Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2015/Questions/3

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Accountability, democracy, community majority

In my opinion a structural problem WMF has is its technically absolute lack of accountability to anyone: nothing can stop WMF from going off-track, hence few trust WMF. IMHO the solution is simple: make WMF democratic (in Bobbio's very specific sense; see a one-page summary at §2). So, do you agree with ensuring community majority and why? What will you personally do on this matter if elected, or what have you done if you already served on the board? Nemo 07:30, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

As I said before, I do not think that regulating Board composition will help adjust the current situation within WMF. However, it can harm funding, administration and structure of WMF. However, I personally think of adjusting the structures of all other committees and communities by modifying existing boards and involving new boards so that we will enhance the role of the WMF community within WMF. --Csisc (talk) 10:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

Dear Nemo, I was totally unaware of these things but following this election, talk pages and your links,i found many contributors have grievance on WMF, this is certain and natural because we are the contributors and for us only it is the WMF. Even I endorse your statement to make WMF more democratic, so that a contributor can have his/her right for the contribution he/she did in this movement. WMF runs on community, I don't want any structural changes on WMF as it is better and will always be. It's the time that, we have to fill the gap between the community and the Foundation or it may go off-track, which will be a loss to both WMF and community.

The three members on the board will get elected by the community , so it's their prime responsibility to work for community if we follow the democracy in WMF. If, I get elected in this election, I will put my personal effort at my level best to fill the gap between WMF and Community. Even i will try introduce this initiative Few hours with a "Wikipedia" to find the successes or failures of any language community.-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 21:47, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

A nice reference! I like the idea of our community having a majority on the Board. It is, of course, debatable if (as you insist) anyone who has been the Board member for more than 5 years cannot be considered a representative of our community, but in terms of being an elected representative the distinctions is pretty much straightforward (either someone gets elected or not). I do not think that all members of the Board should be directly elected, but I think that a composition of community elected - affiliates/chapters appointed - co-opted experts (in more or less equal proportions, with possible adjustments for chapter activists not to dominate totally), plus the founder seat would make sense. A change of this sort would require a majority support in the current Board, though. However, it is worth discussing, as in some occasions the community representatives are at odds with the rest of the Board, which may signal a certain alienation of this body. In practical terms, as the Board member, I would be against FDC funding capping (currently instituted), or 2-year affiliated organizations freezer (introduced in 2013). I would also support FDC review of parts of WMF budget, as a form of community control. Speaking of limits on terms, I think that 2, max. 3 consecutive terms should call for a break (but a person should be eligible for re-election after that, although in practice I don't think it would matter).

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

This is arguably the hardest question that I'm going to answer in this election, but it is a necessary one. I agree in fact that we need to ensure that the community has a very strong say in our movement's governance, especially in the Foundation's affairs, but there are many ways to approach this. Board composition is one of those ways, and this is a good start. (Ergo, I support having a community majority, but with additions, as I will explain below.)

I'd like to think though that while a Board composed primarily of community members will naturally have a more community-oriented bent, but this may not always happen. While we are one community, we are a multifaceted one, and there are many other players who are part of the community but either choose not to have a say in how the Foundation is run, or are incapable of having a say. It's one thing to have a community majority, but it's another to have a community majority that is not completely representative of our movement, and that's the hard part given the many challenges we face (gender gap, onboarding the developing world, etc.). There should be a stronger community process for selecting trustees who don't represent our core editorship before we go around talking about Board composition.

To compensate for that, I agree that having a community majority on the Board should be accompanied by having stronger external actors and stronger transparency. We need to strengthen affiliates so that they too also have a say in Foundation governance. Projects should be given a stake in major Foundation decisions through stronger consultation processes with the Foundation. We should have open, publicly accessible conversation both within and outside the Board (some affiliate boards already have committed to holding open meetings) that can be publicly observed, with mechanisms for community members to provide input. There are many ideas that the community may have to increase transparency, and we should thresh them out. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 11:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

Nemo, I see you are an idealist! In my considerable experience of community politics I can tell you that the moment someone gets elected to anything, they are perceived by those who have elected them as being less trustworthy! Underlying your comment I sense a feeling that the Board does not stand up to the Executive, and that the Executive is the 'enemy'. Such an attitude is a recipe for management disaster. To express my own idealism, the Baord should not be conceived of as divided into 'us' and 'them', but each member should exercise their responsibilities to assess issues independently and seek mutual consensus.--Smerus (talk) 18:56, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Yes, Nemo but you know, the issue here is how to manage, and every management coasting time and commitment. Wherever you have a good structure if there's no reconciliation, Responsibility and accountability nothing you can do, and it seems to me that we still have people who think that WMF is there for some one special, even some few colleges contesting on the WMF Election process with failing attitude before sat on the office. I don't see a reason of doubting about the mandate of the Board. the matter is to ask your self that "what's my perception" as to me is "Bring a change and make the world better place to live" this slogan is meaning a lot and let me say simply "every body need a good forward and not backward" I promise if elected I will do whatever god wish me to do objectively. Francis Kaswahili Talk 14:59, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

No response yet.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

If the WMF itself was democratic, a Board would not make sense. The WMF should not be democratic. The Foundation reports to the Executive Director, and the Board selects that person and oversees and directs her actions. The Board itself already decides democratically, it can vote for or against certain actions. Elections for those Board members who enter via an election, are democratic, too, even though participation in these elections is pathetically low. This is a point where improvements could be made to alert more Wikimedians on why these elections are important, and what a no-vote means for them.

Now, I assume that your actual suggestion is to have a majority o Board members elected by the community. I am in favour of that suggestion, and I would go far beyond 50%+1 if I had it my way. It is absolutely unacceptable from my point of view that the Board could (and already did) push through decisions that the no elected member is in favour of. Appointed Board members do not have to have voting rights, and the number of appointed members can be reduced. There is plenty expertise among the editing community. I do not agree on term limits for elected members: If the electorate gives them their vote again and again, there should be something right about them. My ideal Board at this time would be 1 Co-founder + 2 Chapter + 7 community elected, with all co-opted experts non-voting.

