Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:38, 23 August 2019

Jimbo welcomes your comments and updates – he has an open door policy. He holds the founder's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. The current trustees occupying "community-selected" seats are Doc James, Pundit and Raystorm. The Wikimedia Foundation's Lead Manager of Trust and Safety is Jan Eissfeldt.

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Small donations no longer accepted

Congratulations, Jimbo Wales! Despite your request for donations by the end of June, you have refunded all donations from a small donor. I am glad that Misplaced Pages is so successful. 84.120.0.236 (talk) 14:11, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Define "small donations" when you say they're no longer accepted? Looking at the "donate to us" page the minimum donation from a donor in Spain is €3, which is surely small enough (I imagine any lower than that and the transaction fees mean it's not worth the WMF's while to process). ‑ Iridescent 20:38, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

@Iridescent: could this be connected to this recent thread? They both seem as...less than competent as each other  :) ——SerialNumber54129 06:16, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Katherine (WMF) wrote: Renew your donation: €1 »

Jimbo Wales wrote: Renew my donation: €1 »

@Iridescent: From the page you have linked: Please select an amount (minimum 0.87 EUR)

84.120.0.236 (talk) 23:03, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, some less-intelligent trolls have proposed off-Misplaced Pages that the WMF can be crippled by making small donations and then indignantly demanding a refund. As if an organization with a $100 million budget could be damaged by people acting like fleas and gnats with their one Euro or two dollar claims. Logical thinking is not the trolls' strong point. Cullen Let's discuss it 06:28, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

And indeed once money is donated, the recipient is under no obligation to provide a refund anyway. Emails would got ot OTRS where they would get a template response, costing the Foundation precisely nothing. Guy (Help!) 16:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

So, if no human is taking care of donation messages, could these refunds have been an automated decision? Certainly, the donation process reports an error caused by Wikimedia. After taking measures, Alice has decided to retry her donations. By the way, Bob was refunded Alice's donations. 84.120.0.236 (talk) 22:56, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

• It could foreseeably be disappointing if you donated your life savings to WP and they didn't bank the money, but otherwise, sitting on the money given in small donations and large philanthropic donations, will not go the way you expected. If they bank most of the money, taking it for granted, donations will dwindle. They will surely amount a few hundred millions into an egg that way, but these millions will slowly lose value without being replaced. What happens then is, to maintain the value, they are forced to invest in the sort of investment schemes which give capitalism a bad name among capitalists. You think Jimbo gets a lot of personal complaints about being a leader now... watch those complaints get injected with vile and venom when the foundation becomes involved with big banking, especially if the investments are successful. They are given the money to maintain, and improve, the sites, and they wisely spend it towards that purpose as currency, rather than taking it as a grant. What might cripple them is if they hold the money for some time, and then larger investors demand it bank. "They've still got it, Your Honour! We want some of it back, we want most of it back and then..." Then it's not for granted any more. Suspicion should definitely not be castigated, however it makes more sense than is immediately apparent to do as they are doing with it, so where your concern is best placed is in exactly how the money is spend rather than if it is spent at all. They are juggling small beans on a large stage in the reality. What is the figure... 16 billion edits a year now? The foundation is receiving what, under 0.01c towards each edit? (not sure if that is totally accurate...) ~ R.T.G 11:23, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Transparency and accountability of the Wikimedia Foundation

From 2008 to 2014, the WMF gave public monthly reports on their activities. Every team gave a fairly detailed account of what they did that month. In 2015 these were replaced with quarterly reports, PDFs summarizing each team's activities. These were then replaced with (intermittently and then frequently missed) "Quarterly check-ins", which were replaced with nothing. Not one WMF team or department has, afaict, produced a single public check-in in seven months.

