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Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny

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By The ed17
The Belfer Center, Harvard University

One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.

The position, advertised and promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation, was at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They were looking for an "experienced Wikipedia editor" who would have a "unique role facilitating collaboration between the faculty, staff, and fellows at the Center and the Wikipedia volunteer community".

This chain of events was initially set in motion by the WMF's executive director Sue Gardner after an inquiry from Liz Allison of the Stanton Foundation, an organization that had donated several million dollars to the WMF (including $1.2 million in 2010 for the Public Policy Initiative and $3.6 million in 2011 for the troubled VisualEditor). While the Wikipedian-in-residence would be funded by the Stanton Foundation and work at the Belfer Center at Harvard, they asked the WMF to act as a fiscal sponsor for administrative reasons. The WMF also recruited candidates; their first choice, a long-time Wikipedian and former Harvard librarian, was rejected for not having enough experience in international security. The job description was sent to an email mailing list of academic international security programs; the WMF interviewed two candidates from the resulting applications. Timothy Sandole, who registered a Wikipedia account on the day applications closed, was selected by Belfer to fill the position on the basis of his previous academic experience with international security issues.

The offering of the position was not uncontroversial; the Foundation's deputy director, Erik Möller, has since written on the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Liam Wyatt, Pete Forsyth, Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis were among those who either "noted the risks and issues early on" or "provided internal feedback and criticism ... pointing out the COI issues and the risks regarding the project." Left unstated was the strength of some of this feedback: "we told them so", Wyatt stated. "We tried ... to tell the relevant WMF staff that this was a terribly designed project, but the best we got in response was that we could help edit the job description after it had already been published! ... We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role ... The WMF dug themselves into this hole despite the frantic attempts, which were largely rebuffed, of several of the GLAM-WIKI community help them fix it—or at least reduce the number of problems."

Sandole's final report

Sandole was hired for the full-time position and remained in it for 12 months, from August 2012 to August 2013. His final report notes that he "made 80 significant edits to 63 Wikipedia articles", "conducted three Wikipedia seminar workshops, each lasting approximately 1.5 hours", and "privately consulted with five Harvard Kennedy School staff members/fellows and one student". Some of the edits he made could have the appearance of propagating a conflict of interest, albeit a minor one; his additions to Russia–United States relations are based on writings by Graham Allison, the Belfer Center's head. Participants on the mailing list have questioned the apparent editing for pay by Sandole, especially in the context of the Foundation's response to paid advocacy by the public relations company Wiki-PR and its resulting proposal to modify the Wikimedia site's terms of use.

Sandole was supervised by Sara Lasner of the WMF, though Möller emphasized that this was only administrative oversight, handling vacation requests and payments, among other unnamed duties. According to Möller, "Timothy's edits weren't monitored in detail by the Wikimedia Foundation." Yet there was enough supervision from Lasner for her to tell Sandole in September 2012 to "be conscious of not over-representing Harvard University in his research". Her superior Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, the WMF's chief revenue officer, also sent an email "regarding awareness of conflict-of-interest issues in general."

Möller's thoughts reveal what he believes should have occurred at the WMF:

He concluded his email:


Discussion continues on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.

In brief

  • Finnish investigation of donations to the WMF: An investigation into the Finnish Wikipedia's fundraising banner has been closed with no action. As we reported in February, Finland's Money Collection Act requires individuals to apply for and receive a permit before soliciting donations. Under this law, authorities in Finland served wikifi-admin@list.wikimedia.org, the mailing list of the Finnish Wikipedia's administrator core, with a "clarification request". That was forwarded to the Wikimedia Foundation's legal team, who issued a formal press release on 3 March:


