In fact, Wikipedia's edit rate has dropped significantly since its high-point in 2007. In May 2007, it took about 5 weeks for 10 million new edits to be added. Presently, it's 9 weeks; the number of edits per unit of time has approximately halved.
The rate of edits per article per unit of time is a fraction of what it used to be. Basically, many articles are fairly static compared to ten years ago, when new content creation was at its peak.
And you're right; the vast majority of old article revisions are never looked at.
Wikipedia is legally required to maintain cash reserves some degree beyond their yearly expenses. When those expenses increase, they need to carry bigger cash reserves.
Yes, and if you spend x% more each year, then naturally you must ask for x% more money next year, just to have a big enough reserve again. And then you can spend more again, and again, ad nauseam.:) That's exactly what's been happening. WMF asks for and spends about 30 times as much money now as they did ten years ago. If WMF follows that logic for another ten years, it will require 30 times as much money in 2027 as it does this year, just to keep the reserve high enough. That will be $2.4 billion. And after another ten years, $72 billion. I think something will give before then.:)
WMF also runs Wikinews, which carries news articles in dozens of languages. It runs Wikipedia in many languages all over the world. Every time it adds a new language, there's a new regional user base. If each language Wikipedia grows as above, then you have cubic growth until the rate of new Wikipedia languages slows.
Wikinews is practically dead. (English Wikinews, at any rate; I don't think it's any different in the other languages.) So are many of the other Wikipedia language versions. A slide shown at Wikimania 2014 said that of 284 Wikipedia language versions, 12 were "dead" (locked), 53 were "zombies" (open, no editors), and 94 were "struggling" (open, less than 5 editors). 125 were described as "in good or excellent health" (that number included every Wikipedia language version that had 6 or more editors).
In my opinion, a Wikipedia language version that has 6 volunteers working on it could not be described as in "good health".
But Commons content has grown significantly, and it does have large files. As far as I recall, it doesn't account for very many pageviews though, compared to Wikipedia.
Pagecounts. Admittedly, traffic was somewhat less in 2008 (that's as far back as that graph goes), but it has more or less plateaued for the past four of five years (while annual revenue more than doubled over the same period).
I don't think I've ever thought WMF was in financial trouble.
Then you differ from many people. There are countless expressions of concern online from people who've seen the fundraising banners. Moreover, many Wikipedia volunteers over the years have expressed concern that the fundraising messages make it sound like there is a financial emergency when in fact there isn't. Over the years, it's been a recurrent topic of conversation on the Wikimedia mailing list, every December.
I'm okay that they get paid - and get paid well.
I am okay with that too, though I draw the line at severance payments of this magnitude. YMMV.
And all of that amazing content is brought to you by unpaid volunteers.
There is little need for money to fuel Wikipedia content production. Ten years ago, when content production was at its peak, the Wikimedia Foundation had 11 employees and a twentieth of the budget it has today. Wikipedia looked and worked much the same then as it does now...
People, by and large, donate "to Wikipedia" (but in reality to the Wikimedia Foundation) because they believe there is a shortage of funds to keep Wikipedia up and running and, like you, would not like to see it disappear. But the Wikimedia Foundation isn't in financial trouble; it is swimming in cash, and has been less transparent about many things, including executive compensation, than it could be.
In my view the WMF could do more to demonstrate that it is spending these increasing amounts of money on things that actually benefit readers and volunteer contributors in some palpable way (including how much was spent on each of these). Cost/benefit statements, so people can see that their money has been put to good use.
There are many reader- and contributor-facing things the WMF could do, but doesn't, to my knowledge. For example, they could pay to provide volunteers with free access to paywalled sources, to enable them to cite better references, and create more reliable content (present initiatives in this area seem rudimentary). They could provide readers with tools enabling them to gauge the trustworthiness of an article, based on its sourcing, or how much healthy community involvement it has seen (what information there is now is so impenetrable that no casual reader can make sense of it). They could communicate more openly about known problems in Wikipedia projects that readers should be aware of. Example. Things like that.
Many volunteers – content writers – are quite jaded about the WMF, feeling the WMF get free money off the back of their volunteer work and spend it on stuff that doesn't really help. Spending money in ways that produce little benefit has been an acknowledged problem in the past.
