To Sue Gardner

[Anthonyhcole]

Hi Sue.

Why do you not implement the will of the board, which among other things is that we should respect the basic human dignity of our subjects and readers when doing so doesn't unduly diminish the encyclopedia? Is it because it would make the foundation legally responsible for any harm done by en.Wikipedia? I've heard this from other Wikipedians but never from the WMF.

If this is the case, can you tell me why the foundation shouldn't be held responsible for any harm done by the project?

[thekohser]

You know that this message board is not typically read by Sue Gardner? Why don't you e-mail her, or call the Foundation office?

[Anthonyhcole]

You know that this message board is not typically read by Sue Gardner? Why don't you e-mail her, or call the Foundation office?

I left a note on her en.Wikipedia talk page. I know it's a long shot.

[The Joy]

The WMF Board has its own "will?" I thought they were a rubber-stamp parliament for Sue and Jimbo? When has it shown any backbone?

[thekohser]

For those who always wanted to ask Sue Gardner something, and then have her dodge the question, she will be doing an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit on Wednesday, November 13.

[Vigilant]

in r/TwoXChromosomes...

Classless to the end.

Just read some of the threads
http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/

[IFF] I finished Insanity! After carrying 3 babies, I'm finally beginning to love my body again.

[IFF] I was the only girl in an otherwise male sparring competition, and I got 3rd place! I just wanted to brag a little

Women Would Choose 'Me Time' Over Sex, Survey Finds

[IFF] My sister just released her first book! And it's dedicated to all the babies lost from fetal abnormalities. 0

[IFF] I drew a tree(monkey pod) this week that I'm pretty happy with

[IFF] 6 months ago I started a business handpainting cocktail-themed yarns. Here is my latest creation: Alaskan Ice Tea!

[IFF] My boyfriend and I cosplay together. Last weekend was our 2 year anniversary. We took this photo.

My favorite:

Online abuse against women: "The internet is a fertile breeding ground for misogyny – you only have to look at the murky bottom waters of Reddit and 4Chan to see the true extent to which it allows violent attitudes towards women to proliferate."

Online abuse happens to everyone.

[EricBarbour]

in r/TwoXChromosomes...

Don't forget r/TrollXChromosomes, the dark companion......

[thekohser]

You can tell Sue Gardner is on her way out at the Wikimedia Foundation. She had the nerve to re-tweet this highly critical review of WMF donor and board-seat-buyer, Pierre Omidyar.

[thekohser]

Forgot that this Reddit AMA actually happened. I am afraid to even look.

[EricBarbour]

Forgot that this Reddit AMA actually happened. I am afraid to even look.

Not surprisingly, she ended up talking mostly to Brandon Harris, Kevin Gorman, Sarah Stierch, Nihiltres, Sage Ross, Steven Walling, Mark Holmquist, and Kat Walsh. All of her disgusting little ass-nozzles sat there and "had a conversation" with their Director. Probably to prevent anyone from criticizing her, as usual.

(Although our old friend enwikibadscience did show up, and was ruthlessly downvoted and shouted down.)

I'm going to save a capture of this, because it's fucking hilarious. What a bunch of assholes.

[Zoloft]

Forgot that this Reddit AMA actually happened. I am afraid to even look.

I'm reading it now. Actually fairly interesting in a 'Wikimedia Dissonance Bingo' way. Sue's posse, including Sarah Stierch and Brandon Harris, showed up to help her answer questions. She stuck to it a lot better than other notable types who've dodged questions or cut it short under pressure. She seemed to enjoy her AMA.

[Randy from Boise]

A little bit TL;DR, but pretty interesting reading.

I especially loved this bit by SG answering how she first got involved as a Wikipedian...

* * *
As an editor I got involved like most people -- back in about 2005 I saw a typo on Wikipedia (misplaced comma) and fixed it. I got a bit of a rush from that, like lots of people -- "I helped Wikipedia!" and so I started editing a little bit here and there. My first serious edits were in the article about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (where I worked at the time). That's also a normal way to start, although it is frowned upon. I didn't know that then. I think I first registered in 2007 -- before that I edited as an IP.