  • WMF's mid-year financial statements: The Foundation's mid-year financial statments have been published alongside a Q&A. The WMF's Finance and Administration Department reports that the organization's financial picture is "strong", although both revenue and spending are lower than anticipated.
  • Board of Trustees: Nominations for the Affiliate-selected seats on the Foundation's Board of Trustees are open until 31 March.
  • Wikimania 2015: Six bids have been received for Wikimania 2015, including Bali, Indonesia; Esino Lario, Lake Como region, Italy; Cape Town, South Africa; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Monastir, Tunisia; and Mexico City, Mexico.
  • New York Times and GLAM-Wiki: Noam Cohen, who has previously written several reports of Wikipedia for the New York Times and attended several Wikimanias, profiled several Wikipedia collaborations with museums in a recent article. From the lead: "If ever there was the antithesis of the crowd-sourced Wikipedia, it would be a museum, where an expert picks what is seen and not seen, then carefully prepares captions explaining what each piece of art means. But while there used to be innate suspicion toward Wikipedia among museum staffs, even hostility, in recent years there has increasingly been cooperation."
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  • Excellent work by The ed17. I am disappointed to read of this slow-speed mishap in which WMF's amateur-hour performance failed to meet expectations. Chris Troutman (talk) 03:54, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, well... Paid advocacy disclosures are prima facie evidence of bias and influence. But bias and influence themselves remain, as far as I know, as an ethnically European, English-speaking male basing most of my research off of material largely written by economically-privileged English-speaking males, unaffected by any recently proposed policy changes.
    The only thing I see here that I don't like is that edits were made to international politics articles concerning Russia while, somehow, neglecting to notice that the law of Russia article is damn-near unusable (an external link to the law of Russia would be a start), rendering any sort of fact-based analysis damn-near impossible, and leading me to believe that most English Wikipedia editors on Russian political articles have little idea what the hell they are talking about. Bias or no bias. Int21h (talk) 04:41, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The ad for this position was pretty clear about the applicant needing to have specialist knowledge in international affairs/defence topics, so the Librarian missing out isn't necessarily surprising or a bad thing if they lacked this expertise. However, if I remember correctly, this position wasn't advertised by the WMF to members of WP:MILHIST, which was the most likely pool of applicants (also if I remember correctly, I posted a note on the project's talk page after seeing this advertised through the WMF's website). That said, most of Timothy's editing looks pretty good to me, and he's improved a fair few articles on international security issues which really need specialist input. Whether this level of editing represents value for money is a good question though, especially if some of the edits were not-great. Nick-D (talk) 05:41, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Value for their money" is a worthwhile point to consider. According to this article, Sandole was paid a rather handsome salary to work full-time for which he made 209 edits, of which he considered 80 significant to 63 articles & conducted 3 seminars & consulted with some people; working as a volunteer with a maximum of 10 hours of week to devote to this, over the last 9 months I was able to make around 1500 edits, & to an area that I am not as proficient in as Sandole is in his -- Late Byzantine history vs. International security -- I contributed at least 100 significant edits to 59 articles. (Because I do not have the same level of expertise, I believe it's safe to say spent a lot more time in research of this topic than Sandole would have in his.) Maybe preparing & giving those seminars & consulting took up a lot of his time; it wouldn't have been an issue had Stanton should have made a more serious effort to recruit from active Wikipedians. IMHO, I could have given better value than Sandole had, which means any veteran Wikipedian could have. Lastly, when I first thought up this admittedly obvious idea years ago, I considered it way to reward established Wikipedians who had made contributions in one form or another to the project; in this case, it went to an outsider who had ties to the granting institution -- which can only reflect poorly on all parties. -- llywrch (talk) 18:01, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Basically in agreement with Nick-D. I found myself thinking as I looked over the material that it would actually be quite a bit of work to get up to speed on the current state of scholarship in so many different IR topics. This type of focus for WIR might be a very effective way to train a generalist researcher in the field, even though it's not the cheap way to write an encyclopedia. (From the perspective of volunteer-driven wikis, it's hard to say the cost was worth it, but it appears the funder may have been more interested in IR than in wikis. Not at all sure that quick edits by amateurs on IR topics are a true substitute for input by specialists, especially by specialists who have language skills, and international/academic experience and connections. Sometimes solid, well-documented