On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwy...@gmail.com> wrote: > The original job description (here > https://hire.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?j=o52lWfw8&c=qSa9VfwQ) is on the > WMF's page and says that "Wikipedia, in cooperation with the Belfer Center... > is seeking applicants for a Campus Wikipedian...." with the first task of > the position being "Researching relevant topics and improving the > articles".Stanton is not mentioned anywhere as the actual funding > organisation (are > we ok with that?), and since when does "Wikipedia" hire people?
Disclaimer - I had no involvement in the project and am unaware of the details. As far as I can tell, this was a pretty opportunistic one-off agreement primarily supporting a funder's desire to boost the Wikipedians in Residence model. The frustration by Liam and Pete expressed in this thread does suggest that we erred on the side of moving too quickly - I respect their engagement in the field highly and appreciate all the efforts they've made to help develop clear models and practices for this type of work. I'll note that Timothy Sandole disclosed his affiliation with Harvard on his user page, and stated that he was "tasked to author, edit and improve Wikipedia articles". Given that any substantial influence on what he did clearly came from Harvard rather than WMF, I think from an ethical standpoint, that's the most important part. However, I agree that if we ever engage in such projects again, we should aim for the highest standard of disclosure, including any pass-through agreements. That's especially true in light of the disclosure requirements currently under discussion. I'd love to see more visibility into the project's outcomes as well. We ask people to write detailed reports even as part of travel grants [1], so if there's no public report of any kind, that's a bit disheartening. This project was not funded through the individual donations of the general public but rather through a third party foundation that had an interest in seeing this happen, so from an ethical perspective, it's reasonable that the standards of accountability differ -- but if we have the ability to obtain any kind of public report after the fact, I think as a matter of good practice, it would be a good thing to do so. I saw SJ already left a question on Timothy's talk page. I also just pinged him via the email feature in case he has time to comment here a bit more about the nature of his work. Without such visibility, it's hard to see how much Timothy's work deviated from the community-developed WiR guidelines [2], which don't say that WiRs shouldn't edit, but which emphasize the issue of conflicts-of-interest and the idea that a WiR shouldn't be an in-house editor. Erik [1] e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Daniel_Mietchen/58th_Annual_Meeting_of_the_Biophysical_Society/Report [2] https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
