RFC on WMF's intrusive ad banners on en.wp

[Vigilant]

RFC

[Vigilant]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

[Zoloft]

Blog post maybe?

[Midsize Jake]

To be fair, I don't think there's any way they could run fundraising banners that aren't misleading, and still actually raise funds.

This is the best I was able to come up with:

Don't scroll away! For over twenty years, sites run by the Wikimedia Foundation have provided the world with huge amounts of free information that is usually fairly accurate, somewhat relatively free of political propaganda, and occasionally even well-written. We do this without advertising, unless you count what you're reading now, and without paying any of our contributors, unless you count the ones we hire to work for us directly and act as though that doesn't matter. Without your generous donations, Wikipedia might only last about 35 more years before running out of money — that is, unless we decide to hire more C-level executives and "community liaison" staff (or buy a brand-new high-rise office building) in the meantime. But with your help, we can continue to build our massive legal and administrative war-chest to effectively prevent any of the people or organizations we harm on an ongoing basis from suing us and threatening our hegemonic monoculture within the world of online general reference information. Our footprint is vast! But just having a vast footprint isn't enough. We need still more vastness.

And since any attempts to sue us are immediately thrown out of court because of a blanket liability shield enacted before most American legislators even knew what the internet was, much less understood the potential of anonymously-accessible interactive websites to spread false and potentially-libelous content, legal expenses are practically an afterthought. Instead, we use that massive war-chest to finance extensive grant-making activities all over the world, for the benefit of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people and groups nobody has ever heard of, including us — many of whom have virtually no socio-cultural benefit track record whatsoever, and are mostly located in small third-world countries whose people probably don't like you very much at all! And for good reason, too! (Also, did we mention that we don't take crypto? Just in case you thought we were bad people.)

Remember, Wikipedia is for you. Not you personally of course, but rather "you" in the sense of "everyone who has internet access and takes whatever we say at face value." We want to make sure "you" have equal access to "knowledge," that being a kind of catch-all term that includes and excludes whatever a few hundred highly-active Wikipedia users and administrators deem appropriate at any given time. What we do (aside from the way we treat our article subjects) isn't cheap. It costs lots of money to run our servers and data centers, and the mere fact that this amounts to barely 5% of the amount we take in annually doesn't mean it isn't "lots." If we were forced to physically eat all that money in the form of recently-printed twenty-dollar bills, we almost certainly wouldn't survive.

(I don't know if we could use that as a blog post, but admittedly it's been a while since we did a "think piece.")

[DanMurphy]

The word salad from, what, 4 board members and the Flounder there is quite something. Condensed: "You're our cow. We need to milk you. For the little girl in Africa. Why do you hate charity?"

[The Garbage Scow]

The WMF is desperately overdue to be covered in an expose article in the press. They can start with this:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fu ... WMF!_Shame!

What a bunch of rotten old crooks!

[No Ledge]

Shame on you WMF! Shame!

[Vigilant]

Just have one single banner for all WMF fundraising.

[ArmasRebane]

The WMF is desperately overdue to be covered in an expose article in the press. They can start with this:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fu ... WMF!_Shame!

What a bunch of rotten old crooks!

Literally the only hope someone in the press would write a good article about this is if Slate’s Stephen Harrison does. He’s the only writer I’ve seen who actually groks much of how Wikipedia works (don’t know how familiar he is with the WMf stuff though.) Can always give him a ring. https://slate.com/author/stephen-harrison

[Vigilant]

Ruh Roh!

Here comes the fucking hammer.

Link

Comment from Nataliia, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

Hello again. Thank you all for the constructive comments here, which I took to the Wikimedia Foundation Trustees in a meeting the Board held yesterday along with staff. What the Board and staff have heard is quite clear, here and elsewhere: the Wikimedia Foundation should change the fundraising messaging to take into account more direct community and readers’ input.

