[Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Maryana Iskander

[Andreas Kolbe]

Frederick,

The paragraph in your letter that resonated most with me was this one:

(9) The Wikipedia movement also seems to be shifting away from its
volunteer model. This is what gave it its strength and vitality. We seem to
be moving to an NGO/funded or even corporate model of operations. Wikipedia
may well have the resources to afford this. But could such an approach
actually demoralise volunteers who have, and continue to, put in a lot of
their labour of love?

There are and have been many signs of this increasing corporatization.

The vast majority of volunteer contributors never ask for or receive
funding from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Yet the board members
[s]elected by this unpaid majority of contributors have only ever formed a
small minority on the WMF board.

Meanwhile, the WMF is accumulating every greater amounts of money – an
income generated by annual fundraising banners that convey a misleading
impression of urgent financial need to millions of readers.[1]

Every year, tens of millions of donor dollars flow into a completely opaque
fund, the Wikimedia Endowment, which

– has never published audited accounts
– is with the Tides Foundation, which specialises in obscuring money flows
through "donor-advised funds" (such funds, whether right-leaning or
left-leaning, are the very antithesis of transparency)
– has never disclosed how much it pays the Tides Foundation for managing
this fund
– has never to my knowledge disclosed any other expenditure, including
whether or how much it pays any contractors, consultants, advisers etc.

Per the most recent Form 990 available, the WMF spent $56 million on salary
costs in 2019, while reporting a total of 291 employees. This makes an
average of over $190,000 per head (by now most likely substantially
exceeded, as salary costs have kept rising), a figure the WMF neither
confirms nor denies.[2]

For its most recent major strategy process, which resulted in its Strategy
2030, the WMF enlisted the help of Hillary Clinton's erstwhile trip
director, a lady who has since stood (unsuccessfully) for political office
herself.[3]

For its PR strategy, it has long relied on a firm founded by the chief
communications and marketing officer of the Clinton Foundation.[4]

The various foundations that have donated the most substantial amounts of
money to the Wikimedia Foundation generally have strong links to the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an American think tank specializing in
U.S. foreign policy and international relations.[5]

The WMF's most important partners are to be found among the most dominant
and richest U.S. tech companies, which earn vast amounts of advertising
revenue from the content Wikimedia volunteers create, while at the same
time holding back education and healthcare investment in the Global South
by doing everything they can to avoid paying taxes in these countries.[6]

I don't think that these choices, priorities and strategies are a
particularly good match for what the average global volunteer contributor
is about, nor are they in tune with the project's original and declared
founding aim of political neutrality.

I agree that the overall effect is rather demoralising, all the more so as
none of this had to be this way.

Andreas

[1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/ and
https://thenextweb.com/news/why-is-wikipedia-asking-for-donations-when-it-has-vast-cash-reserves
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:IRS_tax_related_information/2019_Wikimedia_Foundation_Form_990_Frequently_Asked_Questions#WMF_salary_costs
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Williams
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=16945819
[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-06-27/Forum
[6]
https://www.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/TCPB19_Developing-Country-Demands-for-an-Equitable-Digital-Tax-Solution_EN.pdf

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 8:19 PM Frederick Noronha <
fredericknoro...@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://www.opensourceforu.com/2022/01/an-open-letter-to-maryana-iskander/
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[Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Maryana Iskander

[Frederick Noronha]

https://www.opensourceforu.com/2022/01/an-open-letter-to-maryana-iskander/

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 April 2022  | Frederick Noronha. 784 Saligao 403511 Goa

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