It is difficult, because both contributors and readers are an amorphous mass, and the WMF has perhaps tried to listen more of late under the new CEO. But when I see managers with a checkered work history receiving six-figure windfalls, or wanting to spend $32 million of donated funds on building a Google competitor, or the WMF clamming up and being unresponsive to reasonable questions, or putting out misleading fundraising messages as they have in the past, I am not convinced that this does justice to the mission people gave money to support. The money given to the WMF is given to them in trust, and in my opinion they need to do more to earn it. That's what this is about, not whether Wikipedia is useful or not.
You gave your time freely. Donors gave their money freely, believing Wikipedia to be in financial trouble. That's generous.
You say you "did this expecting nothing in return, not even gratitude". Doesn't it strike you that the attitude of WMF managers, involved in building the same project as you, yet asking for $200,000 over and above the rightful compensation they received for their work – all paid from those donations – is strikingly different from your attitude?
In 2007 Wikipedia was a top-10 website with much the same traffic as today and got by on revenue of $5 million. Today it asks for – and gets – 16 times as much. Content creation costs nothing and is done by volunteers, who also retain legal responsibility for the content they contribute. The WMF itself has always been protected from liability by Section 230(c).
As for the "unstable donation-based revenue stream", revenue has been on the up and up for every year of the foundation's existence. And whenever revenue has increased, spending has increased proportionally. It looks to me the spending is not driven by need, but by the availability of cash, including cash to pay managers the payments disclosed in the Form 990.
It takes 20,000 people donating $10, in the belief that this money is necessary to "keep Wikipedia online", as Wikipedia fundraising banners have put it, to pay one manager $200,000.
To me, asking for that kind of payment seems sharply discordant with the generosity of volunteers and donors contributing freely in the belief that they are helping to build a common good.
Tell this to the unpaid volunteers who write the content that you and others appreciate so much. They get nothing under this arrangement, while the WMF sits by a faucet spewing money.
Given that contributors donate their time, given that readers donate money, isn't there a moral case to be made that departing managers should not ask to be handed a six-figure sum upon leaving, enabling them to do nothing for two years?
You get kids donating a bit of their pocket money to Wikipedia, believing the site is in financial trouble. You get people in developing countries donating $5, which to them is a lot of money. It takes 40,000 such people making that sacrifice, believing they are contributing to a better world, to pay one manager that extra $200,000.
Given that all of the content of Wikipedia, Commons etc. is contributed and curated by unpaid volunteers, the question is how much of the "value" is due to the paid staff. Because the staff take no part in writing or checking content.
In 2007, for example, when Wikipedia was already a top-10 internet site, the WMF had less than a dozen employees (compared to something approaching 300 today). How much value have the $350-odd million in donations and the hundreds of employees added since then, over and above the content freely contributed by unpaid volunteers, and was the money spent efficiently to create the most value for readers and contributors?
“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”
Could you explain this in more detail? The US Department of Labor states, "Severance pay is often granted to employees upon termination of employment. It is usually based on length of employment for which an employee is eligible upon termination. There is no requirement in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for severance pay. Severance pay is a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative)."
This seems to contradict your assertion that employment law dictates severance pay on an increasing scale.
The Wikimedia Foundation does not participate in content production at all.
Content production, curation, quality checking etc. is all left to unpaid volunteers. That is by design – the WMF doesn't want to be a publisher or arbiter of content. In part, that's because they would then become potentially liable for defamation, errors, etc., whereas now, they're just an online service provider protected from any such liability by Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act. Contributors themselves are legally responsible for any content they add to Wikipedia.
So I don't think you'll ever see the WMF intervene in content production.
Well, Wikipedia is entirely written by unpaid volunteers (excepting the odd paid PR writer).
The money the WMF raises does not go to the contributors who create the content. (Okay, some volunteers apply for grants for something or other, and get them, but that is a very, very small percentage of contributors.) The broad mass of volunteers does not get anything.
The WMF does not write the content, and does not check it. They don't even purchase accounts for volunteers to access paywalled sources. (There is the Wikipedia Library, but as far as I know, that relies on donated accounts.)
Actually, internet hosting costs them only $2 million a year. See page no. 3 in this document. Total support and revenue, for comparison, stood at $81.9 million last year. So 2.5% of the fundraising income is spent on hosting.
Quite so. The disadvantage of a semi-crowdsourced system like the one Wales proposes is that the volunteers are anonymous, so you never know which bias has been applied. At least with Fox News or CNN you know where you stand.
About ten years ago, Jimmy Wales said about Wikipedia (time code 4:35):
“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee... We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”
In 2008, when Wikipedia was already the world's number 8 website, the Wikimedia Foundation survived on $5 million (vs. $82 million last year). So, yes, you can have a top-ten website – written entirely by unpaid volunteers – for a fraction of the current cost.
