Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 6

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Village pump (WMF) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (WMF).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.

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Upcoming updates to the terms of use

Original post on Wikimedia-l. Consultations will begin in February for an update to the terms of use, with planned changes including:

Universal Code of Conduct
CC BY-SA 4.0
Complying with the European Digital Services Act

The terms of use were last updated in 2015. I have no opinion on these changes yet, but I plan to try to post interesting WMF-related things here more as I run across them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:32, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The mailing list email in question is also visible at m:Wikimedia Foundation Legal department/2023 ToU updates. The legal team says it will post updates on this page and use it for consultation. isaacl (talk) 14:18, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The WMF botched the process for the Code, botched the Code itself, has never even sought community approval of the code, failed to get consensus for the proposed Code-enforcement, and the Foundation is going back to their old habits of trying of just steamrolling forwards their assigned work with complete disregard for the fact that they failed 4 step ago. If they want an enforceable Code, if they want to add a Code to the Terms of Service, they have to go back and develop a new Code with actual community consensus. Alsee (talk) 21:07, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2023 opens in January!

Hello

The Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) 2023, which lets contributors propose and vote for tools and improvements, starts next month on Monday, 23 January 2023, at 18:00 UTC and will continue annually.

We are inviting you to share your ideas for technical improvements to our tools and platforms. Long experience in editing or technical skills is not required. If you have ever used our software and thought of an idea to improve it, this is the place to come share those ideas!

The dates for the phases of the Survey will be as follows:

Phase 1: Submit, discuss, and revise proposals – Monday, Jan 23, 2023 to Sunday, Feb 6, 2023
Phase 2: WMF/Community Tech reviews and organizes proposals – Monday, Jan 30, 2023 to Friday, Feb 10, 2023
Phase 3: Vote on proposals – Friday, Feb 10, 2023 to Friday, Feb 24, 2023
Phase 4: Results posted – Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023

If you want to start writing out your ideas ahead of the Survey, you can start thinking about your proposals and draft them in the CWS sandbox.

We are grateful to all who participated last year. See you in January 2023!

Thank you! Community Tech, STei (WMF) 12:59, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Vote for your favourite Wikimedia sound logo

Voting has ended. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:52, 24 December 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.

Voting in the Wikimedia sound logo contest has started. From December 6 to 19, 2022, please play a part and help chose the sound that will identify Wikimedia content on audio devices. Learn more on Diff.

The sound logo team is grateful to everyone who participated in this global contest. We received 3,235 submissions from 2,094 participants in 135 countries. We are incredibly grateful to the team of volunteer screeners and the selection committee who, among others, helped bring us to where we are today. It is now up to Wikimedia to choose the Sound Of All Human Knowledge.

Best wishes, Arupako-WMF (talk) 09:37, 16 December 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.

is wmf having another fundraising drive at the moment?

when I came to the main page just now, without logging in first, I saw a large banner announcing a fundraising drive for the WMF. it was a message from Jimmy Wales. is the WMF currently posting banners for fundraising? I thought there had been some community discussion in the past about that. Sm8900 (talk) 00:55, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

There was, at Wikipedia:Fundraising/2022 banners. In the end, the community and the WMF agreed on some re-worded banners. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:00, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

The current banner campaign runs from 29 Nov to 31 Dec. Banners in other countries and e-mail campaigns run at various times of year. Certes (talk) 11:42, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

uh-huh. one question... What's the relevance of asking for "two dollars"? ...click the preceding link to see my full thoughts on this topic. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 13:40, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

TIL I got quoted in Slate. I gotta say I’m not entirely comfortable with the attention but it’s still better than the last time I got noticed offwiki. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 06:13, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

When are we not having a fund drive? Dronebogus (talk) 16:00, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

There's a list of local fund-raising efforts around the world somewhere on Meta or a similar forum but I can't currently find it. There are short gaps between the drives. Certes (talk) 17:15, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Just to point out Wikipedia:Fundraising/2022_banners#English_fundraising_campaign_ended in case you missed that. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:30, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The list is here: m:Fundraising#Current_fundraising_activities. See also m:Fundraising/Reports. Andreas JN 466 08:46, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. There's another table somewhere, with each row having a language (or country?) and dates, but it wasn't up-to-date and may have been deleted or replaced by a current but less detailed summary. I seem to recall there was something going on somewhere in most months of that year. Certes (talk) 14:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

You may simply be remembering an earlier version of that page, like this one or this one. At any rate, there are indeed lots of campaigns throughout the year, in different countries. The campaign just ended only ran in US, CAN, UK, IRE, AUS, NZ, GER and CH. Andreas JN 466 16:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio-enabling website, ghostarchive.org

Don't know where to report this, so I'm posting here. ghostarchive.org has been used as a paywall bypasser, which is against WP:COPYLINK. In addition to bypassing paywalls, it doesn't seem to have a clear process for allowing copyright holders to request takedowns (unlike archive.org). And it doesn't say who runs it, so there's no reason to believe the archived versions are unaltered or usable even for non-paywall sites. Would recommend we add it to whatever blacklist sci-hub is on.

For instances of use, see this diff where I removed it, and search insource:"ghostarchive.org" On most articles I've seen, it's being used to bypass paywalls, not to archive dead links.

It's used on 500 articles, if I'm using Petscan correctly. To clear the current copyvios, I recomment we remove all these links entirely from the archive-url parameter; IABot can then re-rescue the links with archive.org, if they're really dead. DFlhb (talk) 01:27, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The issue might be discussed at WP:ELN. Searching its archives finds Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard/Archive 25#Ghostarchive where people seemed generally content. This noticeboard is unlikely to be useful as not many would notice here. Another possibility is WP:VPM for a general discussion or WP:VPR if ready to make a specific proposal. Usage: 77 http links + first 500 https links. Johnuniq (talk) 03:20, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

BTW, the generic term for this is license washing or license laundering. See c:Commons:License laundering for a discussion of it in the context of images, but it's the same idea. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks to both of you for your guidance; I've reported it to WP:ELN, and linked to the previous noticeboard discussion. DFlhb (talk) 10:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Saudi Arabia arrests two Wikipedia adminstors

I think we had a discussion about the Foundations investigations to COI editing in the MENA area. This clearly relates.[1] Quoting from the article, readers here may rememberthat " Wikimedia last month announced global bans for 16 users “who were engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the Mena [Middle East and North Africa] region”. In an investigation that started last January, Wikimedia said it “was able to confirm that a number of users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties”. "One administrator was jailed for 32 years, and another was sentenced to eight years, the activists said." NOTE that this happened in 2020 (the arrests, that is, not sure about the sentencing). Doug Weller talk 13:22, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

While this is technically beyond the scope of the English Wikipedia, I think it's in line with our goal of free knowledge to do whatever we can to support editors in nations that suppress free access to information. Are there any ongoing efforts in this regard? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:48, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@Doug Weller OsamaK's sentence was recently (August 2022) substantially increased on appeal. See

https://dawnmena.org/saudi-arabia-government-agents-infiltrate-wikipedia-sentence-independent-wikipedia-administrators-to-prison/

https://alqst.org/en/post/extreme-jail-terms-in-saudi-arabia-signal-new-phase-of-repression

https://dawnmena.org/saudi-arabia-government-appoints-agent-involved-in-khashoggi-murder-cover-up-as-president-of-counter-terrorism-court/

Andreas JN 466 09:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I was just commenting on when this started - presumably the WMF knew about it then. Doug Weller talk 13:33, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

You said you weren't sure when the sentencing happened, so I thought I'd help you out – Osama was in fact sentenced twice, once to five years by a lower court, and then last August to 32 (!) years by the Specialized Criminal Court on appeal.

It seems he was caught up in a Saudi drive to increase punishments for social media posts critical of the King and the government (other people's sentences were increased as well; the third article linked above mentions 34 and 45 years imprisonment against women whose only crime was tweeting in support of reform.

It's somewhat odd that no one at the WMF appears to have commented on these jail sentences to date, apart from Jimmy Wales in this tweet, which doesn't do the subject justice. Andreas JN 466 13:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know those dates. Doug Weller talk 16:04, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

If it's true that Wikimedia has not shown adequate support to the jailed Wikipedians if they were jailed unjustly, I can only say SHAMEFUL! Thinker78 (talk) 03:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Correct indeed. Given the flimsy shameful Wikimedia response even when it received widespread attention, there's good reason to suspect that such problems are more widespread than what were uncovered, across many Wikipedias not excluding here. We are thus forced to consider the possibility that many otherwise useful contents have been lost or otherwise warped due to such interferences.

At this point it's time for all of us to consider content boycott wherein from now on just stop contributing new content here and instead consider using alternative fork sites instead. Deletionism? Financial cancer? Let 'em rot!

Encycla (Git-based)
Justapedia (Created by User:Atsme, rumors are that it's in closed beta now and may be released sometime this year).

After all it's already a bad idea to put so many eggs in a place for so long. The free knowledge movement doesn't have to been restricted to a single platform. 2A04:2180:0:1:0:0:89E4:DE0D (talk) 18:13, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

You have a strong point. It's not in my mind boycotting Wikipedia/Wikimedia, but I do think that it is important to seek a way to let them know our displeasure for the lack of solidarity and empathy, if that's the case (maybe they took actions in favor of the jailed editors that we don't know). I will follow your advise though about seeking alternatives to contribute in addition to Wikipedia because as you say, the free knowledge movement doesn't have to be restricted to a single platform. User:Dennis Brown, User talk:The Transhumanist, User:GoodDay, User:SMcCandlish Thinker78 (talk) 19:04, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I try to stay away from Middle East-related topics. GoodDay (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

If you want to boycott one of the most popular websites in the world in favor of a Conservapedia clone, I say good luck. The rest of us will work on fixing these issues. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:36, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the Foundation can say much, if you look at the situation beyond the surface. This isn't a simple matter. If you want to know when Freedom of Speech began it's decline, look no further than the Patriot Act. Americans started this. If the self-proclaimed protectors of Free Speech won't even protect their own citizens, it emboldens other countries to clamp down, and that is exactly what has happened over the last 20 or so years. That Saudi Arabia would do this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
We should start asking tough questions. For example, how many Wikipedia editors have been jailed or sent to mental hospitals or been victims of "crime" in the US and elsewhere because of their editing efforts? Let's not kid ourselves, Wikipedia is a platform that gets around 300+ million views per day.^[1]Some Wikipedia editors do a lot of investigating that surpass in objectivity that of mainstream journalists. With their findings, they on occassion may inadvertently touch raw nerves in the system. There is no original research, but connecting multiple reliable sources that become their own data sets can be infuriating to state and other actors, as the government of Saudi Arabia and even France have shown.^[2]

Conspiracy theory? I live in Guatemala, where the government over 4 decades killed more than 100,000 Guatemalans during its internal conflict, many times torturing them to death in what eventually was the Guatemalan genocide. Sometimes even students would get disappeard for talking to the wrong person or reading the wrong book. I mean if the Obama DOJ justified assassination of US citizens,^[3] the questions are how extensive are such and similar actions beyond what is known and how safe are we editing? In solidarity, Thinker78 (talk) 23:18, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Dennis Brown, Thinker78, what are you two going on about? This is about two specific editors that have been arrested by a specific entity. Spreading unsubstantiated allegations is not an acceptable use of the Village Pump or any other Wikipedia page. If you want to WP:SOAPBOX about how oppressed Wikipedia editors are, then you might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your opinions. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien you are not the OP and we are not advancing unsubstantiated allegations. I cited specific references for what I said. We are concerned about the implications of these arrests and I cited context about my concern for editors' safety. Per WP:CIVIL, one of the characteristics of direct rudeness is ill-considered accusations of impropriety. In light of these arrests, it is perplexing that you want to unduly censor this discussion, when actually Censorship of Wikipedia is a thing. Somehow the identities of those editors were made known to Saudi authorities. If you don't want us to think how things like that can happen or what dangers we may face as editors, that's a bit concerning. Thinker78 (talk) 00:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Per OP (Doug Weller) initial post, another question I have is, how can we tell if some users are working with external parties to advance the aim of those parties (not talking about simple WP:COI issues) and maybe even putting us in danger somehow? Or is it possible that we can notice? What can we do to stay safer while editing? Any guidance about this? I notice that Wikipedia doesn't allow vpn. Could that have been a reason why the Saudi authorities were able to trace more easily the two editors? Thinker78 (talk) 00:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
But, see Wikipedia:Open proxies#Editors who need to use proxies. Donald Albury 02:22, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
There is a request I started because of this discussion. Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Allow registered editors to use vpn (open proxies) Thinker78 (talk) 17:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Upcoming vote on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

Continuing my efforts to post WMF-related stuff here so that people don't have to keep WP:VPM on their watchlist... Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Upcoming vote on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:25, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll put this on W-Ping but I hope we get a louder reminder when voting opens. Certes (talk) 12:02, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Novem Linguae for the ping here. I will make sure to also ping the messages here in the future. JPBeland-WMF (talk) 23:18, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Note: See Approval of Enforcement Guidelines without first approving a Code of Conduct. (link fixed, new section with revised question) Alsee (talk) 04:28, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Anyone know of any voter guides or summaries of the UCoC? One paragraph summarizing what's in it, and one paragraph summarizing why WMF thinks we need it, would be useful. There's an incredible amount of information to read through on meta and it's a bit overwhelming. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:14, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

The first section in m:Universal Code of Conduct, "Why we have a Universal Code of Conduct", gives an overview of what the code of conduct is intended to help enable. The rest of it is not too long so I'd suggest just reading it to see what's in it. m:Universal Code of Conduct/FAQ might also be helpful. Although overall it has many paragraphs, each answer is just one paragraph. The first question briefly covers what triggered the development of the code of conduct. isaacl (talk) 03:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Voting is now open. Please register your choice here. Certes (talk) 11:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I am ineligible to vote, despite 0 blocks and clearly sufficient activity on enwp. Is there a glitch? Anyone else? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:21, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

You should email ucocproject

wikimedia.org and they can hopefully help you. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Vector 2022 deployment update

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Vector 2022 deployment update. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:26, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Voting now open on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

Just a ping here for this message: Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Voting now open on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct. JPBeland-WMF (talk) 00:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Update from Wikimedia Foundation about fundraising banners

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Update from Wikimedia Foundation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:16, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vector 2022 has an RFC

There is an RfC on whether Vector legacy should be restored as the default skin on the English Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Should Wikipedia return to Vector 2010 as the default skin?. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Note: the RFC is at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 -- RoySmith (talk) 18:16, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at meta:Talk:Community Wishlist Survey § Why I'm so fatigued with the wishlist

You are invited to join the discussion at meta:Talk:Community Wishlist Survey § Why I'm so fatigued with the wishlist. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:26, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello Sdkb! You may be interested in this: m:Community_Wishlist_Survey_2023/Larger_suggestions/Dismantling_of_the_annual_Wishlist_Survey_system Theklan (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia losing ground?

I remember when Wikipedia content began appearing within the first five results of a Google search (a proud moment indeed). Soon after, our content consistently appeared as the first result after any paid ads. This has been the default condition for so long now that I have become accustomed to it, even expectant. Today, I was disconcertingly surprised to see content from "Disney Wiki | powered by Wikia" delivered ahead of Wikipedia content when searching "Michael Clarke Duncan", a subject covered in Wikipedia. If this is the begining of a trend, it is rather ominous in my opinion and I earnestly hope it is a short lived trend that we can help correct. I am keen to see what others say about this, and what others think is the meaning or cause. Thank you. --John Cline (talk) 10:34, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Monopolies are rarely a good thing. If there is any particular reason why monopoly-Wikipedia appearing at the top of monopoly-Google should be an exception to this, I can't think of one. Maybe the Wikia article is better? Haven't looked. Don't particularly care. Write good encyclopaedic content, attract readers looking for good encyclopaedic content, and let the readers decide for themselves what they want to read... AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I mean regardless, Jimbo's probably happy about it :) (note: I don't know how involved Jimbo is involved with Fandom/Wikia nowadays, but he did co-found it). ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 11:01, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes it is losing ground. Especially in niche topics (which we keep out the door) we are starting to see plain better websites than Wikipedia. These websites have more information that people are looking for (read cannot be answered by wikipedia), are 'reliable enough' and many of them are updated faster. And the rest goest to TikTok. This has been happening for a while, but i'm glad more people are starting to notice. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Our goal is to write the best encyclopedia we can. Google's goal is to sell advertising. Sometimes those goals align, sometimes they don't. Worry about doing what we do and let Google worry about what they do. The alternative is we start down the slippery slope of search engine optimization, which would be a serious mistake. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:22, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

What Roy said. Wikipedia's main job is to write high quality, well-researched encyclopedia articles. If no one read those articles, that would still be our goal. Which is not to say that people shouldn't read them. But we write to write, and let everything else figure itself out. --Jayron 32 16:32, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I also agree with what Roy said; with the caveat that I don't believe it comes down to "either or", I perceive a middle ground of other options that we could do, ought do, and ostensibly, should already have done. From such a premise, the problem I associate with letting things resolve themselves, is: it feels like "kicking the can further down the road", procrastinating well into tomorrow things that would have more prudently been resolved yesterday. Having said these, I yield. Best regards and be well. --John Cline (talk) 04:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Michael Clarke Duncan is still the top result for me, but Disney Wiki populates the Knowledge Panel, which is surprising. I don't know if I've seen that for anything other than niche topics. I guess there are three considerations here: is Wikipedia doing something differently or otherwise becoming less popular; are other sites doing something to appear higher up in the results; and has the Google algorithm changed in a way that affects Wikipedia. I suspect it's mostly the latter. Unfortunately, one of the big problems with the giant tech companies is they closely guard those processes, making it hard to tell what/if/when something changes (in another tab, I'm writing about how hard it is to study YouTube in part because in addition to the challenge of studying video content at scale, they don't disclose basic statistics about the site and make it really hard to create a sample of videos unfiltered by the recommendation/prioritization algorithms). IIRC Wikipedia's prominence in the rankings dropped somewhat when, first, Google started incorporating more of our content into e.g. the knowledge panel, and second, when companies like Google and Amazon started using our content more via virtual assistants? Not sure, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:57, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I think this has it right. I think part of the hope of Wikimedia LLC was to make providing data easy enough to Google that this wouldn't happen. FWIW, when I searched on Bing, we were the source of the infobox and we were the #1 result on Duck Duck Go (no infobox presented). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:07, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps relatedly, some searches now use Google's own content for the Knowledge Panel instead of Wikipedia. EpicPupper (talk) 01:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Michael Clarke Duncan is still the top result for me as well. So that one may not be the best example of Wikipedia's Impending SEO Death™. Perhaps a false alarm? On the topic of SEO, I will say that I don't like how Google downranks our medical articles, and I also don't like Google's recent trend towards upweighting listicles. I find myself adding the word "reddit" to search terms to get away from listicles and blogs and to see what regular people think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Just a passing comment thast my search, in regular & incognito mode, with and w/out quutes, still gives me Wikipedia as #1. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:40, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Our goal is to write good encyclopedia articles? Well, we could broaden it to say that's our means to the end, the end goal being to inform the world, which doesn't happen if the world doesn't read our product. So, maybe a slight unease is appropriate even though it's far from being necessarily the brink of a slippery slope down to the pit of doom of Wikipedia. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Important followup question: And if so, is that a bad thing? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:28, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

If our goal is to inform the world, and somebody else comes up with a better way to do that, we should celebrate the advancement of our goal. Paintings on the cave walls were a tool. Stone tablets were a better tool, as were papyrus scrolls, the printing press, and wikipedia, each in turn. There will be better tools in the future. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust

Hi All,

I would like to bring this scholarly article to your urgent attention: Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939) Even though it's title is somewhat suspicious it describes a very specific problem on English Wikipedia which is tragic and unacceptable.There is already a discussion about it here but I believe it requires attention and action from WMF.

Best wishes, Adam Harangozó (talk) 09:57, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Summary of the issue please?

Probably doesn't belong on this particular noticeboard, btw. This noticeboard is for discussing things that the WMF is involved in. The WMF isn't some high court that can overrule enwiki content disputes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:56, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It's about much more than just a "content dispute", and it involves what would today be treated as possible COC violations by a group of editors over several years. Disclosure: I'm one of the editors who were interviewed for this essay. François Robere (talk) 16:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

It reads like a laundry list of past grievances, and it appears most of the links to Wikipedia are malformed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:39, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Again, it's more than that. The essay is two-pronged: one prong is a factual review of several en.Wiki articles on the Holocaust in Poland, which demonstrates a consistent bias towards nationalist Polish narratives; the other is an analysis of the processes and social dynamics that lead to this bias, and why the en.Wiki community and the WMF have failed to address it over the span of years. Most importantly: it highlights some of the community's most glaring blind spots, which leave it vulnerable to certain forms of manipulation and disruptive behavior.

I assume that glitch will be fixed soon enough. In the meanwhile, the links work if you just copy-paste them. François Robere (talk) 21:50, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Francois Robere, since you participated very extensively in the Icewhiz case, posting comments supporting him, and since you subsequently made numerous efforts to have him rehabilitated and to relitigate the case, even after you became well aware of his extensive harassment of Wikipedians, and since you also apparently provided commentary to the authors of this article, perhaps your opinion here is not particularly useful? Volunteer Marek 03:22, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Piotrus and Levivich also provided commentary to the authors of this article, is their opinion not particularly useful? You are covered extensively in the article, is your opinion not particularly useful? For consistencies sake you should take a step back and let uninvolved editors take it from here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia being biased towards nationalist narratives is nothing new. I don't see how this is a WMF issue. CMD (talk) 00:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

m:Croatian Wikipedia Disinformation Assessment-2021. Levivich (talk) 00:15, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

en.wiki is not remotely near that. CMD (talk) 03:33, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

hr.wiki had fundamental issues. This is not that. Curbon7 (talk) 03:58, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

We should put out fires even if they're smaller than the biggest fire we've put out. Levivich (talk) 04:04, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Crying wolf is not a proof of a fire. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:19, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

So, like they did with the Croatian Disinformation Assessment, let's have the WMF spend some money on an investigator to see if there's a wolf. Levivich (talk) 04:33, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

They already did spend time and presumably money investigating this (Trust and Safety globally banned Icewhiz for crying said wolf, after all, I assume they have some salaried investigators on the team?). But maybe an independent, neutral investigation by disinterested parties (which is not the way we can describe the essay discussed here) would be good to put this to bed once and for all. I for one would be happy to cooperate with such an effort; I mean, I did get interviewed for this essay already (although sadly for naught, as far as I can tell nothing I tried to clarify or explain has made in into it, hence the clear one-sidedness of the resulting work). Well, in either case, I am sure WMF is aware of this issue, through this venue and likely others. Time will tell if they decide there is anything here to investigate or just a rehash of aspertions by a harasser they've already site banned. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:44, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm quite willing to believe we have an issue with POV in articles regarding Poland, we do in a lot of areas. But the interweaving of certain individuals as almost heroically standing against the tide cuts its credible to shreds. Without excusing the behaviour of others, those editors where banned because of their behaviour. Behaviour that went far outside what should be expected. By not handling that issues, or that other editors had or have their own POV issues, the arguments it makes are undermined. Or to put it in a simpler way, my original comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 09:32, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

"Those editors"? Who? They certainly don't portray icewhiz as heroic (see the quote HEB posted), and I'm not aware of anyone else who was banned. I don't see them portraying any banned editors as heroic. Levivich (talk) 12:24, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Sure, that's a very balanced and neutral portayal of Icewhiz's history: "The 2019 Arbitration Committee case ended dismally for defenders of historical accuracy." :P _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:26, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

That's not the only quote, or the only banned editor. I'm not going into names, much like the article should'nt have. Any discussion of it will become bogged down in internecine back and forth, look no further than this discussion. If it had stuck to a scholarly review of the articles and their problems it could have been of great use. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:29, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested Exactly. Most of them were brought to ArbCom already in the past and acted upon (or deemed inactionable). There are some content issues that may be worth discussing on the talk pages for some articles, but regarding "the processes and social dynamics that lead to this bias", this "analysis" is very problematic as it rehashes claims made by a site-banned editor (Icewhiz), claims already reviewed and discarded by said ArbCom proceedings, and ones that were intended to win a content dispute through destroying the reputation of certain editors (hence, the harassment/site-ban conclusion). Disclosure: I'm also one of the editors who were interviewed for and are discussed in this essay. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:45, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The authors also conclude that "Icewhiz himself may have strengthened the hand of the distortionists." Its a balanced piece even if you don't like what it has to say about you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The piece is anything but "balanced". Seriously, that is the last thing this piece is. Volunteer Marek 03:19, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

And you are in a position to judge that objectively because... ? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh please. The article's authors complain about how "Icewhiz was unfairly banned". Oh really? Faking quotations, lying about sources, turning BLPs into attack pages, using racist language, making false accusations against other users... "unfairly banned"... riiiggghhht. Then the article is, well, pretty much forced, to admit that Icewhiz has been socking like a madmen ever since his ban (that's the "may have strengthened the hand" part. Love that "may" they threw in there. Can't even come out and say it without being mealy mouthed). But they whitewash that too. They only mention his socking. They kind of have to since they use statements of his obvious socks as "evidence" (sic) and because they wish to give some space to our own Levivich here to make an appearance (Levivich complains about people who complain about Icewhiz socking). But what's the part they leave out? Oh yeah! The death threats. The doxing. The posting of detailed personal information of Wikipedia users children. The rape threats against those children. The harassment at work. And all that stuff that really matters. No no no all this poor guy did was just a lil' ol' socking. Such a victim!

