Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2022-05-29

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2022-05-29. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Community view: Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections (4,467 bytes · 💬)

I'm surprised that half of these 12 have less than 5,000 total edits -- a few with less than a thousand total edits -- hardly enough to get a good feel for the mood & environment of any one project. And yet the Analysis Committee found them qualified. -- llywrch (talk) 19:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Llywrch: The analysis committee has not convened. When it does it will eliminate about half of these candidates. The North American analysis committee member has not yet been appointed; see these notes from the meta:WALRUS meeting last night to select one - meta:WALRUS/May 2022. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Then the lead of this article is confusing. The first sentence discusses the candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation Board, the second the Analysis Committee. While I might have been a bit hasty in connecting the two, it's not helpful mentioning both together without explaining their relationship. Say, these are positions we'll be voting on in the coming days. -- llywrch (talk) 21:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

"wishes of the community". Just to be clear here, when we say "the community" we're talking narrowly about people who are on English Wikipedia, who read the Signpost, who are interested in this election, and who take the time to fill out this unofficial poll (Not to mention highlighting edits as a proxy for qualification to serve on a board). That seems neither inclusive nor diverse. Ckoerner (talk) 18:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@Ckoerner: I'd like to highlight some aspects that you mentioned that are present in normal elections: only people who are "interested in elections" will vote, and only people who take time to do so will. Unfortunately, I believe that this is the best way forward; the Wikimedia Foundation has decided its preferred method, and in that method shortlisting is not the responsibility of the community. Thank you, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Hey @EpicPupper thanks for replying. I hope my comment wasn't viewed as being too pointy. I want to call you in (and others reading), not call you out. Text is hard. :) I appreciate the attempt to help inform affiliates and just want to make sure we're being honest with our language. Everyone is busy and I'd hate for the framing of "the community" to be misconstrued by affiliates.

True to that aspect of who shows up. Of course only folks who are interested will vote. Same with people commenting on Signpost articles. :p That doesn't really refute the gist of my comment. I'd hope we'd do our best to help folks who struggle to find the time to participate as they are often the most overburdened and underrepresented in community governance (folks who have minimal time to volunteer, English isn't their primary language, aren't aware that there are even elections(!), etc.). Bringing those folks into the fold would give us a much more representative view into the wishes of the/a community.

A small clarifying point. If I'm following things on Meta correctly, and I think I am, but would love to be politely corrected if not because it's A Lot! The method of election governance was developed by a board selection task-force (all members of which are community-selected) and the Elections Committee (also made of volunteers).

That's after the two call-for-feedback sessions in 2021 and 2022. Foundation staff are following the process approved by these volunteer-led groups. So "the Wikimedia Foundation has decided its preferred method" is more accurately "the Wikimedia movement has decided its preferred method and the Foundation is carrying out those wishes" from my perspective. Ckoerner (talk) 15:01, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Essay: How not to write a Wikipedia article (5,815 bytes · 💬)

Nice when you can do so, but try to find, for example, a plot summary of an obscure Victorian play, or, for that matter, in many cases a plot summary that includes details of the ending. Also, there's numerous cases where I've seen inaccuracies (or, at best, descriptions that reflect changes made in a particular performance) in summaries of a play; if we're not using the original work, and don't have sources to contradict it, are we forced to include inaccuracies?

If what's suggested here can be done, it should be done, but it really, really isn't that big of a deal if we do use the original source.

And, of course, sometimes complaints about a plot summary being too long can be counterproductive: If I'm considering putting on a play or opera or something, I need enough information to get a good idea of whether the plot sounds interesting. A paragraph-long explanation that strips it down too much inevitably makes it sound generic and trite.

There's good reasons for holding back a bit when it comes to copyrighted works. But with ones out of copyright? For rarely-performed plays, hard-to-find books, and so on? The detail is valuable. I remember when the movement to trim down plot summaries began. For years afterwards, half the plot summaries on Wikipedia were downright unusable without going to the page history, because they did things like cut the sentences introducing a character, and then suddenly names began appearing later with no context, or failed to establish a conflict until discussing the resolution of it. We don't need Round Two of that. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 21:47, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Also, using second-hand plot summaries [because that's what "sourcing" plot summaries is] means a higher chance that an error slips in. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

If you can't find any sources describing the ending of the work, then I would personally consider it undue weight to describe the ending in the plot summary/synopsis. Poorly-considered trimming can be an issue, sure, but I like seeing this essay, as this has been part of my own Wikipedia writing philosophy for a long time :) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I buy that. I really don't want to have to track down a French-language play and translate the 18th century French to learn how it ends, because the people reviewing it when one could easily see a performance of it wanted to avoid spoilers.

If you're describing a performance, weight is very different than in an encyclopedic article. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 19:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Nevertheless, using secondary sources exclusively is, and always has been, how this encyclopedia is built. If there are insufficient secondary sources, that says to me that the topic is not notable.--~TPW 13:34, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

That's... not an accurate description of Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary. Which even says "an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot". Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 17:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• The Signpost talking about unnecessary trimming in plot sections for articles about creative works (including films)? I see this as a personal attack! -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 16:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Good advice. Reminds me of that time when I wrote an article about a book without ever having read it. Avoids the famed WP:PLOTBLOAT issues. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:25, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

With a plot summary that focuses very heavily on the setup and then descends into vagueness before describing anything after that. Which, y'know, is probably okay for a recent novel, but utterly useless for a historic novel. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 22:48, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

• The argument that providing a secondary source makes it easier to verify content is only valid if the source is available online. What if an editor cites a printed review? How is that any easier to verify than citing the original work? I also echo the concern about secondary coverage avoiding spoilers, which would cause plot summaries to be unbalanced or incomplete. I'm adamantly opposed to mixing real-world and fictional material on character articles. I get the motive behind it, but it makes it much harder to recognize when the content is unbalanced. Argento Surfer (talk) 15:42, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Featured content: Featured content of April (517 bytes · 💬)

• Thank you for this good summary, I always enjoy perusing the new featured content. —Ganesha811 (talk) 00:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

+1! czar 14:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

From the archives: The Onion and Wikipedia (2,377 bytes · 💬)

• An interesting blast from the past. I don't think The Onion would write the same piece today because it doesn't accord with people's experiences of Wikipedia. As an editor, I see dozens of instances of vandalism per week, but as a reader I might notice a couple per month—and many of those I only spot because of years of experience in seeing the telltale signs.
  I think the go-to joke about Wikipedia today is the hackneyed and disruptive "I edited it to say [X ridiculous thing]", or (less bad) a faked screenshot of an article changed. The joke here is implicitly the opposite of The Onion's piece: Wikipedia is an authoritative source and the juxtaposition with the reminder that anyone can change it is funny.
  With all due respect, I believe Adam and Ben have been proven wrong, firstly with the success of Wikipedia and secondly with the failure of all of Larry Sanger's attempted spin-off wikis. But it's interesting to see that as late as 2006, five years into the project, there was still such dispute about how Wikipedia should be written. Though, of course, forcing registered accounts or (more rarely) identity authentication remain perennial proposals. — Bilorv (talk) 23:50, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Skimming through Sanger's article, I was rather surprised to discover that the word "blogosphere" was still being used unironically as recently as 2019. On the other hand, the fact that he fell into the blockchain morass is totally unsurprising to me. Lots of smart people fell for that. --NYKevin 09:14, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

    I don't know many smart people who fell for the blockchain pyramid scheme. I know smart people who recognised they could be at the top of the pyramid, and people who joined the bottom of the pyramid because they believe themselves to be very smart. — Bilorv (talk) 18:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

2022 Reader Survey

Hello, and welcome to the first Signpost Reader Survey! We hope to incorporate feedback we receive into actionable, direct changes that reflect the state of our diverse readership. Please feel free to treat this page as a talk page; all questions are optional, and the regular talk page guidelines (signing messages, civility, etc) apply. Thank you for your participation!

How would you rate your experiences with The Signpost, on a scale of 1-10?

• 8/10 Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• 9/10 Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 10/10 Lectrician1 (talk) 04:02, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 9/10 Applodion (talk) 08:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 8/10 Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 8/10 PAC2 (talk) 20:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 9/10 Clovermoss (talk) 05:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• 9/10 WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• 5/10 Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• 9/10 Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• 10/10 --ssr (talk) 14:22, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Optionally, leave a comment on why you gave the above answer.

• Still room for improvement, but that will come in time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• When I started reading The Signpost I was often impressed by the quality of the "main articles" (op-ed, special report and such), to the point that I wondered why Smallbones wasn't headhunted by some "real" newspaper. By now I've come to expect the high standard. The new co-editors-in-chief have got some very large shoes to fill. Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I love the informalness in content as the Wikipedia community itself is inherently informal. The Signpost is not a typical formal newspaper and it shouldn't be. I also love the variety of content and incorporation of content directly from the community like featured pieces, community work, and featured articles and media. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:04, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Usually the content is of high quality, but there's a recurring rate of something significantly problematic (for the Signpost's nature) that would drop it a point, and then it's just a matter of frequency. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• A hugely useful bit of Wikipedia. I love that it's not afraid to express opinions, but equally doesn't have an agenda to push. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Neither especially good or bad; just middling. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• I'd like more content involving interesting facts. Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

How likely are you to recommend The Signpost to another editor, on a scale of 1-10?

• 10. I'm a firm believer that all editors should be aware of The Signpost even if they are not interested in reading it. On its relaunch in April 2018 I was surprised at the amount of enthusiasm for it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• 10 I think there should be a small note on the main page of WP when a new Signpost is available. I agree with Kudpung that all editors should be aware of The Signpost. Based on the time between me starting to edit and discovering The Signpost, there's room for improvement there. Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 10. I too think the signpost should be on the main page. With more exposure the publication could possibly become biweekly which would be awesome.
• 10. The Signpost's news related to the insides of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation as well as their interesting pieces on media reception, sciences, interviews, etc. are something I look forward to every month. Applodion (talk) 08:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• 10. It's by far the easiest way to keep your finger on the pulse for those who are short on time (like me!). WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• 1. It's already quite prominent and so needs no bush. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• 10/10 Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• 10 - Amazing work guys. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• 10 --ssr (talk) 14:22, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Which columns of The Signpost have you read?

• All - always. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• I've read them all. Now I only glance at columns like trafic report, featured content and news from the WMF Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Alllll! Lectrician1 (talk) 04:06, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I always read everything except featured content and traffic report. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Usually things that might impact what I do - so the discussion report and technology report are must-reads every time for me. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• I usually skim them all. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• I used to read them all, but nowadays I only go through about 60-70% of the reports. Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

What are your thoughts on each of the following proposals?

Increasing social media reach - which channels do you use?

