom the entire movement would grind to a standstill should have the majority influence in the candidate nomination and electoral processes, and it should be reasonable to let them.. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Obviously your work has zero value, or you would be getting paid for it, right? Dennis Brown - 2¢ 12:13, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung: I agree with your critique of the election system and composition of the Board (though I would clarify that more these 2 seats are community voted, e.g. last year we elected 4 people to the board), but regardless I hope people will vote in spite of how flawed the system is, while continuing to lobby and push to make it better.
For everyone else, if you don't want to watch the videos, you can also read transcripts of the candidates' responses. Legoktm (talk) 12:43, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
The system is indeed flawed. The volunteers have a right to know who gets on the board, how they get there, and to be directly part of the selection making. Rightly or wrongly, I have always had the impression that the BoT simply rubber-stamps the intentions of the WMF who will do what they want anyway. I'm sure that plenty of Wikipedians share the same opinion and would like to be convinced otherwise.
As Dennis possibly implies, in the eyes of the WMF, it's volunteers are an unwashed mob of expendable galley slaves. If catastrophe is to be avoided, this year's composition is going to be crucial in the way the encyclopedias will continue to be supported in the future. Unlike in the past, it is going to be essential for the Board to intervene to stave off the WMF's next series of faux pas; "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." – 1867 John Stuart Mill, 1867, British philosopher.
That is not to say of course, that the WMF is especially 'bad' per se, but they have lost sight of Wikipedia grassroots and embark upon goals that have little to do with what the tens of thousands of unpaid editors and maintenance workers signed up for and what new editors are completely unaware of until they later become involved in Wiki politics. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:02, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
The videos are important. They may provide insights on the candidates' sincerity and goals that cannot be conveyed on paper. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:02, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
When the voting compass talks about the WIkipedia community, does that include editors, or everybody but editors? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Wakelamp the (s)election system is such an unholy complex mess (nearly as complex as US presidential elections, but even less democratic), I doubt very much if anyone even bothered to consult the compass. I know I didn't and I haven;'t a clue what it is. It didn't prevent me from knowing exactly who I should vote for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Please vote for those you prefer by midnight UTC, and consider consulting the compass first. It confirmed my opinion of the candidate I'd already picked as a clear number one, and helped me rank the others. Their views on the WMF's role vary, and the right choices can make an important difference to our future. Certes (talk) 10:40, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung the ideas that the wmf is out of touch with the average editor and that the average editor shouldn't vote seems like a really bad combination. For people upset with the direction of the foundation I think one of the best things they can do is vote. Same with people who are happy with it. Both kinds of candidates can be found in this election. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 11:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Barkeep49, sorry, pardon? I think you just pinged the wrong user. Things happen when we're busy ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:03, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Kudpung no I meant you . You had said it was less democratic than US presidential elections and that it has lost sight of Wikipedia grassroots. I was suggesting that voting was a way to remedy that problem rather than just bemoaning undemocratic elements. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:45, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Barkeep49, beats me how you can construe this as a call to not vote: The volunteers have a right to know who gets on the board, how they get there, and to be directly part of the selection making. If you check my edits you'll see I been going round the site encouraging people to vote! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Wakelamp: "community" generally refers to people who edit and contribute to the wikis. Different people have different opinions on how broad or narrow the definition should be. The Wikipedia Community is one essay that I quickly found that explains the different ways of looking at it. Legoktm (talk) 14:45, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Reminder, voting closes in about 21 hours at 23:59 UTC today. The statistics show that turnout rate has gone up to ~7.6%, but we are behind other large Wikipedias, like German and French, which are both at ~10% (we're also behind Spanish, Italian and Commons). English Wikipedia makes up 35% of the electorate but only 32.7% of voters. Please vote, it's important that the English Wikipedia's opinions are appropriately reflected in the results. Legoktm (talk) 02:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

  • Now that it's all over bar the shouting, I've had a look at the compass and lo and behold it matched the way I voted 100%. The compass clearly demonstrated which candidates are on the side of the volunteers and which ones are firmly in the WMF camp. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:48, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
    With regard just to the first sentence, that's an interesting method I should have tried - decide who to vote for, then take a look at the EC. Not such a concern here, but more so for elections where I'm not so well researched, good way of trying to mitigate confirmation and anchoring biases Nosebagbear (talk) 14:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, Nosebagbear, I wanted to make sure that it would no longer be possible to change my vote after looking. Some of the candidates may not have been as familiar to me as others but I have the advantage of having been around long enough to know what's afoot in the covert corners of the Foundation. It was therefore not difficult based on their backgrounds and statements to assess which ones would best represent the interests of the WMF's main asset: the volunteers who provide and maintain the content for free while the the staff enjoy their celebrity salaries and junkets on the proceeds of that free work.
My main concern is the amount of effort (and probably money again) spent on researching for and producing the compass for an election for just two preselected candidates out of a total of 11 seats. The entire system of (s)election of the board members makes a mockery of the meaning of 'democracy'. I'm sure even Barkeep49 can understand my opinion even if he doesn't share it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
While the EC, I believe, uses a free platform that someone found during the MCDC elections (though obviously any staff time in setting up does have a fiscal opportunity cost), I can absolutely agree as to the preselection of candidates aspect Nosebagbear (talk) 10:44, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Back in April, there was considerably more fuss about this year's (s)election method in German Wikipedia than here. :/ The interesting question is what (s)election method the WMF will stipulate next year.
This said, I am happy that two or three decent candidates made it through the affiliate selection process this year. But without changing the board composition, community representatives will always have a hard time trying to change the WMF's course. It doesn't help that they are not allowed to voice disagreement with any board decision (see the odious section 9). Andreas JN466 13:40, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

new resource for movement discussions.

There is a whole new set of forums being utilized now, which are available for discussion of any and every topic that pertains to Wikipedia, and our community and the Wikimedia movement. please feel free to go there and sign up for an account, and participate as often as you may wish. I hope you will click the link below to do so. we would welcome your input. thanks!!

thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 17:25, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Why are discussions about Wikipedia being held at another site? We have talk pages here. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 21:34, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
The domain registrant for movement-strategy.org claims to be Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., so this appears to be yet another Meta. We already have too many other WMF sites that few Wikipedians ever visit trying to control us; let's hope the latest diversion dies quickly. Certes (talk) 22:47, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
Hear hear. We have meta for that. We don't need yet another external site. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the replies above. In reply, I would note that we do already have multiple platforms that are external and off-wiki. if you prefer to not use those platforms, or if you find them counter-productive, then of course that is fine, and one is fully entitled to one's own opinion on that. however, there is no objective basis for precluding the existence of an individual off-wiki platform, in view of the context of multiple other platforms being in existence and fully accepted, prior to this.

the off-wiki platforms that are already fully active, and used regularly, include: Telegram, Discord, IRC, Slack app, (such as the slack channel listed at this page).... et cetera. this is not a full or definitive list. please note that, just as one example, the usage of the app "Telegram" includes multiple groups (i.e. threads) there. the thread on Telegram that is labeled as being for the "Wikimedia movement" as a whole, has over 700 members, and is fully active. in addtion, on Telegram alone, there are additional active threads for Wikimania, for Wikimedia Hackathon, for WikiVibrance, etc. and several other active topics as well.

So Telegram is clearly an existing active external platform. not only is it not on any Wikimedia site, it is clearly an app that is not under control of WMF in any way. the main difference with the MS Forums is that they are indeed fully designed by Wikimedia itself. so in that sense, they are a resource that is much more focused on the WMF community itself. I hope that is helpful. --Sm8900 (talk) 17:31, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

  • Not only is this yet another demonstration the WMF's pathological hatred of their own Wiki platform,
  • not only does this perpetuate the WMF's disastrous pattern of cooking up plans off-wiki which end up in hot conflict with actual community consensus,
  • community members are prohibited from the site if they declined to register an e-mail address on their wiki account.
    • According to WMF figures I came across, somewhere between 20% and 45% of users decline to provide an email, and an outright majority do not have a verified email.
Note that Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy says Because we believe that you shouldn’t have to provide personal information to participate in the free knowledge movement, you may:
A bad idea doesn't cease to be a bad idea just because someone else has already done it. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
true true. perhaps go to the threads onTelegram, and address these thoughts to them? I didn't know that alternative processes for open and free expression would attract such opposition here. perhaps you should go to the Telegram thread, and tell all 700 people to discontinue all discussion? if you're right that such interchanges is a bad idea.,how then can we address those errant individuals who seem to persist in this practice? perhaps wikipedia has some articles on some historical methods for pummeling such practitioners of untrammeled discourse? I'm deleting my own tongue-in-cheek remarks. I guess I'm trying to say, in a large, diverse, dynamic and vibrant community such as the wikipedia world community, isn't it good to have some diverse methods and platforms for discussion? it seems to me to have some obvious benefits. Sm8900 (talk) 13:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Just a note that anyone can anonymously create an email address at protonmail aka proton.me —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
@Sm8900: Could you clarify whether you're inviting us on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, and what particular benefits beyond the wiki interface this forum brings? Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:28, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
hi. no, I am simply an ordinary editor. as far as the benefits of this forum, it is basically that threads there are serving as semi-permanent communication threads, to reach out to communities that are less-represented, and to enable the wikimedia movement to be more inclusive. for one thing, one good feature there is that it can translate mutliple languages easily. Sm8900 (talk) 19:28, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

It's important to distinguish between "official" platforms set up by the Foundation and unofficial platforms created by a group of volunteers. For an official platform, decisions can be made that will apply to a broader community, and there may be an expectations that those who wish to talk about, say, movement strategy are aware of the discussions taking place on the platform. In contrast, I don't think there's any expectation that Wikipedians need to follow what's said on Telegram, Discord, IRC, etc., in large part because the guardrails we have in place ensure that no big decisions can be made there that will affect the broader Wikipedia community. They're for more casual chat and collaboration, or for working on wiki-adjacent projects like planning edit-a-thons or coordinating with museums.

That said, let's be real: MediaWiki stinks for trying to work in multiple languages at the same time. Good for encyclopedia that anyone can edit, bad for multilingual discussion forum. This looks like interesting software that may make it easier to do just that. I'm all for a trial run to see how it might fit in and/or what it might replace. But if you're going to tackle an important, consequential process like movement strategy with that trial, I'd hope the WMF is clear that it's unofficial and optional -- that Meta is still the primary site where decisions are documented and decided. Perhaps a staffer can clarify this (or perhaps Sm8900 knows the answer?). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 19:39, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites, thiose are all very good and valid points. I can absolutely attest that the MS Forums are not to replace any official processes, any currently-existing forums generally accepted by the community, such as Village Pump, or any and all internal decision-making processes in any way. none.
this is purely meant as a way to give a forum and a voice to communities and to groups who have previously been under-represented here. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 20:35, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
@Sm8900: However, there is no objective basis for precluding the existence of an individual off-wiki platform.
Actually there is plenty of reasons.
  1. We have established workflows and tools for discussions. We have WP:RFCs, with centralized discussions etc... We have our watchlists, which lets us easily monitor these discussions, or at least the hubs in which these discussions occurs. They are integrated with WP:AALERTS, which are monitored by thousands of editors. We have RFC bots which advertises those discussions. We have cross-wiki ping notices. I have email notices setup too.
  2. Whatever other external site exists, I don't check it every time I log in Wikipedia (which is several times a day) and doesn't have this level of integration
  3. And lastly it's a damned hassle and splits discussion and the userbase for no reason. All of what could be achieve on an external site can be achieved here already. SO USE WHAT WE HAVE and stop making external sites. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:56, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
by the way, creating external platforms does not split the user base, actually. in actuality, it expands the user base, by reaching additional people and groups, who might be more interested in that external platform as a resource. Sm8900 (talk) 21:29, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
I appreciate your reply. You make some highly valid points. I would suggest just one small thought on this.
Obviously not everything that an external platform can do could be replicated here, simply due to the technical features themselves. I simply mean no platform is equivalent to another, just like email, WhatsApp and telegram all have different features. --Sm8900 (talk) 12:33, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
I had a look, and the inline Google Translate feature is awesome! Is that an add-in? Could the Foundation develop something similar for MediaWiki? (Sure, wiki talk pages will never have all the features of Discourse, without building something like Flow. But if people are saying MediaWiki sucks for such-and-such purpose, then invest in work to make it suck less.) @Rhododendrites@Sm8900 ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 21:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
Google Translate is indeed awesome but might raise concerns if built into MediaWiki. For example, not all editors would be happy giving Google such an easy way to link their wiki account to an IP address. Certes (talk) 22:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
You could proxy the requests through Wikimedia servers, so that Google never sees the end user's IP. That's how the Content translation tool does it when machine translation is used. the wub "?!" 08:49, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
That's pretty costly though. I doubt if we were to do this for all discussions, google would let us have that for free. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:03, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
You can easily do this on the user side by using Google Chrome, which has translation built in. I think Safari and other browsers also do the same. It does not need doing on the server side... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:05, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
the translation services provided at the MS Forums are highly useful, and outweigh the beneffits of doing so via the browser. Sm8900 (talk) 15:50, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
@Pelagic, how about coming by MS Forums, to discuss your ideas for Wikipedia add-ins? Sm8900 (talk) 00:41, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Names of WMF Senior Management

There is no current list of names. Any help appreciated. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:16, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Is https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/ not sufficient? * Pppery * it has begun... 00:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedia Sound Logo: What is the Sound of all Human Knowledge?

On September 13, 2022, the Wikimedia Sound Logo Contest was launched. In the tradition of the movement's visual logo contests, the Wikimedia Foundation has organized a contest to select, this time around, a sound logo to represent all Wikimedia projects. To learn more about the initiative, visit soundlogo.wikimedia.org.

  • The first phase, for submission of proposals, will be open until October 10, 2022.
  • Voting, open to all, will take place in December of this year.

(!) If you want to learn more about sound logos, need help with your submission, or if you have a good idea but don't know how to capture it, join our workshop on September 29 at 15:00-16:00 UTC. Sign up directly on Zoom or check the contest meta page.

CalliandraDysantha-WMF (talk) 22:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) by * Pppery * it has begun... 22:54, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Should the WMF have rules or policies for when banned users apply for or are part of the team that administers grants?

Last week, a discussion at the Administrators Noticeboard was opened concerning a global image-adding contest. In the course of the discussion, it was raised that a $7,000 WMF grant was awarded to help run this contest last year, and that one of last year's contest organizers (the "Project Manager & Coordinator", in fact) responsible for administering said grant was in fact ArbCom banned from English Wikipedia several years ago (still in effect). Among the findings of fact for that Arb case were that the user had used sockpuppets, introduced potential BLP violations, engaged in COI editing, and repeatedly uploaded copyright violating photos (the user had their account renamed, so don't be confused by that). Admins attempting to address issues the contest introduced into English Wikipedia pointed out that the fact the photo-adding contest organizer was Arb banned (in part to mishandling of photos, no less) made it difficult to coordinate fixes. There was also general dismay at a banned user being entrusted with WMF money. One admin in the discussion pointed out that another banned user has also received WMF grants, despite the fact that their bans on two projects were apparently related to misrepresenting how they were going to use the grant.

A lot of this is a year-old stuff, but in general, users banned from one or more WMF projects receiving grants raises a number of issues:

  • The WMF is essentially getting less for what its paying than if it awarded the grant to a non-banned/non-blocked user, since a blocked user is restricted in what they can actually do
  • Awarding a grant or any other trust to a banned user (especially if the grant is related to activity for which the user was banned) creates mistrust among the community from which the user was restricted in some way
  • The grant may be in-effect funding undesirable behavior by an untrustworthy recipient.

I think the WMF, if it doesn't already, needs a policy (or perhaps UCOC provision?) governing when a banned or blocked user applies for a grant (including topic bans). I think this could maybe be presented in the form of a question on the application which says "Are you under any active sanctions on any Wikimedia projects? If so, please provide diffs of what led to them and explain the circumstances of the restriction being placed against you, and why you do not think this will adversely affect the administering of the grant." The WMF should then scrutinize the answers to determine whether or not: a) this person can even be trusted; b) this person is the most effective grant recipient; c) this would look terrible to the community and strain community-WMF relations. Gross or willful misrepresentations of one's own restrictions should be grounds for that user automatically failing the grant application.

I look forward to other comments. @I JethroBT (WMF): as I was informed you were likely the best onWiki WMF person to know about grant administration and be the best person to let know about this discussion. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:30, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Indy beetle for opening this. It's a worthwhile discussion. It does seem worth distinguishing between (a) a general analysis of risk when considering a grant, which would include the trustworthiness of the grantee, any on-wiki issues which may impede the execution of the grant, and mitigation strategies to ensure it can be carried out smoothly; and (b) the generally bad feelings parts of the community will understandably feel about the foundation giving money to someone who was considered harmful enough to the project to indefinitely block/ban. I'm going to guess the former is something grant officers already look at. In this case, for example, there are a lot of people involved who could pick up the slack on any wiki one or more organizers could not edit, just like you'd get other people to cover projects in a language an organizer didn't speak (for most international projects, it's unreasonable to expect a single person to be able to oversee it in every language). That makes me think the issue is primarily (b), and if that's the case, how can lines be drawn? If someone were banned from, say, the Croatian Wikipedia or Chinese Wikipedia, or any of the small Wikipedias where it may be hard to overturn a single admin's decision, would they be disqualified from any grant? (I know this is not what you're proposing, necessarily, Indy beetle, though the idea that an enwp ban should be disqualifying seems to underlie some of the comments at AN). Some tricky mixing of money, community relations, and governance here. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:02, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
The issue of potential admin/community abuse (or say a really old trivial ban that's been forgotten about) is why I'm suggesting diffs and that the applicant explain their side of things, so WMF can review it. After all, based on the stories, being banned from Croat Wikipedia is essentially a badge of honor and decency. With regards to a general analysis of risk when considering a grant [...] I'm going to guess the former is something grant officers already look at: Yes I'm sure they do that, but does that include block/ban history? I don't know, and I don't know to what degree WMF examines a user's behavioral history on the site. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:32, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
It is worth noting that as part of the Wikicology case, I JethroBT (WMF) stated,
Our team recognizes that Wikicology has contributed extensively to the Nigerian User Group, and has made good-faith efforts to plan grant proposals supporting their community. That said, Community Resources requires that grantees and committee members remain in good community standing while participating in our programs. Recent AN/I discussions ([2], [3]) highlight several concerns about Wikicology’s contributions, including copyright infringement, contributing content unsupported by citations, providing false citations, and repeated creation of autobiographical content. Persistent inappropriate editing behavior, in spite of community warnings, is inconsistent with good ambassadorship for the projects in outreach and off-wiki work. In light of these concerns, we have communicated to Wikicology that the following conditions will remain in place until these issues have been resolved:
  • Status changed to inactive on the Individual Engagement Grants Committee,
  • Removal from accounts for WMF-funded activities, and
  • Removal from primary leadership, coordination, and training roles in WMF-funded activities.
We continue to welcome Wikicology’s participation in our programs through support roles not dependent on those skills called into question by the current discussions. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
This was the last the community knew about this. There have been no updates to the case page since then regarding this aspect. If the issues raised then were resolved, how and when were they resolved, and where was the community informed? Andreas JN466 07:35, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
For reference, user pages on the Foundation wiki:
FloNight, you commented on the case at the time, saying, "Wikicology's future roles will be partially determined by whether and when he retrieves mentoring on Wikipedia English." Did you follow events further after the ArbCom case concluded? Andreas JN466 08:06, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
  • @I JethroBT (WMF): I second Andreas' points and have some additional questions:
    • Does the WMF regularly screen for grant applicants' standing, or did this happen in the Wikicology case because attention was brought to it by the fact of it being an ARBCOM case?
    • How does Community Resources ascertain "good community standing", when it is lost or regained? -Indy beetle (talk) 08:21, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
I've filed an amendment request at WP:RfAr proposing a temporary lifting of T_Cells' site ban so that he can participate in this discussion about his role if he wishes to do so. Andreas JN466 08:45, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
@Indy beetle and Jayen466: Thanks for your questions around these circumstances, and I can understand why there would be concerns here. For those not aware, I'm a program officer with the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Resources team, where I help manage some of the funding programs we maintain. A number of people on my team, including myself, were involved with decisions around Wikicology's eligibility for funding, both during 2016 when the ArbCom discussion was taking place and more recently. I'll do my best to respond to questions below:
I think the WMF, if it doesn't already, needs a policy (or perhaps UCOC provision?) governing when a banned or blocked user applies for a grant (including topic bans).
  • The Community Resources team maintains a set of behavioral policies when evaluating a proposal and the applicants involved with it. (Topic bans would also be a relevant consideration affecting eligibility and our evaluation of an applicant's community standing, though in my experience, they haven't come up that often in proposals I've reviewed.)
Does the WMF regularly screen for grant applicants' standing, or did this happen in the Wikicology case because attention was brought to it by the fact of it being an ARBCOM case?
How does Community Resources ascertain "good community standing", when it is lost or regained?
  • We evaluate a number of factors, including active blocks, block histories, community warnings on talk pages (even if they are removed), and will try to look at applicant behavior in spaces related to the block (e.g. user talk pages, article talk pages, relevant articles, admin discussion spaces, etc.) In more serious or systemic matters, we will consult with the Trust & Safety team.
  • Blocks and bans are always an important indicator of community standing, but there are other considerations as well. A user who is not blocked, for example, may still have a long history of persistent, disruptive conduct (through frequent warnings on their talk page), and may have never been blocked at all. Conversely, just because someone is blocked or banned on a project doesn't mean they will always be incapable of constructive work on other Wikimedia projects. Importantly, we require that applicant with an active block or ban to demonstrate learning and understanding as to the cause of the block or ban by directly corresponding with them about the circumstances, and gauging what they will do to prevent that conduct in the future. This means that applicants with a block or ban cannot casually ignore the block and jump to another Wikimedia project and get funding without addressing the original block with that community and our team.
  • We also evaluate whether that applicant has demonstrated evidence of constructive work on other Wikimedia projects, especially any contributions related to the reasons for the block on another Wikimedia project.
  • Finally, we also ask that applicants make a good-faith effort to complete an unblock or unban request through relevant community processes. If the request is not approved, the applicant is not eligible for funding if the proposal requires them to contribute to the Wikimedia project they are blocked on (which would clearly not be possible anyway).
I hope this provides some clarity to the questions above about our procedures in cases where there is a block or ban. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:33, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@I JethroBT (WMF): Thanks – may I ask for a little further clarity? You said at the ArbCom case (my emphases),