"Unfairly banned". "Balanced". Uh huh. I would laugh if this wasn't so messed up. Volunteer Marek 07:03, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Did they reach out to you for an interview? Also I think you should stop pinging Chapmansh, its starting to look like harassment. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:19, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Faking quotations, lying about sources, turning BLPs into attack pages, using racist language, making false accusations against other users are both WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:BLPVIO without evidence. It's also really, really untoward that you keep trying over and over to connect these authors with rape threats against children. These two people have nothing to do with it, and you're going to get yourself in (more) serious hot water writing such things in public. Levivich (talk) 17:25, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

(oh yeah, I forgot all about the "create sock puppet accounts which impersonate real life people" part of Icewhiz's "unfair banning") Volunteer Marek 07:31, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The very sentence you cite shows the balance, or the lack of it, by qualifying one side, in editorial tone, as "distortionist", and other, as, by virtue of ommission of such qualifier, as not distortionist. It's a very white and black story. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:28, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Spade is spade. Sorry. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:30, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

And proof by assertion is a fallacy. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:33, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

50+ pages, 300+ footnotes is more than "assertion". Levivich (talk) 03:51, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Assertion can be lenghty. To quote from our article on this topic: "The proposition can sometimes be repeated until any challenges or opposition cease, letting the proponent assert it as fact, and solely due to a lack of challengers (argumentum ad nauseam)." _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, as Icewhiz told us once on twitter, the number of footnotes (or citations) doesn't matter if none of them actually show what they claim they show. Volunteer Marek 06:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back you wrote here that G. and K. essay is: - a balanced piece 🤦🏻‍♀️ - Let me confirm that - Do you really believe that it is a %100 balanced? Not even a little unbalanced? Just a little bit? Confirm that %100, yes or no, (if you doin’t mind) 🙂 - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:35, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

IMO that's not how balance works. Its a spectrum not a point. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I won't say much here, because I don't have time to do justice to such an important topic, but I find the use of the word "intentional" in the title of this piece questionable, to say the least. Various editors of Wikipedia have different intents from each other, but the title seems to say that Wikipedia intends this. Does it mean the WMF, the generality of editors or admins or what? Phil Bridger (talk) 16:15, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You are right in noting that the title implies that "Wikipedia intends this", which is questionable. Whether this is a deliberate distortion by Wikipedia, or a deliberate distortion by a group of like-minded editors that hijacked Wikipedia, depends largely on what kind of response the Wikipedia community will be able to make. One option is "attention and action from WMF", as suggested in the OP, some kind of independent review and disinformation assessment. Another option is: no response at all, either because this happens all the time or because nothing has happened. Are there other options available? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:06, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The article by Grabovsky uses wording like Another form of antisemitism in Wikipedia’s coverage of World War II in Poland..., Wikipedia’s insinuation that Jews played a key role in perpetuating this massacre..., and so on. Those are serious accusations. Is any truth here? I think mostly no. Yes, he is right to some degree. Sure, WP is not an RS, everyone knows that. Furthermore, yes, there are biases. One can reasonably argue about a "leftist bias", "progressive bias", "USA bias", etc. Actually, everyone with specific cultural background (Polish, Russian, American, whatever) introduces a bias, even by selecting certain subjects of their interest for editing. But no, the article by G. uses incorrect reasoning. For example, it says: a contributor Poeticbent made an incorrect edit X, same with other edits by others. Yes, sure, people make lots of more or less incorrect/imperfect edits around here. But this is not a proof of intentional distortions, as Grabovsky incorrectly implies. This is content by amateur contributors who have limited time to contribute. This is not a high quality content by professional historians one would expect to receive as a publication in a journal. WP is not a scientific journal. Every version is wrong version around here. It can be improved, but never made perfect only through collective editing. My very best wishes (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Among other typical bad faith assumptions by Grabovsky: This entire context is tellingly absent from the discussed [WP] article.. Yes, perhaps it is absent because no one included it, but same thing is happening with most pages in WP. Any external expert can select a set of 20 WP pages from the area of his expertise and easily show how bad, biased, uninformative or missing context some of them are. Moreover, even professional historians frequently accuse each other of the same, and perhaps some of them are right. My very best wishes (talk) 19:04, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This is all assuming that the criticisms by Grabovsky were valid. It well could be he is wrong about everything. However, being poorly familiar with these subjects, I can not assess it, and leave this to other contributors, for example [2]. My very best wishes (talk) 20:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You were one of them, were you not, MVBW? You are mentioned eight times in the article. Users who belong to the group that "steered Wikipedia's narrative of Holocaust history away from solid evidence-based research" should take a step back and let uninvolved editors take it from here, as suggested by Horse Eye's Back. At the very least, they should disclose their conflict of interest. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 18:10, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh man, you never "drop the stick". What COI are you talking about? I do not see it. Can you clarify please? My very best wishes (talk) 20:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

(@My very best wishes 🙂) - @Gitz6666 drop the stick, seriously. People know about your prior conflicts with @My very best wishes and @Volunteer Marek that resulted in you being topic banned. I hope your TP will be vacated soon (you are a valuable contributor in my opinion) but comments like yours above advising people to step back are not necessary now. Drop it pal. - GizzyCatBella🍁 00:05, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

This whole thing probably had to be ignored per WP:DENY. The claims of malice by Grabovsky are wrong and sound like a personal attack. For example, they accuse me of malicious intentions simply because I commented in a few discussions and made this single revert on a page [3]. In addition to comments on talk, I say in edit summary that I "do not see any BLP violations or other reasons to remove" the content. Indeed, I did not see why one should remove content (for example, 2nd para starting from "According to the American Jewish Year Book..."), and how this can be regarded a BLP violation. Saying that, I did not see the edit by P. on page Stawiski [4] that he made 10 years ago. I did not even know that Stawiski exists until today. If I saw that edit, I would talk with P. (exactly as he suggested in edit summary), and that would be quickly fixed. But P. is not around, hence this is all moot. My very best wishes (talk) 16:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Any decisions should be made by uninvolved editors if possible. But if a user's name has been invoked (especially in an external publication), I think they're entitled to say something in response. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree, but where is the line between saying something and making the conversation a continuation of their feud? The vast majority of the contributions here are from editors named in the article. François Robere, Volunteer Marek, Piotrus, My very best wishes, Levivich, and GizzyCatBella (apologies if I missed anyone) are all in the article. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This is true but what do you expect? This is one more reflection of how we are allowing an indefinetly banned user, Icewhiz, to still influence Wikipedia content, policies and discussions, almost three years after their site ban. As User:Black Kite once said "somewhere Icewhiz is laughing and pointing". Really the only possible remedy that could work to prevent this "continuation of the feud" (in response to an external article) would be for WMF or even just the ArbCom to quickly impose a restriction on posting links to this article on Wikipedia, particularly since it involves one Wikipedian doxxing another in clear cut violation of our WP:OUTTING policy. Volunteer Marek 19:06, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You were already asked to stop gratuitously pinging Chapmansh[5], it is really looking like WP:harassment at this point. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry but are you Chapmansh? If Chapmansh wishes to ask me not to ping them then they can do that (I've only did it a few times where it was pertinent). And can I inquire why you find it necessary to reply and comment on almost every single comment I make? This is getting extremely tiresome and is looking like WP:harassment at this point. Volunteer Marek 00:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Unwanted communication which forces a user who apparently does not want to interact with you to interact with you to end the communication is harassment. Unless "almost every" to you means less than 10% that's not an accurate statement, please do not make false accusations. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:29, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I got halfway through Grabowski's "article" abstract and just gave up. This isn't an objective view of anything, it is a hit piece on Wikipedia. This doesn't mean that there are no problems (I have no idea) but an "article" like this, which spills it's bias out under the guise of objectivity, isn't how you shed light. But it isn't designed to shed light, it is designed to manipulate the reader. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:41, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You mean halfway through the article, or halfway through the abstract? Because halfway through the abstract is only like 100 words. Levivich (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey @Levivich I only got through a 1/4 of that hit piece (through the article 🙂 that is) and gave up.- GizzyCatBella🍁 00:12, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

This is a very long article that I've spent most of the day reading. As @Novem Linguae requested a summary, and nobody has really done that yet (least of all as an outside observer), I'll attempt to do so. For the record, I'm an editor that has been entirely uninvolved in this area until today, when I removed small amounts of content that failed verification from three articles.

The article is about the coverage of articles about the Holocaust in Poland. Its basic thesis is that this subject has been captured by a small group of editors (variously referred to as "nationalists" and "distortionists"), who have worked in close collaboration to push a certain point of view onto these articles. An overview of the main points here:

This group of editors have worked together to promote fringe theories, which the authors felt aligned with Polish nationalist and antisemitic narratives. The editors did this by using copious references to unreliable sources and fringe academics, and sometimes even including original research not supported in the cited sources. This has been to the detriment of more reputable and widely-cited academic sources, which they have often removed and discredited in favour of the fringe stuff. Their close collaboration has given the impression of there being consensus over disputed sources where there was none.
In working together in such close collaboration, these editors have created a battleground over this topic, edit warring as a means to ensure their control over the subject area and to freeze out any opposing viewpoints. Sometimes this even involved some pretty nasty personal attacks against other editors. This has lead to many editors abandoning the subject out of exhaustion, with some mentioning it has detrimentally affected their mental and physical health.
Attempts to resolve this long-running conflict via arbitration completely broke down. This was largely due to administrators not wanting to get involved in what they perceived as content disputes, but also involved a couple cases of admins wanting to wash their hands of the situation - thus letting the offending parties off with barely a slap on the wrist. This has lead to a disillusionment in the arbitration process by a number of long-term editors.
The authors suggested that editors become involved in the subject in order to refocus these articles on reliable sources and that admins respond "more seriously" to fringe POV-pushing, synthesis of material and abusive behaviours by long-term users. They specifically proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation initiate an investigation like the one regarding the Croatian Wikipedia.

Personally I agree with the conclusions drawn by the authors, based on the evidence that they have provided. I think this is something that needs to be taken very seriously and agree that an independent investigation into this subject is desperately needed. Should such an investigation take place, I may even be in favour of a broad topic-ban for involved parties (on both sides) until a conclusion can be drawn. Regardless, this should be taken as an opportunity to strengthen our arbitration processes, our mechanisms to counter systemic bias and our zero-tolerance policies.

In this thread, it appears that many of the involved parties mentioned in the article are now here attempting to shape discussion about this conflict. This includes four editors from the so-called "distortionist group" (GizzyCatBella, Piotrus, My very best wishes, Volunteer Marek) and two editors that attempted to confront them in the past (François Robere, Levivich). As other editors have suggested, I would really strongly urge involved parties disengage from this discussion, in order to allow it to take its course without disruption.

Apologies for the long post. Summing up such a long article is hard and I've probably missed some stuff. -- Grnrchst (talk) 19:15, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

"I agree with the conclusions drawn by the authors, based on the evidence that they have provided" - Grnrchst, the links which are supposed to "provide evidence" in the article don't even work. Furthermore, as has been pointed out several times already, almost all of the diffs used by the authors are the same diffs that user Icewhiz presented in multiple venues, or that have been presented by other editors, they have been looked at, examined, administrated and in virtually none of these cases have Icewhiz's claims been confirmed. Really, as it turned out it was Icewhiz, along with some others who were found to promote fringe theories, used unreliable sources (especially in BLPs) and engaged in original research. In this article however, the authors for reasons only known to themselves, took Icewhiz's claims at face value, despite the fact that they were aware that he had been topic banned, and then site banned for extensive and vile harassment of other Wikipedia editors.

As far as "involved parties disengaging from this dispute", no, that's not a legitimate request. When you are falsely accused of something so serious, you have a right to defend yourself. And in fact that should be expected. Volunteer Marek 19:31, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The links work, you just have to copy-paste them into your browser instead of using the auto-generated link. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:38, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Mmm, no, that doesn't work either. However if you read the link you can figure out the page it's referring to and then go and find the page yourself. Either way, these diffs don't show what the authors claim they show. Volunteer Marek 19:56, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Don't tell me what does or doesn't work for me. I'm sorry it doesn't work for you. Copy pasting works on my browser and on wikipedia [6]. Since they work on wikipedia you could get around your browser malfunction by just copy pasting them into a sandbox and using the preview function. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't telling you what works for you. I stated that it didn't work for me. Now. Can you please drop this and just in general alter your approach to our discussions? They always end up being stochastically enervating and pointless. Volunteer Marek 20:10, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Does the wikipedia link not work for you? I don't understand how solving your problem and letting you assess the source for the first time is stochastically enervating and pointless. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Grnrchst. That's a better summary of the article than I could have written, and I will follow your suggestion and disengage from this discussion. Levivich (talk) 19:51, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I've only looked at a fraction of the document. Some of the claims stack up, others don't. Three examples (quotes from the paper in red):

"Another form of antisemitism in Wikipedia’s coverage of World War II in Poland comprises fantastical accusations of Jews as perpetrators of wide-scale crimes. In March 2011, in an article about the northeastern Polish town of Stawiski, Poeticbent wrote that [...] 'Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia, and deported to Siberia.'" Introduced by long-blocked User:Lewinowicz in 2011, reverted back into the article by User:Poeticbent after it was deleted by an IP in 2013, edit summary "r/v unexplained removal of sourced material, please clarify in talk". As explained years later at AE by User:Ealdgyth, this wording took unacceptable liberties with the source (which maybe wasn't that brilliant a source to begin with). Then again, I would have been more open to the argument made by User:Volunteer Marek in that AE discussion that User:GizzyCatBella only reverted to an old stable version to edit it, and minutes later had already deleted the offending passage. Yet the paper celebrates GizzyCatBella's resulting AE sanction as a rare instance of the system working.
"Wikipedia’s coverage of Polish–Jewish relations contains both subtle and overt prejudices against Jews. [...] Take the claim in the ‘History of the Jews in Poland’ article, that Jews have ‘specific physical characteristics.’" The phrase "physical characteristics" was actually copied from the holocaustsurvivors.org encyclopedia entry for "Hidden Jews". This describes the difficulties Jews had trying to blend in: Appearance-Jews with the physical characteristics of curly black hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, a long nose were in special jeopardy; The problem was that so much had been copied verbatim from holocaustsurvivors.org and other sources that back in 2009, User:Moonriddengirl slapped a big Copyvio template on it. In response, User:Piotrus spent half an hour doing copyright cleanup work, in the process shortening the sentence Jews with the physical characteristics of curly black hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, a long nose were in special jeopardy, which plagiarised holocaustsurvivors.org, to Jews with the specific physical characteristics were particularly vulnerable, thus establishing the wording that offended Grabowski and Klein almost 14 years later.
The article claims that "the Polish Underground State’s wartime Underground courts investigated 17,000 Poles who collaborated with the Germans; about 3,500 were sentenced to death. Some of the collaborators––szmalcowniks––blackmailed Jews and their Polish rescuers and assisted the Germans as informers, turning in Jews and Poles who hid them, and reporting on the Polish resistance." This excerpt implies that the Polish underground was preoccupied with penalizing the blackmailers of Jews. In reality, no more than seven out of thousands of the people involved in this activity were actually sentenced to death and executed I am not sure the passage did imply that to the reader, all the more so if you look at how it came about: what Piotrus inserted seemed more related to what preceded it.

To my mind, based on what I've reviewed so far, the paper is a mixed bag. It points out some real problems that need urgent addressing, but is not a gold standard source where every imputed motive or every account of every content dispute necessarily stacks up to scrutiny. What sucks is that it takes hours to trawl through edit histories to figure out what really happened – in some cases ten, fifteen years ago. --Andreas JN 466 23:28, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah these are all accurate summaries of these incidents. I would be genuinely interested in hearing which parts you think are claims which "stack up". Also your observation about "What sucks is that it takes hours to trawl through edit histories to figure out what really happened" is exactly on point. It takes a single sentence to make a false accusation. It takes paragraphs and hours of time to refute it. As they say, by the time the truth gets a hearing, the lie has already traveled across the world. This is precisely what people like Icewhiz always counted on. Volunteer Marek 23:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The sentence "Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia, and deported to Siberia", sourced to [7], was unacceptable.

The wording "Jews with the specific physical characteristics were particularly vulnerable" was not good. :/ It can easily be construed as anti-Semitic and will have sounded like that to some readers. (I don't think that was the intent, but it's disappointing that it stayed in the article for fourteen years.) Andreas JN 466 00:10, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes that incident. Here are the two edits: 16:26 [8] and then, 8 minutes later, self reverted [9]. Much like with the GCB incident you describe above Icewhiz, and now G&K, would only show the first edit but not the almost immediate self reversion. The phrase itself is from here (pg. 63), a book by Dov Levin, an Israeli historian and jurist, with the one difference that it says "local Poles" rather than "ethnic Polish families". One can argue that it is cherry picked or irrelevant to this article which is indeed why I removed it myself. Volunteer Marek 00:23, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe Grabowski and K. didn't understand that there is an edit history button for each article open for them to look at. - GizzyCatBella🍁 00:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps this will help. - GizzyCatBella🍁 00:44, 13 February 2023 (UTC) 👍

I agree with the general point made by Andreas: the article points out some real problems but is not a "gold standard source", it can occasionally be flawed. But the analysis in No. 3 does not convince me. It seems to me that the article's reading of this diff [10] is justified if one takes into account not only the resulting text, but also the text that was removed. After the edit, the szmalcowniks become a subset of the 3,500 who were sentenced to death. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 00:50, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree it can be read that way. I am just not sure that that was the intent. Basically, the edit did two things: (1) It added figures to the statement about executions or death sentences, and it reversed the order of the two sentences (the other sentence remained almost unchanged).

I am just not sure what motivated the reversal of the two sentences. To my mind, it might as well have been to bring the death sentences into closer proximity with the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, "While many bureaucrat and police reluctantly followed German orders, some acted as agents for the Polish resistance". If so, then the statement about the blackmailers following on the heels of that sentence may just have been an unintentional side-effect. I have committed far greater blunders editing – stuff like this happens. Anyway, that was my thinking. It's hard to know what went through my own head five years ago, even harder to know what went through someone else's. Andreas JN 466 01:10, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Just a few minor questions regarding this particular example: 1) what and whose exactly was unacceptable (the edit by the sock? if so, why, given your analysis I am replying to?) 2) can we conclude that the unacceptabe edit was "an intentional effort to distort history"? Also, for the clarity, you may want to edit your interesting post above with three examples to clarify if the analysis you provide shows claims that "stack up" or don't. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:31, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I thought the edit by the (apparent) sock was indefensible. The source says at one point that a total of 22,353 Poles, including entire families, were deported to Siberia from the regions of Łomża and Białystok. Then, over 600 words later, the source mentions that [...] Musiał found that in many cases Jewish militia members directly participated in mass arrests and deportation actions.

The sock turned that into Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia, and deported to Siberia. That doesn't seem like a neutral summary of the source. The revert by Poeticbent was at the very least a bad error but I know people will sometimes reflexively revert IP edits that appear to delete sourced material. Still, it's better to actually look at the source before doing so. If Poeticbent was aware of what the source said and didn't say, then their edit was as poor as the sock's. Andreas JN 466 16:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

If. WP:AGF is, however, the recommended way to look at this kind of stuff, isn't it? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:30, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about those edits, VM. I was talking about [11] (unacceptable, by a sock blocked twelve years ago) and [12] (a revert of a removal of that passage by an IP). That sentence Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia, and deported to Siberia then lasted five years, until User:Icewhiz took it out, which was the right thing to do. :/ Andreas JN 466 00:55, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, I agree with that. Here is the thing though. G&K's article has a kind of implicit assumption of "collective responsibility" sneaked into its presentation. It assumes that if one, supposedly Polish, editor makes a "bad edit", like... eight years ago, then somehow, currently active editors who are Polish are to blame for that. This kind of approach blaming people on basis of shared nationality is deeply problematic. I am not responsible for what some sock blocked twelve years ago did, whatever the nationality of that sock was (and if this was a Loosemark sock then that guy wasn't even Polish afair!) but G&K structure their narrative to imply that this is somehow the case.

Nota bene: these diffs are the FIRST diffs that Icewhiz presented in his request for case at ArbCom back in May 2019 [13]. If you're wondering why Icewhiz was presenting diffs from editors who hadn't made edits to Wikipedia in very long time... yeah. Volunteer Marek 01:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, interesting. Andreas JN 466 09:51, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

If there is distortion it is because we are reflecting what RS say. It is not "intentional" and I consider the claim to be highly offensive. Slatersteven (talk) 11:40, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I know very little about the Icewhiz case as I wasn't very active on the en.wiki at the time.And to be honest, I don't really feel like reading these endless discussions :) But to be serious, I think that the topic cannot be completely ignored, because Grabowski is a name, and the Journal of the Holocaust Research is not Gazeta Wyborcza or Haaretz, and this article itself is a high level RS. The more so that in several places he points out the actual deficiencies of the articles, but in general the tone of the whole article is full of reluctance and negative attitude, there are also some factual errors or a very one-sided presentation of the matter. It seems to me that part of this can be explained by ignorance of how Wikipedia works (i.e. that sources essentially have the same value unless they are unquestionably considered unreliable, and that it is easier to add something new than to remove something old or rewrite it).

In any case, I read the article paragraph by paragraph and address the individual objections to indvidual articles. I did so in Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust, I'll try to do it with the other articles. Marcelus (talk) 20:37, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to address these Marcelus. Your efforts are appreciated and I hope they can lead towards much improved articles. :) -- Grnrchst (talk) 09:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Grnrchst for the summary! Is there an essay/guidelines of things to look out for for editors interested in cleaning up these biases? On one hand, we can call/request experts to give insights, but in the meantime, we all have a collective responsibility to spot what may be weasel wording/dubious sourcing and at least request/re-examine them. I really enjoyed this essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-04-26/Op-ed which discusses the Myth of the clean Wehrmacht and how it permeates on Wikipedia, which later became a focus within Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. With all due respect to the other editors bickering here, if you have active content disputes, please raise them (ideally on talk page/wiki projects), but no one really cares about re-digging old interpersonal grievances. If there are active conduct issues, raise them at AN/I. I also think it's worth reaching out to the author of this article, to at least show them the discussion, specifically that some of the problematic content has bee quickly reverted, or more banally problematic, rephrased/trimmed from even worse text, without being adequately addressed. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe @K.e.coffman who cleaned up the Myth... article (which I translated to pl wikl a while back, surprisingly it is not a big thing in Polish historiography) can link to some other material; their OP-ED is excellent, just like the work they did.

Realistically, I think we can just look at the issues the authors raise, leaving aside the (sigh) "old interpersonal grievances". Once these are filtered, a few likely errors or omissions will remain. Editors have already started discussions on the talk pages of some affected articles, and a bit of content has been changed already. I guess it helps the coverage is in English; the primary author (G.) raised pretty much the same points two years ago in a Polish newspaper, and I copied his review of the relevant articles, with notes about the possible issues, to our talk pages (see Talk:Szmalcownik#Grabowski's_press_review_of_this_article and several others), sadly, most of this did not generate any action back then. Now we are seeing a bit more interest, which is good (more eyese... etc.). As for reaching to the author, good lack. I tried back them, replying to his newspaper article with my own, and invited him to edit Wikipedia or have his students do it, but you can see from the current dramu how well did my efforts end. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Arbcom case

Note an Arbcom case has been initiated by Arbcom itself. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Holocaust_in_Poland ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:15, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia’s ‘Supreme Court’ tackles alleged conspiracy to distort articles on Holocaust" Levivich (talk) 20:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

"Supreme Court" Huh? I can see the connection. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:35, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

From Arbitration Committee: The English Wikipedia's ArbCom acts as a court of last resort for disputes among editors and has been described in the media as "quasi-judicial" and a Wikipedian "High or Supreme Court", although the Committee states it is not and does not pretend to be a formal court of law. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:37, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh. Alright then. I"m very unfamiliar with Arbcom (and frankly don't want to be familiar with it unless it's necessary) so I thought that was simply the media comparing a Wikipedia process to something they're more familiar with. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:42, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

No it's the media doing exactly that and then our article reflecting that the media does that. But at least this one put Supreme Court in quotes. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah fair enough. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The paper’s reach was fueled by its analysis, unprecedented in the academic literature on Wikipedia, and its finding that a dedicated group has for some 15 years manipulated a source of information used by millions in ways that lay blame for the Holocaust on Jews and absolve Poland of almost any responsibility for its record of antisemitism. Do these people really believe what they write? Seriously, does anyone seriously believe that Wikipedia has been saying for 15 years that the victims of the Holocaust are responsible for the Holocaust? Marcelus (talk) 20:40, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I think so. For example, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted "This is a good article about the pernicious efforts of Polish nationalist revisionism on Wikipedia articles related to the Holocaust in Poland. I've encountered similar revisionists numerous times over the years." [14] Levivich (talk) 20:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Pure madness. Even the Grabowski and Klein article demonstrated literally a few actual misrepresentations that could be considered misleading, and in rather peripheral articles. The rest are simply articles that are not of a very good standard, like 90% of Wikipedia Marcelus (talk) 21:02, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Three and a half years ago, historian Havi Dreifuss, director of Yad Vashem's Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland, talked about Poland and Holocaust Wikipedia articles:

I saw articles changing dramatically, in front of my students' very eyes ... In recent years, when I examined certain articles with them, I noticed that the text and some of the visual aspects were altered. Holocaust revisionism in Wikipedia deserves to be studied in its own right ... in the [English] article on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the fighting forces [that battled the Germans] are misrepresented in the info box on the side. A reader that is not well versed in history could think that it was a joint struggle by four equally important organizations - two Polish groups and two Jewish ones. But that’s not true, the uprising was the result of Jewish actions and the Jewish organizations led the fighting, while Polish groups played an extremely marginal role. There are other much more serious examples.

I think this is about more than articles that are not of a very good standard. The infobox at Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was fixed after that article quoting Dreifuss came out on October 4, 2019. Look at the infobox on Oct 1, 2019 and compare it to the infobox at Warsaw Ghetto Uprising now. These examples that historians point out are real. And just like the cleanup that happened after the 2019 article came out, there is a cleanup that's happening now (which you and I are both participating in). "The proof is in the pudding": the changes made to the articles, after problems are pointed out, are proof that the problems existed in the first place. Levivich (talk) 21:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

One aspect that I haven't seen raised at all yet is the coverage in Polish Wikipedia. For example, Grabowski and Klein say that even after addition of the Obama and Razem episodes, "Muszyński’s [English Wikipedia] biography, over 50 percent of which is authored by Piotrus,[156] continues to read as a list of accolades", the implication being that this is a severe indictment of English Wikipedia. So what exactly does it say about the Polish (or English?) Wikipedia that pl:Wojciech Muszyński reads entirely like a (far longer) list of accolades, without any mention of controversy at all? Pundit, do you have any thoughts on this? --Andreas JN 466 21:31, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

In his 2020 newspaper article, Grabowski explicitly said that Polish Wikipedia is "better" than English... shrug. From [15]: In the Polish Wikipedia, the above entries are presented in a much more objective way, without absurdities and distortions. At home, they are simply subjected to quite rigorous scrutiny by historians, people familiar with professional literature and facts. Meanwhile, in the English version, "editors" can bend them and write nonsense... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:53, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

That's actually interesting. Why is it that among the "collaborators" of the German Reich, the Blue Police, which did not take part in the suppression of the ghetto uprising, but only guarded the area around it, is mentioned, while the actual participation of the Home Army and the Communist People's Guard is omitted? I don't know what was the participation of the Sonderdienst, but both Sonderdienst and the Blue Police were not collaborationist formations, but German ones. So they shouldn't be addressed as such. I think we should discuss this on the talk page of the article. But this example already shows that we are not dealing with misrepresentation here, just a different point of view.Marcelus (talk) 21:47, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. When the head of Yad Vashem's Center for Holocaust in Poland says "X" and a Wikipedia editor says "not X", that is not "just a different point of view" because only one of those people is a reliable source, an expert in the field. Levivich (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't of course talking about mine POV, but about different historians that can see things differentely than Dreifuss. Also I'm not arguing against her really. She is absolutely right that AK, GL should not be shown in the same way as ŻOB or ŻZW. But that doesn't mean they should be left out. They can be added with the annotation "Supported by:" for example. Marcelus (talk) 21:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes that's true, and you're also right that it's really a matter for the article talk page. But to answer your question, do people really believe this? Yes, some very qualified people believe this, like Dreifuss of Yad Vashem and Pitcavage of the ADL. (And Levivich of Wikipedia.) Levivich (talk) 22:02, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

And that's pretty sad really, but I guess it's a result of the imposed narrative Marcelus (talk) 22:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

It's much sadder if it's true. If it turns out to all be a bunch of BS, that would be the happy ending. The sad ending would be if it's true. Levivich (talk) 22:10, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

My only comment on this entire incident will be to say that everyone is biased, to varying extents. Even academics and even field experts are biased, particularly in such an emotional and deeply personal field as the Holocaust. It is very difficult to push back against a scholar writing about the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective such as Grabowski for having factual inaccuracies because of how pervasive anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracies are. Concurrently, it is very difficult to push back against scholars writing about the Holocaust from a Polish perspective for having factual inaccuracies because of how mainstream Polish revisionism about the Holocaust is. I do not envy the position ArbCom has been placed in. Curbon7 (talk) 18:14, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:20, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Transcoding large MPEG videos

I am thinking of transcoding large MPEG videos like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:My_wish.mpg and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TRAPS-Brao_people.mpg to a better format like VP8 or VP9. What do you think? -Yuhong (talk) 02:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

This belongs on Commons. This noticeboard is for discussions of the relationship between the English Wikipedia and the Foundation. Donald Albury 14:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

All videos are already transcoded to vp8 and vp9 automatically. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump/Miscellaneous § Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump/Miscellaneous § Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing news 2023 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia app

Courtesy ping to ARamadan-WMF because I think this is likely the best way to get more members of the community involved. I don't want to speak for you, so maybe you could explain? This page is almost guareenteed to get more eyes than my Signpost essay (views usually fade quickly over time although the talk page got more engagement than usual even then). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot @Clovermoss!

There are two points we would like to announce:

-We are having our first office hour on the 24th of March at 5 pm UTC; please find all the details on how to join and enjoy the conversation about the current features and the roadmap we are working on from here.

-Also, we are working on an anti vandalism tool for Android; we would like to invite whoever could be interested in testing the first iteration of the patrolling tool designs. Your input at this stage will allow us to improve the tool before development as well as gather important feedback for the second iteration of the tool.

Please email or ping me if you are interested to join us! ARamadan-WMF (talk) 12:08, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to ping people who commented at the Signpost talk page to see if anyone's interested: Neiltonks, HJ Mitchell, dlthewave, Bilorv, TheDJ, LumonRedacts, Jahaza, jengod, epolk, and TadejM. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:21, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

@Clovermoss can you link to your Signpost essay, because I can't remember what this is about? Jahaza (talk) 23:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jahaza: Of course: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-01-01/Essay. It's okay if your interest doesn't extend beyond reading this, I just figured it was worth a shot to try. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 § Proposal for next steps following the closure of the Vector 2022 RfC

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 § Proposal for next steps following the closure of the Vector 2022 RfC. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 22:39, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology

You are invited to join the discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:35, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Followup: If you were interested in that notification, then you're probably interested in "part 2" of this Annual Planning work from the product and technology departments: The draft Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

This was published today and represents a more complete, tabular, draft version of all the priorities for the work of these departments' teams for the 2023-24 annual plan. Please bring your comments and feedback to the relevant subsections on the talkpage. LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 15:29, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Upcoming WMF fundraising campaign in India

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Upcoming WMF fundraising campaign in India. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:56, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Vector 2022 zoom meeting

Sounds like they'll be hosting a Vector 2022 zoom meeting. From this diff:

We would like to propose a session with Selena, our CPTO, and some of our staff to talk together about how the Vector process has gone, hear thoughts from the community on the current plan, and plan the future of software decision-making together. We can also take some time to go over our current prototype and other plans for improvements to the skin in the future. This session will take place on Thursday, April 13th at 18:30 UTC on Zoom (click here to join / dial by your location). We look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments. Thank you! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

–Novem Linguae (talk) 20:49, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Roadmap Part 2 of WMF's Product/Tech now public

See meta:Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology § The draft Objectives and Key Results are now published ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:34, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Here's a more direct link. meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology/OKRs. Happy reading. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:38, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

You both beat me to it! :-) If you've other places you'd recommend I notify, please ping me. LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I've already mentioned this on WP:AN, where WE1:2 is of primary interest. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:33, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024

You are invited to join the discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:50, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Elections Committee: Call for New Members

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Elections Committee: Call for New Members. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Climate coverage in the main page of Wikipedia, including a feature about environmental footprint/record of Wikimedia

Even though climate change is considered as the biggest threat I do not see much about it in the main page of Wikipedia. Some news outlets not so much neutral, silence it from their reasons, but I do not think Wikipedia should follow them. The main page of Wikipedia has around 125 millions pageviews per month so it can be compared to BBC or CNN, it is important.