In 2012, following a lengthy process, the community, board, and WMF created the community-elected FDC and its associated processes, bringing accountability and transparency to funds dissemination. The WMF frequently did not participate in the process, and when it did, it repeatedly ignored the FDC's recommendations on the WMF's internal spending and activities. Finally, this year the FDC appears to have been dissolved entirely. The members' terms have all expired and no new elections have been called. The WMF staff appear to have taken over the process in what they're calling a "simplified format", quietly eliminating board approval and community involvement, leaving the funds dissemination process lacking accountability or community oversight.

The WMF continues to act in general in a non-transparent and unaccountable manner. The m:Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap is larger than ever. They've been creating groups with secret membership, scope, and activities, such as the (undocumented) Security Council and (ironically) "On-wiki Documentation working group". They've been quietly shutting down every means of seeing what goes on inside, and moving things from wikis to WordPress sites without public logs, history pages, contribs lists, or author info.

Many members of the Board of Trustees frequently talk about transparency and accountability. User:Esh77, who will be joining you on the Board this Wikimania, opened her candidate statement with a commitment to accountability, transparency, and FDC compliance in particular. The WMF itself talks about transparency and accountability, and yet, the state of transparency does not look good. Can you and the board try to work on this at Wikimania? --Yair rand (talk) 05:24, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Page Pandit, the board liaison to FDC (and Doc James). ∯WBG 08:07, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pundit: with a "u." EllenCT (talk) 01:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

My own humble contribution towards encouraging Wikimedia Foundation transparency (Quote: "We should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details.") is at WP:CANCER. I need a bit of help with that page. The table has been updated for 2017-2018 but the image only goes to 2016-2017. Could someone with SVG editing skills please update the image? Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 01:08, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I fixed the problem on my page by using a table instead of the image, but the image still needs to be updated; it it used on multiple pages on multiple Wikipedias in different languages. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:13, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

It is the middle of Wikimania. I am sure we will discuss some. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:39, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Being on a pleasurable junket is not a good excuse for a slow response, Doc James. If anything, the time spent in hotel rooms ought to be reflective. Cullen Let's discuss it 06:54, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

IMO it's perfectly reasonable for those at Wikimania to be slower than usual in responding. (Or anyone, really. We're all volunteers.) --Yair rand (talk) 06:59, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand: where is the new FDC "simplified format" described? EllenCT (talk) 23:47, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

@EllenCT: I have not been able to find an actual description of the new format anywhere. All the relevant pages just say things like "a simplified process", "processes will be simplified", "a lightweight process", etc, without any real explanation. One of the involved staffers posted this page, in the place where the Board decision would normally be: "A lightweight process that does not involve a board decision has been used this year." The most recent proposal forms still make regular reference to the FDC (through remaining template language?), and the pages are filled with redlink-transclusions of non-existent templates like "Template:FDC date/FDC recommendation deadline/2018-2019 round 2", the FDC calendar is giving errors for anything from the past year, and there are no FDC recommendation pages from the past year. There was supposed to be an election this May, which just didn't happen. There are still redlinks to it around. Stranger still, two days ago the Board appointed User:Pundit and Esra'a Al Shafei as liaisons to the FDC, despite its apparent non-existence? I'm very confused by the whole thing. Some of the users elected in 2017 such as User:Leela0808, User:Aegis Maelstrom, and User:Wittylama still have userpages here or on Meta saying they're FDC members. Maybe they just haven't gotten around to updating them, or maybe their terms were extended somehow without this information being publicized? --Yair rand (talk) 20:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yair rand: it's absolutely bizarre. You would think the many grant recipients would be clamoring for clarity and stability for this, wouldn't you? Maybe they are all on a secret mailing list? Did you notice that meta:User:Pundit says, "My initial priorities (June 2015) included: ... simplifying funding schemes (proven and good programs should get standard default funding from the FDC without the need to write detailed proposals) In progress," where all the other priorities on that list are marked either done, on hold, or not done. EllenCT (talk) 21:00, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Huh. I'm not sure what to make of that. It mentions the FDC, so it looks like the FDC is intended to at least exist in some form? Are there plans to reconstitute it, perhaps?