Community Resources requires that grantees and committee members remain in good community standing while participating in our programs. Recent AN/I discussions ([4], [5]) highlight several concerns about Wikicology’s contributions, including copyright infringement, contributing content unsupported by citations, providing false citations, and repeated creation of autobiographical content. Persistent inappropriate editing behavior, in spite of community warnings, is inconsistent with good ambassadorship for the projects in outreach and off-wiki work. In light of these concerns, we have communicated to Wikicology that the following conditions will remain in place until these issues have been resolved:

  • Status changed to inactive on the Individual Engagement Grants Committee,
  • Removal from accounts for WMF-funded activities, and
  • Removal from primary leadership, coordination, and training roles in WMF-funded activities.
So (1) how and when were these issues resolved, and (2) was the community notified of Wikicology's change in status?
Also, given the history of misrepresentation that was brought up in the ArbCom case, could you (3) please confirm that T_Cells is indeed one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader nominees, as it says on his Wikimedia Foundation user page? I tried to verify this online and all I found was T_Cells' own statements to this effect. In the past, he falsely claimed to be a university lecturer (and subsequently apologised to the community for that). I'll be happy to congratulate him if he was so nominated, but if he wasn't, then this indicates that the same problems that led to his site ban here are in fact continuing. Best, Andreas JN466 09:31, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
^This. Also, with regards to the 2021 contest, if you can answer, how exactly did he get put on the team for that with grant funding? From one point of view, leading the team at the helm of a grant-supported contest which will greatly effect a project from which one has been banned...it's like funding editing by proxy! Unless there was some stipulation that all enwiki matters were to be strictly handled by other contest leaders. -Indy beetle (talk) 14:19, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@I JethroBT (WMF): What is happening – could you give us an update please? Andreas JN466 07:45, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I've reminded I Jethro that there are outstanding questions. --Andreas JN466 10:58, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Indy beetle: Note that User:T_Cells is also listed as a member of the Leadership Development Working Group, a group of volunteers paid a $600 p.a. stipend each, according to the documentation on Meta, to come up with a definition of good leadership in the context of the Wikimedia movement. (See also Wikimedia-l.) Andreas JN466 14:21, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Comment - Enwiki ban is what it is, a ban from the English language Wikipedia. It is not a ban from all languages Wikipedia. If a user is site-banned from the English Wikipedia, the WMF may not fund a grant request from them for projects that are related to the English Wikipedia. BUT if they are in good standing in other languages Wikipedia, and the WMF is convinced that the user(s) could implement the project in that language, they may be funded regardless of our ban on enwiki. SuperSwift (talk) 19:53, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

But if I'm banned from the main wiki I edit for, say, bullying (a somewhat universal behavioral thing), do I get to turn around and apply for a grant while saying I'm a user on another language wiki? -Indy beetle (talk) 21:09, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Also, there's a lot of small wikis out there with dubious governance. If you get banned by a bunch of rogue penguins on aqwiki, that shouldn't automatically disqualify you from getting a WMF grant. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:00, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
No one is arguing for that. -Indy beetle (talk) 21:09, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
But if a user banned from the English Wikipedia gets a grant for organising a competition that involves edits to the English Wikipedia that is a problem. In this particular case the WMF could not be convinced that the project could be implemented without concerning the English Wikipedia because no attempt was made to do so. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:16, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment. I think the issue starts at the user group level here. Affilates and projects are pretty seperated and independent from each other right now. You can be banned from one while being allowed to participate in the other (which is how it works for different projects). That's the status quo, and it should be examined more here. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 23:32, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment "Persistent inappropriate editing behavior, in spite of community warnings, is inconsistent with good ambassadorship for the projects in outreach and off-wiki work. In light of these concerns, we have communicated to Wikicology that the following conditions will remain in place until these issues have been resolved" (from 2016). I remember this case as being particularly egregious. When were these issues resolved, and how? Peter Damian (talk) 20:36, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment Size of grant matters. I would not be concerned to learn that someone with a sockpuppetry block on one project had received a $40 grant for reference books on another project without some assessment of their block. A more substantial grant is a different matter. Time is also a factor, especially if in the intervening time they have been behaving well on other projects. More troubling would be if the grant meant a return to the areas or activities where the past problems arose. ϢereSpielChequers 21:50, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

  • I don't think a single project block or ban should disqualify people from grants related to different projects, but no users banned from a project should be involved (even tangentially) in grants that affect that project. —Kusma (talk) 10:15, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment Are we talking about a White-collar crime or a mistrust? But for me as a Wikipedian, what look terrible to the global community is : NO ONE CHECKS WHY A USER GOT BANNED. I believe there is a lot of missue of access in many projects, so we better to stop judging users based on their block-log. Access-holders are not the [elite .Therefore, for this reason, it is better to talk about the banning of users. I don't know about the user/users mentioned by Indy beetle. But I know about jealousy among users in small projects. --Ruwaym (talk) 01:25, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Comment: @I JethroBT (WMF), Indy beetle, and Peter Damian: For reference, all it takes to make someone a nominee of the "Young Global Leaders" programme of the World Economic Forum is to go on the younggloballeaders.org website and nominate them.

As the website points out, "Due to the large number of nominations received, the Forum of Young Global Leaders only contacts successful candidates. Some candidates may be contacted as part of the due diligence process."

I am happy to tell you that all three of you can now add "Nominee, Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum" to your Wikimedia user pages, as I've just nominated all three of you. Just kidding. But I do think the WMF should hold its grantees and potential grantees to certain standards of personal conduct, and perform related assessments as part of its due diligence before awarding a grant. --Andreas JN466 08:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Open letter to the WMF and the BoT about NPP

Signed by over 400 editors and admins, the NPP team officially launched their appeal yesterday to the WMF and the Board of Trustees to do something about the unaddressed bugs and feature requests for the suite of PageTriage software. It has been signed by over 400 editors and admins. Unable to cope with the increasing flood of inappropriate new articles due mainly to the expansion in the use of Internet and smart phones, the reviewers can no longer guarantee the claims of accuracy, neutrality, and free of spam that the WMF is otherwise so proud of in its flagship encyclopedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:46, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

ABorba (WMF) blocked

I have blocked ABorba (WMF) (talk · contribs) for operating ([6]) the account Scungiliman with contributions such as [7] and [8]. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:53, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Since they didn't edit after being warned, what's the point of the block? Levivich 22:04, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Preventing further disruption from someone who needs a warning to not add "fuck shit" as the short description of biographical articles perhaps. I didn't check the warning's timestamp closely, though; I thought they had continued after a warning. Anyway, if these edits have been paid by the WMF, I'd first like to see a statement from someone else than the blocked user that this has been seen by their employer. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:11, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
That's not a valid use of the block tool. Levivich 22:23, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Preventing disruption is a valid use of the block tool. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:25, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Yes but these blocks obviously were not needed to prevent disruption because there were no bad edits made after the warnings. The disruption had already stopped by the time you arrived at the scene, TBF, so there was no need for a block to stop it. I get you may not have realized the timeline when you made the blocks, but now that you know, you should unblock. Levivich 22:29, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
I have just read their UTRS appeal and remain convinced they should stay blocked for now. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:34, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Regardless of whether the block was too quick or hasty (or even unnecessary), I can understand why, in the heat of the situation, one would be inclined to block. What else would your reaction be if you saw a WMF account (or an account that looked like a WMF account) operating sock accounts for vandalism? If it's an actual vandal impersonating WMF, then problem solved; if it's a legitimate account, things can be clarified and the block can be removed later. But in the heat of the situation, seeing a seemingly-legitimate account vandalizing raises a lot of suspicions, and a block is absolutely on the table for stopping disruption, especially if the account really was a privileged account. I've been threatened for blocking an "unblockable" for vandalizing project pages which is not a good look: admins shouldn't hesitate to use their tools to exercise their judgement if they believe the project is in danger. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
This block might have been too quick, and probably would have been better to see if the warnings to knock it off worked. This has the appearance of dumb and careless user interface testing rather than vandalism, and blocking all 3 accounts with no warning seems overkill. *All* warnings were given after the last edit: last edit --> warning 1 --> warning 2 --> block. If it were up to me, I'd unblock now, but if the block remains, I at least think that "making sure their employer knows" is not a valid reason to keep the block; they should be unblocked, at the latest, as soon as there is an assurance that such "testing" won't recur. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:27, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
concur with Floquenbeam, this block seems premature. Andre🚐 22:31, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
It took me a while after the first block to notice that a WMF account is behind this, and even when I saw that an WMF account's userspace was involved, I first thought I'm dealing with impersonation. There needs to be, at very least, proper disclosure of the account ownership for all involved accounts. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Looks like it's going to be handled thru UTRS: link. And I'd agree proper disclosure is need; not as a condition for unblocking, but as soon as they're unblocked. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:33, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
From my side, it won't be handled through UTRS. On-wiki disruption paid by the WMF, on-wiki block appeal. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:35, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Yes. My assumption was impersonation. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
@ToBeFree At the minimum they appear to also be using/have used:
plus Pineappleupsidedown (talk · contribs), though you've already blocked that one. How many testing accounts does one person need? 192.76.8.74 (talk) 09:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
  • There's a lot of issues here, but right now I want to narrowly comment on I'd first like to see a statement from someone else than the blocked user that this has been seen by their employer. This concerns me. I recognize that we have a unique relationship with the WMF, but the general case of requiring input from an editor's employer on an unblock request is pretty strange. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:49, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
    Yeah, using the term "employer" there as a way to avoid repeating "WMF" had the undesired effect of making it seem like a general attitude. This is WMF-specific. If the WMF pays people to disrupt Wikipedia, that seems problematic enough to make me desire the WMF knowing about the disruption done in its name on its wiki, and that's what I've meant. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:55, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
    I have exchanged e-mails with T&S, with the matter to be handled "internally." -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Good block. Policy is 100% clear that maintaining an alternative, vandalism-only account is unacceptable, and we don't usually follow the three-escalating-warnings process when socking is involved. The fact that he's employed by the WMF only serves to the remove the "sorry I didn't know" excuse – someone who's worked in WMF QA for five years should know that we don't 'test' things by vandalising live wikis. – Joe (talk) 08:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I wouldn't describe an account that vandalises and then clears up the vandalism the next minute as "vandalism only". That said, testing in mainspace is always going to be problematic, not just because you might get blocked, but because we have lots and lots of real vandalism to train tools on, "fake vandalism" is not required and won't necessarily look enough like the real thing. Given past precedent, I would suggest that if the unblock request can't be public it would be better to make it to Arbcom rather than UTRS, as Arbcom are elected by the community, to make tough calls and negotiate terms for people's return. They also made the call when a WMF employee was desysopped but not blocked. ϢereSpielChequers 09:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I've looked into this a bit more since my first comment. It's clear that ABorba (WMF) showed poor judgement by using non-declared alternate accounts. And even worse judgement by doing testing on a production system; that's what test wikis and unit tests are for. Or at least do it in your sandbox, not in mainspace. But I don't see this as anything beyond poor judgement. As for ToBeFree's block, I think it was a mistake, but in the heat of battle, mistakes happen. I could easily see myself making the same mistake if I saw an edit like Special:Diff/1107597956. But, once the full explanation comes out, mistakes need to be corrected. WP:BLOCKP makes it clear that the block is not needed and the accounts should be unblocked. There is no credible reason to believe unblocking these accounts will lead to "continuing damage and disruption". -- RoySmith (talk) 11:39, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    "that's what test wikis and unit tests are for" I don't fully agree with that btw. I test things on production all the time. Both in and outside of Wikimedia. Sometimes it's just easier, sometimes there is no test system for it, but most of all there is just no system that can mirror what en.wikipedia.org provides (activity wise, editable, all the filters, the link with the apps etc etc). I mean if you want to do a quick test on if the abusefilter for profanity by auto confirmed users triggers a notice that is displayed in the official Wikipedia App for English Wikipedia when you use the short description editor of the app.... this is about how you would test it. There is never going to a testcase for that scenario. However generally you should declare that you are testing something and you should make sure that the test is undone if it has any effects (which they did) and you should do it on the proper account etc etc —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I've never looked at how the mobile apps are architected, but certainly in mobile development I've done, the app will have some way to configure which back end it's talking to. If I wanted to test "if the abusefilter for profanity by auto confirmed users triggers a notice that is displayed in the official Wikipedia App for English Wikipedia when you use the short description editor of the app", I would stand up a test wiki (more likely if my job was QA, I'd have one already), configure my phone to use that as a backend, and do my test that way. A big (and sometimes painful) part of scale-up is designing in testability like this. Wikipedia is a top-10 website, the engineering processes should be mature enough by now to support these things.
    For sure, there are some things you can't test in the engineering environment. But those are mostly looking for edge cases that you haven't thought of and verifying that things work properly at scale. "Does an alert get displayed when an autoconfirmed user puts a profane word in the short description" is something that can and should be tested in the dev environment. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:32, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    In fact, there is no Wikipedia App for English Wikipedia – the fact that it is multilingual should provide even more of an opportunity to reconfigure it for a test wiki. 1234qwer1234qwer4 22:40, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Have you read ABorba's UTRS appeal? It gives every reason to believe that he would continue these disruptive edits if unblocked. – Joe (talk) 12:07, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I do not have UTRS access, but if there's something in there which makes one think they will continue to be disruptive, then yes, the block should be maintained. That would be shocking. I'm not saying it can't be true, but it would indeed be shocking. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Based on the UTRS reason given I would not be comfortable unblocking without a clear commitment to not use enwiki as a QA testing ground in this way. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 13:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Toby said the same thing and like Roy I find that just shocking but, yeah, if that's the case, then I agree, leave the accounts blocked. Levivich 13:46, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Self-trout: Well, it turns out I do have UTRS access after all (see my talk page). I looked at the ticket (and the follow up on User talk:ABorba (WMF). I still think this didn't need to end up with a block, but, for sure, this method of testing is inappropriate. All we need is for ABora to say, "I'll find a better way to run tests and I'll declare my socks" and then we can unblock, and this could all be over before I've even had my second cup of tea this morning. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    And just to clarify how long I expect this really should take to sort out, I'm literally on my way downstairs to put up another kettle of water as soon as I hit the the reply button on this. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:55, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • WereSpielChequers, "if the unblock request can't be public it would be better to make it to Arbcom". All the evidence is on-wiki. This case is not within ArbCom's remit.
This looks like another case of an employee who needs The Talk with management about on-wiki conduct & use of WMF accounts. Cabayi (talk) 13:32, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
They are making an appeal via UTRS so not everything is public. If the appeal is not going to be public I would rather it be handled by Arbcom than by UTRS. No offence, but Arbcom is elected. ϢereSpielChequers 14:30, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
(Non-administrator comment) I do not think ARBCOM is meant to be a political solution for the admin corps to hide behind. You have expressed your opinion about this twice and reiterating does not make it any more valid. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
Once I realized this really is A WMF employee, I closed the UTRS ticket. Had they proven not to be a WMF employee, the actions I would have taken would have been more than a redirect to the user talk. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, repeating public information in a private forum does not make it private information. There's nothing in UTRS appeal #62492 which is not already known on-wiki on one WMF project or another. The UTRS appeal was redirected to the user's talk page. Any appeal to ArbCom would be bounced in the same way. Cabayi (talk) 17:05, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
UTRS is not really a private forum. Just the place those w/o TPA can go to request unblock. While I signed the Confidentiality agreement, I believe all admins now have access to UTRS. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • What an unfortunate situation. Just a couple things: (a) there might be times when something needs to be tested on-wiki. If it'll be disruptive, it should be clearly announced, open to comment, and justified as to why it can't happen on a test wiki. If/when that happens and the justification seems reasonable, we should be open to allowing it. (b) If the account is being used as part of ABomba's work duties, it should be declared. If it's being used for reasons that would otherwise be seen as disruptive, it needs to be declared. I do just want to carve out that it should be permissible under WP:LEGITSOCK for a WMF staffer to have a volunteer account that isn't formally linked for privacy reasons (ideally disclosed to arbcom, at least, but not absolutely required). Of course, accidentally editing your other account's userpage kind of ruins it, so this case isn't a great example. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:53, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I wonder why they can't do it in a sandbox or user subpage. Unless the test edit must be done in mainspace? OhanaUnitedTalk page 14:23, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I assume they didn't consider the possibility of us setting up a test filter for them. Which is not a good look. SubjectiveNotability a GN franchise (talk to the boss) 16:38, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Noting for those without UTRS access that Deepfriedokra has declined the UTRS appeal stating that the appeal should be done on-wiki. I was going to the appeal to do this action, so I (as an individual administrator) support that decision. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • As noted in unblock discussion at user talk:ABorba (WMF), a little communication would have gone a long way. Apparently, this just one more example of a disconnect between the Foundation and the Community.-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Noting what a horrendous time-sink this was at UTRS and other venues. SMDH. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:23, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Section break 2