I will try to submit news at least those who are in the consensus, in the category "in the news" but I think it will be a little bit difficult to express the importance of the issue with this, because:

I admit that even though it is considered as the biggest threat it will look strange if for example, 80% of news will be about it as in all other news outlets the situation is different.

It is not so much "newsy" event: the weather is getting worse today, it got worse yesterday and will probably get worse tomorrow.

It is hard to find an event in the news completely unrelated to climate change but it is not always easy to explain the links.

So I has 2 ideas:

FIRST IDEA:

Almost all large companies in the world have something about their environmental footprint on their site. Including digital like Youtube. The fossil fuel company ExxonMobil has it in the top of its main page. Bayer also. So why not Wikipedia? It will be honorable for Wikipedia and for Wikimedia Foundation if it will put a feature about it in the main page, with link to a page with detailes.

Something like:

" Wikipedia is part of Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia foundation is caring about Sustainability and stopping climate change. It trying to lower its environmental impacts.. for this it is doing... The total emissions on 2022 were 2,955 metric ton of Co2... while during this year environmental pages in Wikipedia only included in WikiProject Climate Change has 346 millions views... for more information look here"

The link that I put is to a special page about environmental footprint of Wikimedia. It includes the report of 2022 from where I take the numbers.

SECOND IDEA:

In the Main page of Wikipedia at the bottom of the cathegory "In the news" there is a category "ongoing events". I think we should enter below this line another line:

" Permanently ongoing event: Climate change".

It is really a permanently ongoing event. From one side it is not always has "breaking news", but from other side while other issues loom and then dissapear, it is constantly present. And it is enough important if only the pages in Wikiproject climate change have 346,000,000 pageviews per year, and climate change exist sometimes in the list of 25 most viewed articles (for example one month ago).

What do you think about it?

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 13:53, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

While I absolutely agree with your sentiment, it is simply not appropriate for Wikipedia to be pushing any one point of view, especially on the main page. It is appropriate for WMF to be thinking about climate change. Their servers consume power. They fly employees around the world for meetings. These activities have impact on the world's climate. But WMF is not enwiki. This project is an encyclopedia which steers clear of endorsing or supporting any political or social issues. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:15, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Where have we come as a society where supporting sustainability plus preventing imminent and catastrophic climate change is something that is considered "political"? ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:38, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

The user page, talk page, and edit history of this account bring me pause. This account looks like an WP:SPA for environmental WP:ADVOCACY that's not sufficiently fluent in English. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:58, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

See m:Sustainability Initiative. Frostly (talk) 04:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I think you should just find a concrete news story such as the wildfires in the Mediterranean region and write about it for WP:ITN Andre🚐 15:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Paltry funding for Wikimania scholarships

@Gnangarra, @JVillagomez (WMF), and @MIskander-WMF, I find it rather disgraceful that the Wikimedia Foundation accepted only 197 of the 1209 completed scholarship applications for this year's Wikimania conference, or 16%. While I recognize that travel scholarships aren't cheap, I presume that a sizable portion of the applicants are heavily involved in Wikimedia projects, devoting many hours a week to volunteer work. Wikimania scholarships are one of the few ways the WMF can use its ample financial resources to show tangible appreciation to volunteers and aid participation in the movement. You could have afforded to assist more than 16% of applicants, and it's disappointing that you deemed the expense not worthwhile when you put together your budget. I would appreciate a response from you on this topic. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Sdkb Chiming in here as part of the team at the Foundation that work with each year's Wikimania hosts. The Foundation sponsors the whole event—not just the scholarships—and in this year's Annual Plan, despite reducing expenses across the Foundation, funding for Wikimania increased. Not to undermine any disappointment that any applicant may feel for not having been selected, of course that’s completely valid and understandable, but it does feel relevant to mention that this year there are ~200 scholarships, around 66% more than the ~120 from the last in-person Wikimania in 2019. Together with each year’s Core Organizing Team, the Foundation always thinks about how to spend the funds to reach the most Wikimedians possible, because we completely agree with you that recognizing people for their contributions is critical. This year, that meant increasing the number of scholarships that could be awarded by the volunteer subcommittee, working to keep virtual registration free despite the costs of the virtual event, and working to keep the in-person ticket subsidized. I know it's of course still disappointing for anyone who wanted to attend in person and didn’t get selected. I really do hope those people will consider applying again for future Wikimanias. --ELappen (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@ELappen (WMF), "it was even worse last time" is not exactly a strong justification. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

"it was even worse last time" is not what was said, ELappen said despite all the people losing jobs, all projects being ended the WMF has increased funding for scholarships and for other Wikimania expenses so as many people as possible can be supported in attending. This year its all online and interactive, not just in person as well which is a significant new cost that wasnt part of 2019, while everyone would like to travel everyone can still be there. Gnan garra 00:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

It's always been competitive, I've been rejected atleast twice or thrice, it's easy to look at the paltry number and think it's very low compared to the entire population, but scholarships are, at the end of the day, competitive. You have to demonstrate why it's needed for you to receive one, sure it would be great if more of us could attend, but I don't think there's added incentive in keeping numbers low, it's a purely logistical decision in the end. --qedk (t 愛 c) 10:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@ELappen (WMF): this year there are ~200 scholarships, around 66% more than the ~120 from the last in-person Wikimania in 2019 - the 2019 figures break down full vs. partial scholarships. Were the proportions the same this time? It'd be interesting to see those proportions by geographic area, too. I'm curious if the goal is to select recipients based on involvement/contributions and give them the best chance of being able to attend, or to maximize the number of scholarships/attendees by granting full scholarships just to those who wouldn't need an expensive flight. Probably some mix, I suppose. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:28, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd also like to generally agree with Sdkb. It's great that the foundation has increased spending on Wikimania, but I'd argue it's long been underfunded and still is. It's the main event for getting the international community together, learn from each other, foster a shared sense of purpose, involve people in discussions that affect the movement as a whole, etc. We're otherwise just on our computers talking to faceless usernames. A few of us live in places with robust local meetup groups, but not everyone has that. Even if everyone did, Wikimania is where those local groups connect with each other and where we can meet everyone who doesn't live nearby. Wikimania should be one of the primary ways the foundation expresses that it values the community -- it should be huge. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:08, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I would just throw in my hat to say that in-person meetings are extremely important to community building, and should be a priority. You do work with someone differently, and have a higher level of implicit confidence when you've broken bread. GMG ^talk 13:53, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree, and any of you who are in London on the second Sunday of the month would be welcome to join us. We can and do have meetups that have zero budget - I think that Wikimedia UK bought some nachos about a hundred meetups ago when we combined a London meetup with a WMUK AGM. But Wikimania is special because of its scale, and its ability to reach across geographic and other boundaries. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:57, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
TBH somewhere between 10% and 20% seems about right, the key is to make sure that the percentage doesn't fall as applications increase. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- Why would it be based on a % of applicants? By that logic, if there were only 10 applicants, and they're all great, we'd only give a scholarship to one regardless of the amount of money available? There's not real scarcity here. Nor is the scarcity the number of qualified applicants. If 400 out of 1100 applicants were qualified, what would the justification be for only admitting 200? The $ is there. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:43, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Presumably the number of applicants will increase annually. Can you provide some documents for your assertion that "The $ is there" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/Special report or basically half of the Signpost articles Jayen466, et al. has written over the last decade. The point is the WMF can afford to allocate more to Wikimania, bringing more of the community together, and that the conference is presently underfunded. It could simply decide that it's worth supporting the broader community in that way. What "documents" are you looking for? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:40, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Most charitable organizations can afford to allocate more to throwing parties and conferences... The question is should they? We're an online community, there is no actual need to get anyone together. The broader community doesn't attend Wikimania, that is not support for the community at large. From what I can tell Wikimania is well funded, what makes you say its underfunded? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:49, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

The goal should not be to reach any particular number but rather to have enough funding to be able to support every sufficiently well-qualified applicant. The scholarship committee is clearly unwilling to provide anything more than token transparency about this topic, but if they were, I would be curious to know how many applicants were either admins or had more than 10,000 edits (the rough floor for admin consideration). That's obviously far from a perfect proxy, but it'd at least give a sense of the pool. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
I'd caution against relying on metrics. 10k is a rough expectation for enwiki, but not on most projects, and even here there are a lot of people with edit counts smaller than mine who spend a lot more time than me volunteering in various ways. It should be a qualitative evaluation first. Edit count is a fine data point, but not enough on its own (even if the number is very high -- it's more about who would benefit most from this sort of thing and who would contribute most to this sort of thing IMO). What is clear to me, based on the number of people I've talked to over the years whose applications were rejected it's clear there's no shortage of people applying with experience and involvement, who would also benefit from and contribute to the conference. If the Sdkbs and Qedks of the world are getting outright rejected, it's underfunded. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the evaluation should absolutely be qualitative. When it comes to that, I hope that the scholarship committee gives due weight to online contributions, not just offline affiliate work. The limited info released about the evaluation process this year (e.g. +1 bonus point for supporting outreach, judging competitions, +1 bonus point if they are looking to make connections to establish a project like a Wiki Loves after the event, or create an affiliate, with no bonus points for online equivalents) makes me suspect that that is not currently happening. Perhaps that's to be expected, given that being on the scholarship committee is affiliate-type work that will naturally be filled by affiliate-type editors. Still, it's a lost opportunity to bridge the cultural divide between the online editor community and the affiliate world, and Wikimania would benefit from more presence of the online editor community. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I see you have an axe to grind with the scholarship committee, if you wouldn't mind limiting your response to me to what I said I would appreciate it. Completely meeting the needs of the qualified applicant in a scholarship setting where there is no limit on the number of applicants is simply not possible, not with a billion dollars could that be made to work (if you've got ten we can talk). Its a nice idea, but its not very practical. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I am unconvinced there is any benefit to the vast majority of readers and editors in having in-person Wikimania at all. A better use of donor's money, which would actually have an impact on editors and readers, would be plowing the money into significantly improved software (e.g. the mobile version is still not fit for purpose). Or a trial effort to hire professional mediators to try to resolve complicated disputes. And/or training existing editors to do so. Or expanding the laudable WP library initiative even more, to even more directly connect editors with references. Wikimania is primarily a fun little mini-Davos for the WMF elite, and scholarships - even if tripled or quadrupled - are just a way of expanding the elite slightly. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree. A better use of the money would be to make the product better and continue investing in the tech infrastructure. I've been using the new skin and I think it's a net improvement now that they've worked out a few of the kinks with the inner window size and margins. I will note that a lot of people in the community offered a big petition to the foundation asking for moderation tools for new page patrol. There's also work needed for citation management tools. Or better tools to stop sockpuppetry and deal with IPV6 abuse. It's cool that the foundation is funding some conferences too, but it's largely a PR feel-good thing in my view (I've not attended Wikimania but I've been to the NYC meetup years ago). Not to mention there's still an active pandemic in much of the world that recently rebounded off a bottom and started rising again. So personally I'm satisfied as a volunteer that the foundation is funding some travel. I'm sure if there were any specific cases of individuals who wanted to go but couldn't due to financial issues could bring it up and maybe an exception could be made, or help extended, if there is support and a good reason. Andre🚐 15:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 --qedk (t 愛 c) 15:58, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Shoot. It's still better than spending a zillion years on a code of conduct that most people on most project aren't even aware of. GMG ^talk 16:02, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
UCoC is creeping its way into block and global lock rationales, too. Not sure how I feel about that. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:55, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 Levivich (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree that all those initiatives would be a great use of WMF funds. And I think that having more community editors in-person at Wikimania to advocate for them is exactly the sort of thing that could incrementally move the needle toward getting them prioritized. It's easy for @MIskander-WMF to decide to ignore my ping and not comment in this discussion and others, but harder to avoid in-person interaction with volunteers at a conference. As Rhododendrites has pointed out, the WMF has ample financial resources, so it's not as if it has to choose between funding Wikimania and funding technical improvements — it can do both. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Every $ spent on Wikimania is a $ not spent on software. When we forced them to change their ads this past winter and they ended up with a 5% budget shortfall, they laid people off. They didn't just pull the 5% out of their cash reserves and keep on trucking. The already-increased spending on Wikimania this year comes after those layoffs. (I bet the people who lost their jobs aren't happy about increased Wikimania scholarships.) Wikipedia shouldn't use donor money to send editors to a meetup in Singapore (or anywhere). There are better uses for the money, like hiring more or better software engineers (among other professionals). In my opinion, they already spend way too much money building a "movement" or "community," and way too little building software. Levivich (talk) 16:33, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, don't get me wrong, Lord knows they spent more money on the last CEO's $600k golden parachute than they spent on Wikimania scholarships, so if I were making the cuts, the scholarships wouldn't be my first target, but still. Software is where they need to be spending more right now, nothing else. Levivich (talk) 16:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
It is possible to spend huge amounts on software that doesn't address the problems of the users of the software. Wikimania is among other things an investment in improving the dialogue between the volunteer community and the developers. I think it could do with more emphasis on the existing community - it isn't a good venue for outreach. But maybe we should have an EN Wikipedia meetup separate to Wikimania as we aren't going to have a significant proportion of the EN community at a Wikimania unless it is in New York or London again. Ϣere SpielChequers 08:16, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
An organisation with a $200m income should be able to fund both Wikimania and working software. If they really can't manage both, let's concentrate on the software while we look for better managers. Certes (talk) 10:46, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
I attended my first in-person conference in May of this year, and it made me feel very connected to the movement. Was really nice to get faces to the names. So I am all for spending money on conferences and conference scholarships. Let's get as many active contributors to these things as possible.
Our movement certainly does have a lot of money, but it looks like there is a lot of disagreement about where to spend it. The things that directly affect en-wikipedians (in my opinion) are software (especially community tech), and conference scholarships, so we en-wikipedians are always going to want more of WMF's money spent on those things. En-wikipedians are less likely, imo, to want the money spent on things that don't directly affect them, such as weird software projects, other wikis, the "global" movement, affiliates, machine learning, data science, the knowledge equity fund, and the endowment. For various reasons, these are also WMF priorities, and are competing for time and funding.
Enwiki is in this weird situation where we bring in a big chunk of the donation money, but the money isn't always spent on our priorities. We are competing with 891 other projects for money, developer time, and scholarships. This may be a source of some of the tension we're seeing, where the WMF is not really prioritizing things like software and scholarships as much as we would like. Software and scholarships are very reasonable things to prioritize, so I think it's good we're speaking out about this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:40, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
Speaking of priorities, the WMF recently spent nearly $1 million on golden parachutes for two executives. I estimate that this was considerably more than the total cost of these 197 scholarships. Andreas JN 466 08:45, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Hey now. Let's not be hasty. How else are we going to find someone with...a uh...degree in Middle Eastern Studies, to head a major tech related non-profit, among the most visited websites in the world, and the largest online collaborative project in history... GMG ^talk 11:03, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Given the problems that some past Wikimanias have had with getting visas for applicants from certain parts of the world, I like the way that the Singapore event has skewed things to reach out to parts of the world that can't attend events in relatively closed countries such as here in the UK. However there was a skew in the selection criteria towards outreach, rather than content, software testing or governance. I think that should change in the future. Wikimania is not just an opportunity to discuss outreach - it is also an opportunity for developers to meet users, except that experience of testing new Wikimedia features did not get preference for scholarships. It is also an opportunity to discuss governance issues, but again no preference for that in the scholarship process. (disclosure, I usually apply for a scholarship, and was successful for Mexico and had a partial scholarship for one earlier Wikimania plus I've travelled to two at my own expense). If you are active in Wikimedia and can afford to go I recommend Wikimania. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
+1 {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 11:47, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Calling all iOS enthusiasts!

We are excited to announce a fantastic volunteering opportunity for all Wikipedia iOS users out there. We are currently working on enhancing the "Watchlist" feature for our app, and we need your valuable feedback to create the best user experience possible.

Your input will play a significant role in shaping the initial version of this feature. We value your insights and ideas, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the design.

You can check out the project's page on Mediawiki for more information: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/iOS/Watchlist/Design_Feedback_Frequent

If you're interested in being part of this exciting project, feel free to reply to this post or send me a direct message if you have any questions or inquiries.

Your contributions will undoubtedly make a difference in creating an exceptional user experience in Wikipedia iOS app!

--ARamadan-WMF (talk) 16:04, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/iOS/Watchlist/Design Feedback Frequent — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 08:05, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

How do you want feedback? On the discussion page? SWinxy (talk) 02:49, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

nvm there are sections for that on the page. SWinxy (talk) 19:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Volunteer Opportunity: Join the Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions Project for the English Wikipedia App!

section break 1

Hello everyone,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Amal Ramadan, and I am a Senior Community Relations Specialist supporting the Apps team at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I wanted to inform you about an ongoing project we are currently working on for the Android version of the Wikipedia app. This project focuses on machine-assisted article descriptions. For more details about this project, please visit the following link.

At this time, I would like to reach out to the English Wikipedia community and invite volunteers to join us in this important endeavor. We are specifically looking for individuals who can help us evaluate and provide feedback on the English translations we have.

If you are interested in participating, I would be delighted to provide you with further information and complete details. Please feel free to get in touch with me or reply to this post, and I will be glad to assist you.

Thank you for considering this volunteering opportunity, and I sincerely appreciate your valuable contributions in advance.

--ARamadan-WMF (talk) 10:03, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@ARamadan-WMF: Seems to have many issues still, so please don't enable it on enwiki without approval from the Village Pump (WP:VPT may be the best location, unless people there suggest something else). In general, it regularly creates long descriptions which are cut off rather randomly, generating incomplete descriptions (test with e.g. "Hunger". And in too many cases the suggested description is wrong (I tested it with 3 suggestions, and usually at most one is good). Examples I got at the testing place:

"Deforestation in Nigeria" gives "Forest in Nigeria", "Forest deforest" or "Forest"
"Star" gives "Large star in the constellation of the Sun" (er, what?), "Large star" or "star" (as can be seen here, capitalization of the first letter of the description is completely haphazard in many cases, and sometimes further on as well, I once got "Traditional Food" as a suggestion)
"Leopold II" (a disambiguation page) gives "Emperor of Belgium" (right???), "King of Belgium", and "pope" (even better!)
"Isaac Newton" gives three descriptions which all start with "English physicist, physicist"
"Benjamin Netanyahu" has one good description (Prime Minister of Israel) and two totally wrong ones ("Prime Minister of Israel (1927-2018)" and "Prime Minister of Israel (1996-2019)")
"Murder" gives "Killing of another without justifies", "Killing of another" and "Criminal punishment"

This doesn't seem ready at all. Fram (talk) 10:07, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh dear. Disambiguation pages should not have manual short descriptions. (Nor should redirects, in case that wasn't obvious.) Descriptions should never begin with a lower-case letter. (We might allow "iPhone model" or "eBay trader" but these are so rare that false positives would dwarf them.) Does the suggestion list include WikiData's description? It often exhibits excessive verbosity (why settle for a star when you can have an "astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity"?) but may be suitable for pruning manually to provide a good SD if you uppercase its initial first. Certes (talk) 11:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

...and to echo one of Jonesey's points below: articles which already have SDs are certainly not a priority for receiving a new SD and should probably never be changed by this tool. (I thought that was obvious, but apparently not.) Certes (talk) 15:34, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @ARamadan-WMF, as I'm sure you know the English Wikipedia has some very well developed guidance at Wikipedia:Short description for writing short descriptions, which enjoys wide community suppport. Could you please indicate how your project tries to ensure compliance with those rules? Do you, for example, run a post-processing step to ensure that you meet WP:SDFORMAT and WP:SDDATES standards, and that you use WP:SDNONE appropriately?

You will want to change your nomenclature, as well, as the expression "Article description" means nothing here. The term consistently used for the last six years, ever since these things were invented, is "Short description". Use of the word "short" is of real practical importance, as new users often tend to assume that descriptions of 60 or even 80 characters are OK. The fact that your system easily generates impossible suggestions of over 90 characters (eg "Hunger") tells me straight away that you haven't considered WP:SDSHORT.

You seem to be running a multi-language project that doesn't so far as I can tell take any account of the rules and customs here. I suggest you might like to seek advice from Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions, which is pretty active. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

ARamadan-WMF: I'm interested in further testing of the tool. From what I tested, using this tool without supervision is a no-go, but I guess it could eventually be good enough to give multiple suggestions for a human to choose one (or reject all). MarioGom (talk) 09:44, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments. I have taken comprehensive notes and will pass them along to the product team. I'm also going to recommend that they read this discussion themselves.For clarity, I am not recommending that this be released to editors at the English Wikipedia.

Again, I appreciate your assistance. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 15:03, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

section break 2

Further test issues: tool doesn't seem to work on Uptown Theater (Kansas City, Missouri). No idea why it turns Beier Ko in all three suggestions into a purely Canadian person. For Napoleon, the three suggestions in full are "1804-1815", "1799-1815" and "1804–1815". The suggestions for Barack Obama are "44th President of the United States" (fine), and "48th President of the United States"(!) and "29th President of the United States". Okay, one could say, just take the first suggestion then, but e.g. for Emmanuel Macron the first suggestion is "Prime Minister of France", a post he never held. For Alpine, King County, Washington, the first description is "village in the Philippines" (what?), second is "Civil parish" (again, what?), and the third is the correct but rather general "village". Oh, and take your pick, is the 2013 Asian Athletics Championships – Women's heptathlon a "Judo competition", a "heptathlon competition", or a "Karate competition"? Note again the inconsistent capitalization.

In general, there is much wariness on enwiki to let any AI tools loose on the contents, whether it is fully automatic or human-assisted like here. I doubt, in its current state, that this tool will be an exception to that rule. Fram (talk) 12:32, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The tool seems to like "Prime Minister". Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, is either "Prime Minister of Germany (2005-2018)", or "Prime Minister of Germany (2005-2019)" or "Prime Minister of Germany (2005-2018)". On the other hand, Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor, is, according to the tool, "Former Federal Chancellor of Germany" or "Former German Chancellor of Germany" or "Former German Chancellor".

@ARamadan-WMF, please do not allow anyone to use this tool for editing if it messes up BLPs like this. —Kusma (talk) 13:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

ARamadan-WMF, the attention to detail surrounding this tool is indicative of a project that is not refined enough to meet the needs of the English Wikipedia. The very first thing I noticed when I went to the tool's page is that one of the option boxes is labeled "number beams" instead of "number of beams" (I see that "beam" is jargon for what we call "short description"). That may seem like a small problem, but when I see small small problems of this type in a project focused on getting wording correct, I know that the project is nowhere near ready for deployment.

I clicked the "Submit" button while leaving the text box blank in order to get suggestions for random articles. I got the following (I have not removed or selected from the results; these are all of my results):

Walwyn's Castle: Human settlement in Wales (correct); village in the United Kingdom (failure to capitalize); Human settlement in Wales, England (very wrong). Note that this article already has a short description, which you can tell because it is in the category Category:Articles with short description.
Zorn, Texas: Unincorporated community in Texas, United States (correct); unincorporated community in Texas , United States (failure to capitalize); human settlement in Texas, United States of America (failure to capitalize). Note that this article already has a short description, which you can tell because it is in the category Category:Articles with short description.
Socioeconomic status and mental health: Studies about the relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health (bad: repeats the title in the SD); Studies about the relationship between socioeconomics and mental health (worse: repeats the title in the SD and uses a word that does not exist in English); Social causation theory (very wrong). Note that this article already has a short description, which you can tell because it is in the category Category:Articles with short description.
Matthijs Vermeulen: Dutch composer (inadequate); Dutch composer and journalist (acceptable); composer (inadequate and uncapitalized). These are all worse than the existing short description of "Dutch composer and music journalist". Note that this article already has a short description, which you can tell because it is in the category Category:Articles with short description.
Siemens-Schuckert B: reconnaissance biplane (failure to capitalize); German reconnaissance aircraft (correct); reconnaissance aircraft (failure to capitalize). Note that this article already has a short description, which you can tell because it is in the category Category:Articles with short description.

So that's 15 suggested short descriptions on five random articles, all of which already had short descriptions, so they should have been ignored by this suggestion tool. Of the 15 descriptions, just 4 were acceptable, and zero of them were better than the existing short descriptions. That is utter failure and not indicative of a tool that is ready for deployment on the English Wikipedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:51, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I had a look at some articles and got the same sort of results as others above.

Battle of the Beanfield: "Human settlement in England" (incorrect), "A battle in 1985" (not incorrect but not very useful), "conflict" (vague to the point of being useless). The exiting short description "1985 conflict near Stonehenge, UK" is superior to all of the suggestions.
Fire engine: "Vehicle used to carry water" (techinically correct for a subset of fire engines, but miseading), "Vehicle used to fire" (what does that even mean?), "Type of vehicle" (much too vauge). The existing short description "Emergency vehicle intended to put out fires" is superior to all of the suggestions.
Wat Tyler: "1381 rebellion" (incorrect), "English rebellion leader" (not bad), "1381 rebel" (not incorrect but a bit vauge). The existing short description "Leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt" is superior to all the suggestions.
Railfan: "person who is recreationally interested in trains" (too wordy and incorrectly capitalised), "An railway buff or train buff" (gramatically incorrect and not very helpful), "An railway buff" (gramatically incorrect and not very helpful).
Open Championship: "golf tournament held annually in Prestwick, Scotland, UK" (incorrect and incorrectly capitalised), "golf tournament held in 1860" (incorrect and incorrectly capitalised, "golf tournament" (vauge and incorrectly capitalised). The existing short description "Golf tournament held in the UK" is superior to all the suggestions.
British Rail Class 230: "diesel electric multiple unit of battery" (incorrect and incorrectly capitalised), "locomotive class" (incorrect and incorrectly capitalised), "diesel electric multiple unit" (incomplete and incorrectly capitalised). The existing short description "Diesel-electric or battery-electric multiple unit passenger train" is superior to all the suggestions.
Penis: "organ of the reproduction animal" (???), "organ of the animal" (arguably correct but very vague), "organ" (far too vauge and, like the others, incorrectly capitalised. The existing short description "Primary sexual organ of male animals" is superior to all the suggestions.
The Boy Bands Have Won: "2008 studio album by Chumbawumba" (correct and identical to the existing short description), "2013 studio album by Chumbawumba" (incorrect), "2010 studio album by Chumbawumba" (incorrect).
Love: "Emotional state of love" (tautological), "Emotional state of feeling" (arguably sort of correct), "Emotional state" (arguably sort of correct). The existing short description "Emotion" is superior to all the suggestions.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned by others is that the tester says "Seems wrong? Leave feedback on Phabricator." with a link to phab:T318384, but that is a very specific technical subtask of the ML programme ("Put API on Cloud VPS") that has been closed as resolved since December 2022.