"This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million
in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how
much support we have from people all over the world. Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to
continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following
reasons: [...]
Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few
more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before
making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many
people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting
to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan
to give the easiest means to participate)."
(Follow link for full text of the WMF statement, including their spending rationale.)
Actually, the first stage is costed at 2.5 million, of which the Knight Foundation is only covering $250,000. The rest is coming out of donations. The other three stages will each cost more than the first.
From this write-up, linked in the article (the link is on the word "costed"):
"Page 10 of this text specifically says that the cost of the first stage of "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" is $2.5 million, and that the grant is for 1 year starting in September 2015. Page 2 says that the whole project is in 4 stages, each lasting approximately 18 months = 6 years. This grant of $250,000 therefore only covers 10% of the cost, of the first stage, of the total project."
Well said. It's gotten to the point where whenever Wales starts badmouthing people and calling something "utter fucking bullshit" or a "total lie" (as he did in this case), you have to suspect that something very much resembling the exact opposite of what he says is actually true. At the same time, he claimed in those discussions he was "a much stronger advocate of transparency than James [Heilman]", the community representative he and the others had thrown off the Wikimedia board.
Isn't that just a bit of regurgitated propaganda, assuming facts not in evidence (i.e. that liberal arts majors, dogs and Republicans would follow the rules)?
Wikipedia throws such people out today, and they're back tomorrow, with a new pseudonymous sockpuppet account.
Wikipedia lists over 70,000 blocked sockpuppeteers, and that list does not include some of the most serious cases, where individuals have used literally hundreds of sockpuppet accounts. (For reference, the English Wikipedia has around 3,000 steady contributors making at least three or four content edits a day.)
Wikipedia sure needs a competitor, though to me this isn't a good reason. It's simply because monopolies in information transmission are a bad thing, and because Wikipedia is wide open to anonymous manipulation. For all its talk about transparency, Wikipedia is the first encyclopedia where you are not told (and are not supposed to ask or find out) who's written the thing. There are often good reasons for this (some of the harassment editors experience is vile – rape threats, death threats), but the one thing it is not is "transparent".
That comparison to housing associations strikes a chord...:)) It's one of the main attractions of Wikipedia: you get to define what X is FOR THE ENTIRE INTERNET. It's a particular type of personality that jumps at that chance (even though it often turns out to be a greasy pole).
Well, current partners of the Wikipedia Library project include Adam Matthew, BMJ, British Newspaper Archive, Cochrane, Credo, De Gruyter, DynaMed, Elsevier ScienceDirect, FindMyPast, HighBeam, HeinOnline, JSTOR, Keesings, Loeb, MIT Press Journals, Newspapers.com, OCLC, Oxford, Past Masters, Pelican Books, Public Catalogue Foundation, Project MUSE, RIPM, Royal Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Sage Stats, ScotlandsPeople, Questia and Women Writers Online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's a lot of VP positions to fill...;) The fact is this came about quite differently. Volunteers had for years complained about lack of access to JSTOR et al.; Jake did something to remedy that. And he started out doing it as a volunteer himself. Credo, HighBeam and JSTOR were first; Elsevier came aboard later, as one of many. This was in no way Elsevier's initiative.
Elsevier is just one of many publishers involved here, along with JSTOR, Cochrane, BMJ, Oxford University Press, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Have you ever tried to write a Wikipedia article without access to the best sources? Would you like to rely on such an article? Or more to the point, would you want to be treated in a hospital whose doctors made a point of not reading any research published in non-OA journals, and who read no books they had to paid for?
A few weeks prior to that, we learned that an administrator had managed to manipulate Wikipedia's articles on a bogus Indian business school over a period of years, with an Indian journalist estimating that Wikipedia had messed up thousands of students' lives by lending its brand's supposed credibility to the school's misleading propaganda: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/0... and http://scroll.in/article/71429...
Each of those would have deserved the title WikiGate more than this non-issue, which if anything actually helps improve Wikipedia's reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, Wikipedia's edit rate has dropped significantly since its high-point in 2007. In May 2007, it took about 5 weeks for 10 million new edits to be added. Presently, it's 9 weeks; the number of edits per unit of time has approximately halved.
The rate of edits per article per unit of time is a fraction of what it used to be. Basically, many articles are fairly static compared to ten years ago, when new content creation was at its peak.
And you're right; the vast majority of old article revisions are never looked at.
