User talk:Katherine (WMF)

Media Inquiry on Plagiarism

Hi Katherine, sure, have the journalist google my name and contact me by email. I'll be glad to give them a phone number. --WiseWoman (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Where is the strategy audit?

Hi Katherine, I saw in your Metrics Meeting slides that this month you have scheduled an "Audit 2016-18 strategy: Does it capture all assets, strengths, threats, opportunities?" Where is that taking place?

Do you know when the critical question synthesis of the meta:2016 Strategy/Draft WMF Strategy and its discussion is due back from the strategy process facilitator contractor? It's been "(coming soon)" redlinked in the infobox there for over three months now. EllenCT (talk) 01:38, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @EllenCT: - we deprioritized the critical question synthesis against preparing the Annual Plan and shepherding it through the approval process. We expect it to be ready around the end of next week. The Audit will likely live on a TBD location on Meta, but has not yet been planned beyond what I presented. We'll be sure to continue to share as that process moves forward. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! EllenCT (talk) 01:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Any word on the critical question synthesis? EllenCT (talk) 01:59, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much for seeing that through, Katherine. I excerpted the recommendations at meta:2016 Strategy/Recommendations and started brainstorming some specific tutorials as suggested on the discussion page there. EllenCT (talk) 14:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Specific suggestions

Please consider the risks of coordinated paid advocacy and ways to mitigate that risk. It is similar to the risk that bias will be introduced where the surveillance state controls or has a chilling effect on editing.

By the way, I like the fact that your first article was on a housing project. We can not make improvements until we study flaws. Where do you find the best skills to make constructive criticism complementary? EllenCT (talk) 13:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

That was a serious question; I hope you didn't think it was rhetorical. I wish I had better constructive criticism skills, and your popularity among sticklers makes me want to know your advice. EllenCT (talk) 17:35, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

One of the tutorials I suggested is on constructive criticism skills. That seems to be the lowest hanging fruit for community civility gains, as far as I can see. EllenCT (talk) 14:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Staffing suggestion

From [1] which was archived before being responded to: Please give Halfak (WMF) the funding and authority to hire Nettrom, Quang Vinh Dang, Claudia-Lavinia Ignat, Susan Biancani,Yu Suzuki, Masatoshi Yoshikawa, and/or their referral(s) for an importance evaluation system to complement ORES's quality classification system. Would you please also get Legoktm help for mw:User talk:Legoktm#FRSbot questions so our nascent jury system can pass audit? I also want to know how much it would cost to implement searching recent changes.

Thank you for your kind consideration of these requests, and please keep up the good work. EllenCT (talk) 14:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Abandoning projects or assigning further budget

Hi Katherine,

What mechanisms does the WMF have for abandoning failed projects or assigning new budget to projects that have not completed their objective with prior funding? Are there any that are explicitly open to the community?

Thanks and best wishes,

Samsara 21:15, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	WikiConference North America Barnstar
	Thank you for the role you played at WikiConference North America 2016. This year's conference could not have been a success without your contributions and we hope you will continue to be involved in 2017. On behalf of WikiConference North America - Gamaliel (talk) 01:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Holiday greetings

	Thank you for all you do for WP. I was proud to have gotten to meet you. Keep inspiring us all to push on. Merry Christmas and best wishes for a happy, healthy and productive 2017!
	TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:14, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

WMF Legal and paid editing

Hi Katherine

I am interested to learn if the WMF management or the board has discussed taking legal action against companies that offer services to edit Wikipedia and that have no on-Wiki presence disclosing their edits here, per the Terms of Use. We all know the companies and their websites, where they use the Wikipedia name, etc. I have looked and never found disclosure by any of those companies in WP. I have looked and found no public evidence of WMF legal engaging with these companies, other than Wiki-PR.

Some en-Wiki editors recently identified a long-term paid editor and brought the matter to ANI: thread is here.

Two questions:

Has this been discussed, and if so, what has/have the outcomes been?

Also, is there budget for WMF legal to take action against such companies?