I became ED in middle 2007. I'd decided to leave the CBC, where I'd been running CBC.CA, because I felt like the public broadcasters, and traditional media in general, were declining in influence/importance. One day I was following Wikipedia's coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre (which was excellent) and I decided to investigate who was behind the site. I found out it was a non-profit, and that it was looking for an ED. So I got in touch with them, and then I took the job :-)

Whoops, when Jimmy's Bright Line is officially Da Law (and I am being facetious when I say that), the next Sue G. gets indeffed on day 2.

Unintended consequences!!!

RfB

[Zoloft]

I am going to post a few excerpts:

Well, the problem we'd run in to with this is that a lot of the people who are well respected in the general community, are, in fact, the problem. It's sad, but it's gotten to that point. Without a large respected group of people willing to lead by example, enforcement starts looking better.

I'll probably get some shit for naming particular people, but one of our most problematic editors for a long time was Betacommand. The first Wikimedia Education Summit I attended I met at least three people who - although performing well enough to be invited, as students, to the summit - had almost been driven off in their initial interactions on Wikipedia, because they involved Betacommand being an aggressive yelly-poo. The problem was, Betacommand did a ton of useful work for the projects, so no one wanted to get rid of him. Eventually, he did end up banned.

To point to a more modern case: Malleus is responsible for tons of super awesome content generation and no one wants to get rid of him for that reason. He's also a recidivist jackass when it comes to dumping profane rants on people, both new and old, and I would suspect he's driven away a large number of people. But how do you balance the good he presents vs the bad he presents? There's an author who I can't name offhand who argues that, in the long run, it's deleterious to your organization to tolerate any Malleuses or Betacommands for any period of time simply because they provide content benefits. (Ironically, I think this was an author Sue maybe introduced me to.)

[Zoloft]

ragesoss
Who will be the next ED of Wikimedia Foundation?

[–]jorm
Spoilers!

[–]mindspillage 6 points 3 days ago
Well, there's an unfamiliar name....

Sorry, everyone is still arguing over how to interpret the results from the Ouija board, so it may be a while.

(The serious answer, which ragesoss likely already knows, is that candidates are still being interviewed and no one knows yet. And that whatever happens we are seriously going to miss Sue.)

[–]SueGardner
LOL ragesoss. Yes, mindspillage is of course correct on all counts. Except she won't need to miss me, because I'll still be around :-)

[Zoloft]

...
What am I going to do next is a great question, and thank you for asking it. To recap quickly, a couple of months ago I told the WMF Board I was planning to resign. I promised to stay until we find my successor and I will -- so I am still here at the moment, and I don't know exactly when I'll be leaving (which is fine).

Let me see how succinctly I can put this: I'm leaving because although Wikipedia is awesome, I am pretty disconcerted by how the internet in general is developing. Today, I don't think somebody like Jimmy Wales could create something like Wikipedia out of their spare bedroom in some small town somewhere. I just don't think it could happen, or at least I think the odds of it happening today, are much much lower than they used to be. Anyone who's read The Master Switch by Tim Wu will recognize what I'm saying -- increasingly, the internet landscape is made up of powerful incumbent organizations that are stifling innovation and inventiveness. [[Kronos effect]] The ordinary pathway today is -- you build a new thing, and in 2-5 years you get acquired and your product is shelved. Or (more rarely these days) you move into a monetization phase, which often takes the form of selling users' private data -- the "you are the product being sold" model. This general tendency is amplified and I'd say exacerbated by the Silicon Valley VC network, which is designed to drive towards an outcome (any outcome! failure is okay!) as quickly as possible.

All that is depressing to me. It breaks what the internet is for -- the idea that people can share information and connect with each other, unimpeded by censorship or geographic borders, and without having their data/information used inappropriately. Again: I'm not sure that today, something like Wikipedia could be invented and could thrive. To the extent that's true, it's really sad.

