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 as you 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. Furthermore, though you've acknowledged that your tweet was hurtful to members of the community that you in a way lead and represent, you have not meaningfully apologized or addressed it on-wiki. I am often one of the first to speak up about unreasonable demands on peoples' time—Wikipedians are unfortunately prone to forgetting that people have jobs and standard working hours and personal lives and other obligations—but even a quick note on-wiki (any wiki) to say you'd be addressing it would've been a good start. I understand also that you're more fluent with Twitter, but meeting us where we are (or not) makes a big impression.

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 is 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)

I am not currently a member of the Arbitration Committee, but previously served on the Committee for eight and one-half years, which I believe made me the longest-serving member, for whatever that might be worth. I don't want or need to add to everything that's been said thus far, here and elsewhere, except to comment on the importance of dealing with the current situation. Whether deservedly or otherwise, this set of disputes is creating the highest level of unhappiness and disharmony in the English Wikipedia community that has ever existed in my 13 years of editing. I am sure you cannot address the issues unilaterally but you can certainly give the matter the attention it deserves, and reinforce that level of urgency with both the Board members and your Office colleagues. Putting aside the issue of the individual editor who was banned, as I wrote last week, the community remains uncertain exactly what it is that the WMF is trying to accomplish with this new initiative and how we are collectively to get where the WMF wants us to be, assuming that it's a place we agree we want to go. And if the goal is a higher level of civility, then as I wrote last night, your own utterances probably should model it, both on-wiki and in off-wiki communications about our project. But most importantly, please adjust your priorities as needed: until progress has been made toward deescalating the current situation, I can imagine no more urgent call upon your effort, time, and dedication to the wiki movement. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

So many members of the Arbitration Committee in one place, all ready to congratulate themselves for their reasonableness and moderation, here to tone police a single tweet while ignoring the morass of conspiracy theories emerging from the toxic cesspool they preside over. This was no different from any other office action which you yourselves approved of and enforced against other users. The only difference is that the target was popular. Before you congratulate yourselves too much, all of you are the reasons we are in this mess in the first place, not Katherine's tweet or any alleged communications failures on the part of the WMF. You should all be embarrassed to have the audacity to blame anyone but yourselves for steadfastly doing nothing about this situation for years until the WMF was forced to step in to do something you would not. Gamaliel (talk) 22:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

You seem lost.- MrX 🖋 23:04, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Bless your heart. Gamaliel (talk) 23:10, 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)

And I'm a long-time editor with no advanced permissions. I very much want to make sure that you start paying close attention to that main discussion. I think that we all are on the same team here, wanting what is best for the encyclopedia. But you really, really need to be aware that a large brush fire has been burning under your watch for quite some time now, and it needs to be dealt with thoughtfully. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:07, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

I would also suggest a look at WP:BN. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:31, 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)

Responding to some questions and concerns

Hi folks. I'm not very active here mostly because it's not a very active page in general. It's usually vandalism, which is quickly reverted by folks who watch the page (thank you!). But when I'm pinged there's a lot of activity here, like today, you have my attention, and here I am.

I understand people are very upset about my tweet yesterday. My tweet wasn't really meant to be about the BuzzFeed article about the situation here on enWP, it was meant more a comment about Twitter and media culture in general. (If I’d wanted to comment on the article, I would have linked to it directly.) But I understand why it was upsetting, and why it could be seen as dismissing or dismissive of perspectives and people here in the en-wiki community. That truly wasn't my intention, and I apologize. (It was also a somewhat ill-conceived and hasty throwaway, which is Twitter in a nutshell, versus what I hope will be a more thoughtful and well-written reflection here, more in line with the nature of this community.) Thank you for reaching out and inviting me to clarify my intention here.

My actual feeling on the BuzzFeed article, which I also clarified on Twitter, is that it accurately covers the situation in the community and the anger or frustration people have expressed about the ban and the Foundation's action. In general, I don't have issues with negative press coverage of criticisms about the Foundation or my own judgment and actions. That’s part of my role, and often I find it very useful to help me learn and improve. To that end, the coverage of the conversations was a fair characterization of many perspectives here. Very often the press doesn't really understand the workings of Wikimedia, however, the journalist clearly did his homework to understand community conversations and processes. He put in the effort, so kudos - that's not easy and it often takes people a long time. (I personally found the “culture war” framing to be strange, because seemed like it was trying to make a Wikipedia issue into a comment on society as a whole, using a very American perspective for what is a fairly international community.)

However, while I don't have any issues with the things I described above, I did felt the way it handled reporting on the alleged targets of harassment was objectionable. For people who know how the communities work, it would be very easy from the article to identify those individuals. That is not okay, and it would have been possible to write the article on the issue and the controversy without needing to take that approach. The Foundation communications team has been in touch with the Buzzfeed editors with our concerns around that. I take very seriously the matter of protecting members of our community, especially ones being harmed by harassment. Criticism is fine, but you shouldn't make it harder for people who already are in a hard place in order to make a point. Or, as I've been taught, don't 'punch down.'

Even if I’ve not been vocal here on my talk page or on other discussions, I’ve been closely monitoring what’s been going on here on en-wiki, and will continue to do so. I believe there are things that could have been handled better on the Foundation side, including my own communications. My goal, which I’ve shared with the Board and am happy to share with you all here, is to find a path to de-escalate the current situation and build better, lasting solutions to the issues of harassment. To me, this means consulting with the enWP community to address your articulated concerns about our respective roles and community processes, identifying some clear next steps to resolve some of the current concerns, and consulting on how we can work together to strengthen community self-governance while also cultivating a respectful editing environment that safeguards everyone in the community.

As always, I appreciate people's passion and the community's efforts toward holding the Foundation accountable, even when these conversations are difficult. I recognize I've also not answered every question or responded to every comment on my page today -- there's a lot, and I wanted to focus on the things that seemed most important and to have the most energy around them.

I know it doesn’t seem like it to many people at the moment, but I wholeheartedly support and am committed to the principle of partnership with members of this and other project communities. It’s been a part of my commitment as a Foundation employee for five years, and consultation is something I’ve made an effort to embed in every aspect of our work, from the movement strategy conversations to the product development process. We don’t always get it right, and even if we do, we don’t and won’t always agree on everything. But I know that collaboration and discourse is essential, and something we all -- Foundation and staff alike -- should always be working toward. Thank you. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)