Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, please note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.

« Archives, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57

Are WMF and WP too different to ever get along ?

WMF (non developers) and WP are very very different Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory#Dimensions of national cultures just as a model for discussion to show how different they are

• Power distance index (PDI): WP -medium (new editors), WMF low
• Individualism vs. Collectivism  : WP 50/50 , WMF - Very Collective
• Uncertainty avoidance  : WP - High, WMF - Low
• Masculinity vs. Femininity : WP : More Masculine , WMF Very Feminine (see article for explanation)
• Short (tradition) vs Long (Change) ; WP S, WMF L
• Indulgence vs. restraint ; WP : High R, WMF HIgh I

And bonus DIversity : WP em/en dash preference; WMF people not like WP editors Wikipedia is : for WP it's the editors, for WMF it's the readers whose desires are only known to WMF Countries : WP is Samurai Japan plus California hippies, WMF is Sweden :-) Wikipedia exists to ; WP - create Wikipedia,free speech, an NPOV WMF -as a cash cow

I think we suck on a few things (mercilessly, no long term planning, ..), but based on this I suggest we need a divorce. WMF can have the $100 M, but we want the Kids (WMF developers, IT, organisers, and the person from fundraising who was brave enough to ask about the emails 13:02, 27 August 2022 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:02, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

It's difficult. Wikipedia, especially enwp, is the WMF's cash cow. In return, WMF provides useful functions such as legal and administrative services, a hardware platform, maintaining the software and (slowly and reluctantly) adding a few requested features. On the other hand, the vast majority of the money goes elsewhere with no direct benefit to editors or readers: interference in government, global diversity workshops, unwanted technical changes, financial trusts with no clear aim. Splitting could benefit Wikipedia in the long run, with a lower level of income spent in a more focused way, but is hampered by the stupid decision to give Wikpedia's domain names and trademarks to a WMF which has a strong incentive to withhold them. Certes (talk) 13:41, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I think the Wikimedia foundation is a bit like NASA: slow, bureaucratic, resistant to change, with its reputation primary provided by its early glory years. I don't have the solution here, but it is imperative that the WMF must become nimble if it wants to survive for the next 10 years. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:22, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Also, technologies have improved, and it is not out of a question for an individual or group of individuals to fork Wikipedia for the community, like the second reincarnation. To me, this is absolutely not an ideal situation, but will eventually happen if the WMF continues to be aloof with important issues and toying with random things. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:24, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Splitting worked for LibreOffice and others but it's very much a last resort, because we'd leave behind integration with other WMF projects and the excellent reputation of the Wikipedia brand. The best option is for the WMF to revert to its previous narrow role which has community consensus. However, that would put a lot of people who out of a comfortable job, and we can't expect turkeys to vote for Christmas. Certes (talk) 18:50, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

A fork is a bad idea, but you also can't put the cat back in the bag. The only way out is through, and continuing to move forward. Andre🚐 19:57, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

A fork of Spanish Wikipedia happened in 2002, you can read about it in meta:Spanish Fork. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:53, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't count the developers as on the community's side rather than the WMF. I don't dispute there are exceptions, but consider how many clashes between the WMF and the volunteer community have been IT focussed (the premature release of V/E, that viewer experiment, the reader comments box etc etc). Mixing volunteer and paid staff on the same project is not easy, especially if you want to maintain volunteer motivation and self respect. There are models that can succeed longterm such as "staff are employed to do the things that volunteers want to happen but aren't volunteering to do". However I don't see the WMF agreeing to adopt any of the viable models that could lead to a stable and successful movement for the longterm. Less than a decade ago part of the tension between the community and the WMF was over civility and harassment issues, but with the WMF as the less "woke" side of the equation. One reading of the UCOC dispute is that the WMF has gone from taking such issues less seriously than the community to taking them more seriously. Another reading, and one I find more convincing, is that the WMF's commitment to wokeness is barely skin deep and ill thought out. The UCOC is more about an old fashioned power grab, a secretive and centralised solution by people who neither respect nor understand the way the community works. If the WMF was really as "woke" as the community they wouldn't have been so resistant to the Portuguese language community ending IP editing, and they'd be using their real world influence to get IP companies and Police forces to deal with the people who make death threats against members of our community. To me the divide between the WMF and the volunteer community is cultural, but I don't see it through the lens of Hofstede's theory. I see one side of the divide looking at the Movement in silicon valley terms as one of the top ten internet sites, where the volunteers and the product is all subject to a "move fast and break things" mindset and standardisation and centralisation are key, And the other side of the divide a group of people who have taken the dream of "making the world's knowledge freely available to all" or "making the internet not suck", and found a way to make that a reality in a radically decentralised wiki way... I agree that the two groups are close to needing a divorce, I'm not 100% convinced it is inevitable or unavoidable. ϢereSpielChequers 19:49, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

This is very insightful. My thoughts, inspired by this comment: Volunteers give their blood, tears, and sweat equity as early stakeholders in open-source projects. Governance is tricky when it becomes top-down. To the extent the foundation can listen to community feedback and be on the side of the "workers," it will be less of a scab to "management." The startup mentality has always been a part of Wikipedia, the trouble is when control and predictability become more important than spontaneity and creativity in problem-solving. The foundation may not understand the community ad hoc self-organizing systems, and instead try to use a regular hierarchical corporate directive, which won't work. It's about servant leadership, retrospectives, being open-minded on the details but focusing on principles, values, and making sure the specifics remain negotiable and you don't over-plan. Andre🚐 19:56, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that top down v bottom up is a major faultline in the divide between the WMF and the community. I don't accept that it is inevitable that governance moves from a bottom up philosophy to a top down one. ϢereSpielChequers 20:04, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree. There are certain objectives and key results that may come from the top-down, but the solutions and the approaches should be determined by the community. Andre🚐 20:08, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

I am certain that NPP will get their developer, that WMF will tone down their donation approach, and that there will be a community outreach with lots of t-shirts. But I can't see that WP Meta or WMF are prepared to move on root issues for another few years until the lobster heats up a bit more, so I think the best thing is to create our own interWIki council. It's diversity, so it must be good. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 02:40, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok - I was wrong :-( The interWiki council is also a bad idea Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

I think the developers are very much like us based on what they write. It has all the same issues we have been discussing Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:05, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: a clarification, if I may: "Mixing volunteer and paid staff on the same project is not easy" (agreed wholeheartedly, but...) "especially if you want to maintain volunteer motivation and self respect." — I'm not sure I follow here? — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 03:12, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

As a volunteer on software development for the project, I, like TNT, would also appreciate some clarification on this sentence. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:11, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm reasonably sure either this post is satire, or one or several of the replies are satire, or all of the above. Otherwise, I'd be significantly more fearful of the future of the project, but of course the posters on meta pages are not really a representative sample of editors. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:16, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv In any satire there is some truth. I don't think a divorce is inevitable (But didn't eswp do that?) With whether it is representative, I suggest you look at the discussion on Wikimedia donations emails on Proposal, Then hav search for #wikipediascam, google trends, google news for wikipedia and donation, quora, reddit, and it is worth getting a login for this ycombinator thread Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 02:24, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

There was another, bigger ycombinator thread before that one. Andreas JN466 10:16, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

At least there's a few good points raised. I did comb the donation threads. I refuse to touch q***a on all principles -- if WMF-WP has integrity problems, q'a is satan incarnate. It would be good to collect links to key threads and points in one essay so that we don't have to refer people to all corners of the internet for this grand controversy. I don't know what substantial issue I should look for in particular through the noise, but I do find it funny that most of these threads begin with complaints about the endowment and management bloat, when the 2007 whistleblower thread (also brought up in complaints) was about financial mismanagement which was, as described, due in large part to lack of logistical staff. The logical remedy is to hire competent logistical staff, whose overhead increases with the size and scope of projects and their finances.

I don't know how WMF decided on their endowment goal, but as WMF operates globally and often has to deal with government legal threats directly I imagine a substantial hedge is justifiable. I also don't know how they are perceived as an investment in terms of risk, should they need to leverage funds, which would also substantially influence their endowment goals. Maybe there's some new grand project being planned that hasn't been revealed, who knows, but for an org of this size and scope I fail to see how a $100m endowment is inappropriate. It's also common in reaction threads that commenters will list expenditures that are a waste of money, then immediately follow with an alternative wishlist that is comparably or far more expensive yet always objectively more prudent.

Orgs aren't perfect, and nonprofits and NGOs in particular are notorious for inefficiencies that expand with size (independent audits and open donation ratings help mitigate this, but it seems there will always be at least some baseline inefficiency that is in part intrinsic to the nonprofit and/or donation incentive model). None of this is to suggest there is something wrong with vocally complaining -- it is essential to an open audit system -- but can we at least separate the realistic substance from the cruft from the plain ridiculous? SamuelRiv (talk) 15:28, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The key issue is quite different from the money amounts per se – it's about how the money is brought in. It's about making people think you are struggling to keep Wikipedia online when in fact you have $400 million in assets and reserves, have reached your $100 million endowment target in half the time planned, enjoy huge annual surpluses and have steeply rising executive salaries.

Add to that the fact that the Endowment has never to date published audited accounts or disclosed any of its expenditure. Andreas JN466 22:39, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

??/ Where does the 400 Million come from?/ (I couldn;t work out a definite number :-)). I have no problems in paying staff. If they help WP, and make editors life easier then go for it. And Strongly agree about the [1]], It has some clever people on it, but I think it has one editor on it, and I didn't realize that their were no reports. I would prefer that there was an editor appointed audit expertWakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 03:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

It's an estimate of financial status at the end of the third quarter of the 2021/2022 fiscal year (i.e. status at the end of March 2022). It is based on the following:

– Net assets in June 2021: $231.2 million ($51 million up on year prior)

– Endowment in June 2021: $100 million ($37.1 million up on year prior)

– Increase in net assets as of 31 March 2022: $51.9 million

– Increase in Endowment as of January 2022, the most recent figure available: $13.4 million

So, adding together, we have $231.2 million + $100 million + $51.9 million + 13.4 million = $396.5 million. There are another $3.2 million left in the m:Knowledge Equity Fund, earmarked to go to non-WMF organizations.

Note that the WMF had a total surplus of $88 million in 2020/2021 (Endowment growth included). (For more on Endowment transparency, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-05-29/Opinion.) Andreas JN466 06:38, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I was wondering who WMF funds. Please look at page 69 of their IRS 990, i don't understand why we are getting other organisations to do WMFs charity work.

• Tides $5.5 M
• yale $260 K (but the last mention is 2017)
• Peace Development Fund 150 K - no mention
• Black Lunch Table $168K but i can't find a mention that we donate

* We also seem to give grants to a Wikipedia DC, which I assume is to get around the non-profit lobbying rules

Also have a look at the breakdown by country for funding and spending and staff, page 41 Schedule F part 1 and 2 11:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Pretending that money is needed to keep the servers running then diverting it to political pressure groups is a gross breach of trust, however noble the causes being advocated. It leaves me with a serious ethical conflict: I want to continue helping our readers, but each article I improve makes me feel like an accessory to fraud. It seems that every time I log in, there's a new proposal to hijack another part of our encyclopedia's governance. I want to continue contributing, but we're very close to the last straw. Certes (talk) 12:20, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, which political pressure groups are being funded? I don't see any listed above. I'm not sure how the Yale grant is any more controversial than any other major WMF grant. The reason you partner with outside institutions is because outside institutions are more established and experienced with the infrastructure to do it better and cheaper than if you did every little thing in house. Should we establish the "WMF office of janitor development" to fund our own office cleaning staff, or just pay a company to do it? For comparison, Google and other companies donate to WMF, a nonprofit, not because they're being nice, but because WMF projects are extremely important to their own R&D and business development, and it makes far more sense to support WMF than to start a "WikiGooglePedia" clone that is identical in every way -- donation based, etc. -- for the sole purpose of being an in-house operation, just to satisfy a handful employees who don't like the idea of outsourced interests.

Tides Advocacy according to the FAQ is distributing the Equity Fund, not simply being given money to spend on their own lobbying. I'm not quite sure I understand the model of Tides Advocacy still, as OpenSecrets isn't really open about its data -- Tides Advocacy is responsible for lobbying money, but that's part of what it's explicit purpose is -- to spend lobbying money on behalf of other nonprofits. It's hard to gather how much, if any, lobbying it does on behalf of its own interests. Regardless, this isn't about Tides lobbying, as WMF's explanation suggests. I don't know what Sched. F is supposed to indicate -- are you surprised $11m is spent in the entirety Europe in this breakdown? If the amount is what surprises you, why is it not the total -- why Europe specifically?

Finally, I've seen it argued in these same threads that WMF should do more government lobbying on behalf of, say, IP (and typically open source advocacy slips in there too -- some people also voice concerns about China and Russia policy). Would it make more sense for Google to hire, in-house, the dozen or so expensive people needed who specialize in high-level IP lobbying (IP lawyers are not a sufficient substitute), something that would only be really needed to be working on all engines a handful of times every decade when major legislation comes up, or just outsource to a lobbying firm? SamuelRiv (talk) 15:37, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv Lobbying removes our tax exemption. I agree Tides is very confusing (note only the 2019 990 returns are available

1. The [[Tides Foundation] companies include Tide Advocacy, and is interlinked with many WMF projects
   • There are many issues (See signpost for more information).
   • “The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which manages Wikipedia, is closely tied to the Tides Foundation."
   • "The general counsel of Wikimedia, Amanda Keton, is the former general counsel of the Tides Network, the former head of Tides Foundation, and the former CEO of Tides Advocacy."
   • “The multimillion-dollar Wikimedia Endowment, created in 2016, is managed by the Tides Foundation and has an advisory board appointed by Tides. In 2020, Wikimedia established the multimillion-dollar Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Fund to be run by Tides Advocacy”
   • There is no mention of Tides on Wikimedia Endowment
   • I found a few other people that overlapped with both companies.
   • There is no conflict of interest is not broke as the WMF counsel is a past employee.
   • The Tides Foundation are not involved with education
   • They support only Democratic candidates, but | not that much directly, and instead via PACs and small organizations
   • tides makes no mention of wikipedia or wikimedia or education
2. Tides Advocacy is not involved with education
   • [| IRS 990] states "TIDES ADVOCACY MAKES CONTRIBUTIONS TO ORGANIZATIONS THAT SUPPORT POLITICAL ACTIVITY, CONDUCTS INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURES, AND MAKES PARTISAN COMMUNICATION TO EXPRESSLY ADVOCATE FOR THE ELECTION OR DEFEAT OF A CANDIDATE."
   • They funded a Democratic candidate and did 800 K of lobbying
   • There is one mention of education on their 990 – A grant of 10 K to North Carolina A Philip Randolf Educational Fund Inc for the purpose of environmentalism.
   • No grants have a purpose of education.
   • Their [[The Advocacy Fund - Tides website make no mention of education - but specifies their purpose as "civic participation, Healthy Individuals and Communities"
3. Some of their consultants actual work seems to differs from that on the IRS form   (company, IRS stated work, their website, $)
   • KIVVIT, Consulting Services (Issues Campaigning) $505,022
   • BASE BUILDER Payroll Services (Mailing lists) $386,373
   • THREE POINT STRATEGIES Staffing services (US Electoral Strategy),
   • | Natasha MINSKER Consulting Services (Actually "Skilled in Public Policy, Politics, Lobbying, Non-profit Management, Community Organizing, and Criminal Law. Graduated from Stanford University Law School.")
4. Certain accounts on Tide Advocacy seem very high - especially per employee - bracketed amounts below. ( I think they have 20 employees (p/t and f/t ) but they also hire temps).
   • Travel $1.76 Million (90 k)
   • Other Employee expenses $1.6 million (80K)
   • Office Expenses $1 million (50 K per employee -which does not include occupancy of $534)
   • Conferences 900 K (wow)
   • IT is 260 K (13 K) But they only have 7.3 K of equipment??? ( See P 51 of 990}
   • Political Donations 800 K
5. Tides Network is mentioned on  the Tide Advocacy  990 (p 72), but as unrelated.  On the Tides Network 990 it supports Tide Foundation, Tides Centre, Tides inc. It pays $13 M of network fees and “Tides Network supports the operating Organizations and appoints board members for Tides Foundation, Tides Center, Tides Two Rivers Fund and Tides, Inc. Tides Network sets the direction and policy orientation for and has economic interest in all of Tides organizations.” Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:47, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Giving money to Yale, funding the Black Lunch Table in Chicago, earmarking $4.5 million for non-Wikimedia organizations (more than half the grant money so far going to US orgs) etc. is all very well, but then you shouldn't tell people in India and South Africa that you urgently need their money to keep Wikipedia online. Andreas JN466 10:19, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

And Agreed we are telling whoppers

??? Does anyone know which months the banner ads have run. I would be interested to know whether they have increased up the number of times the ads appear,

I turned off the don't show banner ads a few dsays...But they didn't appear :-( But when I logged out, I got an awesome message of doom that took up the whole screen. It hasn't happened again.