So upshot: I don't know exactly what I'm going to do next. I still have a FT job right now running the WMF, so I haven't had a lot of energy yet to put into thinking about my next thing. I am basically at the stage of generating-and-discarding bad ideas, with each being successively slightly less-bad than the previous one :-) But my goal will be to essentially aim to support [something] that enables ordinary people to start sustainable projects/sites aimed at making the world a better place :-)

Kronos Effect (T-H-L)

If she still finds herself at loose ends once her successor is named, she could come over to Wikipediocracy and blog bout the pitfalls of Web 2.0 and Silicon Valley VCs...

[enwikibadscience]

Forgot that this Reddit AMA actually happened. I am afraid to even look.

Not surprisingly, she ended up talking mostly to Brandon Harris, Kevin Gorman, Sarah Stierch, Nihiltres, Sage Ross, Steven Walling, Mark Holmquist, and Kat Walsh. All of her disgusting little ass-nozzles sat there and "had a conversation" with their Director. Probably to prevent anyone from criticizing her, as usual.

(Although our old friend enwikibadscience did show up, and was ruthlessly downvoted and shouted down.)

I'm going to save a capture of this, because it's fucking hilarious. What a bunch of assholes.

Expected, but good to have it on record.

Sarah Stierch was an impressively dismissive pea-brain distraction, though. Very well done, maybe she's in line for a promotion?

[Zoloft]

Our own enwikibadscience appeared in Sue's AMA. His question was not addressed by Sue, and (probably because he linked Wikipediocracy) several Redditors ganged up and down-voted his thread into invisibility: link

[–]SomewhatScience -5 points 3 days ago <--Note downvotes

Why is the science so bad on Wikipedia's main page?

I started trying to correct some of it, got chased off by the all-boy-expert-disdaining crowd, started writing about it, and now, the editors see the bad science and say I'm making mountains out of molehills, but don't bother correcting it.

It's hard for editors to understand Wikipedia policies that say verifiability matters then watch editors make up science and spread it through cyberspace.

Why doesn't Wikipedia care that their editors are making up information and spreading it all over the place?

What is Wikipedia, a social network or an encyclopedia?

[–]SomewhatScience 0 points 3 days ago*

And, yes, I think if there were more women editing Wikipedia, I would not have been chased away; it would have been a less hostile atmosphere for all human beings.

And, when the mostly-boy social network winds up posting garbage science on Wikipedia and spreading it into cyberspace, it's a problem.

[–]jorm 3 points 3 days ago

I think it's difficult to address this question (why is science so bad) without having some specifics to look at.

[–]SomewhatScience 1 point 3 days ago

I wrote the current blog on Wikipediocracy, http://wikipediocracy.com/. And I write on my own blog (http://badsciencewikipedia.wordpress.com/), long-windedly about the bad science I find, including incomprehensible featured articles, like Atlantic Puffin, which contain made-up information, from sources that, on their face, are far too old to be using for taxonomy (Ernst Mayr, 1969), and list random examples, while wikilinking to useless additional articles, other FAs that have no wikilinks to jargon, Fanno Creek; DYK candidates that use 6th grader's powerpoints as sources (Wildlife of Chad); others that just made up information, Jiddat al-Harasis, Desert, Pedra da Gávea.

This is pretty typical, editors make up information or sources, articles get promoted and garbage appears on the main page. Bad science; I point it out, and I'm the bad guy. How about putting good science on the main page and removing bad science from Wikipedia?

[–]SomewhatScience 0 points 3 days ago

Or, how about creating a non-hostile editing atmosphere that is about creating an encyclopedia rather than social networking with the boys?

Then, content would be more important than hanging out with the guys and scoring barn stars, and the bad science could readily be removed from Wikipedia, much less from main page appearances.

[–]groops 2 points 3 days ago

I think that all of us would love to create a less hostile editing environment on Wikipedia. The question is - how do we do that? The Wikimedia Foundation has launched a number of initiatives aimed at the problem over the years, with varying degrees of success. Community initiatives have also had varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, it's just a really hard thing to fix.