I would like to know if anyone has any information regarding plans for the future of public reports, the FDC, transparency of WMF activities. Was any progress made on any of these at Wikimania? --Yair rand (talk) 23:42, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pundit:?

EllenCT (talk) 05:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for my belated weighing in, I only returned from Wikimania and had a chance to make up for the lack of sleep and jetlag. My understanding is that the FDC process is frozen now, as the strategic discussions are carried over and a new collaborative funding scheme emerges from the community discussions there. This solutions has some pros (like a smaller burden of just carrying over the same budget from last year, when compared to the need to apply), but also obvious cons (less oversight, no growth possibility). Nevertheless, this is how we are rolling. As a former chair of the FDC for three terms, I am certainly hugely biased in favor of this process and I believe that the FDC has proven tremendously useful. It is a paragon of community-driven funding. Nevertheless, there naturally are some areas for improvement, such as e.g. the possibility to apply for multi-year grants, for a much easier fast track for common sense and standardized projects (like GLAM or editathons). It is also reinforcing the existing organizational structures, which inhibits our growth in the most rapidly developing regions. I know that the new Chief of Community Engagement, Valerie D’Costa, is following the strategic discussions closely and also working on a sensible model. Pundit|utter 11:44, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pundit: thank you. By the process being frozen, do you mean that the FDC no longer meets but the recipients and their award amounts from the last time they met are being carried forward from quarter to the next, or something else? Are the Board's new "FDC liaisons," you and Esra'a Al Shafei, liaising with anyone in the Foundation such that the Board might be able to perform oversight of the grants? EllenCT (talk) 01:21, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@EllenCT:You're correct, the amounts from last time are carried forward, according to my understanding, for the time of the strategic exercise. FDC liaisons are connecting with the FDC members (who, even though not deciding about funding, are engaged in discussions and exchanging ideas on the movement resources). Pundit|utter 13:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pundit: So there still are FDC members? Are they the same ones whose terms were set to end in June 2019, or were new members appointed? --Yair rand (talk) 19:16, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Fun fact

Fun fact: The modern Misplaced Pages hosts 11–12 times as many pages as it did in 2005, but the WMF is spending 33 times as much on hosting, has about 300 times as many employees, and is spending 1,250 times as much overall. I just updated WP:CANCER with WMF financials from 2017-2018. Enjoy! --Guy Macon (talk) 02:33, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Not sure if this fact is really fun. Herostratus (talk) 03:20, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

- and still only funds the same number of scholarships to Wikimania as it did 8 years ago... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:44, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

But supports a lot more community conferences, meetups, and activities other than Wikimania than 8 years ago. (I agree, by the way, that it would be good to have more scholarships to Wikimania.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

• Is there a list somewhere showing exactly what they spend the money on and how much their employees get paid? Dream Focus 03:13, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

• Here is a question that I have been asking since 2015. I started asking it after hearing complaints that asking the WMF to explain how they spend our donations was too much work, so I asked about one tiny detail just to see if they will ever reveal any details.

--Guy Macon (talk) 11:02, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a pretty ridiculous set of claims. The cost of hosting is not determined by "how many pages". Servers cost less now, bandwidth costs less now, but there's a WHOLE LOT MORE of things like that needed now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:46, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

I consider the claim that the WMF is doing 1,250 times more work than they were in 2005 to be "a pretty ridiculous set of claims". It may very well be that I am counting the wrong thing. Feel free to provide at least a rough estimate of what I should be counting instead. Have the number of lawsuits we have to defend against gone up by a factor of 1,200, requiring us to spend 1,200 times more on lawyers? Did the introduction of redundant data centers (an excellent use of donations) end up costing us 1,200 times what we were paying before? Did inflation make every dollar buy 1,200 times less? Did our airfare costs go up by a factor of 1,200?