Asides

Hmmm. ,,,It would be quite amusing to copy all their banner ads to one page, and have the editors descend to tag it :-) The media would find that amusing :-) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:59, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

The ads appear in different regions at different times. There's a list at m:Special:CentralNotice – filter on Campaign type = Fundraising – but it seems incomplete: I recall a campaign last December. At least the perpetrators recognise that Users already hate these banners. Certes (talk) 14:00, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

m:Fundraising has an overview of current_fundraising_activities. In addition to the scheduled campaigns listed on that page there are sometimes low-volume campaigns run for testing purposes, where banners only appear for a small subset of users. That's why people sometimes see a fundraising banner appearing "out of season". Andreas JN466 14:26, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that I wanted to find out if WMf had increased the frequency, because one of the fundraising staff wrote [this] saying it was a bad ideaWakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:36, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp: The $5.5 million to Tides are the annual $5 million paid into the Endowment (and included in WMF "expenses"), plus planned gifts, all of which have been diverted from the WMF and redirected into the Endowment since the February 25, 2021 board resolution. So any money people have left to Wikimedia in their wills in the past today goes into the Endowment. Andreas JN466 08:33, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

They are the 2019 numbers, but it still means that we are funding a Democratic Party fund raiser???

As far as I can see Tide (which was co-created in '72 by the heir to a cigarette fortune has taken us over),the trustees are toothless, and the WMF will keep on increasing up its staff :-(

Vivat Tidepedia! Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:27, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

It's amazing to me the WMF doesn't fund more software projects. When a proposal was made to create a citation database it was rejected. Just one example. I understand they tried this with VE and got kind of burned, but that was a white whale project from the start. Smaller more doable projects that have a big impact. For example let's get a really good version of what reFill does to get our citations standardized. And make the tools cross-language. -- GreenC 04:46, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree keeping it small and attainable, with frequent iterative deliveries, and user testing and feedback, is the way to go. The visual editor citation toolbar works pretty well, if you're citing a standard URL or a DOI or ISBN, I mostly use that now instead of reFill and CitationBot, and you can enable it in the beta settings for the wikitext editor as well. Andre🚐 05:04, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

@Andrevan @CactiStaccingCrane I would like a way of reducing down the time/friction to find and cite articles. Reading references is fun, but it's multi step, so it's a pain for new editors

• A curated reference (NPP reputation tools) search engine similar to the film project's. ability to exclude self published, google books without preview, check for AKA names from articles.
• JSTOR is mentioned in the missing ref for cites is restricted to 500 edits, so excludes new users that know citations
• Google Book cite is not context sensitive (so manual entry of chapter name, page, chapter author, we don't use Google books API google site is missing data references ), and no image ocr to text tool, Ideally, it would be nice to get special approval from Authors' Guild & Google to have full or at least text access to the snips.Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:49, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC WMF doesn't fund things because there is no upside for them.I asked for the road-map the other day, and got pointed to this, and it makes sense because we have no roadmap ourselves:-( Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:20, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

So, let's make a goal for ourselves. What specific goal would we want to achieve by 2023? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Change the proposal process. All proposal are created as an article. Editors comment on the article talk, and write an evidence based article. Results are fed back to the proposal page. 07:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:59, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Changed my mind again :-) Create a WP Development board. Have elections. - all active editors vote. They can work out what their job is, but they have to report to ALL active editors Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:17, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Relating to the "Masculinity vs Femininity" question, how does WMF show "a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life" as opposed to Wikipedia editors showing "a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success"? Strange post. Dialmayo (talk) (Contribs) she/her 17:48, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

• WMF The WMF vision is very F ("Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment") matches pretty well with "a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life ; It is not achievement based (John Lennon type imagine), or assertive, or measurable, and the weak in this case are the information poor. The modest doesn’t match for management, but I think it describes a large number of WMF employees.
• WP community I have placed the WP equivalent in brackets "a preference in society for achievement (number of edits, articles, references,front page, DYK, heroism (NPP, anti-vandalism, bleck/white thinking ), assertiveness (AfD, NPP, ANI, robust debate), and material rewards for success (well we don’t get paid, and I think many of us are less than fluch with funds, but maybe this matches with being an admin, respected, ,,,,) . But it is a model and "a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life" also matches well with lp desk, tearoom, AfC, reference desk, quarry, helping newsbies, and nearly all the editors i have ever interacted with.

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 10:43, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I like to think that the typical long-term Wikipedia editor also exhibits the qualities attributed to the WMF above. If anything, the WMF seems more achievement-based: it emphasises acquiring, measuring and spending donations, various equality metrics and deployment of new software (wanted or not). Certes (talk) 11:32, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure whether WMF measure themselves that much; WMF measure WP outcomes (with donations being the exception, but even that is not really in their control that much). Dev is actually not measured that much - except for say a big milestone (Vector 2022) - there doesn't seem to be measures of new feature use, links to business KPIs, "cost" justifications. With the wanted or not software, open source projects typically give you the option to use/not use. but the way WMF manages wiki seems to be very unlike other open source projects The core product is not being develops to meet external challenges, or evolving based on personal preferences (but we don't have that many available/visible anyway) becoming popular. For instance, with Vector 2022, the dev team had a one size fits all mentallity/no preferences - WP editors should have the same UX as readers. They didn't understand that it was our IDE (editing workspace), and their own IDE had 132 char line. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The WMF currently uses the OKR framework rather than KPIs. There's a dedicated team for measuring results in the Product department (see their current work on Phab), plus every team in Product and Technology has to do their own work. Measuring feature use is routine during development, and sometimes continues afterwards. For example, the Reply tool that I'm using right now has been used 2.42 million times since inception through the end of November, across all wikis, and 184K in November. The Editing Team has also run an A/B test for every major feature in this project, and another is coming up as soon as the instrumentation passes QA. It sounds like you aren't personally aware of the work that's done in this area, and then perhaps jumped to the conclusion that since you didn't know about it, it wasn't happening. And, honestly, I get it: you probably have more important things to do with your life than to wonder which metrics are being used for which bit of software.

More generally, I have looked at your comments on this overall subject over the last couple of months, and I have not found that they align with my experiences either in the WMF or in any of the communities I'm part of. "The WP Community" doesn't have single culture. Even the much smaller subset of "the English Wikipedia's core community" doesn't have a single culture. It might be interesting for someone to do some proper research on the question. (The last time I read research on a related point, it was years ago and more about individual psychology, and concluded that we [the editors at the English Wikipedia] were conscientious, disagreeable, and neurotic.)

For anyone who finds this sort of thing fun, there's a sort of cultural-personality quiz at https://hbr.org/2014/08/whats-your-cultural-profile that you might enjoy. The only regret I have about it is that it compares your results against your selected country, but doesn't tell you which country's profile you are most closely aligned with. In this context, it would be interesting if we could aggregate the results, so we can see how much the responses spread. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank-you for your comments about measurements/objectives and key results (OKR), as you know the organisation up close and I don't. I am glad to know that dev works likes that, but I am uncertain about some parts of WMF rather. Finance is very good though. The personality stuff I am still researching, and thinking about. SO

Change to communication style Other people will know this better, but before Lila Tretikov left in March 2016, this was how OKR was presented, and the comments are clear, and the measures are visible.

At some stage, the emphasis on clear communication stopped, and the goals became vaguer/more PR speak.

This page outlines the history

"Replaced by Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/Quarterly check-ins until 2019. Since July 2019, this has been replaced by Wikimedia Foundation tuning sessions." and has now been stopped I think

Current measure issues

1/ Sometimes the measurements is for purposes that are totally at odds with what I think of as enWP values. "Leverage this high traffic (due to COVID 19) to Wikipedia through paid media to increase positive awareness and trust before the Fundraising tests in the US"

2/ Sometimes the measures don’t match with other figures (WMF state that active editors are increasing by 7 % per year) or compared with prior reports for year on year figures, or show weird peaks in certain months such as May.

3/ Many of the areas, have a very low success rate in what should be their core KPI (often because the task is Herculean) and instead focus on the qualitative or inputs, or have lots of percentages rather than raw data.

4/ Sometimes the measures are causing a concentration on gaming the measures. YMMV Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 04:49, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Like most well-managed US organizations, the WMF reviews and adjusts the quarterly review system every few years. At the WMF, they like to rename the system when they do this. However, the overall point is the same: upper management officially checks in to see whether the annual plan is on track, so they can report to the Board about how well the organization is following the direction set by the Board.

As for publishing less, I understand that there was a serious discussion about the costs and benefits, given that almost nobody reads the material. As it reached my ears, the question amounted to whether it was right to spend 100+ hours, four times a year, producing reports that will apparently be read by just one or two people who aren't being paid to do so. If there had been more ongoing, organic interest, they probably would have continued to create and publish detailed results.

On your metrics:

• Why shouldn't the WMF run paid advertisements telling people that WPMED and WPCOVID were doing a great job with COVID-related content? It looks like you stayed away from those articles, but I spent many hours in them, and I wasn't even a major contributor compared to some other editors. Reminding readers that Wikipedia isn't full of COVID misinformation like some other sites was a positive thing. Postponing the routine fundraising tests during the early parts of that advertising campaign was also very appropriate.
• About the 7% increase: Summer is usually quieter, but during the first summer of the COVID pandemic, more people had to stay home, and some of them decided to edit. Everyone I talked to back then – volunteers and staff alike – expected the number of editors to increase when compared against the previous summer, when people's time available for editing was competing with travel, sports, parties, and outdoor fun. Weird peaks in certain months are expected. Expect "weird peaks" every Janaury (seems to be a New Year's Resolution thing), every September (when Wiki Loves Monuments runs), and so forth.
• I don't know why you think they have low success rates. Or maybe you think the problem is that they set goals that don't match yours? It is easy to imagine different groups having opposite goals: "Increase editing by newcomers" and "Prevent unwanted edits" are pretty much opposite goals. We (i.e., volunteer editors) have joked for years that we could reliably stop all vandalism by blocking everyone, but that's not a viable strategy long-term. (Percentages are the normal way to measure changes Year over year.)
• I notice that you provide no link or evidence that there is any "concentration on gaming the measures". Gaming metrics is possible in any system, but that doesn't mean that measuring something is inappropriate. See, e.g., the volunteers at this wiki whose key metric is whether certain maintenance backlogs have reached a round number. You could write a script to empty Category:Candidates for speedy deletion in mere seconds, or to empty Special:NewPagesFeed in minutes, but nobody does. You could game a metric, but when reality is important to you, you don't have any incentive to do so.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Report changes "Like most well-managed US organizations, the WMF reviews and adjusts the quarterly review system every few years" Such changes are often mentioned on annual reports, but there is always a risk associated with reduction in reported information because it reduces oversight,

Other common examples would be the reduction in the number of auditor days or no increase as the organisation increases, or the removal of board approval, or the dilution of board attention on finance and managerial performance by adding other tasks/roles etc

Tuning sessions Tuning is associated with public relations, and it de-emphasises that the management have a duty to report. I was incorrect that the quarterly reviews have stopped , @Jayen466 mentions that they have just stopped being published.

Cost Benefit "As it reached my ears, the question amounted to whether it was right to spend 100+ hours, four times a year, producing reports that will apparently be read by just one or two people who aren't being paid to do so." The 100+ hours is very small compared to the budget, it is a normal thing that organisations do, and the management and the trustees have a duty to examine the report in great detail, and raise any concerns The "read by one or two people who aren't being paid to do so", is deeply troubling- I didn't realize that was how they viewed the editors. The problem with financial reports is that they really aren't that exciting for most people, because they don't see them as insights into an organisation; they are boring. The earlier reports were much better as they tended to be a more warts and all, an provided information that allowed you to concentrate.

Ongoing Interest " If there had been more ongoing, organic interest, they probably would have continued to create and publish detailed results." If you look through the various talk pages for reports there is actually interest and questions, and newsletters do mention it but I agree there is no focus. The trustees are supposed to have provided this, but as a counter example there has been many years of unhappiness about fundraising without action so I think there is an organic interest.

COVID My problem with COVID ad slide was not that WMF was saying what a great job editors were done, but that the advertisement was intended to increase the amount of donations later. I appreciate the work that you and the volunteers did, especially coping with so much pre-print.

Year on year increases Your points are well made, but if you look through the reports there are references to nil baseline year after year, and there are some programs with very good people that are impossibly hard, With YOY figures they are %s, but you need the raw numbers to check them.

Goals ""Or maybe you think the problem is that they set goals that don't match yours?" For instance, have the new wikis been successful in organic growth? I would like that Wikipedia articles to improve in quality, and that more wikipedia editors.

Gaming metrics Detection is always tricky, but one way is to compare user impressions to metrics. The headline measures for WMF is donations. diversity, new/active editors. and edits/new articles are all up. But Wikipedia editors are concerned about lack of editors. There are other ones such as counting experienced editors that attended an editathon towards number of edits, but I don't mind that as I think editathons are justifiable in many ways. Funding the mobile telco access in India doesn't seem to have a measure etc.

You could game a metric, but when reality is important to you, you don't have any incentive to do so For editors I think this is true, and I found it incomprehensible when I was younger that all people wouldn't think the same. But if someone believes that a goal or personal status is more important than anything else then .... Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 16:36, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood the quarterly reviews and reports. These are not financial in nature. These are meetings in which lower-level managers present slide decks to tell upper management what their teams have done for the last three months. The "tuning" had nothing to do with public relations. Think "tuning up your car to improve performance and efficiency".

English Wikipedia articles have improved in quality. For example, we're at an all-time high for percentage of sentences that have an inline citation. This improvement in the inside-the-article quality is probably happening at the expense of having any article at all, even one that says as little as "Alice Expert is a professor of expertise at Big University", on many subjects, and disproportionately on subjects related to marginalized people, but if your wish is only for quality improvements to the surviving articles, then your wish has been fulfilled, and, for better or worse, it is likely to continue being fulfilled.

Wikipedia editors have been concerned about the lack of editors ever since I started editing, and probably before that, too. Sometimes it really does mean that someone wants more editors. Rarely if even means that someone wants new content creators, rather than more gnomes chipping away at a backlog. However, more often, those complaints appear when someone's wiki-friend has stopped editing. Rather than saying I'm sad that my friends have stopped editing (I could name a whole list, and I've also written two entries in Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians) or posted a meatball:GoodBye-style resignation manifesto, it's fairly common for editors to declare that there is a general crisis and that soon there will be no editors. I haven't looked up the number of editors here for about a year, but the last time I looked, the numbers had been either flat or slightly rising for years. The general story is that enwiki and dewiki are basically stable in terms of number of editors, and that growth happens outside these wikis. If enwiki's numbers are up, it's because people in India and Africa are coming online, not because more British or American editors are being created. This, of course, has challenges for the existing enwiki community, especially RecentChanges, AFC, and NPP folks, because it means that there will be more articles created and edited about people, places, and subjects that the average person in those roles hasn't ever heard of. It's difficult to correctly evaluate a subject's notability if you don't recognize the names of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the relevant country.

I find individual editors who game metrics (e.g., asking for an article to be deleted so that they can claim credit for creating it), but in conversations at work, I find people talking about the limitations of certain metrics and why a particular metric might not be valid. For example, I was in a conversation a little while ago about measuring the change in activity from a particular geographic region, and half the conversation was how another team's work could accidentally render the metric useless. It wouldn't be possible to separate "change due to our project" from "change due to their project". If the goal were just to show that something changed, then this wouldn't be a concern; in fact, you would embrace this, because it doubles your chance of being able to claim that your project was successful. But instead, as usual, they cared more about reality, so they're searching for a different metric. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

By quality, I meant any move in content assessment on projects. Is wanting that a controversial thing for WMF?

Can you point me to the statistics you used for your statements that

• we're at an all-time high for percentage of sentences that have an inline citation.”
• “The general story is that enwiki and dewiki are basically stable in terms of number of editors, and that growth happens outside these wikis"

You mentioned a number of concerns about en editors {"It's difficult to correctly evaluate a subject's notability if you don't recognize the names of the biggest newspapers and magazines in the relevant country” and “This improvement in the inside-the-article quality is probably happening at the expense of having any article at all, ... and disproportionately on subjects related to marginalized people,”)

But if there is no concern about editor numbers why are either of these an issue? And have you any proof that these issue are happening? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:48, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if the first has been published (I asked for a particular graph to be uploaded to Commons months ago, but I don't know if it happened).

For the second, here are the number of active editors in every January for the last decade or so (January, because I didn't feel like typing ~130 dates and numbers into this template; these numbers are public if you want to explore more yourself):

Number of editors per year

Year	Number
2012	530,393
2013	503,848
2014	458,111
2015	400,370
2016	458,304
2017	456,975
2018	449,805
2019	448,453
2020	436,116
2021	456,389
2022	400,250

Looking at these, it appears that the overall numbers have been pretty much flat since 2014. It's always possible that the low in Janaury 2022 is the start of a trend, but you need more than one data point to declare a trend, and since January 2015 was almost identical, then any competent statistician would suggest not jumping to conclusions.