  • Why is this being discussed here, rather than at WP:ANI? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Because the account being blocked was a WMF staffer. If they weren't, than ToBeFree would probably have hit the block button and posted nowhere, like happens with most other vandal accounts. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Not sure I see the logic of that. If the vandalism by ABorba (WMF) needs more discussion than a simple block, it needs discussion as vandalism, in the places where such behaviour is normally discussed, rather than on an obscure village pump page not remotely intended for such purposes (see the notice at the top of this page), with less than 300 page watchers. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:40, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I hoped for the WMF to see and comment on this, so I created the thread, noticed that the header still says "Wikimedia Foundation currently does not consider this page to be a communication venue" and sent an e-mail to info@ requesting a statement regarding this thread. As the page is about "matters of significance to both the community and the foundation", it seemed to be an appropriate venue. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, but if it is a matter of significance to the community, the community needs to know be aware of it. Discussing it here seems an odd choice, and one might well ask whether doing so, rather than at a place where vandalism is normally discussed, might be perceived as preferential treatment. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:05, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I'd rather have expected a complaint about this thread being an unnecessary pillory than one about it not being enough of it. 🙂 ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Please feel free to post a notice to AN and ANI. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Done. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • If a Foundation employee wants to play with filters, there are numerous proper ways to do it, and this wasn't one of those. So the real question is, do we believe him? Not naming names, but this isn't the first employee to do stupid things. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 19:36, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Their editing history through this does not make me inclined to think that this is vandalism, and is indeed poorly designed testing. Or, at a minimum, poorly handled testing without suitable notification, agreement, and aftermath cleanup. An unblock should be conditional on both individual and WMF rapidly coming to a better methodology. Or, on the individual side, they could just agree not to do any more testing and I'd back an unblock, notwithstanding info to the contrary. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I definitely believe that ABorba is a WMF employee in quality assurance - you can't have a (WMF) username without it being made for you and TheresNoTime who is a foundation employee in addition to being an enwiki functionary has also verified that this is a real employee. I also believe that ABorba edited as Scungiliman because they admitted as much to ToBeFree. I further believe that a WMF QA employee would have reasons to test abuse filters. And, sadly, I also believe that a WMF QA employee would not understand the right way to do this testing and that that they can't just test abuse filters on enwiki, even if they immediately revert their testing. We've definitely had foundation employees do stupid things but I'm not aware of anyone going rogue so mark me down as completely believing what happened here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    So, "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be adequately explained by incompetence?" I feel much better now. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    incompetence is as valid a reason for a block as is malice. Wikipedia best practice does not draw a distinction. --Jayron32 13:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Just wanted to say, simply as a member of our community, (re the comment immediately above, and other comments similar to this one), I'm very glad to see the ideals of full discussion, full benefit of the doubt, due process, etc etc, being followed so ardently here. I appreciate and applaud those trying to provide real clarity, fairness, and thoughtful judgment on this. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 22:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Let me add, the fact that an employee never had the idea of dropping off a note at WP:AN to say he was going to test, at a minimum, demonstrates once again that the Foundation sees itself as the rightful owners of Wikipedia, and that the actual community is just a necessary nuisance, tolerated but looked down upon. It's not all his fault, but he is an employee of that system. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:23, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    ACAB. MrOllie (talk) 20:28, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    No most aren't, but the system is broken. Being an admin, I'm not prone to being anti-authority, I'm just not for authoritarianism and the like. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:33, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    @Dennis Brown sticking with your "incompetence, not malice" scenario, how many Foundation employees are aware of how the communities work? If you're employed to do a technical role, how much do you learn or are taught about how the people who use the product, use it? Nthep (talk) 20:40, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    That's a very good question. If it was important to the Foundation, they would have a protocol for doing live software testing that could be written down in a paragraph or two. So either it isn't important to them, or he didn't follow it. That would be the case for any IT dept, in any company. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:47, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    the actual community is just a necessary nuisance, tolerated but looked down upon and ignored until we make ourselves an intolerable nuisance. Levivich, an intolerable nuisance 20:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    Anecdotally, I remember years ago, I want to say Jimbo or someone, making small vandalism as a demo to show how it got reverted immediately, and understandably people were annoyed by this lack of empathy for the humans behind that seemingly magical reversion. So, I'm inclined to say this isn't necessarily indicative of any major position or viewpoint. It's just a stupid and foolish mistake. We all make them from time to time. As long as we can learn and grow, that's what matters most, right? Andre🚐 21:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
    I don't have a lot to say or a lot of comments to make on this, but I wanted to simply say that I think that @Andrevan above shows a commendable effort to try to seek some type of positive approach and resolution, if possible. I agree that this matter is highly worthy of concern. I agree with the editors above who have taken an active approach to truly address this, as a problem, and also those who sought active communication with WMF. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 22:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I support the block. Sockpuppeting to insert vandalism into live articles is not an appropriate method of testing anything, especially for a Foundation employee. In fact, under these circumstances we should consider a community ban. The Foundation exists to support Wikipedia, not to vandalize it. Sandstein 08:52, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

The following accounts are  Confirmed by checkuser:

The amount of password resets that I see on Pineappleupsidedown makes me think it may be shared. --Guerillero Parlez Moi 12:54, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  • I've been following this for a few days before making my feelings public. Here is the real crux of the issue: I am fine blocking all of the sock accounts; but what we need to decide is "Do we, going forward, believe there is likely to be continuing abuse from the person running the main account?" If AND ONLY IF we believe the answer to that question is a clear "yes" do we need to maintain a block on the ABorba (WMF). I am willing to be convinced by Aborba that they have learned their lesson, and believe them if they say unambiguously that they will no longer do this anymore. I don't see the need to maintain such a block if Aborba understands the problem that led to the block, and agrees to stop the problematic behavior. A condition of the unblocking should be a clear 1-account restriction as well. --Jayron32 13:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    A QA tester with a one-account restriction? Srsly? Levivich 15:51, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Well, maybe they should have done their job properly. The consequences of fantastic incompetence are not negligible. There are 100 ways a QA tester could have done this, up to and including publicly telling everyone exactly what they were doing, having clearly identified QA accounts, perhaps with a clearly identifiable naming scheme and where such accounts are listed at their main account explaining what they are and what they are doing, etc. If a person behaves in a manner indistinguishable from a vandal or a troll, there is no reason for them not to expect to be treated that way. Legitimate quality control tests are welcome. Covert breaching experiments are not. --Jayron32 15:47, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
    If a person behaves in a manner indistinguishable from a vandal or a troll, there is no reason for them not to expect to be treated that way. So like if they use the word "shit" in mainspace edit summaries, we should treat them as a vandal or a troll?
    Are you familiar with WP:TECHALT and WP:TESTALT? TESTALT says (bold added) The second account should be clearly linked to the main account, except where doing so would interfere with testing or training. That line was added in 2013--that's how long we have officially recognized that sometimes, disclosing test alts would interfere with testing or training.
    Covert breaching experiments are not welcome, actually, it's not covert -- just because we don't know about it doesn't make it covert, the WMF knew about it. But also, red team testing is not a breaching experiment. Yes, most testing should be done in testing environments, and in-prod testing should usually be done with disclosed alts and with testing programs announced and test edits marked, but there is absolutely a necessary place in QA testing for intentionally vandalizing mainspace with undisclosed alts making unmarked test edits. It doesn't need to be done with the particular text string that was used here (IMO), and I'm not sure if this was that type of testing, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that one reason someone might want to vandalize a short description is to test whether and how that vandalism propagates to other places that copy enwiki article short descriptions, even if or even after the vandalism on enwiki is removed: e.g., does reverting the short desc vandalism on enwiki also clear up the vandalism that was copied elsewhere? Like I said, I don't know if that's what they were doing here, but it doesn't take a lot of Assume Good Foundation to imagine that this was legit testing.
    This was not "fantastic incompetence", it was a simple mistake. The person who made this mistake did not act like a vandal or a troll, and it's a WP:PA to suggest such, and they certainly shouldn't expect to be treated by the rest of us as such, not after identifying themselves, which, let's remember, they did 6 minutes after they were asked.
    You've personally used more profanity in your mainspace edit summaries than this user has. Your outrage is unwarranted. Levivich 18:25, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Good block. Very good. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:48, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I disagree and I fear this is turning into a witch hunt. WP:BLOCKP is clear that blocks are "to prevent imminent or continuing damage and disruption to Wikipedia". Many of these accounts have either zero edits or haven't edited in almost a year. There's no evidence that there is any "imminent or continuing damage or disruption". Accounts like that are regularly left unblocked at SPI.
    I also object to the use of the term "vandalism" regarding the edits made by these accounts. WP:Vandalism (which ranks as policy) makes it clear that vandalism is editing ... deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose. That's clearly not what was going on here. Poor judgement, sure. Contrary to best devops practices? IMHO yes. But certainly a good faith attempt at testing the software, and as the policy says, any good faith effort to improve the encyclopedia is not vandalism. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:57, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Agree with RoySmith. Andre🚐 15:00, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    My views partially align with RoySmith here; I think so long as assurances are made explicitly that the behavior that led to the fully justified block are going to cease, I see no problem with unblocking. The block was fully justified, but that doesn't mean it continues to be justified forever. --Jayron32 15:07, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I agree with RoySmith. Sm8900 (talk) 15:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Me too. Levivich 15:50, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I concur. I feel like this is a collective effort of Reichstag-climbing, motivated by general collective dislike of the WMF. I also believe the block was justified, but these further condemnations are unnecessary. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 16:41, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @WaltCip, agreed. Sm8900 (talk) 18:55, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Concur with Roy Smith. This went from "Hey, we might have a WMF staffer vandalizing on a sock, we need to block them(valid block reason)" to "Well, we know it was testing, but we now demand answers from WMF before we unblock this staff member(not a valid block reason)". The answers can come, but the block needs tochanged for clarityFrederalBacon (talk) 17:30, 1 September 2022 (UTC) could go. FrederalBacon (talk) 16:53, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    You have not read their e-mail request to the Unblock Ticket Request System. There are multiple voices above for keeping up the block for now because of text you have not read. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    There's nothing particular wrong with the unblock request, it's just not developed. Let's not pretend it concluded with, "I'm going to vandalise regardless of what you think". In reply to FrederalBacon, we don't need to hear from the WMF, however (note to ABorba (WMF)), we do need to hear from ABorba (WMF) to ensure we don't have a repeat. This is standard procedure. Until ABorba engages in any discussion, even an unblock request, they're not going to get unblocked, and any other live testing or editing is not going to go down at all well. For the record I don't think it was a great block. This could probably have been resolved with a cordial chat. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I agree with everything you said regarding hearing from the editor (obviously). I'm just saying that some of the voices above also appear to be voicing more frustration with the foundation than with the testing.
    And to TBF, I know I have not read it, nor will I, obviously, I'm not an admin. I'm just saying that, from where I sit, it appears as though the block, while legitimate when placed, could be lifted without any further disruption to the wiki, and I think that's a growing sentiment. FrederalBacon (talk) 17:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Zzuuzz that's somewhat disingenuous. They did try to engage in discussion. They filed a UTRS ticket. We shut them down by closing the ticket a little over an hour later. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I agree with some of that. They were clearly directed to their talk page, which I think is probably appropriate, and we've heard nothing from them since. Nothing, that is, except another test edit. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    He was asked, quite appropriately, to continue the unblock discussion on-wiki. That is not being "shut down". – Joe (talk) 18:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    This could probably have been resolved with a cordial chat. Is the key take-away from this episode. The thing that sticks out is that when ABorba (WMF) was asked a question, he answered in 6 minutes and the next thing that happens is he gets blocked, and now we've blocked all his test accounts. That was unnecessarily harsh. I don't know what he wrote on UTRS but if it were me, I'd have written "FU guys I'm trying to do my job here WTF". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Levivich 18:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Levivich He wrote something far more polite and professional. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Albeit amounting to basically the same thing. – Joe (talk) 18:39, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Levivich, @RoySmith, those are very good points. @Joe Roe, with all respect, what he chose to write in actuality does not amount to the "same thing" as the hypothetical phrase imagined in an earlier comment above. I hope you don't mind my saying that. I respect your views and concerns fully on this. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 18:42, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    How do you know? UTRS can only be accessed by admins, can't it? – Joe (talk) 18:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Joe Roe, thanks for replying and engaging here. I was making a much simpler, and abstract point; namely if a comment is phrased politely, then it does not amount to the "same" thing as a comment that is noiticeably less polite. I was simply noting that as a general principle. i hope you don't mind my own small comment, which is meant to simply reflect and cogitate, as it were, upon this small aspect of this topic. Sm8900 (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Yeah same like always. Just angry ppl trying to torch the foundation any chance they get —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Well, to be fair, Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is pretty horribly corrupt and bad. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:54, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm glad this was resolved, however, I'm curious why my username showed up with checkuser? If there was any activity that led to it being flagged, or there is anything I need to change about my testing. I don't make any changes to articles except on testwiki or my sandbox, or my own test user talk pages. Please advise. EdTestCommons02 (talk) 21:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
@EdTestCommons02: Emailed -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 21:19, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

section break 3

  • WP:NOTLAB is policy, not "best practices". —Kusma (talk) 19:36, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    NOTLAB says Wikipedia is not a public laboratory and talks about research projects and researchers. QA testing is not that. Let's not lose sight of who User:ABorba (WMF) is and what he was doing: he is our employee, testing our website for us because we pay him to. He is not some third-party researcher. The WMF is not some third-party organization. The money that pays him comes from the donations that are made by donors who are donating to support the community, and it's spent by trustees who we elect (btw everyone go vote if you haven't already). The testing is for our benefit (readers and editors). Yes, he was "doing it wrong", but he's not a vandal, or a sockpuppeteer, or a researcher, or a WP:PAID editor--all of which he's been accused of. Levivich 19:47, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I don't see a huge difference between "researching" Wikipedia software and doing QA "testing" if the resulting edits are the same. —Kusma (talk) 20:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    When your doctor pokes a hole in you and drains out 10cc of blood for analysis, that's "testing". When a random stranger comes up to you on the street, pokes a hole in you and drains out 10cc of blood because they're curious what will happen, that's "assault". -- RoySmith (talk) 20:27, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, I'd rather have tests done by someone I know to be my doctor (who tells me that they are doing a test) than by a random stranger (who doesn't tell me). Which gets us back on topic: tests and test accounts need to be properly declared. —Kusma (talk) 20:30, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I hope a constructive outcome to all of this will be the requirement for all WMF accounts (and by extension, their test accounts) to be properly identified — a couple of lines of who/what/why is all that's needed... I dare say that would have prevented a lot (if not all) of this — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 20:32, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I agree but isn't that already a requirement and the issue here is the WMF's (or a particular team's?) compliance with those requirements? Levivich 20:33, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    That commitment came eight years ago. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:41, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Sdrqaz and Levivich: ah, quite right, thank you — everyone (new) just seems to do it as an onboarding step now — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 20:44, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @TNT: but I agree about coming to a constructive outcome here, I just sort of think the need for policy changes or clarification is more on the WMF's side rather than the enwiki side. Maybe an email should be sent out to testers reminding them of the rules about disclosure of alt accounts, etc., and asking them to make sure all their test accounts are in compliance. (cc JBranaa (WMF)) I share another concern that AndyTheGrump raised at ANI which is that I don't quite see why QA testing would require the use of the test text string "fuck shit" in mainspace rather than some other text string that would be less disruptive, and that sort of makes me question whether the WMF should review the parameters of exactly how they test in production in mainspace on the largest wiki that millions of children read (for example have they considered testing on noindex'd test articles). Levivich 20:56, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Agree, 1) do automated and manual testing first in lower environments like integration and staging, 2) if you must test in production, all test accounts must be labeled and known to admins, 3) if you have to test abuse filters, surely there's a less disruptive way Andre🚐 21:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    @TNT, acknowledged. We will be working to better align our processes with what we've learned here. JBranaa (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
    To go with this analogy, while our initial reaction may have been understandable, now that we know that the person who poked us who we thought was a random stranger was in fact our doctor, we should let go of his collar. Levivich 20:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Please. The community complains of aches and pains and is ignored by said "doctor" whom we did not hire. The "doctor" lives the high life from our hard work but you find it important to bend your knee for this malpractice? Chris Troutman (talk) 20:43, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Going with the whole doctor thing, your doctor made a surprise house call to give you a colonoscopy... I mean, let's not pretend it was OK. It was a bad idea. But apologize, stop doing it, salt the earth and move on. Right? Andre🚐 20:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    You're right, going with the analogy was a bad idea. Levivich 20:50, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
I have a better analogy. Would you be willing to tell your Congressman (or Congresswoman) about the trends of property values on the block where you live? ok, now how about a random stranger? ok, now how about if a random stranger started asking you some pesky questions, and when you waved them away, you then found out that the erson was your local congressman? you'd run after him to have a friendly chat, right?
ok, so think of WMF as your local Congressman, or any local politician. almost everyone finds politicians annoying in some way; however, when a politician takes an actual interest in some local item, usually people prefer to cooperate.
I see the WMF as dirrectly analogous to one's local elected officials; in general, we would probably find them annoying, however, most people would agree that they still serve some useful purpose. I hope no one minds my small excursion into analogies here; however, I have used this analogy to explain the WMF quite a bit, and when the topic of general irritation with WMF comes up, this is one way that I like to view this whole topic, and this whole issue in general. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 21:05, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
I agree in general. I think though like any good politician, WMF needs to understand and cater to some public sensitivities. Admit the "mistakes were made" and put in place protocols and plans to avoid it in the future. It's a PR problem. Andre🚐 21:14, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Here's another one User talk:EdTestCommons02-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 19:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Unblocked. Let's cut this out now — these obviously aren't vandals, the project is not in imminent danger, so you're all able to slow down and engage in discussion. — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 19:52, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    I'm not convinced that was appropriate; as an employee of the WMF, you are WP:INVOLVED. BilledMammal (talk) 09:30, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
    I've been a volunteer much much longer than a member of staff, will always be a volunteer first and foremost and try to use this dual-role to vocalise community concerns internally. With my volunteer hat on I'm an admin, a local functionary and a global steward, whereas my staff hat only consists of the ability to write software for y'all — I'm more than capable of separating my thought process between software development and administrative actions, and although I'm very careful to hold myself to an overly restrictive definition of "involved", unblocking one account after chewing them out a little just ain't it you'll note I'm fairly unimpressed by all of this, on both sides, so it's not like I'm here to bang the Foundation drum. Hopefully this goes some way to reassure you, but please feel free to follow up on my talk page (or WP:AN I suppose!) if not — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 00:27, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Aside from the account issues, testing on real wikis is yet another symptom of the WMF not properly resourcing the existing test environment that we already have. The "code stewardship request" for the Beta Cluster illustrates multiple volunteer and WMF developers explaining why it's useful and why it needs more support, and nothing from WMF upper management. Legoktm (talk) 19:45, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Absolutely. It isn't like the WMF doesn't have the budget to set up a proper mirroring test environment, including capacity to simulate traffic if that is what these tests require. It seems clear to me that this is a management problem. This is a consequence of bad practices required by ABorba's superiors. MrOllie (talk) 20:51, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
    Agreed, he is just a worker, not the architect of this flawed test strategy. Andre🚐 21:15, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

At a minimum, all of these test accounts need to disclose:

  1. That they are running tests on behalf of the WMF
  2. Who owns them

To comply with WP:SOCKLEGIT. The owner needs to have an unlocked WMF account with a name and contact information. --Guerillero Parlez Moi 20:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Unless the project is about edit summaries and the testing needs to take over the entire edit summary field in order to have a valid test result, I would expect any such live testing to use the edit summary field to clearly label it (maybe with a bit of shouting) AS A TEST, and to include a link to a page on mw or meta or wherever the case may be, where one could find a project page describing the particular testing going on. The project page should also list previous project testing on test.wikipedia.org, and why stopping there wasn't sufficient, and it had to be continued live. Presumably, it would be accompanied by a Project talk page, where any Wikipedia editors who were discommoded or had other comments could register their thoughts and get feedback. Mathglot (talk) 03:40, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

  • That is exactly correct. In a normal world, the WMF employee would simply drop a note at WP:AN with their WMF account saying "I'm about to test the profanity filter using account User:WMFtestguy, so these edits will probably need RevDel afterwards." Maybe even add "I will be testing on the article Richard Hurtz" or "I will be testing several articles/pages". Then in the edit summary, start with "WMF test - (other text if they want to test the filter in edit summaries)". This is just so simple, so common sense, and really doesn't require extended conversation ahead of time. This is why I say they have no respect for the community. It doesn't even dawn on them to communicate with the unwashed masses called "the community". They just dump their garbage on our lawn and walk away. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:45, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Statement from Jan (WMF)

Moin. First, many thanks to @Guerillero:, who notified T&S. Let me briefly share an update on where we are at and to be transparent about my email reply to him earlier today, too:

  • The community did the right thing being initially cautious, especially given that the accounts in question did not have the traditional features of a Foundation work account (WMF-name and disclosures on the user pages about the purpose).
  • The problem is both one of Foundation's long-standing work account naming policy (the features are mandatory for staff and contractor accounts working on community wikis) and of reasonable community expectations about being notified beforehand. On Wednesday, T&S will join the call of the team the accounts belong to, Quality and Test Engineering, to help the team resolve the issues. They have been very responsive, and ahead of the meeting, my initial take is that the incident mainly occurred because folks weren't fully aware of the account naming policy, its history, and related expectations.
  • The team has agreed to not conduct further tests until both these issues have been resolved.

I also promised Guerillero to circle back with an update after the upcoming meeting. I am happy to share that follow up here, too, if there is an interest. Best regards,--Jan (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi JEissfeldt (WMF), Thank you very much! In addition to account naming and notifications, I'd hope for an agreement not to insert obscene references to copulation or similar vandalism simulations into mainspace articles at all. There are surely less disruptive ways to test edit filters, and there's no reason to believe that the community would deny or object to the creation of a test filter for a custom keyword such as "WMFTESTFILTERBLOCK". As the team has agreed not to conduct further tests until the issues have been resolved, I'll remove the three blocks I have placed for now lacking a preventative need. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:38, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, ToBeFree, your proposal strikes me as very sensible and I will raise it on Wednesday. The team has done lots of good work helping to improve software before it reaches the community wikis. That wasn't always the case at the WMF before this team was created. So we should be able to work out a way for them to do their work without unnecessary disruptions, especially in the main space. Best regards, --Jan (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Agreed, and maybe the QA team needs to publish their test plans 24h or 48h in advance and allow experienced admins to object. And maybe they shouldn't do this kind of testing on prod at all but make a test environment. Andre🚐 17:58, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@JEissfeldt (WMF): I think you're missing an important element here, which is that, putting all the issues with accounts and lack of disclosure aside, enwiki has a longstanding policy that says making disruptive edits for research or testing purposes isn't acceptable; see WP:NOTLAB. We're a real encyclopaedia on the real life internet and we don't want our readers to open up a biography and see "fuck shit" under the heading, even if it's only for a few minutes. As several editors who work in tech have said above, running tests on your production environment is unprofessional. – Joe (talk) 07:29, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
re I also promised Guerillero to circle back with an update after the upcoming meeting. I am happy to share that follow up here, too, if there is an interest. – I would personally be grateful for that update after the meeting. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 12:13, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
@L235: Noted :)
@Joe Roe: We agree on both points. I have never met anyone in my nearly two decades here who thinks testing in production is a good pathway. That the testwikis themselves sit in the production cluster, too, just illustrates the larger problem of technical debt (of which our testing infrastructure itself is basically part). If you are interested in my personal views on the latter, I outlined them - including the caveat that I naturally don't speak for Product and Technology - during the Board's community office hour in April (the relevant community question gets read out at 1:00:22). Best regards, --Jan (WMF) (talk) 06:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Moin, @L235, Joe Roe, Andrevan, Guerillero, and ToBeFree: thank you for your patience while I discussed your concerns with the Quality & Test Engineering team. They were very interested in your proposals how to improve their work here and agreed to:

  • Rename their test accounts to align with other staff accounts, making them easily identify-able for the community (T&S will help with that next week).
  • Publish disclaimers explaining the staff accounts purpose on the related user pages (same, T&S will help implement that change).
  • Explore publishing the rules under which they conduct tests that they need to do on this wiki. They would like to invite your feedback on two questions:
  • Would the technical village pump be an acceptable home for brief announcements for local tests?
  • Would you be interested in joining them in a call to discuss the rules - and the technical limitations they work under that are forcing them to conduct some tests in production - before they take effect?

