Live data from Hacker News

Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

diff.wikimedia.org

151–160 of 252 posts

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#151
post #5

I didn't know my Wikipedia donations funded parties in Accra, Berlin and Chandigarh. I think that should be been in the fundraising statement.

Yeah, I wish there were a way to support just Wikipedia. I don't really care about a lot of Wikimedia Foundation's other pet projects, but the way they phrase their banners and emails, you'd think we are always a razor's edge from Wikipedia servers shutting off...

Same as with me and Mozilla then:

I deeply dislike that these four things happens almost simultaneously :

- firing the people who create their biggest contributions to the free and open web ab also their main source of income

- supporting other efforts all over the place

- begging for money from the "community"

- while brushing me of in tje comments when I ask about progress on a 4 year old bug

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#152
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no connection to and don't know Wikimedia Foundation, and the context for these references is not totally clear. (Maybe it was related to these https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_20/Events .) Regardless, do you really begrudge the CEO visiting these places? I get where you're coming from: it's easy to roll your eyes and dismiss this kind of thing as political correctness, pointless "diversity and inclus…

Wikipedia doesn't need that kind of attention. Writing for Wikipedia is like journalism, it is not automatically better just because you have more eyeballs. What kind of people do you want to attract? Do you think the best writers are attracted by the best parties? Wikipedia has loads of contributors in Germany. That is because of a long history of German intellectualism, it is not because Wikimedia is throwing parti…

> Are these parties without alcohol? I hope so, because we wouldn't want to exclude the muslim world, right?

What? They aren't a fraternity, so I don't think drinking is mandatory.

If you look at any large organization it has these kinds of frivolous events. Among other things, they let the leadership get a sense of the social environment and how it reacts to some of their ideas with less filtering. I personally don't attend most of these events, but it is really a silly direction to assume everything that is not technically necessary is a waste of money.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#153
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wish there were a way to support just Wikipedia. I don't really care about a lot of Wikimedia Foundation's other pet projects, but the way they phrase their banners and emails, you'd think we are always a razor's edge from Wikipedia servers shutting off...

Same as with me and Mozilla then: I deeply dislike that these four things happens almost simultaneously : - firing the people who create their biggest contributions to the free and open web ab also their main source of income - supporting other efforts all over the place - begging for money from the "community" - while brushing me of in tje comments when I ask about progress on a 4 year old bug

- and the boss paying herself massive salary while Mozilla is dying

You can support Servo Project independently now :

https://crowdfunding.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/projects/servo

While it doesn't directly contribute to Firefox itself (for now) I think this is worth supporting

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that, but the more surprising thing was that hosting is even less...

Hosting a static site doesn't sound that expensive, plus they're likely not paying for a premium & costly cloud provider like AWS/Azure.

Wikimedia isn't completely static…

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#155
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you really want to see the schedule for WikiIndaba 2017 that took place in Accra, here you go. http://2017.wikiindaba.net/index.php/Programme Try not to tear the armrests off your chair in rattles of indignation.

My chair doesn't have armrests, I do not squander my money like they do. I dedicate my time to editing Wikipedia, where is my reward? > There will be live performances, karaoke and some pleasant taste of good music. This night promises to be super fun filled. Are you ready to sing and dance in representation of your country at a thrilling battle with the Ghanaians? Yes, please invite me to your next party. I am a fun…

Perhaps you should invest yourself by getting a chair with armrests.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you cite specific examples of wrong or actually harmful information? That would give more credence to your arguments. Maybe also link to your rejected contributions to show that you are not just disgruntled because your edits were reverted. I do agree that there are lots of inaccuracies in articles, but having Wikipedia with at least somewhat helpful information is infinitely better than having nothing at all.

Political content is a landmine, articles are often locked because vandals are often indistinguishable from those with better information but still controversial.

One example: Britishfinance/"Ireland as a tax haven"[1]

Summary: A user, Britishfinance (believed to be Paddy Cosgrave, disgruntled founder of the web summit, a major EU tech event that moved from Ireland to Lisbon as the Irish government wouldn't give him what he wanted) spent about a year primarily editing articles related to Ireland to make a link of claims about the country being a tax haven the most prominent feature of them. Case in point, look at the overview for the article on Ireland after the user edited it [2]. It's since been rolled back somewhat by other wikipedia editors who felt that was a disproportionate amount of space given to that discussion.

But Wikipedia isn't so well equipped to handle this kind of dispute.

1. Ireland certainly has benefited from its tax policies, including both competitive but undisputed to be the right of the country, like having a lower corporate headline tax rate than its neighbours, and

2. Ireland has been involved in tax loopholes, such as the now defunct double irish/dutch sandwich stuff

3. You can find sourced articles for all of this.

So at what point does putting this information as the most prominent information in a wide variety of Ireland related articles cross from being just adding facts to encyclopedia articles to being politically motivated? When one side is an active wikipedia admin and the other side is a bunch of casual editors or users who don't edit, who gets the benefit of the doubt?

1: https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/bgyfet/til_theres_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Irela...

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this is not what happened with Mozilla.

Isn't it? Mozilla has cut or spun-off basically everything other than Firefox.

The most prominent project on mozilla.org at time of writing is Mozilla VPN. Pocket also gets substantial screen space dedicated: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#158
post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

Of course Wikipedia has some unique problems due to its fundamental structure, but on the whole it is roughly as accurate as other Encyclopedias [1]. But not every study agrees [2]. See also [3]. It seems to be also be field dependent, and I have to say that personally, as a mathematician, I have never seen anything wrong in any article about mathematics.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249362832_Compariso...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#159
post #80

Wikipedia may have been an amazing idea in the beginning. Then it got taken over by a bunch of entrenched editors more interested in their own power than the accuracy of the pages' information. Today I can see mistakes and inaccurate info in every niche I am familiar with. Because of that, I cannot trust it on subjects I know nothing about. I tried contributing and fixing but nothing got through. Even worse, the leve…

You can still pay for Encyclopædia Britannica if you really want to.

Re: Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia doesn't need that kind of attention. Writing for Wikipedia is like journalism, it is not automatically better just because you have more eyeballs. What kind of people do you want to attract? Do you think the best writers are attracted by the best parties? Wikipedia has loads of contributors in Germany. That is because of a long history of German intellectualism, it is not because Wikimedia is throwing parti…

> Are these parties without alcohol? I hope so, because we wouldn't want to exclude the muslim world, right? What? They aren't a fraternity, so I don't think drinking is mandatory. If you look at any large organization it has these kinds of frivolous events. Among other things, they let the leadership get a sense of the social environment and how it reacts to some of their ideas with less filtering. I personally don'…

Most large orgs don't beg for my money after I've already given them my time for free though.
Post reply on HN