That said, I, in my own personal, entirely non-expert capacity, would predict a decline compared 2021, because numbers went up a bit during the pandemic (as seen in the January 2021 data point), and as the pandemic resolves in most of the developing world, one would expect the numbers to go back down by approximately the same amount that it went up. I would be surprised if the current month has fewer than 350K editors, but I wouldn't be surprised if the January numbers come in lower than last January's 400K. I also wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were back up, either.

In terms of the rest: I have seen articles rejected because the sources weren't in English, in violation of WP:NONENG, which obviously disadvantages editors (and subjects) from non-English-speaking countries. Editors have told me that they have cited the biggest newspaper in their country, and seen it reverted as "unreliable" – a claim that doesn't hold up under scrutiny, but most people don't know how to get that extra scrutiny. For example, I see that you made 8 edits to articles last month, and that one of those was reverted. You know how to ask for help; most people don't. To give a different type of example, there was a discussion earlier this week chiding an editor for being too formal when requesting help. The editor comes from a country that expects formality outside of family and close friends. It's very American to bristle when someone addresses you formally (it's part of the Baby Boomers' youth culture), but it's off-putting to people to be told that you need to follow someone else's cultural norms just to ask for help. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) The problem with the tuning session presentation decks surely was that people did read them and the info contained in them didn't match the PR (examples: Enterprise, donations surplus). There is little cost and effort involved in publication, as the decks are created and shown to employees anyway -- just some light editing to create a version suitable for publication and a Commons upload. This is what was done for well over a decade. Andreas JN466 18:13, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Aside from yourself, how many people can you name that regularly read the quarterly reports? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I've included information from them in articles that were very widely read, both here and elsewhere. It's the transparency that is valuable. Andreas JN466 22:01, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@Guy had a similar better expressed [[2]] "the idea is basically to give a wider group of stakeholders a voice in setting development priorities and approving feature changes. In business this would typically include development leadership and business stakeholders, and the idea is to make sure that effort is spent where it will have the most impact on organisational priorities. Normally we'd handle this through RfCs at Meta and the like, or by meetings between WMF and devs I guess, but the meta discussions tend to attract only people with detailed interest in things like microformatting, much of the discussion is arcaqne and they run on geological timescales."

"They can work out what their job is": Is this satire again?

If there's already proposal pages that editors can amend and discuss, and the proposer can submit grant applications and would do/coordinate the implementation, and WMF reviews the grants... what's a board for? (aside from whacking ideas for bloating the WP bureaucracy over the head, Stooges-style.) SamuelRiv (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Not Satire -All the committees started with vague responsibilities, which we then coloured in as we went.

I disagree that the proposal/grant process works well.

1. After the proposal is approved, then it falls down. No one is respsonsible for testing, reporting back, supporting the chage, and testing, Our process at the moment is proposal approved, WMF start work, ask for comment directly, install, RfC complaining, testing, modifications, complaints about defaulting it to all.
2. Gold Plating. The pareto principle applies to software in that 80 % of the cost is the last 20 % of work. Our current process causes large expensive projects, with many features that are unused, because multiple voices demand without triage
3. Planning. We have no forward plan for how we think WP will work, which means WMF have no roadmap. We have no risk reduction or proactive planning. For instance, what do we do if

• We have a Denial of service attack type attack on the NPP, through an AI creating thousands of articles.
• Google/Facebook creates an AI generated 'pedia
• Our tired UI encourages Generational change - The continuing decline in admins, 100 K editors leaving per year

$ Proposals and System changes are papering over conflict and editor resource issues,

1. Proposals are solutions, but there is no list of problems, and there is no data analysis to verify opinions.
2. Benefits of Change. There is no checking of whether the proposal achieved it's goal.
3. The Content creators (mostly new editors) are not involved. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:12, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

These are great points. If development on WM software is not currently managed well, how would proposing changes through a WP bureaucracy be different from proposing changes through a WMF bureaucracy? You still have to go through the participation of the entrenched volunteer WM programmers, which through divorce of projects you have suddenly fragmented. I don't know how the addition of additional input of WP editors into the process (there's phabricator, WMF project pages, emailing WMF people directly, proposals through WP, and more currently that you can do to raise these concerns or search for whether they are already being addressed) is supposed to help anything except possibly an editor's self-esteem, briefly, until they are ignored. It reminds me of the story Richard Feynman talks about of receiving messages from the public, even after filtering for those who aren't cranks -- he's busy trying to decode the combination lock on a safe, using some tools to make the process more methodical, and comments come in like "did you try 21-3-49? How about the bank manager's birthday?" There's a good case to be made that WM coding should have a better management structure, but in the end that will probably require hiring at least a project manager and principal coder, which means yet more $200k+ salaries to shell out. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:56, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I believe I am correct in stating that most WMF staff (employees + contractors) work remotely, i.e. from home. So why do they have to be in the US? There are many parts of the world outside the US where competent coders can be hired for a fraction of the cost. Andreas JN466 14:56, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

WMF funds some grant requests and not others, and they give reasons why. I have wondered about some of their rejections, whether it is due to being beaten out with a limited grants budget (all departments anywhere have limited budgets) or if they lost on merits or prospects for completion. Could you link the specific proposal you are referring to? SamuelRiv (talk) 15:35, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

When did WMF and WP start to diverge? Was it after the 2015 Harassment Survey? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 07:00, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I have been editing for 14 years and have been an administrator for five years. I have always tried to develop friendly relationships with WMF staffers and still have some friendships though far less so than in the past. I used to live about 32 miles from WMF headquarters in San Francisco, and was always willing to drive there, pay for bridge tolls and parking, and meet with the staffers to share the perspectives of highly productive volunteer editors who are essential to the success of the encyclopedia. As the years have gone by, the staffers that I knew and who paid attention to what I had to say as a highly active encyclopedia editor have moved on, presumably to even better jobs in the software industry. A few remain who I interact with, but it seems that the WMF is determined to throw its cash resources at "pie in the sky" efforts to draw in editors from poor countries without fixing the fundamental flaws with the mobile sites and apps that such potential editors are most likely to use. The WMF takes in the massive amounts of cash that poor people worldwide donate, and instead of spending that to allow people to truly collaborate on smartphones used by billions of people worldwide, they squander the money to keep overpaid and unproductive code monkeys prosperous for more and more years to come, to the detriment of the encyclopedia. The desktop site works just fine on modern smartphones. Why not shut down all mobile sites and apps, and lay off all of the developers who have utterly failed to make these mobile sites and apps fully functional for over a decade? Why should people who have failed for so long stay on the payroll? I hate to be mean but no profit making business would tolerate a dozen years of complete and utter incompetence from a project team, when the free alternative works just fine as I have proved over and over and over over the years. It is nest feathering behavior by human beings who should know better. Their excuse boils down to "it's hard". Not acceptable when the cash donations of poor people are at stake. Cullen328 (talk) 07:48, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 241#Newbie and IP edits should be vetted delayed before they go live " But we have a situation ongoing for a very very long time now that there is a disconnect between the community and the developers... a lack of trust is part of it... so that experimentation and rollback (something that we as Wikipedians should be super comfortable with) isn't allowed to happen. Any change to software is much much harder than it needs to be.-" Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:36, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Like you, I always switch to desktop view on mobiles and tablets; it's perfectly fine unless you have a 3-inch iPhone screen. It would be nice if the desktop view option were more prominent, or indeed the default setting.

Fundraising squeezing money out of poor people: See the current discussion/RfC over on the Proposals Village Pump, reviewing the Wikimedia fundraising emails about to go out. It touches on that.

As for throwing money at the developing world: While I think there may be some problems with spending decisions (see Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 5#Should the WMF have rules or policies for when banned users apply for or are part of the team that administers grants?), I looked at the Form 990 a while back and found that claims the WMF is spending large amounts of money in the developing world are merely a convenient PR meme. In reality, the amounts have been absolutely minuscule to date – less than 2.5% of revenue. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/News and notes#Where does the Wikimedia Foundation spend its_money? for a breakdown. Andreas JN466 08:25, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung , @Cullen328 Your posts made me wonder where the WMF developers spend their time

Exhibit 1 - fund raising Full board- 5 members

Exhibit 2 - Community Wishlist All in backlog

@WereSpielChequers You are correct - they aren't on our side - They can have the kids as well

??? Can we ask the trustees for the breakdown of costs by project ??? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Your "Exhibit 2 - Community Wishlist" link doesn't seem to work — I think you may have meant phab:tag/Community-Wishlist-Survey-2022? If so, that board appears to be a little misleading, and you might find phab:tag/community-tech a little more helpful in gaining an insight into how this specific team is spending their time In the interest of transparency, I work on the Community Tech team as a software engineer, though I consider myself a volunteer first and foremost. — TheresNoTime-WMF (talk • she/her) 16:38, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers, Cullen328, and TheresNoTime: Some people are conspicuous by their absence from this list, maybe it's because they are concerned about landing in the Foundation's bad books. Not that it would matter, the WMF doesn't appear to give a hoot because the SF cabal, or at least its management class, is a classic example of groupthink. I've often wondered what it's like to split one's personality between being a volunteer and accepting pay at the same time. Personally I don't think it's possible but I do admire the tiny handful of those who straddle the Great Divide and who are able to remain on the side of the volunteers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, I've been a volunteer since 2007, and was a WMUK part time staff member from 2013 to 2015. I can remember leaving the room for one WMUK AGM (I didn't have to be in the room as either a volunteer a member or an employee, and would have been in an odd situation if I'd been in the room for a particular item). Mostly though I thought it worked, and I think my history of being a volunteer for six years before I joined the staff was a big advantage in my GLAM role. As for your letter, I suspect I'm not the only Inclusionist who was put off by the sewer analogy. If I'd agreed with the letter a bit more I would have signed it, as we both learned many years ago when we and ScottyWong looked into the block logs of the most active editors, discreet and diplomatic approaches are not the best way to influence the WMF. ϢereSpielChequers 19:05, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers:, I wasn't alluding for a moment to your salaried role in a Wikipedia chapter. I will also never forget the one-to-one meeting we had in Oxford a great many years ago that inspired and encouraged me to become so active on NPP issues for over a decade. NPP has been without any coordination for a couple of years until MB stepped in recently. He and Novem Linguae are doing a grand job which partly includes doing some of the paid WMF's work for them for free. I thouroghly agree that discreet and diplomatic approaches are not the best way to influence the WMF. The new NPP oodinators' initiative with their letter is urgent and admirable although there might be some very minor turns of phrase that in hindsight could just possibly have been differently worded. I don't think they are a deal breaker though, and NPP certainly needs a lucky break soon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:56, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• There are clear culture-clashes between Wikipedia (enwiki in particular) and the WMF; and I definitely agree that some of the stuff they've spent the money enwiki (largely) generates on could have been more productive. But at the end of the day operating a site with the size and prominence of Wikipedia is going to require a sort of legal, financial, and bureaucratic overhead that cannot (currently) be done through enwiki's methods. I think we can and should push for better communication between the two and more input and influence from Wikipedia in the WMF's decision-making process, but I don't think it's realistic to suggest separating the two; we'd just need another WMF eventually. And at the end of the day, while I disagree with some of what the WMF has done, they've done better than the people who run any other high-profile website I can name - would you want to replace the WMF with the people who run Twitter? Google? Facebook? At the end of the day, outside of a tiny number of clashes that ended up having little impact in the grand scheme of things, the WMF has mostly allowed enwiki to do its thing, and enwiki has largely done all right by that arrangement. --Aquillion (talk) 03:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Aquillion, the difference between the WMF and 'big tech' is that Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc., pay salaries to the people whose work generates the huge corporate profits. This sets the paygrades for the staff at the WMF, several of whom are on celebrity salaries. This is what causes miscontent. The WMF expects, yea, demands, that not only do we accept their wasteful, unrequested software 'enhancements', but that our volunteers who have enough to do also do the engineering on projects that the paid devs don't find sexy enough.

The case of the NPP tools is rather essential and without the new articles being promptly and accurately patrolled, Wikipedia will loose the very reputation for clean articles that the Foundation boasts about. Indeed , it's already happening.

We are down to barely 10% of the supposed 750 reviewers, and of that 10% only a tiny handful are doing 90% of the work, and backlog drives are proving largely ineffectual. In the worst case scenario, the reviewers will simply down tools. I wouldn't exactly call ACTRIAL, for example, a clash that ended up having little impact in the grand scheme of things. It had an immediate effect that worked wellmfor a while, but its usefulness has since expired. It was extremely useful in one respect however: it proved loudly and clearly just how totally wrong the WMF can be. They may have forgotten it in the grand scheme of things, but we haven't. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:00, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

As Kudpung says, staff at Twitter etc. work for the company and can be expected to follow all reasonable orders in exchange for a salary. At Wikipedia, money flows the other way: unpaid editors create and curate content, which attracts donations, which WMF takes from Wikipedia. Effectively, Wikipedia is buying services such as hosting and legal from the WMF. Even though the transfer of Wikipedia's brand made the WMF a monopolist, it should still act more like a supplier than an employer. Certes (talk) 10:15, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Actually, "unpaid editors create and curate content" exactly describes the business model at Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Why do you think those companies give away their services for free? Because then their users generate content for free. Which those companies monetize by selling ads. If you're not the customer, you're the product. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:47, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to have to think about that one. If Wikipedia is really run like Facebook, this will be my last contribution. Certes (talk) 22:51, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

@Aquillion: Are you aware by just how much WMF revenue has increased over the years?

As for WMF salaries, compare some of the entries here to the corresponding entries two years prior. You've got the CEO's compensation increasing by 7%, the DGC's and GC's by 10%, the CFO's by 11%, the CAO's by 22%, the CCO's by 25%, the CT/CO's by 28%, and the CPO's by 32% over a two-year period when US inflation was at 2%.

Meanwhile, WMF fundraising messages ask donors – including in places like India and South Africa – for money "to keep Wikipedia online". Andreas JN466 11:12, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@Aquillion I don't really wish a separation, but a rebalancing of the relationship. I do think that WMF has changed it's philosophy Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 22:57, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Has there ever been a proposal to message Spotlight to all active editors? I ask because it might correct the WMF and WP imbalance because most editors will never go near pump, For instance the discussion on the WMF emails only involved 20 editors (plus lurkers) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk)

Arbitrary break

What a tangled web the WMF weaves: A recent, long comment from a senior Foundation employee, goes to demonstrate once again the reasons for the community's long-ingrained distrust of the Foundation's use of the huge surplus money generated by the free work of volunteers, and the claims the Foundation makes of supporting the volunteers with the required software. The comment comes across as a rather poorly worded hurried attempt by the WMF to justify itself but it clearly contradicts that department's own mission statement.

The community has previously been told quite clearly that the maintenance of the essential PageTriage software is not within the remit of the WMF's Growth Team (although it was a WMF creation). At the same time they are telling us that there will be no action until a request is submitted through their annual Wishlist Survey. Maintaining the features and addressing the bugs in the various elements of the NPP tools is clearly beyond the scope and purpose of Community Tech as described on their own web page. Even if the community were to assume a huge dose of good faith, what is it supposed to believe?
The appeal addresses precisely that question. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:25, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Well, what else can we do? I predict that once the letter is sent, a similar response to the above will be made. I suppose we need some other big idea if we are to improve the program. Perhaps something for me to mull over for a while. Even if the letter does succeed, it wouldn't hurt to devise an alternative solution to the problem. CollectiveSolidarity (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

@CollectiveSolidarity Your user name is very appropriate for a possible solution; have The Spotlight sent to all active editors with editorials explaining the issues, or at least encouraging connectivity/editor retention/community/article improvement. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 03:50, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp, @CollectiveSolidarity, in regards to your question, what can we do to create a semi-permanent resource, where these concerns could be aired? yes, we could send the Spotlight to all active editors. that is one option. are there others? let me ask, is it possible to create a user essay in the "Wikipedia:" namespace, to articulate and summarize these concerns? Sm8900 (talk) 13:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@Sm8900 I have had difficulties working out another alternative for the essay, because everywhere I looked within WMF, I found reasons for major concern, and a clear policy of avoiding oversight.

What I am very uncertain of, is what the appetite for change is at the moment. if we wish to change them, then we will have to address/disprove some of their issues (as they use them to justify their mission), and create an alternate structure that represents the editors, with the media, and in decision making Otherwise, I expect even if there was a scandal, or major media attention, that changes would be superficial. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:05, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

hi @Wakelamp. ok. I appreciate your reply on that. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp, general question, how do I find the "Spotlight"? I'm sorry for my basic question. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:42, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Apologies. Freudian Slip. I meant The SignpostThe Signpost Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:19, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

I have an Option 4 which would solve your NPP issue.