• I have never used social media, but it would probably be a good idea to increase the reach of The Signpost Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• I'm on Reddit (if you want to call that social media). I've gone off Facebook, only use that to log on websites.
  Social media runs the risk off WP discussions being debated away from WP. I once read an article in The Signpost that mentioned that, which I do not like at all. On the other end; It is the way of the world now. So a double edged sword maybe? Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I use Reddit and Discord. I'd recommend just posting to r/Wikipedia and people will likely crosspost from there which could really help with exposure. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I'd oppose such - I don't want to risk the Signpost chasing social media focus rather than on-wiki effort. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I'm on several social media platforms but I'd agree with Nosebagbear, I'd prefer the Signpost to stay right where it is and for any promotion of it to be on-wiki. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• There are too many such channels and it seems best to focus on the one that we all have in common, right here. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• I'm in favour of this, and I'm on Reddit. Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• General oppose - keep wiki things onwiki. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:15, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Creating a filtering tool for articles

• Probably not necessary; a solution looking for a problem? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• Could be cool. I was thinking you could make Wikidata items for Signpost articles and then you could have really powerful filtering and tagging. I'd be willing to help. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Don't think it's needed - it looks like most of us read everything or nearly everything. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• The table of contents works fine for me, as does the wiki search. I don't see a need for anything more. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Meh, I'm indifferent to this one. Tube·of·Light 11:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Creating a scavenger hunt

• No idea Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• I don't think people would do it. Not worth the time to setup. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:10, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Feels like significant effort to establish, wouldn't draw in more readers beyond those we already have. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Might be worthwhile to see if people engage with it for an issue or two, but it's not really something that I'm interested in. Clovermoss (talk) 05:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Sounds like fun but probably more effort than it's worth. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Applying for user group status

• Why? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• If you mean meta user group, sounds goodish. Not really sure what the significance or benefits are though. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:13, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• What are the benefits of doing so? Does this not risk amending the control routes for the Signpost? Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• As per the others, not really sure what this is trying to achieve. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• What would this accomplish? Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:15, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Creating a non-editing role account to email both EiCs

• Why? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• That's up to you all if you feel your current communication setup is not sufficient. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• If you think it would help, seems logical. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I can see the benefits but we don't like shared accounts. A shared EiC email address might be a better solution. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Does this need community support? I mean whatever works for yall. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 19:16, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Would you be willing to help contribute to The Signpost?

• Certainly Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• I don't write. I just do Wikidata. So if Signpost => Wikidata, I'll certainly help ;) Lectrician1 (talk) 04:15, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I might be interested in contributing to On The Bright Side again. Clovermoss (talk) 05:05, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• I can't commit time on a regular basis but the occasional one-off article might be doable if/when I have something interesting to say! WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, if I have something particular to say. Not interested in just filling space. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions for The Signpost?

• Many Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• Occasionaly I've seen an obituary section in The Signpost. I've read those with interest. Maybe make that a regular monthly column. Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Without wishing to sound flippant, I would hope there's not enough material for obituaries to be a monthly column. — Bilorv (talk) 15:46, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Get Signpost on the Main page. Also, Traffic Report is really long and should maybe be broken up or each week in a collapsible container. Lectrician1 (talk) 04:17, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Not sure about the main page, but including it in the standard welcome notices is probably worthwhile. WaggersTALK 14:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
• Interviews of editors, functionaries, WMF staff and partners. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

General comments

• Welcome to the new EiCs! I'm glad to see the strong passion in this editorial. The short URL is great—for instance, you'd share this article as signpost.news/2022-05-29/From_the_team. — Bilorv (talk) 22:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• Congratulations to the new team on getting their first issue out. I am only too aware what a huge amount of work and commitment it requires. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
• Welcome and congratulations to the new EiCs! —Ganesha811 (talk) 00:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• The short URL could use some inprovements. It should redirect to en.wikipedia instead of en.m.wikipedia. Additionally, it should support HTTPS. --Firestar464 (talk) 02:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Hi @Firestar464! Thanks, we're working on these :) 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:10, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• The new team have taken on a huge task. Best wishes on fullfilling it. Dutchy45 (talk) 03:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

February 2015 Signpost reader survey results

• "the first Signpost Reader Survey" - a similar Signpost reader survey was already run back in 2015 and might have been worth reviewing before launching the current one. The results were e.g. discussed in this editorial, and one (heavily selection-biased) conclusion from the survey remains highlighted on the Signpost's "About" page as of today. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:41, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• You only had unanimous support because I chose not to publicly voice my opposition to Pupper. The hijacking of the talk page does not bode well. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) Chris Troutman (talk) 21:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Hello @Chris troutman, thanks for providing your feedback. I'm sorry that I didn't have your support in the process; I would always welcome feedback or criticism. I was wondering what you meant by "the hijacking of the talk page"? Thank you, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:46, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  The Signpost does not run reader surveys on the talk page of piece in the newsletter. You hijacked that space meant for reader comments. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  I considered multiple options, but concluded that this was the easiest to access. "General comments" is intended for comments of the article. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:47, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Chris troutman: Pinging you since you requested it. EpicPupper did write another comment. Clovermoss (talk) 05:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• I think that in the heat of the enthusiasm, a couple of things got overlooked and familiarity with the process was not 100%, but one or two good decisions were made. When Bri and I took over in 2018, it was a relaunch, but it went off quite smoothly. Chris troutman provided some excellent support and without his help it would not have been possible. We looked into the archives to see what had been done before and how it had been done. We created a lot of additional content 'columns' in order to encourage new contributors to fill them, but we didn't actually change the format even if the style went more towards a magazine. Possibly what the new team has done in their eagerness was to change too much too soon, and like a new broom, make a clean sweep, but that is not a criticism - keeping The Signpost going is the most important goal. That watchlist notice needs to go up though. It was an idea of ours which brought us a significant number of new readers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Kudpung, thank you for your input. I'd appreciate if you read my previous comments; I explained that the watchlist messages need to be added by an administrator, and that we've requested that it be added. This process takes time; we hope that it will be fast every issue, but this is not a guarantee. To my knowledge, none of the active contributors to The Signpost are administrators.

  I would also appreciate elaboration on what you describe as chang[ing] too much too soon; please explain the changes that we have made that you consider to be too soon. To my knowledge, the only change that we have implemented is creating the short URL signpost.news.

  Thank you for your advocacy. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:23, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the watchlist messages need to be added by an administrator - it was my idea (Kudpung puffs his chest out) and I was an admin at the time. I won't elaborate on the good things you did, lest I get sanctioned again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:24, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

A good exercise is to go through the archives of every issue since March 2018 and see which columns received the most reader comments, how apt they were (some are blatant PA, while the majority made excellent suggestions), and consider what it would be like if The Signpost were able to be selective about the readers' comment that get published, just like any other neswpaper or blog. That's the problem with The Signpost , it's neither one thing nor the other: it is expected by hardliners to kowtow to Wikipedia mainspace rules, but somehow produce interesting and compelling investigative journalism. I don't really know what is the most precarious - being an admin or being a Signpost E-in-C., the worst is probably being both (diffs available); for example, it's E-in-Cs and regular contributors all being male, The Signpost can't even mention gender related issues without being accused of misogyny. Time the newspaper did what the WMF did: poopooed its own MediaWiki and went to Wordpress. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I made a sortable table of the longest Signpost talk pages -- a veritable rogues' gallery. One can only imagine what it must have been like to post in some of these! jp×g 20:41, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

JPxG: All you need to do now is read them all! (if you haven't done so already). It's certainly a useful table for examining what changes can be considered for the future of the periodical, and it's something EpicPupper can use if he has time between his preparation for the next issue. At least starting with this one which was the moment when The Signpost had hit the most severe existential crisis in its history. One can only imagine what it must have been like to post in some of these!: you've only been editing seriously for barely 2 years and although you've done an amazing amount of very high quality work in that time, catching up on the history of The Signpost's is probably quite a daunting task.

The comments on the articles in the issues that have been published since Smallbones and Bri ensured The Signpost's continuation have not been free of controversy (nor were they during my short tenure as de facto temporary E-in-C); for most of that time since they took the relay however, I have been semi-retired from Wikipedia. The comments are nevertheless some of the most revealing, and some have created quite a storm including the forced deletion of some articles or severe post-publication tinkering. I'm sure Bri and Smallbones have thrown their arms up in despair more than once. It's interesting to note that many of the detractors have not been regular contributors to Wikipedia, and indeed have also rarely edited since that time either. Some simply appeared to have an axe to grind and while at times they might have enjoyed some respect from the community, while complaining about The Signpost journalism they think nothing of resorting to the lowest of sarcasm and PA. Interesting reading nevertheless because it demonstrates the contrast between the policy 'hardliners' and those who believe that anything goes in the newspaper's readers' comments sections, and with impunity - in much the same way as what makes RfA such a toxic process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:33, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

• Welcome to the new and thanks to the old editors-in-chief. Your work is truly valuable and is appreciated. Keep up the good work! SchreiberBike | ⌨  15:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
• I tried to make "Russian Signpost" called Vikivestnik. It's really a hard job! Please all Wikipedians appreciate Signpost very much, it's a great gift that you have it. It is VERY important for preparing good editors that make good Wikipedia. --ssr (talk) 14:26, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

"Guys"?

"This April, two guys nominated themselves as replacements, and in May the discussion was closed after unanimous support. It's official: these two guys are now the Editors-in-Chief."
Guys. Really? You could not find another word in the vocabulary except a gendered-slang that can't tell the difference between male and female persons? How about using "gals" instead? * Whaaat? Ridiculous! * Because, of course, that would be an affront to the Wikipedia boys club. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 03:07, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure what this post means. Do you mean you'd prefer if we used a term that was more gendered, or less? jp×g 01:00, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Less. How about ... editors? As in: "two editors" and "these two editors". Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 05:12, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary and JPxG: Been a few months, but: I can appreciate where Pyxis is coming from, but at the same time I'll point out that there is technically no inherent gender implication to "guys". Or there doesn't have to be, anyway. Yes, it's frequently interpreted that way, serving as the male counterpart to "gals" (a sense implicit in Pyxis' original comment), but ultimately the word's only gendered because we decide it is.

The actual origin of the word is mostly lost to the ages (it probably has something to do with Guy Fawkes, but even if so nobody's really sure how exactly), but nothing in its origins implicitly associates it exclusively with males. It's not clear when or how the word came to have that implication. The title of Guys and Dolls can be held up as pretty clear evidence of the word's male-gender associations (at least, at that point in time). However, it's also likely the play's title has been a major perpetuator of that association ever since. But there's no reason we can't reject that implication simply by choosing to agree on a different one. Some of us already do.

As with the word "actor", uses of "guys" in a gender-agnostic sense are growing more common as people divest the word of its arbitrary and unnecessary gender implications. (I'll self-{{citation needed}} here, since I don't have any sources to back me up on that. I've seen plenty of non-gendered uses of "guys" to refer to groups that were not exclusively male, and even seen it used -- by men and by women -- to address groups populated entirely by women. But my anecdotal observations have no value as evidence and would quite correctly be dismissed were I to present them as such. I wouldn't try to, anyway.)

