The Register swings at the Wikimedia movement's finances, and misses
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It's that time of year again. As the Christmas lights go up, Wikipedia's donation drive kicks off. Wikipedia claims that the donations are needed to keep the site online. Guilt-tripped journalists including Heather Brooke and Toby Young have contributed to Wikipedia in the belief that donations help fund operating costs. Students, who are already heavily in debt, are urged to donate in case Wikipedia "disappears".
But what Wikipedia doesn't tell us is that it is awash with cash—and raises far more money each year than it needs to keep operating.
The author of the piece, Andrew Orlowski, opened the piece strangely, bringing up an unrelated story from 2005 and several early missteps by the Wikimedia Foundation.
He paraded several examples to support his argument. He first targeted one of the Wikimedia chapters: "In the UK, the local chapter of WMF, Wikimedia Foundation UK [sic], admitted to racking up a bill of £1,335 on business cards, calling it 'a failure to make the most effective procurement choices'." Yet in this claim he confused chapters, which are independent, with the WMF. Worse, he wrongly attributed the quote to the chapter (it was a question from WMUK trustee Fæ). The actual chapter response states, "We do not believe this represents a failure to make an effective procurement choice, as alternative suppliers were sought, and a sensible decision was reached ... [but in the] future, we will ensure that business card purchases are more thoroughly researched."
Orlowski next questioned Wikimedia Germany's €18,000 funding for editors to attend and photograph concerts, along with €81,000 to photograph many politicians. This of course fails to note that freely licensed, professional photographs of government figures are rare outside the United States, whose federal government releases its photography into the public domain.
Last, Orlowski conflated Omidyar Network's $2 million donation (2009) with winning a seat on the WMF Board of Trustees. The trustee in question, Matt Halprin, was appointed on 24 August 2009, just one day before Omidyar's donation. However, Halprin has since left Omidyar and continued to serve as a trustee until last month, and there is no evidence of a 'donation for board seat' agreement.
This superficial journalism was a substitute for what could have been more valid and useful criticism of the movement, of which there are many such opportunities, such as the repeated delays in the development of the visual editor, which is viewed as essential for the continued health of Wikimedia projects. WMUK, too, has many areas that could be examined, such as the Gibraltar controversy (see Signpost coverage: "UK chapter rocked by Gibraltar scandal"). Bringing up only three examples, one from three years ago, another misquoted and extremely minor, and the third necessary to obtain high-quality photographs to headline Wikipedia articles, Orlowski missed a chance to offer real, constructive criticism on the WMF and its chapters.
Links alleged between Jimmy Wales and Kazakh government
The Telegraph and Daily Dot, among others, have alleged that there are many links between the WMF, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Kazakhstan's government, which is for all intents and purposes a one-party non-democratic state.
The controversy began when the background behind Wales' first "Wikipedian of the Year", Rauan Kenzhekhanuly (see Signpostcoverage) was publicized. Before becoming the head of a non-profit organization, Wikibilim, he served in Kazakhstan's Russian embassy and as the Moscow Bureau chief for the National TV Agency, which is viewed as a Kazakh government propaganda outlet. Additionally, his organization is backed by Kazakhstan's sovereign oil wealth fund, which is run by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's son-in-law.
Wales has vocally supported both Kenzhekhanuly and Wikibilim, and the WMF gave the latter a US$16,600 grant to hold a Wikimedia conference in Kazakhstan in April 2012.
Wales defended himself and the WMF, saying: "The Wikimedia Foundation has zero collaboration with the government of Kazakhstan. Wikibilim is a totally independent organization. And it is absolutely wrong to say that I am 'helping the Kazakh regime whitewash its image.' I am a firm and strong critic. At the same time, I'm excited by the work of volunteers, and I believe—very strongly—that an open and independent Wikipedia will be the death knell for tyranny in places like Kazakhstan."