• Define what changes you want,
• Ask for a ball park quote from an external Wiki developer,
• Do a press release. But require they do the interview in a way not to reveal your identity - the Secret Wikipedia.
• Get Ask EFF agreement to help , and to use one of their bank accounts.
• Get agreement from Gutenberg, Open ID, Apaches, Free Software foundation, celebrity to put up banners for us
• Get a | quote
• Have the developer do a detailed quote
• Create a kickstarter (after asking EFF to verify whether statements are legal) explaining our plight. and advise that x % will go to Support EFF and to review our management documents. Any over will go to the supporting charities.EFF will disburse the cash at development milestones. Kickstarters can also get t-shirts with 2005 Wikipedia Slogans @Jayen466. This was my Option 4). Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Option 4.1 Is similar, but we sell the T-shirts on wikipediocracy. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 07:06, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Send a notice that 'The Spotlight' is available to all editors that have logged on in the last 12 months. If we want change then we need to organise, otherwise they will continue to increase in size, and ignore us.Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 03:46, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Wakelamp, let no one doubt for a moment that the required changes to NPP have not been thoroughly researched, discussed and defined by the NPP team. It's a lot of ongoing, dedicated work here and on its sub page. The scope of the work is such that paradixically, some of the Growth Team's members are telling us it's too big for the current pool of WMF developers, while other members are insisting the changes should be appealed for at their Wishlist. This obviously casts further doubts as to the professionalism and seriousness of those in charge of the Foundation's technology, and puts their sincerity in question. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:37, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

On the Org chart they show 4 developers assigned to the project - have they been assigned elsewhere?

Chris Albon Director of Machine Learning

Kevin Bazira Software Engineer III

Aiko Chou Software Engineer III (Contractor)

Tobias Klausmann Senior Site Reliability Engineer (contractor)

Luca Toscano Senior Site Reliability Engineer (Contractor) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 23:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors is famously out of date, if that's where you got the above from — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 06:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes - that's where I got it. Is there a better one? I thought of scraping Meta user, but only IT staff seem to have user pages. The web estimates 900 staff and growth rate of 35 %

WMF is incredibly opaque compared to others Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:51, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a more up-to-date global list like that (and I believe that one is slated for removal) — for the Growth team, their team listing on MediaWiki.org may be more helpful? — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 12:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

With Growth, the page states it is only for mid-sized wiki.

Thank-you for the tip about the possible upcoming deletion, and. I have now downloaded it just in case

There is nothing else so i have already converted it to Excel for the other analysis I am doing,

As an aside,Glassdoor (employee reviews) has been an eye-opener, as it indicates that the WMF internal structure is fiefdom/divisional silos (each has it's own section, often a profit centre linked to a project), with absent central control, unquantified goals, and with every difficulty factor turned to 11

Conway's law states that organisations create computer systems that reflect their internal communication,which explains a lot about the WP and WMF systems,

File:"Org charts" comic by Manu Cornet.png

"Org charts" comic by Manu Cornet

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:50, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The WMF staff page should remain available: it is on archive.org, along with older versions. Certes (talk) 12:16, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Wakelamp's option 4 proposal is phrased as if its some radical view, but if it was rephrased as: start a wikimedia affiliate, raise some money (or maybe just get a grant from WMF), and hire a developer to do the things you want - that proposal would be a pretty normal proposal. Bawolff (talk) 05:41, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

That sounds like a proposal worth taking further. Although most MediaWiki users are readers, many enhancements requested by editors are important too, and will help editors to provide readers with better content. If the WMF structure doesn't allow those developments to happen, for whatever reason, then an alternative route is needed. I've had responses in Phabricator along the lines of "go and do it yourself", but I'm not familiar with the relevant code, unlike the developers funded by donations. Certes (talk) 12:13, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@Certes "I've had responses in Phabricator along the lines of "go and do it yourself". That isn't very constructive of them. How do you find the wishlist process?

@Bawolff The radical part is by doing it as a visible kickstarter, we are openly stating that the donations are not being used for the purpose intended,

@Kudpung, Certes' comment that "I'm not familiar with the relevant code, unlike the developers funded by donations.", made me wonder what are the ORES/NPP developers doing instead? Is the work you and yours wish done difficult to because the requirement is complex , because ORES/NPP is complex? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 23:40, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp and Bawolff:, the work that two (or more) of our New Page Reviewers are doing is because they just happen to know about software code (maybe it's their job in RL). They are doing it because the WMF says they won't do it because they don't have enough money - which everyone one knows is hogwash, and they have inferred that if NPP want it done they should find volunteer developers to do it.You would stay up to date more if you were to read The Signpost, Wikipedia's monthly newspaper. Here's a link to the article that was published in last week's issue. Raising an affiliate is one thing and creating a simple user group is easy enough, , but the WMF are hardly likely to provide a grant simply for the running of a user group, and for a user group to receive donations it has to be an incorporated body, such as a registered charity. The catch 22 is that it would first need money to do the fundraising. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:51, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I do find the wishlist process helpful. I vote there annually and have suggested a few items myself, notably the temporary watchlisting facility, an enhancement which the WMF implemented very well and which I now use daily. We don't get everything we wish for but we do get some of it. It's one of the more effective avenues of communication and the WMF deserves credit for its part in that process. Certes (talk) 10:11, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Certes, no one is saying the Wishlish is not helpful and it's fine for community requests for convenience tools. However, PageTriage is a major MediaWiki extension, it's the indispensible motor that enables editors to keep totally inapprpriate spams and attack pages out of the encyclopedia. No AI or filters or bots can do that, it's work for ecperienced human editors. The extension is a big peice of software. The total abberation is that in the same talk page diatribe they are telling us that we should put our request into the Wishlist, then in the same breath they don't have enough 'resources' and they don't have enough money. How's that for clear, professional thinking? Our work fuels their Big Tech lifestyles, the community deserves some return for it. Cullen328, one of our most mature and respected admins, spells it out even more aggressively than I would dare (mainly becase I'm one of the loudest users one who for years has negotiated with the WMF for NPP and other software that keeps the corpus clean, and I'm still trying). Cullen drives 32 miles to talk to them, I spend $1,000 a time to fly across the world to try and get an audience with them.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the proposed NPP extensions are too large to be a wishlist item. I was specifically answering Wakelamp's question on wishlists, without reference to NPP. I agree that NPP improvements should be made, independently of the wishlist, and I signed the recent letter to that effect. Certes (talk) 12:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

When you say we don't get everything that we want, what is the constraint? WMF resources, technical complexity, ....? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp and Certes: I appreciate that type of response is frustrating, however sometimes there's tasks that nobody is willing to do. In such a case, the choice at phabricator is to either say some variant of {{sofixit}}, or they could lie, and say "we'll get to it any day now" and do nothing. Would you really prefer to be lied to? That said, to clarify, there are non-technical things to be done here. contrary to what everyone here believes, it is rather unclear what is actually wanted for NPP. Prioritizing and clarifying tasks would probably go a long way towards people actually fixing NPP issues. Right now, anyone who looks into it, sees a list of like 80 unsorted tasks, thinks to themselves, it looks like a lot of work to get familiar enough with the community's needs to figure out which tasks are important and why, and instead moves on to something else. This is something anyone can help fix.

Kudpung: As far as "openly stating that the donations are not being used for the purpose intended" - if you create a kickstarter in good faith to raise money to do something, nobody is going to object. On the other hand, if you create a kickstarter with the intent to embarrass WMF into doing something and no intent to use the raised funds to actually do the dev work you are talking about, then that is going to annoy people. In any case, I doubt WMF is saying it doesn't have enough money. I think its saying its using its resources elsewhere. Money buys resources, but money is not the same as resources. In regards to costs of incorporating - we're talking $40 to incorporate, and about $500 if you want to be a 501(c) [Is that really necessary? you could probably have an existing affiliate hold the cash to get around the requirement]. You have a plan that involves raising money in the high ten's of thousands of dollars. If you are worried about the nickles and dimes here, it seems unlikely you will get anywhere near your actual goal. Bawolff (talk) 14:11, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

,Bawolff, a couple of points here: if you follow the links in the Signpost article you will see the text where the WMF have clearly stated they are short of cash. Either that is true or they are lying. Financial analyses seem to demonstrate the latter. As much as I believe in building bridges across the chasm that divides the unpaid ordinary people here whose work raises the donations that go first and foremost to the WMF executives' salaries, I am not American, I don't live in the US and I'm not going to learn how to incorporate a registered charity there, and I'm definitely not going to put up a penny myself to kickstart it - I'm not a philanthropist. There's no need for me to embarrass the WMF, they shoot themselves in the feet - constantly, and as long as they are sitting pretty in Montgomery tower, they do not care. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:05, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung I followed the links, i did not see that claim. I did see the PM of the "Contributor Tools teams" say that these teams (A small part of the WMF) would prefer to use their budget elsewhere. That's really different - they are saying they have the money but are using it for different things, and they are not talking about WMF's money, but the budget of a specific team which is a small part of the WMF. And hey, maybe that's a stupid decision on the part of WMF. A reasonable argument could be made that it is. But saying the decision is stupid is really different then claiming that WMF is claiming that it is too poor to do it. As far as starting an american charity - then don't start one in america. All I'm claiming here is Wakelamp's proposal about starting some organization, collecting some money, and then doing something, is not the outrageous proposal everyone around here seems to be making it out to be. Its a perfectly normal thing to do, and is how some MediaWiki features already get developed. Bawolff (talk) 17:07, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Bawolff, if you followed the links as I suggested, you missed this one and if it isn't a claim that money is in short supply, I don't know what is: Contrary to what some might think, we really don't have an endless supply of money that allows us to fix every important problem, and it's a bit ironic since they have enough cash for their Wishlist to fix all the unimportant ones. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:48, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I stand by my statement. They don't have infinite resources to solve every problem all at once, but then again nobody does. I can understand that the framing of the statement does make it sound like a money issue, possibly as a way to deflect focus from the fact a decision was made and it was an unpopular one. However, taken literally, all its saying is that there are more bugs in existence then people to solve them. Which is of course true. However, i wouldn't extend that to saying they couldn't solve the problem if they wanted to, just that, rightly or wrongly, there are other things they would rather prioritize. Bawolff (talk) 17:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear: are these "tasks that nobody is willing to do" being declined by volunteers or by paid employees and contractors? Certes (talk) 22:48, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Paid employees and contractors, Certes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Certes: Not to speak on behalf of Bawolff here, and addressing the question more generally — it can be a mixture of both. Firstly, in situations where a certain tool/extension is no longer maintained/"owned" by a WMF team, new feature requests/bug reports are (ideally) worked on by volunteer developers. These volunteers are of course free to choose what tasks they work on, which can result in these "{{sofixit}} moments" on those that they opt not to complete. In cases where a tool/extension is still maintained by a WMF team, internal priorities may dictate which tasks are to be worked on next, and with a finite amount of time and resources there's always going to be some which will languish in a backlog. This too can result in a "{{sofixit}}", not from a volunteer who doesn't wish to work on a task, but from a member of staff (normally a product manager) setting expectations and perhaps wishfully hoping a volunteer developer steps in. It's not ideal, and I do honestly hope that at least one outcome of the NPP discussions are a reconsideration of some budget decisions with a renewed focus on supporting the editing community with their technical needs. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 23:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

TheresNoTime, You're right of course, that is indeed an accurate description of the scenario. What disconcerts the NPP team however, is that PageTriage is a major and critical extension and to be told at Phab it has no owner comes as unusual. More to the point, the Foundation's reluctance to address the issues with this importance piece of software and expecting the New Page Reviewers to do it themselves seems irresponsible - not all Wikipedia editors are software engineers, nor do they need to be. Some are and they are ready to jump to action but they most definitely not be doing the Foundation's work for free.

Here's a simple analogy: The truck drivers in a wealthy transport company are complaining to the management that the brakes on their lorries have not been maintained for a longtime and are getting dangerous, "No money for it, so fix it yourselves'" says the CEO before climbing into his company Rolls Royce.. TheresNoTime, do you drive a car? Do you know how to change the brake pads and bleed the system afterwards? Not even in Germany which has some of the strictest requirements for obtaining a heavy goods vehicle or bus driver licence, and where the candidates are expected to fully understand the workings of the different brake technologies, are the drivers required to know how to repair them. What happens is that the drivers go on strike until the brakes are fixed. In the meantime the company gets a reputation for poor delivery times and looses its customers.

Imagine a world where the Wikipedia volunteer maintenance workers put their tools down... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:45, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung: Everyone thinks their component is the most critical, simply asserting it is won't change hearts and minds. You could argue WMF is bad at prioritizing the right things (After all, this is the same organization that for many years felt that MediaWiki itself was legacy and should not have any teams dedicated to it, luckily that time has passed) but it is what it is. Probably the biggest counter-argument for the impact of this tool, is that it is only in use by english wikipedia, which limits the amount of impact any fixes to it makes and raises the natural question of if it really is so critical, how come everyone else is getting along just fine without it? [Not trying to argue this, just pointing out that this is the argument that is probably going through many people's heads when they decide what to work on]. Bawolff (talk) 17:08, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Bawolff, I'll remind newer users that PageTriage it was created by the WMF as a consolation prize for having so rudely and aggressively forbidden the ACTRIAL. Part of their decision to offer it was based on the premise that it would also be used by other Wikipedias. Everyone is getting along 'just fine' without it because they are smaller and as region specific they don't carry as much clout as en.Wikipedia which is the first target for global spamers. I believe I also read somewhere recently that with 6.5mio articles, the en.Wiki has more articles than the sum of all the other wikis put together - but that's beside the point - PageTriage is not a luxury or convenience tool à la Wishlist, it's as essential as this is to human beings. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

It is obviously false that en wikipedia has more articles than the sum of all the others. French, german and spanish together already have more than english wikipedia - as can be seen by visiting https://www.wikipedia.org . Then there is the whole question of how you should count wikidata which has a very high edit rate. Anyways, at the end of the day I am not the one you have to convince that it is essential, however simply asserting that it is is not very convincing. 95% of phabricator posts are people claiming that their thing is the most important thing. Most of them are wrong, some of them are right but either way, the assertion by itself does nothing to move the needle. Bawolff (talk) 03:30, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Bawolf So the problem is priority setting. Can you advise me how to find (group,taks,project,tag?)the pt/en/es/wikidata projects on phab that you mention? Do they have wish lists as well? And is is possible to see how many story points/hours were/will be used on a task? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:44, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

i did not mention any pt/en/es/wikidata projects so i'm not sure what you are referring to. In general though you can just search phab for whatever you are looking for. Most people don't track time on a per-task basis. Story points are estimates from before you start a task not how long it actually took. They are also not comparable between different groups (or even over the long term in the same team). 1 story point might mean 10 minutes to one person, it might mean 1 day to another. Bawolff (talk) 18:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

"i'm not sure what you are referring to" - I asked based on your comment that "It is obviously false that en wikipedia has more articles" and I assume you meant this link.I agree that the top 4 have more articles, and English may soon be eclipsed by Cebuano_Wikipedia by itself. The articles per encyclopedia metric is becoming meaningless with bot translations, wikidata has so many edits because of the gamified options (I ran up 70 (?) very quickly using this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 12:59, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Bawolf, Whose side are you on? The WMF's as a MediaWiki admin, or the Community's? Does it not interest you that the Foundation's reputation depends on an encyclopedia that has reasonably trustworthy content? It's the en.Wiki that probably draws most of the donations. Do you not believe that is a priority? What do you think is more important than vetting the new articles? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:30, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung That's not constructive. There is no possible answer that Bawollf can give that will satisfy you, because you have defined community as agreeing with you, and as a Wikipedian I proudly say that we never all agree on anything. Especially us. So, if you want to convince an editor show refs, and good faith ; if you want to convince devs you need cost/benefits, (preferably strategic (long term/multiple areas/stable) over tactics, good faith, and caffeinated beverages. With your NPP proposal, you haven't explained what the benefits are in terms of numbers; I have now looked through your list and I couldn't see how it would solve your problems of capacity/quality. My guess is also that NPP are not considered the Scarlet Pimpernel (NPP: Still heaven or hell for new users – and for the reviewers) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 12:59, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Kudpung I'm on my own side, in all things. In any case, i think WMF has many flaws, but much of the vocal criticisms are misguided, which ultimately helps WMF escape scrutiny because its critics are so easy to dismiss. As far as the matter at hand goes, you need to show that your proposal would help those things, in a significant way, not simply assert it. Furthermore the benefit has to be great enough to justify people abandoning current work in progress that is half done. To be clear, i'm not saying that it isn't, or that if i was in charge i wouldn't decide differently. I am saying that it's not being presented in a covincing way, which is why you are not getting success. Bawolff (talk) 15:53, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Excellent choice of sides. I agree the WMF critics are easy to dismiss, especially as we don't seem to have any power over WMF under the California non-profits act

1. We are only a small part of their mission

"The organization is also required to serve public, rather than private interests; generally, this means that its activities benefit a large and indefinite class of individuals, as opposed to a small, identifiable group. In particular, the organization may not be organized or operated for impermissible private interests, such as those of specifically designated individuals, the founder of the organization, the founder’s family, or persons or companies controlled by such private interests."

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

2. We have no voting rights,

"If a public benefit corporation has members, the members are typically vested with voting and other rights pertaining to the corporation’s affairs. And, when the corporation’s articles of incorporation or bylaws give members certain voting rights, they are called statutory or voting members"

Statutory members have the right to vote for the corporation’s directors (also known as board members, not to be confused with the corporation’s membership), to vote on the manner in which the corporation’s assets will be disposed upon dissolution or merger, or to vote on changes to the articles of incorporation or bylaws.

