James, I don't think anyone has suggested using the endowment money to fund translations. That money is being collected for the purpose of guaranteeing the projects future, even if we enter an era where the fundraiser doesn't work. Repurposing that pot of money in such a way would have ethical and hopefully legal implications.
But once that endowment is big enough to take over the task of funding the foundation, the annual fundraiser will no longer be needed to fund core foundation activity. It could then be repurposed with translation as one of the things that we ask people to donate to, and in such a scenario there is very little exposure to the Foundation, especially if the banner is asking people to donate to the chapter or other organisation that is organising the project. In the past several chapters have been "payment processors" - funds collected in their country were collected by them. Moving back from our currently over centralised organisation to a more decentralised one would mean that money collected in say India stayed in India at least if it was being collected to fund translation into Indic languages. The Foundation doesn't have to handle the money if our fundraising banners were to ask our readers to fund the activities of the Wikimedia chapter in the country where they live, or even if people in wealthy areas of the world were being asked to help people in countries without the libraries that they are used to, and without the plethora of material available to people who are literate in one of the main languages of the Internet. Regards WereSpielChequers --------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2018 15:30:13 -0700 > From: James Salsman <jsals...@gmail.com> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation > Message-ID: > <CAD4=uzzhqbrenjsdqywyghemi-eoqkpfn7xckzq2hyyrqan...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > If the Foundation Endowment paid for translations of articles across > Wikipedias, it would still be like a Foundation Grant in terms of the > legal effect on the DMCA safe harbor provisions and the practical > effect on whether mistakes could bring the Foundation into disrepute. > > Maybe the Foundation could pay for translations, as long as a much > smaller independent third party was reviewing them for fidelity and > freedom from bias under conditions where a group of people are trying > to confound the paid reviewers by including a constant but small > proportion of intentionally inaccurate and biased proposed > translations to make sure that the reviewer quality is sufficient. > > If that doesn't work, then the independent third party anti-bias QA > organization could grow to do the translation, perhaps as a thematic > organization supported by both outside and less than half internal > Foundation grants. > > Best regards, > Jim > > On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 2:53 AM, WereSpielChequers > <werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Pine, there is one possible way to fund such translation in the future; The >> Foundation is building up an endowment. When that endowment has grown to >> the point where the annual return is sufficient to fund the Foundation, >> then you could re-purpose the annual fundraiser from collecting money to >> host Wikipedia, to collecting money to make Wikipedia available in other >> languages. >> >> If I'm correct in thinking that part of the problem for many of our widely >> spoken languages with weak wikipedias is that the more educated people who >> speak those languages are more likely to contribute edits in what is to >> them a higher status or more language or one more useful to their career, >> then maybe we should test using fundraiser type advertising to ask our >> English readers in places like India to translate articles from English to >> Indic languages. >> >> In some parts of the world where incomes are generally very low and >> financial donations reflect that perhaps we have little to lose by shifting >> now from asking for funds to asking for content donations, especially in >> the language of that area. >> >> WereSpielChequers >> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> Message: 2 >>> Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2018 18:13:38 -0800 >>> From: Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> >>> To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> >>> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Paid translation >>> Message-ID: >>> <CAF=dyJhxBXyhmMPvDYWA4oPGuj3mOTjQ1bP5QQKhGE3U2tDFcA@mail. >>> gmail.com> >>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" >>> >>> On the subject of paid translation, I could imagine this being included in >>> the scope of work for a "Wiki Community Foundation" or "Wiki Content >>> Foundation" that would do work that WMF doesn't do and/or shouldn't do. I >>> have a number of activities in mind for this kind of organization. >>> Unfortunately, I do not know how to fund it. I think that this organization >>> should get most of its funding from non-WMF sources, and WMF has such >>> strong fundraising capabilities that I think that competing with WMF for >>> funding from readers and grant-making organizations would be very >>> difficult. If WMF would like to have conversations about how the community >>> could raise funds directly from readers and non-WMF foundations, I for one >>> would be very interested in having that conversation. >>> >>> Pine >>> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