Depending on the outcome of the RfC closure, hopefully the changes can be done by next Tuesday for the English campaign. The content the fundraising team would run next Tuesday will be based on the comments and ideas collected in this RfC, Meta, and other avenues. That draft messaging is being worked on and will be shared by the team tomorrow for further improvement. During the next year the team will develop a better process for this globally as there is quite a lot of detail to figure out.

More to the point, it is time for a reset between the Foundation and our communities on the seemingly intractable issues that we have been discussing for many years. Maryana will share more with you soon about the budget impacts of the changes in the fundraising approach, as well as the other concerns raised here (and elsewhere) about the direction of the Wikimedia Foundation --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

en.wp -> English, "We will make some minor modifications to the current banners to quiet this feeble 'mob' and showour benevolence, but from here on out, you powerless peasants need to fucking understand who's running the show here."

Maryana seen here getting ready to deal with these peons

How it ends


Oh, how the mighty Communitah has fallen in such a few short years.

One thing that's particularly funny about all this is just how little sway Jimbo holds anymore.

He's like a vestigial third hand that occasionally manages to hook a fingernail on something, which is quickly cleared with obvious annoyance.

[Smultronstället]

Discussion of the WMF's support for Russian and Russian-adjacent chapters was informative. Victoria seems to lack critical thinking skills though she's on the board. Wouldn't putting it to prospective donors that they have a way to make a difference to citizens of Russia increase donations? Given how the WMF ignored concerns of Hong Kong editors for so long, why assume Trust and Safety is doing a good job helping those in Russia? Is there a yearly breakdown of situations brought to Trust and Safety's attention in terms of general category of alert and whether any action was deemed warranted?

[Smultronstället]

Maryana seen here getting ready to deal with these peons

Did the Mary Poppins sequence add to the point in some way? I'm unfamiliar with the movie reference.

[Vigilant]

Maryana seen here getting ready to deal with these peons

Did the Mary Poppins sequence add to the point in some way? I'm unfamiliar with the movie reference.

It's hard to find certain clips of certain movies.

The other one I found was pretty blurry.

[nableezy]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

[Smultronstället]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

Can they make their own banners to display a different time of year?

[rhindle]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

Unless the community is like an HOA.

[CoffeeCrumbs]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

That the WMF has de jure authority doesn't necessarily mean that it has de facto authority. While I'm not sure the community has the determination to even repeat the FRAMBAN scenario, the WMF needs Wikipedia to be managed and as such, the community does have a great deal of leverage over the WMF, if it can be harnessed, whether or not the WMF has legal rights to do X and Y.

My cats legally own precisely nothing in my house and have no source of income. That doesn't mean they have no power to get things that they want.

[CoffeeCrumbs]

The WMF is desperately overdue to be covered in an expose article in the press. They can start with this:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fu ... WMF!_Shame!

What a bunch of rotten old crooks!

Getting mainstream media interested in Wikipedia/Wikimedia dynamics is an almost impossible task. Believe me, I've tried, and even very personal connections have zero interest in touching this kind of thing. It's too "inside baseball" for most readers, who don't really care about 99% of the disputes on Wikipedia. Basically, short of, say, a DoJ investigation of the WMF/Tides relationship (and I'm certainly not implying there is or will be one), it's a real snoozer for editors outside of a few small, indie/tech-focused outlets.

[nableezy]

That the WMF has de jure authority doesn't necessarily mean that it has de facto authority. While I'm not sure the community has the determination to even repeat the FRAMBAN scenario, the WMF needs Wikipedia to be managed and as such, the community does have a great deal of leverage over the WMF, if it can be harnessed, whether or not the WMF has legal rights to do X and Y.

My cats legally own precisely nothing in my house and have no source of income. That doesn't mean they have no power to get things that they want.

Im curious as to what people think the lesson of FRAMBAN was. Fram is no longer an admin, though his ban was indeed vacated (after serving 3 months of it anyway). Sefidari remained chair of the Board of Trustees for another 2 years, as far as I can tell nothing negative happened to any WMF employee or team as a result. I dont get why people think they have this power over the foundation.