If members are deemed statutory members, California law also gives them other rights, including the rights to:  Inspect certain corporate records; 3  Receive notice of member meetings;4  Remove directors; 5 and  Sue directors in derivative actions, or third parties on behalf of the corporation, under certain circumstances.6

ARTICLE III - MEMBERSHIP The Foundation does not have members. (Fla. Stat. Section 617.0601)

3. We could not prevent an ownership change

"In the unlikely event that the ownership of the Foundation changes, we will provide you 30 days' notice before any Personal Information is transferred to the new owners or becomes subject to a different privacy policy."

www.forbes.com /how-to-successfully-approach-a-nonprofit-takeover/

4. The board could not prevent an ownership change

The policy change resolution is amazing in it's power

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Delegation_of_policy-making_authority especially coupled with the quorum, trustee appointments, and voting power in the bylaws Gordon Gekko would approve.

5, The Global Council

The Global council would seem to weight affiliates with 1 active user the same as en de es https://wikistats.wmcloud.org/display.php?t=wp Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 15:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Have we any details of the contract with Tides or our obligations to the Endowment?

WMF may been taken over financially, If the contract with Tides specify we must put in $X irrevocably each year into WE, because we have ceded control.

WMF can only recommend to Tides on how much to spend (but they don't have to spend anything) Tides's fees are effectively a 14+ % handling fee (On their Web site Sponsorship costs of 10 % plus Fund fees of 5 % for a DAR ( ( Donor-advised fund)) which is similar to the annual reports on Tides Advocacy and Tides foundation), plus they receive all positive returns on the investment until is spent by the grantee.

DARs are controversial (even with some billionaires),because of their use in dark money political funding (both left and right), by billionaires (up to 75 % Capital deduction up front with the giving spread over many years, for boosting their "giving" by giving to other DAF, scams, for being at risk for of funding terrorism, dummy banks, 75% deductions up front were on the IRS "Dirty Dozen in 2008 (as tax minimisation schemes ,grants for private purposes including one case part of the Varsity Blues scandal, and because they do not have to show itemised accounts of who receives the grants (so there is risk that they 'sell' two donors the same grant'.

"If I want to launder, I can set up a donor-advised fund I control and make donations, then direct those donations to a nonprofit that I also control—so I then control the beginning, middle and end of the transaction and I just cleaned money,” Rechtman said. “I can also go through a donor-advised fund I don’t control, as long as the donations ultimately go to a charity I do control.”"

The Tide faq is important reading in terms of anonymity, and documentation required. [3] Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:35, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Just to add that it is not "we" (Wikipedia) who are ceding control to Tides. The WMF has seized control of Wikipedia in a number of frog-boiling stages over the past 20 years. It is the WMF rather than Wikipedia who is now passing on that usurped power. Certes (talk) 11:04, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Petition WMF

Since 2012 and the change in fundraising model through the introduction of A/B models. WMF have been inflicted by the [Resource curse]. WMF had two resources in plenty - money and volunteers, so it had little need to listen to those few that complain.

Suggestion is that we advise WMF to Freeze

1. Fundraising, the Endowment - we have three years
2. Hiring of staff/contractors/consultants. Linkedin shows a 35 % growth, WMF has 21 jobs open but Indeed shows 75 job.
3. Any structural change to the WMF-WP relationship

Until

1. They confirm ALL the email claims claims through a detailed list of staff with split into the percentages, detailed annual reports for WE and WMF, contracts, staff surveys, statistics, etc...
2. Explain exactly how we will have transparency on the Endowment and give an example of how much of a $10 donation via the endowment will get to grantee, and how we will know what they did with it Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk)

Wakelamp, I have left a message for you on my talk page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:23, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

=== Does the WMDE to DEWP relation work better? === Their wishlist process is problem focused. Are they better resourced? === if WMF-dev did as we wanted, how would you want the Wikipedia platform be different in five years?=== WP-WMF/dev communication/priority setting is a big issue in the comments above But even if we could decide strategy, hat do we want the UX/Editing Process/Dev/Roadmap to be in one, five or ten years? Is the [|2030 plan] in line with this?

In 2017, we created a strategic direction to guide our Movement into the future: By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us.

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 15:03, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Vector 2022 - everyone else was correct about WMF Dev

I have struck out the above. The The WMF's response to the RfC on Vector 2022 makes it clear that it is not an option. So because everyone else was correct and my boundless optimism in WMF Dev was misplaced. I have also struck out the suggestion that they hold themselves accountable by providing a summary linked to the comments. It is a great method to prevent sham consultations, but it also works well with buy-in with communities, making sure systems work, and refocusing. Oh well, off to research why they are incorrect :-) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:34, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Best way to get the WMF's attention

If you don't like the direction the WMF is going... Stop donating, and encourage others to do the same. Blueboar (talk) 11:56, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Stopping donating is ineffective - there are far more people who will.

Read he WMF response ".... it's evident that text becomes difficult to read at those lengths...so why would anybody study that. ..we have no reason to question the WCAG guideline, nor the individual opinions of 15 WMF designers, nor the several other design and typography professionals we've been advised by. Wikipedia is different than many sites, as you and many others have pointed out, but that doesn't mean it is different in regard to what a readable line-length is.

...And yes, more informational density is probably more appropriate for an encyclopaedia than for many other reading experiences, ...So yes, we can be unique and that's wonderful ... most readers are reading on narrower screens, and nudge editors towards having common experiences with editors. If they want to opt-out of that, I think that's their choice,.... and we hopefully embody the experimental spirit you speak of Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:05, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I doubt that money from Wikipedia editors forms a significant part of the WMF's income. Our impact comes from donating skill and effort, without which their cash cow would be rewritten by spammers and vandals. I wonder whether it would be fair to our readers to protest by withdrawing that labour during the forthcoming banner campaign. Certes (talk) 17:59, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Agreed we don't. But I think we are going to be OK, as WMF are far weaker than I thought.

The only real advantages is that they control the PR, and the narrative, we are weakly networked, and we have no alternate tech strategy.

The big disadvantage of WMF is that they are running a large scale experiment in governance and growth. They are focused on KPis - 30 % growth in staff.. 350 languages, press releases, maximising geographic separation, encouraging micro-edits, the ability to create millions of articles at will, create dummy editors if they wish, no controls over who they fund, and fundraising without limits,

Problem is that there are always limits. And their master plan of creating an unbiased auto written encyclopedia is not technically possible would create zero barriers for entry, and zero reasons for donating. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:30, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia gave away its domain names and trademarks to the WMF. That's the main barrier to a more equal relationship. The WMF can ride the gravy train as far as it likes. Our only recourse is to fork Zxcvbnmpedia with its own URL, at which point the WMF could spend its cash mountain on paid editors to fight us for traffic. Certes (talk) 15:18, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought so as well, until I realized that it doesn't matter who owns the trademark (we are using wiki on wikipedia - so they can't complain), or who owns the domain names (they have no way of stopping us from using it), paid editors (good luck with that - my estimate is on the order of a billion dollars of work per year (median edits of active editors is 250 per year (wmf figure) times 200 k editors times $100 per hour (including on costs) gives 5 billion).

They are already running into problems with bias and ineptitude causing the reader decline. Their long term vision is a bit boring , and Donations are dependant totally on what we do. The only thing they do control are the servers, major software releases, the ability to create new wikis, and the narrative/pr. Correct me if I am wrong, but all the big changes have been tied to grants, or because of things we do. They lose control if we

• remove the need for a centralized server structure.
• Open the architecture - use open source forums and tech editors, but write them to wikis.
• reduce the scope - rather than the sum of all knowledge - access to the sum of all knowledge. integrate other communities - Khan academy, Wiktionary, and other databases - rather than replicate.
• Remove the need for 350 wikis,
• better communications within wiki. (signpost for all)
• better communications between major wikis
• challenging their legitimately as controllers of a toxic community

and lastly by having us act as the opposition, so that each media release is followed by us explaining that they are bonkers.

Leadership

My impression of the Wikipedia projects and the WMF is that they are a free-for-all in which most everyone does as they please. As different people have different ideas and different approaches you then get a lot of conflict and chaos. So, for example, the members of the English Wikipedia don't seem to get along with each other smoothly, let alone getting along with the WMF too.

What seems to be missing most is leadership as it seems that no-one is in charge. In the early days, you had a fairly clear leader – Jimmy Wales – plus a chief of staff, Larry Sanger. Jimbo then created an organisation – the WMF – and Sue Gardner provided leadership for that, establishing the financial success which now powers the WMF. But after Gardner, we had Lila Tretikov who clearly failed to get a grip and Katherine Maher who seemed to mainly focus on healing the wounds. We now have Maryana Iskander but, as yet, I'm not seeing much visibility or impact from her appointment.

Of course, strong leadership can be a liability – just look at what Elon Musk is doing to Twitter. There's some lessons to be learnt from what's happening over there and so perhaps we should count our blessings. If there's one thing worse than making $ millions, it's losing $ millions!

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:45, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Maryana Iskander 's background is in charity, and grants, politics, and donors, I can't see her as fixing the rift - there are so many vested interests, they see no limits, there is so much status (Katherine is on a Nobel Prize Committee), and so much money at stake.

WP, even with all its chaos, is probably more competent than WMF, because what we do is very visible, and could be easier to change as the number of productive (non bot, non micro) editors/admins drop. So, as we need leadership it must come from within WP. But to clarify, leadership means a strategy and a direction, not necessarily a person. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:43, 6 November 2022 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk)

Dedicated resources

Have we ever considered requesting the WMF hire a couple of software developers whose sole responsibility would be to work on tasks allocated by the enwiki community? An example of where we would choose to allocate them would be the NPP software.

There would be some practical issues to resolve, such as how we allocate tasks and what work they should do if we fail to allocate tasks, but those issues can easily be resolved and if the WMF agreed I think it would go a long way to improving our relations with them, as a significant part of the tension comes from them not properly supporting us. BilledMammal (talk) 14:49, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Dedicated developers would be good, but I agree task allocation/co-operation is the issue because WMF have different goals, and frankly what we do isn't exciting for them or helps them achieve their mission.

If we had dedicated developers (and we have lots of volunteers), creating interfaces to existing open source systems (such as Phab, phpbb to replace WMF system gaps (or admit for things like talk, that Wiki wikis are a very poor fit), or a better search interface

Examples of WMF goals being different

The WMF no mention of vital articles ; Meta has one mention of Improving vital articles, Phab has no mention of improving existing editor processes and 10 mentions of Vital article; WMF have 175 IT staff (for 350 Wikis and fundraising/grants/wikidata/google Enterprise), of which I have heard that mumbled that 10ish work on enWP for existing editors, and the database that supports them. (Wikidata is out of deWP, and I am not sure who funds Commons, but they have also raised a petition. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:41, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

We already have an annual ballot for community suggestions for development features. I think it makes sense to continue and perhaps expand that approach rather than have dedicated programmers as the ballot could result in developments that involve different IT skills from year to year, and this emphasises features we want rather than who codes them. ϢereSpielChequers 15:50, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

So you suggest that rather than request the WMF hire two developers who are dedicated to work on tasks allocated by the enwiki community, we request they allocate the story points equivalent of two developers, allowing them to match the skills of the developer to the task?

That makes sense, though my concern is that if there aren't dedicated developers our tasks will be low on the priority list and often end up uncompleted. BilledMammal (talk) 03:47, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

With a 100 M a year in donations, I don't see why we have a wish list - why not do all the things that are worthwhile now? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 15:40, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

I know I'm a month late, but what a great question. This is the question we should all be asking the WMF over and over until they complete the list. Levivich (talk) 17:15, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

May I pin this topic?

We discuss this each year, I think we should leave it until we have a proposal. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:44, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

May I?

Wakelamp, this thread was started months ago, and it's now something like three-quarters of the page. Maybe you should break it up into sections that could be separately archived after the usual two weeks of inactivity? Or manually transfer the parts you want to preserve into a page in your userspace? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:31, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Conway's law and WP and WMF fundamental differences

• Conway's law states that ."ganization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." ,Systems/processes and organisations mirror each other.

WMF organisation WMF has a centralised organsation with low interaction between nodes (departments), exacerbated by its policy of emphasising geographic spread over effectiveness, Their central KPIs are donations/media mentions, unmeasurable or not related to WMF to their actions, WMF system/processes This organisational structure is reflected in systems and processes, complicated undocumented architecture and links between systems, The complicated partly undocumented architecture and links between systems, doesn't quite fit Conway's law, but I think it might be just a reflection of the organisation, and protective of devs (they need protection!)

1. A central server running on non-standard configurations (So, we can't spin up more capacity on AWS)
2. A central development architecture that we get around, and has no strategy
3. A WMF focuses development team (UX team who want a single UX experience for both Editors and reader, a community wish list rather than a strategy, no attempt to provide tools that editors can hack (proper workflow tools open interfaces for other edit tools, newletter systems, project tools,,,), Fundraising having an unlimited IT budget)
4. Overcentralisation causing fiefdoms (Poor communication between nodes (departments) to the point that you have profit and cost centres mixed, poor financial controls, seperate IT departments, high chance of fraud, and entryism,
5. A command/control mentality towards WP (Judgement of editors especially if it increases up donations),
6. A central tenet, "the mission" justifies the means (their constituency is not the editors, and they should be controlled, or not provided with services, working with Facebook on bias issues),
7. Avoidance of responsibility (buereacratic, no measurement of outcomes, restriction of information, faux consenus within WMF or PR speak, weasel word strategy documents, deliberate poor communication because it is boring or too hard, hiding of bad news, volunteer editors bearing the burden, and no duty of care towards editor mental health or legal issues),
8. Conformity to norms (hiring by alignment with the mission, social pressure within WMF, focus on status and branding, diversity over competence, inexperienced managers promoted from within dependent on patronage for perks and promotions,
9. Centralisation of opinion (WP NPOV means WMF view, non-bias is universal and timeless and must be imposed on other Wikis (just like misionaries translating the Bible)
10. A preference for working with other centralised/high status organisations rather than open source, and
11. An intolerance of rival structures (enWP editors toxic, a diffusion of major WIki power by 1 vote = 1 wiki, undermining of Trustee power);,

Apart from that they are Apples :-) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 02:23, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

What does "WMF (non developers)" mean? (People writing on Wikipedia tend to use abbreviations without explanation. This is a very irritating habit that I would really lke to see changed. ABD CKF WRET WITWIGO? ) Kdammers (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I will try to reduce my abbreviations. ‎

The discussion about WMF developers is at the top of the thread, I thought that the WMF developer areas had more in common with WP, but there was disagreement that this was true. It also gets a but murky what is a non developer area, because many of the VPs have a core area, an advocacy area, and their own IT departments.‎

For intance Lisa Seitz-Gruwell (Chief Advancement Officer/ Deputy Chief Executive Officer) is repsonsible for a staff split into 22 IT, 22 Grants/advocacy, 6 endowment, 23 fundraising, 10 education, plus many overseas staff overseas I guess based on job title in Wikimedia related organisations. So, it is doubtful, that the 22 advancement IT staff priorities wouldline line up with WP editors, as their metric is donation. ‎

As an aside, the advancement department breaks a fraud prevention accounting principle called Separation of duties as it contains multiple steps in an income process, both income and expenditure, and is not that dependant on other departments except for a weekly cash transfer by finance. A structure like this is a recipe for organisational chaos. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

That's not true. What makes you think there is any cash transfer to any departments? If you want a bill paid, you send the bill to Finance, and they pay it directly (or not, if they think it shouldn't be paid). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) Rather than cash transfer, I should have said transfer of funds, or cost/revenue transfers. You are totally correct that receipts/bills/invoices would be paid by Finance (normally after approval by a manager, or being matched against a purchase order, or blanket order, or travel authority)

Summary I can't find anything like the Advancement structure anywhere. It's awful from a fraud prevention perspective (see Zack, G. M. (2003). Fraud and Abuse in Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Prevention and Detection. United Kingdom: Wiley.), but organisationally it explains some of the disfunction of the WMF-editor relationship, as Advancement is really a mini-WMF within WMF.

Detail Some background is needed. Double-entry bookkeeping depends on two people looking at part of every transaction, which is recorded in at least two separate ledgers/accounts, which each have a matching documents (or electronic authorisation) raised by different people, referencing entities that have been checked to exist. Finance sits above this, banking and matching/ reconciling to make sure everything balances, and with all systems controlled in the basement of IT. :-)

Advancement controls ALL these steps for all revenue, except for banking and the GL transactions to move revenue into accounts. They control CiviCRM, matching of donors to bank transactions, credits, mismatches, the marketing letters and banners, bequests, donors who have agreed to match other donations, donor data harvesting, donor analysis, SQL updates, payment platform, and receipt of funds from other donor advised funds. (yep - their DAF goes into our DAF which is spent by the Tide DAF ... eventually).