Whatever Wales' culpability, there is an inherent problem in this awkward situation, as Eurasianet's Myles Smith points out:
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As Kazakh-language development is a major policy goal of the Kazakh government, Kenzhekhanuly must know how much favor his project curries with the government, just as similar projects sponsored by USAID, OSF, and Chevron have. Whatever the intentions of Kenzhekhanuly's organization, or of Jimmy Wales' cheerleading, the reality is that an authoritarian system, particularly one as well financed as oil-rich Kazakhstan’s, has thus far choked the idealist dreams of the crowd-sourced openness revolution. Without the freedom to express opinions openly in all fora, the online medium may remain a reflection of discussions in the rest of society, not an exception to them.
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Later comments on Wales' talk page, led by Andreas Kolbe, tried to forge a link between Wales and the Kazakh government through Wales' friendship with Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom and the head of a public relations firm that has been contracted by the Kazakh government in the past. Wales, saying that Kolbe's tenuous allegations were "weird and irrelevant", hatted the discussion and banned Kolbe from his talk page.
The Signpostmentioned the Kazakh Wikipedia developments in June 2011.
This article was retitled on 5 January, as the previous title was too strong and therefore did not accurately portray the position of the news coverage surrounding the event.
Brief notes
Top hundred articles, by views: Various media outlets, including the BBC and Infodocket, have run stories on the most-viewed articles on Wikimedia sites. Facebook was this year's most-viewed article on the English Wikipedia, but the BBC highlighted the differences in article views between languages. The full lists are available on the Toolserver. As the BBC acknowledged (but several other sources did not) a few of the results are highly suspect, but most seem to be accurate.
A video about one new feature launched in 2012 (Special:NewPagesFeed and its associated page curation toolbar) displayed using another (the TimedMediaHandler).
In the first of two features, the Signpost this week looks back on 2012, a year when developers finally made inroads into three issues that had been put off for far too long (the need for editors to learn wiki-markup, the lack of a proper template language and the centralisation of data) but left all three projects far from finished.
The overall result was a year of numerous incremental changes (including Special:NewPagesFeed, new diff colours, MathJax support, high-resolution images, database dump mirroring) but few genuinely watershed moments. One exception, however, was the switchover in version control system from Subversion to Git in March. For a complex transition, the switch was made relatively easily and more-or-less on schedule, although the top-down nature of it – and in particular the choice of code review tool Gerrit – continues to rankle with some developers even now. The possibility of entrenching a division between staff and volunteer-written code, highlighted in last year's annual review, was successfully avoided, though the presence of a de facto distinction – first established by a Signpost investigation in September – is an ongoing concern likely to remain on the agenda for most if not all of 2013.
Other big gainers included Wikipedia Zero, the Wikimedia Foundation's drive to make a (sometimes text-only) version of its flagship project available for free on internet-enabled handsets across the developing world, which went from strength to strength over the course. Despite only being in development this time last year, quarter of a billion people are now estimated to have free access under the system, with more than a dozen further partnerships already agreed. An Android app was also released in 2012, and the predicted mobile web upload facility is now in development, building on continuing from the success of a "Wiki Loves Monuments" app that included similar functionality. A mobile editing interface, scheduled for March, was not so lucky. As forecast, support for accessing Wikipedia via SMS/USSD has now been implemented, though it is yet to go live.
There were low points too, both technical and social. Downtime was not as rare as the Wikimedia Operations team would have liked, while untested (or insufficiently tested) code, deployed live, caused problems on a similar scale. The fine line between constructive criticism and personal attacks, particularly in the context of top-down decisions, remained well trodden, not least in the context of the rise of Wikimedia Labs at the expense of the independently-run (but not financed) Toolserver.
On a more positive note, the TimedMediaHandler extension (improving MediaWiki's handling of video files) was finally deployed to Wikimedia wikis following a drawn out development process few would wish to emulate. Only time will tell whether the lessons learned will ensure the Lua coding, VisualEditor and Wikidata projects – now 15, 13 and 9 months old respectively – can reach the same end any quicker; but more on that next week, when the Signpost looks forward to what 2013 may have in store for Wikimedia wikis and MediaWiki more generally.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
The logo of the controversial Tor anonymity network, home to both legitimate editors and vandalsTor be or not Tor be: developers consider the problems of anonymised editing: Trying to provide a fuller service to users of anonymity network Tor may be "aiming too high", wrote one contributor to a thread on the mailing list this week. Tor, a controversial system for anonymously accessing the web, is popular among citizens of countries such as China, Burma and Iran as a means of safely evading tight censorship controls, but can also be easily manipulated by repeat vandals to evade blocks. Differentiating between the two is at present virtually impossible, with users blocked from editing unless they can prove their good intentions – something which is impossible if they have no other way of editing. Although some incremental improvements were proposed to the process of blocking Tor users, most obviously in the literature provided, it is unclear whether there is any way of allowing editing whilst also preventing abuse.