I would love to replace that "11–12 times as many pages" number with something you think is more representative. Just pick a metric and I will use that. Just tell me how much more "a WHOLE LOT MORE" is and point me to where I can verify the numbers. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:02, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Let's look at this another way. Instead of going back to 2005, let's go back ten years to 2007-2008 when we spent $5,032,981 USD to do everything. In 2017-2018 we spent $104,505,783 USD.

In 2008 Misplaced Pages had over 5 million registered editors, 250 language editions, and 7.5 million articles. wikipedia.org was the 10th-busiest website in the world. The number of regularly active editors on the English-language Misplaced Pages peaked in 2007 and has since been declining.

Is anyone here willing to make the claim that we are doing twenty times more than we were doing 10 years ago and thus need to spend twenty times as much money? I was here in 2015. I did not notice any evidence of pressing needs that were not funded because we were spending 5% of what we are spending now. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

From your own figures the spend is $81,442,265 - it's the income that's $104,505,783. The spend is less than double that of 4 years before: $45,900,745 in 2013/14. All the same.... Johnbod (talk) 19:19, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry for the silly mistake. Grabbed the numbers from the wrong column.

From 2007-2008 to 2017-2018 donations went from $5,032,981 to $104,505,783 USD -- 20.76 times higher.

Spending went from $3,540,724 to $81,442,265 USD -- 23 times higher.

Is anyone here willing to make the claim that we are doing twenty three times more than we were doing 10 years ago and thus need to spend twenty three times as much money? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

and 40 times more employees to do it. The enigma is why every time the Community needs the software improving or repairing, the high-ups in charge tell us that there is not enough money and not enough staff. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:47, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I just updated WP:CANCER last night. For those who haven't read it recently, you might want to look at the latest version. For those who are convinced that I am full of shit, I welcome you to explain here why you believe that that we are doing 23X more than we were doing 10 years ago. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:58, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, isn't there a detailed record of expenses somewhere? Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:58, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Do the records exist? Of course they do. Like every other organization larger than someone working off his kitchen table the WMF has an accounting department that has a record of every single cent spent. I absolutely guarantee you that if someone needed the information they could, in a matter of a minute or two, print out the first toilet paper purchase of July of 2009, how much they spent, what brand they got, when it was delivered, who signed for it, etc. Everybody keeps those sort of records, because otherwise someone could generate fake toilet paper purchases and pocket the money, leaving the WMF staff with a TP shortage.

Can we see any detailed financial records? That depends on what you mean by "detailed". The records the WMF published show us that in 2012 they spent $2,690,659.00 USD on "computer equipment and office furniture". How much of that was furniture? That's a secret. How many chairs did they buy? That's a secret. How much did they pay per chair? That's a secret. Clearly the only thing that makes Misplaced Pages more successful than Britannica is our closely-guarded trade secrets regarding furniture purchases in 2013. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:23, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Guy, we are supposed to say "private," because "secret" is hopelessly biased. EllenCT (talk) 04:35, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: It looks like the Finance team finally split the "computer equipment and office furniture" category for the more recent financial statements. Apparently $112,417 was spent on furniture in the 2017 period, and $214,498 for 2018, and $1,572,855 on computer equipment for 2017 and $2,468,880 for 2018. --Yair rand (talk) 22:24, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Great! I am going to ignore computers because I don't know whether that number includes servers. So let's look at the furniture numbers:

Under the 2017 "cash flows from investing activities" they list "purchase of office furniture" at (112,417). So they spent $112,417.00 USD on new furniture in 2017, and less than that in 2018.

(Elsewhere they list the total furniture assets as $1,186,756.00. I am not interested in the totals -- don't want to get into age and depreciation issues -- but yearly furniture purchases at roughly 10% of total furniture assets (depreciation is straight line over a useful life of five years) seems completely normal.)

It looks like they had around 280 employees and contractors in 2017. Should we assume that they bought furniture to handle that many, or could it be that some of them work from home and don't make any demands on the furniture budget? If anyone has insight on this, please discuss on my talk page.