Logging : System auditing is normally a band-aid, but I couldn't work out the status of logging at the app level from Meta or phab or civicrm docs, or the controls at the direct SQL level.

The Endowment : Advancement also picked up some other areas after the November 2019 announcement of community engagement officer departure and the to be closed. So, Advancement have their own advocacy area, high status type stuff, and also control the WMF endowment. These areas all involve transferring externally/spending money , which is normally kept separate from people who control revenue because of fraud risk. In the case of the WMF endowment, they now have since October 2022 their own grant committee to advise Tides what to spend money on, but with none of our internal controls. There is no mention of transferring money back to WMF. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:21, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp, it sounds like this is the point at which I normally say that if you're in the US, you can usually take a basic accounting class from your local community college for about a hundred bucks, plus the cost of the textbook. I recommend that everyone do that, even if you don't think you will ever use that professionally.

Double-entry bookkeeping does not require two humans. It requires writing the same thing in two places. Since the widespread adoption of accounting software a couple of decades ago, the second entry is normally handled automatically by the software. Ledgers are not the same as accounts. Accounts are not the same as bank accounts. You don't have to have two copies of the documents (and if you required that, then you would soon find that the electricity to the office was being cut off for non-payment). Two copies are primarily used when shipping goods, in which case you expect an invoice/bill sent to the person authorizing the payment plus a packing list sent with the goods themselves.

What you seem to be grasping at is the account process. In the case of a simple donation by old-fashioned paper check would ideally be handled this way: Two people open the mail together, with one opening the envelopes and calling out their contents, and the other watching and making a written list of donations received. They hand the stack of checks to a third person. That third person fills out a deposit slip and takes the checks to the bank. The auditor, if concerned, compares the first list against the third person's deposit slip, to see whether they match.

For online donations, all of this happens automatically. The fundraisers don't have access to either the money or the bank accounts. They can see the money being sent from a donor directly to the banking system, so they can make a list of donors' names, dates, amounts, and methods (e.g., credit vs debit card), but the money is never in their actual possession. (Read up on PCIDSS if you're really interested in this, but basically, you do it their way, or you can't accept online payments.) The people with access to the bank accounts – but not the fundraising systems – see the money coming in, so they can make their own list of donors' names, dates, amounts, and methods.

As for whether you should worry about this: The WMF, like all larger organizations, is professionally audited every year. The work is done by an accounting firm that is chosen by the Board of Trustees, which has a designated audit subcommittee. If there were something wrong with the WMF's accounting process, the auditors would have alerted the Board to it, and the Board would have demanded changes. No trustee that I've ever met, in any organization, has ever wanted to be the one who was asleep at the wheel while the organization got robbed.

Also, while I'm sure it's frustrating that you can't figure out who, exactly, has access to the money, I suggest that you see this as a benefit. If you can't figure out who would have the easiest time stealing donations, then neither can any hacker who wants to go phishing in that department. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay.

• “No trustee that I've ever met, in any organization, has ever wanted to be the one who was asleep at the wheel while the organization got robbed.” Agreed, but a non - profit can be perceived to have been "robbed" in many ways. such as diversion of funds to other charities, waste, and misuse of assets.
• ‘The WMF, like all larger organizations, is professionally audited every year." . External audits aren't particularly good at finding fraud - they catch <4% of the frauds that are found, and as the WMF 2020-2021 audit report states are '"not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entity’s internal control.
• “Double-entry bookkeeping does not require two humans.”; except for small companies it requires different people responsible for each side of a transaction, and yes the documents can be electronic. I was trying to give examples that people could relate to. :-) I like this quote "The most effective procedures are those that have the greatest segregation of duties. The more people involved in the process, the less likely it is that an error or defalcation will occur."
• Some other issues for Trustees

• Why not set a limit on fundraising? Why not cap staff for a few years?
• The mismatch between what donors think they are giving their money to, and what WMF are spending it on.
• The internal audit department and size of external audit has not grown proportional to WMF.
• The director authorities are excessive for a non profit - grant making authorities of $2 M and the “General Spending & Contractual Authority up to $50,000 USD [4]
• The transfer of bequests/planned gifts. Trustees have approved transfer of bequests for different purposes [5]
• The Board delegation of policy making [6]
• The Glassdoor employee reviews [7] are more damning than usual.
• That the Wikimedia endowment is a DAF ( [Donor Advised Fund] (huge fees, non transparent grant making, tax avoidance for billionaires such as Elon Musk, no requirement to spend, reduces admin percentages on charity navigator, and is not irrevocable (no way to give money back to Wikipedia). [8] [9] [10] [11].

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Double-entry bookkeeping does not require two humans, full stop. A responsible accounting process requires multiple humans, but double-entry bookeeping itself does not.

I wonder why you make some of these assertions. For example, you say The internal audit department and size of external audit has not grown proportional to WMF. Please tell me: What is the size of the internal audit department? If you don't know, then please tell me: What is your basis for saying that this team is not the correct size now? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Different world views : WMF and Slate vs WP - The banner debate

Rebecca MacKinnon VP, WMF Global Advocacy linkedin post "Slate's Stephen Harrison has written a balanced and thoughtful story about a recent debate in the English language Wikipedia community about fundraising banners that the Wikimedia Foundation runs on English Wikipedia. He concludes: "In recent years, Wikipedia has been attacked by authoritarian regimes and powerful billionaires—people who do not necessarily benefit from the free flow of neutral information. If $3 helps hold them off, then that’s coffee money well spent."Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

No one has yet said what WMF and WP are. The thread starts with "Are WMF and WP too different to ever get along ? == WMF (non developers) and WP." Having waded through comments, I am guessing that WMF is World Finance Fund and WP is Wikipedia. But, considering that they are in quite different spheres, I had no idea when I first tried to read this thread. I repeat my plea: explain the abbreviations you use. Kdammers (talk) 22:23, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

WMF is Wikimedia Foundation, and WP, as used here, usually means English Wikipedia. I'll avoid commenting about Anglo-centrism in these discussions. Donald Albury 00:18, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

The Slate article is being covered on the RfC.

@Donald Albury You mentioned that you found the discussion Anglo-centric. Do you see any areas in which the WMF-WP relationship could be improved?

The discussions about WMF accountability, truthful fundraising, the Endowment, structure, and fraud risk don't seem Anglo-centric. Alignment of enWP and enWMF aims and strategy is at worst Anglo-spheric.

De Wikipedia seems to have a less apocalyptic pop-up, but there are complaints on Reddit which has a similarish global demographic to enWP ( 14k views and 3 k and more), and memes in a few languages; English, English, Spanish, and Indian. Although there are positive ones (Germany. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I was referring to the mentions in the discussion implying that the English Wikipedia is more important than the Foundation. Donald Albury 14:22, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I want to mention that I was interviewed by Stephen Harrison and quoted in his article. I think that Harrison did a good job describing a debate that was quite bitter and confrontational for a while, but was eventually resolved in what I see as a pretty positive way. We will see how the editor software support debate plays out, but if there is no major progress on that front in the next ten months or so, expect another bitter disagreement. As for "Anglocentrism", I have great respect for the other languages versions of Wikipedia, but the English Wikipedia is by far the largest version worldwide, and English is the de facto international language of the 21st century. Speakers of other languages interested in writing Wikipedia articles want to write articles in English because this is where most of the readers are. I very much doubt that many fluent English speakers yearn to write articles in Hindi or Romanian or Tagalog for example, but the opposite is commonplace, and this is a problem that needs to be addressed without resorting to buzzwords. Cullen328 (talk) 08:00, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Not just because English is where the readers are. Often we translate an article into English because it is easier to translate into other languages from there. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:42, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposals to improve corporation-related coverage

In September, I came across Amazon (company), which was in a pretty poor state (now significantly better). Currently, many of our corporation-related articles have significant issues, including inconsistent structures, excessive length, and relative confusion about the inclusion criteria. Our "Criticisms of ... Inc." articles are pretty uniformly bad, with poor structures, poor readability, and very unclear criteria for inclusion. These problems aren't isolated to specific articles, so I'd suggest we try to address them systemically, to reduce overall editor workload.

Two ideas I propose are:

• Creating a topic-specific manual of style guideline for company-related topics, which would give clear examples of a what's due/undue, how to treat controversy sections (since WP:POVFORK is harder to apply to these articles), and would propose an outline (history, products & services, corporate affairs, etc.) to promote consistency. This should ideally cover both main articles on corporations, and criticism-specific splits. We already have equivalent MoS pages for television or music-related articles, for example.
• More tentatively: clarifying or expanding WP:POV (given the surprising obscurity of WP:PROPORTION among editors of corp-related articles) to clarify its application here. It's currently very clear on scientific issues and BLPs, but when it comes to corporations, many editors interpret WP:DUE to support inclusion of practically every controversy that's been covered in reliable sources. When a new controversy appears, many editors indiscriminately add it to the relevant Wikipedia page, resulting in ever-lengthening articles and posing a maintainability burden. It wastes a lot of editors' time to selectively clean up these additions, and potentially need to argue at length in favor of each removal, if anyone disputes them and the content has been in the article for a while.
  • The policy's lack of clarity also means that editors who favor removing such content must base their arguments on inherently ambious and less well-known policies like WP:VNOT, WP:NOT, and WP:10YT. (I'll note that WP:RECENTISM is sadly not policy).
  • Policy changes may not be required, but perhaps we could add article notices pointing to WP:PROPORTION that people would see when they click Edit; I'm sure others will have better ideas on systemic ways to minimize editor workloads for these articles.

(As a minor side-note, I want to invite editors to check out Google Chrome version history, iOS version history, and List of iOS and iPadOS devices, since those are somewhat corporation-related too. WP:INDISCRIMINATE relies mostly on editors using "common sense", which seems insufficient. Many of our version history articles are extremely long and copy release notes verbatim, which may constitute copyvio. And many "list of devices" articles are far too detailed and hard to browse (especially with accessibility software). Again, this may not require new policies, but we should likely clarify existing ones or make them more prominent. Please discuss this side-note in a separate subsection to maintain clarity). DFlhb (talk) 20:32, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

• One of the few things from WP:N that should apply to article content as well as article existence is WP:SUSTAINED, in particular if something only shows up in a 24 hour news cycle, but then is never mentioned again in any reliable sources; it's likely not WP:DUE. WP:DUE should deal both with how much mainstream sources cover a topic, but also should have a temporal element. If no one is writing about it after the fact, then it likely isn't worth reporting; it doesn't have any historical significance. I have no problem with Wikipedia using current events to add to an article, but I also think that one of the defenses for removing something from an article should be "It's been X years since this happened, and no reliable source has ever covered since". They say that journalism is the first draft of history, but if it doesn't make it to a second draft, it's probably not worth keeping in an article... --Jayron32 12:03, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

  I would strongly support this; it would likely increase the signal-to-noise ratio of content additions. DFlhb (talk) 13:13, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

  This discussion really should be on VPI - it's got a lot of significant changes considered, which would need to be fully spelt out to be taken to VPP as fully formed proposals. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:29, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

  This angle really needs to be placed into WP:DUE, adding that viewpoints/coverage that only come from a short-term burst of news should not be weighed as heavily as views/coverage that come from the long-tail of some event. Effectively this is codifying parts of WP:RECENTISM that, in how many editors edit WP today, gets readily ignored as facts are added the second something changes without looking towards the longer-term narrative. Masem (t) 14:09, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

The first and foremost concern I have with any changes to how we cover companies, is that we not permit any kind of entering wedge for corporate PR departments and other hired guns to cleanse and polish their clients' reps. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:04, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but on the other hand, we should not be a catalogue of every single time a company is mentioned in a newspaper. If there's was a fire in an Amazon warehouse in 2009, even IF a newspaper wrote an article about it, we don't need to have that event in the Amazon article. How do we decide which events are important enough to cover? We discuss them. There's a middle ground between "allowing corporate shills to cleanse Wikipedia of all negative information" and "cataloguing every single time a company is mentioned in any reliable news article ever". We should not allow the latter to happen merely because we're frightened of the former. --Jayron32 15:00, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

In my experience most articles on companies suffer from the opposite problem. Amazon is probably a bad example; being one of the largest organisations in human history, it probably attracts a bit more attention than the average company. Usually very few editors are motivated to edit these articles proactively – except for those with an interest in promoting the company, who we'd rather not. The result is that negative coverage gets swept under the rug in favour of peacocky corporate histories and overly-detailed product catalogues (some random examples from Category:Companies in the Nasdaq-100: Amgen, Microchip Technology, Xcel Energy, Intuit). The proliferation of "controversies", "legal issues", etc. sections is a symptom of this. Amazon's appalling treatment of its workers, for example, isn't some free-floating, subjective "criticism" of the company, it's a well-documented fact that is an essential part of its history. Facts like these should be presented we're they're relevant, throughout the article text, not relegated to a few lines in a section at the bottom of the page because they happen to reflect poorly on the subject. – Joe (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

What generally happens with "controversies" sections is that you get something that a company did once, got a lot of short term criticism at it, and some WP editor judges that all a "controversy". For example, YouTube recently had temporarily put 4K videos behind its subscription tiers but two weeks later reverted that. Hypothetically, with the way some WP articles are written, that could have been presented as a "4K video controversy" on the WP article, but in reality the change itself likely merits no mention, and if anything, that could be incorporated as criticism related to YouTube's "changes on the fly" practices.

Absolutely there are valid criticisms and controversies like Amazon's that are mentioned above, but that has the long-tail of coverage and didn't come out of a incident lasting only a couple days. Masem (t) 15:37, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Joe, you do realize that it is quite possible for two things to be wrong at the same time, right? Yes, where controversial corporate practices have received widespread, sustained, coverage then it is likely that is worthwhile to mention in an article. No one, not anyone, zero people, are talking about that sort of thing. What we're talking about here is the sort of minor, one off, singular events that are minor blips in the history of a company getting out-sized attention in an article. It's quite possible for us to BOTH cover the sort of long-term covered controversial corporate practices that maybe aren't in these articles, AND to avoid the "minor incident of the day" reporting that these articles fill up with, often instead of the actual real stuff we should be covering. --Jayron32 15:43, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

@Jayron32: You seem to be under the impression that my comment was intended to be a rebuttal of or challenge to you, and all I can suggest is that you read it again. – Joe (talk) 15:51, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Not at all. I don't form impressions. It's not worthwhile. --Jayron32 15:55, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I will say that this goes both ways. At Sembcorp, for example, several years of UPEs Gone Wild had turned a fossil fuel company into a socially conscious innovator devoted to positive social change #wow #whoa. On the other hand, on Target there was once an entire section devoted to an incident of somebody sneaking into a Target and playing porno clips over the speakers, once, about a decade ago. jp×g 11:43, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I'll let this discussion die after this, but others may be interested in Talk:Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.#Strays_away_from_WP:POVFORK. I'm wondering why WP:POVFORK seems to be so rarely applied to non-BLPs. It just makes for way worse articles than what we could have. DFlhb (talk) 09:01, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Came here after seeing the move from Criticism of Apple Inc. to Practices of Apple Inc., which, as I just wrote at WP:NORN, strikes me as strange. It's not a POVFORK if DUE coverage would overwhelm an already long article, as with Apple, Amazon, Nestle, etc. That some people add UNDUE items to it doesn't mean the article itself is bad -- it means it needs standards for inclusion like any other article comprising smaller events. In some cases, it may make sense to spin out, say, "labor practices of Apple Inc" and a few others to separate articles and then include the parts that are smaller in scope in the main article, but I don't see a bigger problem with "criticism of [company]" articles than I do in company articles. We don't actually have very many of them (many of the pages in that category aren't criticism articles). I'd say this is a cause for improving those articles rather than getting rid of them. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:33, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't actually mind that large numbers of our articles on companies give somewhat WP:UNDUE coverage to negative incidents and stories, while at the same time being pretty bad at reporting financial results, changes in top management and even the basic business activities. The negative stuff quickly vanishes from other media coverage, while it is always easy to find the "official" version. Nobody in their right mind would pay attention to WP for anything except negative stories, & I don't mind if that stays the case. Johnbod (talk) 17:32, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Series of RfC's on specific questions about Vector 2022

The general RfC was useful, but due to how broad it was I believe a series of specific yes/no questions, about areas that concerns were raised but insufficiently discussed, would be useful.

At the moment, I have three questions that I believe should be included. Work on wordsmithing these questions, as well as work on determining other relevant questions, would be useful.

1. Should Vector 2022 be renamed Tensor?
2. Should Vector 2022's default width be full width?
3. Should the width toggle for Vector 2022 have permanence for logged out users?