Best regards Jytdog (talk) 06:16, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Uncontrolled spending increases

In my essay at User:Guy Macon/Wikipedia has Cancer I make several proposals.

Whether of not you agree with the essay as a whole, would you be willing to propose and/or support the following?

• Make spending largely transparent, publish a detailed account of what money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details.

• Limit spending increases to no more than inflation plus some percentage (adjusted for any increases in page views). Are you willing to support any limit at all on spending growth, and if so roughly how much? 10%? 20%? 30%?

• Build up our endowment and structure the endowment so that the WMF cannot legally dip into the principal when times get bad.

--Guy Macon (talk) 02:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for all you do at the Wikimedia Foundation!

Asparish (talk) 00:21, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Q re funds

Hey Katherine, my real life person ;) just got an email asking for a donation. I attended an anniversary conference in SF (it was great) couple of years ago, and from what I understood our issue is not the funds but what to do with them. So I am curious about our current approach to maintaining and improving wikipedia. If my impression re what we discussed is correct, why are we asking for more donations? I'm eager to give, just curious about our strategy. Rybkovich (talk) 22:21, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

A question for you

Hi Katherine. Some community members just pointed me to this tweet from your twitter account earlier today (archived here for reference). I gather that the tweet is in reference to this article by Buzzfeed News, which was published this afternoon and tweeted (archive) three times today by its author Joe Bernstein, who is registered here as JosephABernstein.

We haven't met, but by way of introduction, I'm a current member of the Arbitration Committee. I'm here entirely in my capacity as an individual volunteer, not as a representative of the committee - but still, as a volunteer whose role means I've invested quite a bit of time over the last couple of weeks trying to work out a broadly satisfactory solution to the situation described in that article. Does your comment reflect your views about the volunteers who have taken an interest in or discussed the article, who spoke to the reporter who wrote it, and who have spent their time trying to resolve the issue it covers? (As I was writing this message, I noticed you'd posted a followup (archive), but I'm afraid I don't understand it - the original text, When you have to retweet your shitty pseudo-thinkpiece three times because no one cares., is pretty specific, and hard to read as garden variety the world is burning subtweeting. Were there other long articles posted three times today?)

I understand some community members have asked you about the same comment over at meta - I'll post a short note there, but as the concerns that have been raised about the underlying incident reflect a matter of local community interest, I'd prefer to keep things on enwiki. Thanks. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:13, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi Katherine. As another member of the Arbitration Committee, I would also like a response here. Worm^TT(talk) 06:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Agree with Opabinia regalis that it would be appropriate and helpful for you to make a clarification statement here on Wikipedia, even if it is to say that yes you were posting about the article, but did so in a moment of weakness and frustration. We understand that here on Wikipedia, because it is a surprisingly stressful place to work as a volunteer because we have to monitor thousands of edits every hour looking for edits which damage the reputation of Wikipedia, which put the Foundation in jeopardy of legal action against them, which create unrest, which are disruptive, plus having to deal with the everyday frustrations of editors who disagree with each other over how best to edit the encyclopedia, and then work out from the context what the issue really is, and how best to address it. So, yes, we understand frustration here on Wikipedia, and sympathise with people who make inappropriate outbursts now and again. We tend to be more understanding and forgiving of those who are self-reflective and honest about their actions as it tends to reassure us they have taken on board what has happened and so make it unlikely that it would happen again. So we would be more reassured if you said yes it was about the article which had annoyed you on a personal level, then if you attempted to cover up the tweet by saying it was about something unrelated. However, if it was about something unrelated, and you can supply evidence of that, that would be even more reassuring. SilkTork (talk) 06:42, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

It might help to stop tweeting about this issue until you have a clear statement to make, and to make that to this community, not the Twitter one. This Twitter comment: [2] in which you say that the Wikipedia community is a "monolith misnomer" to suggest that we are fractious and divided and unable to agree, could be read as hostile, non-appreciative and non-understanding of the communal work that goes on here every minute of every day, and insulting to those of us who value the collegiality and co-operation of the community and who respect and abide by the consensus of the community, even when they disagree with it. There is speculation in the community that the Foundation does not understand the community, and sees it as toxic and fractious and troublesome; such comments encourage that view rather than dissuade it. SilkTork (talk) 08:22, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