This project is not ready for beta testing, let alone production. Thryduulf (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think she is suggesting letting it loose on en:wp. She says "We are specifically looking for individuals who can help us evaluate and provide feedback on the English translations we have", and she seems to have come to the right place! I tried a few, with similar results to you & Fram. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

It is very unclear what is being suggested and in what fase we are. From the link given: "As a first step in the implementation of this project, the Android team will develop a MVP [...] Should the 30 day experiment show promising results based on the indicators above, the team will introduce the feature to all users and remove our 3 edit requirement for suggested edits. [...] The team will partner with volunteers to patrol edits made during the time of the experiment and assign a grade to the edit." (these seem to be the volunteers asked for here). So it looks as if a 30-day period started on 10 July, and after this (i.e. now) it would be turned on "for all users". But it seems the experiment already ran in April/May[16], and the findings should have been published in June[17], though I can't find them. The actual status and planning for this tool are to me rather unclear. Fram (talk) 16:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Agree with @Thryduulf. this project is not ready for beta testing, or production, or implementation. Sm8900 (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

More evidence of how bad this is really isn't needed, but I've been having another play and the last two articles I tried have been particular lowlights - Nicola Sturgeon was variously described as "Prime Minister of Scotland", a position that doesn't exist, and a Scottish politician born in 1984 or 1994 (she was born in 1970, so these two at least are BLP violations); and Tower Bridge described as "Lighthouse in London, England", "Lighthouse in London" and "bridge" - the first two are particularly perplexing as the word "lighthouse" (or "light house") appears nowhere in the article. Thryduulf (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, well said indeed. a human editor would never make those mistakes. and since we do seem to have lots of humans here as editors... so therefore, the question arises.... why is this app needed ....at all....? Sm8900 (talk) 17:30, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

is this a version of Archon? or Nomad? or Vaal? Sm8900 (talk) 17:36, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Sm8900 that is a good question, especially given that nearly every article either already has a short description or has been assessed as not needing one (the title provides a complete description). I can understand that a project with this goal might be useful for smaller wikis, but only if the output was very significantly better than the examples here. Thryduulf (talk) 17:42, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, Agreed. as per WP:Identity, the title is both the basis of identity and nutshell formulation of the article's topic. well said! Sm8900 (talk) 17:48, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

VR + Wikipedia...?

I joined WP today to talk about how WP is great. But could be greater. Not in content, but layout. I am a strong believer in VR and AR lays the future of learning. How VR ready is WP?

Ok, science could be shown in the way of maps. To get a birds view first. A big continent, the highest mountain mathematics. Like a globe, connected spheres of interests, but also unconnected, where the ocean is, the not known, or unknowable. This would allow a child, or child minded person, to enter a BIIIG picture. There lays the continent of humanities. And there the continent of mathematics, with a hillside full of trickeries around numbers, computer science in a separate valley, watered by streams of specific sources. So, instead of on a book cover, you oversee a whole globe of nothing than science. And here you, as Peter Pan. Wander the long road of knowledge, jump on little islands, esoteric science, neither recognized by the hard science, nor the humanities. It would be a chance to exibit what we know. In total know. All things considered. A globe of knowledge. Overseeable, as a bird, as an astronaut. Good science has also be seen in a bundle, like an archipelago, inhabited by different highly specialised faculties. There can be capitals, where stuff gets remixed, but it would then be more about the little CRACKS, you start to see, when you go REALLY deeep down on this planet of knowledge. I see it as Google Earth, the closer you go, the higher is the resolution. The fine grain of content from WP, what only miles below you, like a map, or a globe, is your starting point. Above that is a new knowledge ordering.

This old idea of mine (I am 67 btw.) would not bring me here, but a rather new one. I am fishing in my own ocean maybe, when I think this globe of knowledge inverted, turned around like a sock. And giving it VR appeal with a beautiful side effect, that now you see all the knowledge, all around you. And then, zoom down, zoom in, go in the detail, let the veins pulse reddish, where distant relations exist. Make it possible to overfly the world of facts, just join them together in the best appropriate way. As map. Not by an alphabet. I suppose my idea will not be taken serious, but I do not mind. I just would KNOW, that I would be every day on WP, if I could fly like Peter Pan over the wide territory of what is known.

Something like this should be done open source, crowdfunded and enginered. Not to touch any of its content, this would in my eyes be the book cover of the most interesting book ever written. While the content is basically traditional, like a paper version, this cover would be the widest funnel to let more people getting to look at your interesting book. Mappify what you have to say, so the lonely walker at night can follow better the springs of wisdom. Make a never ending map, a globe. Buy them from dump shops, repaint them. And then turn the whole concept around, like a sock, so by turning your head with your VR glasses, you get an idea how still big the ocean is. The stuff, we do NOT know....

Tell me what uou think about my vision. I do this in photography already. Check out invearth.com for the GENERAL look, of how an inverted globe looks like.

All this will not make WP look even smarter, than you already are (?), but would maybe suck kids away from Tik Tok. Or such...... Dreamers of all walks of life, who nose in books with appealing covers.

It is just an idea....

Greetings from New Zealand. 2/8/2023

Fitzgeraldo Fitzgeraldo Absentree (talk) 06:15, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

That would be a very ambitious project. For comparison, there is a project to produce audio versions of English Wikipedia articles. After many years, there are 1,710 (out of more than six million) articles with audio versions, and some of those have not been updated in 17 years. Remember, all (with very specific and limited exceptions) of the content in Wikpedia is contributed by volunteers, so what you propose would require large numbers of volunteers to contribute time and effort to the project. Donald Albury 13:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

These are very different arts. Many millions of people have been taught how to write a crude essay or research paper, and when I teach people from among the small fraction who have done these things outside class, it's easy. I just have to explain how a Wikipedia article differs; they already know things like exposition vs persuasion and the structure of a paragraph. Few have been taught how to organize an illustrated lecture or a drama, so the pool of easy candidates is small. Even elementary things like paragraph structure are different, and then, the script is only a small part of the work of video production. As for VR; c'mon! Hardly anybody is good at that; it's a pioneer art. So yes, when such products are made, they should be uploaded to Commons and appropriate articles should link to them. But it's going to be very small for many years. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:55, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the time my boss suggested we video my training sessions for staff and show the video to later groups. I knew just enough about what it would take to do that properly to know I didn't have the experience, time or desire to attempt it. Donald Albury 17:21, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Whole different art. In the 20th century cheap videotape came along, and since the 2000s everybody carries a video camera / recorder in their pocket. Cheap laptops can run decent editing software with timelines, splices, dissolves, and so forth. The result is, as hoped, a vast output of video shorts on many topics, but it ain't Hitchcock or Goddard or Kubrick.

What we get from Youtube and Vimeo and their competitors are a few somewhat useful Khan Institute items, even fewer, somewhat better TED talks, and a huge volume of poor shooting, poor editing, and very poor reading of a badly written script. As a fairly experienced still photographer, when I point my camera on a tripod at a Wikimedia Lightning Talk podium and set it for video, I don't bother viewing the result; I hand it over to someone who might edit and upload it. Generally they do their job at least as well as I do mine, but it doesn't much matter.

So, when we read an article and wish for a video version, what we should do is search for someone else's already not-bad online video that is relevant, and link to that. Maybe we should have a task force or other organization to search, catalog, and link useful videos. Running our own video operation, analogous to the way we organize text production, is unlikely to create much. And VR? Well, sure, if someone has already put something relevant online. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Whole different art. In the 20th century cheap videotape came along, and since the 2000s everybody carries a video camera / recorder in their pocket. Cheap laptops can run decent editing software with timelines, splices, dissolves, and so forth. The result is, as hoped, a vast output of video shorts on many topics, but it ain't Hitchcock or Goddard or Kubrick.

What we get from Youtube and Vimeo and their competitors are a few somewhat useful Khan Institute items, even fewer, somewhat better TED talks, and a huge volume of poor shooting, poor editing, and very poor reading of a badly written script. As a fairly experienced still photographer, when I point my camera on a tripod at a Wikimedia Lightning Talk podium and set it for video, I don't bother viewing the result; I hand it over to someone who might edit and upload it. Generally they do their job at least as well as I do mine, but it doesn't much matter. So, when we read an article and wish for a video version, what we should do it look for someone's already not-bad video that is relevant, and link to that. Maybe we should have a task force or other organization to search, catalog, and link useful videos, but making our own video operation is unlikely to create much. And VR? C'mon. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, Google Earth VR does something close, and I think they take snippets from Wikipedia. SWinxy (talk) 20:18, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Online News Act

The Online News Act is a new law in Canada which gives news organisations the right to claim funding from "digital news intermediaries". It takes effect at the end of 2023 but is already having an effect as Meta is now blocking Canadian news links from its platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

This may affect Wikipedia as it is a digital news intermediary too. I noticed the issue when working on the Yellowknife evacuation story at In the News where the issue is having an impact – see Yellowknife wildfire: communication issues and Facebook news ban hamper evacuation efforts.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:27, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

What is your point here? If Wikipedia is or will be affected by the Canadian law, then that is something the WMF have been/are/will be dealing with there is nothing we can do here. The ITN link seems to be just you disagreeing with a very clear consensus (something that is quite common at that venue). Thryduulf (talk) 10:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

No idea why @Thryduulf is balking at the thread. Per the header of this page, Editors or Wikimedia Foundation staff may post and discuss information, proposals, feedback requests, or other matters of significance to both the community and the foundation. Andrew Davidson has information, a concern that may be of significance to the community. So it belongs here to be discussed. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I do indeed expect that the WMF will be taking an interest in this. And so that's why I started some discussion here, as this page is for such WMF-related issues, right? There's another act in the offing in the UK – the Online Safety Bill – and that may have some impact too. "Forewarned is forearmed"! Andrew🐉(talk) 11:16, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I very much doubt that the Online News Act has direct relevance for Wikipedia. I see nothing that affects citing and linking to sources. Unlike Meta or Google Wikipedia doesn't show snippets or previews, nor does it embed content. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:31, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The Online Safety Bill on the other hand could have very real implications.[18] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:33, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, although the WMF is clearly well aware of it, since they formally stated they wouldn't carry out age checks in direct response to the OSB. It's terrible in both core aspects and in actual execution of those aspects, and despite a majority of parliamentarians disliking it, I suspect whipped votes will see some form into being. Nosebagbear (talk) 01:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Disallow access to the world's encyclopedia? That would be playing with political dynamite. In the free world, access to this essential knowledge resource has become a cherished civil right. If the UK blocked Wikipedia as the Guardian suggests could happen, [19] imagine the backlash. Disgruntled users may protest en masse, very well flooding the streets. Therefore, blocking Wikipedia as a whole is highly unlikely. — The Transhumanist 06:26, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

It's more likely that the UK will follow China and Russia in allowing only partial access to Wikipedia. The UK government has form for this, when requests to Wikipedia were routed via a proxy which blocked an article about an album illustrated by its cover which depicts a naked child. It caused chaos for editors, whose contributions (including those from vandals) all appeared to come from one IP address, and was quickly reverted. That's still not a great result for anyone, and would put the UK firmly on the list of repressive regimes. Certes (talk) 10:25, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Russia allows full access to all Wikimedia projects at this point. Ymblanter (talk) 14:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

"Disgruntled users may protest en masse". Sadly, I doubt it. I mean governmemnts historically have committed the worse atrocities many times without people doing anything about it. People are more likely to riot because their sports team won or lost. If there are concentrated efforts to organize protests by powerful groups (like with the BLM situation), people are more likely to protest than waiting for organically to happen. Spontaneous protests do happen but they are a whim of randomness. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:11, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Random person no 362478479 Per the lead of the article Online News Act, "or facilitating access to their content via their platforms.". Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia does facilitate access to their content. Besides, governments often love to abuse their power and many times come with novel and sometimes even arbitrary interpretations of their laws. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:39, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I assumed that the ONA restricts directly presenting (parts of) the content of a news site, e.g. in the form of previews or snippets. I don't think that any news corporation has an interest in restricting mere links to their content. But the law is indeed hopelessly vague in this respect. The text is:

Making available of news content
(2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if
(a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or
(b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.
— http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent#ID0E02D0AA

It is indeed possible (maybe even natural) to read (2)(b) as including simple linking.[20] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

[...] the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced. This is literally Wikipedia! @SMcCandlish:. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm no expert in Canadian media and free-expression law, but that does sound vaguely worded enough to accidentally net Wikipedia and anyone else who ever just quotes ("any portion of") or links to ("access ... is facilitated") any Canadian news source for any reason. It's apallingly poor policy writing, and I think the Canadian courts would recognize that such a strict interpretation would be overreaching in the face of section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Candian Supreme Court caselaw permits the government to impose some "reasonable" limits on freedom of expression, but this clearly wouldn't be reasonable. However, a test case could take years to work its way through the court system, and one might not happen anyway if no enforcement action is taken in the direction of this strict interpretation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

It sounds as if we need someone who is an expert in Canadian media and free-expression law. I trust that the WMF can find funding to consult such a person. Certes (talk) 13:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

What can we do about it, anyway? The Canadian government will not be able to charge the Wikipedia community with breaking the law. Most of us are beyond their reach. Their target for enforcing a strict interpretation of the law, if they should choose to do so, would be the Foundation, but the Foundation is a corporation in the US. Also, the Foundation has a legal staff, who are better qualified than I and almost all other editors are to judge the impact of that law on the operations of Wikipedia. This is something that I will gladly leave to the Foundation to worry about. Donald Albury 02:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@Donald Albury you stated, "The Canadian government will not be able to charge the Wikipedia community with breaking the law." Except of course, Canadian Wikipedians.

Wikipedia admin jailed for 32 years after alleged Saudi spy infiltration^[1]
The DCRI (French intelligence agency) forced Rémi Mathis, an administrator of the French-language Wikipedia and president of Wikimedia France, under threat of detention and arrest, into deleting an article about the Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station.^[2]
A country has the right to prevent the world’s Internet users from accessing information, Canada’s highest court ruled^[3]

Really worrisome! Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:52, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@Oshwah, Koavf, and The Transhumanist: Thinker78 (talk) 04:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Super-interested in the topic, but not 100% clear on why I was pinged. Is there something you think I in particular can add to this conversation? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I can't see where this actually impacts Wikipedia at large. It's a US corporation. It might suck for Wikipedia users in Canada, though. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 05:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

First, I think it is important to display empathy for Wikipedia editors in Canada (I mean, I shouldn't really need to say this). They are Wikipedia. Second, it may have legal repercussions to the display of information in Canada. Third, the world is interconnected. Laws in Canada and their influence in other countries could have impacts in Wikipedia around the world. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:42, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that this sucks for Canadian users who could lose access to Wikipedia. I just don't think this is something WMF will be affected by. I'm not entirely sure what Canada intends to do if they don't comply. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 00:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Unless "digital news intermediary" ends up being defined to include individuals with no formal relationship with an on-line organization, I do not see how individual editors, Canadian or otherwise, can be forced to enter into bargaining with Canadian news organizations for payment for linking to stories published by those news organizations. Donald Albury 11:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

OK. An extreme reading could indeed include quoting. This is really worryingly vague language. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 13:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I must state that I do not see how the Online News Act would apply to Canadian Wikipedians. The act affects "digital news intermediaries", not individuals. The act defines "digital news intermediary" as an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content made by news outlets available to persons in Canada.^[4] The Foundation, as the operator of an "online communications platform", is a potential target of this legislation. If the Canadian government succeeds in enforcing this law against the Foundation, it will harm Wikipedia. However, I do not see how an individual editor could be made a target of this legislation. - Donald Albury 12:03, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

References

^ Belanger, Ashley (6 Jan 2023). "Wikipedia admin jailed for 32 years after alleged Saudi spy infiltration". Ars Technica. Retrieved 8 Jan 2023.
^ Willsher, Kim (7 April 2013). "French secret service accused of censorship over Wikipedia page". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 May 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
^ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/top-canadian-court-permits-worldwide-internet-censorship Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship
^ "Government Bill (House of Commons) C-18 (44-1) - Royal Assent - Online News Act - Parliament of Canada". www.parl.ca. Retrieved 2023-08-26.

Soft Delete

Editors may be interested in a discussion on the possibility of creating two forms of deletion, currently at WP:VPI, that could only be implemented by the WMF. BilledMammal (talk) 18:31, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there are other ways the foundation could raise money -- are they better for the project?

You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there *are* other ways the foundation *could* raise money -- are they better for the project?. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 12:04, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

About a job posting at the Foundation

I'm probably over-reacting at this job posting, but at best the job title troubles me -- "Group Product Manager, Contributors". (So are we volunteers now a "product"?) At worst, this position should be put on indefinite hold until all of the volunteer communities have had a chance to offer input, & the duties re-written. Or maybe this is another case where all of the decisions were made & the die has been cast, & none of us volunteers can change anything about this. -- llywrch (talk) 07:26, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a little unfortunately worded (would contributor tools be better?), but the role seems to be a relatively standard software UX sort of thing? I wouldn't mind having someone to "understand and faithfully represent the needs and requirements" of the volunteer community, it would probably help with the changing things. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:48, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you're overreacting. "Contributors" refers to the area of work done by the former Contributors team at the WMF. The posting says, "..managing the product managers of the Editing, Growth, Campaigns, and Moderator Tools cross-functional teams", explicitly not contributors like us. Legoktm (talk) 09:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Llywrch -- thanks for checking out the job posting and reflecting on it. I'm Marshall Miller; I'm a director of product at WMF and the hiring manager for the role. I know that our structure at WMF and the jargon we use can be opaque, so I'd like to take this opportunity to explain it a bit and see what you think.

Much of WMF staff are inside the Product and Technology department, which is run by the Chief Product and Technology Officer, Selena Deckelmann. I report to her. There are a lot of different teams inside the large department, but basically responsibility for all the different parts of the Mediawiki software and all the technologies that operate on the wikis are divided up amongst those teams. Many of the teams are responsible for parts that we don't really see as day-to-day readers and editors of Wikipedia, like the servers, the databases, the APIs, etc. But many of the things that day-to-day readers and editors do encounter are part of the "Core Experiences" group, which is responsible for the software behind much of the user experience -- things like the visual and wikitext editors, the skins for reading, the recent changes feed, discussion tools, notifications, and the iOS and Android apps. I'm the director of product for that group, which means I manage the product managers, who are the people that set the roadmap for their respective teams. There is another director for the group who manages the engineers, and another leader who manages the designers.

The Core Experiences group has about ten teams in it, and that necessitates some additional structure. We're going to be grouping together four of the teams that work mostly on editing functionality: Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Campaigns. I actually used to be the product manager with the Growth team, but my role has since grown. We're calling the group "Contributors", not because it manages contributors, but because contributors are the people whose experience the group is going to be working to improve. The idea is that we always want staff in the group to remember who they're trying to help. And so this role that's posted is going to be working with those four teams and trying to think at a high level how all the different features should fit together to be a coherent whole for the editors, rather than a disjointed and confusing set of tools. For instance, right now there are a couple teams thinking about how machine learning can be used to prevent obvious vandalism -- but we don't want to end up building two features to do the same thing (without a good reason). Does that all make sense? Let me know if there's anything else I can try to explain.

And like @Alpha3031 said, this person will be listening closely and working with volunteers, since those are the people who will be using what the teams build. It's definitely not going to be an easy job -- because our communities of editors are so energetic, creative, and unique. Please let me know if there's anything in particular you're thinking about or caring about as we look for the right person for this job. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for responding Marshall. I think it's great when WMF folks answer community questions clearly like you did here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Good post, thanks :^) jp×g 08:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Office hours for the Wikipedia mobile app

Further information is here if people are interested. There's also a related MediaWiki page. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 07:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, @Clovermoss, for sharing the info about the upcoming office hours, this will be considered in our future announcements. and rest assured, we're already on it to fix the red link problem. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 12:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Donations 'In Memory Of'

A forum to which I belong recently had one of its best liked members pass away. The family suggested donating to Wiki in lieu of sending flowers. Several of us have done so but noted that it would have been nice if we could have specified who the donation was in commemoration of.

So i propose that Wiki add an item to the donation page letting a donor say eg 'Given in fond memory of', and 'on behalf of' whatever forum, club etc the decedent was a member of.

I think having such an option would add a level of meaning to the act of giving, also that the number and amount of donations would increase. Passécomposeé (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

It is not possible to donate directly to Wikipedia. Donations from the Donate link on this page and other sources go to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which determines how the money is spent (or retained). One of their many functions is to provide the infrastructure for English Wikipedia. The WMF collects millions of donations each year, and I am not aware of any procedure for marking individual donations as you would wish. Certes (talk) 15:53, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the OP is asking for such a procedure to be added. If it's just implemented a comment field in which the donator can explain why they are donating then I can't see any significant harm in it, and potentially some benefit (e.g. if many people mention X when donating then mentioning X in fundraising banners may be worthwhile). Obviously any free text field can be abused, and reading comments does take time, so it isn't free, but it's not something to be dismissed out of hand. Thryduulf (talk) 19:46, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Thryduulf, that is what I had in mind. I hadn't realized there would be an expense in time but hopefully allowing such comment fields would be productive enough to make it worthwhile. Passécomposeé (talk) 20:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Dear @Passécomposeé

Thank you for your suggestion here. I am Julia and I work for the WMF's Advancement department (which is where the fundraising department sits). Thank you for your generosity in wanting to make a donation in memory of another person, I regret to tell you we currently do not have the functionality to offer this option. Your suggestion to add this method is a good one, and I have passed this on to the team and we hope to be able to implement it soon.

Thank you again for your support, and please don’t hesitate to ask if we can be of further assistance.

Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Julia! Passécomposeé (talk) 13:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

When does this end?

The WMF fundraising banners have been up for months now. Surely they serve no further purpose - anybody who was actually going to donate would have by now, and it's not like actual editors see a cent of this anyway. Can't we just dispense with them? Rattus.nonnus.existus (talk) 23:45, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you can, in your preferences. Cabayi (talk) 14:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Legal concerns email addy

Currently, at Wikipedia:FAQ/Article subjects there are two email addresses suggested for an article's subject to contact Wikipedia when legal issues are concerned:

Under The information in your article about me is wrong. How can I get it fixed? It says:
- "For serious legal issues, including libel, please send an E-mail to info-en-q@wikipedia.org."
Then, under I would like to sue you for lying about me in your article. How do I proceed? It says:
- "If you have a genuine legal concern, tell us about it by emailing info-en-q@wikimedia.org."

I'm guessing any difference between the two domains is irrelevant, and emails sent to either one will all end up going to the same place — but I'd like to know for certain. Thanks in advance for any info on this! Regards, Spintendo 15:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably both of those should be changed to legal@wikimedia.org. Izno (talk) 17:04, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

no, there's a gatekeeping function at VTRS to filter out the stuff that really needs goes to legal and that which doesn't. Sending mail direct to legal loses that function. Nthep (talk) 17:11, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

My concern is more so the domain and not really the prefix. It was my understanding the domain has always been wikimedia. But this last February, an editor made this edit which inexplicably changed the domain to Wikipedia. When the editor changed the domain, the first email addy was changed....but there are actually two places on that FAQ page where the email addy was displayed. The one which was changed was towards the top of the page, but the second one is further down on the page and somewhat hidden. That one wasn't touched; It still uses the wikimedia domain. In 5 years of reviewing COI edit requests, I've found myself having to give out that email address perhaps only six times. Every time I do, I always double check with the FAQ page (just in case anything has changed). That's when I noticed the difference in domains. So I thought I would bring it here to check if there was a mistake. Spintendo 22:10, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Both domains will work and end up in the same place. Nthep (talk) 22:20, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, that's good to know. Much appreciated! Regards, Spintendo 22:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Interviews: Tell us about your experiences using Wikidata in the Wikimedia sister projects

Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland is investigating the different ways Wikidata is being used in the Wikimedia projects. If you would like to speak with us about your experiences with integrating Wikidata in Wikimedia wikis, please sign up for an interview in this registration form. Please note that currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.

For more information, visit our project page. Feedback is always welcome here. Thank you.-- Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 10:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § Close appeal of Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 6#RfC to issue a non-binding resolution to the Wikimedia Foundation

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § Close appeal of Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 6#RfC to issue a non-binding resolution to the Wikimedia Foundation. Mach61 (talk) 13:41, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

RfC to issue a non-binding resolution to the Wikimedia Foundation

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus for Wikipedia: Village pump to issue non-binding resolution for all three sections, especially #3: Increased support for internal needs. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:00, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Should the English Wikipedia issue the following non-binding resolutions to the Wikimedia Foundation?

Each of the resolutions has its own section for !votes and discussion:

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia
Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects
Increased support for internal needs

01:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Proposed resolutions

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia

Discussion

The English Wikipedia community is concerned about the distribution of grants related to activity on the English Wikipedia that will either not contribute to our goals of building an encyclopedia or will actively hinder those goals. We request that the Wikimedia Foundation informs the English Wikipedia of all non-trivial grants that will result in activity on the English Wikipedia through the opening of a discussion at the Village Pump (WMF) prior to the grant being issued.

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects

Discussion

The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has found itself engaged in mission creep, and that this has resulted in funds that donors provided in the belief that they would support Wikimedia Projects being allocated to unrelated external organizations, despite urgent need for those funds to address internal deficiencies.
We request that the Wikimedia Foundation reappropriates all money remaining in the Knowledge Equity Fund, and we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community.

Increased support for internal needs

Discussion

The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has neglected critical areas of the project, and that continued neglect of these areas may endanger the project.
To improve the resilience of the project, we request that money be reallocated to hiring more technical staff, whose role will be to fulfill requests from the community such as those expressed on the Community Wishlist, as well as restoring access to tools such as grapher extension.
To improve knowledge equity we also request that that the Foundation provides funding to assist established editors in accessing the resources they need to improve the encyclopedia, such as by increasing the number of libraries accessible through the Wikipedia Library and by giving micro-grants for the purchase of backlogged items at Resource Request.

Related discussions

There are three related discussions that editors involved in this may be interested in; they are listed here.