BilledMammal (talk) 01:32, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the third question is pointful. If it could be done, it already would have been. From what I'm hearing, the question amounts to "Should we re-write MediaWiki core from the ground up and double the size and complexity of the cacheing systems?", which is not something that non-technical people actually get to decide, unless they're on the Board and are prepared to appropriate tens of millions of dollars to make it happen. The devs tell us Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance except when they say so, and it sounds like this would be a serious performance problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Based on this proposal I don't believe such an issue exists; if we can "hack" such a solution in, then the WMF can implement a proper solution. BilledMammal (talk) 00:39, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

A cookie-based solution with Javascript is possible but would potentially result in the layout shifting after initial page load. Not sure which way would cause more dissatisfaction with non-logged in users. isaacl (talk) 00:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Pinging Alexis Jazz who, I think, had a method for storing logged-out users' preferences which has become buried in the verbose discussions. Certes (talk) 11:08, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Certes, there would be either a layout shift after initial load as isaacl described or the preference would be enforced through a URL parameter which is hackish and may impact cacheing complexity. So if a layout shift is unacceptable, sorry. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Btw, whenever the argument is made in discussions like these that "we should be encouraging people to make accounts", that argument should be countered by saying that if every reader actually did that, the servers would collapse as nothing could be cached anymore. The hackish URL parameter could cause a cache split (for a true/false parameter: double the number of cached versions), but every user actually registering an account would be infinitely worse. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:58, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if I understand what a layout shift after initial load is - is it the same thing that happens with the WMF donation banners when they suddenly appear in an article? (Addition: if it's the same thing, then I oppose it for donation ads, but support it for width toggles )199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:27, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the answer is basically yes. It would be similar to a Flash of unstyled content. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: Please, add a question for having a hybrid TOC system like Sushi or Song, which preserves the legacy TOC along with the new one.--Æo (talk) 01:10, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

idea: new mainspace entry, to list major or noteworthy articles from magazines, or other periodicals

Here is a new idea that I would like to present here for consideration, and discussion. As you know, Wikipedia is a resource with sweeping comprehensiveness. We have articles here for every sitcom, every commercially produced record, every cartoon, every notable band, every king or president, every congressman, every legislature, every published book or novel, every amino acid, the list goes on and on.

ok, here is my question. given our comprehensive nature in terms of scope, topics, and content, what would be some possible approaches to create an index of every notable article published? I.e., articles from magazines, or journals, or various reputable periodicals?

to put it another way, if a novel becomes notable just by being published, then why shouldn't the same hold true for notable magazine articles?

for example:

• if a public figure of major notability publishes their thoughts on their own main field of interest. why shouldn't that be worthy of inclusion in some article that serves as an overall index?
• as another example, if a major public figure publishes their views on a n issue of major importance, then why shouldn't that be deemed notable to be listed in a major entry on Wikipedia serving as an index of major articles in magazine and periodicals?

some arbitrary examples of articles which clearly should not be included:

• ordinary news articles on every day events
• movie reviews of a non-noteworthy nature.

Ok, so clearly, based on some of the above, the standard of whether a magazine/journal article meets WP:Notable would hinge upon some possible parameters, amongst others:

• if the author of the article is notable in general.
• if the author has a notable connection to the subject matter of the article, which makes it worthy of inclusion
• if the article itself is of sufficient noteworthiness to warrant inclusion
  • obviously "sufficient noteworthiness" is a concept that we would need to clearly work out specifically, and to define.

ok, obviously a number of details would need to be worked out. we would need to define clear standards of notability, in terms of what would be included, and what criteria and what basis would be used to determine what could be included. yes, that would all need to be clearly delineated.

Ok, so what are some folk’s thoughts here on this? I would truly welcome any feedback, ideas, input, or comments on this idea. Thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 17:14, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Re: if a novel becomes notable just by being published. Just being published isn't sufficient for notability for novels or any other type of book, see WP:NBOOK. Schazjmd (talk) 18:00, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

'Notability' as the term is used in Wikipedia policy, concerns article topics - things we decide we can adequately write about ourselves, based on available sources. It isn't an assertion about the importance of a subject to the outside world, and it would be improper for Wikipedia to engage in such subjective categorisation of such material. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:07, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Schaz and Andy's comments, and of course there are the NOTs: not everything, not directory, etc. Nevertheless, I've often thought that what would be useful to our readers is if every citation's author and publisher were blue links, so that readers would always be able to learn more about the sources used in an article. I've thought about having NPROF-style auto-notability for reliable source publishers and authors, but there are alternatives that don't involve changing Wikipedia's notability guidelines, such as using Wikidata to be the index of information about publishers, authors, and works. Levivich (talk) 18:23, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I was going to say that Wikidata already has items for cited sources, with corresponding items for all of their associated attributes. (It's what I found makes adding info to Wikidata so time consuming.) isaacl (talk) 23:32, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

If you have not seen this before, this category with many subcategories may be of interest Category:Works originally published in periodicals (there may be other parent categories/lists that are also useful)g, which I think will include many such notable articles categorized by things like type of publication and/or country and so on for examples of what articles which have had articles. Skynxnex (talk) 18:23, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

welll..... what about, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...? so here is our first contestant. see what I mean?> so how about some general guidelines, which might perhaps proceed from the few but genuinine items already fitting within this category? And presumably the implicit guidelines which govern items for inclusion of this type? Sm8900 (talk) 21:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

@Sm8900 in very broad terms, if a topic is notable it may support a standalone article. I can't see us recording for example every tweet someone produces (...publishes their thoughts...); but if someone publishes a statement about something it may already be included in their biography, etc. I think I'm a bit lost on what you want to accomplish; Would this idea result in a new page being produced? If so, would you write (in your sandbox) one draft article/list/etc that you think wouldn't be inclusion-worthy today, but if this idea was adopted would be? Having an example would help me give better feedback. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:01, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

those are good ideas, @Xaosflux. for now I'm just brainstorming on how such an entry might be written. if I can find a magazine article that is worth covering, then I will write a draft. So your point is noted. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 14:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Section break 1

ok, how about this as an idea? an article from a magazine or periodical can be considered noteworthy for inclusion, if it has signfiicant published coverage in third-party media outlets; in other words, if it has received coverage from various media outlets elsewhere, in addition to the media outlet that published the article itself.

I think this standard is so simple as to be self-evident or a truism, since it is simply the same standard that is teccnically applied to any current topic, current event, or prominent individual or creative work that is being considered for inclusion as an entry on wikipedia. --Sm8900 (talk) 15:19, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

• No, I feel guilty about being overly negative, but most of the possible outcomes undermine what Wikipedia actually is. First problem is how do we define a "major article"? Taking the example of science articles (purely because I need to take a practical example in a field where I feel competent to guess what the proposal might do, in concrete terms), I don't know of any journal that distinguishes between "major" and "minor" articles. Are we going to define everything in Nature as major/notable, but everything in Annual Reviews of Plant Biology as probably not? But Nature publishes novel research, which is a primary source, and Annual Reviews of Plant Biology publishes reviews, which are secondary sources, and therefore highly appropriate as references in articles concerning plant biology. But if we include ARPB, we have to include an enormous multitude of other, equally reputable journals that publish review articles from time to time, and of which most readers will never have heard. How do we compile that list? We could, I suppose, do it by impact factor, but there are big debates in the science world at the moment about how fair impact factor is as an indicator of the true relevance of a journal or an article, and impact factors are specific to academic publication, so they presumably wouldn't extrapolate to deciding what's a "major article" when it comes to military matters, or the film industry. And how do we then deal with the fact that some subjects, like gene editing, or the role of gut microflora in health, will produce truly vast lists of relevant articles if we accept all reputable news-sources and science-journals? And what do we and our users do with this list? This prompts the really big question: if all we're doing is a big, automated search of all published literature, and dumping the result on the user for them to sort out, what makes us better than Google? Our strength is in giving an approachable, well-written overview of a subject based on good secondary sources, with sufficient carefully-chosen references to give our readers a foothold in the broader literature. Our strength is in our human, collaborative editing, and we shouldn't be tempted by the siren of enormous automated data-processing. Google will always be far, far better at it than we are. The true indicator is the fate of the Science Citation Index, which did in the field of the sciences what I think this idea is intended to do more generally. Thirty years ago, I and my colleagues used the science citation index all the time. Now I don't know anyone who uses it, simply because Google does the job much better. Automated literature indexing as a field distinct from broad internet search providers is a comet-watching dinosaur donning woolly underpants and staring extinction in the face. Elemimele (talk) 11:14, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

@Elemimele, you are making some outstanding points above. However, I actually have changed my own initial proposal somewhat. I agree that creating or compiling an exhaustive list, or index, or summation of all notable articles is simply not needed, and is not feasible or viable at all; actually that was not what I meant to propose, but I see how my proposal above might seem to suggest that somewhat.

here is my current actual suggestion; if a published article has received truly major media coverage, then perhaps we might consider whether it is viable for an entry. such as, if hypothetically, if a leading politician wrote an article, which then subsequently attracted major news coverage and headlines worldwide, over its importance, or dramatic content, etc., then perhaps we might deem it worth of an entry here.

Cover of the September 1917 edition of the magazine featuring Sherlock Holmes

we have numerous articles for short stories, many of which appeared as items in a periodical or magazine when first published. In fact, the categories cited above by another commenter, as being focused on items from a magazine, are mainly populated by published short stories. in the 19th century, many authors like Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, published short stories in notable publications. The Strand Magazine is one of the best-known magazine, for fans of Sherlock Homes.

my main thought is that if we did move ahead with this in any way, it would still not precipitate any major change in content, or expansion of content overnight, at all. On the contrary, this idea would be implemented on an extremely narrow basis. We absolutely, would not seek to publish any type of index, that would be exhuastive or comprehensive in regards to all noteworthy articles etc. as you rightly point out above, any such effort or attempt would be highly inadvisable. Your points on this are spot-on.

so therefore, I propose that perhaps we might all keep in mind for the future that perhaps if an article appears on the landscape sometime in the future, perhaps we might simply consider now as to whether such an article could be deemed worthy of its own entry here, and what might be some valid and useful criteria for doing so.

and in addition, here is another thought; a set of regular weekly columns by a columnist, who has had some type of noteworthy role or impact, should be worthy of inclusion here, simply as being on the same level and within the same general category as any other major type of published work. So I just wanted to add that idea and note as well.Ok, so please feel free to reply, for anyone here who may wish to do so. And @Elemimele, I greatly appreciate your thoughtful, helpful, and well-reasoned insights above. Thanks! Sm8900 (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I fail to see the issue. We already have articles on such noteworthy publications, and no one is suggesting that they should be deleted. Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen is a snappily named article on one such scientific publication, and no special guidelines (whether notability or MOS) seem to be needed. April 26 Editorial is a completely different example, this time of a front page article in China. WP:CREEP: nothing new seems to be needed, or at least no actual problem has been identified so far. Fram (talk) 14:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Fram, actually, my only point was whther we can have entries on individual articles within such publications. to recap, we already have numerous articles on numerous short stories, many of which also started out as literary works published in magazines, so that was one large part of the basis for my initial thoughts on this.

yes, the entry that you cite on the 1905 article by Einstein is a perfectly valid example of one such entry. so you have helped me very much to broaden my own knowledge on this. thanks. Sm8900 (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Don't reply to archives

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T249293

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T324676

Is there an easy way to suppress those tempting [reply] links on archives of talk pages? I just nearly replied to an old conversation I'd become engrossed in, forgetting that I was reading an archive, and I doubt I'm the first to make that mistake. I know I could create a bit of JavaScript to do it for me (or anyone else who runs or copies it) – CSS might even suffice – but I was thinking of a more universal solution. Certes (talk) 12:27, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Conceptually, __NOEDITSECTION__ should disable it. DMacks (talk) 06:58, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

As this is a place for ideas, I wonder if we should add that when creating an archive. The page could still be edited using the tab at the top, where the title is visible as reminder that one is editing an archive, but it might prevent accidental changes. Or perhaps the problem is sufficiently rare to ignore. Certes (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

The archive header templates generally already add it. But the reply tool doesn't (yet) honor it. Anomie⚔ 12:32, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Feedback for my proposal wanted

I have drafted a proposal called Wikipedia:NotReallySoroka's Law on spelling of currency names and symbols, and your feedback is appreciated. Thank you. NotReallySoroka (talk) 06:46, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Non-descriptive title. Content is either trying to say what WP:ENGVAR already says or it's trying to override it and/or MOS:FOREIGN, depending on which way you read it and whether the spelling is one used in English. Overall I'd say it's not necessary and if you want to keep it it should be moved into your user space. Anomie⚔ 12:40, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

As Anomie says - ENGVAR handles the cases where you can say you have sufficient concurrence with your spelling that it's not just a personal choice (except where that lovely national relevance comes in). Your concept has one appreciable aspect beyond ENGVAR, which is that it suggests that currency spelling can be a truly personal choice. Which it can't. If your spelling is no more than your personal preference, despite what everyone in your country/linguistic grouping thinks, then it's functionally a spelling mistake, and thus should not be encouraged. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:21, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Creating a feedback system (like/dislike) over time for articles of Wikipedia

Hi, nowadays in the contemporary World Wide Web, feedback system (via like Like, and dislike  Dislike ) is very common. But for an interactive system (like articles of Wikipedia, that content of an article changes over time) we should show "like/dislike over time", and the mean of "like number on a month" can be shown to the user on the top of an article, plus a diagram for "number of like/dislike in each day" for that month.

So I propose to add an option for Like and  Dislike that after a click of a user, its color changes from gray to green/red, and showing the mean like/dislike number per last month at the top of that article, and additionally create a "like/dislike per day" diagram. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:49, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

That seems like a great way to make off-wiki brigading more effective. Platforms like YouTube and Netflix have removed similar displays because of brigading issues. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:04, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@ScottishFinnishRadish We can propose solutions for the brigading issue, IP and username supervision is one technique.

One of the benefits of feedback is that finding bad/good articles in the opinion of users becomes more convenient, and we can make a "bad article" more user-friendly and more fluent to become a good article. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:12, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I think this would attract more feedback about if someone likes or dislikes the topic of an article, as opposed to the coverage of the topic. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:50, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux I don't think so! I think "like number" attracts how well that topic/concept is described. If one finds and understoods his intended and required information in a fast and fluent way, then he/she likes that article, otherwise dislike.

We can show this sentence in the feedbacking system: "Was this article helpful?" and then ask him to feedback the article, to avoid voting about topic instead of coverage of that topic. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:02, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh thanks for the note, please see Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool, where a previous experiment in this was done. In 2014 it was disabled following this discussion: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article feedback. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:05, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux Wikipedia follows 1% rule, i.e., only 1% of users (or readers) are the actual writers of articles. So I propose history of feedback (past like and comments) should be kept hidden for 99% and only other 1% can view history of like number and comments. This 1% should do something to improve that article and remove defects of article. One way to find this 1% is to check and inspect edit number of a user, if edit number is greater than for example 2000 edits, then this feedback history become apparent for that user. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:33, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea, especially to do with bias and uneditorly behaviour, but I agree on the brigading, and that if there are problems the reader should fix. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 10:55, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

These systems have had a massive negative impact on society as they drive content towards extremism ie. the more emotional the reaction content the more likes/dislikes it gets, the more attention it gets. I would be very opposed to it. -- GreenC 15:00, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC The question of feedback is "Was this article helpful?" or "Did you get the answer of your question?" Yes(like)/No(dislike). In my opinion this is not emotional at all. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:08, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry my typo I should have said 'emotional content'. If people are motivated to edit based on number of likes they get (and people do get motivated this way) they will make content they discover gets more likes. There's a ton of academic research on this topic I'm probably not explaining it correctly. -- GreenC 15:15, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC Suppose some one wants a recent and clear photo of Tim Berners-Lee to use in his presentation. He opens Wikipedia and founds a picture of him at 2014. Now is 2022, and he can feedback about this article that:

 Dislike : I did not satisfy my request, because the picture that is present is for 8 years ago.

This way, writers of this article is alarmed to upload a newer version of Tim Berners-Lee's picture.

I should note again that these comments are visible for only 1% (see 1% rule) but this 1% should do something to improve the article. For example this 1% somehow find a picture, or create a discussion at talk and wants a newer version. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:38, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC@ScottishFinnishRadish@Xaosflux Briefly speaking:

99% + 1% of participators of Wikipedia can write feedback, but 1% of participators can view feedbacks and then modify the article.

This is the most important application of feedback. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:26, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia where anyone can edit. It looks like the feedback system that you are proposing actually makes it harder for people to join the project and make edits, since they would just write the problems they had with the article in a feedback box instead. Knowing that the encyclopedia is not perfect and has many issues to be fixed is how I was introduced into editing Wikipedia.

Another big question is how to ensure that we can respond to the feedback efficiently. Having a text box soliciting feedback can invite a lot of writing since we have a lot of readers. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 16:47, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Above, the proposer notes IP and username supervision is one technique, but for this idea to work, we'd need to understand how this could be done without costing more effort in review than we'd gain. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:46, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. The basic premise here seems wrong to me - this is a site dedicated to writing an academic encyclopaedia, it is not a social media site designed to feed people content they want to see to keep them engaged - "like" and "dislike" are completely the wrong things to be asking about because people's emotional response to an article is not the kind of feedback that is useful in an academic context. You don't see academic journals asking their readers to react to the articles they publish.