Btw, I've been pretty regularly reading your blog since you followed me on Twitter. I haven't had time to step in and fix the crap you've drawn up, but hope to eventually, heh. As someone who was majoring in Geology for multiple years, your blog makes me sadface every time I read it.

[–]SomewhatScience 0 points 3 days ago

It bums me out, too. I would much rather be sourcing Angiosperm articles and bringing them up to date; what an amazing area in science today.

I just can't get over what I am reading in these DYKs and GAs.

Thanks for reading my blog; and I do apologize for being so wordy; I just can't get over how convoluted, contradictory and unreadable these articles are; if the science were correct, maybe the bad writing could be fixed, but, at least stop making up information when you don't know something!

[–]SomewhatScience 0 points 3 days ago

And, you know what; you don't have to spend years studying geology to write competently about it; you don't have to spend years studying biology to write competently about it. But you do have to have some background and have to be able to read in the sciences; and you have to read your sources and organize what you say; you can't just randomly pick 5 sources and cherry-pick sentences out of them, then mish mash them together in any order.

[–]groops 2 points 3 days ago

Oh, I certainly agree you don't have to spend years studying a field to write competently about it. Most of my content creation is stuff I have no real academic background in. The few years as a geology major are just why some of your posts have made me cringe extra-hard - it's always easier to see how horrible something is when it is your field.

[–]SomewhatScience 0 points 3 days ago

Some of the geology was the most cringe-worthy; the intrusive metasediments intruding granites that were not due for another 100 million years could only truly be appreciated by someone who has taken a stratigraphy course, for example. The Anorthite bungle probably requires some petrology to be as aghast as necessary.

A number of people wrote that they had downloaded the metasedimentary intrusives article, or screen-shotted it, and posted it on their bulletin boards or e-mailed it to friends; a group out west is planning a t-shirt with it on it for their next geek fest.

I used hide tags not as a slam on the length, but just to save screen space.

[enwikibadscience]

Our own enwikibadscience appeared in Sue's AMA. His question was not addressed by Sue, and (probably because he linked Wikipediocracy) several Redditors ganged up and down-voted his thread into invisibility: link

I used hide tags not as a slam on the length, but just to save screen space.

Too bad, since I was downvoted, that Sarah answered and cost herself plausible deniability.

[Cedric]

Here's my favorite bit:

[–]Tongan_Ninja 1 point 3 days ago

What's the biggest misconception about Wikipedia you've seen in the media that you've had the pleasure of correcting?


[–]SueGardner 2 points 3 days ago

There are a ton of misconceptions about Wikipedia, what a great question.

Probably my favourite is "Wikipedia is dying." As Mark Twain wrote, reports of [our] death have been greatly exaggerated --- journalists have been predicting the demise of WP ever since it began. A partial list of things that have been predicted to kill Wikipedia: vandals, spam, legal threats, copyright violations, lack of incentives/pay for editors, Google Knol, Encarta, Facebook, "the financial crisis," Wolfram Alpha, Quora. That's off the top of my head, to date, so far -- there will doubtless be more.

Someone on Wikipedia once said that Wikipedia only works in practice, it can't possibly work in theory -- I think that's true and I think it's the source of the earliest 'x will kill WP' memes: people just couldn't believe it exists and it works. More recently, I think journalists mostly are just confusing it with other types of websites. It makes sense to me that people don't have loyalty to a particular social network for example -- if your friends go from MySpace to Bebo to Facebook to whatever, you will go too. Wikipedia's different from that because it's a permanent repository of useful information -- it's not ephemera. It's the opposite: over time it gets better and better.

Doesn't jive that well with what you were telling the woomookies two years ago, now does it Sue?

To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, "I don't want to say it, but it rhymes with 'flying witch'."

[Vigilant]

Here's my favorite bit:

[–]Tongan_Ninja 1 point 3 days ago

What's the biggest misconception about Wikipedia you've seen in the media that you've had the pleasure of correcting?


[–]SueGardner 2 points 3 days ago

There are a ton of misconceptions about Wikipedia, what a great question.