OTOH, with social change being a slow process that's best measured on geological timescales, I recognize that not everyone is on board with genderless "guys". There are many women who object to being referred to as "guys", feeling it an implicit suppression of their gender. Furthermore, some transgender women have shared how painful it is for them to be addressed as "guys", which can be a trigger point for their own past experiences with being misgendered. Right now the word still has gender associations for the majority of English speakers. FeRDNYC (talk) 16:19, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

@FeRDNYC: While there are some good points to be had here, "guys" in this instance referred unambiguously to two specific male humans. If one or both of us had been female, we'd have said something else. jp×g 16:54, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Humour: A new crossword (681 bytes · 💬)

An interesting way to select words. Knowledge of spoiler:     Wikipedia tools, H:INCAT in particular     is required to solve all the clues efficiently. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Now this is a hard, hard one. I could get just 2 without using google 🤭 – SD0001 (talk) 11:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

In focus: Measuring gender diversity in Wikipedia articles (12,292 bytes · 💬)

• "Nobody would be able to say what a fair share of females in the article would be. However, I personally think that 5% is not much and that the contribution of women to economics is more important." This is kind of a cop-out. I'd like to know what the state of the representation of women is in the world of possible citations before adjucating whether we are below this line. Are 5% of academic papers in the field of economics published by women? I don't know, but this would be helpful information in determining whether or not the above proposal is meant to align our citations with academia due to some unconscious bias on the part of editors against women or is some sort of affirmative action proposal to increase the proportion of women in our citations for the sake of such. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 21:47, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Good point. We're not here to right great wrongs, we're here to report what reliable sources are saying or have said about notable people, incidents, processes, etc. – Athaenara ✉ 02:46, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
  • There does appear to be a significant gender gap in the field of economics itself according to the sources cited in this article, though not nearly as low as 5%. ––FormalDude talk 05:11, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

It could be argued, though, that “increasing the proportion of women in our citations for the sake of such” is one way of countering systemic bias. I don’t think we need to know detailed statistics about the contribution of women to economics to know that 95% of citations being from men is likely to be unrepresentative and worth improving on. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 09:22, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

We face the same issue with the share of women among biographies. No one know what is the good or fair share (15%, 19%, 30%?). But in the last years, projects such as Women in Red have focused on this issue and made an effort to increase the number of biographies dedicated to women. I'm just raising the same issue at the article level (poke Chess). Of course we need to rely on sources and reflect the reality of the topic. But we have some editorial freedom in the way we write articles and we can develop some aspects of the topic. In the article about economics in French, I've dedicated a section to the question of women in economics. I think it's a good way to start (if there are some sources of course). Last but not least, it's also in my opinion one aspect of the concept of "knowledge equity", which is key in Wikimedia movement strategy (Wikipedia:Wikimedia Strategy 2018–20/Innovate in Free Knowledge). PAC2 (talk) 16:45, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• I am a bit wary of the methodology here. As acknowledged in the article above, only those people with Wikipedia articles get counted in the statistics. If we go with the opening premise that non-male genders are under represented in Wikipedia articles, we are compounding the error by multiplying two disparities together. For example, an article has x% of citations from males and y% of citations from females. Now, for the sake of simplicity, lets say 80% of all biographical articles are about males and 19% are about females. Only comparing citations with linked articles we have x*0.8 and y*0.19. This results in a far lower percentage for female citations in the graphs than is mentioned in the article. I am not sure how we improve the calculation methodology but it is worth remembering that the level of the imbalance reported is distorted by our own distorted data. From Hill To Shore (talk) 17:33, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  From Hill To Shore you're right. This can be part of the interpretation of the results and one way to improve gender diversity in an article would simply be to create articles about women named in the article. PAC2 (talk) 06:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  Since the level of representation is being approximately squared by your methodology, perhaps the square root of the result would be a more accurate estimate of the representation. ~Kvng (talk) 19:36, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  This occurred to me as well. In absence of information on any differences between the two proportions (% cited and % bluelinked), root-transforming sounds like a reasonable hack to remove the compound effect. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

• You say in the text that you're measuring the "share of people cited in an article by gender" (later you refer to the percentage of "people quoted in the article"). I think most readers would understand this to mean that you're looking at the gender distribution of the authors of works cited in the article and listed in the "References" section. So it was surprising to see that you're actually measuring the people wikilinked from the article. Colin M (talk) 19:50, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for the feedback Colin M. The term wiki linked is more precise but I'm not sure that everyone understands it. PAC2 (talk) 06:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  Even if the term "wikilinked" isn't perfect, "cited" is worse. It means it won't count a female author who either isn't mentioned, isn't linked, or is red linked in the references section, but will count a bluelink that says something like "Economist John Doe wrote his seminal work on economics while on sabbatical in France and having an affair with the musician [[Marie LastName]]", where the bluelink has little to do with the topic at hand. "Mentioned and linked" might be better if you truly think "wikilinked" is too jargon-y. As a side note, I'd argue that an attempt to do this same test but for references / Bibliographies only would be a worthy endeavor, just some articles don't have well-formatted citations, and you can't look at Wikidata for unlinked authors. SnowFire (talk) 23:42, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

  @SnowFire: Yes, the tool cannot presently look at Wikidata for authors that do not have a link from the analyzed Wikipedia article, but many scholarly publications are in Wikidata, many of their authors have been disambiguated, and still a sizeable number of these have gender information, so by looking up the publications in Wikidata and their gender diversity, a more finegrained picture might emerge for the Wikipedia article in question. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 01:43, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

• Thank you for this interesting article! Zarasophos (talk) 09:15, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Although it is noted that there is indeed a disparity, that is mainly because women were not entitled to study at degree level until the 20th century. As such, there were very few women who COULD be mentioned on such a wide topic as "Economics", and they would be massively outnumbered prior to 1940. I am surprised that there is no mention of either Anna Schwartz (co-edited the Friedman book), nor Elinor Ostrom (who is THE ONLY woman to ever have won a Nobel prize for economics). I have added Mary Paley Marshall to the article, as she co authored a book where her husband was mentioned (but not her!?!). I fear all this analysis & debate is less positive than adding stuff that is seen to be obviously missing Chaosdruid (talk) 03:34, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Chaosdruid: The analysis has drawn to your attention (someone who has knowledge of female involvement in Economics) that there is a gap in the article and you have made an improvement to it. I would say that is a positive. Similar analysis of other articles may help identify other areas where there are particular gaps.

Most of the "debate" above is about refining the method of analysis to produce more accurate data. With accurate data, we will be able to spot articles that have an unusual disparity and correct them. From Hill To Shore (talk) 05:44, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@From Hill To Shore: I have no fore-knowledge, except A level economics - I simply did a search on Google for the top 10 female economists, read about them, and used that info. That should have already been done, since this page has discussion involving 8+ editors going back for at least two weeks. I feel that is a negative. Similarly these edits include removing a male author, instead of leaving him and adding the inserted female one; which actually looks like more of a negative considering that the article now does not include the counter statement to the previous paragraph end.

Perhaps action is more important than discussion - do we wait to see if anyone else actually adds the other 2 I mentioned? Maybe then we can do an analysis of why no one bothered to actually fix the thing you were all discussing? I will leave it up to one of the other nine or so editors to maybe add some detail on the ladies I mentioned as I feel perhaps there is a litle bit of looking for a disparity rather than curing it. I did not see a "gap in the article", I saw a gap in the editing of said article after someone had raised a flag.

... and yes, I get annoyed about things that are discussed and never actually acted upon Wikiwide, as well as hasty knee-jerk editing that tries to correct a perceived wrong but actually lowers the accuracy of an article. Chaosdruid (talk) 07:15, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Chaosdruid: So, you are complaining about knee jerk reactions but want 8+ editors to jump in and attempt to fix something they may not be familiar with? My interest and expertise do not lie with economics, so you are better placed than I to look at that article. Also, your example of a set of bad edits involve an ongoing content dispute on the article talk page that predated the publication of this edition of Signpost. Why are you trying to link an unrelated content dispute to the editors here?

You are also misrepresenting this discussion. While a few people here have talked about the example used of the economics article, most of the comments are about the principles and methods of analysis. Is there actually a problem and is the data a valid representation of the situation? You want us to fix wiki-wide problems but seem to begrudge people giving up their own time to discuss how we can better understand what the problem is and where we should fix it. That you wanted to improve the economics article and went ahead and edited it is great. However, you shouldn't expect every editor to conform to your expectations and timescales. We all improve the project in our own ways and at our own speed. From Hill To Shore (talk) 09:25, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

In the media: Putin, Jimbo, Musk and more (7,979 bytes · 💬)

• The Kennedy citing trend should be seen as a bad thing for us. Unless you are citing Wikipedia to talk about Wikipedia, this only muddles our ability to produce quality content; WP:CITOGENESIS. I don't see why a publisher wouldn't have told their author to spend another week checking the sources Wikipedia uses, rather than citing us directly. -Indy beetle (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. As an academic, you are expected to put in the extra effort to find more reliable sources. X-Editor (talk) 23:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

But is it a "trend"? From the NYT review, it sounds like an exceptional oversight at Yale University Press. czar 04:23, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I hope it was merely an oversight, if an embarrassing one. I'd much more concerned if Yale cognizantly signed off on it! -Indy beetle (talk) 10:27, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not even so worried about feeling the need to preserve one version of an article, I am just generally uncomfortable that Kennedy cited Wikipedia instead of the sources WP uses that he presumably, hopefully, checked first. WP is getting better, but please don't cite us! Especially not in your academic book! Unless it's literally there to cite "For X years, Wikipedia has said Y on the subject..." before going into a mainstream perception argument. Kingsif (talk) 01:29, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see the citations. Is it a bare URL or a permalink? And what facts are cited? In all likelihood this is indicative of a serious lack of source reliability analysis skills by the historian in question. — Bilorv (talk) 15:03, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Wikipedia the best encyclopedia in the history of mankind! And Putin can't do anything about it! ---Zemant (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• The bit about low traffic for some moth articles made me think of a thought attributed to J. B. S. Haldane: when he was asked if there were anything that could be concluded about God from the study of natural history, he replied, "an inordinate fondness for beetles", because of the vast profusion of species and morphologies thereof. Somewhere in this line of thought is a disjunction: God can afford to pay lots of attention to all the many many kinds of beetles, but humans apparently cannot afford time to pay significant attention to all the many many kinds of moths. Of course, perhaps arthropod biodiversity could be a matter of a thousand monkeys and not of any deities' proclivities anyway. Regardless, the data exhaust of Wikipedia, in all its countless forms—including what Wikipedia is and is not, and what Wikipedia could be but is not yet and perhaps may never be but we can't yet be sure, and how Wikipedia is developed over time and how it is not developed, and who reads Wikipedia articles (or not) and which ones they read (or not), and so on—lays bare realities about the nature of human cognition and the human condition. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
• I appreciate Morris' characterization of set index articles as "disambiguation pages except not, because reasons". Haven't quite figured out the crucial difference either :p --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:34, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I like that succinct characterization, too. Regarding what the difference is, or was meant to be but perhaps no longer is: An interesting topic. I am pretty sure that the differentiation originally grew out of a legitimate recurring problem of how to adequately handle (ie, not mishandle) semantic relations and ontology components of a hyponymous/hypernymyous character whereby various concepts in life have a hypernymous parent level about which not a whole lot needs to be said, beyond 1 sentence or 1 paragraph laying out the definition, but (in contrast) each of the various hyponymous instantiations of the parent theme is "a whole thing" that warrants a whole encyclopedia article (even if only a short one, nonetheless still an entire one, rather than none). I believe that the concept of a set index article was originally supposed to provide for a way to allow Wikipedia to duly acknowledge and (briefly yet adequately) explain/cover/represent the existence of the parent concept/theme that by itself does not warrant an encyclopedia article but nonetheless is necessary to recognize ontologically, as a node in one's mental schemas, cognitive models, and ontologies. Otherwise Wikipedia's rules/practices, at least as understood and enforced by some Wikipedians if not all, inadvertently contain a misguided problem whereby a parent concept exists and needs to be recognized but Wikipedia artifactually is inadvertently "not allowed to say that it exists," in a way that can actually feel stupidly/maddeningly insane or Kafkaesque to those people who even realize/can perceive that it even exists. For such people, one of the heartaches has been that many others do not realize or perceive thus, in a way that can seem somewhat unaccountable or counterintuitive to those who do. It is the argument between person A who puts a blurb at the top of a DAB page explaining the chief parent concepts and person B who deletes that blurb and says that DAB pages can only start with the contextless and mindless line, "X may refer to:". Quercus solaris (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

• I appreciate how the Christian Post quoted extensively from our notability policies to balance out Barnette's claims of being cancelled. I should find it laughable that she characterises the crowdsourced Wikipedia as a monolithic repressive entity to be opposed through people power. “They don’t like giving up power. They forget that the true power is with the people, though.” (Not laughing, though.) I wonder about us telling people they are "non-notable". We understand that the term has a special definition here, but others don't. Would it be better if we said not "famous" or "well-known" enough? Those also send a wrong message. Is there a better term? ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 08:37, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Maybe just create some made-up word, like "Wikipedable". That way no common associations can interfere. -Indy beetle (talk) 09:58, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Moths

Strikes me that Special:WhatLinksHere/Trichromia_phaeocrota might explain a lot: If an article is under a hard-to-spell scientific name, and the only link in (besides this article and the list of least viewed articles) is from a page that looks like this - a lengthy list of links to articles with one sentence at the top - the discoverability of the article is incredibly low. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 18:03, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

News and notes: 2022 Wikimedia Board elections (5,792 bytes · 💬)

So much money for (very high) WMF salaries but never enough for support for editors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:10, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't mind so much decent salaries for qualified individuals, it's all of the money going for PR services that I question. I mean, does Wikipedia have a big PR problem that needs to be remedied? If so, how are they going about this? Commercials? Focus groups?

