The Signpost

News and notes

French chapter woes, new affiliates and more WMF team changes

Crisis point for Wikimedia France

The French disconnection

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There have been fresh developments in an ongoing controversy within the leadership of the Wikimedia France chapter (WMFR). At the centre is the management and governance of the chapter, including conflicts of interest, board resignations, resignations by volunteer project leaders, the dismissal of staff, and the expulsion of members. Some 70 members have signed a call for an early general assembly, which is now being scheduled.

Threads on French Wikipedia's Bistro (a central discussion point for editors) have raised related issues on 26 and 27 June; many further discussions regarding WMFR have occurred since 8 July. Several chapter members have developed a timeline (in French, English translation available) of events dating back to 2013; the hashtag #wmfrgate has been used on Twitter.

In an email, forwarded to the Wikimedia-l mailing list by Chris Keating, five of the seven WMFR board members describe their view of the situation. According to Keating:

Topics covered include:

  • How WMFR feels community members are "destabilising and denigrating" the chapter, and how Wikimedia France is responding by expelling some of those people from the organisation, threatening them with legal action, and temporarily closing its email discussion list
  • Accusations that Christophe Henner has personally manipulated the FDC [Funds Dissemination Committee] process to cut WMFR's funding
  • Also, a statement from WMFR that the WMF is also considering withdrawing WMFR's chapter agreement

The Wikimedia Foundation has responded to the email. Katy Love, Director of Resources, writes:

WMF staff will conduct a site visit, which will involve "working with Wikimédia France to initiate an independent governance review". Funding to WMFR is conditional on such a site visit and governance review, as well as making progress on implementing the resulting recommendations.

Wikimedia Foundation Communications Director, Juliet Barbara, told the Signpost:

Allegations about the FDC process in Wikimédia France’s recent email to its membership have no merit. They were rejected by the Wikimedia Foundation Board, which strongly endorsed the results and independence of the FDC process and denied Wikimédia France’s appeal of that recommendation. Based on his past relationship with Wikimédia France, Christophe was not present during any FDC discussions related to WMFR at the Round 2 discussions held in May.[1] He also formally recused himself[2] from the Board’s investigation and handling of Wikimedia France’s appeal and abstained from voting on the Wikimédia France section of the Board's resolution.

WMF team changes

Following on from last month's changes (see previous Signpost coverage), Trevor Parscal has announced some further adjustments on the Wikitech-l mailing list. The Language and Collaboration teams merged to become the Global Collaboration team. Runa Bhattacharjee will manage the combined team. Meanwhile, Dan Garry joined the team responsible for editing tools like VisualEditor, now renamed the Editing team. This allows James Forrester to "step away from his 5-year stint as the Product Manager for VisualEditor and focus on leading product for Contributors".

Brief notes

Logo of one of the newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Wikipedia Library User Group.

Footnotes

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Why no mention of the other new administrator, User:Anarchyte? Optimist on the run (talk) 05:28, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

. Anarchyte (work | talk) 06:34, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Fortunately this is a wiki so it is easy to fix such errors and omissions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.75.37.119 (talk) 07:27, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone wants to read the full WMFR letter (rather than my 4-line summary), Sj has translated it into English. The Land (talk) 07:51, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Is it correct that to some extent the discussions about WMFR reflect the participation by some of the members of their board in paid editing? (if inapropriate, I will remove the qy, but it is important to report the actual basis of a dispute.) DGG ( talk ) 18:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi @DGG: - I am not aware of that as a criticism. Of course a huge amount is being said by both sides so I might be in there somewhere. I believe there are serious concerns from community members about (among many other rhings) whether there is appropriate separation between WMFR's lobbying programme and the political career of one of its board members, and also about whether WMFR staff have been fundraising for an endowment without apparent consultation with the community or WMF, but I haven't see paid editing raised as a significant issue per se. The Land (talk) 18:44, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @DGG: You may have been thinking of the Swiss Chapter. 1, 2. --Andreas JN466 10:37, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
so I was. My apologies. DGG ( talk ) 17:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I so wish that I was surprised at this development. Not from what I know of WMFR prior to the statements that have been published, including the WMFR letter, but because the hubris shown in said letter by those who have power in that organization is not unique to that affiliate. IMHO, the WMF has been extremely naive about setting up systems that afford individuals power over others, thinking that just because we are all Wikipedians with the best of intentions, that only the best of human nature will always assert itself. Sorry but power corrupts, even the best of people, and not everyone takes on roles for purely altruistic reasons despite wrapping themselves in all the jingoistic terms of the movement. More situations like this current exist in other affiliates, and problems with admins in Wikimedia projects and more situations of this type will occur. Question is, will the Foundation learn from this particular embarrassment enough to make the necessary changes in the future?Thelmadatter (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

















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