@Pgallert: Because Nemo made a similar claim on my talk page, could you please say which decisions you are referring to, that were 'pushed through' against the opposing votes of all elected Trustees? I am seriously curious, but I couldn't find any such case. --denny (talk) 06:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I must admit I was a bit too hasty with that one: followed Nemo's link and thought, see, there it is. Phoebe was on the 'other side' in those decisions, I have struck my comment. I'm sorry for that, I should have been more careful. That said, if I am not totally blind I did not find many such minutes, particularly from recent Board meetings, the pure possibility is scary, and the Board did not overwhelmingly operate on consensus, as you assume on the linked talk page thread.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

As others have pointed out in their answers, the Foundation is accountable to the Board. Also, arguably, the Foundation is insofar accountable to the contributors and the donors insofar that both can withdraw their support if the Foundations mucks it up. The history of the Spanish Wikipedia shows that this case is not merely hypothetical, and following Superprotect last summer I am still surprised the German Wikipedia did not realize that option.

Sure, we can increase the number of elected Trustees, we could even have them all be elected. But I am unsure whether that would increase the accountability of the Wikimedia Foundation. What indication do we have that this would indeed be the case?

What if we instead focused on more decentralization? If we tried to come to a stronger and smarter Balance of Power between the different agents in the Wikimedia movement? I recently had a chat with Lydia Pintscher - she is know leading the Wikidata project as my successor at Wikimedia Deutschland. We were talking about the role of the Chapters inside the movement, and she reminded me of a simple, but beautiful truth: Wikidata is as successful as it is because it was not done by the Foundation. Now, this might easily be misunderstood: the Foundation played a major role in Wikidata's conception and in the way it was eventually developed and deployed. But because Wikimedia Deutschland was an independent entity, it also could not control Wikidata as tightly as it would have otherwise. The need for consensus and compromise between these two entities, automatically opened us to external channels. We in Berlin had to talk and communicate with an external entity in San Francisco anyway, we can't just walk over to the other desk and quickly gather some handwaving agreement. We had to communicate and express our ideas constantly, and since we had to do so anyway, why not publicly? And this in turn lead to even more participants in that conversation.

Was this planned? For sure not. But can it be repeated? Yes, I certainly think so. We need more and stronger participants in the Wikimedia movement. Instead of focussing whether three, five, six, or ten members of the Board are directly elected, I'd rather focus on creating a more decentralized environment, that necessitates communication and participation, and that creates a stronger balance of power.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

Having more community representation can resolve many issues that often arise between WMF and the community. Of course there is need of specific skill set and expertise on the board. But I believe that the Wikimedia community is big enough and have people with the right kind of skill set and expertise. So, I would propose for approaching the community first even if we need a specialized skills and experience on the board. It can be a way of ensuring more representation on the board. At the same time, introducing term limit for re-election/appointment of board members can also improve more community representation and diversity.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

Yes indeed. Where democracy prevails, the rate of accountability is always high. WMF is still in growing stage. Lets hope to learn from the past mistakes and pave an accountable and democratic platform. Decentralization of powers and responsibilities is essential. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 08:21, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

I am in favor of greater "direct democracy" rather than just "representative democracy" at the WMF. This would include decisions at the level of granularity of, "what software should we develop next", "what experiments should we try to address editor retention", and "how can we make the community more welcoming / more polite"?

I am supportive of having the majority of the board elected by the community, even though the above changes will make board composition less important. This could be carried out by making one more seat elected (4 elected by the community rather than 3). I do not consider term limits to be unreasonable either and would vote for a maximum of two consecutive terms. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:55, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

In my opinion a structural problem WMF has is its technically absolute lack of accountability to anyone: nothing can stop WMF from going off-track, hence few trust WMF. IMHO the solution is simple: make WMF democratic... — I'd differ with you that there is a "technically absolute lack of accountability to anyone." WMF — the professional organization headquartered in San Francisco — is accountable to the WMF Board of Trustees. Hence: be very careful whom you vote for in this election. Insiders will give you the same old-same old without critical oversight; motivated outsiders will provide oversight and new ideas for a better way forward. As for myself, I would like to make all 10 Trustees directly elected by the community to provide a much needed organizational counterbalance to San Francisco's growing hegemony. I also will work to improve the flow of information between the board and the community and promise to publish quarterly reports, hopefully in three languages. Carrite (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

As I mentioned on the page you linked, a community majority is important for WMF governance. Especially because the decisions of the WMF are so tightly bound up with decisions about the movement as a whole. If the movement were to become more independent of a central foundation, this would be less critical: but that's where we are today.

I suggest two steps to move in this direction:

• Increase the number of community trustees to 6
• Clarify in the Bylaws that a majority of the board must be appointed through community [s]election (as opposed to the current language, "from the community", which phrase is itself defined by the Board)

Another key aspect of accountability is observability & regular monitoring of results. Having open board meetings that interested community observers could call into (to listen, not to contribute) would be a start.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I agree with the idea of open board meetings that interested community observers could call into (to listen, not to contribute) would be a great start here.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Improving content

How can the WMF most effectively devote its resources (time and money) to improving the content of the various projects? Didcot power station (talk) 17:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

I think that WMF Board should interfere globally and not specifically. I mean that the WMF should not lose money on developing specific projects because knowledge is regularly developing and an acceptable status can be considered as below the standards in the near future. However, I think that developing some means of assessment and elimination of projects would be more fructuous. If a project is always endangered and could be deleted, its admins would be obliged to work regularly to develop it. That is why I decided to create a WikiLeague within each version of wikis that help valorizing important projects and eliminate inactive ones so that only active projects would be remaining within a period of several years. --Csisc (talk) 13:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

Wikimedia is spending a lot for improving its projects. For now, we have IEG , PEG many others for engaging Wikimedians in their respective projects. Other than this we can have,

• On ground development : Foundation should create a structural platform which could bring/attract new editors to the project. Communication gap is a major issue in every Wikipedia, we should create a sustainable community that they can engage or empower new editors.

• Few hours with a "Wikipedia"  : We could start this project to know every successes or failures in a Wikipedia, Employee/Board/Steward/FDC person of foundation to spend few hours with a Wikipedia community.Having conversation with any random users in a talk page or social media platform and knowing; what problem they are facing ? , What solution they have? or anything else. Now we have 288 Wikipedia following these things everyday we could be able to make a good report about, What is our opportunities or drawbacks in particular.

• Outreach Programs : GLAM , QRPEDIA , even Visual editor or other star projects of Wikimedia are still unknown to several users, Foundation/Chapters should invest some money on spreading awareness on this, lot of work is needed at grass-root level. Developing better communication skill , increasing the potentiality of a Wikimedian is equally important because they represent themselves from the brand Wikipedia, For example Train the Trainer program of CIS-A2K is a similar program to groom the leadership quality of Indic Wikimedia community members. Wikipedia Education program is also an asset for spreading the value of free education among the citizen, we should work on it so, that more countries will participate in this specific program.