I also thought I'd see some mention of whether or not WikiMania was happening but nothing here or on the WMF-related page. Maybe you could add some information on this, whether it is going on or canceled or gone virtual? If this was already mentioned in a previous issue, sorry I guess I missed it. Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:42, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious where the PR efforts are going. US? India? Waste of time. Indonesia? Might be worth it. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@Liz: Apparently the Signpost didn't cover the March announcement on Wikimania 2022: "Wikimania will take place this year from August 11-14. The conference will be primarily virtual, with support for local gatherings and events where possible." --Yair rand (talk) 00:16, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi! It was partially covered in the Technology report through coverage of the Wikimania Hackathon. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

That report is a particularly unfitting place to put one, and we should have included coverage in NAN. Apologies for this oversight. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, the claim in emails sent to donors is, "32% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers". I'd like to know how this figure was worked out. Andreas JN466 00:06, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Do the WMF think this is an impressive claim? I imagine people would assume the statistic was 100% minus the server costs if asked. Though I shouldn't complain about them making people less likely to donate, as I'm firmly in opposition to all their fundraising. — Bilorv (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Bilorv: There is a little more information on this claim now on Meta. Of course, it is problematic in multiple ways. --Andreas JN466 16:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Your tireless patience in those Meta comments is admirable, Jayen466. But to be blunt, what I've learned from the WMF response is: the emails are both directly false (32%) and deliberately misleading ("to keep Wikipedia online"). — Bilorv (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if the fact hundreds of us contribute our time, labor & materials for free has ever been considered by Foundation employees who push for more pay. Not that I think anyone should be paid less than a living wage, but IMHO the fact that what people come to Wikipedia (& its related websites for) is created by unpaid labor would make me uncomfortable if I insisted I should be paid more. Even prevailing wage might be asking too much. -- llywrch (talk)

FWIW, "Gluzdov.com, Inc." is usually known as Speed & Function. Legoktm (talk) 04:06, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• The CEO salary is astonishing. I wonder how you sleep at night knowing that you're making that amount of money from misleading fundraising banners and unpaid volunteers, many of whom are much more talented specialists than you. You must think you're an irreplaceable genius. I shouldn't be surprised given the ego of some of the Oxford people I've known in real life (the place where Iskander got her Master's), but I've never actually understood what goes on in their heads. — Bilorv (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I could think of a lot more adjectives than 'astonishing', Bilorv. That said, that salary would pay the entire intercontinental scholarship bill for around 300 attendees to a Wikimania, or provide NPP with a complete, desperately needed rewrite of the code of its MetaWiki curation software extension ten times over... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. I wonder how Maher would argue that she contributed more value than this per year. She wasn't even the front-facing public representative of Wikipedia—this has always been Jimmy Wales. — Bilorv (talk) 15:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

News from Diff: Winners of the Human rights and Environment special nomination by Wiki Loves Earth announced (127 bytes · 💬)

Very nice pics! Thanks! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 ---Zemant (talk) 12:29, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

News from the WMF: The EU Digital Services Act: What’s the Deal with the Deal? (5,015 bytes · 💬)

• It's always hard to tell how much impact our public policy team has on things like this (I suspect it's not crystal clear for them, either) - they are fairly limited on editor communication to avoid poisoning the well and obviously they're the ones reporting it. That all said, communities will ultimately be happy if the one line summary of any legal changes in this vein reads "You're fine, keep acting as you are, the Foundation can buffer any changes without your notice". In this instance, this good article (with thanks to @FPutz (WMF) and JGerlach (WMF):, by the way - a nicely clear read) seems to do just that, barring the crisis circumstances. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Going forward, I just thought I'd ask - will we be getting a similar article for the online safety bill in the UK? That one looks like it's going to have some really problematic bits in, Wikipedia-speaking. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Hi Nosebagbear! The team published an article on this, if you're interested. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:47, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for flagging @EpicPupper, you beat me to it! Eventually we will also produce a deep dive analysis of the bill, as part of this series on online safety bills. These are a little more 'in the weeds', the Australia deep dive we published today lets you know what level of analysis to expect. FPutz (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• Really good to hear this update, which is not something I would expect to be saying about EU legislation. The key for me is: It is our position that regulations need to target the causes, not the symptoms, of the spread of illegal content: i.e., the targeted advertising business model and algorithms driving profit for ad placement. Focusing on these aspects both gets at the root problem of the issue and avoids regulating non-for-profit websites like Wikipedia as if they were operated according to the same model. A very insightful and well-considered position from the WMF. Wikipedia should not be used as an excuse for laissez faire policy about the internet, as if it is impossible to distinguish between a non-profit volunteer-run encyclopedia and a for-profit corporate dictatorship (like Musk seeks to create with Twitter). To use an extreme example, we are not on the side of websites that knowingly host videos of sex trafficking victims being raped, but nor are we safe without some guarantee that, as long as we work to quickly remove such content, the WMF can't be held legally responsible for a bad faith actor uploading such pornography to Commons. — Bilorv (talk) 21:47, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Considering the progress of legislation in the rest of the West, the EU could only have done worse in legislating the Internet. (Following the notorious GDPR and Article 13, which also caused consternation among those proclaiming to uphold the rights of internet users and consumers) I'm hoping the pattern of applying different criteria to for-profit monopolists on one side, and non-profits and small businesses on the other, will spread to other countries in coming years. Daß Wölf 07:18, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

  While I certainly share your position on Article 13, GDPR is flawed but brings a set of positives - it's by no means a one-way set of laws. However, its relevance to Wikimedia are more things like the right to be forgotten, which the GDPR recitals don't set a great deal of detail on. So it's looking like it's being defined by data commissioner pseudo case-law and actual case law. On that front I suspect we'll see more and more (attempted) incursions on the France and Germany side, and fewer from others (including the UK, where though no longer EU, it's obviously in the DPA2018) Nosebagbear (talk) 08:17, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Opinion: The Wikimedia Endowment – a lack of transparency (67,330 bytes · 💬)

• This lack of transparency questions the correctness of the administrators. Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 23:08, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• This lack of transparency looks almost like a deliberate attempt to avoid informing the tens of thousands of volunteers what actually gets done with the funds their work generates. But it's probably just very poor management with nobody wanting to accept the responsibility of being in charge. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:19, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• I have personally pledged 10 rolls of toilet paper to the endowment, and am excited to announce that I have amassed double that quantity, and am currently working to secure transportation of said donation to the Endowment offices. (I jest. I'm sure something will come of this. Money always confounds everything, eh?) ASUKITE 03:18, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• I might catch a lot of flak by saying this, but I disagreed wholeheartedly on how Tides worked with Wikipedia. The revelation that WMF "moved the goalpost" from $33 million, and to $100 million, and then still not transferring to a 501(c)(3) organization really concerned me. That fact alone is showing that WMF does not have good intentions with the funds. You made a promise, you must keep it. There is no valid reason to keep moving the goalpost, moving to a separate independent 501(c)(3) is not that complicated or difficult to do. Secondly, as a conservative in politics, I have concerns as Tides is a clearly progressive organization. I am not saying that WMF has to support conservative organization, but I expect WMF to work with organizations that are more neutral. There are lots of organizations that are apolitical, WMF should be working with those instead of working with Tides, an organization that clearly has a progressive bias. While I never donated a single penny to WMF, this opinion only reinforced my thinking - that my money won't be used for "good" purposes. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 06:10, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  @SunDawn: The Tides Foundation is not just an organization clearly allied to the Democratic Party, it is also one that specialises in obscuring money flows. See, for example, "Dark Money Judicial Influence Examined in Senate" (courthousenews.com), which quotes a Democrat Senator describing the Tides Foundation as a "dark money" nonprofit much like those on the Republican side: "[Democratic Senator Sheldon] Whitehouse [of Rhode Island] was willing to admit that, while the influence for years was largely Republican, Democratic dark money had also caught up — with groups like Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation playing a mirroring role with some Democratic Party members."

  So there are two aspects here: one is that this is an explicitly political organisation, just like any Republican donor-advised fund; the other is that it is an organisation specifically designed to reduce transparency. There may well be a legitimate role in society for anonymised giving – I don't want to debate that (not least because there is much I still have to learn about US politics ...) – but for an organisation that used to pride itself both on its transparency and its neutrality, it seems like an odd choice of partner. Andreas JN466 18:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Jayen466: The way I see it, Tides has some legitimate use - like what is used by Humble Bundle. Humble Bundle may not have time to set up 501(c)(3) for their donation giving, but that does not apply to WMF. Humble Bundle is a for-profit company, not WMF. But I agree with your assessment that the use of Tides to hide what charities WMF is giving to is at odds with neutrality. I iterated again that my problem with WMF-Tides close relationship is that Tides has a known bias, and WMF shouldn't have chosen an organization that has clear bias. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 01:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• Poor communication about the reasons (if any exist) for the delay is particularly concerning. Thanks for brining this issue to the attention of a wider audience. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:47, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Full transparency and accountability should be required. The Foundation was set up to support Wikipedia, not the other way around. Maybe one of the 550 employees can spare a few minutes to unlock the secrecy vault. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  The only thing WMF should be doing is to keep Wikipedia online - this means server management, coding, maintenance, and IT-related tasks. The fact that WMF has a hands off policy on keeping the quality of the product, relying on unpaid editors who improve their product quality daily and keeping the quality, shows that WMF does not need many employees. WMF has expanded to 500 staffs, and I honestly don't know why WMF has to expand that way. WMF had done many things that shouldn't be done. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:56, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• WMF is doing many good things, and maintaining and funding Wikipedia and the rest are certainly worthy endeavors. As for employees, the more the merrier, as long as each works to the best of their ability to maintain Wikipedia. As for sharing of funds, as I wrote below, the WMF should fund all of the conventions (national and international, including greatly expanded lodging and travel assistance), assist with bot expenses, and fund many other existing and new projects of Wikipedians (such as a well-reasoned research travel program for long-time creators) in order to further include the community into its monetary process. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  as long as each works to the best of their ability to maintain Wikipedia: FWIW, Wikipedia reportedly accounts for 30% of WMF expenses. The vast majority of Wikimedia’s value to ordinary people – the website we know and use – costs the firm about 30 percent of their $112.5 million operating budget ($33.75 million) to maintain according to Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia. Andreas JN466 15:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• Currently on Hacker News. --Andreas JN466 15:15, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I would love to read a reply from the WMF to these serious allegations. Something for the new editing team to sink their teeth in? Dutchy45 (talk) 15:22, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Investigative journalism? Is that even a thing? Unheard of in the real world, go back to Second Life or wherever you got such a silly idea. Randy Kryn (talk 21:44, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• I stopped editing in mainspace awhile ago. I don't revert vandalism in the main namespace nor do I create content anymore. Let this encyclopedia crumble and starve out the cancer. If you write or improve articles you are part of the problem. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that you feel this way, and thank you for your great work here. Wikipedia, and the Wikipedian volunteers who create it, have the intention to inform (and in some cases misinform by omission) and share information with readers spanning the globe, and do not edit for the benefit of foundation personnel even though as the quality of the encyclopedia grows the foundation gains in acquired-value and respect as well. Within this symbiotic relationship WMF should certainly fund all of the conventions, bot expenses, and many other existing and new projects of Wikipedians (such as a well-reasoned research travel program for long-time creators) in order to further include the community into its monetary process. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: If I may ask, then why are you here? -Indy beetle (talk) 07:43, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