T&S can help put a call together if you are interested in the conversation. Best regards, -–Jan (WMF) (talk) 07:25, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

That's good enough for me as a step in the right direction, I'll let others chime in. No need to join the call, I already have enough on my plate to manage on my actual job. Andre🚐 15:12, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
From my point of view the technical pump makes sense as an announcement place. But I think there needs to be broader onwiki documentation about why production testing is sometimes necessary rather than just discussing it on a call. This could live here, on meta, or mediawiki, and then linked to as appropriate. If a call does end up being organized I would be interested in joining. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not completely sure how this became a T&S issue, but yes, I'd be happy to be on a call to discuss this sort of testing. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:36, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again 🙂 The upcoming renames and userpage disclosures are probably the most important step; I'm happy to see them on a tangible timeline supported by the T&S team. Regarding the announcements/explanations/discussions, I guess as much as possible of them should be held on-wiki (too), where I'd happily participate. I'm also happy to see Barkeep49 and RoySmith, both of whom have programmed userscripts implying noticeable technical competence, joining the call if there is one. I'm thankful for the kind invitation, but I'll stick to written English. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:34, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
@JEissfeldt (WMF); I would be more than happy to jump on a call with you and them to workshop a proposal -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 07:03, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Hey folks, circling back on this with an update. Anthony has provided a list of 10 test accounts to the T&S team. We have just renamed to have them standardized and dropped a disclaimer on each of their userpage. The accounts are User:QTE-Test1-WMF,...and User:QTE-Test10-WMF. We will send out a doddle to Barkeep49, RoySmith, Guerillero and folks who are interested to the call together with Jean-Rene Branaa, Engineering Manager for the Quality and Test Engineering team and Jan from the T&S to discus the rules and where to post. Thank you.--Wikimedia Foundation office (talk) 11:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Are these logins for individuals, or role accounts? Certes (talk) 11:45, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
The disclosures on their user page say they are "role accounts", so I would presume the latter. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 13:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Hello, I looked at the page history of user talk pages of the accounts which are being renamed. I found that there are still several accounts which looks like test accounts. They are Scblr (talk · contribs), UserTesting1 (talk · contribs), Viladedoggo (talk · contribs), Talktest2 (talk · contribs), Tannerjs91 (talk · contribs), HeyDimpz (talk · contribs). Some of these accounts also edits other user talk pages which those accounts also looks like test accounts. They include WikiEditorSam (talk · contribs), JoNewbie (talk · contribs), Climadeo (talk · contribs) (see its user talk page history, there are test accounts and a staff editing its user talk page), UserTalkTest (talk · contribs), Dbrant testing (talk · contribs), Scblrtest (talk · contribs), Scblrtest2 (talk · contribs), Scblrdev (talk · contribs). I don't know whether those accounts are being created by other staffs but I believe that they are likely test accounts. 132.234.228.55 (talk) 08:44, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Some of these accounts have disclaimer for working with the WMF in their user pages. Are those accounts required to be renamed? 132.234.229.33 (talk) 09:16, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
At first glance for most of the accounts: yes, I suspect. My folks will be sorting them together with that (different) team based on the rules and the results of the upcoming conversation with Barkeep49, RoySmith, and Guerillero. Best regards, --Jan (WMF) (talk) 07:20, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
I have a suggestion on the test accounts to be created in the future by staffs. As accounts owned by staff should have the "WMF" tag, which is in the title blacklist, I suggest to grant some staffs an account creator flag to override the antispoof. It also allows to check which staff created the test accounts. 132.234.229.28 (talk) 02:57, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
I would hope that this is essentially unnecessary, since staff already have the ability to override the title blacklist through the Staff global group. stwalkerster (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Comment by a Community Member

I have a few comments. First, in looking over the election materials, I think that there is some insight into what is wrong with the Foundation's attitude. They ask the candidates what radical changes should be made to the Foundation or the Movement. Some of us didn't sign on to a Movement. Some of us think that the Foundation is the corporate structure for managing a large data center in support of various stakeholders. Maybe the fact that the Foundation thinks that it is the vanguard of a Movement is part of the problem.

Second, it appears that, perhaps because it thinks that there is a Movement that will change the world, the Foundation hasn't tried to stay in touch with its stakeholders. Each of the wikis has at least two communities of stakeholders, the readers and the editors. We are the largest and most active community of editors, and we might be similar to some of the other communities of editors and might also be able to provide insight into the largest community of readers. The live English Wikipedia is on servers that belong to the Foundation, but the encyclopedia belongs to its communities. (So go and test somewhere else.)

Third, you aren't showing that you have a clue as to how to change the world if you don't know how to manage your own data center, but are in the data center business. (So go and test somewhere else.) Robert McClenon (talk) 05:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the general thrust of the comments by Robert McClenon. The monetary value of the Wikimedia Movement has been created entirely by the volunteer editors, especially the diligent, long term editors who contribute to Wikipedia in English. German, French. Japanese. Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese and Italian. Not to criticize the editors who contribute in other languages, but the editors working in these languages I have mentioned contribute the vast majority of the useful content, and the English version in paricular is heavily viewed in countless countries worldwide, since English is consided the lingua franca of business and academia in countless countries. To summarize, the volunteers who are actually creating the monetary value are solely responsible for the financial clout that enables the WMF staffers to receive their generous San Francisco based salary and fringe benefit packages. If the staffers were responsible for creating excellent encyclopedic content, the entire project would fail in short order, because the majority of the staffers have shown little interest and less expertise in actually creating encyclopedic content in multiple languages. That would be OK if the WMF staffers showed respect for the people who volunteer (in part) to allow them to receive their generous salary and fringe benefit packages. Based on my 13 years of trying to interact with WMF staffers, my experience is that the more cash that the WMF hoards, the less interested the WMF staffers are in meaningful collaboration with the various volunteer communities, and the more inclined they are to focus on interaction with fake community representatives who are all about grant programs instead of genuine support for the broad communities of editors. It is really sad to see how badly WMF money is misallocated, and what poor results there are for their paid outreach efforts. The bottom line is that financial incentives attract careerists, not genuine encyclopedia editors. Cullen328 (talk) 06:37, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
Agree in general. The more money there is, brought in by fundraising campaigns widely thought to be misleading, the more it becomes the glue that keeps the movement (!) together, and the priorities and ethics and mindsets change beyond recognition.
The availability of "easy money" earned in large part off the work of others has a corrupting influence all round. The other day I compared the top salaries in the Wikimedia Foundation's 2018 Form 990 versus the 2020 Form 990. I found (please check ...) that from 2018 to 2020 –
  • the CEO's total compensation incl. benefits increased by 7% (to $423,318),
  • the DGC's and GC's by 10%,
  • the CFO's by 11%,
  • the CTO's by 17%,
  • the CAO's by 22%,
  • the CCO's by 25%,
  • the CT/CO's by 28%, and
  • the CPO's by 32%
– all over a two-year period when the annual US inflation rate was reportedly at 2%. All but three (the GC, CTO and CT/CO) were the same person in 2020 as in 2018. I'm pretty sure those are better raises than most donors got – including this pensioner last year with $18 to his name, who promised he'd donate as soon as his social security check would clear. Andreas JN466 07:05, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
The questions for the videos were proposed and voted for by community members here: m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Community Voting/Questions for Candidates#Proposed Questions. So the phrasing in this case was down to a volunteer. This said, I'm not sure who first started speaking of a "movement". I'm not overly fond of the term. People used to refer to the "project(s)"; that seems to have become less common as references to a "movement" have increased. Andreas JN466 06:47, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: Is this supposed to be under the thread about ABorba? – Joe (talk) 07:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
User:Joe Roe - Yes. I put it here on purpose. It was brought by their testing on the live English Wikipedia, which is why I told them to go and test somewhere else. Yes. That test is indicative of a grandiose attitude by the WMF. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:49, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: I'm a little confused for how the board election and the idea of a Wikimedia Movement(TM) relate to the attitudes of the staff members on the Quality and Test Engineering team. I mean, they all feel like very separate issues? –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 05:24, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
This has a high degree of pot calling out elitism of kettle. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:29, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

It's nice to finally see Cullen328, Robert McClenon, and others now using the very argument I've used a hundred times over the past 4 years that goes something like: "The WMF is more interested in its pursuits of becoming a socio-political movement than supporting its volunteers with necessary software that makes the whole thing work. It's not what I signed up for" Be careful what y'all say though about these WMFers on their celebrity salaries and junkets, it was my repeating a totally innocent but extremely accurate comment of Cullen's that was 40% of what led to me being desysopped. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:31, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Many of the WMF's socio-political goals are reasonable ones which I share, but diverting readers' donations to them is as immoral as lining their own pockets. The WMF continues to grab so much power from the communities, one inch at a time, that it can dictate whatever terms and conditions it likes. Our only recourse is to stop editing. At least Wikipedia is safe in one way: The WMF can now afford to hire paid editors to replace the volunteers it seems hellbent on driving away. Certes (talk) 19:05, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Community members meeting about QA

RoySmith, Guerillero, and I took up Jan (WMF)'s invitation above to have a meeting where we could discuss changes to avoid this kind of situation happening again. We met earlier today. It was, from my perspective, a very productive meeting. Coming out of the meeting there was a commitment to (among other things):

  • Better transparency and identification of WMF staffers doing testing, including on-wiki documentation of the work
  • When an edge case needs to be tested - as in the situation that sparked this where there needed to be testing of accounts that were not autoconfirmed - that there be notification at WP:VPT at least 1 business day in advance
  • Linking to the relevant phab ticket in the edit summary whenever possible (an example where not possible: when something involving an edit summary is being tested)
  • Not just test on enwiki because it might be the most convenient solution but because it's truly necessary to do accurate testing.
  • Renewed documentation and training for testers so they understand what's expected on enwiki (which is not always the same as other wikis)

I expect some of these to happen quickly - Jan has already begun working on elements to be hosted here on enwiki - while the last two pieces might be more medium term projects. But on the whole I found the foundation staffers we talked with to be open to hearing the community perspective and eager to be productive collaborators. If I missed anything I hope someone else fills it in. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:48, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

My take on things is pretty much the same as Barkeep's, and his bullet list jives with my own notes. I'm happy with the way the meeting went and I'm fully confident that WMF will soon have improved processes in place to make things run smoother in the future. On the enwiki side, I think we all came away with a better understanding of the constraints under which the WMF QT&E group works and how they will on occasion require testing in a live environment. And I think the WMF folks now have a better understanding of what particular issues got enwiki folks so excited. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:31, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
I agree with what Barkeep and Roy said. I came away from this meeting thinking that JBranaa (WMF), from the testing team, was extremely open to our input and wanted to get it right. If anything, he was less thrilled about future testing being done on enwiki than Barkeep, Roy, and myself were. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 07:34, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you again @RoySmith, @Guerillero, and @Barkeep49 for taking the time to meet with us. I found the discussion very informative and as Guerillero noted above, I want to use what we learned during this situation to improve how we do things in the Quality and Test Engineering team as well as influence how development teams do things as well. Looking forward to working more with you and other members of the community. JBranaa (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Board of Trustees election results

The results of the recent Board of Trustees election have been announced at m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022/Results. Certes (talk) 11:46, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for giving the link :) Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 21:37, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

English Wikipedia user group?

It's rather difficult to miss the underlying feeling in some areas of the English Wikipedia that the Wikimedia Foundation is perhaps not listening as closely as it should to y'all — most recently, this has surfaced in topics such as PageTriage and the fundraising campaigns. I can certainly share some aspects of this feeling, and try to surface this constructively where I can.

The formation of a Wikimedia user group for the English Wikipedia would, among other things, allow for a delegate to attend the Wikimedia Summit and voice concerns directly to decision makers. I'm no fan of complex bureaucracy, and as such can offer no suggestions as to how a delegate would be selected/how the user group should run etc, but I did want to surface the idea and see if this is a direction y'all would consider investigating — providing the "message" doesn't get spread too thin, more opportunities for discussion can't be a bad thing.

For transparency, I am employed by the Wikimedia Foundation, but consider myself a volunteer first and foremost and make this suggestion as such. I think this is the most appropriate village pump for the topic, but please do feel free to move it if not. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:22, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Potentially this is "too much and not enough". If the Wikimedia Summit winds up as an influential forum within the movement then one delegate from this community would be a tad farcical given the proportion of Wikimedians who are active here and how we differ on several key things, but having that one delegate risks people thinking that that forum somehow represents this community. I'm fairly confident that a number of attendees will be active on this wiki, but they won't be there to represent us and may not have views that would be mainstream here. I detect something of a governance flaw in this project, user groups thematic orgs and chapters all have their roles, but if they each start sending people to a meaningful summit then we risk some people realising that they potentially have multiple routes to the summit; (the chapter where you live, a couple of subject based ones and now a project based one or two). The more attractive being at that summit becomes the more we risk a proliferation of such orgs, some of which won't do much other than send one of their own to an annual jolly. ϢereSpielChequers 19:57, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
It’s not there for the same reason as that the en.wp editors don’t have a conference of their own. No one wants to organize it. The ppl who want to organize things are all already doing that. All the ppl who don’t want to organize things are the ones complaining all the time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:06, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
I think a single user group for all of the English Wikipedia is the wrong size. I think smaller subgroups of the English Wikipedia, say functionaries, NPP, AbuseFilter rule helpers/maintainers, DYK enthusiasts, WikiProject <whatever>, etc. would be a much better fit for the user group model. Legoktm (talk) 05:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
@Legoktm: The meta:English Wikipedia Functionaries User Group is in the works. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 07:38, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
That is fantastic. Legoktm (talk) 17:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Given that worldwide, Wikipedia is pretty synonymous for the en.Wiki; given that the en.Wiki is the one WMF project that probably generates most of the donations; given that fundraising is based largely on the claims of maintaining an ad-free encyclopedia, perhaps the representatives of NPP should be given a loud voice. NPP is the only firewall that prevents scams, spam, attack pages, and pure junk and nonsense for entering the corpus. This vital function needs more attention from the Foundation. Its presentations have constantly been denied at a string of real Wikimanias and again its importance was played down in a recent live streamed Board of Trustees Zoom session. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:01, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
    @Legoktm and I were talking yesterday about user groups and I specifically mentioned that NPP would be an enwiki user group that I think should exist. So I agree with his point above that enwiki probably needs several user groups, and I agree with you (and him) @Kudpung that NPP should be one of them. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:09, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
    I will say that it seems like the best affiliates have a good focus to direct effects but broad enough to allow efforts from a number of angles to coordinate. Too narrow and a group burns out or loses momentum.
    A group that takes in NPP and some of the related spaces like UPE and related disinformation focused work; and some of the recent changes work which is ultimately all part of the broader problem space. That feels like a set of stuff which gives such a group a decent chance at surviving and achieving things. That would also be a group that would work well in partnership with the functionaries group and the stewards group.
    I'll caveat also that I am a WMF staffer, however like TNT, I firmly consider myself a volunteer as well and I would also be happy to help bootstrap an effort like this to get it off the ground. Seddon talk 16:43, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

WMF staff hierarchy

As far as I can make out, there are dozens of different job titles above the rank and file in the WMF, but in the absence of an organigramme, there are no relative lines of authority. Can anyone throw any light on these job titles and relate them to pay grades?

  • Chief Executive Officer
  • Chief of staff
  • Deputy Chief of Staff
  • Director of Executive Communications
  • Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer
  • Vice President
  • Senior Manager
  • Senior Specialist
  • Lead Specialist
  • Specialist
  • Head
  • Principal Manager
  • Senior Manager
  • Lead Manager
  • (Manager
  • Lead
  • Senior Director
  • Director of Operations
  • Director
  • Senior Officer
  • Principal Officer
  • Officer
  • Principal
  • Senior Associate
  • Associate

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:03, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Re pay grades, some of that can be roughly derived from m:Wikimedia Foundation salaries. --Yair rand (talk) 23:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that Yair rand. Probably when I said 'pay grade' I said the wrong thing, because the salaries seem to be arbitrarily fixed. Pay grades alone often reflect competency rather than responsibility. Although at or very near the top it's fairly clear who reports to whom, what I'm trying to establish are the lines of actual responsibility, particularly in Product/Engineering, such as who are the deciders of which development projects are defined and created, how they are prioritised, and how budgets are accorded for them and by whom. The arborescence of a proper organigramme would show this and how the different departments overlap. That is not clear at all for example at Staff & Contractors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:10, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Most (not all) of these are standard job titles in the industry and not WMF specific (Look at https://levels.fyi to see what other places do). Some of these do not denote responsibility over others but simply how much someone is getting paid (e.g. Principle engineer gets more money than a senior engineer, but it doesn't mean that they neccessarily get to tell the senior engineer what to do. It usually but not always means that the principle engineer has more "respect" in the org, so it might be easier for their ideas to get traction). Generally in terms of responsibility, an engineer does the work, they report to a manager, the managers report to a director who is a manager of the managers, and the directors report to the c-level, who reports to the CEO. There's probably exceptions though. Bawolff (talk) 14:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That's pretty much what I said: Pay grades alone often reflect competency rather than responsibility, for example it's perfectly possible in the army for a highly skilled corporal to be earning as much as a major. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
My big question here is why does anybody care? If we have issues with the WMF, we should be discussing the issues. I can't see how any analysis of who reports to whom, or how much individual people earn, is relevant to our purpose of building an encyclopedia. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I can't see how any analysis of who reports to whom [...] is relevant to our purpose of building an encyclopedia. It becomes important when concerned Wikipedians attempt to talk to or lobby the WMF to allocate more resources to the development of certain software. It's important to be able to talk to decision makers. The top decision makers are obvious. The middle and bottom decision makers are not well publicized. The best public org chart I've found doesn't make the bottom-to-top decision-making hierarchy clear. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:10, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Grades also relate to scope and the level of abstraction they are working at, which is probably a better framing than authority. Seddon talk 19:17, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae hits the nail on the head. Even the WMF staff are confused. For example, there are two managers in the same group in the Product department, one tells NPP to put their requests through the Wishlist, another tells NPP that Community Tech has no money and won't do it any way, while to avoid accepting patches people at Phab make up policy as it suits them. The volunteers get pushed from pillar to post while the staff place Pass-the-Parcel and Musial Chairs. Hardly surprising the communities are so skeptical about the WMF. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Open letter to the WMF about Wikimedia Commons

Ziko, thank you for your initial post informing people about this. However, further discussion really should take place on Commons. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:21, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Hello, there is an open letter in preparation, directed to the WMF. We want to improve Wikimedia Commons. Please have a look at the draft text here, and please comment on the talk page. Ziko (talk) 11:33, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Ziko, total waste of time like this. WMF will just spend a couple grand and fart another Human Rights Policy. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
You're probably right. If they can spend their time drawing up elaborate plans for the future and UCOCs to pretend to be busy instead of doing some concrete work, they will. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Kudpung, what's UCOC? UCOC is a bus company, that's probably not it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:38, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
UCOC is the Universal Code of Conduct which the WMF recently decided to impose unilaterally on communities which have been happily self-governing for 20 years. Certes (talk) 09:30, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
I guess they probably have it for legal reasons, just as Discord and YouTube and Fandom has a community guidelines page that details acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They still recognize self governance but they prob just want to keep the lawyers happy with this policy. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 21:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
We're not here to keep lawyers happy: they're paid to keep us happy! Certes (talk) 22:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikimedia Foundation English fundraising campaign - October pre-tests

Hi everyone,

As previously mentioned here, I will continuously inform you of pre-tests on English Wikipedia as the Wikimedia Foundation prepares for the English fundraising campaign later this year. As part of the English campaign we test our infrastructure on a regular basis throughout the next few months and you might see banners every now and then on Wikipedia if you are not logged in.

