686:"Value for their money" is a worthwhile point to consider. According to this article, Sandole was paid a rather handsome salary to work full-time for which he made 209 edits, of which he considered 80 significant to 63 articles & conducted 3 seminars & consulted with some people; working as a volunteer with a maximum of 10 hours of week to devote to this, over the last 9 months I was able to make around 1500 edits, & to an area that I am not as proficient in as Sandole is in his -- Late Byzantine history vs. International security -- I contributed at least 100 significant edits to 59 articles. (Because I do not have the same level of expertise, I believe it's safe to say spent a lot more time in research of this topic than Sandole would have in his.) Maybe preparing & giving those seminars & consulting took up a lot of his time; it wouldn't have been an issue had Stanton should have made a more serious effort to recruit from active Wikipedians. IMHO, I could have given better value than Sandole had, which means
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there were conflict of interest issues (That's what I've gathered anyways, I must admit I haven't followed every email on wikimedia-l). I consider that a mild act of impropriety. The worst case scenario is that the foundation was unduly influenced by a major donor to do so despite being aware of the problems. That would be a larger act of impropriety on the part of the foundation. I don't know if that is what happened, the evidence is not sufficient in my mind to definitely conclude that happened, so I would prefer to suspend judgment on that. In any case I think its important we discuss issues like this, in order to figure out if there actually was any impropriety, and if there was, how significant it was. In the long run we will be stronger for it.
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just gives the impression that it's just a smear campaign with no solid claims of anything improper. Russavia has been rightfully banned here for his creative personal attacks, and frankly anything he says now should just be ignored. Odder, who has worked hand in glove with
Russavia before in this type of smear, doesn't make any claim of impropriety in his blog. Rather, his argument seems to be that the WMF's proposed change in the Terms of Use to require paid editors to disclose their edits is hypocritical because of this two year old minor case. That's a pretty weak argument - you can't change policy (or ToU) simply because of one old incident. All in all, it is just bluster and an attempt at
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researcher in the field, even though it's not the cheap way to write an encyclopedia. (From the perspective of volunteer-driven wikis, it's hard to say the cost was worth it, but it appears the funder may have been more interested in IR than in wikis. Not at all sure that quick edits by amateurs on IR topics are a true substitute for input by specialists, especially by specialists who have language skills, and international/academic experience and connections. Sometimes solid, well-documented information on complex topics just doesn't come cheap, in terms of money or time. Evaluating the quality may also require specialists rather than random
Wikipedians.)
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without taking any personal responsibility for the claim, a second (banned) editor flew it over to the mailing list, a third editor brought it over to
Knowledge (perhaps to Jimbo's talk page). Mix in a bit of Wikimediocracy propaganda. And voila, a story made out of essentially nothing. We've seen it done many times now. They call this
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I think realistic allegations of impropriety should be investigated and responded to regardless of their source (Not that their is anything wrong with the source of the information - it came from a blog post of an active
Wikimedian in good standing). Well I agree that a minor program from 2 years ago
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Basically in agreement with Nick-D. I found myself thinking as I looked over the material that it would actually be quite a bit of work to get up to speed on the current state of scholarship in so many different IR topics. This type of focus for WIR might be a very effective way to train a generalist
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mailing list that Liam Wyatt, Pete
Forsyth, Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis were among those who either "noted the risks and issues early on" or "provided internal feedback and criticism ... pointing out the COI issues and the risks regarding the project." Left unstated was the strength of some of
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What "realistic allegations of impropriety"? As far as I can see, nobody has been accused of any impropriety, just below par management. The blowhard post by
Russavia is all heat and no light. Skimming it might make it seem like there is some accusation of impropriety, but looking at it in detail
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veteran
Wikipedian could have. Lastly, when I first thought up this admittedly obvious idea years ago, I considered it way to reward established Wikipedians who had made contributions in one form or another to the project; in this case, it went to an outsider who had ties to the granting institution
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of the WMF, though Möller emphasized that this was only administrative oversight, handling vacation requests and payments, among other unnamed duties. According to Möller, "Timothy's edits weren't monitored in detail by the
Wikimedia Foundation." Yet there was enough supervision from Lasner for her
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it had already been published! ... We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role ... The WMF dug themselves into this hole despite the frantic attempts, which were largely rebuffed, of several of the GLAM-WIKI community help them fix it—or
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Well first off, I still think we should try to lean from cases of sub-par management, and learning requires public acknowledgement of past mistakes (imo). However I don't think that's all there is to this. The foundation green-lighted a project that had conflict of issues, despite being warned that
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The ad for this position was pretty clear about the applicant needing to have specialist knowledge in international affairs/defence topics, so the
Librarian missing out isn't necessarily surprising or a bad thing if they lacked this expertise. However, if I remember correctly, this position wasn't
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While this WiR program doesn't look to have been very successful, it doesn't look like it cost the WMF any money either. I really have to wonder what's the big deal about an underperforming program from two years ago? Let me guess on how this story came to light - some blogger claimed something
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several
Knowledge collaborations with museums in a recent article. From the lead: "If ever there was the antithesis of the crowd-sourced Knowledge, it would be a museum, where an expert picks what is seen and not seen, then carefully prepares captions explaining what each piece of art means. But
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in Russia. While I think it was good that the WMF got to respond to this, it's telling that none of the accusers actually made any accusations on this page, nor have they exposed themselves to any questions on what their interest is in this. IMHO It would be best if the Signpost did not repeat
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The Wikimedia Foundation did and does not intend to undertake similar efforts again (programs that include paid editing), but these kinds of issues can extend to any program that includes active work on content. So my initial take is that we should aim ensure that content-related programs are
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notes that he "made 80 significant edits to 63 Knowledge articles", "conducted three Knowledge seminar workshops, each lasting approximately 1.5 hours", and "privately consulted with five Harvard Kennedy School staff members/fellows and one student". Some of the edits he made could have the
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The Foundation's strong view is that the Finnish Money Collection Act is not applicable to the matter for numerous reasons that we laid out in our statement to the National Police Board. The Wikimedia Foundation does not have its own activity or representation in Finland. While there is an
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evidence of bias and influence. But bias and influence themselves remain, as far as I know, as an ethnically European, English-speaking male basing most of my research off of material largely written by economically-privileged English-speaking males,
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minor factual error: Lisa is "Chief Revenue Officer", not chief financial officer. It is correctly labeled on the page you linked to. We do not have a CFO, though Garfield largely performs those duties as Chief Administrative Officer.