[CoffeeCrumbs]

That the WMF has de jure authority doesn't necessarily mean that it has de facto authority. While I'm not sure the community has the determination to even repeat the FRAMBAN scenario, the WMF needs Wikipedia to be managed and as such, the community does have a great deal of leverage over the WMF, if it can be harnessed, whether or not the WMF has legal rights to do X and Y.

My cats legally own precisely nothing in my house and have no source of income. That doesn't mean they have no power to get things that they want.

Im curious as to what people think the lesson of FRAMBAN was. Fram is no longer an admin, though his ban was indeed vacated (after serving 3 months of it anyway). Sefidari remained chair of the Board of Trustees for another 2 years, as far as I can tell nothing negative happened to any WMF employee or team as a result. I dont get why people think they have this power over the foundation.

Because, well, it wasn't about freeing Fram, it was about the process. And in this case, as you no doubt are aware, he was instead judged by the community-elected arbitration panel. The WMF hasn't done anything anywhere near as heavy-handed with admin/user discipline since then.

[Anroth]

And frankly Fram has racked up more successful removals of disruptive and poisonous editors as a non-admin than an admin in the equiv timeframe. All removing the tools did was free him up from the burden of responsibility. Not sure that was what the WMF intended....

[ArmasRebane]

Yep. The WMF can do what it wants legally, but the output of the users is the product they are fundraising against, and if the community writ large is able to organize against WMF action, there's real stakes for them. The most active editors leave, the more articles become prone to disinformation, falling out of date, technical issues, etc.

Arguably if you want to be cynical you could say the WMF's diversity outreach has been less about uplifting marginalized voices and more about trying to create a larger pool of dissimilar editors so they could keep the gravy train running if the Fram types revolt.

I expect if someone starts the process next year early enough to preempt the banners, you could get a group to do it. Then it heads to a fight with the WMF, and if history is any indication, they will fold after making the most possible mistakes they can make in the process.

[Vigilant]

And frankly Fram has racked up more successful removals of disruptive and poisonous editors as a non-admin than an admin in the equiv timeframe. All removing the tools did was free him up from the burden of responsibility. Not sure that was what the WMF intended....

You can't win WMF

[Vigilant]

Arguably if you want to be cynical you could say the WMF's diversity outreach has been less about uplifting marginalized voices and more about trying to create a larger pool of dissimilar editors so they could keep the gravy train running if the Fram types revolt.

Balkanization.

They did it to the board, as well.

We talked about this in the Fram thread at the time a bit.

[Vigilant]

Ugh. Agreeing with Kudpung.

@Shani (WMF): and @Laurentius, Pundit, Victoria, NTymkiv (WMF), Lgruwell-WMF, and Phoebe: 1,344 words to tell us that nothing is really going to change any time soon other than instead of spending more money on the communities' concerns, the WMF is actually scaling back. But they are making cuts on precisely the areas where the volunteers need support rather than reducing the money the WMF spends on itself and its junkets and non-encyclopedic ventures.

What's the point of the CAC if the board simply always sides with the WMF and states that community concerns "are not within our remit" ? With such a statement the board has accurately shot itself in the foot and anything they say now is merely thin attempts at saving face. In contrast, it will lead to the action that the English Wikipedia editors are proposing here. Contrary to what the communities used to believe, the BoT is not a watchdog, and between the board and the WMF it's not even clear which tail is wagging which dog. Community members who are elected to the board usually get thrown off it for doing their job and exposing scandals of the highest order. Whoever, or whatever process appoints the CEOs doesn't have a history of making the best decisions - it's even rumoured now that the last CEO was actually 'asked' to leave.