Conclusion : In conclusion, I can say that we have lot of projects and we can create many some of them requires money or time but the most efficient one is the community without it we are zero, So building community should be first priority.-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 21:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

I think that the WMF can and should support the editors, and this will lead to improving content. We have many different approaches: making life easier for new editors (important!), making life easier for veteran editors (even more important, but often neglected - as if being a veteran meant that you will not leave anyway... I remember stewards pleading for certain tools for years...), educating and propagating Wikipedia, teaching about licenses, developing more GLAM-like initiatives. There is no one perfect way to do it all effectively, and in hundreds of languages and different communities, but the role of the Board is to prioritize promising initiatives, and support the organizations in our movement (including WMF, but also the chapters, as well as volunteer-driven thematic groups) in finding new ideas, as well as proper storing and exchanging of working older ones. In my role of the FDC chair for three terms, I was actively supporting projects, that contributed to content development, and I think that the current granting schemes make sense, although require improvements (for instance, I've been an advocate for less bureaucracy and paperwork requirements for small organizations, as well as lobbied for multi-year funding for (a) well-proven initiatives as well as (b) major projects with clear milestones and longer time-horizon).

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

I think the most effective way to improving the content is to concentrate on protects like wikimedia education programs and GLAM projects around all over the world .

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

There are many ways we can support content growth on the projects, but we must remember that content does not exist in a vacuum. Content will always interact with the community around it, and we must be careful not only to invest in content generation, but in the growth of our movement as well. To that end, I suggest three courses of action:

1. Invest in editor growth, both new and old. This means that we have to invest in editors actually editing the projects, whether that be funding materials needed to expand knowledge, reasonable travel to far-flung places for documentation, better tools for our power users, or better processes for consulting veteran editors on major technical changes. One of the successes of the Philippine Cultural Heritage Mapping Project is that we directly invest in our editors, giving them reasonable support to help them write their content. Not only have we developed content, but more importantly, we've brought in promising new editors who will help grow the projects and, more importantly, the movement at large. We need to seriously support that.
2. Invest in community dynamics and community health. We need to invest in understanding how our community works, researching on best practices and solutions to problems that can be replicated Wikimedia-wide, and preventing the breakdown of social relations between editors so that they can be focused on content generation and not petty politics. Whether that be through meetups and conferences, edit-a-thons and community-building sessions, a rewards program for prolific editors (something that we're currently toying with at Wikimedia Philippines) or just a couple of barnstars to motivate editors to keep on editing, we need to put time and resources in ensuring that our community is capable of producing content without distraction.
3. Invest in our outreach and partnerships. We must let people know about Wikimedia and what we have to offer, whether that involves onboarding new editors, pursuing new partnerships both GLAM and non-GLAM, entrenching our place in academia, investing in promising initiatives, or helping spread our reach (and, in turn, our content) through tech partners. Some of this can be done by the Foundation itself, but we must also invest in our affiliates—who in fact do most of the groundwork for the movement to begin with—so that they can do so more effectively. Given that this is heavily dependent on local context, we must be capable of investing in multiple initiatives in different countries rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.

We can invest all we want in content, but if we don't have the people to make the content work for us, then it will simply sit there useless. The Foundation should definitely consider investing more in our people and the projects they run in order to get that ball rolling. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 21:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

By recruiting and supporting editors.--Smerus (talk) 18:57, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Didcot power station (talk), Not only time and money but Plan, Strategy, Vision and Mission it completing a tool of implementing the objectives of the WMF and if you talk about WMF means Organisation which definitely doesn't Talk,walk, Plan or implement it's objectives but need some one capable for operating that objectives doesn't matter of color, religion or National but a person with comitment, responsibility and accountability it's enough to cut your thirst for WMF. Francis Kaswahili talk 11:18, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

No response yet.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

That indeed is its major task. Except keeping the servers running, fostering content creation and improvement is just the important mission of the WMF, and apart from paying necessary bills, pretty much all of its activities should be directed to that aim. How that can be done most effectively needs to be the subject of constant research, discussion, and action.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

No response yet.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

The editors are at the heart of all the content we have on various Wikimedia projects. Quality improvement is also an outcome of how well we can engage and facilitate the editors. So WMF's focus should be on devoting more resources for improving editor engagement, facilitation, training as well as providing improved tools for better editing environment.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

In this matter I agree with Pundit. Apart I suggest for more IEG and Project grants. The WMF should deal and accord directly with the editors without involvement of the intermediate organization or chapter. A successful story of Mr.Pavan Santosh of Telugu wiki is an example. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 08:48, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

I think the first key is increasing support of the current editor community. We have a few thousand people who are donating the equivalent of a full time job or more to Wikipedia ( I know I am ). If we can make them more efficient than they already are this will increase the rate of Wikipedia improvements.

The next key is supporting already existing collaborations which we know are working well. For example Wikimedia Taiwan has a very effective collaboration with a medical school in Taipei. This model could potentially be adopted by other chapters with other medical school in other languages.

Finally working with the communities to trial efforts to increase editor numbers is important. Creating long term editors is the holy grail of the movement but will not be an easy problems to solve. But by spending time considering what other NGOs have done and through trial and error I believe we can achieve at least a few successes. To achieve this we will need to give people room to experiment with at the same time making sure all changes are reversible if not effective. To determine effectiveness we will need to have clear metrics as part of all experiments. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:19, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

I endorse the view of Doc James that the most important thing what WMF can do is increase support of its current core volunteer base. We always hear public statements about "Oh, there are hundreds of thousands of people who edit Wikipedia." That might be true, but it is also fundamentally wrong. There are, in very round numbers, slightly more than 10,000 volunteers across all projects who contribute 100 or more edits each month. That number is virtually a constant, down from a shade over 11,000 in the good old days LINK. About a third of these are at En-WP, roughly 10% at De-WP, and slightly less than 10% at Fr-WP, with the other half or so working on other projects. This is the core volunteer community. Who are these people? What do they need? What are their fundamental complaints? Do they have suggestions to make? WMF doesn't even know because they haven't been bothered to database them and to survey them in any sort of regular manner. This is a terrible failing that needs to be immediately addressed.

WMF needs to survey, survey, survey, and then to listen, listen, listen. That's the key to editor retention and content improvement.

