Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-31/News and notes

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NPP letter

• It's a shame the NPP community has to resort to such an action to obtain any engagement from the WMF, particularly while the Foundation is wallowing in money but is making a desperate need for cash a fundraising claim for needing more. There does still seem to be a disconnect between the Foundation and its flagship projects whose voluntary work brings in the donations. Having been involved with NPP for well over a decade, the community's action has my total support. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
• I must be missing something. The last sentence but 1 in the NPP section says:"There is a particular need for reviewers who can accurately judge the quality of foreign-language sources" Why can't/don't foreign-language Wikipedia's help out here? It shouldn't be that hard for any language WP to begin an inventory of their language sources, pass some form of judgement and make it available for other WP–languages. Add a section where foreign editors can submit a source for judgement and there's a handy and valuable tool IMO. I'm sure I'm not the first 1 to think along these lines, so what gives? Dutchy45 (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

  @Dutchy45 multilingual editors who speak English are probably already active on enwp out of necessity, due to enwp's dominance/popularity. That said, enwp's policies on notability may different from other language editions of Wikipedia, so we couldn't easily transpose notability of sources. That could change if a project like meta:WikiCite/Shared Citations became a reality. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

  As the author of the Shared Citations proposal, I'm always pleased to see it mentioned and recommended 'in the wild' like this - thank you Shushugah. While I do wish to reiterate the implication of your point Shushugah that this is indeed merely a proposal and makes no promises of funding/prioritisation, all good ideas have to start somewhere :-) I would appreciate if people who are interested in the issues of assessing reference quality on en.wp would have a look at the proposal and see if they think its a viable solution. As I hope is obvious to people who read it - especially the "principles" section - it would permit each language WP to still make its own sovereign choices about the visual display/format of references, and its own policies about what counts as "reliable", but to centralise the task of all the data entry required to maintain and monitor it all. LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Fundraising emails

• I'm going to be blunt here, those fundraising emails are awful and misleading. They're the kind of thing you'd expect to show up in your spam email. Even if there wasn't anything ethically wrong about them (which is definitely the case), it also just bad for Wikipedia's overall credibility. I've also met a lot people IRL who find persistant fundraising campaigns in general to be annoying... the more they're asked, the more they feel like they're being forced and the less likely they are to feel like they want to of their own volition. Clovermoss (talk) 01:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  @Clovermoss: Thanks. May I ask you – and indeed anyone who has an opinion on these fundraising emails – to please go visit the ongoing RfC at the Village Pump and copy whatever you say here and say it there at the RfC as well:

  • Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC_(WMF_fundraising_emails)

  If we want to have our voice heard, we need to have a well-visited RfC we can point to. Cheers, --Andreas JN466 08:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Glad to see the acknowledgement and promise that "42% of your gift will be used to sustain and improve Wikipedia and our other online free knowledge projects. 31% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers who share their knowledge with you for free every day." Which confirms one use of the 31% number referred to in past discussions. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Nobody seems to have any idea what that number actually includes. However I am certain that what readers imagine does not match the reality.

  As I mentioned before on Meta, "31% of your gift" in 2020/2021 would have been 31% of $163 million, i.e. about $50 million. That's an order of magnitude more than all Awards and grants combined. (Note that the total $9.8M "Awards and grants" figure shown on that page includes the annual $5 million to the Endowment at the Tides Foundation, see p. 14.)

  When I asked for more information what this 31% figure is supposed to include, I received no reply. Andreas JN466 17:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  There is certainly a risk that without a good explanation, the Foundation could be seen as a self-licking ice cream cone by some. I mean, even taking the 31% figure at face value, that means 69% of the gifts do not support volunteers who create content... hmmm. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  About the self-licking ... the other day, I compared the top salaries in the 2018 Form 990 versus the 2020 Form 990.

  I found that from 2018 to 2020 –

  • the CEO's total compensation incl. benefits increased by 7% (to $423,318),
  • the DGC's and GC's by 10%,
  • the CFO's by 11%,
  • the CTO's by 17%,
  • the CAO's by 22%,
  • the CCO's by 25%,
  • the CT/CO's by 28%, and
  • the CPO's by 32%

  – all over a two-year period when the annual US inflation rate was at 2%. All but three (the GC, CTO and CT/CO) were the same person in 2020 as in 2018. I'm pretty sure those are better raises than most donors got. Andreas JN466 19:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  I just read about what happens with Thomas. That is such a crappy behavior from Wikipedia. It happened in 2021, now is 2022, and nothing had changed. I am sure average people thought that Wikipedia is on the verge of being taken offline and the boards of WMF are paid very low and working so hard to keep Wikipedia running, while the truth is completely the opposite. I didn't expect a change either this year, as long as editors like us kept working to keep the project online. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 07:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

  I absolutely agree that those, roughly, are the most prevalent (mis)perceptions. And those are misperceptions deliberately fostered by the WMF, using this project as the vehicle to spread them – for financial gain.

  I also think that these messages, about how it's "awkward" to ask, but there is "no choice but to turn to you", etc., "resonate" particularly with people who are not well off – like this senior, Thomas, with $18 in the bank, promising to donate as soon as his social security check clears.

