Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-05-17/Op-ed

Op-ed

Swiss chapter in turmoil

Out of the woodwork

Gender Gap workshop in Geneva, 9 March 2016

Two new contributors, "Nattes à chat" and "LaMèreVeille", set up a gender gap workshop to write and improve articles on notable Swiss women. They sought support for their project, being relatively new in the movement. It was in Paris that Nattes à chat was informed about the August 2015 Festicabales event in Geneva. The theme of their future workshop was well received by Wikipedians from France, whereas some of the Swiss-based Wikipedians were uncomfortable with what they saw as the "feminisation" of the encyclopedia. Once the workshop started, the participants started to receive a lot of negative feedback from a very active Swiss contributor, and this got them looking into his background.

Their sleuthing first turned up the name of Racosch Sàrl, a PR firm that advertises "Wikipedia by Wikipedians"; then they discovered that two chapter board members were partners in this company, and finally that the third partner was precisely the contributor who was giving their project such a hard time. When asked about how they manage to separate volunteer and paid activities, one of these board members said that he just switches hats depending on whom he is talking to. That answer was very unsettling for Nattes à chat and LaMèreVeille, and both contributors also felt that there was a definite conflict of interest (COI).

Nattes à chat then asked a contributor to the French Wikipedia, Jules78120, for advice. She attended the chapter's general assembly along with LaMèreVeille to get answers concerning the undisclosed paid-editing activities and COI of certain board members. Two of the three partners of the Racosch PR company, vice-president Frédéric Schütz and former interim executive director Stéphane Coillet-Matillon, acknowledged their involvement. The third partner, Nicolas Ray, was also mentioned but was not present. In spite of this coming out, their paid-editing activities were not fully disclosed and transparent on Wikipedia, and this prompted Jules to publish a piece on the French Wikipedia's Bistro (analogous to en.WP's Village Pump), on April 6.

I commend Nattes à chat and LaMèreVeille for their dogged investigation, which flushed some of the paid contributors out of the woodwork. Part of the board was unaware of either these paid-editing activities or the potential COI of the other board members until it struck them in the face during the April 2 general assembly.

During the general assembly, paid editing and the need for the chapter to investigate the issue were brought up several times. Once the board elections were over, a chapter member present extracted a promise from the new board that they would seriously look into this paid-editing issue, even if the person proposing these investigations is no longer on the board (documented in the draft assembly minutes, but available only to chapter members). Frédéric was re-elected by a comfortable margin, and Stéphane would have been re-elected as well had he not withdrawn, nevertheless this should not be construed as an approval of their paid-editing activities.

Lessons learned

The fact that a consulting firm does paid editing per se is not a breach of the WMF's terms of use (TOU);^[1] but the non-disclosure, the organizational conflicts of interest, and the consequent rift between chapter board members who were privy to inside information and those who were not—these are major issues. The defence of the board members who were involved boils down to their saying that they knew what they were doing and steered clear of any situation that would constitute a COI, so there was never a reason to inform the rest of the board. As the French would say: “Circulez, il n'y a rien à voir" (just move on, there's nothing to see).

What is disturbing is that two chapter officials and the spouse of a staffer they oversee had absolutely no qualms about violating the TOU and were prompted to become more transparent only when the pressure was turned up. The TOU are a good start, but after seeing what's been going on in Switzerland, in my view those terms need to be expressed in greater detail, and I strongly believe that the Foundation should devote more resources to help affiliates to tackle this problem.

What future for Wikimedia Switzerland?

Quite a few chapter members, and even a few board members, complain that their local community is not receiving the support they need for their programmatic work. The feeling is that the chapter spends a lot of its staff resources raising funds to pay for the staff itself, for independent external consultants and project managers. It has now gone so far as to hire a freelance project manager of fundraising! Increasingly, paid staff have been doing the work in such offline activities as photo competitions, wiki expeditions, GLAM, and the main focus of the chapter activities appears to have no need of a local community.

Volunteers from Wikimedia France, Austria, Germany, and Italy sometimes provide much-needed support to local projects in Switzerland, and there's a strong temptation for some communities to abandon WMCH and join forces with a neighbouring chapter. Swiss organisations operating at national level often have to fight against similar temptations. I don't yet see attempts to rebuild the mutual trust and confidence which are necessary for the smooth functioning of our multicultural Swiss chapter.

Let's just hope that our new board will take the hard road and steer WMCH in the right direction, providing the help and support that the Swiss communities need.

Gabriel Thullen is a Swiss Wikipedian and a board member of Wikimedia Switzerland. Pete Forsyth, Nattes à chat, and LaMèreVeille assisted in the preparation of this story.