I read an interesting blog post today that suggested that another key to editor retention involves the experience to which new editors are subjected following their first few edits. It suggests that WMF-sponsored intervention in various ways happen after first edits and the responses to these interventions on editor retention be monitored and summarized. Again: this is a matter of study, study, study. That's what the Board should be actively pursuing. The Board must push the tech/software oriented San Francisco Office towards social sciency research efforts. "Fixing" what ails Wikipedia isn't a matter of writing better code, it is much broader than that alone.

In general, the needs of the various language encyclopedias are apt to be different, one from the other. At En-WP we need a new cadre of subject experts to write esoteric content and additional volunteers to handle the ongoing fight against vandalism and the addition of gunk. Other encyclopedias no doubt have different needs. The WMF Board needs to take the various needs into consideration. There is no "one size fits all" solution. Carrite (talk) 22:34, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

• We need to be bolder in how we position ourselves in the world of cultural archives. The Wikimedia projects are one today. And our communities know a robust, distributed way to manage an digital archive - the sort of archive that billion-dollar institutions would like to set up but have difficulty sharing online. That will start to open up collections on the scale of the tens of millions of texts and hundreds of millions of other records in public archives.

• We need to think longer term, and champion digitization more seriously. All material will eventually be freely licensed: let's be sure that it is in formats and with partners who integrate nicely with our model for free knowledge. There Is A Deadline applies to getting things digitized in the first place; not sort out licensing details.

• Josh and James put it well: we have many current partnerships that work at a smaller level. The WMF can help identify, promote, and scale those efforts through local communities around the world. In particular, we have a few examples of cutting-edge grad students and professors in a field developing their subject in tremendous detail. Some have done it on Wikipedia, others on single-purpose wikis which could easily be incorporated into the sister projects. This is exactly the spirit we need to realize our mission in the current generation. By promoting and honoring that work, we can find scholars in other fields to take up the cause.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I think IEG has worked fine on many Wikis in this direction.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Technical oversight

Do you believe that the Board has, or will have, sufficient technology expertise to adequately oversee and advise on technical aspects of the work of the WMF? If not, how would you enable the Board to develop that capacity: for example, would you support the Board establishing a Technology Committee, composed of members of the Board together with outside experts? Didcot power station (talk) 20:43, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

I had always supported the fact. However, the tech experts should be doing that for science and not for making money. --Csisc (talk) 13:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

Personally , I support to have techies to adequately oversee and advise on technical aspects of the work of the WMF. As the Wikimedia community serves maximum time in the software platform and sometime they face glitches within their project, this issue can only be fixed by some tech experts. The interested Tech experts should start their own committee to deal with all interwiki problems and i hope Board will support them.-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 10:39, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

I believe that technical expertise of the Board members is not necessarily a must, but something that should be looked for, and if missing - definitely to be complemented by appointed experts. Fortunately enough, the current composition is already reasonably technical for the kind of oversight it needs to provide. An idea of a Technology Committee is interesting - however we need to be careful not to try to address all problems with committees, it is a sure sign of bureaucracy. Yet, this area may be worth consideration, considering slips we've had with technological implementations in recent history. Still, I believe that with the new ED, as well as technological department reorganization, these problems are hopefully already being addressed.

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

The way I see it, I think that the Board has sufficient technological expertise to be able to guide it in making tech-related decisions, and it wouldn't hurt if it had more whether in the Board or otherwise. The fact that our ED comes from a tech background, many of our Board members already have tech backgrounds, and the Foundation has been expanding on the technical side, is a testament to this fact. An advisory committee composed of people with strong tech backgrounds from within and outside the community headed by a Board member would be beneficial for us, especially as we chart our further technological advancement. However, we must remember that our technological development doesn't happen in a vacuum, and we need to make sure that the technical advice being fed to the Board is sufficiently vetted by community consultation processes before pushing through with implementing them. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 08:22, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

Of course the Baord needs technology expertise. It also needs to ensure that it can address and explain such issues to those who are not technology experts (e.g. myself). Whether or not the Board has the necessary capacity is something to be assessed when we know its composition! If it is lacking I am confident that appropriate advice can be obtained.--Smerus (talk) 08:49, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Yes Didcot power station (talk) it's possible to form a technical body of expertise but whatever we think to do nothing can be done without a fair reconciliation between us and remember that all these arises problems is the one part of the cone, if you look at the other side you'll found many of issues. The truly WMF need a big reform to reshape, WMF requires respect to make people trusting Wikipedia and it's projects which is the role of the BOT. I promise to put my efforts of support on the process of establishing the committee. Francis Kaswahili talk 15:46, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

No response yet.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

I don't think the Board should not be too technical. Technical insight is easiest to compensate in a Board of an organisation where the challenges are social. Further, after several years of Wikimedia exposure, pretty much all of the standing candidates have picked up technical knowledge how the sites work. I don't see an urgent point of action here.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

The advantage of having appointed members is that they can provide the diversity and expertise that is found lacking, be it technical or otherwise. Also, the Board can at any time dip into a huge pool of technical experts and seek their input and opinion. But remember that the hard technical issues the Foundation faces are not resolved by the Board, but by the engineering and operation teams. They have to struggle with tasks like setting up scalable graph databases, creating a WYSIWYG editor for wikitext, or serving 7,700 pages per every second.

Having said that, I think I might be the Board candidate with the deepest expertise in how our technical infrastructure works, how MediaWiki and its numerous extensions work, and how our communities interact with these features and our infrastructure. I also have worked together with many of our technical contributors, both working for the Foundation and outside of it, and have actually hired a few of them. I have repeatedly pushed what is possible with MediaWiki (see my work on Semantic MediaWiki and Wikidata), and I definitely plan to continue pushing that frontier in order to get closer to realizing our vision.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

I don't think high level of technological expertise is necessary for the Board. WMF already has a big enough technical department and adequate capacity. The thing that is missing is adequate community feedback and community consultation. Creating another committee for dealing with technological issues could be an option. However, I am not sure how effective will it be and there is also concern around introducing another level of bureaucracy. Technology is fast moving and I not sure whether a committee could address the issues on a timely and effective manner. Seeking outside expert help can be another option.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

If there is a separate technical division, it will strengthen the Foundation. I endorse to have a technical team which shall be like technical advisory committee. If an expert is accommodated in the board may also be good. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 05:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

The board has access to a great deal of technical expertise. They have access to the community, who works with the software every day and knows what needs developing. And they have access to tech people within the WMF who know how easy or hard these ideas will be to develop. A team composed of members of the community and members of tech within the WMF will be able to address many issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:40, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

I'm very pleased that WMF is now headed by somebody with a tech background. The WMF Board's job is oversight and it certainly will need to rely upon the outside opinions of tech savvy people as part of that mission. I don't happen to think that formal subcommittees launched by the WMF Board are the way to solve anything, however. The Board's duty is to make sure that WMF's Office is surveying, consulting with, and working with the language encyclopedias to determine the needs of writers, quality control workers (bearing in mind the needs of readers) and developing tools in tandem with them. Committees of experts would be most efficacious if it were the communities that were establishing them to work on development tasks with professional staff in San Francisco. Carrite (talk) 22:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

We do need technical expertise on the Board, to help build an effective strategy for the Foundation, and to advise on partners and alternatives for its technology plan. Our ED was chosen for her technical background, but we still need to improve our longer-range vision and plans: for instance, to decide how much the WMF wants to be focused on solving technical challenges rather than the many other aspects of producing and sharing free knowledge.