The scheduled dates for October are (you can find the September ones in this post):

  • 3rd-10th of October - a low level week long test (During the test, a banner will only be shown to users 5% of the time until the maximum of 10 impressions (1 big and 9 small banners) is reached.)
  • 13th of October - a 100% traffic three hour test
  • 17th - 24th of October - a low level week long test
  • 27th of October - a 100% traffic three hour test

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks you and regards,


JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) by * Pppery * it has begun... 22:54, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@JBrungs (WMF): Can you provide a list of banners that you plan to run? BilledMammal (talk) 04:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes I will share those closer to the time - most likely in early November. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 06:15, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@JBrungs (WMF): Thank you, but I was referring to the ones being run in October. BilledMammal (talk) 09:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@JBrungs (WMF): Is there a list of all banners that were run in September? Looking at m:Special:CentralNotice, only the current campaign is shown, not the ones that were scheduled to run earlier in the month. BilledMammal (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Hi @BilledMammal,
I just saw this message (I was on holiday for a week). The test banners are clearly a lot in volume so let me check with the team to see what they say and could potentially do. I will get back to you next week. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Hi,
Getting back to you on this point. Currently we are not able to share all the test banners we run as there are just too many. If you are interested, you can search for them in the Central Notice logs. As said before, I will share the control banners on the en VP as well as on the Fundraising meta page, ca. 2 weeks before the campaign starts or whenever the control banners are ready. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 09:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@JBrungs (WMF): "You are not authorized to preview banners, or your edit token has expired. Please try logging in again or reloading the page." Well, that didn't work. Perhaps the WMF can post links to the banners directly instead of sending us on a wild goose chase to see what they will post on enwiki? It's not as if these banners are uncontroversial... Fram (talk) 09:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

That refers to the live preview but if you click on Preview last saved version under the banner title you can preview. Seddon talk 10:46, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, that wasn't really intuitive, but works indeed! Fram (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

So, the first one I looked at[11] has:

"To all our readers in Belgium, Please don’t scroll past this. This Tuesday we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just €2, or whatever you can this Tuesday, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you €2 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you."

Which is the same objectionable text that was already dissected. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way., yuck. Perhaps, like me, they don't give "money" but lots of time? Perhaps they can't give? Don't shame people into giving to a rich free encyclopedia. defend Wikipedia’s independence. from what? Why are these banners still being used? Fram (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

In January, in response to similar objections, JBrungs said they were listening and collecting the feedback we saw around the Helpdesk, the Teahouse, the general VP boards on English Wikipedia, and here and that they will also share the banners we are testing prior to the next English campaign on the meta page and will highlight changes that are made in response to community feedback.
Looking at the archives of that page, the only change publicized was the addition of an "I already donated" button. JBrungs, are there any other changes? BilledMammal (talk) 12:17, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I listed the changes that were made here before they went live and operational with the Italy fundraising campaign earlier in the year. Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That's an extremely limited set of changes compared to the many complaints about the language last year and this year. Has there been any feedback about things which were widely criticized but which haven't been changed, with perhaps a reason why? Because this is really insufficient (I was going to say disappointing, but, well, I didn't hive high hopes to begin with). Fram (talk) 12:46, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
As I suggested below regarding the ongoing French fundraiser, I think there is no longer any point complaining to the WMF. If this were likely to have any effect, this effect would have materialised long ago. Every year sees a replay of the discussion that happened the year prior.
There is simply a difference of opinion: the WMF fundraisers think the banners and emails are fine, while the recent volunteer poll and statements from three candidates in this year's board (s)election describing WMF fundraising as "deceptive" suggest the community thinks they're not.
What we need is an adjudication by the court of public opinion. This means contacting the media. Many newspapers have email addresses for tip-offs. In the case of the current French campaign, even if you don't speak French, any major French publication will have English speakers. As suggested below, the links in this Twitter thread are a good start. In fact, even just this table of WMF financial development speaks volumes (even though it doesn't include the more than $100 million that have accumulated in the m:Wikimedia Endowment over the past six years).
It's not like the media aren't interested in stories like this; the recent feedback session with the Dutch community advertised on m:Talk:Fundraising was attended by a journalist working for a Dutch daily (see Dutch Wikipedia discussion).
So please, let's focus effort where it is likely to have an actual effect. Best, Andreas JN466 14:59, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
If previous years' schedules are followed, December in large English-speaking countries is the time to strike. The WMF must consider the banners fair and accurate, or they wouldn't be running them, so they should surely welcome some national publicity for their appeal. I was considering initiating something similar myself and have been thinking about the best outlets for some time. In the UK, for example, The Guardian has a noble tradition of exposés, but its champagne-socialist leanings may be too close to the WMF's philosophy for them to be interested. I don't know the US media market. Certes (talk) 16:31, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Jimmy Wales is still (or again?) described as "a non-executive director of Guardian Media Group, owner of the Guardian and the Observer". While this information may be obsolete (I believe Wales resigned when he started WikiTribune), it doesn't augur well. The thing is not to think about it too much and just email publications. (You can skip the UK Telegraph; they've published several articles critical of Wikipedia fundraising already.) There will always be some where you never hear anything back, but you only need one or two to respond. Start with the biggest publications and work your way down. And don't wait until December – things easily get lost in the pre-Christmas rush, and the emails are already running as we speak.
And you're right, the publicity might actually end up helping the WMF bring in even more money. I don't have a problem with that either, because at least the people who do donate after being informed will then have an accurate idea of WMF finances, and people who are genuinely poor – especially with the cost-of-living crisis this year – will know that they don't have to feel bad if they don't donate. Andreas JN466 18:00, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Banners

September

The banners ran between 2022-09-23 20:00 (UTC) and 2022-09-25 20:00 (UTC) on enwiki for readers from Australia, Canada, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. 10% of pageviews for logged-out readers included a banner, up to ten times per reader.

September banners
Platform Example Banner
Desktop B2223_092423_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_cnt To all our readers in Country,

Please don’t scroll past this. This Day we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this Day, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.

B2223_092423_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_mLgOpening To all our readers in Country,

Please don’t scroll past this. We know we're interrupting your reading, so we'll get straight to the point: This Day we ask you to protect Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you. If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this Day, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.

B2223_0923_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_dsn_cnt We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away

Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your reading recently, but only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. This Day we ask you to protect Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.

B2223_0923_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_dsn_Opacity100
B2223_0923_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_dsn_Opacity75
B2223_0923_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_dsn_Grayscale
Mobile B2223_092423_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_cnt To all our readers,

Please don’t scroll past this. This Day we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.

If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.

We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.

That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.

If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.

B2223_092423_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_dskLgOpening
B2223_0923_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_DoubleCTAs275and25 Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your search recently, but 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This Day we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.
B2223_0923_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_cnt
B2223_0923_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_NoCTAamt
B2223_0923_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_4then2 Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your search recently, but 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This Day we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $25 if you can afford $25, or $2.75 if you can afford $2.75. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.

October

The banners run between 2022-10-03 20:00 (UTC) and 2022-10-10 20:00 (UTC) on enwiki for readers from Australia, Canada, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. 7% of pageviews for logged-out readers include a banner, up to ten times per reader.

October banners
Platform Example Banner
Desktop B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_dsn_BubbleMessage To all our readers in Country,
Please don’t scroll past this. This Day we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence.
98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.
If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this Day, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate.
Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.
B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_dsn_BubbleMessageFrmBkg
B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_dsn_cnt To all our readers in Country,
Please don’t scroll past this. This Day we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this Day, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.
B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_dsn_FrmBkg
B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_amt_cnt We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.
Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your reading recently, but only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. This Day we ask you to protect Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.
B2223_1003_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_amt_CTAGiveNow
Mobile B2223_1003_en6C_m_p1_lg_rml_cnt To all our readers,

Please don’t scroll past this. This Day we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.

If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.

We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.

That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.

If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.

We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.

B2223_1003_en6C_m_p1_lg_rml_RMLOptions
B2223_1003_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_cnt] Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your search recently, but 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This Day we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.
B2223_1003_en6C_m_p2_sm_amt_NoCTAamtRetest

The above fundraising banners (e.g. "We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away. Hi. This isn't the first time we've interrupted your reading recently, but only 2% of our readers give. Many think they'll give later, but then forget. This Sunday we ask you to protect Wikipedia. All we ask is €2, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don't scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.", framed in emergency red) are currently also shown in France (campaign there to run from 4th of October to 1st of November). If you can think of French mainstream media publications to write to, do. The links in this Twitter thread are a good start. --Andreas JN466 14:30, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I have one question from a brief reading. Why does the last (or last 2?) message(s) say "or $25 if you can afford $25"? Every other message just asks for $2.75. Why does that one ask for about x10 more money? (I may have done my math wrong there but you get the point) ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:37, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Also I would like to note that I've discovered that one of the rewards you can get via Microsoft Rewards is a donation to the WMF which is nice. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:38, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
The reason for mentioning the $25 seems straightforward enough. It's just for an A/B test – checking whether the mention of the higher amount alongside the smaller one ("All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25.") increases the average donation per impression or not.
I think a decade of A/B testing is how Wikipedia has ended up with fundraising messages that seem designed to scare and manipulate people into donating – because people who are worried about Wikipedia's survival, or made to feel guilty, donate more. I don't think there necessarily was an intention to mislead or make people feel guilty for using a free resource without paying, but as they say, "you can't argue with the bottom line". If A always brings in more money than B, then it takes a certain strength of character to pick B. Andreas JN466 18:36, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Ah alright. Maybe try one that just says $5? I'd say most people would find even amounts like that easier to calculate out of their account, while still being relatively low in value. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:43, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

October 2

The banners ran between 2022-10-11 21:00 (UTC) and 2022-10-12 00:00 (UTC) on enwiki for readers from Australia, Canada, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. 100% of pageviews for logged-out readers include a banner, up to ten times per reader.

October banners
Platform Example Banner Sticky Banner
Desktop B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_Rewrite To all our readers in COUNTRY,
Please don’t scroll past this. This DAY we humbly ask you to support the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia. Only 2% of our readers give–if you are a rare donor who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. We’re passionate about our model because Wikipedia should answer to you, not corporate interests or billionaires. Most people donate because Wikipedia is useful: if you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this DAY, we can expand access to Wikipedia and fund projects that make it more useful to more people. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Thank you.		 If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_RemixParas To all our readers in COUNTRY,
Please don't scroll past this. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask: if Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, will you take a minute to donate? If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. But the fact is 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way.
We're a nonprofit, we don't run ads or charge a subscription fee. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do. We're passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. Show the world that free access to knowledge matters. Thank you.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_cnt To all our readers in COUNTRY,
Please don’t scroll past this. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this DAY, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don’t scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p1_lg_txt_Passionate To all our readers in COUNTRY,
Please don’t scroll past this. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this DAY, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want everyone to have equal access to knowledge. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the world that access to reliable, neutral information matters to you. Thank you.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_txt_CatchYou We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.
Hi. We ask a few times so that we can hopefully catch you at a good moment. This DAY we ask you to protect Wikipedia. Only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.		 This isn't a paywall
We'll cut to the chase: 98% of Wikipedia's readers don't give; they simply look away. All we ask is $2.75, or whatever seems right to you this DAY, before you get back to your article.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_txt_cnt We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.
Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your reading recently, but only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. This DAY we ask you to protect Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_txt_SorryAgain We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.
Hi. Sorry to interrupt again, but this DAY we humbly ask you to protect Wikipedia. This isn’t the first time we’ve asked recently, but only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.
B2223_1011_en6C_dsk_p2_sm_txt_TimeOfYear We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.
Hi. This is the time of year we interrupt your reading, because only 2% of our readers give. Many think they’ll give later, but then forget. This DAY we ask you to protect Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75, or what you can afford, to secure our future. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away. If you are one of our rare donors, we warmly thank you.
Mobile B2223_1011_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_FoundationFirstLine To all our readers,
Please don’t scroll past this important message from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that maintains Wikipedia. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.
If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.
We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.
That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.
If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.
We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.		 N/A
B2223_1011_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_cnt To all our readers,
Please don’t scroll past this. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.
If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.
We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.
That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.
If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.
We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.
B2223_1011_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_FromSal A message from the Wikimedia Foundation to all our readers:

Please don’t scroll past this. This DAY we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.
If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.
We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.
That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.
If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.
We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.

B2223_1011_en6C_m_p1_lg_txt_ImportantRequest To all our readers,

Please don’t scroll past this: we’re interrupting your reading today to bring you an important request. This DAY we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia’s independence. 98% of our readers don’t give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you.
If everyone reading this donated $2.75, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years. The price of a cup of coffee is all we need. We’re a nonprofit, and the 58 million articles that compose Wikipedia are free.
We don’t charge a subscription fee, and Wikipedia is sustained by the donations of only 2% of our readers. Without reader contributions, big or small, we couldn’t run Wikipedia the way we do.
That’s why we still need your help. We are passionate about our model because at its core, Wikipedia belongs to you. We want to make sure everyone on the planet has equal access to knowledge.
If Wikipedia provided you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, please take a minute to secure its future by making a donation. Thank you.
We ask you, humbly: don’t scroll away.

B2223_1011_en6C_m_p2_sm_txt_Disruptive Hi. We know this is disruptive, but it’s important so we'll be quick: 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This DAY we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.
B2223_1011_en6C_m_p2_sm_txt_cnt Hi. This isn’t the first time we’ve interrupted your search recently, but 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This DAY we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.
B2223_1011_en6C_m_p2_sm_txt_OnceMoreInterruptAgain Hi. Please excuse us once more. We’re interrupting your search again because 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. This DAY we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.
B2223_1011_en6C_m_p2_sm_txt_secondThirdTime Hi. To our readers seeing this message for the second or third time recently: if you haven’t already donated, we ask you to help us sustain Wikipedia. 98% of our readers don't give; they keep reading. All we ask is $2.75 if you can afford $2.75, or $25 if you can afford $25. We ask you, humbly: Please don’t scroll away.

Discussion at Hacker News

Hacker News discussing an article titled "The next time Wikipedia asks for a donation, ignore it". --Andreas JN466 10:21, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

New WMF search violates non-free content policy

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Images with search results (and the subsection Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#How to get the WMF to reverse this?. In short, the new look of the search results, deployed without real announcement or consensus apparently last Thursday, includes non-free images next to the search results, which is not allowed on enwiki by policy. Please join the discussion there, let's not have it in two places. All input from WMF people welcome of course. Fram (talk) 16:44, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Fram, hot damn.
I wonder if phab:T306246 (which resulted from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 196#Can we control images shown by Wikipedia app when searching? which was originally posted by Johnuniq) would have either prevented this or would have made it easier to fix (I'm actually unsure how fair use is excluded from the ajax search on Minerva/Vector-2022 and rather surprised the new search doesn't follow the same rules), but it was recently moved from being a subtask for [Goal] prepare desktop improvements project for further deployment to [EPIC] Vector 2022 post-deployment work. Anyway, I dropped Legal a mail as I doubt they signed off on this. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Didn't even hear back from legal beyond the autoreply. Bummer. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:42, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
@Fram@Alexis Jazz The image selection system initially grabbed non-free images indiscriminately. I did some of the pushing over on Phabricator to make sure the Foundation complies with the minimal-non-free-use requirements. The automatic image selection system was revised to exclude non-free images. Later I ran an RFC which found non-free images were acceptable in article previews, as they were in-context with a short but meaningful portion of the article text. The automatic image system was redesigned with an option to select whether non-free images should be included or excluded, depending on where they are used.
  • Search results at https://www.wikipedia.org/ contain page images, but they EXCLUDE non-free images. Search results there show ShortDescription, but no article-text.
  • The search results here contain page images, including non-free images, in context with a short but meaningful portion of the article text. That was essentially the standard accepted for article previews. While an RFC could be opened asking about this case, I believe it is unnecessary. I am reasonably confident this use would be accepted. A reader could credibly find the amount of article-text in search results to be sufficient to answer their needs, and in that context the non-free images are serving their essential purpose in conjunction with that educational text. Alsee (talk) 21:50, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
  • @Alsee:: "Later I ran an RFC which found non-free images were acceptable in article previews, as they were in-context with a short but meaningful portion of the article text." Link? This goes against our non free content policies, which e.g. also doesn't allow such images in lists, even when they have a "short but meaningful" section of the text. E.g. a bibliography or discography may not have images of all books or records (if they are copyrighted). With this search, it is worse than with such lists, as it is not in the main namespace, and often doesn't have text relating to the copyrighted image, but relating to the search. E.g. when I search for pages containing "Hergé", I get the cover image of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, but the accompanying text is "myself in the role of a sort of Tintin". Hergé, 15 November 1966. Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—had been employed as an illustrator at..." which has nothing to do with the specific image. Fram (talk) 08:32, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
    @Fram The RFC is at WT:Non-free_content/Archive_65#Hovercards. The relevant software-product is-or-was called "Hovercards". I believe the key sentence of the RFC was The image is arguably being viewed "in" a stubified version of the article itself, and it is arguably still serving the educational purpose of informing the reader about the topic and the related text that they are viewing in the mini-preview. A clipped view of the article may extend around the image. The search results are stretching that idea, but it does seem within those bounds. I would raise the point that a noteworthy percentage of our readers may be fully served by the quoted-article-fragment, and the image itself may be an essential reason that the quoted-fragment is sufficient to fully serve that reader. I have no objection to running an RFC, but I predict acceptance.
    If the community does reject this use I predict the Foundation will abide by the result with minimal or no grumbling. They won't be happy about it, but it's a trivial tweak to the code, and it is established that the setting exists explicitly for the purpose of complying with non-free image policy. Alsee (talk) 00:25, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. I thought there also had been an RfC for "related articles", where they also showed non-free images and where the result was that this was disallowed: but I can't find that RfC for now. Fram (talk) 10:15, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
There were immediate and loud complaints when a portal, in the course of showing an extract from an article, accidentally included a non-free image which had a rationale for the article but not for the portal. Certes (talk) 13:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

WMF email policy: what can I tell new anon users that I welcome who might hesitate to register?

Hello, I have a question about WMF email policy, regarding what I can reliably tell new IP users about WMF email policy in order to encourage them to sign up for a free account. My use case is this: I frequently welcome new anonymous users to Wikipedia using one of the appropriate templates at WP:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates. I know that when I register for an account online, some of my main concerns are,

  • Are you going to send me a lot of junk email?, and:
  • Who are you sharing my email address with?

I can well imagine that not knowing, scares off a lot of anonymous editors and keeps them from registering.

I checked my own email, and I have "a personal appeal from Wikipedia's founder" from 11 Dec 2013, and a "Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections" from 10 May 2017 and I probably deleted a few similar ones, but I don't think I get more than one unsolicited email a year, but maybe I just forgot. Note: the former had an unsubscribe link, but the 2017 email did not. (Hey, other en-wiki users: what's your WMF/Wikipedia email experience with unsolicited emails?)

I'd like to modify the verbiage on the welcome templates to say (ideally), "Wikipedia (and its sister projects at WMF) will never email you, and never sell or share your email address", but I don't know whether that is true. I need a WMF page somewhere with the definitive statement on WMF's email policy, so I know what I can say in the welcome templates, and link it to the policy page.