Community Response

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Community Response)

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Survey)

Support (Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia)

There have been many issues over the years where groups have been funded by the WMF to engage in activities on the English Wikipedia, only for the activity to be actively harmful to our project by providing no benefit and resulting in our volunteers having to spend time cleaning up the resulting mess. Often, this result can be reasonably predicted, as it could have been with the Deforestation in Nigeria project, if only the WMF had actively sought our input; hopefully this resolution will convince them to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
As someone unfamiliar, what happened with the Deforestation in Nigeria project?—Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 12:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
(ec x 2) User:Ineffablebookkeeper, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1137#Another Nigerian project dropping poor articles here, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-09-16/News and notes#WMF reconsiders Africa approach, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How can AI be applied to Deforestation and Climate Change: Nigeria's Contribution to Global Warming, as a not exhaustive list. The short version is that a USD $20,000 grant was approved in part because of the false claim that Wikipedia lacked coverage on Deforestation in Nigeria, a claim apparently made after an inadequate search and never double checked before the grant was approved. The articles created by the group receiving the grant were of poor quality, some entirely unsuitable.
This question refers to the original wording of this proposal. Folly Mox (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
* Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:08, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Sandizer (talk) 05:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC) per my comments in previous discussions, wasting money on KEF (support for non-Wikimedia-related initiatives) needs to be stopped now. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 06:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Supporting the amended proposal.—S Marshall T/C 09:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Community, and not the Wikimedia Foundation, governs the Wikimedia Movement. When donors give money to Wikipedia, they give it to the Wikimedia Community and not the Wikimedia Foundation. It is essential that money go to support the Wikimedia Community, its culture, and its values. With increasing regularity and forcefulness, the values and ethics of the Wikimedia Foundation are contrary to those of the Wikimedia Community. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support as amended. Some initiatives seem to be about experimenting with editing privileges as a classroom tool rather than improving Wikipedia, and that's not where these grants should go. Certes (talk) 14:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support as amended. Notifying us ahead of time when a grant recipient's activities are expected to affect this project will allow people to help them course correct in the early stages if lack of competence appears to be an issue, rather than waiting for it to be discovered organically once it has already become a problem. The tighter feedback loop should result in better articles, less discouragement from the grant recipients, more competent new editors, and decreased frustration from en.wp editors. The increased transparency may reduce ill will between this project and the Foundation. Folly Mox (talk) 14:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support with the amendment made. The community should be emphasizing *what* the community wants to happen. Exactly how to make that happen is a separate issue and I think statements like this should be distilled to the key element(s). CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 15:08, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. The language requires the WMF to inform the community, it doesn't say the community has to approve the grant. "Non-trivial" should be defined later as some dollar threshold, so there will be large grants and small grants, and the WMF should be required to inform enwiki whenever it is considering a large grant that will affect enwiki. I for one would like to know about large grants being considered without having to read through every grant application on meta. I've been surprised at how many grants are in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. This would be very easy for the WMF to comply with, and I don't see any downside. Levivich (talk) 16:59, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. The fairly recent case of Nigerian deforestation articles springs to mind and asks serious questions about the ability of the WMF to allocate grants. More attention is needed here. Willbb234 20:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support as amended. Would be good to define "non-trivial" for clarity. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, but I don't think that the notification necessarily has to be a discussion (alternatively it could simply be a post), and I'd be fine with any discussion ocurring on metawiki. It'd create less work for the folks that review grants and less places to monitor. As for the merits of notification, enwiki might often know more about the state of the wiki than grant approvers when a grant largely concerns enwiki (in my opinion should be determined at reviewer discretion), so I think that it makes sense to notify enwiki as a courtesy. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 02:59, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. This isn't even asking for veto power, just "Hey, if a grant you're giving is likely to have a substantial impact on the English Wikipedia, please give us a heads up beforehand." I do not think that is an unreasonable request. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:06, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
This seems like a good step toward transparency and harm reduction. —siro χ o 03:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support anything which hamstrings W?F. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Reviewing grant applications and judging a project's likely impact on content are two tasks that require different skill sets. Perhaps it would help if grant applicants without an established track record as Wikipedians submit some samples of work to the editor community before being awarded tens of thousands of dollars. Andreas JN 466 11:43, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, now that the problematic lines in the statement have been removed. – SD0001 (talk) 16:30, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support: there are far too many situations where unpaid volunteers are cleaning up the mess left by paid agents. It is one thing for this to be for-profit COI editing but entirely another for it to be grant money coming from reader donations. We are the best placed to judge whether an idea fits en.wiki. Creating new articles will rarely be an appropriate task for newcomers. Some absolutely shocking grant approvals show the process has no oversight by anyone with a clue. — Bilorv (talk) 20:59, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Support I think it is actually totally reasonable to say "please let us know if you are going to give money to an organization that is going to edit on Wikipedia so that we can have oversight and guidance". Introducing grant money has the power to overwhelm the abilities of even a project as large English Wikipedia to clean up errors and problems. We should at least be able to know when a project is going to start. Steven Walling • talk 02:16, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. I don't even mainly edit in enwp but I am looking forward of this kind of initiatives from the community and whether we can apply it outside of enwp. RXerself (talk) 16:15, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Support per above. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:58, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Support as a way to increase transparency and community involvement. DFlhb (talk) 12:25, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Support many of these grants are poorly designed and allocated, resulting in waste of money and damage to the project --Ita140188 (talk) 18:58, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support No-brainer. A mild version to just inform. North8000 (talk) 19:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. Dont see why more transparency would be bad. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 20:55, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. The WMF is not a generic "make things better-er" charity. Mebigrouxboy (talk) 23:45, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Support I'm amazed this isn't being done already; giving money to something that creates un-helpful articles here that we have to deal with seems counter-intuitive. Oaktree b (talk) 15:42, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. If money is given in the promise of activity in English Wikipedia a notification should be a common sense approach. The community would gladly assist the organizations receiving the grant, but the community also should have the right to scrutinize "paid" activities going on in their wiki. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Killarnee (talk) 13:07, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support tompagenet (talk) 13:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Support--Wehwalt (talk) 02:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Support Grants should go to organizations aiming to actually help the project, or at least not add more work for volunteers to repair it behind them. In any case, transparency over the goals and intended actions of such organizations receiving grants is more than welcome. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 02:41, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose (Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia)

Too vague to be useful ~~and doesn't respect the autonomy of other projects.~~ What does "non-trivial" mean? What does "active on the English Wikipedia" mean? While I can imagine what they might reasonably mean, if we're going to support a resolution that we hope will be implemented, we need to provide actual metrics against which we can evaluate compliance. Presumably the resolution intends that non-rapid fund grants made for activities that will result in edits directly on EnWiki seek feedback from the EnWiki community. It could also mean something else (allocations over a particular dollar amount, for example, or organizations doing specific kinds of activities). The risk is we pass this because we all imagine some shared understanding when no shared meaning exists, and then when the WMF does what it thinks we mean the false consensus is laid bare as more backlash ensues. Further, the proposal could amount to an EnWiki veto over what occurs on other projects should a grant cover multiple projects (like Commons or Wiktionary). We could say that the WMF should do the same for those projects too, but if every project impacted by a grant gets its own on-project discussion and potential veto, we now have potentially hundreds of consultations to be managed being tracked across multiple projects and threads. That's why these kinds of discussions on grants already take place on Meta, the wiki for cross-project coordination. Of course, communication as to what's happening on meta could be improved such as when I and others added a dedicated "Meta" section to CENT to raise awareness of important discussion on that wiki, but the "here to build an encyclopedia" argument cuts both ways: EnWiki is for building an encyclopedia, not grant administration. I agree with (what I imagine to be) the sentiment, but as a resolution I think it is too loose. — Wug·a·po·des 02:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate the amendment as it addressed a main concern. I'll take some time to consider how I feel about the remaining vagueness but for the moment consider me somewhere between neutral and weak opposition. — Wug·a·po·des 23:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Editor attention is already spread thin among so many (too many) Foundation initatives. Spreading thinner the attention of foundation minded editors further concerns me. The foundation needs to be competent in making grants and to the exten that it's not, that high level problem at the macro level is what needs solving, not micro level feedback. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Regarding Editor attention is already spread thin among so many (too many) Foundation initatives. Spreading thinner the attention of foundation minded editors further concerns me.: My hope, by having them inform us rather than expecting us to watch metawiki and inform ourselves, is that we will make it easier for editors to engage with these sorts of issues and thus increase the number of editors willing to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 07:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I understand. My preference would be that volunteers help the Foundation setup productive systems that do not require constant wide spread volunteer oversight. Grantmaking is a time consuming activity and I'd be happy to let paid people spend the lions share of the time on it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 12:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Oh dear. Please take a good look at all the formal groups that exist in the movement today - roughly 180 of them, at least half of which will directly or indirectly contribute to English Wikipedia. (Don't forget, almost all of these groups do or can participate formally in discussing global policies and processes that will affect our project; and those supporting international events, as well as MediaWiki, Commons and Wikidata, certainly have a trickle-down effect.) And that doesn't count informal groups, "recognized" groups that aren't affiliates, and individual volunteers. Oh, and hubs - which are deliberately intended to involve multiple groups focused on particular topics. If people want to get stuck into reviewing grant applications, they should go over to Meta, volunteer their time and energy, and do it. They're always looking for volunteers. Oh, and incidentally, deforestation in Nigeria is a real thing.[21] Risker (talk) 04:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC) (Adding parenthetically that there are multiple Wikipedias edited by Nigerian Wikipedians; just because there's an article in English - one that has lots of tags on it - doesn't mean there is a parallel article in other local languages. This isn't just an English Wikipedia issue. Risker (talk) 04:44, 3 October 2023 (UTC) )
@Risker: Regarding your parenthetical comment about Nigerian Wikipedians working in many languages, note that the Task List for the $20,000 Deforestation in Nigeria project only mentions English Wikipedia articles. The first draft of the grant application did mention Igbo articles in addition to English, but the references to Igbo article work were first reduced in scale and then deleted altogether: [22], [23]. Andreas JN 466 11:28, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, I think reviewing grant applications and judging a project's likely impact (positive or negative) on Wikipedia content quality require different skill sets. (Of course, the latter is always difficult without a work sample supplied beforehand, or an established track record of article work.) Andreas JN 466 11:36, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Wugapodes and Risker, with more comments to follow. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:15, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
We can and should tell the Foundation that they need to rethink the broad direction they're taking on grants. But in no way should EnWiki, or for that matter any community, become the grant overlords. We are hardly qualified to give individual level feedback on grants. There is a reason we have the board and a foundation. Wikipedia's community governance works great at creating an encyclopedia, but it does not do great at managing money. We can effect grant reform without having to become grant reviewers. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Wugapodes, Risker and CaptainEek. Thryduulf (talk) 08:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The amended version is considerably less bad than the previous version, but I'm still not convinced this is a direction we should be going in. Thryduulf (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
This sounds vague and appears to ask for an enwiki veto of what happens on other projects. I'm not convinced there isn't a problem here, as the deforestation issue highlights, and the WMF should have some introspection of that happened. But I don't believe the current suggest is the right way to go. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I won't repeat the points made so well by others but I want to note that if we deleted the second paragraph and the last sentence of the first paragraph, then I'd certainly "support", and I think others might too. This having been done, I'll move to support.—S Marshall T/C 08:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose per Risker. You want to review grants, nobody is stopping you. Also the non-neutral wording declares matters of opinion as matters of fact, enough to oppose on this basis alone. Gamaliel (talk) 23:08, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Per the very good comments above, with special mention to Barkeep49 and CaptainEek regarding the competencies (and lack of) of our community-governance system here. There have been many expressed concerns with the grant system, but I am unsure how this proposal would move assist much with them. CMD (talk) 03:21, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose. Review of grants should be done through meta. However, it may be good to compile a rolling list of grants that may generate content for enwiki for editors here for ease of tracking related updates. Through this list, we can potentially see if there is an overall benefit or negative outcomes from the grants and then see how such grants can be processed or advised in the future. How it is to be done can be explored further if there's support for this consideration instead. – robertsky (talk) 08:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
No, per Risker and CaptainEek. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:26, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
If one like to review grants head over to meta and do it --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 11:14, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Per most of the above. Badly worded and likely impossible to implement. Not a solution to the issues given as examples. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:39, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
The revised proposal moved me from a clear oppose to being on the fence. This is one where other opinions have influenced my perspective, so I weakly oppose mainly per Risker, but also Barkeep, Eek, and Wugapodes. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:59, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Grants can already be reviewed. Meta is the place for it, not here. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:27, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Mine is a weak support, given the "non-binding resolution" nature of the proposal and the fact that I don't think it hurts to remind the WMF that grants which could impact the on-project conduct of parties, be they regular editors or not, are worth special consideration and have a special level of interest to this community. That said, I'm pushed to a formal oppose based on 1) the fact that the specific proposal here still strays a little into miscasting the community's position to oversight the foundation's financial and administrative decisions in such areas and, 2) the fact that despite this relationships, the Foundation already has more than abundant transparency on such matters through Meta. A better outcome here would be a push to make more editors conversant in broader Wikimedia movement processes and procedures. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:32, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Weakly mostly on two items: 1) Wugapodes' objection over imprecision, and 2) that I think any discussion should continue where it has been, which is Meta, rather than here (i.e. that it should be a notification only here). I think this is otherwise supportable and to be fair is something that could/should be done for every wiki which might be affected by grants work. Izno (talk) 22:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
While it may not literally be written to enable that, the "opening of a discussion" over a new grant would become an avenue to propose revoking that grant, and I don't think it's our place to do that, both in principle and from an official standpoint. RunningTiger123 (talk) 02:54, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Barkeep, Risker, and Captain Eek, at least. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:20, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
There is already a process for this. Curbon7 (talk) 02:26, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Discussion)

Comment. Not opposed to this, but it feels like a bit of a sledgehammer–nut response targeted at the single (awful) grant. Would prefer a longer list of grants falling under the education programme, and elsewhere, that have resulted in clear harm to the encyclopedia. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't have a list on hand, but the most common time for it to occur is when the WMF gives a group funds that they use as monetary prizes for editing; for example, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos in past years, although it is no longer an issue as it no longer offers monetary prizes. BilledMammal (talk) 02:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Would love for this to be more general and not exclusive to enwiki. See comments at m:Requests for comment/Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation, in particular "RFCs where the WMF acknowledges they must abide by the results". Frostly (talk) 02:06, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
While I would love it if the WMF did apply this to other projects I didn't feel it would be appropriate for us to ask the WMF to do so without the consent of those Wiki's. BilledMammal (talk) 02:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Question what does it mean by non-trivial sum? Fresh from organising Wikimania 2023, of which I had a direct hand in operationalising Wiki Loves Living Heritage Singapore 2023, would the sponsored prizes there (offhandedly, not more than 10,000 USD) be counted if it was funded by the Foundation? Of it, it generated 1,180 new images, many are of certain quality that can be used on the articles here. How low do we consider as trivia? This also raises the question of grants that are given that on surface seemingly does not affect enwiki directly, but in reality is. Do we want to or should we be policing those as well? – robertsky (talk) 03:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
@Robertsky Side note. As far as I can tell, WMF does not even support any community requests for funding under 500 USD (rapid grant minimum). If I am wrong, I'd appreciate a link. IMHO 500 USD plus is non-trivial, considering global scale of our project (it is more tham mimimum monthly income in some poor places). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Defining "non-trivial" seems in the cards. I do not know how many grants would usefully be reviewed though if that number is any higher than the floor, since I suspect it is the smaller grants that have an outsized influence on the volunteers here. Pizza for a badly-planned editathon seems more likely to disrupt than most other kinds of grants. Izno (talk) 19:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Comment. I'd support something closer to For any WMF-funded activity that is determined to have had a net negative effect on the English Wikipedia, the WMF will pay an equivalent amount for contract labour to slay backlogs of the community's choosing. I know, I know: who defines and decides "net negative"? It's just a dream. Folly Mox (talk) 03:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Comment I think there's a resolution to be made here, but needs to be more specific in light of the oppose comments. I would leave out the part which says "and does not proceed with the grant if the English Wikipedia is not convinced of its utility." The foundation should certainly evaluate our comments, but the final decisions should be up to it. Also, this needs to be more narrowly focused on projects which seek to directly affect the content on English Wikipedia. – SD0001 (talk) 08:15, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
@AndyTheGrump, CaptainEek, Espresso Addict, Folly Mox, Frostly, JML1148, L235, Piotrus, Pppery, Risker, Robertsky, S Marshall, SD0001, Sandizer, Thebiguglyalien, Thryduulf, and Wugapodes: As the proposal has only been open for a few hours I've updated it to remove the second paragraph and last sentence of the first; if anyone objects I will revert, given that it has been open for a few hours and seen a number of votes, but I believe it is better to get a proposal that we can agree and it seems these changes are necessary for that to happen. BilledMammal (talk) 08:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps a diff might help? Sandizer (talk) 09:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Change BilledMammal (talk) 09:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

What is the reason for the update? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:29, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Because the original wording didn't appear to have the broad community backing we need for the WMF to take these resolutions onboard; I'm hoping this wording will be more palatable. BilledMammal (talk) 10:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
You haven't changed anything that would change my opinion. If people want to get involved in grants, they need to get directly involved. It is incredibly disrespectful to the volunteers who work so hard to analyse grant requests to suggest that *one* community gets veto rights on their carefully considered and nuanced decisions, many of which affect multiple projects. I would suggest that authors of these proposals (I know it wasn't just you, BilledMammal, you're just taking the brunt of the responses) actually spend the time to talk to people involved in grant review and analysis, and perhaps actually try to assist in grant review and analysis, before saying that (a dozen or so people from) a project should be able to essentially veto a grant. Please walk a mile in those shoes. This is WP:IDONTLIKEIT on a global scale. Risker (talk) 19:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't see a veto here now post-change, I see a required notification so that users who might be interested in specific proposals can indeed actually try to assist in grant review and analysis. If the grants at that point are vetoed by review of interested users from here, that would seem to say more about the utility of the grant than not. The clearly detrimental Deforestation project (and others before it!) should not have been approved and review by en.wp users would likely have identified issues with that grant immediately.

I have a remaining concern that this could be used to detrimental effect for grants which do not per se target en.wp. For example, the "Deforestation" project was clearly (or perhaps not clearly) intended to be done as work targeting en.wp, and it is this kind of grant I think a notification would be good for. It feels like a miss to notify about a general grant to improve software affecting multiple wikis or multi-wiki coverage of material but not intending to focus on en.wp or even substantially contribute here. Can this framing be tightened? Izno (talk) 19:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Sorry Izno, I missed this. That was a fair request, but I think it is a little too late now - however, my personal perspective is that a software project wouldn't result in activity on enwiki, even if it would affect enwiki, and thus notification wouldn't be required. BilledMammal (talk) 01:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Where does this proposal "suggest that *one* community gets veto rights"? Please, let's not spread misinformation. Levivich (talk) 19:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
It suggests that in the past. Folly Mox (talk) 20:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Comment. Hi everyone, Yael here, VP of Community Growth at WMF, which is a sub-team within Advancement that includes the Community Resources team, responsible for grants distribution.
I’m seeing two (and-a-half) interconnected issues in this RfC, and I’m happy to speak to each of them: 1) Funding activity on EnWP that is not intended to contribute to our goals of building an encyclopedia; 1a) A specific comment about a grant on deforestation in Nigeria, which is used as an example of either non-encyclopedic content or an active hindering of that goal. And 2) How WMF communicates with EnWP about grants that will result in activity on EnWP.
Regarding #1: The grants we make through our Community Resources team are intended to support the Wikimedia community to contribute to our collective goal of increasing encyclopedic content. I am in complete alignment with the spirit of this RfC - that grants should contribute to this goal, and that they should be of a high enough quality that they don’t make work of en-Wiki editors more difficult. Sometimes people disagree with what is encyclopedic content, but we trust that the Wiki projects make those decisions themselves; thankfully, it’s rare that content directly supported by grants is added to any of the Wikis that is counter to this objective.
Sometimes, we make funding mistakes or the grants don’t go as we had hoped. That’s what happened with the specific grant referenced re: deforestation in Nigeria. As others have mentioned, this is a topic that many believe should be on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the quality of the article didn’t live up to en-Wiki standards and as a result caused EnWP admins more work. I genuinely apologize for that.
There’s a lot we’ve learned from this grant portfolio (you can see the full proposals, both those funded and not, on Meta here). I won’t go into detail here, as I’m trying to respond to the main point of the RfC. In short, this grant came from a pool of funding that did not go through our Regional Funds Committee community review process, and we’ve since sunsetted that pool of funding. We are now sending all applicants from The Organizer Lab to the Rapid Grants program, which has both a lower cap in funding and is reviewed by the Regional Funds Committees.
Regarding #2: Current practice is that all proposals are publicly available on Meta for community input. We rarely see much engagement there, but community members are welcome to engage and their comments will be considered and reviewed by the Regional Fund Committees, which are made up of community volunteers. We also ask all grantees to describe to what extent they’ve engaged with their relevant Wiki communities in drafting the proposal; I acknowledge that some do this more than others and we’re reliant on their self-attestation to this.
Given that Meta can be hard to navigate, and that many EnWP members are more active on the Village Pump, the request to share information there is a fair one. Community Resources can commit to sending out an announcement on all Village Pumps (not just EnWP), when the funding round is open and proposals are open for Community input. This announcement will link to Meta, where the proposals are posted for comment. Ultimately, Regional Fund Committees make the final recommendations on funding, but they take community input, which can be done directly on the Meta pages associated with the proposals.
Finally, I’m open to learning what other communication channels would be helpful (e.g., a Wikimedia-l announcement?) when each funding round is open. On a personal note, I welcome requests and feedback particularly on relatively solvable asks like this. I respect that RfCs are important to EnWP for community alignment, but you are welcome to also just send concerns like this directly to the Community Resources team or to me. We genuinely love solving solvable problems. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

RWeissburg (WMF), that doesn't solve the core problem. Have a look at WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. That should have been treated as an emergency blocker-level bug. Yet, years after reporting, it still is not addressed. We need editors to be notified consistently if we leave a message on their talk page, and for that to be dead obvious in the interface. If the "mobile app" does not or cannot support that, get rid of it, and ask people to use a browser to access the website, which they should be doing anyway (no website should have an "app" to access it; the "app" to access a website is a browser). But if you must have an "app", make sure it functions completely correctly, including letting the user know, in no uncertain terms, when someone has left them a talk page message. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Seraphimblade - I think maybe your comment is intended for the third topic: "Increased Support for Internal Needs"? @JTanner (WMF) has responded on that topic below. 75.104.108.53 (talk) 16:04, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

My apologies - that comment above is from me; I had accidentally been logged out. - Yael RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand what this proposal actually entails. m:Grants shows there are many different processes. Occasionally there can be dozens of grant requests for projects which may produce edits on the English Wikipedia. Does this proposal ask for more granular links pointing out each individual proposal in its own section on the village pump, or what? Nemo 14:01, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Community Response)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Survey)

Support (Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects)

In most cases it will not be appropriate for the WMF to provide funds to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects; our donors gave money to support the projects and we should respect that. Rare exceptions may occur, but in such circumstances broad oversight from the community should be sought, to ensure that the grant is appropriate and that it will not damage our image by causing the public to believe that we are becoming a partisan entity. BilledMammal (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
* Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Espresso Addict (talk) 01:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
As I've said in the past, soliciting donations for one cause and then handing them off to a different cause is in effect the same thing as a scam. 100% of funding collected by the WMF should go into supporting the various editions of Wikipedia and its sister projects or to keeping the WMF operating as an organization that facilitates these projects. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Frankly, I'd find it astonishing that this needed to be said, if it wasn't for the evidence that it clearly does. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
—pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:46, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Pecopteris (talk) 04:15, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Sandizer (talk) 05:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC) per my comments in previous discussions, wasting money on KEF (support for non-Wikimedia-related initiatives) needs to be stopped now. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
WMF solicited donations using disingenuous messaging like "Wikipedia is not for sale" and is transferring not-insignificant amounts of such funds to goals that have nothing to do with Wikipedia or with any of its sister projects. That is morally dubious at best and fraud at worst. It needs to stop. Ciridae (talk) 05:57, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 06:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The money needs to be used for the purposes the donors expected it to be used for. If donors were told they were paying to keep the lights on and the servers running, and they were, then it's unethical and duplicitous to spend it on advocacy think-tanks. Also, Wikipedia has a reputation for neutrality that was very hard-won and will be very easily-lost. Don't squander it please. Spending donors' money on advocacy groups is reckless and risks our core mission. I can envisage headlines about "Wikipedia applies political pressure" on a slow news day and I think that would be a catastrophic outcome.—S Marshall T/C 08:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Money raised for Wikipedia should stay for Wikipedia. As I said elsewhere, $200K USD for a non-profit organization based in Indonesia that works on human rights and advocacy issues for indigenous people is a nice plan, but not related to the project in any way. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
If I may, While I understand the concerns regarding the allocation of funds by the Wikimedia Foundation, it's important to remember the wisdom in the quote, 'It's not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' In this context, the children represent Wikimedia Projects, and the dogs represent unrelated external organizations. It's crucial that funds donated for supporting Wikimedia Projects are prioritized for their intended purpose. Therefore, I wholeheartedly support the request for the Wikimedia Foundation to reappropriate any remaining money in the Knowledge Equity Fund and seek community approval before making grants that may appear unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects. This approach aligns with the principle of responsible fund allocation. Icem4k (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, in the interests of honesty and transparency. Certes (talk) 14:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Community, and not the Wikimedia Foundation, governs the Wikimedia Movement. When donors give money to Wikipedia, they give it to the Wikimedia Community and not the Wikimedia Foundation. It is essential that money go to support the Wikimedia Community, its culture, and its values. With increasing regularity and forcefulness, the values and ethics of the Wikimedia Foundation are contrary to those of the Wikimedia Community. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, per S Marshall's points. The bait-and-switch of WMF fundraising has gone on far enough. Even if used for other good things, it's important to be honest about what money donated will be used for. People who provide financial support deserve that honesty, yet we have this yearly débâcle in which we have banners that suggest that donated money will be used for something that's only a small portion of the budget. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 15:06, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
For many years, the WMF has been spending way too much money on non-editing improvements (like trying to solve the root causes of systemic bias or knowledge inequity) and too little money on editing improvements (like upgrading Visual Editor, or the graphs extension). This needs to stop. They need to spend the donations primarily on hardware and software development and maintenance; only when those needs are met should they even consider spending the donations on anything else, and those needs are not met and never have been. Levivich (talk) 17:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Strong support. I believe donors are misguided on where their money will end up. Giving money to other organisations is a big no and I can't believe this has been going on for so long. Willbb234 20:41, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Donors expect the WMF to spend money on WMF projects and goals, not to be a general-purpose grant making group --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 11:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
If anything, this statement isn't pointed enough. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. Our donation money should be spent at home, not on third party causes that have minimal or no inter-relation with Wikimedia. Reminding the WMF of this is appropriate. I am a bit surprised at the quantity of opposes. Perhaps this RFC should have been simplified to "The English Wikipedia opposes spending donor money on causes not closely related to Wikimedia, and is deeply concerned about the Knowledge Equity Fund." –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. I think the idea of rephrasing this per User:Novem Linguae's suggestion (or by simply cutting the second sentence) has merit. We do not really want to micromanage these grants, nor are we properly equipped for it. We want the WMF to get the message – a message that a good number of opposers appear to agree with. --Andreas JN 466 18:17, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Novem Linguae's suggestion, with tentative support for the other wording. It's rather dishonest to advertise for donations on Wikipedia and then have that money go to something that's at best very remotely related to Wikipedia. 173.244.10.85 (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Support: readers who donate are largely unaware of what their donations are used for and external organisations is a big part of it. WMF mission creep exceeded ludicrous levels several years ago. Of course good things come from working with other organisations like Internet Archive, but the statement is that the WMF need to consult the community over such collaborations. — Bilorv (talk) 21:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
I would prefer if "and we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community." was removed but support the general principal. Jenks24 (talk) 17:24, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Support - funds raised by Wikimedia are understood (and advertised as such) to be used (and necessary) to run Wikipedia and associated projects, not third party organizations. --Ita140188 (talk) 13:56, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. While doing projects on knowledge equity itself is not inherently opposed to what we are doing in Wikipedia, the fund that was gathered by benefiting from the work of the community must be used to help the people inequity inside the community first. I would rather see a legal fund for editors in oppressive countries, or expand the coverage of The Wikipedia Library. RXerself (talk) 20:52, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. WMF funds should be for WMF projects, of which many are needed. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:55, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. The WMF has gone from the stewards of Wikipedia to a 'movement' in it's own right, and it is impeding Wikipedia's ability to be a reliable, high-quality encyclopedia. INeedOGVector (talk) 22:12, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
Support A much needed reform. And ending deception of donors who largely are asked to donate to support Wikipedia and then transferring money to people and organizations unrelated to that. North8000 (talk) 19:30, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. The second part of the sentence could be just removed, since it is too prescriptive on implementation details. For example, simply removing the KEF would also be a good course of action. Anyway, I agree with the overall idea. MarioGom (talk) 07:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Strong Support - Money given to WMF is given out of an understanding that it is to uphold WP - Any deviation from this merits a discussion prior. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 20:57, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
I think the specific wording could use a bit more workshopping, potentially after the RfC, but agree with the overall sentiment. (I prefer Novem Linguae's version.) Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Sandstein 13:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Strong Support Money given to WMF should be used for WMF. My time to edit Wikipedia (that strongly benefited WMF) should be used for WMF/Wikipedia, not for projects that are too far unrelated from the goals of Wikipedia. There are many good causes in this world - people should donate directly to those causes instead. WMF should be totally unbiased, and allowing money to flow out for "causes" can cause biases. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:07, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Killarnee (talk) 13:08, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Johnbod (talk) 19:08, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
Support - The mission creep has been harmful and means ever more requests for funding not actually required for the sites people think they are donating to tompagenet (talk) 13:17, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Fund the community's work, not things that aren't our mission. It's also not being straight with the donors.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Support The grants made should be related to Wikimedia projects. Strobilomyces (talk) 21:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Support as per the above. - AquilaFasciata (talk | contribs) 20:49, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Support. Knowledge equity can mean a lot of things, and the inequity continues in many non-English Wikipedias and most sister projects. These funds should be directed to WMF projects first as that was the donor's expectation. Yet when I see Knowledge Equity fund recipients don't contribute towards WMF projects at all despite having strong synergies (e.g. "Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism" wrote 0 Wikinews article despite being an investigative journalism organization in their name and "Borealis Racial Equity in Journalism Fund" admitted in their report to WMF that they improved/wrote 0 articles and added 0 images.) Even a Wiki Edu classroom project has a bigger and meaningful impact towards an WMF project and at a far cheaper cost. As the Knowledge Equity fund currently stands, it needs to be reined in when projects are funded with so few strings attached. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:10, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Support Grants made with the expectation of reaching Wikimedia projects should go to Wikimedia projects. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 02:39, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose (Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects)