That comes out to $401.00 per employees per year, and assuming that furniture gets replaced every five years, That's $2007.00 per employee for everything -- desk, chair bookcase, etc. Again, completely reasonable.

Just for fun, the most expensive chair on amazon.com is this $6,300 monster: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VMMMJ29/

Moving on to more reasonable choices, a good Steelcase chair like this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077DTUFY/ will run you around $1,500.00. An if you have ever bought office furniture you know that cheap chairs are no bargain -- they simply do not last. You end up paying less in the long run with Steelcase.

My conclusion: The 2017 spending on furniture was completely normal, with zero evidence that the WMF is wasting money.

This leads me to believe that if the WMF ever decides to address the problems identified at meta:Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap#Budget transparency and in particular follows the advice I gave at WP:CANCER ("We should make spending transparent, publish a detailed account of what the money is being spent on and answer any reasonable questions asking for more details.") I would be able to look at the numbers for ten randomly chosen areas of spending and find no evidence of overspending on any of them. I would very much like to do that.

If you are part of the WMF and are reading this, can you please try to make that happen? --Guy Macon (talk) 00:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, thank you for keeping track of this. I am also curious about it. If you ever do manage to get some kind of answer, please ping me, because I'd like to know as well. Jimbo, I do hope you will consider this seriously. Benjamin (talk) 05:48, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Related: meta:Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap --Guy Macon (talk) 06:53, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Guy, I thank you as well. I will put some time into this...: So here in Canada we may have something; Charity name: wikimedia Charity status: Registered

,,, ??? Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:38, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Oops, that shows its not registered in Canada, I'll try looking in the USA rules etc. Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:49, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

I bet the details of the financial statements are available in California. ] Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:00, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

. Lots of info. Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:16, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Nocturnalnow and Guy Macon: N-now - I don't think that level of detail is anything new. Perhaps a lot of the questions raised here could be answered by people just looking, or by the WMF putting more prominent links to the pages.

Guy, I've been wondering where you are going with this. I mean toilet paper and office furniture spending just don't grab anybody except for you. What you need to specify in your requests is what level of detail do you really want and think could be useful to the community. It seems now that you are comfortable with $100,000 details. Ok, please think about what this would entail before making a request on what should be posted. We've got an organization that spends about $80 million per year, almost half of that is in salaries. So if the WMF posts every non-salary $100,000 detail, it could (very approximately) come out to 400 lines of text and numbers (name of expenditure, amount, maybe add in a vendor or short reason for the spending). That's about 10 pages of finely-spaced text (40 lines per page). Is that what you want? What good would that do for the community? Would anybody other than you read it? If it cost, say $10,000, to produce this text would you consider that to be a reasonable expenditure? BTW, doing something similar for salaries would be pretty controversial. SF is a pretty expensive place, and a lot of mid-level people don't like to have their salaries publicly posted. We might lose quite a few good people just because of that.

I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm just asking what you would be satisfied with. Unfortunately, I won't be able to respond to any questions from you for a few days, so please keep your response direct and to the point. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:52, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I am not "comfortable with $100,000 details". I apologize for commenting on the tiny bit of non-detailed information I was able to figure out and for concluding that those non-detailed numbers look reasonable to me. I won't make that mistake again.

Also I have been crystal clear what I want. I picked ONE SMALL financial detail chosen pretty much at random to see if the WMF will ever reveal any financial details on anything. Please don't set up a straw man of consisting some Imaginary Guy Macon asking some imaginary question about "everything the WMF spends requiring 10 pages of finely-spaced text", then criticizing me for asking a question I never asked. The reason I picked a small, easy to answer question was to show that the WMF refuses to answer any actual "what was spent on X" question other than giving broad generalities like "$2,475,158 spend on computer equipment in 2013".