Wikipedia is legally required to maintain cash reserves some degree beyond their yearly expenses. When those expenses increase, they need to carry bigger cash reserves.
Yes, and if you spend x% more each year, then naturally you must ask for x% more money next year, just to have a big enough reserve again. And then you can spend more again, and again, ad nauseam. :) That's exactly what's been happening. WMF asks for and spends about 30 times as much money now as they did ten years ago. If WMF follows that logic for another ten years, it will require 30 times as much money in 2027 as it does this year, just to keep the reserve high enough. That will be $2.4 billion. And after another ten years, $72 billion. I think something will give before then. :)
WMF also runs Wikinews, which carries news articles in dozens of languages. It runs Wikipedia in many languages all over the world. Every time it adds a new language, there's a new regional user base. If each language Wikipedia grows as above, then you have cubic growth until the rate of new Wikipedia languages slows.
Wikinews is practically dead. (English Wikinews, at any rate; I don't think it's any different in the other languages.) So are many of the other Wikipedia language versions. A slide shown at Wikimania 2014 said that of 284 Wikipedia language versions, 12 were "dead" (locked), 53 were "zombies" (open, no editors), and 94 were "struggling" (open, less than 5 editors). 125 were described as "in good or excellent health" (that number included every Wikipedia language version that had 6 or more editors).
In my opinion, a Wikipedia language version that has 6 volunteers working on it could not be described as in "good health".
But Commons content has grown significantly, and it does have large files. As far as I recall, it doesn't account for very many pageviews though, compared to Wikipedia.
Pagecounts. Admittedly, traffic was somewhat less in 2008 (that's as far back as that graph goes), but it has more or less plateaued for the past four of five years (while annual revenue more than doubled over the same period).
I don't think I've ever thought WMF was in financial trouble.
Then you differ from many people. There are countless expressions of concern online from people who've seen the fundraising banners. Moreover, many Wikipedia volunteers over the years have expressed concern that the fundraising messages make it sound like there is a financial emergency when in fact there isn't. Over the years, it's been a recurrent topic of conversation on the Wikimedia mailing list, every December.
I'm okay that they get paid - and get paid well.
I am okay with that too, though I draw the line at severance payments of this magnitude. YMMV.
And all of that amazing content is brought to you by unpaid volunteers.
...
There is little need for money to fuel Wikipedia content production. Ten years ago, when content production was at its peak, the Wikimedia Foundation had 11 employees and a twentieth of the budget it has today. Wikipedia looked and worked much the same then as it does now
People, by and large, donate "to Wikipedia" (but in reality to the Wikimedia Foundation) because they believe there is a shortage of funds to keep Wikipedia up and running and, like you, would not like to see it disappear. But the Wikimedia Foundation isn't in financial trouble; it is swimming in cash, and has been less transparent about many things, including executive compensation, than it could be.
In my view the WMF could do more to demonstrate that it is spending these increasing amounts of money on things that actually benefit readers and volunteer contributors in some palpable way (including how much was spent on each of these). Cost/benefit statements, so people can see that their money has been put to good use.
There are many reader- and contributor-facing things the WMF could do, but doesn't, to my knowledge. For example, they could pay to provide volunteers with free access to paywalled sources, to enable them to cite better references, and create more reliable content (present initiatives in this area seem rudimentary). They could provide readers with tools enabling them to gauge the trustworthiness of an article, based on its sourcing, or how much healthy community involvement it has seen (what information there is now is so impenetrable that no casual reader can make sense of it). They could communicate more openly about known problems in Wikipedia projects that readers should be aware of. Example. Things like that.
Many volunteers – content writers – are quite jaded about the WMF, feeling the WMF get free money off the back of their volunteer work and spend it on stuff that doesn't really help. Spending money in ways that produce little benefit has been an acknowledged problem in the past.
It is difficult, because both contributors and readers are an amorphous mass, and the WMF has perhaps tried to listen more of late under the new CEO. But when I see managers with a checkered work history receiving six-figure windfalls, or wanting to spend $32 million of donated funds on building a Google competitor, or the WMF clamming up and being unresponsive to reasonable questions, or putting out misleading fundraising messages as they have in the past, I am not convinced that this does justice to the mission people gave money to support. The money given to the WMF is given to them in trust, and in my opinion they need to do more to earn it. That's what this is about, not whether Wikipedia is useful or not.
You gave your time freely. Donors gave their money freely, believing Wikipedia to be in financial trouble. That's generous.