Knowledge equity and related issues, while not directly related to the projects, are crucial issues that are within the WMF's scope. Frostly (talk) 02:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
This seems like an over-reaction to a poorly-communicated initiative; the WMF has conceded that it should have provided more information and explanation as to how funding these groups had the potential to expand available free knowledge that can be used in Wikimedia projects. Noting also that this is English Wikipedia, and should only include proposals that are specific to English Wikipedia. Those grants are at the global/meta level. Risker (talk) 04:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The first sentence is fine. The second sentence is way outside outside the English Wikipedia's area of competence. Thryduulf (talk) 08:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm especially opposed to demanding the money already allocated for the fund be returned, it seems unnecessary to me and risks stuff being killed off prematurely every time there's a change in leadership in ways we may not like. There seems to be agreement that the KEF is not going to be repeated, so while there are still going to be changes a gradual winding down based on existing decisions is far better than a sudden change. Do we really want when we finally get something we want funded only a year or two later it will be killed immediately just because new leadership no longer agrees? To be clear, I understand the money hasn't been allocated to any particular purpose yet, but it's still been allocated for the fund. I'm also deeply concerned that there is already a serious imbalance between the English Wikipedia and pretty much every other project (some a lot more than others) and while I don't think many or maybe even any other projects agree with the KEF, effectively we're demanding that the English wikipedia alone is able to dictate where money is not spent which is a major WTF. I'd also note that while the general idea may be laudable, it's actually a lot more complicated than that. I've looked at some of the projects and while they may not directly ensure project improvements, they may in the long term do so. It's well known that there is extensive systemic bias in the English Wikipedia and all projects are affected by this in varying ways. Improving access to education etc in places where it is limited increases the chances we will one day have editors from these areas able to contribute. It's clearly a very long term goal and the actual effect from some minor project is likely to be miniscule, so I don't actually think it's an effective way for the WMF to spend their money and would not encourage it but it also illustrates why a vague statement cannot really limit the WMF. I also consider the issue of insufficient funding for important projects separate issue. The WMF is not short on funds and it's clear that the reason why some important areas aren't getting sufficient attention isn't because they're spending all their money on stuff like KEF. This doesn't mean they should be spending the money on such things but it does mean it is unlikely doing this will achieve anything other than prematurely killing the KEF. Nil Einne (talk) 11:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
meta:Knowledge Equity Fund clearly explains its relevance to the WMF's core mission: the fund is used to (emphasis added) support knowledge equity by addressing the racial inequities preventing access and participation in free knowledge. The English Wikipedia has struggled to address systemic bias from the beginning. It's a major problem and I'm glad the WMF is using some of its considerable financial resources to try tackling the root causes. You can't fix everything with editathons. – Joe (talk) 14:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
It is very interesting and unfortunate that the wording of this part of the rfc equates "knowledge equity" with "non-trivial" activities. The self righteousness is not lost on me. I can only reiterate the sentiments on this oppose section. The zero-sum mindset herein is simply unhelpful. I am yet to hear real facts leveled against "the knowledge equity fund" that are worth talking about, other than "we need money to do stuff and we dont like this projetc, therefore stop it and give us the money". --Thuvack | ^talk 17:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Izno (talk) 19:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Thryduulf here, although the first sentence is fine the second oversteps. Editors dissatisfaction with current spending shouldn't control specific details.-- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Nil Einne. Gamaliel (talk) 23:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I don't think having the English Wikipedia community approve all such grants individually is an effective use of either the WMF's or the community's time. The community should help set the objectives of these grants, so they can be filtered appropriately as part of the grant process. isaacl (talk) 23:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
@Isaacl: Here "community" doesn't refer to enwiki, but the broader community - I was thinking through a securepoll vote (not, in my opinion, an unreasonable overhead when we are talking hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars), but other methods as determined by the WMF would also be appropriate. BilledMammal (talk) 03:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
I have the same view regarding the effective use of the Wikimedia community's time. isaacl (talk) 04:00, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Ideally we shouldn't need to spend time on things like this, but unfortunately the WMF has demonstrated that they can't be trusted to act without oversight, through things like KEF and through other grants like POSTCARD which I discuss below (supporting Youtube and Instagram influencers). Personally I think the overhead can be kept to a minimal, such as by broad requests for approval (for example, rather than having voted on every grant proposed under the KEF, the community votes on the KEF itself), but reasonable minds may differ. BilledMammal (talk) 04:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
It would be more effective to influence the setting of objectives and engage with the review process as necessary. isaacl (talk) 04:15, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
It would be, and my hope is that we will eventually be able to do so such as through initiatives like putting individuals who share the communities views on these grants on the Board, but that is a long term project and this is an issue that I believe needs to be addressed in the here and now. BilledMammal (talk) 04:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
While I suspect this will find some support, after some thought I find myself in the oppose column -- and for reasons not directly connected to the KEF.
First, some background: This proposal began as a proposal to hold fundraising hostage unless the English Wikipedia got line-item veto power over all of the WMF's finances. That's been toned down quite a lot, but I can't get over the pervasive sense of English Wikipedia supremacy/exceptionalism running through all of the discussions up to this point. We are already the largest and most powerful of the projects. We already numerically dwarf everyone else. We already have most of our users in the richest countries on the planet. The idea that we deserve total financial power over the entire rest of the Wikimedia universe is shocking, and while that's not being proposed here, knowing that was the goal means I can't help but carry forward some skepticism here.
I can fully appreciate that the idea of funding projects "unrelated" to Wikimedia projects is going to unite many people with a range of valid criticisms about how the WMF spends its money (i.e. "X feature or Y bug has been missing/broken for ages, but you're funding this?"). But the target of criticism here is something where the feedback has already led to a decision not to fund it again. What we're doing is deciding whether to adopt a general principle about "unrelated" projects using the KEF as an example, but never actually defining "unrelated". Others above have tried to explain the extent to which calling this "unrelated" is misleading. Wugapodes gives some good examples of other "unrelated" (but not actually unrelated) potential grantees. I'd add research into wikis in general, work on OpenStreetMap, research into linked data practices, funding for archives to digitize sources, and other kinds of projects that help us indirectly. And it's in that context that the KEF is indeed related. It's just not an edit-a-thon or Wikipedian-in-Residence. TL;DR - This might look like a referendum on the KEF, but it's actually a broadly worded principle with unclear implications. Given the background of these proposals, I have no reason not to think "unrelated" won't be treated as broadly as possible. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Thryduulf; that bit ought to originate from meta (if it's a good idea in the first place) and seems entitled coming from one wiki. In addition, Wugapodes brings up good concerns about wording. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 03:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Agree with the concerns raised above. Furthermore, even if the proposed method wasn't worded as vaguely as it is, handling individual grants through community vote seems an inherently poor idea, an inherent mismatch with our slow and fuzzy consensus system. CMD (talk) 03:17, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Per others. While I agree with the first sentence, the second feels like we're overstepping a bit. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 06:32, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Rhododendrites above, and per Folly Mox and Wugapodes in the discussion section below. While the proposal's goals are understandable, the vague wording makes it impractical to actually enforce, the proposal would give enwp a disproportionate amount of power over other wikis, and I'm not convinced that a single-wiki RfC has the scope to enforce this change regardless. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:59, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Not a good idea at all. And if this was a good idea, a "non-binding resolution" is not the way to go about it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:44, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
This is far beyond our purview. I can envisage a speculative (if highly unlikely) scenario in which this project were so underfunded with regard to basic needs, relative to the amount of funds raised in relation to en.Wikipedia and donor intent that the en.Wikipedia community might need to make some noise to see more commitment to en.Wikipedia in the WMFs budget. But bluntly, we don't live in that reality or anything remotely like it. This project's needs are more than substantially enough met to justify our attempting to beackseat drive for the fiduciaries and professionals at the WMF on decisions that are well withing their legal and institutional discretion. A more generally worded appeal for a higher level of consultation/seeking feedback from the community might be something I can get behind, but this proposal (especially considering how it arose) is just presumptuous and way beyond the division of labour and authority as relates to WMF and movement finances. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community. This is too vague to support. What is non-trivial? What counts as "approval" and how would it be solicited? Which community do you mean, as there are many of them beyond English Wikipedia? The WMF already tries to get community approval, but globally from all Wikimedians via Meta. The disconnect is that most editors don't show up to Meta and participate in grant reviews, but that work does in fact happen. I agree the WMF should work on encouraging more on-wiki connection between the grant review (which is actually conducted by volunteer committees in many cases, btw) and the editing communities, but this is not a clear enough proposed solution to take action on. Steven Walling • talk 15:31, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
@Steven Walling: You said "too vague to support." What specific definitions of the terms "non-trivial," "approval," and "community" would cause you to support the proposal? Levivich (talk) 16:02, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
This isn't my proposal so not really incumbent on me to fix it. It seems implied that the proposal actually means "The WMF should run a straw poll !vote on the Village Pump every time before they want to make a grant over [insert whatever arbitrary $ amount qualifies as non-trivial]". Really unclear if that's specifically what is meant though. In definition this vague, technically speaking the WMF already fulfills the requirements, because the entire grantmaking process on Meta is done transparently and mostly via volunteer committees. Steven Walling • talk 02:06, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
If this proposal was only the first sentence – a reminder to spend money more wisely and prioritize the Wikimedia Community, in tandem with proposal 3 which I supported – I would certainly get behind that, but a targeted shot across the bow against the Knowledge Equity Fund, which I broadly agree with and would argue is quite valuable and important, is not something I can get behind. Curbon7 (talk) 19:20, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Rhododendrites brings up good points about how this seems to value too much authority over all Wikimedia projects with the English Wikipedia. As noted elsewhere, if there is a place for that authority, it's at meta with the global community. I also think WMF's support for groups outside the project is important – we need places to get our information from in the first place – and I can't shake the feeling this is a step towards stopping that. RunningTiger123 (talk) 03:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Rhododendrites and RT put it well. The proposal is poorly worded, misrepresents a particular community-overseen grant pool, asks to cancel that grant pool and for an impossibly vague en:wp veto over future grants, and misuses the trope of donor intent. It also implausibly suggests that grants earmarked during a year of surplus and amounting to under 1% of the WMF's program budget, are somehow preventing it from addressing unspecified "internal deficiencies". There are valid + uncontroversial points to be made for the Foundation to better align its prioritize with community needs... but this does not make any of those points, instead proposing to make a dubious statement on behalf of the whole community. No, thank you. – SJ + 04:21, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
The original proposal is waaay to broad for me to support in any sensible fashion. The community has absolutely no remit in deciding to veto funding based on what is relevant to the movement (with enough wikilawyering, we would probably have consider recent funding for projects like Wikidata and WikiLamda (or allocation of money for Wikimania 2023) to have not directly support the movement and could have labelled them as mission creep). That being said, I would Support @Novem Linguae's rewording since it is short and succint and gets the point across without resorting to insinuations/effectively codifying a veto power for the en.wikipedia community and assumption of bad faith on the part of the Foundation. -- Sohom (talk) 12:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
@Sohom Datta Judging by the content of your comment and your reference to Novem Linguae's rewording, I suspect you meant to oppose the proposal below this one, i.e. "Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Community Response)". (Feel free to delete this comment either way.) Regards, Andreas JN 466 16:24, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
@Jayen466 Thanks moved :) Sohom (talk) 01:54, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Per Rhododendrites and Joe. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
The purpose of WMF, as mandated by the founding documents, is the support of free knowledge. Maintaining Wikipedia is just one method to do so. Giving to other organizations working in the field of free knowledge is supported by this purpose. --h-stt !? 15:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
As others have said, the second sentence goes too far. I also agree with others that the Knowledge Equity Fund is not obviously unrelated to Wikipedia's mission; we should instead push for greater transparency around the KEF. Suriname0 (talk) 22:24, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Largely per Rhododendrites. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:11, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Discussion)

So I guess my issue with this text is that the WMF does consult with the community about disbursement of Knowledge Equity Grants. See meta:Knowledge Equity Fund#The Knowledge Equity Fund Committee, which lists five volunteers alongside the six staffers.

It's widely known that the Knowledge Equity Fund is pretty unpopular, and no one seems to have indicated it will recur after the third year of disbursements, which I guess we'll hear about on Friday. Someone on wikimedia-l or some other email thread compared these grants to basic research, like laying the groundwork for a more successful "free knowledge movement", which was a minority view but makes sense.

The thing I suppose rubs me wrongest is that the goal here seems to be to stop giving these planned grants to marginalised groups, and spend it instead on English Wikipedia, the rich white dude of the Wikimedia Party Palace. Yes, that's not stated explicitly, but Resolution 3: Here's How to Spend Money on Us immediately follows. We don't not need Foundation money for staff to maintain technical debt, fix bugs, talk to us, etc., but it just feels... kinda gross? Please note this is a comment, not an oppose. Folly Mox (talk) 03:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Folly Mox, I think you hit the nail on the head with this comment. This proposal feels....entitled. Risker (talk) 07:29, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It is reasonable that many in the community feel entitled to see WMF budget used to support Wikimedia projects (not us, which sounds like anyone here is expecting to see a penny). Especially since that is what all fundraising messaging strongly implies. On seeing Wikimedia projects as the rich white dude... I couldn't disagree more. Some of us still see Wikimedia projects as a humanist mission that deserves full focus from the Foundation that was established to guarantee its continuity. MarioGom (talk) 17:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The WMF should be spending its money on improving WMF projects for readers, and on helping editors to make such improvements. No one suggests limiting the spending to wikipedias, or to English-language projects. (Spending on Chinese Wiktionary is fine, and probably doesn't benefit many rich white dudes.) Giving money to some external body to spend should require evidence that it will benefit WMF projects more than spending that money directly. Certes (talk) 18:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that's an important distinction. The WMF is certainly not "The English Wikipedia Foundation", and we of course must remember that. If WMF spends funds on, for example, helping a project in a less common language recruit editors and get off the ground, that is a totally valid use of those funds, because it is spent in direct support of the Wikimedia mission. But WMF is the Wikimedia Foundation, not the Fix-Everything-Everywhere Foundation. So it is reasonable to expect that when WMF spends its funds, it will be able to directly answer the question "What direct benefit is this expenditure expected to have toward the Wikimedia projects?". That doesn't have to be spent directly on the projects—if, for example, the WMF were to help start up a journal willing to do peer review and publication for articles in areas that are traditionally underrepresented in academic publications, that is of direct value to the Wikimedia projects by expanding the range of things we have enough high quality source material to write about, where before that we wouldn't. But it is then possible to say "Well, here's how this benefits Wikimedia." On the other hand, it seems that many of the things WMF is currently doing are in the realm of "That's a nice thing to do—but it seems out of scope for us to be doing it." Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be a dichotomy between Wikimedia Projects and external orgs that I think misunderstands the relationship between our projects and the wider free knowledge movement. Creative Commons and the Internet Archive are external organizations which are mission aligned, and their success is directly relevant to the success of our projects. If they asked us for a grant would we tell them to kick bricks because it doesn't benefit our projects? A more specific example, I spent some time last year working with Cornell's copyright information center on a grant proposal to increase their staffing so that they could resume and increase their outreach work which our CCI group had found valuable but which had been cut due to university budgetary restrictions (it fell through in the planning stage, unfortunately). Would this resolution have prevented that kind of support for mission-aligned organizations? It wouldn't have been spent "on the projects", but the benefit of being a "good neighbor" and supporting groups who share our values and support our goals has knock-on effects that shouldn't be summarily dismissed. — Wug·a·po·des 00:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: This purpose of this proposal isn't to stop grants going to entities that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects; it's to give the broader community oversight of the process, because things like the KEF and other grants like POSTCARD, which are intended to support (I am not making this up) Instragram and Youtube influencers have shown that we cannot trust the judgement of the WMF in this matter.

If the WMF wanted to give $500,000 to Internet Archive or a similar project then I have no doubt that the community would approve it, because there is no possible reputational damage from such a grant and because IA is critical to our mission - it is essential to allow us to comply with WP:V. Indeed, I would argue that it is related to supporting Wikimedia projects, but perhaps a reasonable argument can be made as to why it is not. BilledMammal (talk) 03:54, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

After your response I'm less clear on what's being proposed. You keep using really vague words like "broader community" and "oversight" which on the surface sound agreeable but are being used to mask what seem to be more controversial positions. The "broader community" is Meta, it's the global community comprising participants of all projects. Do you mean everyone or do you mean EnWiki? This community (i.e., the global community) already has broad oversight of these processes including multiple volunteer led, region specific committees and an open comment period on Meta (one of which you linked to). Wanting more participation is reasonable, but I don't think that framing this as if there's no community involvement or participation is fair; not liking a process and a process not existing are different things.

The premise of the resolution isn't even well motivated: the resolution hinges on what individual donors think they're supporting, but neglects the other $30 million dollars in major gifts,enterprise funds, endowment returns, and investment returns which don't come from the small individual donors relied on by the rhetoric. It uses vague language games of "non-trivial" and "reasonable individual" to hide that fact that even among supporters there's no clear understanding of what those mean---some supporters suggest that "non-trivial" would cover every single rapid grant over the $500 minimum. Even your comment here can't firmly reject that this proposal would implicate partnerships with major mission aligned organizations like the Internet Archive I would argue that it is related to supporting Wikimedia projects, but perhaps a reasonable argument can be made as to why it is not. I'm not going to sign my name to something so vague that it can be twisted in whatever way someone wants. — Wug·a·po·des 06:22, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean everyone or do you mean EnWiki? Everyone, and I would argue that they don't have broader oversight of the processes; if they did, KEF would not have happened.

vague language games of "non-trivial" and "reasonable individual" For broad statements like this specificity is difficult, and results in situations where the WMF could use technicalities to get around seeking community approval. However, I don't see that as an issue; the very worst that can happen here is the WMF unnecessarily asks for community approval for some grants.

Even your comment here can't firmly reject that this proposal would implicate partnerships with major mission aligned organizations like the Internet Archive I don't discount the possibility that a reasonable argument could be made, but I can't envisage one. BilledMammal (talk) 06:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Everyone so then why is this on EnWiki? Why are the first words of the proposal "The English Wikipedia community"? Has this been translated in to any other languages? Have opinions of any other community been considered? The KEF was half volunteers hailing from English, French, Spanish, Indonesian, and Arabic projects; the current grants structure was was redesigned over nearly a year on the basis of multiple consultations with stakeholders including various project volunteers from across the globe. Why should anyone believe that an RfC held on EnWiki and talking solely about EnWiki accurately reflects global consensus on how communities would like to oversee grants? On what basis are you speaking for the global community?

For broad statements like this specificity is difficult You want greater control and oversight of a $20 million grants budget, but defining the scope of what you want greater control over is too hard of a problem? Indeed, revolution is easy; governing is hard. Are you prepared to accept the increased staff overhead (read: the administrative costs being criticized elsewhere) that comes with managing all those "unnecessar[y]" postings? Too many posting will make it harder to find the important proposals (compare banner blindness); how will you ensure that this glut of "funding for edit-a-thon pizza" requests won't paradoxically lead to less oversight as people tune out? We could say these (and other questions) are for the WMF to figure out, but if you don't trust them to even implement specific requests, why would you trust them to implement vague requests? Plus, that would mean yet more admin overhead spent on interpreting our vague resolutions.

I don't see vagueness as a problem in its own right; I see it as a problem because it belies a lack of strategic direction. The allocation of a $20 million annual grants budget, let alone the $170 million annual budget, shouldn't be decided on the basis of vague value statements. I find it ironic that misappropriation of funds is seen as a problem when the WMF does it, but we're allowed to hand-wave away the specifics of allocating millions of dollars because it's too difficult to figure out. — Wug·a·po·des 22:50, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding "everyone", I suspect you would find it more objectionable, not less, if the proposal was that grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects needed approval from the enwiki community, rather than from the broader community.

defining the scope of what you want greater control over is too hard of a problem It's a difficult problem, but it is one that we could work around, if it was beneficial to do so. It is not; with this being a non-binding resolution we are better served by defining a principle that we can then work with the WMF to implement - and as I said, the worst that can happen is the WMF unnecessarily asks for community approval for some grants.

how will you ensure that this glut of "funding for edit-a-thon pizza" requests won't paradoxically lead to less oversight as people tune out edit-a-thon's are indisputably related to supporting Wikimedia Projects; this proposal isn't asking for the WMF to get our approval on such grants.

I find it ironic that misappropriation of funds is seen as a problem when the WMF does it, but we're allowed to hand-wave away the specifics of allocating millions of dollars because it's too difficult to figure out. We're not going to be allocating them; this resolution doesn't ask for us to decide where they will go. All it asks is that the WMF ensures that the community is onboard with their decisions. BilledMammal (talk) 08:45, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

You didn't answer my question: on what basis are you speaking for the global community? You claim to be speaking for everyone, but when asked for justification on how you represent global opinions you deflect. When the EnWiki centrism of your position is pointed out, you start speaking about the global community again. You see how we keep playing this language game, right? Do you understand why this inability to speak plainly gives me no confidence in the resolution?

And again, you didn't answer my question: are you prepared to accept the increased administrative costs necessary to handle the superfluous postings and consultation work required to manage your vague resolution? If you balk at doing threshold levels of strategic planning, I do not trust that you are prepared for the far more difficult work ahead.

You're right, I got this confused with the other resolution where edit-a-thons would potentially be covered as a "non-trivial grant[] that will result in activity on the English Wikipedia".

We're not going to be allocating them [funds] This is outright false. The resolution explicitly says "We request that the Wikimedia Foundation reappropriates all money remaining in the Knowledge Equity Fund". You're seeking to direct millions right here and right now, and later on ask that they "seek[] approval" for ill-defined categories of future grants. — Wug·a·po·des 18:18, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think there has been a miscommunication here. This resolution speaks for the English Wikipedia; if passed the English Wikipedia would be asking that the broader community is consulted on grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects. I don't believe there is any enwiki centrism here; we are saying that we are concerned about these grants but we recognize that it isn't our place to decide alone whether they go forward or not; instead, we are asking that the WMF seeks approval for them from the broader community.

This is outright false. Perhaps we are using a different definition of the word allocate; the definition I am using is the act of deciding officially which person, company, area of business, etc. something should be given to. This resolution doesn't ask that we are allowed to decide who will receive funding; instead, it asks that we are allowed to reject funding within a narrow area, to act as gatekeepers. If that isn't the definition you are using can you clarify?

are you prepared to accept the increased administrative costs necessary to handle the superfluous postings and consultation work required to manage your vague resolution I'm not convinced there will be an increased administrative overhead. Some of the grants issued in the past are ones that should be obvious to the WMF would be rejected by the community; even absent this requirement those grants consume administrative capacity. Ideally, the WMF will recognize this and rather than wasting their time, and the communities time, on the grants will instead redirect the administrative capacity to handle the community consultation work. However, even if they don't and administrative costs are increased I believe the net result will be less money spent on the program as a whole due to grants being rejected. So yes, I am prepared to accept it.

If you balk at doing threshold levels of strategic planning, I do not trust that you are prepared for the far more difficult work ahead. I feel I have already replied to your statements about the lack of specificity in the proposal; It's a difficult problem, but it is one that we could work around, if it was beneficial to do so. It is not; with this being a non-binding resolution we are better served by defining a principle that we can then work with the WMF to implement - and as I said, the worst that can happen is the WMF unnecessarily asks for community approval for some grants. BilledMammal (talk) 18:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I can't really support this as currently worded (I do not think that the English Wikipedia in and of itself has the authority to demand that the WMF do a particular thing with already allocated funds), but I will give a "moral support" here. The WMF certainly has been spending too much money on things which do not have a clear connection to the core mission of Wikimedia, and has not generally been willing to give further detailed explanations for "How does this further Wikimedia's goals, and how is this expenditure the best way to achieve that?" beyond platitudes. So, I agree in the spirit of the thing, but this proposal is not the right way to ask for that. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: It's not a demand, but a request - and personally, I would have no issue if the WMF did proceed with the third round, so long as they first secured the broader communities approval through a securepoll vote. BilledMammal (talk) 03:54, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: seconding your point, a proposal to focus on the core mission, with specific examples of what needs clearer focus, would feel constructive. That does not feel like the spirit of this proposal to me, which second-guesses and mischaracterizes a specific effort to counter systemic bias that already involves community input, and at least tried to explain its origins and how it furthers Wikimedia's goals. – SJ + 04:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Small note that the Oppose/Support section titles are potentially a tad confusing. When read at face value, they might suggest you support/oppose the opposite of what you intend. Support for instance, when read as a sentence means: support, giving grants to external organisations, while in reality it means I support the proposal that that we are against giving external organisations grants. This is also a common issue with Survey polls in politics. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Many of the topics and concerns raised here were discussed at the open community call hosted by the Knowledge Equity Fund Committee last Friday, October 6. You can find the notes from that call on Meta. These topics include how we can more clearly communicate opportunities for communities to participate in nominating grantees and getting involved, how the Knowledge Equity Fund grantees are connected to the movement and how we can better connect the dots, and how we are measuring the impact of knowledge equity. The Committee will be meeting this week to discuss the suggestions and feedback from the call and will post an update about next steps in the next two weeks.NGunasena (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I just posted some next steps and changes that the Knowledge Equity Fund Committee will be taking based on the feedback we heard in the community call, in three distinct areas: Improving communication, Clarifying impact, and Connecting the dots with the movement. This is not a comprehensive list as we're still in discussion, but we wanted to share the changes as we go. NGunasena (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

The most important way to address Knowledge Equity also involves "sticking to our knitting": improving our mobile editing interface and mobile apps. Many potential editors only have access to smart phones, not computers. If we really want to boost editing from areas like the Global South, we need to make it easier.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the first thing to address there is WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU. That should have been treated as an emergency level bug from the beginning, and it's well past time to get that fixed. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:41, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Seraphimblade, my name is Jazmin (Jaz) and I am the Product Manager for the Mobile Apps team. I very much agree that maintaining on-wiki communication functionality is important and necessary. This is why, over the last two years, we’ve prioritized improvements to make the WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU table more and more green. (e.g., 1, 2, 3), though for some added context, depending on the platform (Android app, iOS app, or Mobile Web) the implementation, or lack thereof, of alerts differs, but steps are being taken to change that.

Specifically on the issue of IP editors not seeing notifications, we are currently working on it. I can understand that specific mobile communications issues feel a bit slow or quirky (depending on the platform) as compared to others; this is due to several teams working systematically to address anonymous edits through temporary accounts.

In the future, the shift to “temporary accounts” (formerly known as IP Masking) will hide IP addresses from the general public while also allowing people to continue editing without creating actual accounts. Particularly in the apps, users that do not login to a permanent account when attempting to make an edit, will automatically be assigned a temporary account that is based on cookies, not location. On the apps, users with temporary accounts will have the same editing and notifications experience as people that create permanent accounts. This will eliminate the quirks and inconsistencies across platforms, addressing many of the outstanding gaps in mobile notifications. @NKohli (WMF) and @SGrabarczuk (WMF) can share more about this project overall should you have any questions.

Additionally, next week we will make some updates to the cross team on-wiki communication MediaWiki page, which was created to be more inclusive of other language wikis; the refresh will include incorporating updates currently represented on team specific project pages. The app's Community Relations Specialist, @ARamadan-WMF will ping you there once the updates are live so that we can continue the conversation and get your input on whether or not we are going in the right direction.

JTanner (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @A. B., I am happy to see your passion for improving editing on mobile. My name is Jazmin (Jaz), and I am the Product Manager for the Mobile Apps team. While I collaborate with the team responsible for Mobile Web, I do want to make that distinction, so you can understand the context of my response.

My manager, @MMiller (WMF), shared just a few improvements we are working on for the mobile app experience. What isn’t mentioned there is that we are completely rewriting the editor on iOS to improve the performance.

We have an open meeting coming up Friday if you’d like to have a closer look at our roadmap and share additional ideas to improve the editing experience on the app. If you can’t make the time, no worries, we will record it and provide notes. We also make updates for the Android and iOS app on a monthly basis, which includes sharing early designs and ideas and we welcome your partnership. If ever you have feature ideas or bugs you notice feel free to reach out to @ARamadan-WMF so that we can triage it in our weekly team meeting.