Community-WMF tension is nothing new but this time it's reached it peak and everything is boiling over; comments from the WMF or the board might be in good faith but they are just fuelling the fire instead of directly and pro-actively addressing the issues. Either withdraw these intended banners or reap the consequences. This should be compulsory reading for you all, but will you click the link? Will you finally understand those wise tabulated concerns from yet another disenchanted volunteer who is slaving away at doing the Foundation's work for free? Work that is directly concerned with Wikipedia's increasingly fragile reputation for neutrality and accuracy. What is the WMF going to do about it if the community does indeed proceed with its threatened civil disobedience and block the banners? Fire all the volunteers? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:52, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Direct link to a very good essay

[Boing! said Zebedee]

This (thanks to Kudpung for pointing it out), from Cullen328 who is someone of a calm disposition and not given to melodrama, is for me the most on-target comment of the whole thing...

The statement "an RfC on a single wiki, is not the way to decide the financial fate of all Wikimedia sites" is really quite illuminating. The WMF attitude seems to be that when allocating resources, that the English Wikipedia (the indisputable flagship of our free knowledge movement) is just a "single wiki" among 300 wikis, but when it comes to fundraising, it suddenly the most important wiki by far. That is a shockingly hypocritical disconnect from reality and an attitude that illuminates the severe problem we face now in late November 2022. We are ethical people and the ad mongers aren't. Deal with it decisively now. When we PLEAD for better software tools to curate content and communicate with mobile editors for example, we are not asking for things that would benefit the English Wikipedia only. These tools would be for the benefit of editors throughout the Wikimedia Foundation websites. Do editors on our French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias oppose this kind of software support? I do not think so. Anybody who tries to claim that this RFC does not reflect an overwhelming consensus is clearly wrong. Just an example that has nothing to do with the English Wikipedia per se: Year after year, the Android app for uploading photos to Commons has sucked and has deterred good faith contributors, and the WMF has repeatedly failed to deploy a reliable, bug free Android app to upload photos to Wikimedia Commons. Billions of people take photos worldwide on Android devices and it is extremely difficult for any of them to donate their photos under a free license. The app sucks. The app has sucked for years. Millions of dollars pour in and that app still sucks. Why the heck is that? Why can't a smartphone photo contibutor click three or four clearly labelled buttons and freely license their photo? Why does it take a half hour or more, and require a user to uninstall and reinstall the app to upload a single photo? Far smaller organizations deploy apps that work well. The butterfly editors and the dinosaur editors and the tropical storm editors and the asteroid editors may not have commented. They are entirely free to do so at any time. But the English Wikpedia editors and administrators who ''truly care'' about the governance of this project have spoken, and have spoken quite clearly. You need to do one of two things: Either come up with a RADICALLY DIFFERENT banner campaign that immediately creates a consensus in favor of your banners, or suspend your deceptive, unethical campaign on English Wikipedia for at least the next year. You can crank up your unethical ads on the French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese Wikpedias if you are determined to, and see how they react to your overreach. Stop lying about not advertising on Wikipedia when you advertise on Wikipedia every year. That is truly grotesque. The consensus among the active volunteer content creators who are dedicated to the future of this encyclopedia is that we are overwhelmingly fed up with your unethical overreach which enriches the careerists among you and disregards the unpaid volunteers who have literally created your prosperous lifestyles and your exceptionally generous annual incomes and fringe benefits. For the sake of all that is good and righteous, please speak with us frankly and responsively, instead of spouting condescending PR agent talking points. Many of us have spent years or decades blocking PR people, and we place a very high priority on frank speech instead of baffelgab. Do not treat us like we just fell off a turnip truck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1123349084

[Boing! said Zebedee]

Direct link to a very good essay

And yep, that's it bang on the nail. The only people who can't see what that's saying are those who don't want to see.

[Vigilant]

Direct link to a very good essay

And yep, that's it bang on the nail. The only people who can't see what that's saying are those who don't want to see.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair.

[nableezy]

Because, well, it wasn't about freeing Fram, it was about the process. And in this case, as you no doubt are aware, he was instead judged by the community-elected arbitration panel. The WMF hasn't done anything anywhere near as heavy-handed with admin/user discipline since then.