^ English-language Wikipedian Pete Forsyth noted, in his February 2014 Signpost op-ed, that confusion between what is necessary and what is sufficient could lead to this kind of problem.

In this issue

17 May 2016

News and notes

Op-ed

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Discuss this story

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There's a related blog post by Gabriel Thullen at http://wikistrategies.net/french-paid-editing/ summarising some of the discussions in the French Wikipedia. --Andreas JN 466 02:39, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That is an amazing/terrible story, about how this emerged. Thanks for telling the story. The other thing I want to say, is that there is no good faith justification that I can see, for the board members who were paid editors to fail disclose their paid edits per the Terms of Use, which is very clear that the employer, client, and affiliation must be disclosed for each edit that is made for consideration (nor is there in "vous devez divulguer l’identité de votre employeur, de votre client et de votre affiliation relativement à toute contribution à tout projet Wikimedia pour laquelle vous percevez, ou espérez percevoir, une rémunération." from here) The ToU are plenty clear. Jytdog (talk) 14:27, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Our response to this should be 3-fold:

1) Chapters, affiliates, and user-groups should all include a strict no-paid-editing-for-officers-and-employees clause in their by-laws.

2) The WMF should have the same type of rule for all chapters, etc in their rules.

3) The English-language Wikipedia should add a clause to the policy Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure prohibiting paid edits by officers and employees of chapters, affiliates and user groups. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:27, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. This should be obvious to any engaged, long-term Wikipedian, especially one who puts enough thought into these issues to start a business; but since experience tells us it's not, we should certainly have relevant policies at all levels. It's a shame that we don't. On #3, it's not quite that simple, as chapter staff should be able to make edits relevant to the chapter itself; but that is a small detail.

There's more to it, of course; the problems in this case go well beyond the crossover between board membership and partnership in an agency. The extended lack of transparency is rather astonishing, above all the apparent meat-puppeting; and the way specific articles were approached is far from providing a good example for paid editor engagement. -Pete (talk) 21:25, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with User:Smallbones with the clause that this refers to "third party payments" not payment by the chapter itself.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:52, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree on the staff and officer level and board level that not allowing this sort of COI is correct - that COI is not manageable for people who have operational and other key oversight and relationship-building responsibilities, and must be eliminated/not allowed. ~~I don't agree with the board level aspect.~~ I believe that it is possible to be a paid editor and be a very good faith member of the community, if the paid editor very transparently discloses, doesn't edit directly, proposes high quality content on Talk pages (very well sourced, very neutral, including negatives), and doesn't BLUDGEON discussions. In other words, is truly clueful. This is possible. Somebody like that could be a great board member and there should be no bar to them running, especially if they have clearly disclosed and the voters would be aware of their paid editing when they vote. The employees of Racosch Sàrl were not like that, at all.

People are people, and you will find people acting unethically and abusively everywhere you go in many different ways (witness the WMF board over the past couple years), so I am not terribly surprised that this particular ugly thing happened.

The two things I really don't understand are 1) why the Swiss community re-elected Frédéric and was ready to re-elect Stéphane, after all this emerged; and 2) why the Swiss board has not dismissed Frédéric; somebody with a history of disdain for community norms and of deceit should not remain on the board. Jytdog (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2016 (UTC) (redacted per below Jytdog (talk) 00:06, 18 May 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Jytdog, you make a good point, however I think the cases where it would be possible for a chapter board member to engage in paid editing without ethical compromises are vanishingly small. You are right that they could conduct the work within a project responsibly, if they pay attention to the right things; but there is a bigger concern.

I speak from extensive experience on this. As the owner of a Wikipedia-focused business, I find it difficult to have a serious discussion with the representatives of an organization about Wikipedia, without thinking about the ways I could help them if they can pay for a significant portion of my time. I have a personal (and somewhat fluid) standard of how much help I will offer on my own time, and what level of assistance will require a contract. There's a good, solid gap in between...we prefer not to take on small projects, since it's difficult to have confidence in success, so it's a risk for our client and therefore for us. In that in between zone, I'll usually look to refer an organization to a motivated volunteer who shares their interest, or a chapter or similar organization.

Most chapters, I believe, do a substantial amount of programmatic work in content partnerships -- GLAM, education, and similar. There's a strong overlap with the kind of thing my business, or a business like Racoch, charge for. And also, most chapters have no paid staff, or only a few; so board members are pretty actively involved with pursuing, and scoping out, content partnerships. There is a great deal of room in that dynamic for an individual -- whether intentionally or unconsciously -- to devote their attention more to projects that may benefit their business interests, than to those that don't. At minimum, the issue would be a significant distraction to any board member with a foot in both worlds; but in practice, I think it would be more than a mere distraction. It would influence the activities of the chapter, for reasons utterly separate from its charitable mission.