What, in fact, is the email usage policy of WMF? Searching for "Email policy" turned up nothing relevant. I read the following pages, finding nothing relevant:

Did I miss it, somehow? If no such page exists, can I ask you to create a page at wmf:Email_policy (name of your choosing, as long as it turns up at that search link above), and then link it from a few places, and in particular add it to that template? With this in hand, I'll create a soft 404 from en-wiki for it, and then I'll be able to modify those welcome templates and link your new email policy page, and/or say something concrete to anon users to give them confidence about our email policy, so they won't be afraid to register. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:26, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

At wmf:Privacy policy § General, under "Sending emails with news updates and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you", there is information on the type of emails that may be sent, as well as the statement We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you. isaacl (talk) 05:11, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Hopefully, any one signing up who is reluctant to share their email address will proceed with creating an account without an email address. isaacl (talk) 05:14, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Ah, thank you for that. I missed some of it because it needed a click to expand. The phrase "news updates and communications about items we believe may be of interest to you" seems pretty vague, and says nothing about frequency, but as long as there is the opt-out that it links to, then it seems that should be sufficient. Still, it seems too hard to find, especially since my explicit search did not turn it up. Maybe spinning off that information to a new page, or even just creating the page wmf:Email policy as a redirect to that section you linked, would help. Mathglot (talk) 05:42, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Why not add the suggestion of using a web-based email, such as hotmail, gmail, etc.? They're also sometimes known as 'throw-away emails' as they can be created without providing any personal info (eg: you can use your WP username as as the email name, and a fake first/last name in the details. The email could be used for other websites where anonymity is preferred, but not used with websites or transactions where the user's real name is known/used (eg: banking, etc). If the email's detals are sold, it isn't a concern. Just a suggestion. - wolf 09:51, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Added note, it would be handy (and useful here) if WP provided email hosting; (eg:thewolfchild@wikipedia.com). Just a thought... - wolf 09:54, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
I don't think there's a benefit to suggesting ways people can manage their email. Someone concerned about spam is likely to stumble upon this approach on their own, but it doesn't seem like something WMF needs to guide them in. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
.. as long as there is the opt-out that it links to — It would be better if the unsolicited e-mails were opt-in. It ought not be too hard, when a user provides /changes an e-mail address, to explicitly ask them "do you want to opt in to ... "? The idea that providing an e-mail address is a default invitation to send unsolicited e-mails is just wrong. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:32, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
Mitch, not quite sure what you're saying. Are you providing info about how WMF deals with registration when they obtain a user's email address? Or describing how they ought to (which could be a new topic on this page)? Or is this more a cri de coeur or expression of general exasperation at the state of the world with this (or any) website that asks for an email address when you register? I'm sure we've all been there, if it's the latter. Mathglot (talk) 00:47, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
It's a rant in general that so many places/people/websites, to whom I provide my e-mail address for one purpose (including the case where I sent them an e-mail about a specific thing), then automatically add it to a mailing list and send me email spam that I did not want and did not ask for. Allowing me to "opt-out" is not good enough - I did not "opt-in" in the first place. When a user creates a Wikipedia account, the page says "Email is required to recover your account if you lose your password" - no mention of "Email address will be used to send you unsolicited mail unrelated to your account". Another specific example: make a monetary donation to WMF, and they "require" an e-mail address to send a receipt to (despite the fact that they could just display the receipt on the web page so I could print it, and/or allow me to print/download a text or PDF file from that page), then use that e-mail address to send other (spam) mail. At least they did a few years ago - I stopped donating after I complained about it to WMF and there was no indication at the time of them changing that policy. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:08, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
Understood; thanks. Mathglot (talk) 05:30, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
Please remember we have little way to spot new IP editors. The first ever edits from an IP address could denote a new IP editor, but they could also be an existing IP editor getting a new IP address. If we are worried about repeated messaging, spare a thought for the IP editor who gets a message each time their IP address changes. ϢereSpielChequers 11:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
(IMO) For every new account, IP and registered, the talk page should automatically have a 'welcome' template posted to it. If that means that some ip users receive the template again and again, well that's better than someone not receiving it at all. This would simply go down as another benefit of having a registered account. (IMO) - wolf 15:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
I'm not worried about repeat messaging, and I don't think it's a concern; is there any evidence that it is? I agree with Wolf. It's just as likely the the not-new "new" IP editor might appreciate "having their welcome message transferred over" so they can have ready access to the links. Further, since welcome messages are almost always placed via template, an editor using a dynamic IPv6 might not even realize they are editing from a different IP each time, and having a dozen user talk pages each with a welcome message on it is likely to be seen as a single page with a welcome message (assuming they ever hit one of them a second time). And I don't agree with the premise that there's little way to spot an editor who isn't new. Mathglot (talk) 18:33, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
Official privacy policy is that email is not required. That is what I would state first. You can optionally follow that up with the privacy terms if they do choose to enter an email. Alsee (talk) 21:59, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
That's actually a very good point, Alsee, as it could assuage their concerns a bit at the top, and maybe move the needle a bit towards registering for an account. If there's no objection, I may make some trial edits at one or two of the main Welcome templates, and see how it's received. Mathglot (talk) 00:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
@Mathglot in most cases Welcome templates are given to registered users. I'm thinking we might want either a Welcome template specific for IP users, or add some code to customize the template text when it's on an IP usertalk? I'm only semi-knowledgeable about template coding, but I think(?) it may be possible to detect it's on an IP usertalk with reasonably high accuracy. Even just detecting the first character of the username being a digit would mostly do it. Then for IP usertalk we could display the benefits of making an account, along with the email policy. Alsee (talk) 06:20, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
@Alsee:, I don't know the statistics, but plenty of welcomes are given to anon users, and there are already several to choose from, tailored to anon users, such as {{welcome-anon}}, {{welcome-anon-retro}}, and others. See WP:WT#Unregistered users. I probably should've been clearer that I was referring exclusively to that set of templates. Mathglot (talk) 06:26, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Open letter to the WMF about Wikimedia Commons

I thought I closed this already. Oh, wait, I did close it. I just didn't notice that there's two sections on this subject. Like I said earlier, this is the wrong place for this; enwiki and commons are distinct projects. If there's an issue with how WMF interacts with commons, it should be discussed on commons. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Dear friends of free knowledge,

Wikimedia Commons is in crisis. There are numerous concerns and complaints about our central media platform, for many years.

Therefore, this open letter asks the Wikimedia Foundation to Think big! about the future of Wikimedia Commons.

In late August 2022, we at the Commons Photographers User Group talked about Wikimedia Commons. The result of these and other talks is this open letter.

We invite everyone to sign this open letter to show how important Wikimedia Commons is to you. You may be a regular Commons contributor, a Wikipedian, an editor of Wiktionary or Wikivoyage, or maybe you represent an affiliation. We also strongly invite other people who are involved with Commons directly or indirectly, maybe in the context of a GLAM.

Please inform others about this open letter.

Kind regards, Ziko (talk) 22:41, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Ziko, to comment on the final points from the letter:
Commons can be an uncomfortable environment to new users who have a lot to learn in order to contribute in a significant way.
I created c:Commons:Upload Wizard proposals back in 2018 but had no way to actually create a functioning prototype. Now I do, but bad things happened. What I wrote in 2018 could still provide a handle on actually creating this. But it'll probably take community developers to make it happen as WMF developers are generally oriented in the opposite direction of blindly assuming own work. (see cross-wiki uploads)
Commons requires a good knowledge of English, even though it strives to be a multilingual platform.
I have no idea what the WMF could possibly do about that. Hire translators?
Commons is difficult to use for mobile users.
The reference for this point is a comment from 2014(!) about the Commons app. I'm pretty sure the Commons app has seen some development since then.
Commons has problems with scale, as it struggles to handle bulk uploads or large sets of files.
Also, MediaWiki can't handle files >4GB. Which is kinda insane when loads of people have a 4K camera in their pocket.
Commons lacks modern methods for community interaction, such as notifications or leaving feedback for users.
...user talk page?
Commons lacks development in its core feature set. Tools written by volunteers have helped new innovations and functionality, but keeping these tools maintained is hard.
True, but it doesn't elaborate on which tools or how this situation could be improved.
Commons is limited in its support for file formats.
It links to mw:Manual talk:Adding support for new filetypes as a reference. This is largely irrelevant. The biggest missing formats are probably MP4 and HEIC. MP4 is actually supported by MediaWiki. HEIC might be, or could be. But both are patent-encumbered.
Commons lacks video content support beyond basic playback, such as collaborative editing and creation.
Fair point, but technically very difficult.
We also need a profound investigation about the long term: maybe the MediaWiki software as it is used for Wikimedia Commons is not the best way for working with media files.
This would be a monumental mistake. And it won't happen (not without any existing viable alternative), but considerable time and money may be wasted entertaining the idea. You already have trouble maintaining a platform based on something that is supported, what do you think will happen if you transition to something entirely unrelated? Commons as an OAuth connected application? Dear lord have mercy.. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 05:42, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Hiring translators is not the only way that the WMF could ease the language problem, I'm not sure anyone is even proposing that. But there are useful things that the WMF could fairly easily do to address that problem. The letter has a talkpage and I suggest that the WMF read that and try and engage there. commons:Commons_talk:Think_big_-_open_letter_about_Wikimedia_Commons#Geo_locate_language_versions is a practical suggestion that I made, if you are interested in making our sites more multilingual that would be a good place to start. ϢereSpielChequers 11:27, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Cabals, stonewalling and the WMF is A-okay with that

WP:Cabals are a running gag, but in my experience they are quite real. Here are two cases where I was the target and got stonewalled by them. One on Commons, one on Phabricator. Neither is English Wikipedia, but both impact all projects which includes English Wikipedia. And I'm not sure there's any reason this couldn't happen here.
Now whatever you think of me, what I did or what I deserve doesn't really matter. I'm not here to complain about that, I have no open sanctions against me. The problem is communication, or lack thereof.

In March 2020 I used an alternative account to make some comments that, in hindsight, weren't productive. They weren't harmful, they just didn't contribute to the project, but hindsight is always 20/20. So it was stupid. I used an alternative account to avoid legal harassment from a party known for dubious behavior in that area. The account was a screaming DUCK for anyone who knows me at all (which I did on purpose), but I figured it should be sufficient to avoid legal harassment.
One of the things I said using the alternative account was "I'm afraid me and ol' Betsy will have to 'interrogate' some people in relation to this matter." which may seem somewhat threatening out of context, but in context it was word salad. The "ol' Betsy" (which to the best of memory, to the degree there was any coherence at all, referred to my imaginary horse) was keeping with the theme of the Wild West as set by the party I was commenting on, Web Sheriff. What it ultimately meant was "I'll have to ask the photographer", which I did. Which was helpful.
A simple "what the hell?" mail could have straightened all that out. Instead, I was blocked out of the blue 4 days after the fact by the Commons checkuser team. The rationale given was "this is a group action/decision by the Commons CU team" which notably isn't a rationale. The CU team never actually bothered to tell me personally what it was about, causing User:1989 to ask at c:User talk:Trijnstel/Archive/2020#Alexis Jazz.
As things kept going, the checkuser team implied I made off-wiki death threats towards them: Diff 407320695. When AFBorchert asked as directly as it gets "Were these personal threats made off-wiki?", Krd answered saying "Please allow me to not further comment on the case. There is nothing to add from my side. Thank you." Good job dodging the question, he could have saved some time by just saying "no". I hadn't contacted them off-wiki. Admin Magog the Ogre said "AJ has made physical threats of violence against community members and has several times now threatened all of the checkusers. This is no longer a matter of polite discussion. We've moved into legally actionable territory." which I can't classify as anything but fantasy.
Long story short: wheel warring, admins Zhuyifei1999 and Majora resigned as admins and this is the one case over 1 year old in the m:Ombuds commission/2022/Report Feb-Apr. WMF legal had no interest, as far as I can tell/guess because technically nothing illegal happened. Legally speaking, Commons checkusers were forced to make thoughts about their physical safety during this case after personal threats. is opinion. Nobody knows what goes through anyone's head and it doesn't specify who made the personal threats, many admins receive some on a regular basis from random LTAs so that's plausible.
The shocking part is that it's all a charade. The "ol' Betsy" comment was never revision deleted, was only blanked at my own request after the block and the checkuser team, as far as anyone knows (and inquiries were made, but again, stonewalling), never got in touch with m:Trust and Safety nor reported me to the authorities. Simply put: nobody ever took "ol' Betsy" as a serious threat, or if they did, they ignored every guideline in existence.

You'd think that was an isolated case. So did I. Until User talk:Alexis Jazz#So I got this mail from User:TechConductCommittee.
I got a warning from mw:Code of Conduct/Committee/Members which includes several people who work for the WMF. This is the textbook definition of a cabal. They vote for their own members, no community input, they make their own rules (the committee determines its own procedures) and sanction people based on those rules. Cabal. The mail didn't specify what I was being warned for exactly. It said "We recently received a report regarding several of your recent comments at Wikimedia Phabricator, related to VisualEditor." but didn't link any of them. So over time, I pinged all the members of the committee to ask for -at least- some links. The one who delivered the message I pinged more than once. Nobody ever responded. I still have no clue which comments they were talking about or why some anonymous reporter had a problem with them. Not knowing who reported it made me rather paranoid. I can't talk to anyone I was in discussion with at the time without thinking "was it you who didn't have the guts to just engage in a constructive conversation?". In the same period I received a request from PPelberg (WMF) to join a voice chat about development issues. I was considering it, quite excited even, but after that mail I had to decline. I have discovered various bugs since that mail which I no longer bother to report on Phabricator. I can't imagine that to be a good thing for the project overall. Some are just waiting to hit production as I often discover bugs on beta cluster. All that because the TechConductCommittee can't be arsed so cough up some links. That's just pathetic.

This wasn't on enwiki (though it does affect enwiki indirectly), but is there any reason it couldn't happen here? Somehow, the WMF is totally A-okay with all this. And the community effectively has no instruments whatsoever to deal with it.

As illusive as a stonewalling cabal

I wish I had a solution, but I got nothing. Cabals that resort to stonewalling are untouchable. To balance the sadness of this post, here's an unrelated video of a cat trying to catch the red dot of a laser pointer. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:32, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Cabal replies

Hi, Alexis Jazz, this looks radioactive, but I'll risk an observation. (Was close to posting a more verbose reply, but stopped myself at the last moment.)

In the context of UCoC consultations, I got the impression that the attitude at Commons and 'Data was "we don't need a heavy-weight process like an arbcom, because unlike enwp we don't have many behavioral problems and the admins are doing just fine handling them". Yet "doin' fine" could mean producing unjust outcomes and maintaining survivor bias.

In a formal open process with clerks and expected timelines, you can see that the wheels are still slowly grinding on the case. With a small closed group that's accountable to nobody, what incentive do they have not to block and ignore?

The global CoC Enforcers should be more like en.arbcom and less like T&S, but having an emphasis on private evidence and protecting the first-mover to cry victim, I suspect they'll be more like the latter.

⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 18:50, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Pelagic, and as a result of this crap MZMcBride got blocked yet nobody can really say why. Did they deserve it? Maybe. Who knows? I could be next. After that, maybe you. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:09, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
I think two different things are being conflated, Alexis. First, you made what some very-sensitive people took as a physical threat. Other people might not see it that way but these are the sorts of people raised in our society, anymore. You speak loosely at your own risk. Second, groups of people form to protect their own interests which we call cabals. Western Civilization is rapidly degenerating into low-trust societies and those same very-sensitive people figured out that they need to team-up for their continued survival. It seems you failed to get friends of yours into the right places to defend against this unilateral action, which you should have done a decade ago. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:38, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

What's the WMF? Why do people dislike it?

As I'm fairly new to anything in Wikipedia that isn't page editing, I've come to notice a fair amount of dislike towards WMF, demonstrated in some of the topics above, along with the idea lab section. As far as I know, it owns Wikipedia as well as the other projects like Wikibooks and Wikinews. However, I don't really know what it's endgoal is. So, two questions if you'd be kind enough to answer:

1. Did it do something wrong? / Is there a disagreement between it and the community?

2. What is the WMF's objective, or purpose for hosting this series of websites?

I feel pretty lost, so answers would help. Thanks! -- Coolman2917 (talk) 14:06, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

It seems like this board has become largely about criticizing the WMF, so you're not exactly getting a random cross-section of opinions :), but there's absolutely a lot of people with negative feelings about it or some aspects of it. It's been true for as long as long as it's been around. I'd say the problems in the relationship between the foundation and the community (the English Wikipedia community, at least) boil down to two things: money and power (but then, what doesn't?). Early examples of power issues were when the foundation implemented major technical changes either without sufficient community input or against many people's wishes. A few years ago they banned a long-time user in a way that, to put it mildly, caught people off-guard and many saw as an overreach into on-wiki business. As for money, they have a lot of it, and there are a lot of conflicting ideas about how it should be spent. There will always be tension between a group of volunteers who puts in a huge amount of free labor to create a product and an organization whose employees are well-paid thanks to that free labor. It puts everyone in a tough spot. The biggest of all issues is probably the allocation of resources -- debates over where money should go. Some say the foundation has too much money, hoarding some and spending some on things that are too far removed from its actual purpose. Lately that criticism has taken the form of objections to fundraising banners. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:31, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
"What is the WMF's objective, or purpose for hosting this series of websites?" - The Wikimedia Foundation was founded after Wikipedia, to be the corporate structure that owns the servers Wikipedia runs on. Prior to that Wikipedia was being run on the servers of Bomis, but when it started to become unprofitable it was spun off to a new, non-profit entity (the WMF). It was founded as a non-profit, with a mission "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
One of the conflicts between the WMF and the community come down to who is serving who. Does the WMF exist to serve the community and enable the community to produce free educational content? Or does the community exist to further the WMF's goals of developing and disseminating free educational content? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 14:56, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
Asking "who is serving who" is not really the right question. It's a symbiotic relationship; neither could exist without the other. People (on both side) seem to forget that a lot. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:12, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
After analyzing the responses I see it largely has to do with people's donations and the controversial ways to which they are spent. Thanks for the answers - I feel a lot more informed about this. -- Coolman2917 (talk) 15:25, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
Aside from that, sometimes the community also have issues on how independent en-wiki should be, or how far WMF could govern en-wiki. The biggest debacle ever is WP:FRAM, which is still remembered by many editors, and in my opinion, many editors see it as WMF infringing on the independency of en-wiki. But most debacles are about how the editors see WMF as "begging" for money from readers, while WMF doesn't provide the editors (that are improving Wikipedia constantly) enough tools to improve the Wiki. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 02:59, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
The WMF needs Wikipedia far more than Wikipedia needs the WMF. Andreas JN466 07:56, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
It is a symbiotic relationship at present, but the assertion that WMF needs the community is increasingly untrue. Most of the work of the community is done by a core of content contributors, and as WMF's endowment becomes larger, it becomes increasingly possible for WMF to employ contributors. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 17:35, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
An interesting proposition.
The m:Wikimedia Endowment currently stands at around $120 million (we don't know exactly, because the WMF won't say ...). According to Wired's excellent "Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet", Britannica contributors were paid the equivalent of 50 cents per word in today's money. English Wikipedia contains 4.2 billion words, so employing people to produce that amount of words would have cost over $2 billion. (Bear in mind though that with constant editing and arguing, the actual number of words typed into Wikipedia is far greater ...) Over 21 years and at about 200 million words per annum (which corresponds roughly to the current rate at which words are added to English Wikipedia), that works out at approximately $100 million a year, which is indeed within the WMF's reach today. However, that is only English Wikipedia, and the administration and recruitment costs involved in employing such a huge number of writers would be astronomical.
More importantly, perhaps, would a Wikipedia written by paid authors be Wikipedia? I don't think so. If you retain a crowdsourcing element, then the authors would have to spend much of their time engaging with improvement suggestions rather than writing new articles, which would drive up cost. Secondly, if the WMF moved to a paid contributor model, the volunteer community would fork and keep the volunteer-run project going somewhere else. Finding an alternative host and funding would be relatively easy – we know that Wikipedia can run on $5 million a year. At least a proportion of the public would prefer that project, which puts in question how much money the WMF could actually make from "their" project. Paid contributors vs volunteers would be an interesting contest (and we know how Britannica vs Wikipedia ended ...).
Incidentally, the creation of Wikipedia as a whole (all languages) involved about 3 billion edits (an edit being anything from a typo correction on a talk page like this to posting a 5,000-word article in mainspace in one fell swoop). As the WMF now takes about $170 million in revenue each year, this means each volunteer edit is worth about 5 or 6 U.S. cents per annum to the WMF. Cheers, Andreas JN466 19:01, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Hey there. I'm still forming my thoughts on the WMF, but here's some of what I've observed to be the areas of tension: User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Community tension with the WMF. Don't forget the WMF also does a lot of good work too. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:21, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. Coolman2917 (talk) 11:22, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

@Coolman2917:, To some extent, I think it's partly a reflection of human nature. When everything is going fine, you don't get feedback: have you called your auto mechanic lately, to tell them how much you appreciate it that your car is running fine, or your plumber to let them know the faucet is still not leaking nine years later, or FedEx that they've successfully delivered the 17th package this year without a hitch? Putting it another way: the views you read are biased in a natural way, reflecting the things people don't like or want to change. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 18:25, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Interesting way to put it.. I like when everyone has different opinions, it provides a nice thing to discuss and an objective to agree on all terms. 𝘾𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙢𝙖𝙣2917 (talkpage) 20:29, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
I like Mathglot's answer here; I note that I am almost always entirely satisfied that the WMF acts in good faith in what it believes are the best interests of all of its communities. That being said, I also like that the WMF really pisses a lot of really loud people off. Not because I agree that those people are justified in their vitriol, but because any organization with money and power needs to have its feet kept to the fire all day and every day. It's the Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? issue. Anytime someone with any power over anything isn't being actively stared at, you can usually believe that they are doing something untowards. I have generally agreed with most decisions of the WMF, and where I have had my disagreements with the things they have done, I have generally at least understood their motivations and accepted that they are working in the best interests of a LOT of moving parts, and sometimes my perspective is not going to be the one that wins out in those situations. But, like I said, I only trust them because I know there are people who will hate every single move they make, and will thus scrutinize and attack everything. That's a GOOD THING in a functioning democratic society. All leaders should constantly feel under attack all the time; it's the only way that we know they are keeping everyone's best interests at heart. Even people I agree with, I appreciate that there's someone who doesn't agree with them keeping them on their toes. --Jayron32 18:24, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Fake Wikipedia app for Android