Sure, the en.WP community has asserted its role in its internal governance. T&S has continued their role in making unappealable blocks, including for primarily en.WP editors. I dont see that as the roaring success for the independence of en.WP that you do, if anything what was taken away was only slightly clawed back. But it doesnt change the overarching point, that this is their property and if they want to do something with it they will. And no RFC is going to change that.

[Arishok]

It would be nice if they just came out and said, straight up, “we reject your RfC on the basis of us liking money more than we like all of you. Tough beans! We’re gonna go fan ourselves with stacks of hundred-dollar bills now, want to watch?”

[Wampyre1990]

Closed by Joe Roe with consensus to not run the banners in their current form link

[Vigilant]

All of the WMF/Board statements come across as simple more shallow platitudes from people who don't actually do anything useful.

[Vigilant]

The WMF is a nonprofit that has grossly exceeded its remit

I disagree strongly with Beeblebrox; the WMF is a registered nonprofit that has evolved way beyond its remit, has stashed away a sizeable endowment, and has been fundraising deceptively. It is not only reasonable, but moral, to seek to rein this in, at least on the one project whose community we are. In particular because the banners the WMF has placed year after year on en.wp and proposes to again place on en.wp this year both imply and state that the donations are sought and used for the continuation of Wikipedia. The ends do not justify the means, however fervently WMF employees may believe in its self-declared broader mission, and continuation of employees' jobs cannot be a consideration in itself for a charitable organization appealing to the public. My first preference would be for us to suppress the display of the banners on English Wikipedia, by any technical means possible, and if the WMF overrides that action, to go to the press with a statement that we, who actually created, maintain, and continue to develop English Wikipedia, do not endorse the banners and sought to dissuade the WMF from running them. My second choice would be for us to run a banner on English Wikipedia, with wording such as:

We, the editors of the English-language Wikipedia, do not endorse the below/above banner. [link is to this RfC as closed by Joe Roe] The Wikimedia foundation has an endowment in excess of $X and only Y% of its spending in the last fiscal year was in support of Wikipedia and the other projects. Please see details [HERE] [link to an information page with links to WMF financial statements and explanation of items such as chapter support]. You may also wish to create an account, which does not entail identifying yourself and makes it possible to hide some of these banners.

Yngvadottir (talk) 02:04, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Who is Yngvadottir?
I continue to be consistently impressed.

[Boing! said Zebedee]

All of the WMF/Board statements come across as simple more shallow platitudes from people who don't actually do anything useful.

Yep, it's all marketing and PR speak - 100% appearance, 0% substance. It really infuriates me whenever I try to speak frankly with someone, and all I get in return is marketing. Is it so ingrained in their training that they've actually forgotten how to talk like ordinary human beings?

[owl be it]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

"Private property"?

[Silent Editor]

The WMF is a nonprofit that has grossly exceeded its remit

Who is Yngvadottir?
I continue to be consistently impressed.

I do like that she included her standard "This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF" disclaimer as part of her edit summary for that post.

[No Ledge]

A nearly unanimous RFC to not run misleading WMF fundraising banners on en.wp is being brushed aside by the WMF.

Ok but like this is among the silliest things you can have an RFC for. Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

"Private property"?

It is like a library or a public park where we can all go to learn.

They're asking for donations to support a public park, not private property. In the "free speech zone" of a public park, anyone should be allowed to panhandle. Including the (dis)organized editing community.

[Lurking]

In spite of what the WMF itself claims ("public park"), probably the best comparison as far as the public/private thing goes would be a privately-owned park kept up by unpaid volunteers in return for the park being opened up to the public free of charge.

And sure, the owner can, within legal limits, set their own rules and ideas for the park, what its upkeep should look like, under what circumstances the public may make use of the park, what should be on that information board that's the first thing a visitor sees, and so on. But if those rules and ideas and actions and decisions get too far out of line with what the volunteers are willing to put up with, the park will still end up with few or no volunteers, and thus no upkeep, and eventually, no more public visiting.