For any Mobile Web ideas that are editing specific feel free to reach out to @PPelberg (WMF) and for more reading features @OVasileva (WMF) is a good person to talk to. JTanner (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Increased support for internal needs (Community Response)

Increased support for internal needs (Survey)

Support (Increased support for internal needs)

What we need from the WMF most of all is tech support; for them to maintain the website and develop the tools that we need to build the encyclopedia. Unfortunately, this support is often lacking; despite the criticality of New Page Patrol it took a massive lobbying effort to get the WMF to dedicate any resources to it, and it has been six months since we were notified that the graph extension had to be disabled due to security risks, but there has been little progress on restoring it despite its utility. Hopefully the WMF will be willing to take this resolution on board and in its next budget direct a greater proportion of resources towards providing this support. BilledMammal (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
* Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Espresso Addict (talk) 01:27, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Easy support, though I'd encourage removing "established" from "established editors". While accepting this non-binding resolution is several steps removed from actually seeing a change in TWL resources, what would help knowledge equity is actually to lower the requirements to access TWL. Help people get off on the right foot when they're editing rather than assume they'll slog through 500 edits without access to good sourcing. Certainly not enough to cause me to oppose, but I'd like to see that word removed (apologies for not catching it before the proposal went live -- perhaps it's not too late, BilledMammal?). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
While I understand your concern, I'd prefer to leave "established" in there. Realistically publishers offering resources are going to want to have some idea of the hit rate they are signing up for. I can't see Elsevier, for example, wanting to open ScienceDirect much more widely than they already have. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Then what is the funding going towards? Last I checked, everything in TWL isn't because the WMF paid for it but because someone simply asked the publisher for it. WMF could help close the gap. I cannot imagine the WMF paying to add these resources, as that would lead to all the other publishers saying "wait, we don't have to give it away?" — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites and Espresso Addict: Just jumping in with a quick note that Rhododendrites is correct - we don't pay subscriptions for any of The Wikipedia Library's resources. It would be obscenely expensive given that we serve tens of thousands of users (approaching the entire WMF budget), and as you suggest, paying one publisher would risk resulting in a chain of events where other publishers also demand payment. I'm sympathetic to the idea of lowering access requirements, I'd love for more editors to be able to use the library. Unfortunately this would require renegotiating all our agreements, which is a lot of work. Input is welcome on this topic at T314357. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:06, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, Samwalton9 (WMF). I read the interesting Phab link but it won't let me comment. I think it would be more realistic for the Foundation to pay for access for a small group of highly active named editors, perhaps for a specific type of task, which would make it fall more under the Wikipedian-in-Residence type of relationship. On the access requirements, fwiw, I have chatted to several non-editors about the library resources as a recruitment ploy and non-editors are generally interested until I mention the access requirements, which seem unapproachably steep to them. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:44, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
If they say they're raising money to support and improve the encyclopedia, they should do so. Intothat darkness 01:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Frostly (talk) 02:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I've said as much before and I think leveraging existing resources like the legal fees assistance program and Rapid Grants would be an efficient way to make progress on this in parallel with increasing Wikipedia Library holdings. — Wug·a·po·des 02:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Community Wishlist items that consistently receive high support are continually being overlooked due to currently insufficient funding for technical staff. Reallocating funds from such editing grants would arguably enable editors to more efficiently pursue these grants' aim of increased article coverage BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 02:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
"Hire more devs" is a no-brainer. The microgrants sound like an interesting idea as well, and the Wikipedia Library is already amazing. But yeah, hire more devs. Help us align with our shared goals. Folly Mox (talk) 03:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
This is what people are donating for. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The WMF has more than enough money to do these things, but it has inexplicably decided to spend a large sum of this money on things that do not help Wikipedia and its sister projects. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Mainly due to the graph extension being disabled and the lack of work going towards fixing it. It's like a ghost haunting the talk pages of most Wikipedia articles. I've noticed a concerning amount of decay when it comes to tech support, and if additional funding will help then I'm all for it. Deauthorized. ^(talk) 03:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
While I'm a little worried about monkey paw effects here, that doesn't diminish my support per BilledMammal. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:39, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Had to look up The Monkey's Paw... hope that's the reference :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:16, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
—pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:46, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
In agreement with Barkeep49, with more comments to follow. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 04:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Common sense. There have been several technical issues at NPP that we have had to beg and grovel for the WMF to fix. More resources towards technical development is self-evident. Curbon7 (talk) 04:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Pecopteris (talk) 04:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
While I understand that the Foundation has had some growing pains in the tech department, that is no excuse to not continue to put effort into our software. If that requires some radical changes, so be it, but we need more effort going into our backend. That means more money. There are far too many tech issues that have lingered for years. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
100%. Don't know if this is going to move the needle but it couldn't hurt. Nardog (talk) 05:08, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Sandizer (talk) 05:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC) per my comments in previous discussions, wasting money on KEF (support for non-Wikimedia-related initiatives) needs to be stopped now. Instead, we have our own needs (software, database suscriptions, outreach) that should be supported. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:51, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Tech support and maintenance, and development of features requested by editors is the minimum that is expected from the WMF. Ciridae (talk) 06:00, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 06:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The implementation of wishlist proposals every year leave out a lot to be desired. – SD0001 (talk) 08:20, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely. Stifle (talk) 10:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
I'm not generally as critical of the WMF as many but this is the one areas I agree with the critics. The WMF has been slack in supporting the communities needs. I appreciate that it doesn't always go well since some features have been implemented on request then disliked and abandoned, and that there are a lot of communities with differing needs to support, but they can and should do better. Nil Einne (talk) 11:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Clearly. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Micro-grants for old Resource Requests seems like a pretty good idea. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 13:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
This is what the WMF was created for. Certes (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Community, and not the Wikimedia Foundation, governs the Wikimedia Movement. When donors give money to Wikipedia, they give it to the Wikimedia Community and not the Wikimedia Foundation. It is essential that money go to support the Wikimedia Community, its culture, and its values. With increasing regularity and forcefulness, the values and ethics of the Wikimedia Foundation are contrary to those of the Wikimedia Community. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
It's the primary mission of the movement, after all. The execution should match the sales pitch. Many of the other things they do are, I feel, for laudable goals, but fundraising shouldn't be pretextual in this way. There are many projects related to the core mission that receive anemic funding. The core mission is the reason the WMF exists. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 15:14, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The Night Watch (talk) 15:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
WMF has consistently shown that it is willing to spend any amount of money needed for fundraising, and the fun parties that are involved with that, and very little on actual needed functions. The leadership has been a disgrace for years, and is part of the reason I don't spend more time here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:46, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
WMF has been neglecting its core function for too long. Levivich (talk) 17:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. I particularly like the idea of widening the scope of the Wikipedia Library. I think this is a resource which so many editors use and could do with additional investment. Willbb234 20:43, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
There shouldn't be long outstanding issues while the WMF remains well funded. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the foundation should always have its primary mission in mind. However, I support with the nuance that the foundation has hired support staff, of which some are necessary, and that whilst micro grants for resource requests are a good idea, the linked page (at least) is only on enwiki which is a negative. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 03:23, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes. —siro χ o 03:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
One of the WMF's primary founding purposes was to provide technical services and software development for the Wikimedia projects. If not its top priority, that should be very close to it. We have far too often seen highly desired community requests go either entirely unanswered or get a "We don't have the resources right now" for years on end, while we see tons of resources flowing out in dozens of other directions. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:43, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, if for no other reason than this is what donors expect their money to be spent on. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 07:50, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
I think this is where we're on firmest ground, because we're asking for something that we need rather than trying to dictate to the WMF. It really is astonishing how little of the WMF's enormous budget goes to software. We haven't been able to use mw:Extension:Graph for six months, apparently because it was unmaintained for years before that. NPP had to beg for fixes to Page Curation, also unmaintained for years, and after three months of work all the team assigned to it could manage to do is switch to a more modern backend with no significant changes to the functionality (to be clear I'm not criticising the team; they're clearly under-resourced). We can't reliably talk to editors on mobile. And that's with volunteer developers doing a great deal of the heavy lifting. – Joe (talk) 08:24, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support This is the core reason for the WMF to exist --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 11:10, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Technical maintenance is important and is outside the ability of the community to perform. I think conveying to the WMF that we'd like to see more investment in that area could be productive. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:05, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
We have some of the most-obsessive volunteers and they give the world their labor for free. Least we could do is ensure truth in advertising by supporting those editors. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Now this one I can get behind. My support is a little on the weaker side, because I recognize the complexities involved in the financing of the Wikimedia movement and institutional ecosystem, with it's many stakeholders and I broadly respect the discretion of the WMF as pertains to addressing and balancing the competing needs. That said, the specific areas highlighted by this proposal are known current weaknesses in our technical infrastructure (even if vaguely defined here). And while I have often felt the scrutiny the WMF faces from some of it's more consistent critics as regards it's management of movement resources has strayed into the presumptuous (to say nothing of those that are sometimes histrionic, speculative, unrealistic, or simply wildly outside the purview of those without the relevant fiduciary or professional duties), I do think that these would-be muckrakers have succeeded in at least one respect: highlighting just how sizeable a largess the WMF has managed to accrue for the movement through effective fundraising. While I do not believe it is this community's role to set terms on how those funds are distributed (outside of a speculative existential crises from underfunding), I do not see the harm in pointing out to the WMF that we have a few areas where funding of technical solutions would be especially helpful at this moment in time, and that there is an argument to be made, based on donor intent, that the large role that en.Wikipedia plays in generating funds for the movement as a whole arguably militates for plugging these needs sooner, rather than later, at least when the reserve financing is as flush as apparently they currently are. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 22:01, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. I am not so concerned with the Wikipedia Library and WP:RX part as this is the first I'm hearing of problems in those areas. I am very supportive of the Community Wishlist and community software part of this RFC though. Community software seems like an area that has historically been neglected, with some small progress made recently, but still with much work to do. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:00, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. Andreas JN 466 18:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
Support: with the amount of money the WMF have, the technology we have should be cutting edge. The graph extension is a prime example of something that should have been fixed overnight. The Wishlist simply doesn't work. The problem is not just the broken things and the missing functionality. I don't think many experienced volunteers understand just how unusable this website is to newcomers. For one thing, website design has advanced since 2001 when writing in lightweight markup language was expected. For another, experienced volunteers accrue all sorts of gadgets and js code to make simple tasks that are otherwise very complicated or make readable what is completely unreadable on the base site. — Bilorv (talk) 21:16, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
Support This year the Foundation did the annual planning in public with community input for the first time in years. That was a step in the right direction, and many of the things they committed to are explicitly with the editing community in mind. There is still more that could be done to put sufficient staff attention on community needs however, and be responsive/agile when it comes to planning and resourcing. Steven Walling • talk 02:10, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Jenks24 (talk) 17:25, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
Support it's ridiculous that the foundation has apparently enough money to donate to other organizations, while not enough to perform basic software maintenance to support its core mission --Ita140188 (talk) 14:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
Support – Most people who donate I've talked to IRL have the impression that "it's to keep the servers running". I think using a larger portion of funds towards tech support is necessary or should at least be an option to allocate your donation to. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Support, very much needed. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
Support DFlhb (talk) 05:04, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Janhrach (talk) 17:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support This will also stop deceiving donors who do so to support Wikipedia. It would have been better to include / implicitly includes "shift funds from other less related areas, not increase total expenditures." North8000 (talk) 19:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support The WMFs number one job - really the only reason it needs to exist - is technical and it seems to always forget that in favor of "flashier" initiatives. The impact of more technical work dwarfs any other uses of donor money. Galobtter (talk) 22:51, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
Support We could do so much more. (comment from involved editor) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:48, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Support The WMF needs to provide far more support to the community, and there are almost zero blockers preventing it, or at least a request for it from us. Justarandomamerican (talk) Have a good day! 21:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. This should be the top priority of the WMF. I would suggest finding ways to align C-level executives with this core mission, rather than aligning Wikimedia projects with whatever makes good high profile resumes in the US NGO scene. MarioGom (talk) 08:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 20:58, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Tol (talk | contribs) @ 14:02, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. In particular, improve the mobile interface and apps so less affluent editors can more easily add content. Many have mobile devices but no desktop computer. Also see my 23 October TWL suggestion in the discussion section below. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:37, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Support. Obviously. Stop wasting $$$ on "flashy" projects in lieu of increased support for the community, that's what people give their money for. --Randykitty (talk) 13:26, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Organization failure when everything is for the "flash" and "bangs" instead of taking care of the core values. We didn't need too much work. WMF is already bloated with millions of dollars they have received - we didn't need to bloat it even more. Any IT startup tech having money/resources WMF got today can easily fix any tech issues around here - but WMF can't. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:10, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Killarnee (talk) 13:08, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
Support Johnbod (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
Support I know of at least one privacy-impacting security flaw which is still not fixed because we have to balance what we are physically able to contribute our time to, and what is within the scope of the project we commit to. What else needs to be said? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:55, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
Conditional Support. I agree with Rhododendrites that the word "established" should be removed from "established editors". I also think mention of the Graph extension should be removed, as there were good reasons it was disabled and it distracts from our overall point to bring it up here. Nosferattus (talk) 01:52, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
WP:TCHY creates a tremendous workload for volunteer editors and has frustrated me for a long time. — SamX [talk · contribs] 08:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Support - we need the resources of the Wikimedia foundation to go directly into wikimedia websites. The ever growing funding requirement that is essentially unconnected from the actual task of running the websites is unacceptable tompagenet (talk) 13:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
Sandstein 12:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
J947 † ^edits 01:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
No editor should be out of pocket because they improve Wikipedia.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Support That literally should be the primary goal of the WMF. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 02:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
jp×g 🗯️ 10:32, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Oppose (Increased support for internal needs)

Oppose Until the foundation manages to get its overall spending levels under control this is a bad idea.©Geni (talk) 20:28, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose Should the WMF devote more effort to community requests? Sure! But I've been here nearly two decades and I've never used grapher extension. And tools I use every day you've probably never used. We're not all going to agree on what is a critical request, so this is pretty pointless. Gamaliel (talk) 23:15, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Oppose including Graph extension Solely on the grounds of including/dragging the the Graph extension into this topic. The Graph extension was disabled due to issues wrt to vulnerabilities with upstream libraries. This is not something that the WMF can do something about. While the WMF could theoretically somehow commit to maintaining our entire upstream software stack, this is prohibitively expensive to the point that even Google and Microsoft do not tend to do this. The approach that the Wikimedia Foundation is currently taking is that of sandboxing libraries is notoriously hard to do correctly, as evidenced by the gazillions of bugs in Microsoft and Google products that use client-side sandboxing (such as research.google.com and Visual Studio Code) which are still being found and exploited. I think the tardiness in this case, is warranted. Support otherwise. -- Sohom (talk) 14:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
This is because the extension was not updated for several years. All we need is to transition to the newest software versions as all established organizations do regularly Ita140188 (talk) 14:01, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
@Ita140188 All we need is to transition to the newest software versions it is significantly harder to do that than you think, especially in the context of the aging technical debt surrounding the usage of MediaWiki. Porting the Graph extension over to Vega 3,4 or 5 (which I agree would also solve the problem) is a non-trivial task that includes more than just updating version numbers but also making sure that wikitext written for the graph tag using the previous version of the library still works on the newer version even though the abstractions used by the libraries might have radically changed, not to mention that in-case this compatibility is not possible, editors will have to manually check and update each and every instance of the usage of graph tags. Sohom (talk) 05:49, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
I agree, and that's the point. The lack of investment over many years created this technical debt, which reinforces the case for having more resources allocated to this. We cannot and we should not assume that old versions of software will work forever and no bugs will be ever found. The only way to have functioning software today is to constantly update it, and that takes resources. Ita140188 (talk) 07:38, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Mild oppose as worded. While I agree with the overall sentiment, "To improve knowledge equity [...] assist established editors" sounds like a contradiction in terms. Reinforcing the existing community might just consolidate the status quo.
I tend to agree with the three premises I see in this statement, namely that:
- the most direct way for Wikimedia to improve knowledge equity is to grow and improve our freely licensed projects (more diverse works for a more diverse audience);
- our contributor base, while insufficiently diverse, is more diverse than the average media landscape, therefore making the existing contributor base more effective will be a net positive for the world;
- the most direct way to make contributors more effective is to look at the existing community and provide them more of the tools they need.
However, those premises are not universally accepted or verifiable. Sure, if you try to improve a specific article like Deforestation in Nigeria you're going to conclude that it's far more effective to message its contributors and give them a few hundred dollars in resources to make further work easier, compared to giving 20 k$ to someone seemingly unaware of the existence of the article. Once you try to do the same across a broader topic like Nigeria or deforestation globally, if you just help the existing contributors it's likely they'll keep doing more of the same. So we need to at least keep an eye on some of our broader goals, such as verifiability, which involve all of our users, including unregistered users.

Which brings me to the specific suggestion included in the proposal. The Wikipedia Library might as well increase inequality, in that it reinforces a relatively narrow base of contributors and contributions based on established/exclusive sources (such as USA-centric publishers or prestige-based research), further amplifying structural bias. The alternative is to invest in more inclusive sources and source providers, which would help all our users get in touch with more diverse sources. An unregistered user who wants to verify a claim from a reference has a much easier job when a link to open access version is provided, or when a preview or digital loan from the Internet Archive is linked. Moreover, such open or semi-open resources help the production of secondary sources by helping library users, translators, researchers, authors, educators. It's relatively easy and low-risk for us to help, as it takes relatively low effort new initiatives or existing initiatives like Invest in Open Infrastructure.

Nemo 11:01, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

This argument is incompatible with WP:PAYWALL Mach61 (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
No it's not. Nemo 17:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Increased support for internal needs (Discussion)

~~I'm not going to read any of these long-worded points, I started to but am guessing that they (Edit: now have read many of them)~~ ...all comes down to WMF has control of the money gained from touting Wikipedia so of course they owe us anything we want and they should also include the community in almost everything they do. Why not? And more power to WMF in everything. I hope some wonderful billionaires will be giving them (and, in turn, some trickle down to Wikipedia please) $100 million at a pop. Bill Gates, donate a 100 million, or 200, give them a lot, and kindly stipulate that 1/3 of that should go to the projects conceived of and organized by Wikipedia editors. Every year someone else should step up and do this. Taylor Swift, a million would go a long way, and Elon, how about funding Commons to the hilt, create the creation. By the way, VivaWikiVegas could use a few million in cash/and or MGM housing donations to throw the bash of the century for Wikipedia's 25th birthday. As for Editor Expeditions...

For just one of a thousand examples, this is something I literally thought of yesterday. WMF Wikipedia coffers (which should be overflowing with kindness) can send teams of Editor Expeditions out in the field. An individual or a group, say an art editor, a technology editor, a city-specific subject-expert, a few fill-in-the-blank editors, sent or a week or two as individuals or as a team to a city, a nation, to the citadels of a scientific field, to work on article sources, photographs for Commons, meeting with local officials to promote Wikipedia etc. Participation of the local community with the Wikipedia community to give options for growth. A team would have a back-up crew working with them daily, maybe the people who will be leading the next on-site expedition.

Things like that. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Randy, I admire your unselfconsciousness. In your first sentence you call others' contributions "long-worded points" and decline to read them, and then you've written all this.—S Marshall T/C 08:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I learned at my father's knee. In my above comment I was referring to the many varied questions and proposals on this page and the others put up yesterday. Brevity might do all of us a favor, but in this case I've added my comments concerning all of them in one place. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Deauthorized: On graph extension. The extension is disabled, but there is no lack of attention from the developers. From phab:T334940, the amount of work to be done to fix the extension is... non-trivial, with no direct path to upgrade the underlying engine to the latest version. Just that the conversation isn't happening here, it doesn't mean there is a lack of work. – robertsky (talk) 03:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
Also an active discussion at mw:Extension talk:Graph/Plans. – robertsky (talk) 03:40, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Fixed link; the page is on MediaWiki-wiki. Remagoxer (talk) 04:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

thanks for the catch! – robertsky (talk) 06:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone understand what the plan actually is? If so, what can editors do to help fix broken graphs which presumably need to be edited somehow, e.g., to make them compatible with Vega 5? This is a good example of something that fell apart when a vulnerability was discovered, because there were no staff resources devoted to fixing emergent faults. That does indeed seem like a money allocation deficiency to me. Sandizer (talk) 09:53, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Realistically a fix will involve a bot any anyone who can code that can work out what the shift from Vega 2 to 5 involves. Not likely to be something general editors can help with much.©Geni (talk) 22:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I guess so, but it's hard to confirm. After this and that, I still really don't have a handle on what needs to be done at all. Sandizer (talk) 16:22, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone understand what the plan actually is? If so, what can editors do to help fix broken graphs which presumably need to be edited somehow, e.g., to make them compatible with Vega 5?

Hi @Sandizer, great question. The plan is to re-enable the Graph Extension in a sandboxed iFrame with a restrictive content security policy. Additionally, we will make the Graph Extension compatible with Vega 5 so that, going forward, all new graphs will benefit from Vega 5's security, accessibility, and syntax improvements. We will also equip volunteers with code and processes that will ease the transition from Vega 2 to Vega 5 when the time for this transition comes.

This is a plan we've converged on through months of conversations with a network of volunteers. Within the next week, you can expect to see a roadmap that details the specific steps we – volunteers and staff – will need to take to make the above happen.

In the meantime, we appreciate how proactive you are, and have been, about asking what you [and other volunteers] can do to help fix the broken graphs.

I recognize that it is likely frustrating to be willing and ready to lend help and for it to not be clear how to do so. I’m naming this potential frustration because it’s important to me that you know it’s something we’re thinking about as we try to strike a balance between re-enabling the extension as quickly as possible while doing so in a way that keeps Wikipedias as a whole safe and secure.

And hi, I'm Peter Pelberg 👋🏼 I work as the product manager on the Editing Team. I'm also responsible for safely and securely restoring access to the information and capabilities disabling the Graph Extension has left people without.

cc @Levivich, @Deauthorized, @Joe, @Bilorv, @Sohom, and @Robertsky. Y'all mentioned the Graph Extension which led me to think you might value knowing when you can expect to see a detailed roadmap from us for how we're proposing to restore it. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF) Thanks for clarifying :) -- Sohom (talk) 18:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Sohom. You bet. If any new questions/ideas/concerns emerge as you're thinking about the Graph Extension, please ping me! PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

It is beyond ridiculous that this problem was allowed to occur and with each passing day it damages Wikipedia's reputation to editors and readers. This is not to criticise the employees working on the issue, but the misallocation of WMF funds that led functionality like the Graph Extension to be neglected for years. The WMF is rolling in money but not spending enough of it on maintaining tech, modernising interfaces, community wishes and so forth. — Bilorv (talk) 19:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. I hope that this issue is corrected soon. Deauthorized. ^(talk) 00:39, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Update: we've published the roadmap for re-enabling the Graph Extension and would value anyone with knowledge of/experience with the extension sharing what you think about it on the project talk page. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): the roadmap seems ok. 2 points in mind, 1. I think it is also best to involve those who hold the templateeditor user rights and/or actively working on WP:TFD/H queue here on enwiki, if you have not done so, to accelerate the transition over to Vega 5. 2. is there an end date to Vega 2 backport? Will Vega 2 be eventually be decommissioned totally and when? Asking because it will give the community a sense of urgency to move to Vega 5 for the supported graphs in Vega 5, while solutions or workarounds for the unsupported graphs/features either in form of somehow grafting the unsupported graphs or decoupling them to another template, etc. can be worked on. – robertsky (talk) 13:42, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): the roadmap seems ok. 2 points in mind, 1. I think it is also best to involve those who hold the templateeditor user rights and/or actively working on WP:TFD/H queue here on enwiki, if you have not done so, to accelerate the transition over to Vega 5.

Great call, @robertsky. We have not yet contacted the two groups you named above. Although, I've filed T346291 to hold us accountable to doing so.

A clarifying question: were you thinking the communication you described above would happen once the technical components for porting existing graphs to Vega 5 are in place? Were you thinking that communication would happen now? Both? Something else?

…I want to be sure I'm accurately understanding you.

is there an end date to Vega 2 backport? Will Vega 2 be eventually be decommissioned totally and when?

Great questions. I'm going to respond to the second question first…

Yes, we are planning to fully remove support for Vega 2 and in doing so, create categories and/or linter tags to mark any remaining Vega 2 graphs as being in need of updating. This is currently scheduled to happen in Phase 5 of the roadmap.

Regarding the first question you asked – "Is there an end date to Vega 2 backport?" – can you please say a bit more about what you mean by this question? E.g. might you be asking:

1) "When the Graphs Extension is re-enabled, will it support Vega 2-based graphs?"

2) "If the answer to "1)" is "yes," how long after the Graph Extension is re-enabled with support for Vega 2 will Vega 2 support be removed?"

Asking because it will give the community a sense of urgency to move to Vega 5 for the supported graphs in Vega 5, while solutions or workarounds for the unsupported graphs/features either in form of somehow grafting the unsupported graphs or decoupling them to another template, etc. can be worked on.

Understood! I appreciate you sharing the thinking that prompted you to ask the above. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF):

were you thinking the communication you described above would happen once the technical components for porting existing graphs to Vega 5 are in place? Were you thinking that communication would happen now? Both? Something else?

For a wider participation, the communication can happen when the components are in place for the migration, hopefully with clear instructions on how to use the tools, which I assume to be at the end of Phase 2? My thoughts are that with clear instructions, at least of the simple charts, any editors can change the charts without much assistance, and for the more complex ones, the experienced template editors, with respect to Charts extension, can quickly work on doing up a suitable replacement based on these instructions, other prior experiences, and/or creativity.

With respect to the end date question, it is was asked under the assumption that Vega 2 will be enabled in a safe manner in the meantime. So yes, your clarifying 2-part questions is correct. – robertsky (talk) 03:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

And presumably if the WMF allocated more resources to it, that work would get done faster? That's how work usually works, anyway. More importantly, with more resources, we can hope that there won't be more extensions in the future that just get forgotten about for six years, causing blow-ups like this. – Joe (talk) 13:21, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. This is the result of underinvestment and neglect for many years, and something that was entirely predictable Ita140188 (talk) 19:11, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Hard to say if throwing more developers at this stage for the Graph extension is going to make the work get done faster. But definitely will be helpful to have more developers/eyes to look into other extensions, being used on all projected hosted on the Foundation's servers, neglected or not. At the very least sort out a priority list based on criteria such as security or feature gap, etc. for future development. – robertsky (talk) 10:29, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

What Robertsky said. There are thousands of us who remember the early WMF having the total staffing of what is today the staffing of the smallest team in the Product & Technology sphere. There are thousands of us who remember hours-long and even occasionally days-long downtime. I can still remember the time there was nobody officially "on call" for keeping the site up, and one of the few capable individuals actually had to deplane just before take-off in order to get Wikipedia back up. (And never did get reimbursed for their missed vacation.) We cannot be complaining about the WMF spending too much money on staffing and benefits while at the same time complaining that there aren't enough staff to do everything. The technological debt is significant (although being worked down). Part of that debt comes from extensions built by volunteers years ago that managed to get into MediaWiki core, only to have the maintainers leave. We may have to give up some extensions that are difficult or impractical to maintain, or consider other ways of doing certain things. But that would mean change, and we all know how Wikimedia communities respond to changes.... Risker (talk) 04:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
"We cannot be complaining about the WMF spending too much money on staffing and benefits while at the same time complaining that there aren't enough staff to do everything." True, but it's almost inevitable that growing organizations will eventually lose focus on some if not most of their core needs, resulting in too many people and not enough vital work being accomplished. Sandizer (talk) 10:06, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I object to Wikimedia Foundation staff hired to do things best done by the non-technical community, including convening conversations on ethics and values, doing outreach, and community organizing. I support Wikimedia Foundation hiring technical staff for code development. The coders are not the ones who find themselves in conflict with the community. The staff who speak on behalf of the Wikimedia community and for the Wikimedia community frequently do. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you should ask the technology staff this. When I sit with developers, they point to the differing expectations between communities, and the disproportionate entitlement of English Wikipedia, as major issues. They aren't here to build English Wikipedia, they're here to support 800 projects, all with different needs and demands. Those staff you're worried about were brought in to act as buffers between the very demanding individuals in many communities, and the developers who (as a group) are quite conflict-averse. When it used to be the developers talking to communities, they were pilloried, too. Risker (talk) 18:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

"buffers" has historically been part of the problem. With the foundation tending towards treating them as ablative meatshields rather than conduits of communication.©Geni (talk) 20:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a really insightful point, which is in some ways at the crux of this: what amount of entitlement is appropriately proportionate for the English Wikipedia? About half of the 820 Wikimedia projects appear to have fewer than 20 active editors. I'll not touch on revenue or mindshare / reputation. That acrimony is best handled elsewhere. I will say that Community Wishlist items are often unfulfilled, which affects all projects, and the priority of the survey results is already determined by devs, so they're free to rebalance to help serve smaller communities disproportionately to their sizes.

Do the dev teams not want more crew? I understand there's a point in software engineering where throwing more people at a problem loses effectiveness, but we're hardly close to that point. Folly Mox (talk) 21:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

They want the supporting arms. Lawyers to make sure they don't get sued, the talking to the press people to try and prevent media fires from getting to bad, the talking to government people, the talking to community people so people mostly aren't pissed at them. The HR and accounts people so they get paid.©Geni (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I guess I'm not seeing anywhere in the proposed resolution where it recommends cutting staff positions that are ancillary to development and maintenance in order to pay for the proposed new technical positions.

In any case though, I think I misunderstood Risker's Perhaps you should ask the technology staff this as something more general than a reply to the sentence directly above it. Folly Mox (talk) 01:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

[Developers] aren't here to build English Wikipedia, they're here to support 800 projects, all with different needs and demands. Then it'd be great if the WMF would hire some devs to work specifically on the English (and other large) Wikipedias, given that we're its flagship project and bring in the lion's share of the money used to support the rest of those 800 projects. – Joe (talk) 13:18, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi all - I’m Sam Walton, the Product Manager for The Wikipedia Library (and now Moderator Tools). I saw increased support for The Wikipedia Library was mentioned in this RfC so I wanted to jump in to share some information about how we grow the library and what we’ve been doing recently. First, some good news - The Wikipedia Library continues to grow, with 12 new partnerships in the last year and numerous collections renewed or moved to more seamless methods of access. We also recently hired Vipin SJ as a dedicated partnerships manager, so for the first time we have someone solely focusing on growing the amount of content available through the library. This has really helped us be more comprehensive and committed in our approach - I’ve worked on the library for something like 8 years now and I think the program is currently in the best place it’s ever been.

