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News and notes

One election's end, another election's beginning

Preliminary results for 2024 WMF Board election

Board elections results

Christel Steigenberger
Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (left)
Victoria Doronina
Lorenzo Losa

The 2024 election for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation is now complete. Preliminary results were announced earlier this week. 12 candidates ran for 4 Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustee seats in this election. The vote was conducted using a single transferable vote system, which transfers votes from eliminated candidates after each round to the voter's next preferred candidate.

The four candidates with the most votes were –

These four winning candidates will need to pass a background check and have all other bylaw requirements confirmed before they can be officially appointed at the board's December meeting.

Two of them (Doronina and Losa) are already on the board and were re-elected. The election came not long after the board's controversial refusal to ratify the "Movement Charter" after it had been worked on over several years (Signpost coverage: "Wikimedia community ratifies Movement Charter, Wikimedia Foundation rejects ratification"). As one Wikimedian noted on the Foundation-l mailing list: "Victoria and Lorenzo, who were greatly associated with the Movement Chart BoT veto some months ago, were reelected by the community, despite many predictions that they would suffer a big backlash for making public their positions, and a number of people was quick to predict their certain removal from office, especially Victoria."

A visual representation of the vote is given by the Sankey diagram above. Incoming Board member Nadzik also analysed some voting statistics on this page on Meta.

Congratulations to the winners and our thanks to the other candidates who ran in the election: Bobby Shabangu, Deon Steyn, Erik Hanberg, Farah Jack Mustaklem, Lane Rasberry, Mohammed Awal Alhassan, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, and Tesleemah Abdulkareem. – Sb, H, S

Administrator elections trial begins

After a year of fewer RFAs, a flood of candidates have signed up in the upcoming trial of Administrator elections. With the call for candidates having closed on 14 October, 35 candidates will be seeking to be elected (or re-elected) as administrator. The full list of candidates can be found on the respective AELECT subpage.

There were a total of 14 RFAs this year until October. Considering AELECT, this brings 2024 to 49, reversing a multi-year trend of fewer admin candidates in successive years. The latest year with more RFAs was 2015, with 53 candidates over the year.

However, it is not clear how many of said candidates will end up passing. As far as is known, the previous record for the number of active RFAs at once is 28 on 6 December 2005, per this discussion in October 2007. The elections will also use private voting via SecurePoll, which may skew the results.

The discussion phase will be open for 72 hours, from 22 to 24 October. Anyone may ask questions at the election subpages, and candidates are "encouraged" to reply. Voting begins from 25 October and will continue till 31 October, closing at 23:59 UTC. After three days for discussion and questions, the candidate pages will be closed for discussion, and voting begins.

Admin elections and other RFA reform efforts were last covered by The Signpost in the 26 September issue. – S

Administrators still in decline

Note: This section was prepared before the large number of applicants emerged for the administrator elections trial.

In prior Signpost coverage we discussed the declining number of active administrators:

Now, on 7 October, Rick Bot has recorded 418 active administrators, another record low count. The monthly averages of data reported by the bot daily were:

2024
Period daily average
January 465.7
February 473.3
March 448.2
April 438.3
May 438.3
June 434.6
July 435.4
August 432.5
September 425.4
October 421.0[a 1]
  1. ^ As of 10 October
Active admins, 2011 through mid 2019 (chart by Widefox)

For comparison, using the same methodology, the average number of active administrators in the past several years (also shown in a chart created earlier through mid 2019) was:

Other years
Period daily average
2017 543.0
2018 528.6
2019 515.1
2020 508.3
2021 487.2[b 1]
2022 470.0
2023 464.1
  1. ^ Data anomaly October-November, only 300 data points in 2021

A trend of declining numbers of active administrators is apparent in both the monthly and annual sets of data. If no more changes occurred after the 10 October data cutoff date, then 2024 would tally a loss of 43 over the 2023 average. The next greatest annual decline in this table was about half as many: -21.1 between 2020 and 2021. – B

CEO of the WMF's Brazilian affiliate signs an op-ed supporting research on disinformation

On September 27, Brazilian Wikimedian João Alexandre Peschanski was revealed to be one of the over 150 international researchers who co-signed a collective op-ed that deemed disinformation to be "one of the biggest short-term threats to humanity", and called for more protection and easier access to online data for those who study it and its perceived impact on public opinion.

This is a notable bit of news, since Peschanski—also known on-wiki as Joalpe—currently serves as the executive director of the Wiki Movement Brazil User Group, an association founded in 2013 and regularly affiliated to the Wikimedia Foundation since 2019.

The op-ed is available in several languages, including Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese, and has been re-published by several media outlets. – O

Product and Technology Advisory Council appointed

The Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) was appointed this week. This council was introduced as a one-year pilot program as part of Board of Trustees' three proposals in lieu of the Movement Charter.

Apart from WMF CPTO Selena Deckelmann and other WMF staff, the council includes:

According to the initial proposal, the 8 volunteer members would include 5 at-large technical contributors and 3 Wikipedia volunteers, at least one of who would be from the English Wikipedia. While it's not clear which category each selection was for, 4 volunteers have English Wikipedia as their most edited project – Sohom Datta, TheDJ, GorillaWarfare (also admin and OS), Benjamin Mako Hill.