Using this as a metric of how "good" an article is also strikes me as a poor idea - regardless of what you say a significant number of people are going to "like" or "dislike" and article on the basis of its topic, regardless of the actual content of the page. It is also quite possible to write an article that is a good read for a causal observer that is factually inaccurate, uses poor sources, misses major aspects of a topic, is biased etc. Structured processes like featured article reviews seem like a much better way of determining which articles are well written.

Asking people to leave comments on articles has been tried multiple times before and has always ended poorly - the final report on the v5 article feedback tool is worth reading mw:Article feedback/Version 5/Report. only 10% of the comments left were actually reviewed by an editor, and only 12% of the comments reviewed were actually marked as being useful. Consider the example you give above, is "the photo is old" a useful bit of feedback? I would argue that it isn't - the age of the photograph is already obvious to anyone looking at the page, and there are a multitude of reasons why that picture is being used that may not be obvious to a reader - it is entirely possible that there are no high quality, recent photos available under a free licence, for example. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 14:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Adding on to what other users have said about how terrible like/dislike systems are in general, I think this is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia in another way. The whole point of this project is that if people don't like an article, they can fix it themselves or express their concerns on the talk page. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:43, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the concept of like/dislike is not consistent with our mission. If the aim is to have readers feed back on missing, incorrect or outdated info, the talk page serves that purpose. However, what might be useful is to make that clearer for the reader and provide a one-click method of adding material to the talk page from the main space. As it is now, I believe, there's a realization needed that the talk page is the right channel, then a click to get to the talk page, then a click to start a contribution, then a click to publish the contribution. This could be streamlined, I believe. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:06, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

We could make a form/inputbox/whatnot to solict and streamline generic feedback on articles, but it comes with a workflow issue: there's a good chance no one will do anything about the feedback. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:00, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm more concerned that the only use will be for causing disruption of the sort seen at Talk:Adam's Bridge [12][13][14][15]. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:09, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Far better that the vandal focuses on the talk page than the main space page, but I agree it is nonetheless ANNOYING! User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

@Ceyockey @ScottishFinnishRadish Wow on Adam's Bridge. I quite like stack exchange's system that you need x reputation to comment on controversial topics. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:28, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Alt parameter for Maplink template

The maplink template doesn't have an "alt" parameter. Should it have one? I think the only relevant reading on this would be MOS:ALT. FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 19:13, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Category for articles without a talk page

Every now and then I come across articles without talk pages. Most recently this one. I just go ahead and quickly create the talk page most of the time. However wouldn't it be nice to have a way of grouping articles without talk pages? Ideally this category should be empty. FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 19:23, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

@FacetsOfNonStickPans I really don't find anything wrong with a non-created talk page; simply existing without having anything useful on a talk page isn't a benefit, for example look at some recent new talk pages: Talk:Zootah, Talk:Jetcost, Talk:Jesus Loves the Little Children, Talk:Itha. In every one of those cases it would satisfy the idea above of an article "with a talk page", but most every one of those can just be speedy deleted as useless. I don't think a "category" would be a good way to deal with these either, if someone wanted to do something constructive they could use a query, such as this one. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:59, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there are number of reasons why a mainspace article may not have a talk page. And then that talk page may have no useful information such as WikiProject templates. I am an average non-technical editor; the link largely makes sense and those redlinks within the limit have indeed been identified. I will explore this more myself. Thank you! FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 22:54, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

I remember the good ol' days before WikiProject tagging became widespread when most articles didn't have talk pages. For example, my first edit in the talk namespace was to create the talk page for the Dionne Warwick article. I think it's about time for you whippersnappers to get off my lawn! :-) Graham87 09:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I used to be quite conscientious about creating talk pages for articles I had started, including adding what I thought were appropriate project banners, but I have pretty much given up on that. Of the last 26 articles I have started, going back 2 1/2 years, ten still do not have a talk page. These days, I am more concerned about how an article fits into the hyper-space of related topics (i.e., how many rabbit holes are available from links in the article) than I am about whether a talk page exists to link to more or less quiescent projects. - Donald Albury 18:44, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

My preference is to create a talk page if and only if there's something to talk about, whether that's discussion on how to treat some subtopic in the article or a banner assessing importance and quality. Certes (talk) 19:10, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Automatically deleting dormant/unactive talk pages, provided certain conditions are met, is also not possible. At the other extreme, identifying the most active talk pages does exist. FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 10:04, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I vaguely remember a proposal to automatically create talk pages whenever an article is created. It would have addresses edge cases, such as a user being unable to create pages due to permissions, but also unable to communicate on talk page due to being unable to create it. It would make it easier for people to contribute to a talk page, without the heightened complexity of creating one too. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 15:15, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

If I understand the table of permissions at Wikipedia:User access levels correctly, everyone not subject to a block (including non-logged in users) is able to create an article talk page. isaacl (talk) 17:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@FacetsOfNonStickPans, why do you want talk pages to exist? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Idea for small topics and article series

Hi everyone. I'm currently working on the article series about Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu. The latest experiences lead to a new idea that might be fruitful for smaller topics and series with close interlinking (scope of ca. 3 to 6 articles). This concerns especially long biographies that had to be split into multiple sub-articles.

I noticed that the current navigation sidebar for our article series has the following issues:

Extended content

It is a powerful tool if placed at the top of the sub-articles, but it gets lost in the mass of surrounding text on the main biography. This is not ideal, since the biography is the most visited page of the series and hence the most crucial one for linking and traffic. The sidebar works properly in desktop mode but is not available in mobile view (similar issue with navigation boxes at the bottom of the page). To make mobile readers aware of the series as a whole, we can use the "See also" section, but that one is visually not very striking. Many readers didn't know that there is a sub-article about Hanyu's Olympic seasons, until it was featured on Wikipedia's main page this month. While the current sidebar of the series is nice in optics, it covers a lot of space with little content, which is not economic.

I experimented with some alternatives and developed a simple navigation bar that could be placed at the top of the article:

Yuzuru Hanyu article series

Biography Olympic seasons Ice show productions Awards and achievements Programs and publications

Advantages:

• This navigation bar should be accessible in mobile view as well. I am not an expert for technical stuff and formatting, so there might be better solutions than this one, but it should give a rough idea how the template could look like.
• It is much more compact than the current sidebar and covers less space in the article. It is also more visible and accessible, and fits the rather simple formatting of Wikipedia better than the colorful box.
• Readers know from the beginning that the article is part of a series consisting of multiple, closely interrelated pages. For example, if readers want to look up the list of Hanyu's awards, they don't have to scroll down the full biography to find the link to the respective sub-article but can click on it directly at the top of the page.
• A navigation bar like this may invite more readers to visit the sub-articles, and it would be a nice opportunity to display good and featured topics in the article mainspace. Personally, I didn't know that Wikipedia has FTs and GTs, until I noticed one through its talk page by coincidence. This is sad because they represent Wikipedia's best works and deserve recognition. A possible labelling could look like this:

Lady Gaga article series

Biography Discography Songs Videography Live performances Awards and nominations

There are many topics and article series, especially large ones with 15–20 articles or more, where the current sidebars and navigation boxes are more suitable. Those can definitely stay. However, for small series, a simple horizontal navigation bar like the two examples above, might be a better alternative, especially if it's accessible in mobile view.

I am really interested in your opinions and suggestions. Thank you very much in advance, and I wish you all a happy new year! Henni147 (talk) 14:13, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Henni147:, maybe the Horizontal TOC can accomplish what you are asking for. I added

{{horizontal TOC|nonum=yes|align=center|limit=3}}

to Yuzuru Hanyu article for you to view. It is positioned at end of lead & before first section title. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC: Thank you very much for your response. My idea does not really depend on the table of contents. The issue is that the current article series sidebar kind of gets lost between the surrounding text. It is placed below the very long infobox, and most readers don't notice it there at all.

In my opinion, it is important that readers are aware that this biography article is part of a larger series that consists of multiple, closely interlinked articles that build a unit in content. Currently, the series consists of three pages but our author team is working on another two, summarizing Hanyu's career as a professional skater, which has started in July last year. And it would be great if readers were able to quickly navigate to these sub-articles to look up information, not having to scroll through the biography article to find the sidebar or individual links hidden between the lines. I think that a horizontal navigation bar like the one above would be a good solution. For our example, it could look like this (lead draft). Henni147 (talk) 20:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

A centralized place for feedback on comprehensiveness

I like to work on broad subject articles, so oftentimes, when I want feedback on an article, I don't need a formal peer review or a full evaluation. I essentially just need a few users to look at it and identify the major omissions. It would be immensely helpful if there were a page somewhere that users could make a post about whatever article they're working on, and people that participate on that page would give a few brief thoughts about where the article might need expansion or what aspects of the subject no one has thought to include. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: My experience is that the best place for quick feedback is the talk page of the article. You start a new section with an open discussion round, and ping those authors who are actively working on the page as well. It has the advantage that everyone who joins the writing process at a later point and visits the talk page, is informed too.

If it's a larger scale project, it may help to organize a task force with a detailed to-do list like our team did for this article series. This solution works quite well.

I hope, these ideas help. Best wishes and a happy new year! Henni147 (talk) 11:31, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

This would be my approach if it's a popular article that receives regular attention and updates, but that makes up a very small proportion of Wikipedia's articles overall. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:20, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Asking a relevant Wikiproject could help. That way you are more likely to get people who are familiar with the sources in the particular topic area than if you ask at a centralized page. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:16, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Skip to Top Buttons

Wiki articles can be very long involving much scrolling especially when using a device with a small screen such as cell/mobile phone or tablet. As these devices are increasing popular it would greatly benefit Wiki readers to have Skip to Top Buttons added to articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jossdickie (talk • contribs) 15:36, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Jossdickie: I've moved this to idea lab, as it would need more development before having a community proposal. But that being said, work on this is sort of already being done; in the new skin, Vector-2022, there is now a floating table to contents that has a return to top capability built in. See what this looks like by using this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn?useskin=vector-2022 . The (Top) on there should solve this concern? You can enable this skin for yourself in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I use the Vector-2022 (Top) button all the time, very handy when I'm working my watchlist, and have scrolled way down a page to find what I'm interested in, then just scroll up the TOC and hit the (Top) button and then the watchlist button to move on. Donald Albury 20:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I’ve been to your try it link but have no floating contents and only a Go to top at the bottom of the them. I’m using Chrome with iOS 15.3.1 on an iPhone. Could you post a link to the ideas lab? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jossdickie (talk • contribs) 17:01, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Jossdickie korean wikipedia has a gadget to do this. You can use this gadget by adding: mw.loader.load("https://ko.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&title=미디어위키:Gadget-scrollUpButton.js&ctype=text/javascript");

to your common.js. This will add a up arrow to the bottom right of your screen which will take you to the top of the page. Terasail^[✉️] 20:52, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh, that is a desktop skin; you are in mobile, not sure. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

WW2 : Lost Figures Task Force

My idea is one to give the men and women who fought for liberty a page. The people who would meet criteria would be Resistance leaders (From any country, France Austria and Low Countries mainly) and low ranking military staff who fought in battles of high importance.

My proposal would be an unofficial task force which requires about 20 people to monitor and create these easy 30min pages. The point of this project is to allow people to more easily know of the people who actually died for our freedom.

Please RSVP on my personal talk page if you want. Multi Lingual people wanted.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeekyDave (talk • contribs) 14:59, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

You may be interested in WikiProject Military history and its biography task force. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:25, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

BOT makers Alert

• https://www.nytimes.com/1901/07/27/archives/thaddeus-hyatt-dead-end-came-to-the-new-jersey-inventor-and-friend.html

no text

• https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/07/27/119079441.html

paywall

• https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/07/27/119079441.pdf

free

....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 11:49, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Flag translations whose original get deleted

I have no idea whether this is already done, technically possible, or worth the effort, hence making it as a very tentative suggestion here. The suggestion is prompted by a situation at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lucretia (Baldung) where a hoax article in the German Wikipedia got translated into English, and fortunately someone has brought it to AfD here too.

I was wondering whether it would be possible to create an automatically-filled category for "translated articles whose originals have been deleted", so that when an article is deleted on its original language Wikipedia, we get a chance to review its fate here? Of course it might get deleted for a spurious reason there, and we might choose to keep ours, but it's generally a really bad sign if another Wikipedia chooses to delete. The argument for is that AfDs are busy places on every Wikipedia, so to spot a hoax translation like this, we need a regular follower of the German Wikipedia's AfD system to feel motivated to make an English AfD, otherwise the hoax lives on; it's very difficult to find articles that have been deleted! The arguments against are perhaps (1) that it doesn't happen enough to justify the effort, and (2) it wouldn't always work. In this particular example it would have failed because the original translator failed to mark the article as a translation anyway (and, perhaps connected in terms of acknowledgement of sources, got themselves blocked from article- and draft-space for copy-vio). Elemimele (talk) 15:03, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

On the Attitude of Administrators and Seasoned Editors

Lately it has come to my attention the rude and unwelcoming manners of a certain number of administrators and seasoned editors, either in the teahouse or in the interactions on talk pages on different articles, even though I understand that disruptive/vandalizing behaviour is harmful for the project and must be addressed swiftly and that the administrator positions entails certain rights and prerogatives , i extend a cordial invitation on everyone here to adjust the attitude to reflect the expectations of welcoming, politeness and patience and even more keenly to those who have spent more time and effort on wikipedia to follow the guidelines and policies that they're so eager to enforce, lets continue building a better and more inclusive and welcoming project. Juanriveranava (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I presume that you are talking about Wikipedia:Teahouse#Extended confirmed pages. We should make vandals feel unwelcome, because they are unwelcome. This is a workplace to build an encyclopedia, not a social club. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

not only, don't jump to conclusions, im contributing with an alternative pov that have been shared by others, it seems to me that policies are enforced when suited to those who incur in said behaviour but those policies that are not inline with that rude and not helpful behaviour like the guidelines to become a teahouse host, don't bite newcomers and so are disregarded in a very selective and unfair manner, Now you have made me feel unwelcome, I guess I'm a vandal in your sight, but hey more power to you, I understand that policies are not laws, and my comment was directed towards the improvement of the project, now I understand how unwelcome I am. have a nice day mate. Juanriveranava (talk) 22:39, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The other day, I saw a warning about vandalism on an editor's talk page. I clicked through to the edit, and found what's probably a bug in the software. I've asked one of the devs to look into it. And now what do I do? Let it pass, or go back to the patroller and say "Hey, you know, if you see a scrambled mess with multiple Special:Tags on it, you should be leaving a note at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) about software bugs, instead of leaving escalating warnings on the editor's talk page"? I don't know that it would solve any problems (one reviewer, out of hundreds or more, would be more aware of one uncommon situation, out of hundreds or more), and it might result in the reviewer claiming editors should magically know that the software was going silently post something different from what showed on the screen at the time they tried to post their edit. If we approached editors with "Hey, that was a mess. Do you need help?", it'd be much more pleasant for everyone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:28, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly my point, all this welcoming policies like, be bold and so forth seem on the light of this rude behaviour empty wording, not put into practice or put at the sole discretion of the administrators or "seasoned bigger than life editors" who bash on newcomers or novice editors, all this very discouraging for anyone trying to contribute.

Then when I make an honest conciliatory call, you got comments like the one form@Phil Bridger in the fashion of, this is not a social club suck it up, and leave this to the grown ups.

to top it I just got a comment on my talk page about how unintelligible my writing is, and how low my english proficiency is, I was suggested to use google translation instead, first time in my life and interactions someone has told me that (not saying im a Shakespeare of the sorts but come on), I've read several comments on talk pages where this practice is not recommended, and in any professional situation using google translation copy paste is frowned upon. So contradictory messages, in the end it seems that one should not even try to contribute because if you do and make a mistake you can get a comment in the fashion of, REMIND THIS I'M AN ADMINISTRATOR AND I WILL BLOCK YOU, IS THAT CLEAR?

But as my mother says, sadly it is what it is, thank you for your contribution @Whatamidoing (WMF) Juanriveranava (talk) 03:10, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Avoiding driving off experts from Wikipedia

I fear experts may be disincentivized from contributing, or driven off by WP:FETCH-like behavior.

One problem, is that even with WP:V, nothing can substitute true expertise. I can read research papers, academic books, watch physics/math lectures, I'm still not going to be able to contribute to these topics with the level of understanding that an expert has. So when experts come here, contribute, and are reverted because of lack of sourcing, not because of any specific content objection, I think that's excessively burdensome. Why not just add a {{cn}} tag?

See this discussion, which seems representative of a more widespread problem: it focuses on procedural issues, instead of content (the only commenter who has discussed the content is the expert whose edits were reverted).

Interested in people's thoughts. Amusingly, WP:BURDEN and WP:PRESERVE were discussed at length recently (see here and here); but those discussions only barely addressed technical articles; most of ours are languishing, due to lack of expert attention, and I think we need to discuss that as its own subject.

How do we make it easier for experts to improve these articles, while minimizing the risk of unverifiable content being added? Surely, we have a ways to go. DFlhb (talk) 00:36, 4 January 2023 (UTC)