Most boards wouldn't have a formal technology committee. (The WMF did create one in 2006, but it was never active.) However, a group of technical advisors makes sense. This could include specialists who wouldn't have time or interest in governance generally. Similarly, a group of content advisors could help the WMF decide on some of the content and sister project issues raised above.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I support the idea of technical committee / group to look into specific issues.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Access to nonpublic information policy

What is your view of the current status of the Access to nonpublic information policy? Do you believe that the current state of affairs is satisfactory? Didcot power station (talk) 06:07, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
If I might be allowed to amplify that: by status I was refrring to the fact that the policy in question was decided by the Board over a year ago but has still not been implemented. Is that satisfactory? Didcot power station (talk) 05:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

I think that the policy is excellent in its current situation. However, it seems that it is a bit unfair for young talents below 18. In MENA like in other regions, there are several users who started their career when they were 15 or less... These users are doing excellent works like GA... and they can need to consult some documents to ameliorate their works. It would be very crual not to let them work as it should be. I think that this policy should be ameliorated although it is excellent till now. --Csisc (talk) 13:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

No response yet.

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

In general, I think the policy seems reasonable. There always needs to be a balance between the need to recognize and ID individuals and respect their privacy (thus, e.g. storing ID scans would be controversial; even with the current policies I know of elected checkusers who quit because of the need to one-time ID, although I think this is a minimum we have to stick to, at some level of responsibility and tool access there should not be anonymity). So, I think that the new policy makes sense, although I agree with you that one year of delay is already long enough to be somewhat concerned.

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

The current policy is a welcome change from the old policy, where it was expanded to take into account the changing dynamics of personal information and how this interacts with the movement. Given that we've yet to implement the current policy though, we need to make sure that any plan to implement this policy upholds both the need to recognize people who need to be identified to the Foundation and the sanctity of people's privacy. We should be able to keep data for a reasonable amount of time (maybe 30 days, maybe longer if warranted), but at the same time we need to make sure that data is properly dispensed with when the Foundation no longer needs it. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 11:32, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

It seems OK to me - but as with all policies, this is a matter for the Board to review on a regular basis.--Smerus (talk) 08:52, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Didcot power station (talk) No comment on it as regards that policy is always policy, whatever you have punctual policy if no supervision nothing can be done, if the community give this opportunity it will take me some hours to study on full management of WMF by now I can say is ok. Francis Kaswahili talk 16:06, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

No response yet.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

No response yet.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

No response yet.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

No response yet.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

The current policy seems reasonable and logical. Hence I agree with this. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 09:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

The new policy is not that different from the old policy. Yes it has been over a year since the new policy came into being. What new processes are required before we can begin using it I am not sure. Would be useful for the board to clarify this.

With respect to how long checkuser data should be kept, I think this is an important discussion to have. It is a balance between trying to deal with those using multiple accounts and privacy of editors. I guess the first question would be how useful would having data for longer be? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:25, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

I believe that the current policy is reasonable. I would like to see Check User data be retained for longer than 3 months on En-WP to better fight off banned editors using alternate accounts, but that's a minor detail, not part of general policy. Carrite (talk) 22:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

No response yet.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I go with the current policy.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Murder of Meredith Kercher Article

What about the Murder of Meredith Kercher article in the English language Wikipedia? Most of the other questions are quite general but I believe examination of a specific topic is sometimes necessary.

The Kercher article is probably the most troubled entry in Wikipedia's history and one that has caused profound harm to living human beings. In the words of Jimmy Wales the article was "highly biased because one side was taken out." He also identified "systematic exclusion of reliable sources" and "censorship to promote an agenda." It strikes me that in a highly contentious criminal case that lack of inclusion of reliable sources who have heavily criticized the trial and police investigation raises grave BLP issues. For more information Google "Amanda Knox Wikimania" and see my Groundreport article.

The problem is worse today than ever. About a dozen editors were blocked because of their POV. The harm caused to Knox and Sollecito by Wikipedia's irresponsible coverage of the case is far worse than anything ever faced by John Seigenthaller. The RS banned from the article include four CBS documentaries, three retired FBI agents, an American Judge, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and many other respected journalists. These people are all breathing fire.

Is there a place for the WMF to act in this case and others where there appears to have been a breakdown of Wikipedia's system? What happens when apparent "consensus" about violations of policy is different from what an impartial finder of fact would conclude? Do you agree or disagree with the statement that many editors were blocked as part of an effort to expel those with a POV opposed by the administrators who controlled the page? Is the article in its current form a BLP violation against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito? Thanks in advance. PhanuelB (talk) 14:18, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

This issue is controversial and common. I personally think blocking the concerned page and trying to arrive to a consensus is the best solution. If this does not happen effectively, the Board should not interfere because the idea expressed by the Board can be understood as a political orientation of the Wikimedia Foundation that should be always considered as unbiased. So, I think that the community should solve such matters itself within a specific institution like the Wikipedia Council I have proposed before. --Csisc (talk) 13:44, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

There is no place for a contributor to put his/her own point of view on Wikipedia. PoV is not always biased, However, advocating POV and implementing POV is totally different. Wikipedia is, was and will always support NPOV, facts and references. It is a serious issue. However, I believe that Board should not put its nose for each and every community clashes, unless and until the matter cross all limits. These kind of problems can get solved within the community itself.