To hasten the day, I guess. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If nothing else, a pretty blatant and explicit self-declaration of WP:NOTHERE. More or less to the letter of the definition, actually. Seriously Chris, you're not the only one with concerns about the direction and future of this enterprise, but your way of confronting that problem feels to me childish and tediously self-oriented/soapboxy at best, while also arguably disruptive at worse. If what you just said truly reflects your view of the project, I'd suggest you just disengage entirely, rather than hang on and contribute nothing but scornful commentary and grave dancing. Those of us with concerns (and even growing doubts about the future of the project) but who also still have the basic collegiate decency to try to frame any continued contributions constructively (or else bow out), will thank you very much, I think--particularly if the alternative is just having you stand around intentionally doing nothing of benefit for the encyclopedia and describing things as 'cancer'. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 12:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Indy beetle: I busy myself with WP:BDC and adding entries to WP:MIA. I revert vandalism on user pages and talk pages as W?F doesn't make money on those. I use The Signpost tagger to add metadata to The Signpost's content. There are ways to contribute to our community without creating a perverse incentive for SanFran to ignore and exploit us. Unlike Snow Rise, I maintain solidarity with our fellow editors even as they all undermine themselves. I wish I could have kept Wikipedia as a useful hobby but I cannot ignore the fact that the good work we do for free is being used by a malevolent cohort who only seek to line their pockets. I caution active editors to admit that their contributions come at a cost to Wikipedians, despite the desires and apparent obsessions of the editor base. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:53, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

As much as I have problems with WMF management and politicking, a comment like I maintain solidarity with our fellow editors even as they all undermine themselves is deeply condescending, almost paternalistic and dare I say kind of what we feel like how the WMF treats us sometimes. Do you suggest we all go on strike? I have a hard time seeing the logic of your position from the standpoint of it being voluntary. If all we did was write The Signpost and clean up talk pages there'd be very little point to being here at all, but by supporting our editing efforts (indirectly as it may be) are you not still a "part of the problem" just like the rest of us? This posture you are adopting sounds like an attempt to virtue signal some sense of moral self-righteousness (and isn't virtue signaling another thing we generally dislike about WMF's style?). I probably tend to agree with some of your takes (if not your polemics) more than most here, but I have to say I'm more with Snow Rise on this one. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:11, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

"Do you suggest we all go on strike?" Yes. W?F is safe in their rent seeking behavior because a strike is a coordination game which they know, in our collective compulsion to edit, we will never overcome. Let's remember I was publicly admonished by the community, so there's no virtue to signal, here. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:12, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Your earlier poor behavior is something that should cause self-reflection, not a mark of pride to trot out to prove you're a real rebel. SnowFire (talk) 21:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I would second a genuine suggestion that we go on strike. I can think of only two instances in which the en.wiki community did something of the kind—the SOPA blackout and the FRAMBAN backlash. Where I would differ with Chris is this: strikes need organisation and collective action. Individuals retiring here and there is not the way to leverage our power. Nor am I endorsing the WMF in any way by editing Wikipedia, any more than I endorse my boss by working or endorse Bezos by visiting websites that use Amazon Web Services (most websites). All I endorse by volunteering is the mission of the Wikimedia community. We do have the power to stop the WMF carrying out actions that almost all of us disagree with; it is not through its sham democracy, but through co-ordinated rebellion. — Bilorv (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Against a strike, which would not be even known by 99% of editors and would only hurt the readers. But why the chairman and many others from WMF haven't responded to this section (which I hope someone there is reading) seems almost incomprehensible. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:45, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: a well-coordinated strike such as a blackout, protest banner or protest version of the Main Page, highly publicised, would be known by all editors and readers. Strikes are short-term, while the decline of our volunteer community in part due to the WMF is long-term and has more effect on readers. More volunteer hours will be lost by this long-term pattern of alienation than would be lost by a short-term activity. — Bilorv (talk) 19:13, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Kind of reminds me of User:Yngvadottir, who adds "This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF" to every one of her edit summaries. Same problem, different solution. Andreas JN466 11:21, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• Look, I'm not saying that there's no reasonable concerns expressed here: I'm particularly concerned about the close ties that the WMF's general counsel has with the WMF's main contractor-administrator of its largest endowment fund. That is a not insignificant conflict of interest--to the point where I actually think there is many an attorney who would have been concerned about taking that job, considering the relationship is too important to the remit of the office of the general counsel to hand off to a disinterested associate member of the office. She certainly has to work constantly in making decisions on how to best serve the interests of her client/employer (the WMF) in dealings with the Tide Foundation, while under the influence of her close connections to said party. She certainly must have gotten the WMF (and probably the Tide Foundation) to sign off on this (this would almost certainly be required by the rules of professional conduct of whichever state(s) she is licensed in), but even then, it's a bit of ethical quagmire. I mean, it's the type of thing that does happen from time to time, but I'm not sure I would greenlight it as a member of the board of any organization. In the nonprofit world, boards are bound by their bylaws and conflict of interests policies when it comes to individual members taking actions in their fiduciary roles in relation to transactions involving parties they have close relationships with. But the general counsel can have a huge influence over how a board views certain issues, and boy does that present a bad look (deserved or not) when suddenly it seems like the outside party is benefiting from foot dragging in changing to another administrative model for an endowment.

But, that lengthy little introductory caveat made, I think that there are places where this story also leans a little towards the histrionic as well--and some of the comments above leap straight over that threshold. I'm not seeking to personalize the issue, but it has to be bluntly said that comments like "moving to a separate independent 501(c)(3) is not that complicated or difficult to do" are not just laughably misinformed, but clearly could not have come from anybody whose been within a mile of that process, for even a small organization, let alone one that is going to hold nine figure sums in trust for one of the world's most organizationally complex legal entities... Creating a nonprofit with any degree of large financial backing at the outset is a deeply complex administrative and legal process, and the Wikimedia context presents special complications. One legitimate reason for taking this process particularly slow is that once the new 501(c)(3) org is established, it's board members will be fiduciaries of that organization, with legal and institutional duties to respect it's mission statement, bylaws, governance norms, and organizational priorities--which will in turn govern how they decide to utilize and invest endowment funds once they are donated to them. If you do not harmonize such organizations with extremely well-considered documents and agreements, while also structuring things in a fashion consistent with administrative and fiduciary law, you can be begging for drama and choppy organizational (and even legal) waters, down the line.

Should five years be more than enough time to get that process ironed out, even considering the complications? Well, arguably yes. But we really aren't swimming in information here about the WMF Board's thinking is, nor the facts informing it. And I do appreciate that the very thrust of this article is that we need transparency on exactly those very questions (among others), and fair enough. But there seems to be an implication (in the subtext of the article and picked up on and amplified in some comments above) that the most likely explanation is something either outright dodgy or at least implying questionable competency and respect for the volunteer community. And frankly, that's a stretch as the likely explanation. There are plenty of reasons why the WMF might be hesitant to pull the trigger and is taking a slow approach on this matter. Look at it in these terms: right now, the WMF is sitting right on top of that $100m+ endowment, held directly in trust by it, presumably. It has a partner that it apparently trusts administering it, and possibly making very sound investment returns from the corpus. Why would they want to rush to hand that sum directly to a new institution before they have made sure that it has formed in exactly the fashion they need it to in order to provide the best chance that it's organizational culture will allow it to integrate with the needs of the foundation, the projects, and the movement? Honestly, dragging their feet is much better than having rushed in this situation, trust me.

Now, does any of that mean I feel comfortable saying that there aren't some shenanigans going on here that I would disapprove of, if I knew the details? No, not really. Like I opened with, there are details here that I think we can say don't make for a good look, at a minimum. But I also think we're a long way off from assuming malfeasance or incompetence based on where we are now and what we know. That said, it will be interesting to see where we are (or are not) in a year's time. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 12:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: I hope we won't have to wait another year for the next update. I also hope that the minutes of future (and past) Endowment advisory board meetings on Meta won't be as terse as the most recent ones available on Meta. They're for the July 22, 2021 meeting and consist in their entirety of this:

Agenda

3:00 - 3:05 pm UTC: Welcome (Lisa Gruwell)

3:05 - 3:20 pm UTC: Election of New Members (Lisa Gruwell)

3:20 - 3:30 pm UTC: Investment Update (Dhaval Patel)

3:30 - 3:45 pm UTC: Fundraising Update (Caitlin Virtue and Amy Parker)

3:45 - 4:35 pm UTC: Board Governance Discussion (Tony Sebro)

4:35 - 4:40 pm UTC: Confirm Next Meetings (Caitlin Virtue) Andreas JN466 22:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'll grant you, that's underwhelming as minutes go. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 02:53, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree, the skeletal minute taking is a bit dissappointing (across multiple boards actually). It'd actually be worthwhile having a dedicated secretary to minute take at these and upload to meta or equivalent. Even if sensitive information is redacted, knowing more of the agenda and tabled items would be useful. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 08:27, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for a very detailed, well-reasoned comment. The WMF certainly has problems with timely communication (as evidenced by not only this, but their well-documented engagement issues with WP:VPW), but the community is far too quick to jump to anger, accusations of impropriety, and statements about the "death of Wikipedia". ThadeusOfNazereth(he/they)^{Talk to Me!} 09:47, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Don't you think the community is entitled to know more about the Endowment than has been divulged? Well over $100 million have been collected on the strength of volunteers' work, yet the Endowment has not published a single audited financial statement, and the last update on the size of the fund described its status as of June 2021. Trasparency creates trust, establishes a feeling of partnership and expresses respect for volunteers' work. Andreas JN466 14:13, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

• I might have missed mention of it, but you might want to include or expand upon, in the Op-ed's time-line, [1] just for clarity. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  I won't edit the piece now; too much time has passed, but thanks for pointing it out. I was looking through the WMF board meeting minutes as well this morning ... there were also:

  • [2] (2016): "The Board sees the current Wikimedia Endowment fund structure as an interim vehicle, for use while the Wikimedia Foundation sets up a long-term organizational structure for the endowment. The Board asked for staff to begin immediately investigating the creation of a separate entity within the next 18 months, to host the endowment independent from the Tides Foundation."
  • [3] (2017) "Lisa started a conversation on diversification of revenue models. She introduced evidence from other sectors indicating that it is better to create multiple organizations, representing diverse revenue models, rather than diverse revenue streams within one organization. (That may include, and potentially focus on, new entities if that was appropriate for particular revenue models.) Different revenue models involve different sorts of appeals and governance, and the approaches may conflict with each other."
  • [4] (2018): "Eileen, Lisa, and a few trustees expressed satisfaction with the current structure of the Endowment, which is being managed by Tides in a cost-efficient manner pursuant to the agreement between WMF and Tides ..."
  • [5] (2019): "Lisa G. presented an updated recommendation on the Endowment structure. She recommended that the Endowment continue to remain at Tides for the time being and that staff present an updated assessment by the end of FY 2019-2020. Katherine underscored that staff is very comfortable with the current relationship with Tides and the service that Tides is providing."