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This chain of events was initially set in motion by the WMF's executive director Sue Gardner after an inquiry from Liz Allison of the Stanton Foundation, an organization that had donated several million dollars to the WMF (including
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Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny: One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical
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undertaken under a clear and simple set of public guidelines, and are situated in parts of the organization well-positioned to support them with subject-matter expertise. We'll discuss this more, and follow up on this as well.
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are based on writings by Graham Allison, the Belfer Center's head. Participants on the mailing list have questioned the apparent editing for pay by Sandole, especially in the context of the Foundation's
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Thanks for writing up this latest GLAM issue that has gathered so many responses on the mailing list, but I am mostly just very glad to read that the Finnish Knowledge won't be shut down after all!
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is not an issue of the same magnitude as it would be if it was happening currently, I feel very strongly that its important to acknowledge and investigate past mistakes, lest they happen again.
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Noam Cohen has definitely attended more than the 2008 Wikimania. For one, I personally saw him at the 2011 Wikimania in Haifa, and I doubt he could have missed the 2012 one in Washington DC.
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list.wikimedia.org, the mailing list of the Finnish Knowledge's administrator core, with a "clarification request". That was forwarded to the Wikimedia Foundation's legal team, who issued a
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strong follow-through in ensuring the highest standard of disclosure regarding all funding relationships, beyond the initial blog post, and continued reporting, including the final report;
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The only thing I see here that I don't like is that edits were made to international politics articles concerning Russia while, somehow, neglecting to notice that the
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on the day applications closed, was selected by Belfer to fill the position on the basis of his previous academic experience with international security issues.
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provides a representative sample of Sandole's writing skills. I regret that it does not appear to be on a level sufficient for his stated position, IMHO.
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a full and honest upfront conversation between WMF and Stanton early on about any perceived or real conflicts-of-interest issues in the context of this work;
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to tell Sandole in September 2012 to "be conscious of not over-representing Harvard University in his research". Her superior Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, the WMF's
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while there used to be innate suspicion toward Knowledge among museum staffs, even hostility, in recent years there has increasingly been cooperation."
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Department reports that the organization's financial picture is "strong", although both revenue and spending are lower than anticipated.
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and comparing this against the actual article work done, one can't help but notice that he says he spent six hours drafting edits
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positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.
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requires individuals to apply for and receive a permit before soliciting donations. Under this law, authorities in Finland
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Sandole was hired for the full-time position and remained in it for 12 months, from August 2012 to August 2013. His
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The offering of the position was not uncontroversial; the Foundation's deputy director, Erik Möller, has since
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The NYT article is linked there! Thanks for the note, as I wasn't aware that he went to Haifa.
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Actually, Garfield is our "Chief of Finance and Administration", so he's both CFO and CAO.
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a sufficient level of training and oversight for Timothy Sandole beyond administrivia.
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Thanks for the report. An added dimension that should be noted is that according to
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encyclopedia to pay for proprietary software from Microsoft. I got that right?
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Möller's thoughts reveal what he believes should have occurred at the WMF:
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In short: They wasted donation money (which the people donated for a
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Anyone else notice that the WMF made the Q&A in Microsoft Word?
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article is damn-near unusable (an external link to the law of Russia
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to become Graham Allison's research assistant, a position he
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that most Wikipedians could have drafted in twenty minutes.
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Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny
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by the Wikimedia Foundation, was at Harvard University's
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New York Times article mentioned in that brief is here:
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to the mailing list discussion, Graham Allison is the
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598:If your comment has not appeared here, you can try
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Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
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915:Thanks, Philippe—that was an editing error.
634:Yes, well... Paid advocacy disclosures are
236:at least reduce the number of problems."
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809:kompromat generated stories like this.
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428:Finance and Administration
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610:Excellent work by
578:Discuss this story
538:WikiProject report
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499:"News and notes" →
403:Wikimedia Suomi ry
271:resulting proposal
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387:on 3 March:
341:Wikimedia-l
278:Sara Lasner
224:Wikimedia-l
1009:. You can
1005:It's your
849:Smallbones
811:Smallbones
670:WP:MILHIST
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177:advertised
83:Share this
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22:2014-03-19
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1007:Signpost
740:Russavia
710:Djembayz
612:The ed17
489:Previous
477:profiled
456:Six bids
440:for the
363:reported
349:In brief
269:and its
181:promoted
155:The ed17
125:LinkedIn
105:Facebook
20: |
1011:help us
868:Bawolff
830:Bawolff
789:Collect
768:Andreas
752:applied
748:husband
693:llywrch
424:Q&A
267:Wiki-PR
222:on the
220:written
115:Twitter
674:Nick-D
655:Int21h
371:served
359:closed
229:stated
135:Reddit
95:E-mail
1024:About
533:Forum
233:after
16:<
1019:Home
990:talk
982:free
972:talk
934:talk
930:Ijon
907:talk
903:Ijon
893:talk
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724:Jane
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497:Next
199:and
179:and
145:Digg
777:466
742:'s
688:any
153:By
80:—
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487:←
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