I think it's theoretically possible that a chapter could be big enough that the board is exclusively focused on strategic issues, and partnership discussions are carried out almost exclusively by paid staff. If that's the case, it might be possible for a board member to engage in paid editing, without an unmanageable conflict of interest. It would still require careful management, but it might be possible. But I don't think that's at all typical of how chapters work in the Wikimedia world today. -Pete (talk) 00:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, well taken and things I wasn't aware of. Redacted above. Jytdog (talk) 00:06, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I will just try to clarify Jytdog's two points. Part of the difficulties stem from the differences in culture and business practices between the US and Switzerland.

1) why the Swiss community re-elected Frédéric and was ready to re-elect Stéphane, after all this emerged;

This issue with paid editing and COI emerged during the actual elections. Each candidate prepared a short presentation, and that was when questions were asked about paid editing and COI of certain board members. You must understand that the General Assembly was running very late, that there had been a long and frustrating discussion about voting regulations and how to count votes. When it finally came around to voting the new voting regulations, the assembly had to re-vote at least once (there were more votes than persons present) and so on.

When the subject of paid editing and COI came up, the two board members systematically played down the importance of this issue. Most members WMCH had placed a large amount of trust in the two board members, and were not about to change their mind on such short notice... You also have to realize that this type of COI is quite common and is still accepted among elected officials and politicians in Switzerland. We (the Swiss people) are slowly changing the way of doing things over here, transparency is progressing little by little, but there still is a lot to be done before we even reach the level of disclosure that is the norm for American elections.

2) why the Swiss board has not dismissed Frédéric; somebody with a history of disdain for community norms and of deceit should not remain on the board.

The board as a whole was not aware of these activities. The chapter president may or may not have been aware, but if he did know about the paid editing activities, he did not bring them to the board’s attention. What is certain is that the WMCH vice-president and spokesman, as well as the acting Executive Director knew about the paid editing and COI, and they did not think it was an issue the board had to deal with - they were both partners of the Racosch PR company. GastelEtzwane (talk) 10:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for explaining. 1) Makes great sense, and again that sounds like a very difficult thing to have lived through. I am sorry for that. On 2), you have my sympathy there as well. I guess in the next election things will be different!! Jytdog (talk) 10:54, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There was already a big change in the board but the new board is in force first on 1th june. The bylaws let the old board in force two month after election. - There is a policy how the processes are by probable COI but the old board hasn't followed yet. --Micha 11:03, 18 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Micha (talk • contribs) [reply]

People do this stuff. It's understandable, but they need to be brought in from the cold.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:25, 18 May 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I agree, to some degree, Rich Farmbrough. It's come to my attention that I may have come across as blaming too much. I do think it's very easy to get into problematic dynamics in our movement, because there are problematic views and unresolved discussions all over the place. That's an important reason why I initially opposed the adoption of the TOU update, as noted in the op-ed's footnote: February 2014 Signpost op-ed It's too easy for people to conclude that the necessary conditions imposed by the TOU are sufficient for ethical and respectful behavior.

If we're going to get to a better place around paid editing, blame and vilification can't be the focus. Yes, some agencies treat Wikipedia with outright contempt, and should be treated accordingly; but the more important thing we need to do is clearly articulate parameters that will likely lead to successful projects, where Wikipedia is clearly improved and a client is also happy with the results. I try to do some of this on my blog and in my company's Statement of Ethics; and others do good work as well. But we can all do better.

In this case, I do think there is an important choice to be made, though: I think the board member who's also with Racosche should decide which is more important to him, and resign from the other. Not out of shame, but out of respect for the near-impossibility of managing such an ongoing COI day to day. -Pete (talk) 22:46, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there is campaigning going on to build a counter-narrative and to discredit this one. I have been digging into the weeds of the actual editing and disclosures made over at fr-wiki and it appears to me that there indeed was a failure to disclose paid editing, and there was and is direct editing of articles by paid editors. At some point I will post the results of my work with diffs. It also appears that the principals have been active in shaping the COI guideline over there, which is problematic. The heart of this story seems accurate.

I agree with Rich that folks need to be brought in from the cold; the community there does need to put in place clear processes for people to disclose and post proposed changes on Talk pages. The Swiss board should be very supportive of that, and should be leading by example.

And to the extent that members of Rasoch are fighting putting in place clear policies, guidelines, and procedures, or obscuring or denying their own failures to disclose and follow the COI guideline in the past, this just show how much their conflicting interest is dominating their interest in the movement and the Swiss foundation. Jytdog (talk) 03:42, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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