This is kind of frustrating. Lila (speaking for the board) in her "Why
we
changed
<
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lila_Tretikov%27s_statement_on_Why_we%27ve_changed
"
message, identified falling page views (creating a threat of falling
donation revenue) caused by folks like Google repurposing our content as
an
"existential challenge". I am not sure I agree with that, but the WMF
Board and the former ED said that. (Jimmy confirmed that on his Talk
page,
too)
The key thing about Denny's COI issues as they unfolded, is that he was
surprised and frustrated about the problems managing his COI ended up
causing - so much so that he quit. That stuff actually happened.
Debating
what his COI was or whether it mattered is really beside the point... and
all murky because whatever management plan was worked out - whatever
areas
actually were identified as problematic - we do not know, as that plan
wasn't made public.
Going forward, there should be a) a clear disclosure of relevant outside
interests and b) a pre-agreed COI management plan where those interests
conflict with a Trustee's obligations, before Trustees formally step into
the role. What happened with Denny doesn't have to happen again. That
seems to be the key issue looking forward.
I'm repeating myself, and will stop now.
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Anthony Cole <ahcole...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I agree with all of that, MZ. As to your questions:
"Shouldn't we be applauding Google and others for helping us share our
knowledge with the world?"
Yes.
"What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of
yearly
budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or smaller
should
the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia chapters?"
It depends on what we want them to do.
"...are you sure that we're all agreed that this [Google impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers]
is
problematic?"
I'm less concerned than many, and I'm sure others are unconcerned.
"If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less frequently,
that actually saves us money, doesn't it?"
If our page views drop by 50% and this halves our fundraising
capacity, I
doubt that would be offset by the saved hosting costs. But I'm no
expert on
these things.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:46 AM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Anthony Cole wrote:
Google's "info boxes" and their answers at the top of their results,
we're
all agreed now, I think, are impacting Wikipedia's page views and,
consequently, our ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers.
Google and others have a direct interest in their data being
accurate and
reliable. We already see that Google has a "report a correction"
feature
for some of its services. It's in both Wikimedia's interest and
re-users'
interest for the underlying data source to be update-to-date and
correct.
Our mission is to spread free educational content to the world and we
make
our data available for re-use for this purpose. Shouldn't we be
applauding
Google and others for helping us share our knowledge with the world?
As far as threats to direct-to-user fund-raising go, I'd put
organizational instability ahead of Google at the moment. The
Wikimedia
Foundation has repeatedly been in the news lately for ongoing
management
issues, both in its executive team and in its board of trustees.
What size do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should be in terms of
yearly budget and number of full-time employees? How much bigger or
smaller should the Wikimedia Foundation be than other Wikimedia
chapters?
Even if we accepted your premise that Google was impacting
Wikipedia's
page views and the ability to raise funds and recruit new volunteers
(citations needed, to be sure), are you sure that we're all agreed
that
this is problematic? If others re-using our content has a side effect
of reducing donations to Wikimedia Foundation Inc., donations which
are
received through questionable and increasingly obnoxious on-site
advertisements, you will not find universal agreement that this donor
reduction would be terrible. As others have argued previously, small
and
recurring donations are a means of providing accountability for the
entities entrusted with these monetary donations. If potential
donors no
longer trust the Wikimedia Foundation to manage and distribute this
money, no longer donating financially is practical and wise.
If Google causes page views to go down and our sites are directly hit
less
frequently, that actually saves us money, doesn't it? We're
theoretically
then off-loading some of our hosting costs to Google, Facebook, and
others who are downloading and re-uploading our data to the Web,
exactly
as we mandated that anyone be able to do. With multiple copies of the
data
on the Web, we're better ensuring that the content lives on in
perpetuity.
MZMcBride
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