I have detected a fake Wikipedia app called Search Wikipedia and developed by "Apps Nesst" on Google Play Store. Could you take action against that fake app? --Agusbou2015 (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

All Wikipedia text and most images are freely licensed for reuse, including for commercial purposes. There is nothing wrong with this app, although I have no intention of using it. Cullen328 (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
@Cullen328: Wouldn't the app violate WMF's trademark? –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 03:29, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I do not think so, MJL. If I were to write a book about Twitter, that would not violate Elon Musk's trademark, just like our article Twitter is not a trademark violation. Cullen328 (talk) 17:10, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
@Cullen328: Eh, I don't see think that comparison holds true. If I write about Twitter, there's a clear separation that makes it clear I'm not affiliated with them. "Search Wikipedia" is not as clear (while also directly competing with our own app of course) and probably falls closer to something like Wikipedia Art which was allegedly a trademark infringement (according to the WMF). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:12, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Yes, according to the WMF. I very much doubt that their view would stand up in court, and doubt even more that a simple statement like "search Wikipedia" would do so. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:42, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
MJL, the Wikipedia Art website is still up, 13 years later. So much for the WMF's legal theory. Cullen328 (talk) 20:45, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really know what's going on there
(or at the WMF for that matter). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 21:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I am also not a lawyer, but my understanding of trademark law is that it's based on the likelihood of confusion on the part of the average person. The top of the website contains a prominent disclaimer This web site documents a performance art work that promotes critical analyses of the nature of art, knowledge and Wikipedia. It is not affiliated with Wikipedia in any way. The Wikipedia website is located at wikipedia.org. which was not present on the only version of the website available on the internet archive dated before the legal letter was sent [12] (18 February 2009), nor in the screenshot in the letter [13] (PDF page 2; letter dated 23 March 2009). The disclaimer is present in the first version archived after the date of the letter [14] (27 June 2009). It is likely therefore that the legal people took/take the view that the disclaimer is sufficient to avoid confusion and/or sufficient that legal proceedings would not be straightforward and thus not worth spending money pursuing. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
Companies can use purely descriptive terms to describe themselves without violating trademark. A repair shop that fixes Ford cars, for example, can call themselves a Ford repair shop. Typically, though, to avoid confusion that they are unaffiliated, they will include an explicit statement saying so. Trademarks can be used by others as long as there is little possible of confusion, either through explicit disclaimers or because the two entities are not in related areas. isaacl (talk) 21:24, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Reporting this to legal-tm-vio@wikimedia.org is probably the best thing to do. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

WMF Blog post - "7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia"

Posted at medium. The seven reasons provided by the WMF, with longer explanations available at the blog post, are:

  1. We’re a nonprofit, and readers and donors around the world keep us independent.
  2. Wikipedia serves millions of readers and runs at a fraction of the cost of other top websites.
  3. Reader donations support the technology that makes Wikipedia possible and improvements to how people read, edit, and share knowledge on Wikipedia.
  4. We’ve evolved to meet new needs in a changing technology landscape and respond to new global threats.
  5. We manage our finances responsibly and balance Wikipedia’s immediate needs with long-term sustainability.
  6. Supporting Wikipedia means you’re helping it become more representative of all the world’s knowledge.
  7. Contributions from readers keep us going.

BilledMammal (talk) 02:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Can I start a list of reasons you shouldn't:
  1. We're rolling in money already...
AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Exactly. I find it absolutely absurd that they decided to create a blog post about it. What are we lying to people now about Wikipedia's money situation? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 02:29, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure we have all the data we need to critique these claims properly, but I'll have a go anyway:
  1. Long term, individual donations help ensure independence. However, much of the WMF's income is from large companies. (See discussion below)
  2. Probably true, though Wikipedia also runs on a fraction of the amount donated.
  3. A tiny percentage of reader donations support the technology. Most of the money goes on salaries, opaque funds and virtue signalling.
  4. Corporate mission-speak is difficult to prove or refute.
  5. It should be easy to manage responsibly with donations approaching 100 times the cost of running the servers, but many important technical requests go unfunded.
  6. Is donors' money spent on influencing Wikipedia's content? Presumably this refers to small sums spent to fund articles on underrepresented topics.
  7. The accumulated surplus would keep Wikipedia's disks spinning for at least a century.
Finally, no one is able to "donate to Wikipedia": the Donate link in the sidebar headed Wikipedia sends most of the money elsewhere. Certes (talk) 11:06, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I can answer 4. "We’ve evolved to meet new needs in a changing technology landscape and respond to new global threats." You've tried evolving when it's not needed, and there are no global threats that money can stop. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:08, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
To be fair regarding #3, some of the salaries go to people who maintain and improve the technology. It's not all unnecessary as you imply. Unfortunately some of the salaries go to bad management, people who push US culture war stuff, and such. Anomie⚔ 12:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
much of the WMF's income is from large companies - that statement simply isn't true. Seddon talk 00:11, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
I agree it's a relatively small proportion overall, though still quite a lot – how many million a year would you say, for Foundation and Endowment combined? Andreas JN466 00:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm not up to date with the specifics these days but if I had to guess its probably only about 3-4% of the total revenue in a given year, especially if you omit matching gifts programmes which are directly driven by gifts from individuals. Even our major gifts program is mostly driven by individuals and based off of the 2020-21 fundraising suggests an average of $600 for the whole programme. Seddon talk 00:50, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
But to be clear, the issue I take is with describing it as "much of the WMF's income". Seddon talk 00:51, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
It may in part be a response to social media threads like [15] and [16] but there is always something like this in the run-up to a fundraising campaign. Expect a fluff piece in some major newspaper soon.
As for 6, historically this has generally involved employing some highly paid consultants to try to get people in developing countries to work for Big Tech and Wikipedia for free, like [17] or [18], usually with dire results. Andreas JN466 11:36, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Note that the same blog post is also at https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2022/11/03/7-reasons-you-should-donate-to-wikipedia/ --Andreas JN466 12:04, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh look, the WMF abusing the confusion between WikiPedia and WikiMedia again to scam people into donating money to WikiMedia while pretending you are donating to WikiPedia. Highly ethical behaviour from User:Lgruwell-WMF there. Too bad the rename of Wikimedia to make it even more confusing didn't work. Fram (talk) 11:28, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Related to this, some of the banners the WMF is currently trialling include the following:

Here’s what your donation enables:

  • Improvements on Wikipedia and our other online free knowledge projects.
  • Support for the volunteers who share their knowledge with you for free every day..
  • Resources to help the Wikimedia Foundation advance the cause of free knowledge in the world.

Given the lack of technical support in the areas we need it, like WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU and NPP, the first two points seem a little dishonest. BilledMammal (talk) 12:31, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

When has the WMF ever been honest regarding donations? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:09, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Seddon talk 01:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
The answer that we have had before to such doubts is that anything that increases the amount of donations to the WMF is by definition good. Fundraisers are only judged by the amount of funds that they raise, however unethically they may do so. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:48, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I no longer donate and no longer edit. Here's why Foreskin. Thelisteninghand (talk) 18:14, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

  • Some seriously duplicitous comments by some individuals here: Certes said that large companies donate most of the WMF's money, which is not just wrong but egregiously so - and still hasn't struck through that statement; Blaze Wolf has made allegations of lying that if against another editor on this level of evidentiary basis would be viewed as a personal attack; BW also suggests that there is no threat to wikipedia that can be handled by money - tell me, did the WMF parts of the legal teams and internal administrative support of Block of Wikipedia in Turkey happen for free? Or compliance with changing privacy law? By all means be opposed to wasteful expenditures like the equity fund - but if you're inaccurate or unpleasant elsewhere, part of your reasoning being legit won't cut it. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:31, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you for pointing out my error, though I deny the allegation that it was duplicitous. I have struck through my comment at my first opportunity, the error having first been pointed out at 00:50 this morning whilst I was asleep. So, if not large companies, where is the money coming from? Does 96% of income really come from private individuals donating a few dollars each? Certes (talk) 10:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Certes - it's over 85% of the new revenue (that is, excluding endowment's own effects) is indeed individuals outside the major gifts category (which is $1000+). A person donating £800 is obviously not a "few dollars", but the average donation amount is between $5-15, depending on region. Of the issues I have with WMF fundraising, that they are so heavily focused on small donations from large numbers of people is not one of them - donor pressure is simply not an issue, and for most charities - it is. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:34, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you for the clarification. That suggests that about 20 million individuals donate to the WMF, a number I find surprisingly high. Some will be millionaires who can easily afford a three-figure donation, but I am still concerned that less wealthy donors may give sums they will miss without properly understanding how their money is used. Certes (talk) 10:50, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    More like 9 million, given an average donation of about $13 outside the major gifts bucket? And that sounds very reasonable given the Wikimedia traffic each year. Another key fact is that over half the donations are under $10 - it'll only be a few % donating triple figures. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:05, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Certes and Nosebagbear: The 20/21 fundraising report spoke of 7.7 million donors and a donation total of $155 million. The report contains a further breakdown – major gifts were $18.4 million and so forth. Note that gifts to the endowment are not included in that total. The endowment seems to average about $20 million a year, $5 million of which each year comes from the WMF itself (and is listed as an expense in the WMF's financial statements, under "Awards and grants"). The WMF board also decided last year that money left to the WMF in people's wills would go to the Endowment instead: [19] Andreas JN466 17:40, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    The WMF does not need anymore money cause they have enough already and basically claiming that Wikipedia might go away soon if they don't get more is just straight up lying as it isn't true. If you want to think that the WMF needs all the money it can get go ahead, but I'm sticking with what I am saying. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:13, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Blaze Wolf - please tell me, which ones out of the 2022 test banners we've had have indicated "basically claiming that wikipedia might go away soon"? It was a real problem with the 2020 banners, but all those I've seen for this year's are much better on that particular phrasing. It's certainly possible I've missed one or more (likely, in fact), but can you direct me to them if you're going to hold this position on that basis Nosebagbear (talk) 15:42, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    I'm not going to argue with you over this. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:59, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    Indeed, it's noteworthy that although the current banner does ramp up the donor pressure by pleading twice to Please don’t scroll past this., it no longer seems to hold the sword of Damocles over the head of readers/editors by saying that Wikipedia will cease to exist without its donation. It does say If you donate just $2.75, or whatever you can this Thursday, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years., which is somewhat mealy-mouthed phrasing, in that it does not explicitly outright state a cause-and-effect relationship; it merely says it could keep thriving. Of course, this is just one banner I've seen while logged out, and for all I know they could be running more threatening banners that I'm not aware of. It's also interesting that they no longer call $2.75 "a cup of coffee", like they always used to do in years past. In my opinion, the more ongoing problem - and I've said this in the past - is the people who feel they have a vested stake in Wikipedia by donating, and thus they feel that threatening to withhold donations will allow them leverage in disputes or requests. This is undoubtedly a direct result of the pleading and beseeching that WMF does every year. When you create a culture that Wikipedia is run by some homey little local non-profit that exists only on the goodwill of their fellow man, you are in fact deceiving people in a very dishonest fashion. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 16:04, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    I wouldn't be suprised if $2.75 isn't "a cup of coffee" anymore because of inflation and other stuff. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:43, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    A small sampling of the test banners the WMF has ran in the past month can be found here. BilledMammal (talk) 22:14, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    One wording I saw in the last few days asked me (humbly, probably) to protect Wikipedia, another banner I saw and saved in late October said: To all our readers in the UK. Please don't scroll past this. This Monday, for the 1st time recently [I wish ...], we interrupt your reading to humbly ask you to defend our independence. 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. We're a non-profit that's also a top-ten global website, with the same costs as other major sites. Advertising isn't evil but it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just £2, or what you can this Monday, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. We ask you, humbly: please don't scroll away. If Wikipedia has given you £2 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. There has actually been low-level fundraising throughout the past four months already, euphemistically described as "tests". (I don't think they give the money they receive during these tests back to people saying, "Hey, this was only a test. Thank you for responding." ) I've seen at least four or five banners recently, and I am not often logged out.
    What the WMF never talks about either is its continuous spending growth. Its expenses more than double every five years, and it has had eight-figure surpluses for 9 of the past 11 years. So the money demands are never really about "protecting Wikipedia" or "defending Wikipedia's independence", they are about funding WMF growth and growing the Endowment. The average donor is completely unaware of this. Andreas JN466 17:54, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    I must correct a misstatement on your part Andreas. As far as I am aware, endowment banners use different messaging which expressly states the funding is for the endowment and for "the future". It can't really get more explicit. Seddon talk 18:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    A banner from 2021 to confirm. Seddon talk 18:52, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Seddon: Every year, the Foundation donates at least $5 million of its own money to Tides for the Endowment. In recent years, money going to Tides generally amounted to about half of the entire "Awards and grants" total. But I do remember that last December the Foundation actually stopped the fundraiser for a few days because of volunteer complaints and then ran a specific Endowment banner for a few days in December. But wasn't this quite exceptional? I don't recall another occasion where specific Endowment banners were shown. Regards, Andreas JN466 18:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    I also disagree with Andreas' general point. If the endowment funded our entire spend, then it would feel odd, but our surplus is (very) large but not on that scale. Donating excess raised to the endowment is also fairly standard - should we suggest they must spend everything? The WMF's "lag-time" on amounts raised is fairly substantial (particularly with the growing amount of recurring donations - figuring out whether they are true recurrings or not is difficult) - so I would also get that endeavouring to go (right, it's the 22nd, we've done what we need, shift to an endowment one) is tricky.
    But it may not be impossible - Walt notes that the banners aren't as drastically doom-heavy as they were. I would also concur with him that the multiple "don't scroll past this" mentions are unnecessary (although I imagine they are effective). On top of that, a shift to more positive language should be tried - if we go "we have secured Wikipedia's independence", "we haven't run ads and we won't", and talking about some of those expensive projects that the community actually agrees with (as opposed to, say, the equity knowledge fund) - those are some better changes to make. And given that we do run significant surpluses, perhaps we should say that a shift to endowment banners at the "best guess of annual plan goal reached" should be standard for this and future years? Nosebagbear (talk) 22:50, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    There isn't just a large surplus; spending just went up by 30% and there still was a large surplus. Wikipedia makes a good cash cow. For the effectiveness of "don't scroll past this" see [20] – apparently the phrase works wonders. Andreas JN466 23:11, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    To be clear, I don't object to the endowment per se – only to the mismatch between stockpiling money, skyrocketing expenses and inflated executive salaries on the one hand and fundraising messages claiming an urgent need for money "to keep Wikipedia online" (this year's email campaign) or "defend our independence" (current banners). And we know the more money people give, the more the WMF will spend on itself. Andreas JN466 23:27, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
    @Nosebagbear: I realise I failed to respond to your constructive suggestion. Sorry. Switching to Endowment banners once the annual plan target is reached would make a lot of sense. However, the annual plan calls for an increase of about $20 million in revenue over the year just ended. Annual spending just increased year on year by more than 30 percent. How to handle the fact that WMF fundraising goals increase every year far in excess of inflation? Andreas JN466 21:38, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Procedures on test accounts

Following an extended discussion on this board in August, the foundation has finalized and posted new policy. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:14, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a very positive outcome, the policy looks solid... and short, and clear, which is much appreciated :-) Levivich (talk) 19:30, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Announcements

WP:VPM has new WMF announcements about fundraising banners and committee opportunities. Rather than repeat such items, I suggest that editors interested in future news watchlist WP:VPM. Certes (talk) 13:55, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Community wishlist survey every two years

Another announcement, just in via Tech News: Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting. Time to take things into our own hands? Certes (talk) 23:29, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm rarely openly critical of the WMF, but the CWS announcement concerns me. As I understand it, the gist of the announcement was "We don't have enough staff to keep up with the requests, so we're taking action to reduce the number of requests we get". I would have hoped they would do the opposite, i.e. increase the number of staff allocated to the work. There's a note from @DannyH (WMF): at meta:Community Wishlist Survey/Updates/2023 Changes Update that they are "taking this announcement down". It's not clear if that means they've changed their mind, or that they just want to rephrase things. Danny, could you clarify the intent for us? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:52, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
Well, given that the community itself had criticized the WMF earlier for holding a new CWS while the wishes from the last remained unfulfilled, the move seems logical. – SD0001 (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
I think the criticism was that wishes remained unfulfilled a year later, rather that the annual CWS continued. Certes (talk) 18:58, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
Hi all — I understand that the initial announcement and then taking it down has caused some confusion. Our intention with the Community Wishlist Survey moving to a two-year cadence was so that the team can take on more complex wishes. However, I understand the concerns with this approach, and our goal is not to reduce the number of requests we get, or the chances for input. We haven't made a final decision regarding changes to the timing of the CWS, and we hear and will take all of these concerns into account. Let me know if you have questions. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
I will also state, that this would be a terrible decision. You are doing team driven management of the problem here, instead of goal driven. I understand that the team needs more time for some of these projects, in part because they have to do more with less and because some of the asks have become more complex. But considering how many times I and others have stated (including in meetings attended by senior wmf management) that the foundation's whole problem is that they should do MORE little stuff for the editing community, more polishing, more bug fixing and especially be more responsive, a two year cadence leaves a terrible gap. A gap that the community tech team was founded to fill in the first place. Back to the drawing board. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:41, 22 November 2022 (UTC)
I too was concerned by this announcement. I'd like to see enough resources provided to the community tech team to hold the wishlist more often, not less often. With a good amount of devs, an ideal cadence to hold the wishlist might be every six months. It's important to shorten that feedback loop between requesting software and receiving software.
I honestly think there is huge potential to improve community relations by increasing the size of the community tech team, so that they can do the wishlist more often and deliver more wishes. WMF sometimes works on abstract software and ideas (e.g. Wikimedia Enterprise, Knowledge Equity Fund, etc.), and some volunteers don't feel that volunteers tangibly benefit from these. The wishlist is something that volunteers do directly and tangibly benefit from. The wishlist puts volunteers in the driver's seat. It deserves WMF upper management's full attention.
I'll step off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:21, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae and DannyH (WMF): combining these views, perhaps splitting the wish list into small requests held every ~6-12 months and large requests held every ~12-24 months would be worth discussing (if feasible)? It's not always easy for non-technical users to know the scale of the requests though, so ideally each request would be responded to with a back-of-the-envelope outline of how much work would be involved in implementing it, and whether any teams (e.g. legal, trust & safety, etc) would/might need to sign off on it. Thryduulf (talk) 04:37, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
You are not aware Thryduulf, that Novem Linguae and others are highy competent with MediaWiki and can run rings around most of the salaried engineers. We already costed out the need for engineering for the NPP and newbie onboarding issues that were discussed. NL alone has already done 1,000s of $$ worth of work for free for the WMF. He churns out his patches in days and then has to wait for for weeks for the code reviews. Our volunteers are not the WMF's galley slaves. Either employ him as a contractor and give him +2 or hire other staff; either way it's going to cost money, but not a lot, and the Foundation is swimming in so much cash they are looking for any ways of spending it or even giving it away - except on required development. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:35, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Whether that is true or not, that is completely irrelevant to my suggestion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:31, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
So the WMF budget continues to skyrocket and yet the CWS is running less often now? Classic WMF. WP:CANCER —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 02:50, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
  • I am very concerned about these recent statements from DannyH (WMF) especially as he sat in on a video conference between members of the volunteer communities and very senior staff barely two weeks ago. The meeting was essentially about increasing the engineering workforce. The community was however again met with many vague excuses as to why this 'apparently' can't be done despite a huge glut of funds. With most of the traditional encyclopedic topics already covered and under continual updating by regular gnomes, growth is probably at a sustainable level already and hardly any of the new articles arriving are important or urgent material. Expenditure on costly 'Growth' experiments to recruit and retain more editors are not a priority for software development, nor have they been requested by the Wikipedias. Now the WMF wants to cut back the support for the communities even more. I find this highly disturbing in the wake of that very recent meeting.
It will certainly now not encourage the volunteers to continue to do the WMF's development and repair work for free, or even think out of the box for new ideas as they have been doing recently. Instead, even patches and minor features developed by Wikipedians are being rejected for code review at Phabricator which now appears to adopt a stance of gatekeeper for policy and the purse. It does indeed look as if the WMF is determined to exasperate the volunteers even more. The community vs WMF relations are once again at a very low ebb and it's a question how long the volunteers will continue to tolerate this before making a drastic stand. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

This reduction of output is particularly frustrating in light of meta:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Larger_suggestions#1%. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:41, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  • My occasionally pragmatic self does have to wonder and go "the WMF is shortly going to have to decide what to do about the RfC over at VPR on fundraising banners. Even amongst those who oppose deleting the banners, are hardly enthralled with them (a category including myself). Is everyone just too nervous to phrase it as messily as "buy the community" [A better phrasing would be interim community-driven, but not dominated, expenditure]. If, for every $ the WMF would like to spend on the equity fund, they put $5 extra into a second Wishlist team (with the first team's budget increasing at least in line with inflation), I imagine complaints will reduce. Regarding Kudpung's comments, some of which is accurate, and some of which is not, I have to specifically call out his comments on the Growth (retention) work as inaccurate. Both in terms of the specific projects being unwanted and the focus on them as the proximate cause of the dearth of desired expenditure seem unwarranted. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:55, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone know the positions of our representatives on the board, on this issue? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:12, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a good question but any views they hold would be ignored. A fundamental problem is the disconnect between the elite who have taken over the WMF and the noisy members of the bazaar who do the work. The only way to bridge that would be for the community to conduct a large discussion to produce a short statement of the problem (insufficient maintenance resources) and a proposed solution (more developers). Then representatives would politely draw the attention of the WMF to our humble request. Then escalate through the media. We need to acknowledge that the wishlist process has major problems in that shiny glitz gets more votes than, for example, anti-spam tools. That also needs to be addressed. Johnuniq (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

So this might sound a bit stupid, but the CommTech team has not been reduced or they are not working on other things in the missing year. This means the output won't change so it's not a redaction in resources (they are going to be paid the same, they are not taking extra vacations, their focus won't shift, etc.). It's just instead of doing top 5 wishes every year, they are gonna get to top 10 every two years (maybe 11 since they don't have the overhead of running an extra survey). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for increasing the resources for the community and I have been advocating for it, maybe we can have two teams, etc. But this is not a redaction IMHO. That being said, I think in technical spaces, commtech shouldn't be the only way community have a say on what needs to be done. CommTech's mandate is to fix specific technical problems. That's important but not all community should tell WMF. For example, the community should be able to tell WMF to work on multimedia for a while, to work on NPP for a while, and there is no way to do that. And it's a massive problem, I agree but I don't think it's solvable through CommTech. Ladsgroupoverleg 03:14, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Missing option on "please donate" banner - "no, and don't ask again"

I just look something up on Wikipedia on my work machine (in Australia), where I am not logged in, and see a banner asking me to donate money. It's annoying of course, but making it even more annoying are the specific options I can click on:

  • "I already donated" (I haven't),
  • [select donation type, amount, method then] "Continue" (which I don't want to do)
  • "Maybe later" (no, I'm not going to change my mind next time you nag me)

Please add a link "No, and don't ask me again".