You say you "did this expecting nothing in return, not even gratitude". Doesn't it strike you that the attitude of WMF managers, involved in building the same project as you, yet asking for $200,000 over and above the rightful compensation they received for their work – all paid from those donations – is strikingly different from your attitude?
In 2007 Wikipedia was a top-10 website with much the same traffic as today and got by on revenue of $5 million. Today it asks for – and gets – 16 times as much. Content creation costs nothing and is done by volunteers, who also retain legal responsibility for the content they contribute. The WMF itself has always been protected from liability by Section 230(c).
As for the "unstable donation-based revenue stream", revenue has been on the up and up for every year of the foundation's existence. And whenever revenue has increased, spending has increased proportionally. It looks to me the spending is not driven by need, but by the availability of cash, including cash to pay managers the payments disclosed in the Form 990.
It takes 20,000 people donating $10, in the belief that this money is necessary to "keep Wikipedia online", as Wikipedia fundraising banners have put it, to pay one manager $200,000.
To me, asking for that kind of payment seems sharply discordant with the generosity of volunteers and donors contributing freely in the belief that they are helping to build a common good.
Tell this to the unpaid volunteers who write the content that you and others appreciate so much. They get nothing under this arrangement, while the WMF sits by a faucet spewing money.
Given that contributors donate their time, given that readers donate money, isn't there a moral case to be made that departing managers should not ask to be handed a six-figure sum upon leaving, enabling them to do nothing for two years?
You get kids donating a bit of their pocket money to Wikipedia, believing the site is in financial trouble. You get people in developing countries donating $5, which to them is a lot of money. It takes 40,000 such people making that sacrifice, believing they are contributing to a better world, to pay one manager that extra $200,000.
In my view, it stinks.
Given that all of the content of Wikipedia, Commons etc. is contributed and curated by unpaid volunteers, the question is how much of the "value" is due to the paid staff. Because the staff take no part in writing or checking content.
In 2007, for example, when Wikipedia was already a top-10 internet site, the WMF had less than a dozen employees (compared to something approaching 300 today). How much value have the $350-odd million in donations and the hundreds of employees added since then, over and above the content freely contributed by unpaid volunteers, and was the money spent efficiently to create the most value for readers and contributors?
In 2005, Jimmy Wales was proud to tell people:
“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”
It's a very different animal today.
Could you explain this in more detail? The US Department of Labor states, "Severance pay is often granted to employees upon termination of employment. It is usually based on length of employment for which an employee is eligible upon termination. There is no requirement in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for severance pay. Severance pay is a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative)."
This seems to contradict your assertion that employment law dictates severance pay on an increasing scale.
The Wikimedia Foundation does not participate in content production at all.
Content production, curation, quality checking etc. is all left to unpaid volunteers. That is by design – the WMF doesn't want to be a publisher or arbiter of content. In part, that's because they would then become potentially liable for defamation, errors, etc., whereas now, they're just an online service provider protected from any such liability by Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act. Contributors themselves are legally responsible for any content they add to Wikipedia.
So I don't think you'll ever see the WMF intervene in content production.
Well, Wikipedia is entirely written by unpaid volunteers (excepting the odd paid PR writer).
The money the WMF raises does not go to the contributors who create the content. (Okay, some volunteers apply for grants for something or other, and get them, but that is a very, very small percentage of contributors.) The broad mass of volunteers does not get anything.
The WMF does not write the content, and does not check it. They don't even purchase accounts for volunteers to access paywalled sources. (There is the Wikipedia Library, but as far as I know, that relies on donated accounts.)
Actually, internet hosting costs them only $2 million a year. See page no. 3 in this document. Total support and revenue, for comparison, stood at $81.9 million last year. So 2.5% of the fundraising income is spent on hosting.
Quite so. The disadvantage of a semi-crowdsourced system like the one Wales proposes is that the volunteers are anonymous, so you never know which bias has been applied. At least with Fox News or CNN you know where you stand.
About ten years ago, Jimmy Wales said about Wikipedia (time code 4:35):
... We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”
“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee
In 2008, when Wikipedia was already the world's number 8 website, the Wikimedia Foundation survived on $5 million (vs. $82 million last year). So, yes, you can have a top-ten website – written entirely by unpaid volunteers – for a fraction of the current cost.
Wikimedia have posted an update on the Wikimedia mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pi...
"This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much support we have from people all over the world. Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following reasons: [...]
Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan to give the easiest means to participate)."
(Follow link for full text of the WMF statement, including their spending rationale.)