Acquiring new partnerships to expand the available content in the library can be a slow and frustrating process, but usually not because of a lack of capacity on our side. We’re building the library through no-cost partnerships, and this isn’t a proposal publishers are accustomed to evaluating. Unlike with sales, they don’t have teams ready to field these requests and simply action them. Getting a new partnership is a process that starts with getting through to someone at the organisation who is in the right position to understand what we’re asking, usually involves multiple meetings to explain the partnership model, answer their questions, and assuage their concerns. We then need to agree on how access will be provided, and often need to get legal teams involved to review and sign agreements. Although this is all fairly rote to us at this point, and we have dozens of conversations on the go simultaneously, during this process it’s very common for the publisher to lose interest or to spend a lot of time in long discussions around the details (we signed with Wiley about 1.5 years after our first contact with them!). Once we’ve got a partnership signed and content is available to editors, we then need to keep the partner up to date and engaged with the program, so that if we need something from them, we won’t be disappointed to discover, for example, that our contact no longer works there. The reason I’m laying all this out is to explain that although this requires effort from our side, the bottleneck in this process is usually the organisations we’re dealing with.

I also wanted to be candid and note that we shouldn’t lose sight of how much content is already available! We regularly hear from librarians from around the world who are jealous at the range and volume of content we have available in The Wikipedia Library today, because it would simply be unaffordable for them to subscribe to it all. We did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and if the WMF was directly paying for all the subscriptions for the library, for the tens of thousands of users who qualify to use it, the total cost would come out to something like the entire current Wikimedia Foundation yearly budget! All this to say, although - obviously - I appreciate the message you’re sending here about how valued the library is, I personally think we’re already dedicated to growing it and making it as broad in its coverage as possible.

If you want to help us prioritise our partnerships, we have a suggestions page where you can add or upvote content suggestions. It’s not been obvious where these suggestions go historically, so we’re actively trying to do a better job of linking these to corresponding Phabricator tickets, where we’ll post updates on our progress, so you can subscribe to tickets to learn more about how things are going with any particular organisation. If you want to stay up to date with new content available through the library you can also sign up to our newsletter. I also just want to take the opportunity to quickly note that in my capacity on Moderator Tools I created Wikipedia:Moderator Tools/Automoderator to provide opportunities for en.wiki input into our team’s current project.

This message turned out a lot longer than I anticipated, but I hope it's a helpful overview. Happy to answer any questions you have about the library or anything I wrote above. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:03, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

What is a no-cost partnership? Levivich (talk) 15:21, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@Levivich Instead of directly paying for content subscriptions like a typical library, we have agreements through which they provide us access for free. They see benefits from the partnership (more editors citing their content on one of the most popular websites in the world), and so we're usually able to convince them that it's in their interest to go down this route rather than charging us money. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Sam, I just want leave a drive-by kudos for the entire TWL team. I'm not privy to the internal details, but having worked on partnership projects like this before, I can only imagine how chaotic this is. Every partner has its own rules, its own API, its own licensing quirks, its own level of commitment, its own level of technical (in)competence, its own collection of demonstrably stupid and broken things that it insists must happen. Am I close? While I often rant about how clunky some parts of the system are, I recognize the heroic job you folks are doing and the incalculably huge benefit TWL provides to wikipedia editors. Thank you. RoySmith (talk) 15:56, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Extremely well-put, Roy. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:35, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

The library is the best development, by far, in my 17+ years of editing Wikipedia. Thanks to everyone who works on it. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:04, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion for TWL: Libraries buy licenses for digital versions of books they can lend to patrons. Consider a trial program to do the same for the TWL. Considerations:
- Start with a small number of the most requested items and buy them.
- Require a brief explanation from the borrower why they want to check out the resource. It could be a simple one sentence note such as: "I am writing articles on Albanian military battles in the 15th century".
- To prevent hoarding, if a book is not returned by the return date, cancel the loan (if that's technically possible)
- Use volunteers (editors) as gatekeepers, at least on this Wikipedia to save aggravation and distraction for WMF staff. Maybe someday WMF would fund a full time librarian but let's crawl before we walk.
- Before checking out more books in the future, ask borrowers to point to work they did with their first loan. Again, a simple sentence or a few diffs would suffice.
- Limit this to established editors.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:32, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi everyone – I’m Marshall Miller; I’m a Director of Product at WMF. I work with many of the WMF teams that build and maintain editing and reading experiences, including the Editing team, which is taking point on the Graphs extension, the Moderator Tools team, which operates The Wikipedia Library (please do check out the responses from Peter and Sam on those topics above), and other teams like Web, Mobile Apps, and Growth, each of which maintains parts of the software that I’m sure many of you use.

I’d like to address some of the overarching concerns raised in this RfC discussion about the foundation’s level of investment in technical infrastructure and software. I’ll explain below how we’ve made a deliberate shift this year to focus on the needs and ideas of experienced editors, but I know that even with that shift, it can continue to feel like key tools and features are neglected. I understand that feels demoralizing, and can lead to editor burnout. I can say that we’re striving to address that directly through how we spend our resources, and I’m hoping you all will notice the results in the coming months.

So to explain a bit how we’ve prioritized and budgeted this year – the product and technology area is the largest area of focus (both in terms of staff and budget allocation) at WMF. Much of that allocation is toward what we call “essential work” – which refers to the sort of maintenance, monitoring, upgrading, and fixing that keeps our sites running at a fundamental level and across hundreds of languages, including data centers, security, databases, etc. I know most everyone here knows that that kind of work is essential, even though much of it takes place behind the scenes.

Then there are the strategic parts of our work, which is about making substantial changes to how the software works. That work is laid out in this year’s annual plan. You can see that it says that this year, the Foundation’s plan is recentered around Product & Technology, and that we are prioritizing established editors over newcomers. We’re doing this because we know that the wikis depend on the most active volunteers, and that those volunteers have an outsized positive impact on the content. How we’re doing this is expanded upon on this page about the “Infrastructure” parts of the plan, and you can find further detail by following links on that page to the specific objectives and key results, and further detail on the budget here and here. It’s worth noting that the foundation committed to these priorities even while slowing overall budget growth for the foundation as a whole. And we’ve shared that these priorities are intended to be multi-year - meaning that this strengthened focus on our technical needs is meant to be the driving priority for the Foundation’s budget and plans in coming years.

I’d like to lay out some examples of outputs and upcoming priorities from the teams I work with, which I think show the current focus on experienced editors. These projects are all based on ideas and requests coming from experienced users, and are geared toward helping them have more efficient workflows, helping them be able to spend their time on the most important wiki work, and have control over how features are used on their wikis. If those don’t sound like the right priorities for experienced editors, we definitely want to hear how you see it. I think it’s also important to note that for each initiative in this list, knowledgeable and interested community members have been involved in the planning and design throughout – this helps us make sure that the plans to invest in experienced editors’ workflows will actually make a difference to them.

New Pages Patrol / PageTriage: after the open letter from new page patrollers about the PageTriage software, the Moderator Tools team worked with patrollers to modernize the software so that future improvements and bugs can be much more easily addressed. The new version of PageTriage entered production this past week.
Discussion Tools: over the past year and a half, the Editing team has rolled out the many parts of the “Discussion Tools” project, which added the “reply” button on talk pages and the ability to subscribe to specific threads on a long talk page, among other features to make it efficient to engage in conversation on the wikis. About 2.6 million edits have been published with the reply button, with 79% of those being made by users with over 100 edits. And for newcomers, data analysis has shown us that these tools have increased the quantity and quality of the comments they make on talk pages.
Dark mode: having a “dark mode” for Wikipedia has persistently been a top wish in the Community Wishlist, and it is prioritized in this year’s annual plan and currently under development, along with the ability for readers and editors to choose their preferred font size. We’ve heard from many community members that these changes will make both reading and editing Wikipedia a more comfortable and accessible visual experience.
Patrolling on Android: the Mobile Apps team is building a way for patrollers to easily patrol edits from the Android app, meant to give patrollers more options and opportunities to do their wiki work on their mobile device.
Watchlist on iOS: the Mobile Apps team introduced the watchlist on the iOS app this past week, which gives experienced editors a new way to monitor important pages from their phones.
Edit Check: we’ve heard from many experienced users and wishlist proposals that software could help prevent or improve low-quality edits from newcomers, which experienced users then have to correct or revert. To address this, the Editing team is building “Edit Check”, which is going to start out by automatically warning newer editors when they have added information without a reference, encourage them to add a reference, and then check whether their reference comes from a dubious source. This is meant to decrease the burden on patrollers while also teaching newcomers how to add reliable information. As of this past week, Edit Check is now being tested on several small pilot Wikipedias.
Automoderator: English Wikipedia and some other large wikis have benefited tremendously from bots that automatically revert clear vandalism, like ClueBot NG. This takes a major burden off of patrollers and frees up their time. The Moderator Tools team is working to bring that capability to other language wikis that don’t currently have any of those sorts of bots, so that their patrollers can also focus on more challenging problems.
Community Configuration: when WMF builds features, it is common that different wikis want the feature to work in different ways. We want experienced volunteers who know their wikis well to have control over how a feature works on their wiki – instead of WMF being the sole keepers of that control. The Growth team is building Community Configuration, which is a way for administrators to specify aspects of how a feature will behave for all the users on that wiki. This is currently implemented for the Growth features, allowing English Wikipedia administrators to specify, for instance, which sorts of edit suggestions newcomers receive. With the work being done here, administrators will be able to similarly configure many of the other features listed above, like Edit Check and Automoderator.
Commons Upload Wizard: among multiple community concerns being addressed around Commons are upgrades to the upload wizard. These upgrades will help newcomers load content appropriately to Commons, guiding them toward making the right designations about licensing so that Commons patrollers can more accurately make deletion decisions.

That list touches on some of the projects specifically geared toward experienced editors, and does not include items addressed through the Wishlist process (more updates to come on how that process is evolving to better meet community needs). I hope that many of you follow along with the above projects in which you’re interested so that you can weigh in and help guide them.

How does this all sound? Does this approach make sense? What thoughts or concerns do you have about the work or the prioritization? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 04:55, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I’m Runa Bhattacharjee, Senior Director of Product for Languages and Content Growth. I oversee the Community Tech team, which runs the annual Community Wishlist Survey. I am based in India.

The wishlist is an important avenue for the Foundation to understand and address the technical needs of volunteers. While the Community Tech team is tasked with a prioritized list of wishes during the year, they are not the only team who supports this work. More than 20 teams across our Product and Technology department support the wishlist process right from evaluating the incoming wishes, providing technical input, responding to dependent technical debt, infrastructure support, and various kinds of reviews. These teams also work on wishes and provide maintenance work for completed wishes as a core function of their roles. Periodically, the teams also gather (virtually) multiple times a year for dedicated wish completion sprints. Going forward we would like to do a better job of highlighting how editors' priorities expressed through the wishlist make it to teams across the Wikimedia Foundation.

To give you a few examples of recent work done through this setup:

Auto-save feature now known as Edit-Recovery Feature that saves wikitext and other edit form information while typing, and allows for restoring it after the browser has been accidentally closed, or a power or network outage or browser crash.
Better diff handling of paragraph splits -that allows viewers to understand when paragraph spacing was inserted between two versions of a page.
"Who Wrote That?" - A browser extension that displays authorship information directly in Wikipedia articles, and was extended to more Wikipedias.
Add link to CentralAuth on Special:Contributions that helps admins, patrollers, and other editors to find useful information related to blocked users, across wikis.
Realtime preview that allows users using the 2010 wikitext editor to preview the page in real time when editing.
Rewrite XTools - a project to update and maintain XTools, the wiki curation and moderation tools originally developed by User:X! and rewritten by User:Hedonil.
Watchlist Expiry that allows users to watch pages for a limited period of time.

Recently at Wikimania I heard from volunteers their appreciation and support for the community wishlist survey process. At the same time some voiced their frustration and concerns about the process the way it is now.

Advanced editorial role responsibilities are growing across languages, regions, and affiliate needs. Besides a growth in volume of technical issues, there is also an increase in the technical complexity in the issues that the editors are bringing to our notice. It is important that we help connect the dots and make the necessary improvement within the Wikimedia Foundation so that editors' priorities expressed through the wishlist make it to formal priorities listed in our annual plan to make sure they are resourced and tracked more impactfully.

We have begun a process to improve and redesign the wishlist survey, with the objective to have an effective response system in place for the technical requests we know are of high importance like critical editor workflows. In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more information about how the wishlist will evolve.Runa Bhattacharjee (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Procedural query If proposals 1 and 2 pass, would they pass with the wording The English Wikipedia community is [...], because frankly ~40 in favor with ~20+ opposed is not representative of the English Wikipedia community (at least of those who are participating here) especially when compared to the overwhelming support in favor of proposal 3. Curbon7 (talk) 02:30, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
My understanding is yes; while the support isn't as extensive as for #3, approximately twice as many editors support #1 and #2 as oppose it and so in my opinion it is still appropriate to say that the English Wikipedia collectively - though not unanimously - supports this position.

For a different example, we still say that the Arbitrators are elected by the English Wikipedia Community, even though some receive less than 2/3rds support. BilledMammal (talk) 03:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
Correct. Although this does also highlight the fact that we may need to make this page more accessible to editors in general - My first year at wikipedia, I dont think I even knew this page existed. If you look at the discussion above, the experience amongst editors is much higher than what would be typical of wikipedians - Which can be a benefit and a hinderance both. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 13:06, 25 November 2023 (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.

Post-close

A small note of elaboration. I have determined that the Wikipedia Village Pump has issued the three non-binding resolutions, due to the support of discussion participants outweighing opposition. I have not stated whether this is supported by English Wikipedia, and the absence of reference to the Wikipedia community in the closure statement should not be seen as summarising the discussion. There is clear support that this discussion page supports these resolutions, with the third resolution being supported especially strongly.

The English Wikipedia community is concerned about the distribution of grants related to activity on the English Wikipedia that will either not contribute to our goals of building an encyclopedia or will actively hinder those goals. We request that the Wikimedia Foundation informs the English Wikipedia of all non-trivial grants that will result in activity on the English Wikipedia through the opening of a discussion at the Village Pump (WMF) prior to the grant being issued.
The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has found itself engaged in mission creep, and that this has resulted in funds that donors provided in the belief that they would support Wikimedia Projects being allocated to unrelated external organizations, despite urgent need for those funds to address internal deficiencies.
We request that the Wikimedia Foundation reappropriates all money remaining in the Knowledge Equity Fund, and we request that prior to making non-trivial grants that a reasonable individual could consider unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects that the Foundation seeks approval from the community.
The English Wikipedia community is concerned that the Wikimedia Foundation has neglected critical areas of the project, and that continued neglect of these areas may endanger the project.
To improve the resilience of the project, we request that money be reallocated to hiring more technical staff, whose role will be to fulfill requests from the community such as those expressed on the Community Wishlist, as well as restoring access to tools such as grapher extension.
To improve knowledge equity we also request that that the Foundation provides funding to assist established editors in accessing the resources they need to improve the encyclopedia, such as by increasing the number of libraries accessible through the Wikipedia Library and by giving micro-grants for the purchase of backlogged items at Resource Request.

Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:16, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm still quite peeved that statement 2 directly targets the KEF for liquidation. It just seems unproductive to phrase it that way, which is a shame because the first portion of statement 2 raises a solid point regarding the apportionment of WMF funds. All I'm saying is it would have been far more productive to request that the WMF focus on WMF projects first for funding rather than just saying "Nuke it!!!!". Curbon7 (talk) 18:02, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

The resolutions can be amended by consensus as well. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:50, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

For clarification, I'm not just whining because my position did not achieve consensus. I am well-aware that my support of the KEF is a minority position here on en.wp. I'm just trying to say that there is a more tactful way to word that statement. Curbon7 (talk) 05:37, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip, I'm concerned regarding the lack of coverage regarding opposition for the resolutions in your close. Please consider amending it to be more detailed in summarizing the discussion rather than only providing a broad result.
Additionally, I see in the discussion that while there is a numerical consensus for the resolutions, there are also quite reasonable arguments opposing it. I encourage you to weigh the content of the discussions rather than merely the quantitative !votes.
(involved) — Frostly (talk) 04:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe I have implied that there was more opposition to the first and second resolutions than there was to the third resolutions, without giving undue weight to that opposition. I have been purposefully concise to avoid amplifying any particular arguments.

Regarding the opposition to the first two resolutions, I could not find any objective reason to weigh the minority view disproportionately in its favour. There is much less scope to weigh the minority view greater than the majority view in a non-editorial discussion such as this, where editing policies don't apply. As a neutral closer, I cannot find (or should disregard) that one argument is subjectively or arbitrarily better than another, though I do not mean to suggest that I think you are saying I should. I can add the underlined to the closure comment. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:04, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Wait what? (involved): 1. I thought this closed like two months ago? 2. I have determined that the Wikipedia Village Pump has issued the three non-binding resolutions, due to the support of discussion participants outweighing opposition is the least best closing rationale I've seen outside AfD. Folly Mox (talk) 04:48, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
It did close a while back, was reopened, and then archived without close if I remember correctly. And now reclosed. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 05:07, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I closed it and the close was overturned. Honestly this RfC is so stale I doubt the WMF will draft a response to it. Mach61 (talk) 05:25, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

There is simply not much more to say. There is greater support for the three resolutions than opposition, not only in number but in relative weight as well. I have elaborated above that there is a lack of any compelling reason to give disproportionate weight to the minority view, rather than a reason to not do so. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:11, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I could have been a lot kinder in my characterisation of your closing rationale, but what about identifying common themes, subtopics, and rationales? I thought a close was supposed to summarise the discussion. See example. Folly Mox (talk) 07:09, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I appreciate that discussion closures can be longer, but I did not feel it was appropriate in this case to summarise the points of the discussion. Unlike closing a discussion for an editorial dispute, determining the reasons for the consensus wouldn't provide further editing guidance. The unusually lengthy closure comment in your example helps editors contribute to the article further than the direct question being discussed. There is not much more to summarise this discussion than editors choosing to support these resolutions, and I aim to avoid expressing an opinion on which reasons are good or bad. I would encourage anybody to summarise the arguments of the discussion. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:53, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
I think for long RFCs, long closes are better. Part of a good close is summarizing the discussion. The participants need to feel like you read everything and understood it, and enough of the closer's thought process needs to be disclosed to make the participants feel like the close is within closer discretion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:40, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae:

Summary: Resolutions supported due to discussion participants' concerns over Wikimedia Foundation funds being provided for non-encyclopaedia initiatives, funding of activities which cause article quality issues requiring editors to resolve, lack of notice to the community regarding grants being awarded, and desire for technical upgrades to Wikipedia. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: Regarding:

I have determined that the Wikipedia Village Pump has issued the three non-binding resolutions, due to the support of discussion participants outweighing opposition. I have not stated whether this is supported by English Wikipedia, and the absence of reference to the Wikipedia community in the closure statement should not be seen as summarising the discussion.

I find this a little confusing - it makes it unclear to me how the support of the Wikipedia community could ever be determined, if a CENT-listed RfC in the Village Pump is insufficient to do so. I think it would be helpful to close this as we would any other global discussion; simply stating whether this or isn't a consensus, without making the consensus limited to a specific area that doesn't reflect the true scope of the discussion.

Would you be willing to update the close to do so? BilledMammal (talk) 03:54, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

It is certainly unclear how the support of the Wikipedia community can be determined, without far greater participation. There have been discussions and votes on Wikipedia with hundreds of supporters (38, 45 and 78 supporters for these three resolutions). I found consensus for these resolutions, but there is not enough to say that the Wikipedia community supports the resolutions directly. Instead, it can be said that the Wikipedia Village Pump believes that English Wikipedia should issue these resolutions. I am willing to update the close to describe that this is not limited to a specific area, but neither should it be implied that it is unlimited. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:04, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I am willing to update the close to describe that this is not limited to a specific area, but neither should it be implied that it is unlimited.

Can you specify how you would update it?

It is certainly unclear how the support of the Wikipedia community can be determined, without far greater participation

In the past, a CENT-listed RfC at the village pump that comes to a consensus on the question asked. Can you clarify on what basis, and what policy or guideline supports that basis, that lead you to decide that it was insufficient in this case? BilledMammal (talk) 05:41, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

It can be described that the consensus is not necessarily limited to this talk page, but the closer can't determine the extent of the consensus beyond what they can see in front of them. I did not decide that anything was insufficient in this case and I made no decisions about how the Wikipedia community feels. The close was purely regarding how this talk page feels. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:26, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

It was listed on T:CENT and had at least 78 participants. I do not think that saying It is certainly unclear how the support of the Wikipedia community can be determined, without far greater participation is accurate. To request any higher sets the bar way too high, to a number that is unachievable, imo. This was, by all measures, a well-attended RFC that was advertised in all the places necessary to make it a community-wide consensus rather than a local consensus. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:42, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: I agree with Novem Linguae here; I think your close was broadly appropriate, except where you try to say that there was only a local consensus; I don't believe that such a statement is supported by policy. Would you be willing to adjust your close, or failing that revert it and allow another to close? BilledMammal (talk) 15:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Well I don't say that it's only a local consensus, it just can't be determined how broad the consensus is. If the resolutions had a thousand supporters for example (rather than thirty-eight), it would be much easier to determine a project-wide consensus. I could add this detail to the closure comments. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I feel like if you believe this, you should close the entire RfC as no consensus. That's generally what closers have done when they feel a higher quorum is necessary to justify changes. Mach61 (talk) 05:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe that a higher quorum is necessary. There is enough consensus here to determine that the Village Pump supports these resolutions. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:28, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The difference between this and other RfCs is they don't explicitly claim to speak on behalf of the entire website/community. There have been very few other RfCs along those lines before, and they've more often been styled more like an open letter, or have gotten more support than these got (e.g. the SOPA/PIPA blackout). I'm involved, of course, but it does seem like a good point that if the RfC is framed as speaking for the entire Wikipedia community, it's setting itself up for failure because it would need a high degree of participation to be justified. Even if it's listed at CENT, if only a small number of people support something it's hard to close as consensus on behalf of the entire site. IMO the discussion didn't need unarchiving and closing. The WMF has certainly already seen it, has seen that there was more support than opposition, and has seen the arguments on both sides. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia's financial health

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-11-20/News and notes has a update on Wikimedia's financial health, including an audit report for FY2022–2023. Income is up $25m at $180m. Expenses are up $23m at $169m, including salaries up $13m to $101m and hosting up $0.4m to $3.1m. Certes (talk) 11:35, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: add user-defined Common edit summaries to Preferences

I'd like to propose an enhancement to Preferences to add a feature enabling a user to enter a list of their own commonly used edit summary phrases, and then present them in the "Common edit summaries" dropdown that appears in Preview mode below the Edit summary input field.

In my case, I rarely use any of the potted ones, but I do have ones I use all the time, and this would be a real productivity enhancement. Probably one set per namespace to match current dropdown functionality, but just implementing mainspace would be a good start. (If I had my choice, I'd have the offerings be additive, i.e., organized as checkboxes, or permit multiple choices in the dropdown via Ctrl+select so I could assemble my edit summary by picking several, but this is probably a separate proposal.) Extra credit: in Preferences, if my custom edit summary list is empty, then prepopulate it grayed out with my top ten summaries in my last 500 edits (or top seven, as mainspace common summaries dropdown length is now). In the Preview mode dropdown, place user-defined list at the top, and if not fully filled out, then fill in remaining slots below from the potted summaries. When the cheers die down, extend to other namespaces. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Great idea. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:52, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Does your browser not save them for you? Firefox does for me, so all I need to do is start typing and then select from the options FF gives me. Nthep (talk) 14:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Editting the desktop site via mobile and the keyboard does all this for you, including narrowing selection based on what has already been typed. Most of my summaries take no more than two or three taps. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:45, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I use section edits almost exclusively (for many reasons, including ease of use, faster, fewer ec's, etc.) and the browser suggestions have to match from the very first character. For this section, it has to match /* Proposal: add user-defined Common edit summaries to Preferences */ which means there aren't any, except for my OP and further edits here. Same thing in, say, Mainspace or User talk space, where this feature would be really handy, and where browser suggestions help barely at all. Mathglot (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Copy and pasting are also easier on mobile. I cut the section details get the summary I need, and paste the section details back at the front. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:35, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

phab: is the right place for proposing new features in MediaWiki. But an easier way to implement it would be add this feature to MediaWiki:Gadget-defaultsummaries.js gadget. – SD0001 (talk) 18:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Added to the Gadget talk page; thanks. Mathglot (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia starts next week

Dear all,

The WMF is running its annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US from 28th of November to the 31st of December 2023.

Thank you to everyone who has worked together to prepare the campaign this year! We’ve built up the collaboration process this year on the community collaboration page, at in person events (e.g. Wikimania and WikiCon North America), and in other individual discussions. More information around the campaign, like example banners and messaging, can be found on the community collaboration page. We continue to welcome ideas on the page.

Some more resources around the fundraising campaign:

Love Wikipedia? Get to know the nonprofit behind it by Maryana Iskander
ABC for Fundraising: Advancing Banner Collaboration for fundraising campaigns by Julia Brungs
Preparing Together: Updates on 2023 English fundraising by Julia Brungs
The Fundraising Report 2022/23
7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia by Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact me directly at jbrungs at wikimedia dot org, or the team:

On the talk page of the fundraising team
If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket
If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donatewikimedia.org

Thank you for the collaborative effort this year,

Julia JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

It's starting now? Then why have we had banners up for a month or so? There have been complaints here and at the Teahouse. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 19:04, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks for all your hard work this year, for both you personally Julia and the entire team. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 07:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

[1] ttps://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org

[2] ttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/wikipedia-editor-allegedly-forced-by-french-intelligence-to-delete-classified-entry/

[3] ttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/obama-secret-kill-list-disposition-matrix

[4] Belanger, Ashley (6 Jan 2023). "Wikipedia admin jailed for 32 years after alleged Saudi spy infiltration". Ars Technica. Retrieved 8 Jan 2023.

[Guardian_2013-5] Willsher, Kim (7 April 2013). "French secret service accused of censorship over Wikipedia page". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 May 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2013.

[6] ttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/top-canadian-court-permits-worldwide-internet-censorship Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship

[7] "Government Bill (House of Commons) C-18 (44-1) - Royal Assent - Online News Act - Parliament of Canada". www.parl.ca. Retrieved 2023-08-26.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

Upcoming updates to the terms of use

Community Wishlist Survey 2023 opens in January!

Vote for your favourite Wikimedia sound logo

is wmf having another fundraising drive at the moment?

Copyvio-enabling website, ghostarchive.org

Saudi Arabia arrests two Wikipedia adminstors

Upcoming vote on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § Vector 2022 deployment update

Voting now open on the revised Enforcement Guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Update from Wikimedia Foundation about fundraising banners

Wikipedia:Vector 2022 has an RFC

Discussion at meta:Talk:Community Wishlist Survey § Why I'm so fatigued with the wishlist

Is Wikipedia losing ground?

Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust

Arbcom case

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Universal Code of Conduct revised enforcement guidelines vote results

Transcoding large MPEG videos

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump/Miscellaneous § Community feedback-cycle about updating the Wikimedia Terms of Use starts

Editing news 2023 #1

The Wikipedia app

Discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 § Proposal for next steps following the closure of the Vector 2022 RfC

Discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Draft/Product & Technology

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Upcoming WMF fundraising campaign in India

Vector 2022 zoom meeting

Roadmap Part 2 of WMF's Product/Tech now public

Discussion at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Elections Committee: Call for New Members

Climate coverage in the main page of Wikipedia, including a feature about environmental footprint/record of Wikimedia

Paltry funding for Wikimania scholarships

Calling all iOS enthusiasts!

Volunteer Opportunity: Join the Machine-Assisted Article Descriptions Project for the English Wikipedia App!

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section break 2

VR + Wikipedia...?

Online News Act

Soft Delete

Discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there *are* other ways the foundation *could* raise money -- are they better for the project?

About a job posting at the Foundation

Office hours for the Wikipedia mobile app

Donations 'In Memory Of'

When does this end?

Legal concerns email addy

Interviews: Tell us about your experiences using Wikidata in the Wikimedia sister projects

Discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § Close appeal of Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 6#RfC to issue a non-binding resolution to the Wikimedia Foundation

RfC to issue a non-binding resolution to the Wikimedia Foundation

Proposed resolutions

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects

Increased support for internal needs

Related discussions

Community Response

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Community Response)

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Survey)

Support (Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia)

Oppose (Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia)

Grants to organizations intending to be active on the English Wikipedia (Discussion)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Community Response)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Survey)

Support (Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects)

Oppose (Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects)

Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects (Discussion)

Increased support for internal needs (Community Response)

Increased support for internal needs (Survey)

Support (Increased support for internal needs)

Oppose (Increased support for internal needs)

Increased support for internal needs (Discussion)

Post-close

Wikimedia's financial health

Proposal: add user-defined Common edit summaries to Preferences

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia starts next week

Discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there are other ways the foundation could raise money -- are they better for the project?