Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Strategy] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Guillaume Paumier]

Dear Ziko,

For context, I want to preface this by saying that I am speaking as a
former member of the strategy team, not as a Foundation employee. My
perspective was always that the team leading the movement strategy process
was working in service of the movement, not of the Foundation.

I hear that you are unsatisfied with some of the content of the document. I
hear that you disagree with particular elements like advocacy or new forms
of knowledge. I hear that you question the broad definition of "community",
which in your opinion should only include active Wikipedians.

I don't agree with all your points, but I understand them and I relate to
some.

I appreciate that you hold very strong opinions on some of those topics. I
would like you to see that other people in the movement can hold
dramatically different opinions that are just as valid.

Many people (in and outside the movement) pushed for Wikimedia
organizations to become much more active politically. Others expressed
concerns about becoming too political. In the end, the document gave a nod
to political advocacy but didn't make it the number-one priority of the
movement. There was a balance to strike, and I would like you to understand
that need.

I would also like you to understand that your approach and language may
alienate other members of our communities. When you call oral traditions
one of "the most terrible things from the paper" and disparage experts who
shared their opinion with us, your words unwittingly cast away communities
who have been historically left out, and you contribute to perpetuating
their structural oppression.

You argue that the notions of new forms of knowledge, oral traditions, and
Western bias were pushed by experts and by the Foundation, and didn't come
from the communities. And yet, at the 2017 Wikimedia conference in Berlin,
whose participants were coming from Wikimedia communities, the
most-voted-for statement at the end of the conference was this one:

*Knowledge is global: we must move beyond western written knowledge,
towards multiple and diverse forms of knowledge (including oral and
visual), from multiple and diverse peoples and perspectives, to truly
achieve the sum of all human knowledge.*
[
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2017/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_3
]

What I am trying to convey is that for each of your concerns, there are
people within our movement and communities who have fought, like you are
fighting now, for those elements to be part of the movement's strategic
direction. And they have outweighed you. On some other topics, your opinion
is the one that prevailed. On many topics, we all agreed. It is now time to
accept the outcome and focus on what motivates us to contribute
individually to parts of the strategic direction, so that we can advance as
a movement.




2017-10-03 13:38 GMT-07:00 Ziko van Dijk :

> Hello Guillaume,
>
> Thank you for sharing your point of view. But I cannot agree with you that
> this is a case of „negativity bias“ or „tunnel visions“ or „begrudging
> fashion“. I have fundamental concerns about the redefinition of the
> community and the widening of the movement‘s purpose, and I fully join
> Frank Schulenburg‘s statement that the draft paper says hardly anything to
> the average Wikipedian.
>
> As I do not know your prerogatives given from above, I cannot judge about
> your personal role. I don’t want to and I have nothing against you
> personally, on the contrary. Indeed, you took some of the most terrible
> things from the paper - such as the „oral traditions“. But they still
> appear as a residue in the „Appendix“, and how could it happen in the first
> place that they were ever pushed forward by the WMF? Challenge 2 called our
> work with reputable sources a „Western bias“. Where did that come from? Not
> from the communities (my definition), but from „experts“ such as a man who
> runs a company for storytelling and claims that he can trace his ancestry
> to the middle ages via „oral traditions“!
>
> As Andreas pointed out, there is much more in the Appendix such as the
> cooperations with Youtube and Google, „new incentives“ etc. and also the
> opinion that „Wikimedia“ should become more „political“. Certainly, I was
> against SOPA and like to see the WMF fight copyright problems. But what I
> saw at Wikimania made me wonder about the common ground. The WMF is
> partnering up with the ACLU that endorses the freedom of speech for the
> KuKluxKlan. The WMF is already approaching EU laws from an American point
> of view and dismisses the possibility that Europeans may think differently.
>
> If we keep all those things in the draft paper and in the Appendix - the
> WMF will have carte blanche to do literally anything it likes, being a
> social movement fighting whatever technical, political or social inequity.
> But well, the WMF will claim that that is what the „community“ wants -
> given the new definition of community, that would e

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Erik Moeller]

On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 4:10 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Reading between the lines of statements like "Knowledge as a service",
> "essential infrastructure", "tools for allies and partners to organize and
> exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia", etc., my sense is that the
> document, without saying so explicitly, is very much written from the
> perspective that the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, Bing (and anyone else
> developing digital assistants and other types of knowledge delivery
> platforms) should be viewed as key partners in the exchange of free
> knowledge, and served accordingly, through the development of interfaces
> that enable them to deliver Wikimedia content to the end user.
>
> My problem with that is that those are all for-profit companies, while the
> volunteers that contribute the free content on which these companies'
> profit-making services are based are not only unpaid, but actually incur
> expenses in contributing (mostly related to source access).