And as not a member of Arbcom but just one "the 'oi polloi", yet someone who has contributed more than 150,000 edits to this project over 14 years, I'd also very much like to hear your explanation. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:06, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

In 13 years I have never seen this place erupt as much as this - alot of people are very upset. It needs leadership and soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:38, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the tweet is currently under discussion at Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram#Katherine Maher tweet. Also, throwing my headband in to endorse Opabinia regalis's comments. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF have displayed appalling leadership and appalling communication throughout this farrago. And now you add the kind of childish hideousness that if done on Wikipedia could get you banned without appeal or information about your offence by your very own WMF secret police. Disgraceful. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 12:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Ah. You've not edited here in 3 years. So at the risk of earning your scorn on Twitter, I'll repost this message on meta. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 12:31, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

You can add me, speaking as a Wikipedia editor or ArbCom member or whatever you like, as someone who is hoping you will speak on-wiki to this. I've always admired that you speak your mind on Twitter, and use it to voice everything from your political opinions to my own personal favorite use of Twitter: a place to air those weird thoughts that go through your head and have no other place to go. A lot of people in similarly high profile roles such as yourself use their Twitter accounts as little more than an extension of their corporation's Twitter account, resulting in a very robotic and uninteresting feed, which I find unfortunate. But by not handing your account over to some communications team with a carefully-orchestrated messaging plan, you definitely run some risks as far as how your messages come across, as I'm sure you're aware.

I personally find it frustrating that (to my knowledge) the first you've spoken about this recent WMF ban fiasco is a) in a tweet, not on-wiki, and b) only to dismiss a journalist who wrote a piece that you later acknowledged "covered the community position and wiki details accurately". You also haven't actually addressed directly whether you were initially tweeting about the Buzzfeed article at all, which to me feels evasive (and honestly, a little bit gaslight-y)—it certainly seems unlikely that you were referring to some other thinkpiece that was tweeted out three times by its author, especially when you later addressed the Buzzfeed article directly, but you've said things like "it wasn’t about a specific author or article" and alluded to thinkpieces on things like gender and income inequality as if you might have been referring to something else. You've also said that you have not communicated with the community because no one has asked you to directly, but surely your employees and board members have made their CEO/ED aware of one of the largest issues that the largest Wikimedia project has faced in the past years? Why would you not proactively address it, rather than wait for a community member to comment? Sure, Trust & Safety is the group that typically handles bans and subsequent communication, but this ban has evolved into a major threat to this community and its relationship with the WMF, which to me seems like it be a critical time for leadership from the CEO and ED. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:25, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

I am another member of the Arbitration Committee. At this stage, I request from you a full explanation. Why did you write such a thoughtless tweet? What time have you devoted to the future handling of WMF actions on enwiki? What action are you taking next? We can gather donations without you. You are here to provide a degree of professionalised leadership and experience. As it stands you would probably be blocked if you were a volunteer, acting like that and contributing nothing helpful. It is pathetic. AGK ■ 17:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Comments relating to WP:FRAMBAN

Without any intention to involve myself in the main discussion, above all as a community member, and as a former admin here and elsewhere (not that the bits should matter), I would like to express my disappointment at the way the WMF has handled this matter so far, at various levels (and especially when it comes to clarity in the WMF-community relations). Although my contributions have been dwindling and scant of late, this climate of general malaise arising out of this situation is dispiriting (and given that this is enwiki, that's saying something). I do not wish to expound further on this issue here, but if you or anyone else should need my opinion, my email user function is open, FWIW. MikeLynch (talk) 11:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Email

Hello, Katherine (WMF). Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— Miniapolis 17:14, 28 June 2019 (UTC)