Foundation-supported Wikipedian in residence faces scrutiny

One of the first university Wikipedian in residence positions, hosted at Harvard University in 2012, has jumped back into the spotlight amid questions about its ethical integrity.

The position, advertised and promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation, was at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They were looking for an "experienced Wikipedia editor" who would have a "unique role facilitating collaboration between the faculty, staff, and fellows at the Center and the Wikipedia volunteer community".

This chain of events was initially set in motion by the WMF's executive director Sue Gardner after an inquiry from Liz Allison of the Stanton Foundation, an organization that had donated several million dollars to the WMF (including $1.2 million in 2010 for the Public Policy Initiative and $3.6 million in 2011 for the troubled VisualEditor). While the Wikipedian-in-residence would be funded by the Stanton Foundation and work at the Belfer Center at Harvard, they asked the WMF to act as a fiscal sponsor for administrative reasons. The WMF also recruited candidates; their first choice, a long-time Wikipedian and former Harvard librarian, was rejected for not having enough experience in international security. The job description was sent to an email mailing list of academic international security programs; the WMF interviewed two candidates from the resulting applications. Timothy Sandole, who registered a Wikipedia account on the day applications closed, was selected by Belfer to fill the position on the basis of his previous academic experience with international security issues.

The offering of the position was not uncontroversial; the Foundation's deputy director, Erik Möller, has since written on the Wikimedia-l mailing list that Liam Wyatt, Pete Forsyth, Frank Schulenburg and LiAnna Davis were among those who either "noted the risks and issues early on" or "provided internal feedback and criticism ... pointing out the COI issues and the risks regarding the project." Left unstated was the strength of some of this feedback: "we told them so", Wyatt stated. "We tried ... to tell the relevant WMF staff that this was a terribly designed project, but the best we got in response was that we could help edit the job description after it had already been published! ... We did get to dilute the worst of the original job description so it wasn't so blatant a paid editing role ... The WMF dug themselves into this hole despite the frantic attempts, which were largely rebuffed, of several of the GLAM-WIKI community help them fix it—or at least reduce the number of problems."

Sandole was hired for the full-time position and remained in it for 12 months, from August 2012 to August 2013. His final report notes that he "made 80 significant edits to 63 Wikipedia articles", "conducted three Wikipedia seminar workshops, each lasting approximately 1.5 hours", and "privately consulted with five Harvard Kennedy School staff members/fellows and one student". Some of the edits he made could have the appearance of propagating a conflict of interest, albeit a minor one; his additions to Russia–United States relations are based on writings by Graham Allison, the Belfer Center's head. Participants on the mailing list have questioned the apparent editing for pay by Sandole, especially in the context of the Foundation's response to paid advocacy by the public relations company Wiki-PR and its resulting proposal to modify the Wikimedia site's terms of use.

Sandole was supervised by Sara Lasner of the WMF, though Möller emphasized that this was only administrative oversight, handling vacation requests and payments, among other unnamed duties. According to Möller, "Timothy's edits weren't monitored in detail by the Wikimedia Foundation." Yet there was enough supervision from Lasner for her to tell Sandole in September 2012 to "be conscious of not over-representing Harvard University in his research". Her superior Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, the WMF's chief revenue officer, also sent an email "regarding awareness of conflict-of-interest issues in general."

Möller's thoughts reveal what he believes should have occurred at the WMF:

He concluded his email:

Discussion continues on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.

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