Probably my favourite is "Wikipedia is dying." As Mark Twain wrote, reports of [our] death have been greatly exaggerated --- journalists have been predicting the demise of WP ever since it began. A partial list of things that have been predicted to kill Wikipedia: vandals, spam, legal threats, copyright violations, lack of incentives/pay for editors, Google Knol, Encarta, Facebook, "the financial crisis," Wolfram Alpha, Quora. That's off the top of my head, to date, so far -- there will doubtless be more.

Someone on Wikipedia once said that Wikipedia only works in practice, it can't possibly work in theory -- I think that's true and I think it's the source of the earliest 'x will kill WP' memes: people just couldn't believe it exists and it works. More recently, I think journalists mostly are just confusing it with other types of websites. It makes sense to me that people don't have loyalty to a particular social network for example -- if your friends go from MySpace to Bebo to Facebook to whatever, you will go too. Wikipedia's different from that because it's a permanent repository of useful information -- it's not ephemera. It's the opposite: over time it gets better and better.

Doesn't jive that well with what you were telling the woomookies two years ago, now does it Sue?

To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, "I don't want to say it, but it rhymes with 'flying witch'."

Wikipedia is dying because it's boring and has "been done".
Like MySpace, etc before it, people have tried it and moved on.

Unless they can gin up an entire demographic who can be convinced "wikipedia is the new cool thing" then editor numbers will irreversibly decline.

Wikipedia isn't new or cool.
The act of "being an editor there" is entering the backwaters of the internet.
Think USENET.

[EricBarbour]

Wikipedia isn't new or cool.
The act of "being an editor there" is entering the backwaters of the internet.
Think USENET.

Yes. And when the average college student realizes this, Wikipedia will be instant toast.

[Randy from Boise]

Here's my favorite bit:

[–]Tongan_Ninja 1 point 3 days ago

What's the biggest misconception about Wikipedia you've seen in the media that you've had the pleasure of correcting?


[–]SueGardner 2 points 3 days ago

There are a ton of misconceptions about Wikipedia, what a great question.

Probably my favourite is "Wikipedia is dying." As Mark Twain wrote, reports of [our] death have been greatly exaggerated --- journalists have been predicting the demise of WP ever since it began. A partial list of things that have been predicted to kill Wikipedia: vandals, spam, legal threats, copyright violations, lack of incentives/pay for editors, Google Knol, Encarta, Facebook, "the financial crisis," Wolfram Alpha, Quora. That's off the top of my head, to date, so far -- there will doubtless be more.

Someone on Wikipedia once said that Wikipedia only works in practice, it can't possibly work in theory -- I think that's true and I think it's the source of the earliest 'x will kill WP' memes: people just couldn't believe it exists and it works. More recently, I think journalists mostly are just confusing it with other types of websites. It makes sense to me that people don't have loyalty to a particular social network for example -- if your friends go from MySpace to Bebo to Facebook to whatever, you will go too. Wikipedia's different from that because it's a permanent repository of useful information -- it's not ephemera. It's the opposite: over time it gets better and better.

Doesn't jive that well with what you were telling the woomookies two years ago, now does it Sue?

To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, "I don't want to say it, but it rhymes with 'flying witch'."

Wikipedia is dying because it's boring and has "been done".
Like MySpace, etc before it, people have tried it and moved on.

Unless they can gin up an entire demographic who can be convinced "wikipedia is the new cool thing" then editor numbers will irreversibly decline.

Wikipedia isn't new or cool.
The act of "being an editor there" is entering the backwaters of the internet.
Think USENET.

Wikipedia is an internet institution.

It's queer, it's here — deal with it.

RfB

[Vigilant]

Tim,
USENET is still extant. How many people frequent it?

[Midsize Jake]

...reports of [our] death have been greatly exaggerated --- journalists have been predicting the demise of WP ever since it began. A partial list of things that have been predicted to kill Wikipedia: vandals, spam, legal threats, copyright violations, lack of incentives/pay for editors, Google Knol, Encarta, Facebook, "the financial crisis," Wolfram Alpha, Quora. That's off the top of my head, to date, so far -- there will doubtless be more.