Here, once again is my actual question:

"I would really like to see an itemized list of exactly what computer equipment and office furniture was purchased with the $2,690,659 spent in 2012 and the $2,475,158 spent in 2013. Verifying that those purchases were reasonable and fiscally prudent would go a long way towards giving me confidence that the rest of the money was also spent wisely. How about one purchase? Could you at least tell me how much you paid for the very first chair purchased in 2013, and what kind of chair you bought? If I can't get any details on where the money was spent, could I at the very least get a breakdown as to how much was spent on computer equipment and how much was spent on office furniture?"

What say the WMF either give me at least a partial answer to my question or just be straight with me and admit that the WMF considers that to be none of my business and that my question will never be answered? --Guy Macon (talk) 03:19, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm obviously not speaking for the WMF, but I think I can give you a direct answer. Absent any direct connection with the "owner", CEO, or largest contributor, no organization - for-profit or non-profit - is going to give you the detail you are requesting. Just try it with another organization that you trust. Say you contact the International Red Cross via e-mail and ask them how much they spent on office furniture in 2017, what would happen? They'll likely send you a polite email giving you links to accounting documents similar in format to the ones the WMF publish and maybe say that making detailed disclosures at the level you requested would not be cost effective. Then they'd go have a good laugh. If the IRC (or anybody else) won't give you such info, why would you expect the WMF to?

There is one question that is suggested by this that I consider to be important, but I think I have the answer. If somebody within the WMF was fraudulently ordering toilet paper that was not being delivered, how would that be caught, or more generally, how is is embezzlement and similar fraud detected?

There are internal controls that are generally not published (for obvious reasons), but their existence is checked by external auditors every year. One measure that public auditors must use is a statistically rigorous random sample check of individual accounting entries, so that any insider can never be sure that they will never be caught. So your toilet paper example could show up there.

Have a good weekend. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:58, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I cannot imagine any organization that would devote staff time to answering obviously bad-faith "questions" such as this rant. --JBL (talk) 20:07, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Please don't accuse me of bad faith without evidence. It is possible to disagree without being a jerk, you know.

And just because you can't imagine something doesn't meant that is does not exist. See:

• Radical transparency
• Radical transparency: Let me be Frank with you
• Charities are underestimating the importance of trust. That’s a problem.
• Why foundations should embrace radical transparency
• Foundations Need to Be More Transparent
• Foundation Takes Radical Approach to Transparency in Grant Making
• Radical transparency is the only thing that will salvage public trust in charities

--Guy Macon (talk) 20:54, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

The evidence is that you question explicitly specifies the ways in which it is asked in bad faith. In particular, you spell out in gory detail the fact that you have no interest whatsoever in the actual content of the answer. If someone else made such a comment, you would immediately point them to WP:POINT; if any of that wording were put into an RfC question, it would immediately be shut down as not properly formulated. You would be more likely to get a positive response if you (1) had a reasonable story to tell about what data you want and why (this is Smallbones point, roughly) and (2) acted like an adult instead of a petulant child (this is my point). --JBL (talk) 10:59, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Elgafar, Quotiel or Situla?

Okay, Jimbo, which one of these do you like best and least?

• Elgafar (closest to status quo)
• Quotiel
• Situla

I like Situla because it elevates ombuds to highest echelon status, far better than disparate line worker community liaisons. I don't like Quotiel because it doesn't and therefore isn't worth the re-org. EllenCT (talk) 01:02, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

It would take me a great deal of study to form a reasonable view. If I had to guess, having reviewed each of them briefly, I think all of them have some merits and some limitations. I think in many cases in something as radically non-hierarchical as the Wikimedia movement, the "structure" depends very much on the subject matter under discussion. To give a simple example, funding decisions are decided differently, and should be decided differently, to content decisions and day-to-day community governance matters (details about most blocks, who is on ArbCom, etc).