  So plans changed in 2018 and 2019, without notice being given on Meta.

  Also of interest is

  • [6] (2021): "RESOLVED, that the Board instructs Foundation staff to remit all planned gifts to the Endowment, unless the donor has explicitly directed that the gift be used exclusively for the Foundation’s annual operations or another restricted purpose."

  I guess this may in part explain why the Endowment is growing so quickly. Sending planned gifts to the Endowment wherever possible has a similar effect as increasing the annual grant from the Foundation to the Endowment. And I guess the fact that the Foundation's revenue has kept growing over the past year regardless probably means that its revenue has increased even more than is apparent. Andreas JN466 15:23, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  Also cf. 501(c)(3) references inserted on the Meta Endowment page here, removed here.

  And from m:Wikimedia_Endowment/Meetings/July_16,_2019:

  • "Financial: Investment committee met over the past few months to discuss possible adjustments to the strategy. Fees at Tides are very competitive, and it doesn’t make sense at the moment to change investment managers."
  • "Governance: Holding off on discussions about forming a separate 501c3 until the Wikimedia Foundation completes the hire of a General Counsel." (my emphasis)

  That General Counsel, hired a couple of months later, was of course the head of Tides and former CEO of Tides Advocacy – Tides Advocacy, the unpublicized (until months later, when it was mentioned in a footnote of the audited financial statements) recipient in June 2020 of $8.7 million of Wikimedia money, about half of which was to go to external, non-Wikimedia-related organisations, right?

  I don't know what all of this is, but it doesn't strike me as transparent. And we still have had no update on Meta about how much money is in the Endowment for almost a year. Andreas JN466 15:51, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  So, is it the case that regardless of whether the Endowment is a separate corporation or not, it could still be invested with Tides?

  And as of now, all the Endowment is, is an investment account of the Foundation? Thus, the Foundation can do anything it wants with it. Also, if as I understand from you, the intent has always been to fund the Endowment with funds donated to the Foundation, it can't be a surprise that Foundation is putting, other than operating capital into the Endowment account. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  The Endowment is completely separate now, organisationally, while at Tides. That is why it is not mentioned on the WMF's Form 990.

  Depending on the context, the WMF say either that they have no control over it (which means no listing in the Form 990) or that they have full control over it (as stated on Meta, "The funds may be transferred from Tides either to the Wikimedia Foundation or to other charitable organisations selected by the Wikimedia Foundation to further the Wikimedia mission").

  The one important way in which the Endowment, as a Collective Action Fund at Tides, is different from an investment account owned by the Foundation is that anything in an investment account (and any major grants made therefrom) would have to be declared in the WMF's audited financial statements and in the Form 990. The Endowment, on the other hand, is not so declared.

  So in theory – as far as I understand it at least (IANAL) – the Endowment could, if there were sufficient funds in it, make a $50 million grant to any deserving organisation they like tomorrow, and we would never know. It would not show up in the WMF financial statements, nor would it show up in the WMF Form 990, nor would it show up in the Tides Foundation Form 990.

  This changes instantly the moment the Endowment is a 501(c)(3) organisation, because then it is a charity that has to make the same Form 990 disclosures as the Foundation in order to retain charitable status. Andreas JN466 16:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  Most of the money in the Endowment does not come from the Foundation, but is donated (or left in a will) directly to the Endowment. As far as I know, the WMF has for the past six years given a grant of $5 million to the Endowment each year (a total of $30 million so far). There are related board resolutions, and this is also mentioned in the small print of the audited financial statements. (These $30 million show up as expenses in the WMF financial statements, under "awards and grants".)

  However, WMF Fundraising staff also work on fundraising for the Endowment directly. If you look at [7] for example, you see that WMF fundraising staff have revenue goals for the Endowment as well as for the Foundation. But the Endowment is not included in the top line totals.

  As Caitlin Virtue once kindly explained to me, "Donations to the Endowment that are received by the Wikimedia Foundation as a pass through are redirected and sent to the Tides Foundation. Therefore, they are not reflected on the Wikimedia Foundation's financials as revenue or net assets" – even though these are funds raised by WMF staff. The same then goes for planned gifts redirected to the Endowment – they are pass-through, which means they are not captured in the Foundation's revenue and asset records. Andreas JN466 16:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  Well, it's not completely separate (see the WMF minutes that I linked above), what it is is a fund created by the WMF under various legal instruments, which evidently can be changed or revoked by the Foundation -- but that regardless, the auditors because of the present legal instruments view it as funds falling outside of the 990. (Also, yes, generally when a settlor hires a manager, they manage the funds not the settlor). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  Do you agree that the WMF should communicate how much money is in the Endowment, and that there should be transparent records of revenue and expenses? Andreas JN466 20:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

  This is the part where I failed to see the "neutrality" and the "transparency" of the project. Despite claiming "transparency", WMF is hiding behinds lots of jargons and complicated vernaculars to pull out a switcheroo. A simple 501(c)(3) structure is not sought out by WMF for reasons unknown. Simple 501(c)(3) is not being done because it is too simple - that money sent out to places will immediately be seen by interested parties. But right now we have "Endowment", "Foundation", and other bodies, playing a shell game so we don't know where the money goes. WMF is playing a game like big companies - pretending to be "honest" in their dealings but they are actually dishonest. The greatest problem is Tides - a known progressive leaning organization. Why would WMF choose Tides? ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 07:08, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

  I think that is where the "evidence from other sectors" mentioned above comes in: the WMF is copying models used elsewhere. That is why all of this feels a little alien. Andreas JN466 17:00, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I would like to address two issues, one minor (but still annoying) and one preventable risk which may result in the death of the encyclopedia.

First the minor issue: In the thread above we once again see someone claiming that if you don't create articles you are WP:NOTHERE. As is clearly stated in WP:NOTNOTHERE, there are other ways of building an encyclopedia. Those who only write code are here to build the encyclopedia. Those who only help people at the refdesk, help desk, or teahouse are here to build the encyclopedia. Those who only "advocate amendments to policies or guidelines" are here to build the encyclopedia. Those who only deal with incoming emails are here to build the encyclopedia. And those who only oppose harmful behavior by the W?F are here to build the encyclopedia.

Now for the preventable risk which may result in the death of the encyclopedia. Consider what will happen if revenues stop growing every year and level out or even decline. Nothing can grow forever. Even cancer eventually stops growing when the patient dies.

Right now, the W?F keeps spending more and more every year to do essentially the same job they were doing ten years ago with far less spending. Will they finally reduce spending when revenues stop growing? Or will they assume that the decline in revenue is a temporary blip and dip into the principle of the endowment to support continued spending increases?

The W?F has two paths they can take.

The first path is to legally structure the endowment so that no future CEO or board can spend the principle down to zero. If we follow this path, there will always be enough money from the interest to keep the servers running and fund a few essential core functions. Maybe we wouldn't be able to have expensive Wikimanias in exotic vacation spots. Maybe we wouldn't have a headquarters in pretty much the most expensive city on earth. But we would still have an encyclopedia.

The second path is to continue to treat the endowment as a piggy bank to be raided whenever needed and hide where the money is going until debt exceeds assets and the W?F goes bankrupt. Don't worry, though. Someone will buy it. Maybe Google. Maybe Facebook. Maybe Apple. Maybe Microsoft. Maybe Elon Musk.

 October 24, 2029: Bankrupt online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been acquired by ExxonInfowarsMicrosoftCNNGoop. "We believe that we have the key to making Wikipedia profitable again" EIMCG CEO Xi Jinping stated. "For a nominal fee (determined by online auction) you will be able to own a particular Wikipedia page and have compete control over that page's content."  EIMCG stock rose 23% after the announcement.

--Guy Macon (talk) 02:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Uh, no, Guy: that's not even remotely what I said, and someone who has been on the project as long as you should know to be more careful about imputing strawman arguments you believe you perceive as a subtext to another community member's comment, when they have in fact expressly said nothing of the sort. I have nothing but respect and gratitude for our volunteers who contribute their time and energy in areas outside of content creation, be they technical or policy contributions or indeed even rhetorical arguments about the direction of the project. So dismissing non-mainspace contributions is not even a small component of my observation. The reason I said that Chris seems to have self-declared as WP:NOTHERE has nothing to do with which namespace their edits land within, but rather because his own description implies his presence here does not in any substantial part reflect a desire to improve the encyclopedia, but rather to denigrate and discourage those editors who do so. He expressly states that his objective (or at least his hope) is to "see the encyclopedia crumble" and I'm sorry, but no matter how you slice the cake, and no matter what space he contributes in, that's pretty definitionally WP:NOTHERE.

As to the rest of your post, we can certainly agree that every enterprise of the scale of Wikipedia needs to be supported by sound financial policy, but all I see here is a vague assertion that the WMF is run by incompetents incapable of keeping expenditures in line with income and capital, rather than professionals in nonprofit administration with extensive experience in just that balancing act. And I'm sorry, but the rhetoric there is long on jingoism and short on particulars or evidence. And your argument is not improved by the "Wikipedia is going to end up sold to a corporation and become defiled by profit motives. I'm sorry, but that's just not even remotely within the realm of something that's ever going to happen. In the extremely unlikely event that the WMF became so insolvent that it had to administratively dissolve--which is a pretty cockeyed notion to begin with in the manner you imagine it, for numerous reasons, but let's put that to the side for the moment)--under U.S. nonprofit law, the worst case scenario would be that the remaining assets of the Foundation (including any IP associated with it's projects) would be donated to another nonprofit with a similar mandate, a process that (given the number of stakeholders involved, would almost certainly be overseen by a court to make sure said assets were redirected to a nonprofit purpose. Indeed, in a situation like this, a court would likely become involved (through one form of litigation or oversight or another) long before the corporation became completely insolvent, if there was such massive malfeasance as to bring such a large profile and flush organization to the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, while the Foudnation exists, it can hardly just begin selling off the encyclopedia, the support and maintenance of which is baked into its bylaws, policies, culture, and ties with the larger movement. For that matter, even if the whole enterprise came crashing down tomorrow (again, histrionics, but let's assume its possible for the sake of argument), most everything of substance in terms of content and most of technical assets in terms of software, are open license, which means any number of members of this community could take every last word of the encyclopdia and most of the non-physical infrastructure and just recreate the whole thing under another name (or names). That's part of the very thinking behind how the movement was structured from the beginning. It would be a non-trivial undertaking, needless to say, but if we're talking about whacky, never-gonna-happen scenarios, it would be feasible, if the alternative was a commercialized Wikipedia. So no "Wikipedia, brought to you by Amazon" is not a realistic or reasonable concern.