I also endorse Pundit's point that, libelous material after published should get verified by legal department. This step could make articles reader friendly. -- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 11:16, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

It is a very important problem. However, I do not believe in the Board's direct interventionism in content issues of different projects. I trust the communities to be able to resolve content disputes on their own (and I know it is not always realistic, yet I still believe it would be worse if the Board meddled). Even the content dispute resolution methods and procedures pertain to the communities. I would not like to comment on a particular project's rules (en-wiki BLP). Moreover, I definitely believe that if some libelous material is published and there is a complaint, it should be dealt with by the legal department (and this is sort of a safety valve if a current consensus on policy differs from impartial reader's view).

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

I'm not sure this is particularly relevant to the election, but as far as I know the Board shouldn't get directly involved in the content disputes of individual Wikipedias. This should really be left to the community to decide through the proper mechanisms.

That being said, I think that at this point, we need to ensure that the integrity of BLPs is maintained. What happened with the Meredith Kercher article is reprehensible, and it shouldn't have happened in the first place—"neutral point of view" doesn't mean discounting other points of view to make a point, and it should never mean that. I think the English Wikipedia's dispute resolution mechanisms are capable of resolving this, and I strongly believe at this point that any Foundation intervention treads a very fine line between enforcing an editorial line (which we're not supposed to do) and maintaining the projects' sanity (which we can do). Should the Foundation—which shouldn't involve the Board—need to intervene, it should only do so as an absolute last resort. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 07:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

The particular issue raised here (which is one I have not personally followed in detail) is I think one for en:Wikipedia and not for the WF Board. --Smerus (talk) 20:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

MMKA, it's an project like any other project, remember that wikipedia is crosscutting, among of that it's including information of living and died Person. WMF's Board of trustees are the ultimate corporate authority supervising the organisation sanctions. The question of our college raised on Wikipedia project, wikipedia is among of 12 projects of the Wikimedia Foundation nothing wrong has been done to the queries but remembered that there are technical’s staffs dealing with articles of the Wiki projects controlled between the administrators and the executive committee, the WMF doesn’t have a jurisdictions whether criminal or civil sanctions. WMF’s BOT will deal on the ethical code accordingly and where there’s no codes it will be on discussions. Francis Kaswahili talk 12:31, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

As all the other candidates before me have already pointed out, this issue should be dealt by he community and not by the board.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

No response yet.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

No response yet.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

No response yet.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

Content creation is left to the wit and wisdom of language and the local community. NPoV should be viewed and reviewed by the local communities. Intervention of non local communities and WMF may not be fair for content creation. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 09:09, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

It would not be appropriate for the WMF to become directly involved in content issues. I have no expertise in this case and without spending a fair bit of time developing a good understanding should not weight in. En-WP has a number of dispute resolution mechanisms. The talk page appears relatively quiet for the article in question and that is were issues should be discussed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:55, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

This is an En-WP content debate that is clearly outside the purview of the WMF Board. I suggest that this question be removed. Carrite (talk) 22:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

No response yet.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I think local community should decide its own policies.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Accurately measuring the reliability of Wikipedia

I read the first few days' responses to the 2015 Strategy/Community consultation and - at least from the unregistered respondents who I assume to be readers rather than community members - there was a clear theme emerging: they don't - but would like to be able to - trust Wikipedia. In its 2015 Call to Action the foundation listed a number of objectives reflecting its commitment to excellence, community, and innovation. Among those objectives was: "Improve our measures of ... content quality..."

Do you think the fact that our readers can't trust us is a problem, and do you support the foundation's commitment to improve our measures of content quality? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:09, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

I personally think that this mistrust is a problem. Unfortunately, this problem is growing... and even the solutions like Community Peer Review and Journal Peer Review could not solve this important issue... If elected, I will try to work with institutions like SIL International for Linguistics and involve some independent wikis done by experts in Wikipedia to solve this problem. Moreover, I will try to ameliorate the means used for the quality assessment of works in Wikipedia and involve a new tool in the wiki called "Rate this" in order to see what are the papers that are causing such problems and try to invite community to work on them and ameliorate their output. --Csisc (talk) 14:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

No response yet.

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

Obviously, the fact that some of our readers don't trust us is a problem. This is particularly acute and disastrous in the academic community (I wrote about this issue and hope to address it more if on the Board). Truth is though, that it is even really difficult to systematically and properly evaluate content quality. There are window studies of selected areas (showing that our quality in some of them is quite high), but it is barely possible to accurately evaluate article quality across topics on one project, and we have hundreds. Even the very perception of quality differs across the projects (I am going to present results of my quantitative research in this respect at Wikimania in Mexico) Thus, I fully support the idea to try to improve measurements of content, but in practice I find them difficult to implement across all articles (although e.g. there already are some pretty promising ideas for automated quality predictions). The issue definitely deserves more and more attention, as our projects mature.

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

No response yet.

David Conway (Smerus)

As regards the headline - I don't know how one would 'accurately measure' reliability. As regards the question - of course reader trust is a crucial issue; if we lose it, the project fails. Developing trust with other providers/disseminators of information (academia, journalism) is intrinsically going to be difficult, not least because there is an element of competition. This is exacerbated by the fact that our 'competitors' are 'licensed' to provide information - by being academics or professional journalists - and can (and do) use this to characterise the open editing policy of Wikipedia as 'unregulated' behaviour which can misinform and mislead existing and potential readers. And even when information is technically correct, it may give rise to criticism if it is 'undue' (see e.g. here). The volume of existing material, and growth of new material, on English Wikipedia alone is beyond the capacity of voluntary editors to monitor for accuracy. As time goes by, undoubtedly it will be possible to develop trawling bots which can make some assessment of accuracy (in a sense these already exist as regards blatant or apparent vandalism); we also need to ensure support for editors and that editors clearly understand the issues involved. Given the principle of open editing, and the fallibility of human nature, I am not sure what other actions the Board can profile to enhance accuracy, but as a member it is an issue I will seek to progress.--Smerus (talk) 20:33, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Yes, Provided that Wikimedia Foundation is a Supervising Board has a mandate on this. and to be trusted there's some very important steps must be taken a specially to users and all the community which is: terms of use, registration and Identification am a follower of the true name for the satisfactions and commitment. Francis Kaswahili Talk 12:56, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

No response yet.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

No response yet.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

I trust you don't trust the Trustees to alone solve the issue of trust in Wikipedia. There has been a general thrust towards more reliable content for more than a decade now, and many smaller Wikimedia projects have adopted the stricter rules of the English Wikipedia very early, maybe even too early in their development cycle. One of the major decisions in Wikidata - and one I got chided for a lot - was to adapt the data model used in Wikidata to explicitly model references.