information on complex topics just doesn't come cheap, in terms of money or time. Evaluating the quality may also require specialists rather than random Wikipedians.) Djembayz (talk) 01:27, 27 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for writing up this latest GLAM issue that has gathered so many responses on the mailing list, but I am mostly just very glad to read that the Finnish Wikipedia won't be shut down after all! Jane (talk) 09:34, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the report. An added dimension that should be noted is that according to Russavia's contribution to the mailing list discussion, Graham Allison is the husband of Liz Allison. Sandole subsequently applied to become Graham Allison's research assistant, a position he now holds. He appears to have done little actual work on Wikipedia during his residency. Looking at reports like [1] and comparing this against the actual article work done, one can't help but notice that he says he spent six hours drafting edits [2][3] that most Wikipedians could have drafted in twenty minutes. Andreas JN466 12:23, 23 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • While this WiR program doesn't look to have been very successful, it doesn't look like it cost the WMF any money either. I really have to wonder what's the big deal about an underperforming program from two years ago? Let me guess on how this story came to light - some blogger claimed something without taking any personal responsibility for the claim, a second (banned) editor flew it over to the mailing list, a third editor brought it over to Wikipedia (perhaps to Jimbo's talk page). Mix in a bit of Wikimediocracy propaganda. And voila, a story made out of essentially nothing. We've seen it done many times now. They call this kompromat in Russia. While I think it was good that the WMF got to respond to this, it's telling that none of the accusers actually made any accusations on this page, nor have they exposed themselves to any questions on what their interest is in this. IMHO It would be best if the Signpost did not repeat kompromat generated stories like this. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:34, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think realistic allegations of impropriety should be investigated and responded to regardless of their source (Not that their is anything wrong with the source of the information - it came from a blog post of an active Wikimedian in good standing). Well I agree that a minor program from 2 years ago is not an issue of the same magnitude as it would be if it was happening currently, I feel very strongly that its important to acknowledge and investigate past mistakes, lest they happen again. Bawolff (talk) 15:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • What "realistic allegations of impropriety"? As far as I can see, nobody has been accused of any impropriety, just below par management. The blowhard post by Russavia is all heat and no light. Skimming it might make it seem like there is some accusation of impropriety, but looking at it in detail just gives the impression that it's just a smear campaign with no solid claims of anything improper. Russavia has been rightfully banned here for his creative personal attacks, and frankly anything he says now should just be ignored. Odder, who has worked hand in glove with Russavia before in this type of smear, doesn't make any claim of impropriety in his blog. Rather, his argument seems to be that the WMF's proposed change in the Terms of Use to require paid editors to disclose their edits is hypocritical because of this two year old minor case. That's a pretty weak argument - you can't change policy (or ToU) simply because of one old incident. All in all, it is just bluster and an attempt at kompromat. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:41, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well first off, I still think we should try to lean from cases of sub-par management, and learning requires public acknowledgement of past mistakes (imo). However I don't think that's all there is to this. The foundation green-lighted a project that had conflict of issues, despite being warned that there were conflict of interest issues (That's what I've gathered anyways, I must admit I haven't followed every email on wikimedia-l). I consider that a mild act of impropriety. The worst case scenario is that the foundation was unduly influenced by a major donor to do so despite being aware of the problems. That would be a larger act of impropriety on the part of the foundation. I don't know if that is what happened, the evidence is not sufficient in my mind to definitely conclude that happened, so I would prefer to suspend judgment on that. In any case I think its important we discuss issues like this, in order to figure out if there actually was any impropriety, and if there was, how significant it was. In the long run we will be stronger for it. Bawolff (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • minor factual error: Lisa is "Chief Revenue Officer", not chief financial officer. It is correctly labeled on the page you linked to. We do not have a CFO, though Garfield largely performs those duties as Chief Administrative Officer. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Noam Cohen has definitely attended more than the 2008 Wikimania. For one, I personally saw him at the 2011 Wikimania in Haifa, and I doubt he could have missed the 2012 one in Washington DC. Ijon (talk) 16:44, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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