Nor are the other presumptions that the WMF is incapable of adjusting its annual budgets to fluctuating circumstances particularly well founded, as far as anything in this thread so far is concerned. They've kept things reasonably in proportion for twenty years and they wouldn't be the first nonprofit to spend decades benefiting from steady growth in donations only to have to adjust to a slowdown. Even when that happens, and even if it happened extremely suddenly, the liklihood is that that they will be still sitting on massive investment capital. The assumption that the WMF staff are so horribly incompetent that they will be unprepared for such eventualities, or that their current administrative priorities constitute "raiding" of the endowment inconsistent with their fiduciary obligations seems to me hyperbolic and unsubstantiated by anything more concrete than vague hand-wringing. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 02:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Res ipsa loquitur. You misapplied WP:NOTHERE.

"I stopped editing in mainspace awhile ago. I don't revert vandalism in the main namespace nor do I create content anymore. Let this encyclopedia crumble and starve out the cancer. If you write or improve articles you are part of the problem."[8] --Chris Troutman 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

"I busy myself with WP:BDC and adding entries to WP:MIA. I revert vandalism on user pages and talk pages as W?F doesn't make money on those. I use The Signpost tagger to add metadata to The Signpost's content. There are ways to contribute to our community without creating a perverse incentive for SanFran to ignore and exploit us"[9] --Chris Troutman, 22:53, 31 May 2022

"If nothing else, a pretty blatant and explicit self-declaration of WP:NOTHERE. More or less to the letter of the definition, actually."[10] --SnowRise, 12:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

You misapplied WP:NOTHERE, as you have done previously when criticizing me for writing WP:CANCER. Working to stop Wikipedia from going bankrupt or being bought by Google is also part of building the encyclopedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Re "Nor are the other presumptions that the WMF is incapable of adjusting its annual budgets to fluctuating circumstances particularly well founded", has the W?F ever reduced spending? Are you sure that they can? Fun exercise: Pick any Wikimania. Tell me how much it cost, and where the money was spent. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:31, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Right now, the W?F keeps spending more and more every year to do essentially the same job they were doing ten years ago with far less spending. The WMF had only 7 paid emloyees when I registered. TBH Snow Rise, and his further comment: the WMF is run by incompetents incapable of keeping expenditures in line with income and capital, rather than professionals in nonprofit administration with extensive experience in just that balancing act, is a perfectly apt description. I have been working as an unpaid volunteer consultant for 'do good' NGOs on and off here in Asia for longer than Wikipedia exists and their management/executive cohorts nearly all have the same things in common: enjoying high salaries and perks, little effective output during office hours, grossly disproportionate expenditure on their own infrastructure and comfort, paying external agencies for the work they are too lazy to do themselves, squandering the rest of their easy-come;easy-go donations, and a palpable disregard for the expendable community of the hundreds (or thousands) of volunteers who do the actual work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:30, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

The WMF should really be in a position to be a leader in radical transparency in how it handles finances. I'd love to have a foundation that ran with the same level of hyper-auditability mindset that a wiki engenders. I suspect increased transparency would also help reduce the catastrophising where people sometimes read their fears into the information gaps, which is in their own interest! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 08:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Guy Macon:, Wikimanias have always been mainly a major junket for the WMF employees who make up anything up to a third of the presenters and attendees, and I'm sure they miss them. However, the local organiser group bid for their budget allocation which they get with what appears to be little due diligence. They then often cut corners, look after themselves for the work they have done, and one can only guess what happens to the cash left in the kitty after the event. The cost of the conference, even including the scholarships, doesn't make the slightest dent in the WMF's finances - it's only the equivalent of a few months of a very senior WMF executive's salary and perks. The vast savings that have now been made due to 3 cancelled years (and probably a fourth) in a row due to COVID-19, would enable an extra special super conference in visa friendly Thailand and its western tourism geared hospitality industry at a fraction of the cost of the USA, UK, Mexico, Stockholm, Ontario, and Esino Lario. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the WMF will do something else with the money. One sure fire way of killing volunteer editor enthusiasm, is to put an end to face-to-face conferences and meet ups. Continuing to use COVID as an argument would be a very poor excuse, but it's hardly surprising that with my 22 years of solid local knowledge and language here, the international team of organisers didn't want me on board... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:03, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to stop Wikimanias without good evidence as to how Wikimanias do or do not help to build the encyclopedia. What I would very much like is an honest accounting as to what was spent on just one of them. It's an old trick accountants use; pick some small item that is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall budget and is easy to audit. Document where every penny went and exactly what was bought in ridiculous detail. This catches that subset of financial mismanagement that drains a tiny amount from pretty much everything you do.

In my essay at WP:CANCER I make the following recommendations:

"If we want to avoid disaster, we need to start shrinking the cancer now, before it is too late. We should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details.

We should limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage (adjusted for any increases in page views), build up our endowment, and structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad.'

If we do these things now, in a few short years we could be in a position to do everything we are doing now, while living off of the endowment interest, and would have no need for further fundraising.

Or we could keep fundraising, using the donations to do many new and useful things, knowing that whatever we do there is a guaranteed income stream from the endowment that will keep the servers running indefinitely."'

TLDR:

• Make spending transparent; give the donors an honest accounting with details.
• Put some sort of limit on spending increases. Even "Don't spend more than ten times what you spent last year" is better than the current complete lack of any restraint on spending increases.
• Structure the endowment so that the principle will always be there and can never be drained.

I await the inevitable reply from W?F apologists explaining why the above recommendations are actually undesirable. I will make popcorn. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Around this time last year, the Foundation had at least $330 million "in the bank" ($100M+ in the Endowment, and $230M in assets, not counting property and equipment); as fundraising has been going well this year, I estimate it is now $20M–$60M more.

WMF VP Erik Möller estimated in 2013 that Wikimedia's mission, beyond merely keeping Wikipedia online, could be sustained on $10M a year. Even if we double that 2013 estimate, to $20M, the Foundation would at that level of spending – bearing in mind the interest it earns each year on its investments, along with planned gifts – already have enough money to keep Wikipedia online and fulfil its wider mission, as imagined in that 2013 post, indefinitely, without ever asking the public for another penny. Andreas JN466 16:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: And yes, transparent accounting and protecting the principal is something I believe most volunteers would agree with.

With regard to making spending transparent to donors, as opposed to obfuscating it, see this mailing list thread. Andreas JN466 17:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your diagnosis and your concerns, Guy Macon. It may seem farcical that the WMF would sell Wikipedia off to the highest bidder, who would then proceed to systematically create the opposite of Wikipedia's mission. However, this is the logical endpoint of the profoundly capitalist and un-charitable logic being used to run the ever-expanding WMF at the moment. We could run with a bare-bones, 50-strong staff who are all paid a perfectly livable wage of one-tenth of what the CEO makes currently. And it is not as if you couldn't find 50 generous and qualified people willing to work for less money than they could make elsewhere—our volunteer community proves there is no end to the sacrifice people will make for a radically free encyclopedia. But the WMF will not change by itself, so I have to ask—now we know what the problem is, how are we (the community) going to solve it? — Bilorv (talk) 23:23, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Bilorv and Bluerasberry: You (Bilorv) mentioned collective action – a strike – above. This is one approach. The other is using the media, both the professional media and social media, to inform the public of issues of concern to volunteers. The two should ideally be combined, of course – the media could and would report on collective action supported by a significant number of volunteers.

Note that the WMF recently adopted a human rights policy. The right to form and join trade unions is one of the fundamental human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the WMF says underpins its own human rights commitment. Moreover, in its policy, the WMF also endorses the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which in Article 8 explicitly includes the right to strike.

The first step would consist in formulating a statement of association that a large number of volunteers could and would sign up to ("We, the undersigned, are concerned about X"). This would form the basis of any collective action, and would also define membership in the union – which I would say should be a union of equals, without leaders. We have enough planned and existing "levels of government" already! What do you think? Do you want to have a go at formulating such a statement, or do you have alternative ideas? Andreas JN466 10:41, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: I agree with your ideas and some of the above comment would be a good start at an outline to convince people to join a union. I think somebody else would be better than me at formulating a specific and actionable concern that could be provably resolved by the WMF in the short-term. — Bilorv (talk) 11:27, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I created three "specific and actionable concerns that could be provably resolved by the WMF" (make spending transparent, put some sort of limit on spending increases, make a real endowment instead of a W?F piggy bank) years ago and published my recommendations. I even created a specific step #1 (reveal a single Wikimania's costs). The problem isn't deciding what to do. The problem is W?F stonewalling. You can't get any sort of dialog started with anyone at the W?F who is authorized to take any action of any sort. All you will get is silence and a few self-appointed volunteers who act as if they speak for the silent W?F. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:40, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

The primary point here is not to engage in a dialogue with the WMF. Such dialogue will continue, of course, and occasionally one may achieve a modest result, like here.

The point is rather to gauge how many volunteers are dissatisfied with the WMF's financial conduct. If this is a considerable number, then we have an alternative to talking to the WMF: the media.

To make as broad a church as possible, I wouldn't necessarily make the statement more specific than "financial conduct". Anyone signing up can express their particular misgivings or points of criticism. The media (including social media) can then be directed to a page where all these statements are recorded.

More specific points can be raised later on, but to begin with I would start with the broadest possible statement. Agreed? Andreas JN466 15:25, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Wait...what? You are saying that instead of trying something that has never worked before again and again I should try something new? That's just crazy talk. :) Seriously though, the above makes a lot of sense. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:44, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: Some of us have been talking about similar things. Let's you and I talk by voice or video. Thanks for writing this piece and asking question. The trust that the public has in Wikipedia is because of community oversight and participation, and in your writing you have identified places in the Wikimedia Movement where various forces are blocking that community engagement. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:21, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Is nobody going to say it? I'll say it. Broken promises and opaque communications involving more than $100 million mean one of three things:

1. The money is being used for someone's profit
2. The money is being used for a purpose other than what it was donated for
3. The money is no longer under the control of the Foundation

Guess we'll find out when the IRS gets interested. →StaniStani 05:45, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Various WMF money spending scandals have been reported in The Signpost on several occasions over the years. It doesn't have any impact on what is clearly a grave cause for concern. The staff just circle their wagons, dig themselves in, put up more smoke screens and remain schtum in the hope that people will get fed up of complaining. Apart from the very few volunteers who frequently feature as facilitators on noticeboards and help pages, or admins and arbs, or regular commenters on The Signpost articles, the vast majority of editors just get on with the job of creating and maintaining the traditional, uncontroversial encyclopedic content. Most of them are not interested in Wikipedia's backroom politics, and don't give the financial aspect a second thought. They are probably not even aware of the distinction between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, have never been to a meet up or a Wikimania, and they wouldn't go on strike if they were asked to. And the WMF knows it. Even the huge walkout of admins over Framgate didn't bother them in the slightest. The CEO's Wikipedia talk page attests to it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Why not just lobby for the WMF to include financial transparency provisions in the UCOC (it wouldn't be a bad thing for such rules to be included for edita-thons or otherwise either)? Probably get nowhere and lead to some awkwardness, but hey it would be funny. -Indy beetle (talk) 10:05, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

WMF response

JBrungs (WMF) kindly has provided a brief response to an enquiry about this Opinion piece on Meta. She says,

Thank you very much for your comments and thoughts. We will be publishing an update on work for the Endowment, the Endowment Board, and governance later this month."