PTAC was last covered by The Signpost in the 14 August issue. – S

News from WMF

The WMF published two bulletins since our latest Signpost issue – one for late September and early October respectively.

Of note were The Power of the Commons, an event hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation and other organizations as part of The Summit of the Future at the Headquarters of the United Nations and a new change to the Wikidata Query Service.

Highlights from the October issue include an e-mail from the "Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee" and its Movement Charter debrief process (Spoilers: They'll collect feedback until January 2025).

More notably, nominations are currently open for positions on AffCom, Ombuds commission and the trust and safety Case Review Committee. AffCom plays an advisory role in official accession of new affiliates to the movement; the ombudsfolk are tasked with investigating complaints about infringements of the WMF privacy policy and related policies by CheckUsers, oversighters and others with access to sensitive user data; and the case review committee represents the community for appeals of certain trust and safety office actions. Applications for the Affiliations Committee close on November 18, 2024, and applications for the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee close on December 2, 2024.

Wikimedia Foundation has filed an amicus brief in a Mexican case known as Richter v. Google – more information about the case here, it is compared to Section 230 in the United States. Although Mexico does not have statutory Section 230 protections, the Internet Society says that they are subject to similar content moderation restrictions and protections due to international treaties with the U.S. and Canada.

B, S

Knowledge Equity Fund: Final grantees announced, reports from 2023 grantees

Introducing the Round 3 Knowledge Equity Fund grantees

The Wikimedia Foundation announced a new round of grants from its Knowledge Equity Fund (see previous Signpost coverage), awarding "13 organizations in 10 countries, supporting work to address knowledge gaps and create and share new knowledge" with $1.362 million in total.

It also published impact reports for some of the Round 2 grantees announced in August 2023, and noted some highlights from three such reports:

Another round two grantee doesn't seem to have provided reports yet (but the Foundation "will share the rest of the final reports as we receive them"):

In the recent announcement, the Foundation notes that

Through multiple community conversations that we hosted in 2023, we heard feedback from volunteers about the goals and impact of the Knowledge Equity Fund which led us to make some key changes for our upcoming rounds of funding.

These changes include

  • More consistent and clear communication about the Knowledge Equity Fund, its grants and impact
  • Opportunities for movement groups to also receive grants for work they are doing to address knowledge equity
  • Clearer measures of impact for Knowledge Equity Fund grants

The announcement also states that

With the conclusion of Round 3, the Fund now has $815,000 USD left [from the $4.5 million it was set up with in 2020]. The Equity Fund will run one last “round” in the next 4 months, where we will choose a handful of the most impactful grantees from the first rounds and provide them with a final “top up grant” to deepen their work with the movement and ensure that the content they create is present on the Wikimedia projects.

AK, H

Brief notes

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Admin elections trial

Regarding AELECT, a discussion on voter guides ended with consensus that neither prohibits nor encourages voter guides, as long as they're not linked from the AELECT pages. Editors who find them useful may find a handy list at User:Novem Linguae/Essays/2024 administrator election voter guide#See_Also, among other locations. Soni (talk) 16:51, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Soni and Novem Linguae: Thank you for the information! Oltrepier (talk) 07:07, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since publication there was one nomination withdrawn, and the discussion period began is proceeding with 34 candidates. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Technically we began the discussion period with 35 candidates, then 1 withdrew. There was also a withdrawal or two during the SecurePoll setup period. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another nomination withdrawn, now 33 candidates. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And another, now 32 candidates just a few minutes before voting may begin. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's another 24 hours of discussion phase, I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oof, you are right. Voting starts 25 October. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledge Equity Fund

I oppose the Knoweledge equity fund with considerable passion. While these projects are admirable, they should not be getting money from the WMF. The Foundation's job is to keep the servers running, hire lawyers, and fix big bugs, not to be a philanthropist, especially given the community wasn't given input. I would point the WMF to the second resolution of Wikipedia:Village_pump (WMF)/Archive 6#Grants to organizations unrelated to supporting Wikimedia Projects. Is there somewhere central I can complain to the WMF about this? Cremastra (uc) 01:43, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe meta:Talk:Knowledge Equity Fund? –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:53, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that seems like the central spot for whingeing. Cremastra (uc) 13:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Cremastra and Novem Linguae: The best place to share your views is in The Signpost. The Wikimedia community has many questions about the program. I am aware of these because we studied the program for previous Signpost coverage, but did not manage to produce the story we wanted. It would be helpful to have a full Signpost article on program outcomes to date. I can support a writer or journalists, but cannot take the lead on the whole story.
If you want to a story, then here are some suggestions: Submit a question to community calls on Wednesday, October 23 (ESEAP friendly time: 10am UTC, Pacific friendly time: 4pm UTC); bring the answer back to The Signpost, and draft a basic outline of the program which contains the news of the answer to the question you asked in the context of third-round funding.
Standing by to support! Bluerasberry (talk) 14:41, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

















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