Does it make sense for editing communities to vote to decide on a partnership with museums that the relevant chapter is pursuing? No. Does it make sense for the chapter to try to rewrite and enforce policy on reliable sources? No. Different people, and different groups of people, have different skills and different traditional and legal authorities.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:10, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough. What if the choices were diffs against the status quo instead of redesigns from the ground up? Would you support, for example, the WMF as it exists today but with a fully transparent funds dissemination process and a team of ombuds in the C-suite? EllenCT (talk) 03:43, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

These models should be read in conjunction with the recommendations from the Roles & Responsibilities working group. (Disclosure: I am a member of that working group.) The three models are what we see as three possible outcomes by 2030 based on our recommendations. There are also links for you to fill out a survey for each of the three models and add in comments; I know a lot of people don't like to go off-wiki, but that survey collates the data more completely and effectively for the working group to understand and give proper weight to the feedback. I really encourage people to participate, because this feedback will determine which of the three models goes forward to the final recommendations. Risker (talk) 04:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Have you seen the surveys? They are comprised of the many propositions copied verbatim from the proposal descriptions, each presented as a Agree/Disagree/Other question. Who thought that would work? How are respondents supposed to determine whether an aspirational component which may or may not exist in the future satisfies specific operational constraints? You need better surveys. EllenCT (talk) 04:57, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

It is a fair critique; it's difficult and takes a lot more time than we had to develop a survey that is both easily utilized and granular enough to provide useful feedback. Given we only finalized the models on Thursday afternoon and had to have the surveys ready by 9 a.m. Saturday, we did the best we could. It isn't perfect, but it is already producing some actionable feedback, so we're remaining hopeful. Risker (talk) 06:03, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Further comment: Elgafar is not "status quo": it essentially splits the WMF in two, leaving only the tech side as WMF, and the rest of the WMF as roughly a new entity with a series of committees similar to the FDC with plenty of staff support to carry out the decisions made at the committee level. Risker (talk) 04:07, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

My apologies. I feel like the stock Mediawiki development organization is already effectively segregated from the rest of the WMF, so please forgive my misunderstanding. EllenCT (talk) 05:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

It's a fair comment, EllenCT, and perhaps one you might want to include at some point. It is the one closest to the current structure, certainly. Risker (talk) 06:03, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Please pardon a superficial question (and I'm sure this isn't really the right place for it anyway), but where do the terms Elgafar, Quotiel, and Situla come from? Are they just arbitrary made-up code-words in lieu of referring to Models 1, 2, and 3, or do the words have some inherent meaning that I am missing? Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing, Newyorkbrad. It sounds like made-up Dungeons and Dragons verbiage to me, but perhaps there is a rational underpinning known to those with deeper insight than I possess. Cullen Let's discuss it 05:47, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

They are names of stars. When we first created them, we used names of animals, but decided that those original names didn't sound quite neutral enough. Risker (talk) 05:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I see how discussing which animal the WMF is modeled on could become a distraction. :) Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 06:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Hedgehog. Definitely a hedgehog. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:53, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

It is clearly and obviously a duck-billed platypus. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

I had been guessing they were IKEA product names because of Wikimania in Sweden. EllenCT (talk) 17:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I get it. I'm not sure what kind of names others would have come up with that wouldn't have implied some sort of hierarchy or geographic link or something like that. Even Ikea names would have suggested that we thought of one as a throw pillow, another as a chair, and a third as a wall unit or something like that. There are always opportunities for people to find new ways to assume ulterior motives. I didn't come up with the idea of stars, but I think it's better than animals or A/B/C or something else that implies a hierarchy or preference or association with something else. It's just unfortunate that there's more discussion about the names than the models, and I'm not sure how we could have got around that. Risker (talk) 19:48, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

(nodding) I apologized in advance for the distraction of asking about the names—but if I hadn't asked, someone else soon would have, so I figured let's get that out of the way. (And in passing, noting the oddity that if our wiki-search function is to be trusted, Quotiel is so obscure a star that it's not mentioned by that name anywhere in the entire mainspace.) I'll take a look at the substance of the models next ... if I find myself with anything useful to say, where is the best place to participate in that conversation? Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

meta:Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Roles & Responsibilities/Recommendations EllenCT (talk) 20:09, 21 August 2019 (UTC)