I actually doubt your premise that readers do not trust Wikipedia. I mean, yes, if you ask them "Do you trust Wikipedia?", I am convinced that many people would think about it and say no. But asking people such questions is not a reliable method. Look at where they go if they need information. Imagine instead a quiz show with options to help you answer questions, e.g. asking the audience, calling someone you know, etc. If they would offer an option "use Wikipedia for a minute", I am pretty sure that would become a very valuable option. Bismarck said, that most people who know how laws or sausages are made, would stop respecting them. And I think a similar effect happens when you ask people "Do you trust Wikipedia?". They think about how the sausage is made, and answer accordingly.

In short, the question of trust in Wikimedia projects is not a question I see for the Trustees. It is indeed a question of the individual projects and lies in their autonomy. I would not want to impose rules of reliability and sourcing developed by the English Wikipedia community of 30,000 active editors on a small project, which is just starting to develop and blossom. Each of these projects need, especially in their early phases, the freedom to explore and grow by their own heartbeats. An article like this one would be frowned upon on the English Wikipedia today, but it might still be an improvement for the Burmese Wikipedia today.

(And sorry for the wordplay in the beginning, but I think everyone who made it so far reading the answers deserves a smile. Also, if you actually followed the link for Bismarck, you will learn that he did not say such a thing. At least, if you trust Wikiquote.)

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

No response yet.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

Absolutely. In many instances the readers questioned me about the reliability of the content. Though I gave logical briefings to them, still their faces had question marks! Reliable content creation is the prime objective of the wikipedia articles. Merely depending on the news paper reports, we can not create articles. We need some more authenticity which may be in different forms. Recently on English wikipedia many articles have been deleted with a single mouse click, though they have book references in the local languages. This mindset of the admins on English wiki should be changed. The authenticity of the content may be in many forms. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 13:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

One goal of the movement should definitely be to increase the reliability of our content. I see collaborating with journals as one way of achieving this. For example four of us worked to get our article on dengue fever formally peer reviewed and published. The article is now pubmed indexed [1] and on pubmed commons. This may expose our content to a group which may not have previously accessed it due to reliability concerns.

We have also started a peer reviewed open access journal medical on Wikiversity here. There is still a fair bit of work required to get the articles pubmed indexed, however this will hopefully one day be another way to get our best content published in static form / make it more trustworthy (at a lower cost).

I think it is wise counsel not to trust any source completely, including Wikipedia. We want our readers to be skeptical. I am surprised how much people actually do trust Wikipedia per this survey. We must also keep in mind that both the formally peer reviewed literature and textbooks may contain errors. For example a major medical textbook from the Oxford University Press was recently caught copying and pasting from Wikipedia.[2] The amazing thing is that they changed the references so that the new references no longer supported the text. So they not only copied our text but made it worse while doing so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:59, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

There has been very little attention paid to the question of reliability of Wikipedia. Even the academic literature falls far short of where it should be on this topic. There are no good metrics for development of quality, only the sheer number of articles and average size of those articles, which are increasing. I've made the contention in a thread at Wikipediocracy that English Wikipedia is steadily improving over time, which one may observe by checking diffs between the current version and the first stable version of randomly selected articles. This perspective unsurprisingly drew shrieks from the "Death to the Beast" faction. Nevertheless, I believe that any reasonable effort to confirm this assertion will do exactly that — En-WP's content is improving over time. There does need to be serious study of the quality of the content of Wikipedia, however, and I suspect that WMF has a very great role to play in helping to make this happen. I would support such an effort, although I must admit that my first study goal if elected to the Board would be to get the ball rolling on databasing core volunteers and surveying them as to needs. Assessing content to find its deficiencies and needs logically flows from this shortly thereafter. Carrite (talk) 15:38, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

No response yet.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I think that the very fact that some court judgments are based on Wikipedia articles is a measure of its reliability. But many on non-English Wikipedias fall short of proactive reviews/ admin activity. There is a need to build active editors and admins here.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Long-term vision for Wikipedia's direction?

Which of the following two directions would you prefer as a long-term vision for Wikipedia? Why?

1. A non-profit software company leveraging open data efforts of volunteers.
2. A respected cultural and educational institution providing general access to knowledge to everyone, over the Internet.

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

I think that the second option is more accurate for our situation. Wikimedia Foundation had received worldwide recognition for its role in enhancing the use of free and accurate knowledge through Internet... Wikimedia Foundation is not just an international organization. It is an organization having the sixth most visited website worldwide according to Alexa Statistics and a community constituted from interested users from all over the world. --Csisc (talk) 14:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

I would prefer the second one, Wikipedia is respected cultural and educational institution providing general access to knowledge to everyone, over the Internet. To answer this question, I would like to share one of my experience : In my state/province, we have very few historical drafts reserved over the internet. If i search for an important person of my state , i get no/less results. Through Wikipedia we are able to draft our past or the present, it is a revolution for the free knowledge. I can assure that only for Wikipedia, my future generation will find their history on their hand and will not face problem like us.-- Sailesh Patnaik ^{(Talk2Me|Contribs)} 22:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

Both visions are close to what we do. However, vision no. 2 in my view is the one in which we have more competitive advantage (i.e. we are more unique). Being the sum of all human knowledge is, more or less, what we are trying to achieve even now. I have to admit though that your no. 2 vision, without emphasizing the open data character of what we do, sounds to be a bit artificial (and, in fact, could fit a university - after all, e.g. MIT offers free courses, too, over the internet). I also think it is important to stay true to our non-profit status. Thus, I myself would probably go for "A highly respected, non-profit organization providing access to open knowledge to everyone".

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

I strongly think it's the second one (and I think this takes place both on and offline), but we can't deny that elements of the first come out from time to time, and it should be able to reconcile both.

We can't deny that the Wikimedia movement today provides more knowedge in more languages than many, if not most, other movements and institutions. Millions of people rely on Wikimedia projects to get the information they need. Those millions also look up to Wikimedia as a platform for people to share the knowledge that they know or have been able to glean off what they've seen or read. In that sense, our respectibility as an educational, cultural and informational institution, and the dynamism and mutual trust that defines our community, are what gives us legitimacy.

On the other hand, we must also consider that our community is not only composed of editors and content contributors. What about those who share their programming knowledge for the development of MediaWiki? What about those whose efforts to help the movement through the release of data, either online or offline? We must consider that they too are helpful for the movement, that they too are part of what we're building, and we have to take them into account as well. Without MediaWiki, there'd be no Wikimedia, for example. Sure, they don't contribute actual Wikipedia edits, for example, but without them we wouldn't be able to run as we've been able to.

