[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 8, Issue 43 -- 22 October 2012

2012-10-24 Thread Wikipedia Signpost
Special report: Adminship from the German perspective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/Special_report

News and notes: Wikimedians get serious about women in science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/News_and_notes

Arbitration report: War declared over Malleus Fatuorum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/Arbitration_report

WikiProject report: Where in the world is Wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/WikiProject_report

Featured content: Is RfA Kafkaesque?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/Featured_content

Discussion report: Good articles on the main page?; reforming dispute resolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/Discussion_report

Technology report: Wikivoyage migration: technical strategy announced
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22/Technology_report


Single page view
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single

PDF version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-10-22


http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost
--
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

2012-10-24 Thread Michael Snow

On 10/24/2012 3:38 PM, James Salsman wrote:

The Funds Dissemination Committee was originally proposed by Sue to
the board with explicit support for both groups and individuals,[1]
but at some point after, all mention of individual editors was
removed.[2]

Could someone please say whether this was the decision of the board,
someone else's decision, or a mistake? I ask because I have reason to
believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia administrators are living
below the poverty line, and it seems that support for such individual
editors is reasonable. Local fire departments and the International
Red Cross both have paid personnel and volunteer staff working
alongside each other without any motivational crowding.

[1] 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Draft_FDC_Proposal_for_the_Board#Application_process_and_timeline
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Eligibility_criteria
I suspect you may have formed for yourself a rather different conception 
of the proposed system than what was actually contemplated. To your 
first footnote, I find it strange that you would focus on the section 
headed Application process and timeline for an eligibility question 
when there's a section immediately above it regarding eligibility, and 
that section is exclusively about groups (entities), not individuals. 
The page in your second footnote is pretty clearly an expansion of that 
eligibility section, so it's not surprising if they're consistent with 
each other.


If I understand things correctly, anything in the FDC materials that 
refers to individuals receiving funds should probably be interpreted as 
referring to the Wikimedia grants program, which does invite individual 
applicants and will continue on as far as I'm aware. The grants program 
as a whole would naturally be under the purview of the FDC, but that's 
at another level of the process, so individuals wouldn't be directly 
participating in the FDC process in that sense.


--Michael Snow

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

2012-10-24 Thread Nathan
While this is a tangent, it's an interesting one! I don't think anyone
has done great empirical testing on the income demographics of
Wikipedia administrators. It looks like income was not included in the
2011 survey; it does say that 42% of all respondents were unemployed,
but this is likely driven by the number of students and minors.

In any case, poverty line is a subjective definition that varies
dramatically by jurisdiction. In the U.S., approximately 15% of the
population lives below the U.S. definition of the poverty line. Given
that, it seems extremely unlikely that 18% (or even 15% or 10%) of
American Wikipedians live below that line; for other jurisdictions or
definitions of the line, it seems hard to speculate.

On the larger question, I'm with Jamesofur that I don't think
supporting Wikipedians financially (other than via fellowships as part
of the program budget) was ever on the table. Or at least if it was, I
certainly didn't hear about it.

~Nathan

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

2012-10-24 Thread James Salsman
... I have reason to believe that about 18% of English Wikipedia
 administrators are living below the poverty line, ...

... citation desperately needed for this stat.

In February I performed a survey of over 300 inactive English
Wikipedia administrators based on a survey which had been approved on
the Strategy Wiki more than two years prior. I added financial
demographic questions to the survey. Steven Walling, who I thought had
agreed to act as the Foundation point of contact for the survey during
a public IRC office hour (he disagrees) has access to all of the
original data I collected as a Google Forms document available to his
Google Drive account.

Shortly afterward, I was told that the survey was a violation of
policy (two months later I was told it was not), and that I was
violating the privacy policy because I asked for contact information
to follow up. I was banned from Meta and told to contact the Legal
Department if I had further questions. I did, and I am still waiting
for their response. After several weeks without reply from the Legal
Department, I followed up with some of the respondents, and performed
an additional survey which I do not wish to describe in detail until I
have an answer to my questions from the Legal Department.

If the statistic is in doubt, I suggest that the Foundation perform
their own survey of long term contributor financial status. As of May,
by the way, more than 30 of the original survey respondent
administrators had returned to active status, having made more than 50
edits each after having gone at least six months without editing.

Sincerely,
James Salsman

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

2012-10-24 Thread Samuel Klein
On Oct 24, 2012 9:46 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 When you subsidize volunteers they a) are no longer volunteers and b) the
 same problem with paid editors: losing the power to walk away.

 Give me money to administrate Wikipedia and I give up my bit.  The freedom
 to pick and choose what we do on the website is one of our greatest
 strengths.

Well said.

Sj
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