For the record, I actually would be happy to donate some money (in addition to my time) if I could do so without giving you my e-mail address. Surely it's not too hard to just display the receipt in the browser for me to print or save. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:53, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

I use the "Don't ask me again" option here, but I'd rather not have to. The assumption that everyone wants to donate either "now" or "later" is the height of arrogance. To be fair, implementing an option not to ask again may require collecting more user data then either you or Wikipedia might like, unless a cookie on your current device would be acceptable. Certes (talk) 11:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm no expert, but the only ways of tracking who doesn't want to be asked again would be cookies, tracking the IP address or a flag on/against your account name and none are perfect. Cookies could only work per device and would be time limited (GDOR apparently recommends 12 months, Chrome allows a maximum of 400 days; asking once per year doesn't seem unreasonable to me though). IP addresses would have issues of both false positives and false negatives and would be particularly unreliable for those on highly dynamic ranges (I also don't know if its compatible with the Foundation's non-public data policy). A flag on your account would obviously only work for logged in users (and would be per account not per person, but again this seems perfectly reasonable to me), however it would likely require a change to the software that would need to be signed off by multiple teams (including for compliance with the privacy policy) so it seems very unlikely this could be practically implemented this year even if it is seen as the desirable option. Thryduulf (talk) 13:21, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
A cookie would be reasonable under the circumstances (assuming that they are going to display the banner at all). It's the principle of asking and then not allowing "no, never" as an answer that irks me. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm not certain I'd want such an answer box, honestly. I'm reminded of all the nag-boxes that Microsoft throws at you when you try to install any Internet browser other than Microsoft Edge. Why give them an opportunity to say "please reconsider" if you say "no, never"? I like Certes's idea better. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 19:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for your message Mitch Ames, you can find more details on other ways to give here.
Additionally you can hide the donation banners. They are designed to show to readers that have enabled cookies on their browser, and to hide after the banner is shown a few times or after a donation. Hiding, however, depends upon a cookie that we insert in the browser. Banner hiding won't work if you clear your browser's cache, delete cookies, or change browsers or computers. There are several options available to you to hide the fundraising banners in the future:
  • If you click on the 'already donated' button, or the X in the corner of our banner (or No thanks/Close on a banner on a mobile device), it will hide for one week;
  • If you donated, the ‘Thank You' page will give the a browser cookie. You can revisit the page for a chance to reinsert the cookie. If you read Wikipedia on multiple devices, please visit this page on each of them to suppress the banners.
Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 07:45, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps instead of showing me all the hoops and the order in which I am required to jump through them, WMF might consider just making it simple and reader-friendly.
  • Add a "no, and don't ask me again" button to the banner
  • Do not make the e-mail field mandatory
Mitch Ames (talk) 08:17, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Meetings about misinformation with FBI, CISA, etc..

Re: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/ Are there centralized contribution pages regarding changes made that were requested by these organizations, or are any changes made by uncollated accounts? -- Jeandré, 2022-11-02t16:25z

The report says that someone from Wikipedia (which I interpret to mean WMF) spoke to US government organizations about how Wikipedia addresses misinformation. It doesn't say that any changes were made to Wikipedia. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Pinging user @Jeandré:. But as TBUA said, CISA didn't ask for any edits at all from the WMF, and the WMF in turn hasn't made any disinformation edits. Intercept (who I normally like) had a rather poor article here. As well as asking how we address misinformation, the meetings also were things like "we think X might be trying to add disinformation, you guys should be aware" rather than "Remove edits a, b, c to get rid of this disinformation". Nosebagbear (talk) 10:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
I recall that the Wikimedia Foundation's job ads for Disinformation specialists which started to spring up around 2020 ask for Arabic, Russian and Persian language skills (example; apparently, fighting ISIS is also part of the remit). What would interest me to know is how, to what extent and through which kinds of mechanisms WMF work in this field impacts content.
As far as I am aware, the WMF never volunteered the information that it collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security. "Government agencies" were mentioned, yes, but that is a rather unspecific term. (Corrections welcome; maybe I overlooked a disclosure somewhere.) All of this makes it very clear that Wikipedia is a U.S. project. At least I am not aware of the WMF collaborating with any other country's government in a similar way.
See also ongoing related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-08-31/In_the_media#Foundation_help_with_disinformation, where HaeB mentioned a lo-o-o-ong but notable Techdirt critique of the Intercept article. Andreas JN466 11:13, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
In France, big websites should write a report about fake news every year (Report of 2021). It's done by WMF (+ me and a staff member of Wikimédia France if it's more informal meetings). Pyb (talk) 21:37, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, interesting. Regards, Andreas JN466 00:26, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
The WMF has also worked regarding disinformation regarding Indian and Iranian elections, and this work is not limited to the English Wikipedia (e.g. the main target of many disinformation actors relating to Iran is likely to be the Farsi Wikipedia) which is why they recruited people with knowledge of those languages. Thryduulf (talk) 10:28, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
I take it this work was coordinated with the U.S. government rather than the Indian and Iranian governments? Andreas JN466 16:28, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
It doesn't have to have been coordinated with anyone. WMF can have decided, on its own, that deliberately using Wikipedias (of any language) to spread misinformation is counter to its mission, and then it can decide, all by itself, to hire people that can help them do so. I have no idea if this is what they did, but I also didn't jump to any conclusions that they were coerced to do so or coordinated with any government to do so. The best answer is usually the one that involves the least assumptions. --Jayron32 18:12, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
I would further add that while the WMF is headquartered in the US (and, more specifically, is incorporated in the state of Florida), it operates as a Non-governmental organization, not beholden to any government. I see no indication that the WMF would allow itself to be seen as under the influence or control of any government. Fighting misinformation arises out of the second of the five pillars, and is independent of the agenda of any government. - Donald Albury 19:22, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia:Verifiable but not false should be raised to the status of a guideline. At the moment the second pillar says "verifiable accuracy" but points only to verifiability. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:36, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
I simply commented on the coincidence that for about twenty years, the WMF never hired any Disinformation specialists. But just around the time the meetings with the DHS started, it placed multiple job ads for Disinformation specialists speaking the various foreign languages mentioned.
Certainly, it could be completely unrelated and a complete coincidence, but it doesn't seem very likely to me. Andreas JN466 20:04, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Looking back at the earliest Functionaries emails I have saved that mention disinformation, it seems it was a minor incident during the 2020 US election campaign that made the WMF sit up and take notice. It is very clear that the initiative to learn from the incident and get processes etc in place was the WMF's own.
It seems very plausible the US government's interest originates from the same event, but this is speculation on my part.
Sorry for being vague, but the details are in document marked "Private and confidential - not for distribution" so I obviously have to be very careful what I say. It was primarily handled by Oversight and stewards and there wasn't an ANI thread or similar. Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Thryduulf, I appreciate it. Was that the case described in the document shown on the right?
I still have a hard time seeing how this would have naturally segued into a specific interest in Indian and Iranian elections, as well as Arabic and Russian. That seems far more aligned with U.S. foreign policy interests. Regards, --Andreas JN466 13:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
The community has had to deal with attempts by (possibly government supported or aligned) groups trying to control content in various language Wikipedias for a while, now. Simply trying to maintain the neutrality of all language Wikipedias should be enough to explain a desire to fight disinformation with more formal tools. - Donald Albury 14:11, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
It's the coincidental timing and terminology. The WMF left the Croatian Wikipedia in the hands of right-wing extremists for a decade, despite community outcry ... now the belated WMF intervention in that project is held up as the first example of the Disinformation effort in the context of the WMF m:Human rights impact assessment, which is a project run by User:RGaines (WMF), who says on his user page, Prior to joining the Wikimedia Foundation, I worked at the US Department of State leading a portfolio of foreign assistance programs. Andreas JN466 15:08, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
Speaking of government alignment, I recall that as far back as 2012, Hillary Clinton sent Richard Boly to Wikimania. Boly was then in charge of "an ambitious State Department initiative that uses social media and online platforms to change the way employees communicate and reach outside their boundaries to advance U.S. foreign policy interests.
There is a video of his Wikimania address on YouTube. The whole thing was part of a Tech@State: "Wiki.Gov" initiative. (More about this here.)
So I have some sympathy for people living outside the U.S. harbouring suspicions that Wikipedia is essentially aligned with, or infiltrated by, the U.S. government.
I love the U.S. but I'd much rather see Wikipedia clearly aligned with the U.N. than aligned with any national interest. I think it is more compatible with the NPOV idea and would enable Wikipedia to make a more effective contribution to international understanding. Andreas JN466 15:27, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

On this topic, see Slate article published today: No, Wikipedia Is Not Colluding With DHS --Andreas JN466 22:48, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Opening this topic up again, on a broader level in some ways, and much narrower in others.
Firstly addressing some of the above the CIA asking what is done to prevent x or y, is not the same as them saying we do x, y and z. Highlighting the issue and actively trying to counter them are two separate things, the Intercept article, probably gave as much detail as they knew and the sources would not give specific examples as then actors would know they may be compromised.
Next, I agree with most of the above and in these times there are 6 or more States (Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, India and Pakistan) that may want to or are already actively engaged in or pursuing such activities. The counter is wiki is heavily populated with western editors that can reverse most of the blatant propaganda.
However, the clever Russian web brigades are not necessarily blatant, and I believe are active today on wiki en and possibly other wiki's, using standard Russian political techniques of telling verifiable truth e.g. the partial truth, obfuscations (e.g. mixing NPOV, verifiability with propaganda even if on a otherwise RS, a deliberate confusion over contentious and controversial, one needs great sourcing, the other should have as well but not so much and can be tagged with a cn tag, the other conflicts with your view), brigade level tactic i.e. many editors agree or oppose as required certain items, removal of content when a cn tag is much more appropriate or additions and much more.
So, to the crux of my post, have we implemented any direct counter or mitigation to this type of activity, whether US, Russia or even little ol NZ (I know we are actively trying to influence), identifying and restricting these accounts in some manner, possibly with some subtly, such as tasking good users to report them, conducting a review and blocking for a week, restricting topics they can edit and see if they disappear, checking locations or VPN use, verifying the same, rechecking SHA, double checking edits for suspicious locations or VPN etc, obviously I have not covered even 10% of possible mitigation or identification methods of such actors and any methodology to combat should probably not be revealed in any public forum, however, at this time I cannot see any and there are far to numerous to mention Russian, Ukrainian and other articles going into various disputes on the talk pages where the tactics above are prevelant. Thoughts2404:4408:638C:5E00:7527:D2E8:A117:F6A (talk) 00:23, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

WMF-Enwiki Communication Venue

One of the issues in the Enwiki-WMF relationship is the lack of communication. A step towards addressing this would be to make this page a formal communication venue, which would require the WMF to commit to posting all communications here, as well as to monitor this page for communications from Enwiki and respond as appropriate.

Requesting this is difficult, because as far as I am aware there is neither a venue to make such a request in nor a contact person to make such a request to, and so instead I am floating the idea here. BilledMammal (talk) 22:15, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Just on the note of whom to contact, your best bet is probably community relations? As always, happy to poke people or ask the question internally — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 22:41, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
Good idea to centralize enwiki-WMF communications here. It'd be good to get a commitment from key people to try to post WMF related correspondence here, instead of at the other Village Pumps. I feel that Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 72#Banners and changes at the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 72#Join the Movement Charter Regional Conversation Hours, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 72#WMF English fundraising campaign update and example banners should have been posted here instead. I also feel it's very important for the WMF to advertise important things going on on metawiki here, so that enwiki is able to participate and doesn't end up out of the loop. Could we perhaps get a notice and/or editnotice placed on WP:VPM stating that WMF related communications should go here instead? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:43, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
To elaborate a bit, I like the idea of a board (this board) where major things going on at the WMF and on meta can be posted, and folks can watchlist it and not miss out on anything big. The fact that this board has a reputation for "complaining" and negativity isn't a good argument for shutting down the board, in my opinion. If anything, it's a good argument for the WMF to assign some community relations folks to watch this board and try to improve relations with enwiki. Community tension with the WMF could be significantly reduced with better WMF communication, and in my personal opinion, that starts with posting big happenings to this board (very early in the process, when we still have a chance to participate in it) instead of surprising us. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:40, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Having a board be hostile towards some of the intended users is a problem that needs addressing and in my view it's not a problem for WMF employees to solve. It's a problem for us volunteers to solve. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Per my comments on the talk page earlier this year I don't think this board should be the place. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
There should be one place, even if it's for a one-line "There is an announcement about Foo at WP:BAR#Foo". This page is an obvious place, and I've been posting such signposts here, but somewhere else would work as long as everyone is (literally) on the same page. Certes (talk) 10:10, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Staff are invited here, however we can post important issues ourselves. We use this page for our discussions and run RFCs as necessary. The WMF's is too often unwilling/unable to constructively address an issue until it hits the final crisis stage. We can't force the WMF to do better, but *we* can try to do better. We can catch issues early, and when appropriate, establish consensus much earlier in the process. Alsee (talk) 09:47, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
  • From my offwiki discussions with folks, it is my understanding that most Foundation staff who are aware of this board view this as the place where volunteers discuss (ie. complain about) the Foundation. What we need is to reform this board and make it more like WP:AC/N (with staff and certain volunteers with official announcements as the arbcom basically). We're as far away from that as possible right now (with this board acting more like WT:AC/N). That's what I want out of this board, and if we aren't going to get that we're probably just going to keep running into this situation. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 19:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
    A model of "announcements only with discussion on the talk page" is an interesting one. I think there might be some value (at least initially) of allowing both community and foundation to make such announcements (perhaps with some reverting mechanism for community adds ala WP:CENT). That's a legitimately intriguing idea to try compared to what had been my preference to just shut it down. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:57, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
    +1 make it like ACN, announcements here, discussion on talk. Levivich (talk) 22:35, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
    If they're true announcements, then I'm fine with the community getting to make announcements, too. If we actually do this, and people try to use the board for their own comments/complaints/concerns, then I'm going to revert them as fast as a non-arb trying to post to WP:AC/N (lol). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 03:58, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
  • For those who are interested in the history of this forum, go read Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 168#Proposal: New Village Pump Page. BTW, Alsee did you ever get your bottle? SilkTork what did you send them? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:17, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
    Given that this thread is about encouraging or requiring WMF to use this forum in the spirit in which it was intended is to me a sign that WMF have not engaged. However, I do feel that the WMF response to objections raised regarding the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been encouraging, and I wish for more such collaboration moving forward, though preferably not under the threats of civil action which prompted that collaboration. If WMF and the Wikipedia community were able to work positively together without hostility or suspicion, then everyone would benefit. SilkTork (talk) 01:52, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
    Of course that's not the only recent major collaboration between community and the foundation. We also have the Vector piece. I would rate that also as a mixed bag but a net positive for collaboration. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
    Reading the tone of community comments on the fundraising subpage (and it was the same at the Vector subpage), I am not hopeful about the prospects of reform. I don't see how we can have meaningful engagement in an environment where anyone can write a pointed diatribe at any time. This of course could be said about every talk page on Wikipedia (and about 20% of my comments). Levivich (talk) 03:57, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Book Library

Z-lib's death got me thnking: I'm going out on a limb, but integrating a proper book library into the Wikipedia Library may be the highest-impact the WMF can do to promote article quality. There's a night-and-day difference between articles that are based on books, and those that are based on web sources. I know archive.org has a small number of books they allow users to borrow for free; but a true free book library (with DRM, time-limited borrowing, and all the necessary compromises), enabled by deals with book publishers, may be the single best thing the WMF can spend its money on. Publishers may find it benefitial too, since their books will be "promoted" all over Wikipedia.

This would certainly be nice, and would likely assuage the community's concerns about the WMF's ample resources. I'm sure it would also help the Women in Red project quite a bit, due to biases in what's available online. DFlhb (talk) 19:24, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

An interesting idea. One problem I see is that publishers are quite protective of their income stream from books. While libraries can check out e-books to patrons, the publishers are limiting how many times a given copy of an e-book may be checked out (their justification is that a paper copy of a book will become unusable after that number of times checked out). If the allowed number of check-outs is reached, the library has to either withdraw the e-book, or buy another license. Unless Wikipedia can convince publishers to adopt a less restrictive policy on borrowing e-books, that could become quite expensive, especially as Wikipedia would not be able to predict how often readers would click on a link to verify citations to a few pages, which would be counted as one of the limited number of borrowings allowed. Donald Albury 19:57, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
This is a troubling area. On the one hand, it's great that information is on line. On the other hand, we're at the point where so much information is on line that people can manage without ever looking beyond that. If I were the owner of On Line Content, Inc, I'd be ecstatic that we'd cornered the market and made our competitors irrelevant. But, that's not how I feel. I'm horrified that there's so much information which is sequestered away, hoarded by the owners who insist on restricting access to it. It's a lose-lose situation. The world doesn't get the benefit of the information. And the owner isn't getting any benefit either because nobody's paying the fees they demand. So, the old book or photo or whatever sits in some storage room somewhere until the rats eat it or it eventually goes into a dumpster because the owner doesn't want to pay to store it any more. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
I am seeing a few chinks in publishers' armor. I recently found on-line a book from an academic press that was out of print. The author still held the copyright on the text, and the original electronic files he had submitted to the publisher. The press was not interested in reprinting the book, so he issued it as a free e-book. I'm also seeing academic authors posting on-line articles and book chapters that were published 10 or 20 years ago. Once books go out of print, there are no further royalties (if there ever were) for the authors, and many in academia seem more interested in having their work available than in trying to generate income from it. On the other hand, I see publishers of journals charging high fees for access to articles that are available for free elsewhere on-line. Donald Albury 22:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Many are being reprinted, either in whole or part, on websites like academia.edu for free (as in beer). The problem is that unless you upgrade to paid access -- or know exactly what you're looking for -- the hunt can be long & tedious to find what you want. -- llywrch (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
I cancelled my paid membership in academia.edu after a year. I'm adding links to potential sources far faster than I can use them. Donald Albury 01:54, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Who would have thought the memex would be stopped not by technological limitations, but by a dumb publishing business model.
I still think publishers could be strongly incentivized to participate, if well-negotiated: restrict it to extended-confirmed editors, so that only a small fraction of editors have access and Wikipedia readers still need to buy these books to read them; and heavily emphasize that these books' prominence in Wikipedia might help their sales, and wouldn't be very different from a university library. It's quite common for universities to allow students to check out digital books, too. Frankly, the WMF should be able to secure corporate and government help in funding this, so they wouldn't bear those costs alone. I doubt the proposal is that unrealistic, it just needs a leader with a good vision, some guts, and good negotiation skills to make it real. DFlhb (talk) 11:59, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
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