Actually, the first stage is costed at 2.5 million, of which the Knight Foundation is only covering $250,000. The rest is coming out of donations. The other three stages will each cost more than the first.
From this write-up, linked in the article (the link is on the word "costed"):
"Page 10 of this text specifically says that the cost of the first stage of "Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia" is $2.5 million, and that the grant is for 1 year starting in September 2015. Page 2 says that the whole project is in 4 stages, each lasting approximately 18 months = 6 years. This grant of $250,000 therefore only covers 10% of the cost, of the first stage, of the total project."
Well said. It's gotten to the point where whenever Wales starts badmouthing people and calling something "utter fucking bullshit" or a "total lie" (as he did in this case), you have to suspect that something very much resembling the exact opposite of what he says is actually true. At the same time, he claimed in those discussions he was "a much stronger advocate of transparency than James [Heilman]", the community representative he and the others had thrown off the Wikimedia board.
For detailed background, see coverage in the Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia's community newspaper:
Geshuri steps down from board
Media coverage of the Arnnon Geshuri no-confidence vote
Also check the previous two weeks' News & Notes for how the no-confidence vote came about.
Isn't that just a bit of regurgitated propaganda, assuming facts not in evidence (i.e. that liberal arts majors, dogs and Republicans would follow the rules)?
Here is what happens in real life:
manipulation in the service of commercial agendas,
hoaxes,
malice, and
blackmail,
along with "skewed information, unattributed material, and potential copyright violations".
Wikipedia throws such people out today, and they're back tomorrow, with a new pseudonymous sockpuppet account.
Wikipedia lists over 70,000 blocked sockpuppeteers, and that list does not include some of the most serious cases, where individuals have used literally hundreds of sockpuppet accounts. (For reference, the English Wikipedia has around 3,000 steady contributors making at least three or four content edits a day.)
Wikipedia sure needs a competitor, though to me this isn't a good reason. It's simply because monopolies in information transmission are a bad thing, and because Wikipedia is wide open to anonymous manipulation. For all its talk about transparency, Wikipedia is the first encyclopedia where you are not told (and are not supposed to ask or find out) who's written the thing. There are often good reasons for this (some of the harassment editors experience is vile – rape threats, death threats), but the one thing it is not is "transparent".
That comparison to housing associations strikes a chord ... :)) It's one of the main attractions of Wikipedia: you get to define what X is FOR THE ENTIRE INTERNET. It's a particular type of personality that jumps at that chance (even though it often turns out to be a greasy pole).
Well, current partners of the Wikipedia Library project include Adam Matthew, BMJ, British Newspaper Archive, Cochrane, Credo, De Gruyter, DynaMed, Elsevier ScienceDirect, FindMyPast, HighBeam, HeinOnline, JSTOR, Keesings, Loeb, MIT Press Journals, Newspapers.com, OCLC, Oxford, Past Masters, Pelican Books, Public Catalogue Foundation, Project MUSE, RIPM, Royal Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Sage Stats, ScotlandsPeople, Questia and Women Writers Online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
... ;) The fact is this came about quite differently. Volunteers had for years complained about lack of access to JSTOR et al.; Jake did something to remedy that. And he started out doing it as a volunteer himself. Credo, HighBeam and JSTOR were first; Elsevier came aboard later, as one of many. This was in no way Elsevier's initiative.
That's a lot of VP positions to fill
Elsevier is just one of many publishers involved here, along with JSTOR, Cochrane, BMJ, Oxford University Press, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Have you ever tried to write a Wikipedia article without access to the best sources? Would you like to rely on such an article? Or more to the point, would you want to be treated in a hospital whose doctors made a point of not reading any research published in non-OA journals, and who read no books they had to paid for?
Calling this issue "WikiGate" reflects a rather single-minded focus.
A few days ago, we learned that there was an extortion ring operating in Wikipedia – see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... or http://www.independent.co.uk/n... and many others.
A few months ago, we learned that a hoax article had survived for ten years on Wikipedia, and that its content had come to be cited in numerous places, among many other hoaxes: https://www.washingtonpost.com... see also http://wikipediocracy.com/2014...
A few weeks prior to that, we learned that an administrator had managed to manipulate Wikipedia's articles on a bogus Indian business school over a period of years, with an Indian journalist estimating that Wikipedia had messed up thousands of students' lives by lending its brand's supposed credibility to the school's misleading propaganda: http://www.newsweek.com/2015/0... and http://scroll.in/article/71429...
Each of those would have deserved the title WikiGate more than this non-issue, which if anything actually helps improve Wikipedia's reliability.