--Andreas JN466 13:32, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Here is the promised update: m:Wikimedia_Foundation_Endowment/Updates/2021-22_Q4_Update

----------

In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $100 million goal and that the process of moving the Wikimedia Endowment to its own, independent nonprofit by obtaining US 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status has been started.

We started off with establishing a new legal entity for the Endowment, which was the first step towards its independence. The Form 1023, Application for Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, was then filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in late 2021. The IRS has posted an advisory1 that tax-exempt application processing is delayed. Our submitted application has not yet been assigned to an Exempt Organizations specialist for review, and we do not have an expected date for its processing to be completed. The Endowment continues to be under the management of the Tides Foundation.

Since its incorporation, administrative and regulatory controls have been a key point of focus to ensure the Endowment’s smooth transition from a managed fund to an independent entity. The Endowment Board has established bylaws that define the duties and purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment, the Wikimedia Endowment Board, and Wikimedia Foundation staff working to support the Endowment. The Endowment’s policies regulate activities of the Endowment Board and staff members. Bylaws and policies will be posted to Meta after minutes are approved at July 2022’s board meeting.

All this work helps us to guarantee that the Endowment will support our movement in the best possible way, ensure that the future of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects is secured, and that our communities can thrive.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/wheres-my-application-for-tax-exempt-status

----------

I've asked how much money there is in the Endowment now. No reply to date, but if one should be forthcoming, I'll add a note here. Andreas JN466 14:17, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Update: Financial statements for the Endowment, covering the period 2016-2023, have now been published on Governance Wiki. I

Quote from the linked page:

---

Wikimedia Endowment Financial Statement (June 30, 2016 - June 30, 2023) (PDF)

Summary

This is the financial statement for the Wikimedia Endowment for its first seven years when it was housed at the Tides Foundation, an organization that helps launch nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. During this time, the Wikimedia Endowment had $15 million in investment results (12.5% of total gross revenue that was under management at Tides from inception to June 30, 2023). The Endowment paid $1.5 million in total management fees to Tides over seven years (1.29%) in addition to $132K (.11%) in payment processing fees, bank fees, and transaction fees. In 2023, the Endowment made $4.5 million in grants including $3.2 million to support technical innovation of the Wikimedia projects and a $1.3 millon grant to the Wikimedia Foundation as reimbursement for expenses the Foundation incurred serving the Endowment in FY2022-23 as it transitioned to a 501(c)3. The Wikimedia Endowment moved to an independent 501c3 charity in July 2023.

---

IRS approval for the 501c3 was obtained in late June 2022. Most of the funds remained with Tides for another year; wikimediaendowment.org was edited in August 2023 to replace references to Tides with a reference to the new 501c3 nonprofit. Andreas JN466 06:12, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Recent research: 35 million Twitter links analysed (102 bytes · 💬)

Good review! Thank you! ---Zemant (talk) 12:26, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Serendipity: Those thieving image farms (6,225 bytes · 💬)

• "All of this is tantamount to taking your property without your permission: that is, stealing." No it is not. It is lamentable - despicable - behaviour, and may involve fraud, but it is no more "stealing" than when we are falsely accused of that, when we copy PD images from the websites of other organisations and put them on Commons. Please do not perpetuate such misleading labelling. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:37, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, while this is an interesting report, "stealing" is an inappropriate term for this kind of reuse of PD images. There is the term copyfraud, although it seems that it does not apply to all of the behaviours described, either. Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

If you pretend to have something you actually don't (rights) and you exploit the thing you pretend to have for money, that's much closer to the definition of stealing than You Wouldn't Steal a Car ever was. Though from that point of view, it's their customers who get the short end of the stick. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Aaron Swartz: free at Commons, up to $189 at Alamy

• Nice to see some attention for this subject. CC BY(-SA) was somewhat of a deterrent some years ago. But BY(-SA) doesn't stop anyone from selling it, unlike BY NC (NonCommercial) which we don't consider free (free as in free speech). It was a matter of time: File:Khun Sa (photo by Satharn Pairaoh).jpg (BY-SA) for up to €189 on Alamy, File:Sakyamuni Buddha.jpg (BY-SA) for up to €189 on Alamy and Aaron Swartz at a Boston Wiki Meetup in 2009 (BY-SA) also for up to €189 on Alamy. You have to consider the customers of slimeballs like Alamy: newspapers/sites, TV shows, some of the larger online content creators. Most of them just pay because they believe they are paying for a license and don't want trouble. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Indeed, Aaron Swartz for sale at Alamy would have been a much better title for this article. Vysotsky (talk) 11:12, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Libre is not free as in free speech, which we don't have on Wikipedia; it's free as in free enterprise: the right of corporate America to profit from our work. What Alamy (and others) do is nothing less than a shakedown, and it is possible because people find it easier to pay than fight. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:21, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

  Alamy doesn't even have to be involved. Years ago I was contacted by a textbook publisher about permission to use this file, which I gave. They insisted on paying me even though I reminded them they didn't have to ... I got the impression that their legal department wanted to have all the i's dotted and t's crossed.

  Whatever ... I didn't mind the $200 check, I can tell you that much.

  And, of course, there's the opposite phenomenon, whereby Big Media would just scrape up photos they found on the Internet without paying, much less notifying, the original photographer who was often some guy/gal who just uploaded stuff to his/her Flickr/Shutterfly/Webshots stream never thinking anyone but the other people on those sites would care enough to look at them, much less reuse them. Often this happened because the editorial assistants under deadline pressure just assumed that if it was on the Internet, anyone could use it. Until Richard Liebowitz, anyway. Daniel Case (talk) 17:54, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

May I suggest expanding the Alamy#Criticism, an article that gets many more views than this piece here? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:17, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Quite right. (Be careful with stats, though: this Serendipity piece had 1859 views in 2 days, whereas the Alamy article topped at 2055 views in the last 20 days.) Vysotsky (talk) 20:53, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies. You are right: a Wiki article is more important, and thanks to anyone improving that article. Vysotsky (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Special report: Three stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war (916 bytes · 💬)

• I have posted this piece on Hacker News – it's worth being more widely read: [11] --Andreas JN466 15:18, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Still, Antanana kept writing a Wikipedia article a day, even in the car (as a passenger) on the way toward Kyiv. She says it was really useful that Wikipedia's translation tool automatically saves progress – it was helpful when connection was spotty during the drive. This is dedication indeed. Solidarity to all those whose lives have been disrupted by Russia's invasion, and it's humbling to hear the lengths some people have gone to in order to continue our mission of free knowledge. — Bilorv (talk) 15:15, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Technology report: A new video player for Wikimedia wikis (3,571 bytes · 💬)

The new video player is no small thing. It makes embedding Wikimedia-hosted media outside our wiki-centric ecosystem so much more reliable and, as noted on the project page, it now works on mobile devices. Over a decade since rectangular slates of glass have become the most popular way folks access the internet. That's huge! Ckoerner (talk) 18:45, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

• It does not seem to support TimedText subtitles, though, like the old player did. Clicking the CC button allows you to go to the captions page to edit them, but I cannot see how you are supposed to just be able to view them. Daniel Case (talk) 03:24, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
  • @Daniel Case: for me they work on both desktop and mobile: there's a "CC" button in the bottom bar that you can hover over and change to the desired language. In the case of audio without video, though, I'd like captions to come up automatically—to a language that can be specified in wikicode but defaults to the language of the wiki. — Bilorv (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

    All I see when I hover over it is "create captions". I click that and it takes me to Commons where I can choose from the caption files. (As for defaulting to the language of the wiki, that assumes that subtitles are available in that language) Daniel Case (talk) 17:28, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

    What file are you looking at? The one I picked as an example, the audio file at The 1975 (2019 song), is hosted on en.wiki (NFCC) so maybe there's a difference in display. (As for my default suggestion, if there's no captions in that language then you'd obviously have to choose different behaviour, be it showing the first language in which captions were created, or hiding captions.) — Bilorv (talk) 19:03, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

    @Bilorv: Timedtext captions don't work for me either. I tried File:The 1975 (2019 song).ogg (local file) and File:Bezoek Britse oorlogsbodem-518039.ogv (Commons file). Both have english captions, but the player shows only "create captions" option. Monobook skin, Firefox 101. MKFI (talk) 09:52, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

    @MKFI: very curious. Something has changed for me between 4 June and today, because I'm now seeing the same thing you are, with no captions. Moreover, it was working for me on both desktop (Firefox) and mobile (Safari), and now works on neither! Did the video player change happen simultaneously on all user accounts? Perhaps it's my beta/preference settings or A/B testing? — Bilorv (talk) 18:25, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

    @Bilorv, Daniel Case, and MKFI: The captions were temporarily broken, but they should be working again now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:53, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

    Yes, it's now working for me again. — Bilorv (talk) 15:37, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Tips and tricks: The reference desks of Wikipedia (1,117 bytes · 💬)

• With regard to "Please return the favor", I heartily support encouraging all of us to return the favor. Well said. // A fine point: The Teahouse has "hosts" who answer questions from editors. My understanding is that if one is not a host, one should not answer editors' questions on Teahouse. As I understand it, this policy serves a quality assurance function, e.g., in my experience, hosts' answers are almost always accurate, encouraging, and helpful. If everyone offered answers, Teahouse quality, readability, and usability would likely suffer. // Note: "Please return the favor" is technically correct on this point because Wikipedia Teahouse is not a "Desk". At the same time, that distinction might not be evident to all readers. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 20:58, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Traffic report: Strange highs and strange lows (990 bytes · 💬)

• Congrats to the editor (Darylprasad) who single-handedly hoisted Neoplatonism above many much more controversial articles this month. It's looking great! —Ganesha811 (talk) 23:54, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I hope Darylprasad is having a good day -Gouleg🛋️ ^harass/_hound 15:48, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• "but thankfully not by taking a page from Batman: Arkham and having Batman collect question mark-shaped trophies around Gotham."
  

Riddle me this, Batman.

How do you stretch out a game's content by 40 plus hours for no reason at all? Panini! • 🥪 00:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Video: How the entire country of Qatar was blocked from editing (581 bytes · 💬)

• It's unbelievable that every people in Qatar had a same IP address. Thingofme (talk) 01:08, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• I remember this incident. One of the reactions was "You better duck !" JoJan (talk) 15:31, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
• What can I say? "Nice!" ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 12:54, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19 revisited (1,159 bytes · 💬)

• Good article! Thanks to the interviewer and the interviewees! —Ganesha811 (talk) 23:59, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

On behalf of us all, you're welcome! Wikipedia is the work of many hands –I am struck by how certain subjects take an emotional toll such that the curating editors in particular have to eventually take a step back, and by how fresh troop always show up. I began Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and for I think the better part of month I was contributing to it daily until I had to let it go for the sake of my mental health (and too, in a sense, I didn't want to enjoy war anymore, even at our remove). In this wise the daily drumbeat of Idahoan COVID-19 cases and deaths took an emotional toll on a local investigative journalist, and that was mostly statistics; that beat was handed off to a colleague. Someone has to do it. And so it goes... kencf0618 (talk) 14:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)