Translate extension getting facelift: The Translate extension, which helps users translate (among other things) MediaWiki interface messages is benefiting from a WMF-led visual overhaul, WMF Software Engineer Amir E. Aharoni writes on the Wikimedia blog. The facelift is intended to make it easier to translate new messages, as well as allowing the host wiki (translatewiki.net for MediaWiki interface messages) to surface statistics about which messages out of a batch users struggle to translate.
Wikimedia Foundation concludes fundraising campaign
Brightly colored banners detail the role of the Wikimedia Foundation in maintaining Wikipedia
On 27 December the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) announced the conclusion of their ninth annual fundraiser, which attracted more than 1.2 million donors. The appeal reached its goal of US$25 million, even though fundraising banners ran for only nine days.
This year's campaign emphasized facts about the WMF, featuring lines of text in brightly colored banners. Previous campaigns used personal appeals from Wikipedia editors and co-founder Jimmy Wales. While the WMF considers the fundraiser successful, some editors expressed concerns about the invasive banners and what they considered was the low amount of cash raised. The remainder of the WMF's funding will come from grants and donations given outside the annual campaign.
The WMF's Executive Director Sue Gardner said, "I'm grateful that the Wikipedia fundraiser was so successful. Our supporters are wonderful and without them we could not do the job of delivering free content worldwide. We're thrilled to be able to introduce our readers to the editors around the world who create Wikipedia and to invite our readers to join in editing." A thank-you banner campaign began running on Wikipedia this week for viewers in the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand—the five countries targeted in this campaign.
Czech Parliament releases photos of senators to chapter
The Parliament of the Czech Republic has released a total of 23 images under free licenses to the local chapter, Wikimedia Czech Republic, marking the beginning of a significant relationship. The images depict newly elected senators in the Czech parliament and will be used in biographical articles on Wikipedia projects. The images are now available on the Wikimedia Commons in this category under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
A representative from Wikimedia Czech Republic contacted the public relations department at the Czech Parliament. Their letter detailed the copyright requirements and impact of Wikipedia. The office could not release photographs of all 81 senators due to the copyright requirements of older images, but the chapter was assured that future photographs would be released for use in Wikipedia. Wikimedia Czech Republic announced the accomplishment with a blog post in both Czech and English on December 28.
Brief notes
Personal data of editors and a bot subpoenaed: Neumont University is seeking the personal information of all registered editors who made changes to the article on the university, which includes the information about at least one robot, a possible first in a subpoena. The information was subpoenaed for use in a court case against a third party. However, except for users with advanced permissions, the foundation does not possess the addresses, full names, and other personal information of Wikipedia editors.
Affiliations Committee seeks volunteer candidates: The Wikimedia Affiliations Committee has published a call for 2013 candidates and is looking for about six members. The committee is responsible for guiding volunteers in establishing chapters, user groups, and thematic organizations, and for approving them.
Commons plans 2012 Picture of the Year contest: The Wikimedia Commons is planning its seventh annual Picture of the Year contest and has announced that Round 1 will begin on January 16, 2013. The planning committee is seeking translators.
Milestones: Wikidata, the centralized hub for organizing data on Wikimedia projects, reached two million entries this week. At this time, the entries list only the versions of Wikipedia articles in different languages.
English Wikipedia notes:
Quarterly update: The quarterly update, compiling the past three months of modifications to content policy pages, is complete.
Wikipedia's 12th birthday: Wikipedia will turn 12 on 15 January 2013 after being founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on that date in 2001.