  VRT/OTRS volunteers have commented on this as well (e.g. User:Elli here: "I can't go into the specifics, but as a VRT agent I've received numerous emails from people on limited incomes who are donating money they need because they believe that Wikipedia is in trouble and that they need to give money to keep it online. I'm absolutely disgusted by this, and I think it will catch up to us in the long-run, as people won't want to give once they realize how deceptive these campaigns are."). --Andreas JN466 09:30, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

  @Jayen466: Done. The Thomas example breaks my heart, by the way. Clovermoss (talk) 17:22, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

  The more I hear about the WMF, this as well as the way the new Vector skin is being developed, the more alienated they seem from the goals, concerns, and efforts of Wikipedia and its editors. Good thing they don't own the rights to any of the content. small jars tc 09:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

  Oh, but they do have a product to be sold for profit! Courtesy of their own editors that are working for free of course. I am sure WMF didn't put this on their email. WMF clearly have achieved their donation target several times over they need, and they are planning for a "profit arm" (using free labor, I must say), but still they seem to be begging for donation. I have received donation requests from Salvation Army or others and they didn't beg this much, despite they may be in need of more money than WMF. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 11:34, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

  @SunDawn: this statement is inaccurate, and a failure of assume good faith. A rule that still apply to staffers. product to be sold for profit! - putting aside that it's a service providing, how is it to be sold for profit? The Foundation can't make profit - anything that comes in through that arm is added to the general fundraising pot. It's commercial-generated fundraising, not profit that can go to shareholders. In a sense, Enterprise is the fundraising aspect that is least on the basis of editors' free labour (I mean, no-one else is donating except because they like one project or another, I assume?) - it's generating value on the basis of a more reliable provision of that information in a better format. The WMF has numerous projects where it's been terribly untransparent - but Enterprise is not one of them. It's on Diff, it had multiple office hours, their base document was amended from feedback and you can just talk to the team and they answer. I'd be surprised if they have met their donation target given where they are in their fiscal year. And we've never got to several times the donation target, although it's certainly heavily exceeded. Now, that was the source of one of my other complaints, where they indicated they hadn't met it. Which I believe is correct...but they wouldn't have expected to do so yet. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

  I do assume good faith with fellow editors, but I don't think it applied to WMF. On the other hand, I do understand that there is nothing inherently wrong in making a profit, but the general tone of WMF is that they are "running out of money", "in the brink of shutdown", "can only rely on donations from the readers", while in fact they are not running out of money. I know many charities are running "for profit" - Goodwill, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, are running "profitable" thrift stores. I have no problem with them because of their tone. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:01, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• Hacker News thread on the fundraising email RfC. --Andreas JN466 17:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Admins

• I'd love to be an admin, but I've been around for only a year and haven't made a single article, and my one AfD proposal went up in flames. I'm not sure my RfA would ever pass. Minkai (boop that talk button!-contribs-ANI Hall of Fame) 12:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  I don't see why you couldn't pass with some more experience. Time-wise, a year should be enough, but you should probably get some content experience and demonstrate that you understand policies in administrative areas before running. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, I would agree. We've all had AfDs that didn't turn out the way we expected; if that were a disqualifier we'd have no admins at all. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:03, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I think there is barely anyone here these days that really do want to be an admin. RfAs get a bad reputation for a reason. GamerPro64 03:49, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

• This would require technical changes, obviously, but could the adminship crisis be averted by further breaking down 'the mop' into more specific permission roles? For example, the area of Wikipedia I am most experienced with is RC patrol and counter-vandalism, but for the brief moment I considered applying for an admin permissions it became obvious that with my lack of article writing I would never even be considered. The standards have only gone up since then, and I would never under any circumstances subject myself to the current RfA process, even if my editing history could support admin rights. But if there was a 'Counter-vandalism admin' who only had the rights to do things like delete recently created pages and block non-confirmed users, it might be something that the community might see fit to grant to people of my profile.
  In any case, it seems to me that the most fundamental problem Wikipedia has as a project is dwindling editorship, and the dwindling adminship is an extension of that. It seems to me like fixing this should be one of the top priorities for the project to ensure the long-term success of Wikipedia. Melmann 16:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Farsi Wikipedia IP block experiment

Despite what the study's highlights claimed, it appears that disabling IP edits had no identifiable effect on the total number of good-faith edits—the decline that was observed was also observed on other wikis in the same region that did not disable IP edits.

(I have started a discussion on Meta.) —Emufarmers^(T/C) 07:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Scots Wikipedia editing drive

I know this isn't the fault of the Signpost because they were just quoting sco:Wikipedia:September 2022 Writin Drive, but "help out the site's admins by teaching them proper Scots, and generally improve the quality of the Wiki" makes it sound like CiphriusKane (the only active admin) can't speak Scots. They are a native speaker, though. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Cobra 3000 was reusing the text from 2 years ago, should probably be updated, seeing as the non-Scots writers from that period have left the wiki now CiphriusKane (talk) 15:57, 3 September 2022 (UTC)