That being said though, the Foundation will probably never be a software company. We don't necessarily have anything profitable to offer people. What we do have is knowledge: knowledge that we've committed to being free. That is where our primary focus is, but we should focus on the whole, and that means focusing on software development, open data and community organizing too, among others. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 07:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

David Conway (Smerus)

Why can't we be both? I would hope to be able to support these visions - which are mutually reinforcing in my opinion - in parallel.--Smerus (talk) 20:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

I prefer to both projects provided that Wikipedia is a portal at any level with a slogan of any body can edit regardless of color, tribe, religion, or age depends on knowledge. Francis Kaswahili talk 13:45, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

You said "Wikipedia" bu I think you meant the Wikimedia Foundation. I think that our movement is centered around open knowledge, if the WMF becomes a software company (even one developing free/libre software) it would be different, there are other entities in the world devoted to F/LOSS bu I think that the Wikimedia movement has a broader mission. On the other end, what we do is not just about education, we are not the Khan Academy (which is a great project, by the way. They are also using a Creative Commons license, although a non free one (CC-BY-NC)), we are neither Coursera, EdX, Duolingo or one of many other companies or projects revolving around education. Both components of freedom and culture are central to what we do and defining who we are, and I do not think we should renounce to either of them.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

No response yet.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

No response yet.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

No response yet.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

Absolutely the second one. The mission WMF is free knowledge. The participants, editors are engaged withe volunteerism, with no profit motto. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 09:22, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

The second one obviously :-) We are first and foremost a purveyor of knowledge. Software is only useful if it supports general access to knowledge for everyone. I would trim the last bit "over the Internet" though.

We also need to spread knowledge by methods other than the Internet. For example I am involved in a collaboration with Samsung and others to have SIM cards preloaded with Wikipedia content before they are shipped to Africa. Additionally we have Kiwix and I know many people keep an offline version of Wikipedia on their phone or computer. This is especially important in areas of the world were access to the Internet is less than ideal. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:05, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

A bit of a loaded question, eh? Of course, this touches upon the divergence of orientation between the core volunteers at the various language Wikipedias and the professional paid staff (mostly engineers) in San Francisco. I am a content writing volunteer at English-Wikipedia and have been repeatedly critical of WMF in public fora, so there should be no question about my Weltanschauung. Here's the question, voters: what do you want, more of the same or a change??? Carrite (talk) 15:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

No response yet.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I think both - 1st may be helpful for editors to create bots and the second is indeed useful. For example, free online knowledge can be a useful article reference point.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.

Responsibility for content dissemination

The WMF mission statement has a major point of unresolved grammatical ambiguity regarding whether the Foundation has the responsibility to disseminate free education content, or to empower and engage people to disseminate said content. Currently, either reading fits well with the general behavior of the Foundation (maintaining the Wikimedia projects could be considered as aiding the communities in disseminating content, or disseminating content itself), but they could be conflicting at some point in the future, if there is a dispute between the Foundation and its partners as to how content should be disseminated.

In your opinion, does the Wikimedia Foundation itself hold direct or indirect responsibility for disseminating free content effectively and globally? --Yair rand (talk) 17:23, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Houcemeddine Turki (Csisc)

As other users said, the mission of WMF is clear. The WMF is efficiently engaged in disseminating free content worldwide. I think that this is clear and does not even need to be discussed. --Csisc (talk) 14:27, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sailesh Patnaik (Saileshpat)

No response yet.

Dariusz Jemielniak (Pundit)

I don't really see the ambiguity. The mission clearly states that WMF should "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content". There are also later paragraphs about providing infrastructure, but in my view the mission is straightforward about the supportive and aiding role. The part about dissemination is not conflicting, as our licenses allow for anyone to reuse and redistribute the content (so I don't see how it may cause conflict). However, I definitely do not object to WMF disseminating knowledge :)

Mohamed Ouda (Mohamed Ouda)

No response yet.

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

No response yet.

David Conway (Smerus)

I find it difficult to envisage a situation in which these clauses would stand 'in conflict'. The statement does not seem to me to contain any major ambiguity - the Foundation's start-point is to animate people, for the purpose of disseminating knowledge - via wiki projects. That's it.--Smerus (talk) 07:55, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Francis Kaswahili Kaguna (Francis Kaswahili)

Ooh, Yair rand (talk) That is the Vision and Mission of the WMF which is unquestionable, undoubted, It's for real and that's why The WMF spend some funds for providing and involving the community globally. no doubt every thing can be done either I normally find solution according to problems occurring. Any dispute occurring to WMF must be resolved accordingly with any projects harmless or ties. Francis Kaswahili talk 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro)

I would not object to the WMF disseminaing content. Wikipedia Zero can be seen as an effort to disseminate the content. On the other hand many affiliates finance their dissemination activities (e.g. workshop, conferences, editathons, etc.) via the Program and Event grants or the Annual plan grants of the Wikimedia Foundation. I do not see why this double role should be a concern.

Peter Gallert (Pgallert)

No response yet.

María Sefidari (Raystorm)

No response yet.

Phoebe Ayers (Phoebe)

No response yet.

Denny Vrandečić (Denny)

No response yet.

Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (Ali Haidar Khan)

No response yet.

Nisar Ahmed Syed (అహ్మద్ నిసార్)

I opine both views are fit with the WMF behaviour. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 09:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

James Heilman (Doc James)

I would say both. The WMF should both disseminate our content themselves plus facilitate the dissemination of our content by others. We of course do currently do both now.

We make it easy for anyone to download and build upon our content by using open licenses. This for example has allowed the company Boundless.com to take Wikipedia content and turn it into 25 university level textbooks which are used by million.

We provide Wikipedia via our own website and work with cellphone companies to provide Wikipedia content through Wikipedia Zero. By letting go of control we facilitate innovation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:14, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Tim Davenport (Carrite)

Wikipedia's content is already ubiquitous. Since it is freely licensed, it will continue to be so. WMF needs to rededicate itself to building the best set of language encyclopedias possible, to make sure that content writers and quality control workers have the tools they need to do the job. WMF should also do what is possible to expand the core voluteer community with intelligent, thoughtful Wikipedians. Distribution of what is produced will take care of itself, as always... Carrite (talk) 00:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

No response yet.

Syed Muzammiluddin (Hindustanilanguage)

I agree with both views as fitting with the WMF nature.

Edward Saperia (EdSaperia)

No response yet.

Mike Nicolaije (Taketa)

No response yet.