This seems to be a somewhat prejudiced "reading between the lines".
For-profits like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft will extract as much
information as they can from as many sources as they can giving back
as little as they have to (which includes some activity designed to
maintain and increase goodwill, which itself has value), _regardless
of what Wikimedia does or doesn't do_. They have built knowledge
graphs without the use of Wikidata and without significant assistance
from WMF, incorporating information from countless proprietary sources
alongside free sources.

The power of an open, nonprofit approach to "knowledge as a service"
is precisely to democratize access to knowledge graph information: to
make it available to nonprofits, public institutions, communities,
individuals. This includes projects like the "Structured Data for
Wikimedia Commons" effort, which is a potential game-changer for
institutions like galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Nor is such an approach inherently monopolistic: quite the opposite.
Wikidata is well-suited for a certain class of data-related problems
but not so much for others. Everything around Wikidata is evolving in
the direction of federation: federated queries across multiple open
datasets, federated installations of the Wikibase software, and so on.
If anything, it seems likely that a greater emphasis on "knowledge as
a service" will unavoidably decentralize influence and control, and
bring knowledge from other knowledge providers into the Wikimedia
context.

I had no involvement with this document and don't know what focusing
on "knowledge of a service" really will mean in practice. But if it
means things like improving Wikidata, building better APIs and content
formats, building better Labs^WCloud infrastructure, then the crucial
point is not that companies may benefit from such work, but that
_everybody else does, too_. And that is what distinguishes it from the
prevailing extract-and-monetize paradigm. For-profits exploting free
knowledge projects for commercial gain? That's the _current state_. To
change it, we have to make it easier to replicate what they are doing:
through open data, open APIs, open code.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello Guillaume,

Thank you for sharing your point of view. But I cannot agree with you that
this is a case of „negativity bias“ or „tunnel visions“ or „begrudging
fashion“. I have fundamental concerns about the redefinition of the
community and the widening of the movement‘s purpose, and I fully join
Frank Schulenburg‘s statement that the draft paper says hardly anything to
the average Wikipedian.

As I do not know your prerogatives given from above, I cannot judge about
your personal role. I don’t want to and I have nothing against you
personally, on the contrary. Indeed, you took some of the most terrible
things from the paper - such as the „oral traditions“. But they still
appear as a residue in the „Appendix“, and how could it happen in the first
place that they were ever pushed forward by the WMF? Challenge 2 called our
work with reputable sources a „Western bias“. Where did that come from? Not
from the communities (my definition), but from „experts“ such as a man who
runs a company for storytelling and claims that he can trace his ancestry
to the middle ages via „oral traditions“!

As Andreas pointed out, there is much more in the Appendix such as the
cooperations with Youtube and Google, „new incentives“ etc. and also the
opinion that „Wikimedia“ should become more „political“. Certainly, I was
against SOPA and like to see the WMF fight copyright problems. But what I
saw at Wikimania made me wonder about the common ground. The WMF is
partnering up with the ACLU that endorses the freedom of speech for the
KuKluxKlan. The WMF is already approaching EU laws from an American point
of view and dismisses the possibility that Europeans may think differently.

If we keep all those things in the draft paper and in the Appendix - the
WMF will have carte blanche to do literally anything it likes, being a
social movement fighting whatever technical, political or social inequity.
But well, the WMF will claim that that is what the „community“ wants -
given the new definition of community, that would even be true. :-(

Certainly, people can set up a page on Meta to express their concerns about
such an unready draft paper. Is this an announcement that endorsements of
the draft paper will be welcomed at the main gate, while the concerns will
have to use the backyard entrance?

Kind regards
Ziko






Guillaume Paumier  schrieb am Mo. 2. Okt. 2017 um
22:36:

> Hello,
>
> If you feel a strong urge to reject the text, there is obviously nothing
> preventing anyone from creating a Meta-Wiki page to that purpose. However,
> I would first ask to reflect on the process, its outcome, and where it's
> going.
>
> Strategy is complicated. Building a movement strategy even more so [
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/19/wikimedia-strategy-2030-discussions/
> ]. One person's serious issue may be another person's slight preference.
> People's serious issues may be at odds with each other (and I can tell you
> from experience that they are indeed). Balancing all those priorities is a
> difficult exercise, and I certainly don't claim to have done it perfectly.
> But I do think the outcome we've arrived at represents the shared vision of
> a large part of the movement.
>
> As I was writing, rewriting and editing the text of the direction, I did
> consider everything that was shared on the talk page, and the last version
> is indeed based on those comments, as well as those shared during multiple
> Wikimania sessions, individual chats, comments from the Drafting group,
> from affiliates, from staff, and so on.
>
> While I did consider all of those, I didn't respond to every single
> comment, and there is little I can do about that except apologize and
> endeavor to do better. I should have set clearer expectations that not
> every comment would be integrated in the text. I ran into an issue all too
> familiar in the Wikiverse where one person had to integrate comments and
> feedback from a large group of people at the same time.
>
> High-level vision and strategy integration isn't really something that can
> be spread across a group of people as easily as writing an encyclopedia
> article, and so I ended up being a bottleneck for responding to comments. I
> had to prioritize what I deemed were issues that were shared by a large
> group, and those that seemed to be more individual concerns.
>
> Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not the "everything must be positive,
> fantastic, yeehaw-we-are-number-one" type. If anything, I'm rather the
> opposite, as I think many Wikimedians are. If we had unlimited time, I'd
> probably continue to edit the draft for years, and I'm sure there would be
> other perfectionists to feed my obsession.
>
> However, others in my personal and professional circles have helped me
> realize in the past few weeks that even getting to this stage of the
> process is remarkable. As Wikimedians, we often focus on what's wrong and
> needs fixing. Sometimes, our negativity bias leads us to lose focus of the
> accom

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Chris Koerner]

Hey Yuri,
IMHO, this section is the closest thing (thus far) to an 'elevator pitch'
for the direction of the movement:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity

You could probably even knock it down to "The Wikimedia movement serves
open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We break
down the social, political, and technical barriers preventing people from
accessing and contributing to free knowledge."

Anything that short is sure to lose the nuance in the longer document
(which I'm sure we've all read!), but it might be a little closer to what
you're looking for. Adapt as necessary.

Yours,
Chris K.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

> Hello Joseph,
>
> We must distinguish between the community, the movement and partners of the
> movement.
>
> The Wikimedia movement is not a community, it consists of several
> communities. Such as the community of Wikipedia in French, of Wikidata or
> of Mediawiki.org.
>
> Staffers of the WMF are part of the movement, as the WMF is part of the
> movement, as a chapter is part of the movement. Individual staff members or
> chapter board members can belong to communities.
>
> Donors can be part of the movement, if they like to see themselves as such.
> I doubt that many people who donate 10 euros think of themselves as
> "community".
>
> Staff from our GLAM partners are partners, not community, not movement.
>
> I wonder if the WMF will say in future "we asked the community and it
> approved it", what will be the meaning of "the community"?
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko



Reading between the lines of statements like "Knowledge as a service",
"essential infrastructure", "tools for allies and partners to organize and
exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia", etc., my sense is that the
document, without saying so explicitly, is very much written from the
perspective that the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, Bing (and anyone else
developing digital assistants and other types of knowledge delivery
platforms) should be viewed as key partners in the exchange of free
knowledge, and served accordingly, through the development of interfaces
that enable them to deliver Wikimedia content to the end user.

My problem with that is that those are all for-profit companies, while the
volunteers that contribute the free content on which these companies'
profit-making services are based are not only unpaid, but actually incur
expenses in contributing (mostly related to source access).

Given that one of the documents' stated aims is social justice, I am always
amazed that there seems to be a fairly large blind spot in the Wikimedia
universe when it comes to the starkly exploitative element in the free
knowledge economy. The assumption seems to be that volunteers can't help
contributing, that they are adequately compensated by the personal
satisfaction they derive from seeing their contributions shape the
knowledge landscape, and thus do not need to be given any special
consideration.

Given the Wikimedia Foundation's ever-increasing revenue, I'd like to see
more emphasis on reducing the costs of participation and supporting the
volunteer community, to create a little more social justice within the free
knowledge economy, bearing in mind who does the work, and who profits
financially from it.

Speaking about the future development of the knowledge landscape in
general, I would not like to see Wikimedia become the default provider of
knowledge, to the point where the origin of content is obscured and
knowledge becomes synonymous with Wikimedia content. If that's what's being
striven for, I don't like it – monopolies are inherently unhealthy, for
reasons that should be obvious. I'd like to see a more diverse and less
monolithic knowledge system in our future than that implied here. Part of
that is that knowledge providers basing their products on Wikimedia content
should always identify the relevant Wikimedia project as a source.
Knowledge is only knowledge when it is traceable to its sources, rather
than arriving "ex machina".

On a related issue, we discussed in early August the fact that Amazon's use
of Wikipedia content in the Amazon Echo appears to be partly in breach of
that principle (and indeed in breach of Wikipedia's Creative Commons
licence). We were told that Amazon would be contacted, and that we would
likely be given an update in September. But apart from a brief and
inconsequential flurry of posts last month, we do not seem to have made any
progress on this issue. Please step up your efforts in this regard: surely
it cannot be too difficult to get Amazon to state their legal rationale.

Best,
Andreas
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