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Board election

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Timeline

7 January 2025

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The Forward reports on plans by the Heritage Foundation to unmask Wikipedia editors whose contributions on Israel it deems antisemitic. As The Signpost said in its report:

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank that, despite being already known for its highly-influential role in the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, has most recently returned to the spotlight for masterminding Project 2025, a controversial political blueprint for the incumbent Trump administration.

4 March 2025

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The Heritage Foundation acknowledges their plan to investigate Wikipedia contributors to The New Yorker.

"Mike Howell, of Heritage, told me that this 'investigation' of Wikipedia, which, he said, 'is where information is laundered,' will be 'shared with the appropriate policymakers to help inform a strategic response.' "

The appropriate policymakers are likely to be in Congress, The Signpost adds.

27 August 2025

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House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman [[James Comer] (R-Ky.) and Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Chairwoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) announce their investigation into efforts to manipulate information on Wikipedia. They draw particular attention to coverage of Israel:

Multiple studies and reports have highlighted efforts to manipulate information on the Wikipedia platform for propaganda aimed at Western audiences. One recent report raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.

Comer and Mace are particularly concerned about efforts "to influence U.S. public opinion on important and sensitive topics by manipulating Wikipedia articles" and "the role and methods of foreign individuals".

It is noteworthy that Comer and Mace appeared to view Wikipedia as essentially a US asset, rather than a global project created and read by users worldwide, regardless of nationality.

Candidate statements

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The WMF posted Lane's Candidate Statement on YouTube. Lane said, in part:

Please consider that right now, the Wikimedia Foundation is proposing to replace some of the text in Wikipedia articles from the content written by humans with content written by artificial intelligence. I think that the human to human connection in Wikipedia is very important. Human fact checking, human curation is important, and that the human editors have an important connection with the human readers who are using Wikipedia. We shouldn't compromise that trust, and we should move much more slowly with ideas like this. We're not only facing technological threats, but also we're facing threats, as governments are accusing Wikipedia of spreading propaganda and Wikipedia editors of being agents in opposition to governments. This is not true. We're trying to share neutral, fact checked information. Editing Wikipedia is not a crime. Wikipedia editors speak for themselves and should be protected from persecution. The reason why we're struggling with ideas, changing to technology, reacting to political threats, is because we don't have enough training in volunteer leadership. We've had plans on the table for years to transfer some of the resources that we're spending, like, for example, in the United States to other countries around the world, so that people in different cultures, language communities and nations can speak for themselves. It's very important that we proceed with these plans. We've wanted it for a long time. Help me advance these initiatives.

The WMF posted Ravan's Candidate Statement on YouTube. She said, in part:

Ravan's candidacy was covered by the Jerusalem Post on 10 August: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-863804

1 October 2025

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The Wikimedia Foundation announces a change to its Board of Trustees Candidate Review Process.

9 October

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WMF Board member Victoria Doronina said in a post to Wikimedia-l:

I'm writing this as a Wikimedian, relying solely on publicly available information. I'm sorry, but I will not reply to any questions, as the last time I tried, it didn't end well.

It may sound counterintuitive, but WMF is sometimes too nice and careful about the reputation of wikimedians and this leaves room for speculation. In this case, the WMF left a lot of room for candidates who didn't pass the preliminary stages of the vetting process to withdraw with grace, but it didn't work, and now we have multiple petitions for the reinstatement of these candidates.

Concerning Ravan, future candidates should be more cautious about what they post on social media, as some posts pose significant risks to the WMF's reputation, primarily because the press is particularly vigilant about the WMF board candidates at the moment. I'm supporting women (you may have noticed that I'm a woman too) and LGBTQIA+, but in this instance, I cannot support her candidacy, because the risks for the public reputation of WMF outweigh the risks to gender equity.

As for Lane, he

  • publicly stated in his candidate video (1' in) that WMF is going to replace some of the text in Wikipedia with the text written by AI - this is not true, as anyone who has read the WMF AI strategy would know.
Wikimedia Foundation elections/2025/Candidates/Lane Rasberry - Meta-Wiki
  • Publicly written in the candidate statement:

I set up a Right to Information project on Meta-Wiki because years ago, I wanted information, and I could not find a way to communicate to the Foundation. As trustee, I encourage the user community to organize to make public information requests to me.

To me, it looks like he's going to disclose the non-public information, especially as he emphasises that he's an editor of the Signpost and his duty as a journalist will come before his duties as a trustee. He also writes:

I want access to Wikimedia Foundation financial records so that I can analyze them at my university, or otherwise, the WMF can just be direct in saying it does not want to share this info. Right now the WMF's financial reports are incomprehensible to the user community. We need transparency in those reports so that Wikimedians in each country can know what money the Foundation spends on their behalf, and what the development strategy for that country is.

It sounds like he's going to disclose non-public financial information.

All people who know Lane well state that he's an honest person who does as he says. As a Wikimedian, I cannot support a candidacy for a person who makes grossly unsupported statements. As a trustee, I cannot support anyone who wishes to disclose non-public information, which is in direct contravention of the trustee's duties and responsibilities.

As you can see, my objections to the Lane candidacy have nothing to do with him being a minority or any other potential issue that he mentions in his communications; it's much more mundane.


https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_the_2025_WMF_Board_election_removals/Ravan

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