Doubtless, but my guess is she deliberately left out the most obvious and likely thing, namely the curtailment (or elimination) of "safe harbor" rulings like the current misinterpretations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States. And it's hardly a "meme," it's really looking like it's going to happen - maybe not for a couple of years, and maybe not everywhere in the world, but eventually. Either way, it's hard to believe she wouldn't have that one available "off the top of her head," unless she just can't bear the thought of it.

And nobody with an ounce of sense ever predicted that "vandals" would kill Wikipedia - as far as I'm concerned she's making that up. I suppose there might have been a few Wikipedian types who have suggested that over the years, given that many of them are incapable of looking past the surface of just about anything. Either way, vandals are one of the things that make Wikipedia possible... without them, it probably would have burned out five years ago from pervasive user inactivity.

[EricBarbour]

And nobody with an ounce of sense ever predicted that "vandals" would kill Wikipedia - as far as I'm concerned she's making that up. I suppose there might have been a few Wikipedian types who have suggested that over the years, given that many of them are incapable of looking past the surface of just about anything. Either way, vandals are one of the things that make Wikipedia possible... without them, it probably would have burned out five years ago from pervasive user inactivity.

Quite possibly. Vandalism is now a major "feature" and "attraction", many administrators would never have shown up if there were not vandals to chase. I've been trying to find out more about the CVU, and it's almost impossible--they're even more opaque and paranoid than organized crime, or the NSA (what's the difference?) And why bother, even the CVU has been declining in recent years.

Wikipedia owes Grawp, Willy on Wheels, Corax, Runtshit and their cohorts a great deal. They all helped "build" the mess.

[thekohser]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

[Vigilant]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

Even with a relatively rocky ACA software debut, I'm sure she'd do better than the WMF already has.

[Poetlister]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

Even with a relatively rocky ACA software debut, I'm sure she'd do better than the WMF already has.

Someone like that could certainly provide some effective leadership, and might even give the WMF more credibility in some quarters than it deserves.

[eagle]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

Even with a relatively rocky ACA software debut, I'm sure she'd do better than the WMF already has.

Someone like that could certainly provide some effective leadership, and might even give the WMF more credibility in some quarters than it deserves.

I think that someone competent, like Sebelius, would be great. (Many former elected officials take on the task of leading educational institutions, so this is not out of the question.) However, I believe that Wikiculture is replete with age discrimination. The Wikiwarriors would never allow someone 65 years old with gray hair to hold a leadership role.

[Vigilant]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

Even with a relatively rocky ACA software debut, I'm sure she'd do better than the WMF already has.

Someone like that could certainly provide some effective leadership, and might even give the WMF more credibility in some quarters than it deserves.

I think that someone competent, like Sebelius, would be great. (Many former elected officials take on the task of leading educational institutions, so this is not out of the question.) However, I believe that Wikiculture is replete with age discrimination. The Wikiwarriors would never allow someone 65 years old with gray hair to hold a leadership role.

Worse. She's proven she's competent even under extreme duress.
They know she'd easily see through the developers' smoke screens to the underlying idiocy and fire the bally lot of them.

[Zoloft]

I think I know who could step right into the WMF Executive Director role, to finally free up Sue Gardner to save the rest of the Internet from destruction.

Even with a relatively rocky ACA software debut, I'm sure she'd do better than the WMF already has.

Someone like that could certainly provide some effective leadership, and might even give the WMF more credibility in some quarters than it deserves.

I think that someone competent, like Sebelius, would be great. (Many former elected officials take on the task of leading educational institutions, so this is not out of the question.) However, I believe that Wikiculture is replete with age discrimination. The Wikiwarriors would never allow someone 65 years old with gray hair to hold a leadership role.

Worse. She's proven she's competent even under extreme duress.
They know she'd easily see through the developers' smoke screens to the underlying idiocy and fire the bally lot of them.

Plus she has recent experience with bringing in competent help to fix pervasive programming issues.