If they're fine with that (e.g. they want an excuse to close the park to the public again, or they're looking to make a switch to paid entry and paid employees doing the upkeep), that's one thing.

But if they actually *want* the public to keep visiting the park--like, say, when that park is one of the main sources of donations to a fund used for the upkeep of plenty of the owner's other projects as well--without having to pay for folks doing the upkeep, then repeatedly pissing off sizeable portions of those volunteers (like by deceiving the visiting public into thinking their donations actually go to helping upkeep the park) might perhaps not be the smartest course of action.

[Ming]

Why do these people not get that they are on private property, and the foundation can do whatever the fuck they want their property, including running banners that every single en.WP editor despises. It's a bunch of people bloviating about things they are not able to control. You dont like what the literal owner of some property does with it? I dont like the assholes putting up Xmas lights before Halloween much less waiting for Thanksgiving. Cant do much about that either.

Ah, but if you were on the board of the homeowner's association, you could force them to take those lights down.

And the analogy isn't even that good, because as people who've been following this for a long time are aware, the WMF only exists because incorporation statutes say that it has to, and especially that corporations must have certain officers. Those people don't own anything; really, they are just employees.

[No Ledge]

Wikimedia Foundation is like the management company hired by the homeowner's association. And gosh do they frown on association board members who talk behind their back about replacing them with a different management company.

They don't own the park, they just own the land.

Volunteers could pick up the playground equipment they installed on the land and move it to land owned by a different management company.

Those people don't own anything; really, they are just employees.

Employees of who? Inquiring conspiracy theorists want to know.

[Smultronstället]

The chapters are captured due to wanting funding. Has anyone done a headcount of influential editors willing to form a separate group to lobby for change outside of the WMF's orbit? Press would cover it at least to some extent. There are plenty of issues to foment change towards such as WMF projects taken over by fascists and racists. Just like Twitter these platforms can be used for evil or for supporting pro-social sharing of knowledge. How long has it been since the WMF did a survey of participants, and former participants, of each project to inquire as to whether they have noticed anything like the CCP oppressing people who want accurate data included?

Guerilla Skeptics are a useful prototype of success from outside.

[ArmasRebane]

The chapters are captured due to wanting funding. Has anyone done a headcount of influential editors willing to form a separate group to lobby for change outside of the WMF's orbit? Press would cover it at least to some extent. There are plenty of issues to foment change towards such as WMF projects taken over by fascists and racists. Just like Twitter these platforms can be used for evil or for supporting pro-social sharing of knowledge. How long has it been since the WMF did a survey of participants, and former participants, of each project to inquire as to whether they have noticed anything like the CCP oppressing people who want accurate data included?

Guerilla Skeptics are a useful prototype of success from outside.

[citation needed]

[No Ledge]

Wow, I just found that someone linked to this November 2009 controversy

Wikipedia:Petition for reconsideration of the Wikipedia Forever banner

This precedes my becoming active on the platform; I wasn't aware of it.

But I guess Jimmy Wales has seen it all before.

[No Ledge]

The interface administrators' discussion about technical edits to remove the banners
Removal of donation messages

The only thing that seems to have changed in 13 years is the turnover in executives responding

Thank you Mr. Möller for explaining that the English Wikipedia community no longer controls the English Wikipedia. — RockMFR 12:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[Smultronstället]

The chapters are captured due to wanting funding. Has anyone done a headcount of influential editors willing to form a separate group to lobby for change outside of the WMF's orbit? Press would cover it at least to some extent. There are plenty of issues to foment change towards such as WMF projects taken over by fascists and racists. Just like Twitter these platforms can be used for evil or for supporting pro-social sharing of knowledge. How long has it been since the WMF did a survey of participants, and former participants, of each project to inquire as to whether they have noticed anything like the CCP oppressing people who want accurate data included?

Guerilla Skeptics are a useful prototype of success from outside.

[citation needed]

They've organized off wiki, kept most of their membership secret, only recruit people who have some expertise, and have been able to progress towards their stated goals all without ending up captured or beholden to the WMF. They have also created training that's useful for their members.

[ArmasRebane]

The chapters are captured due to wanting funding. Has anyone done a headcount of influential editors willing to form a separate group to lobby for change outside of the WMF's orbit? Press would cover it at least to some extent. There are plenty of issues to foment change towards such as WMF projects taken over by fascists and racists. Just like Twitter these platforms can be used for evil or for supporting pro-social sharing of knowledge. How long has it been since the WMF did a survey of participants, and former participants, of each project to inquire as to whether they have noticed anything like the CCP oppressing people who want accurate data included?

Guerilla Skeptics are a useful prototype of success from outside.

[citation needed]

They've organized off wiki, kept most of their membership secret, only recruit people who have some expertise, and have been able to progress towards their stated goals all without ending up captured or beholden to the WMF. They have also created training that's useful for their members.

That case seems to suggest that you consider the only important metric that someone is independent of the WMF, not what's actually good for Wikipedia. I think that's a bad dichotomy.

(As for "only recruiting people who have some expertise", given that they've got a Facebook group anyone can apply to join and the membership is secret, there's no way of verifying that, and I doubt it's accurate either way.)

[Giraffe Stapler]

That case seems to suggest that you consider the only important metric that someone is independent of the WMF, not what's actually good for Wikipedia. I think that's a bad dichotomy.

Hey, hold on there just a second. The guerilla skeptics are a special interest group. They are trying to advance their own viewpoints on pseudoscientific subjects. I assume they believe that this is a good thing to do in general and therefore it is good for Wikipedia. One could say the same thing about a group of flat earthers or perpetual energy proponents who are trying to show "the truth" to the world. What is "good" for Wikipedia doesn't really come into it.

[ArmasRebane]

That case seems to suggest that you consider the only important metric that someone is independent of the WMF, not what's actually good for Wikipedia. I think that's a bad dichotomy.

Hey, hold on there just a second. The guerilla skeptics are a special interest group. They are trying to advance their own viewpoints on pseudoscientific subjects. I assume they believe that this is a good thing to do in general and therefore it is good for Wikipedia. One could say the same thing about a group of flat earthers or perpetual energy proponents who are trying to show "the truth" to the world. What is "good" for Wikipedia doesn't really come into it.

Yeah, I just don't see why that's even being brought up in a thread about WMF governance. It doesn't factor in, and just because outside groups can effect editorial control doesn't really relate to governance control or to having a WP without the WMF.

[Smultronstället]

That case seems to suggest that you consider the only important metric that someone is independent of the WMF, not what's actually good for Wikipedia. I think that's a bad dichotomy.

Hey, hold on there just a second. The guerilla skeptics are a special interest group. They are trying to advance their own viewpoints on pseudoscientific subjects. I assume they believe that this is a good thing to do in general and therefore it is good for Wikipedia. One could say the same thing about a group of flat earthers or perpetual energy proponents who are trying to show "the truth" to the world. What is "good" for Wikipedia doesn't really come into it.

Yeah, I just don't see why that's even being brought up in a thread about WMF governance. It doesn't factor in, and just because outside groups can effect editorial control doesn't really relate to governance control or to having a WP without the WMF.

Go back to No Ledge's example of a park and a management company. The English Wikipedia community is ignored by the WMF. I'm not suggesting that the Guerilla Skeptics model is applicable for all groups, but they are successful at what they set out to achieve. Imagine that the neighbors of the park or the town in general had both ideas for how to better utilize the park and concerns about something like crime in the park. When I was managing a property that had previously been rented to meth heads, the neighbors approached me quickly to see what I would do differently. It's the same type of issue.

[Charliebware]

Can't we just add our own banner to the front page of Wikipedia letting readers know that their donations are not necessary and that the WMF is acting in bad faith?