I am a longtime Wikimedia volunteer, activist, organizer and founder and leader of independent Wikimedia organizations. As of that, I am (mostly was) in quite a close contact with highly positioned people from the Wikimedia Foundation, including the Trusties liasoning for the Affiliations Committee (that deals with independent Wikimedia organizations).
I see it first hand that Wikimedia Foundation has some structural problems. They have problems to ensure that they themselves follow their own rules… The Board of Trusties, or at least the Chair knows that for years. Yet, they consistently fail to correct it. Wikimedia Foundation took full responsibility for (at least) one its independent organisation but (to my best knowledge) totally failed to do any corrective action for its misbehavior for 6 years and counting. Some of those corrective actions could be done in 1 day by an individual or in 30-60 days by a committee (which are notoriously slow).
So, yeah. Wikimedia Foundation has its problems and the problems are putting very unnecessary restrains that conteract Wikimedia mission itself. WMF is a great organization with briliant mission and, IMO, it is worth saving. For fixing WMF are needed such reports (to the extend they are true) and corrective actions by the Board of Trusties of Wikimedia Foundation.
Hope that Bernadette Meehan will have the guts to correct all the issues, but guess we’ll see.
Yeah! But especially the Board, which is the ultimate corporate authority of WMF.
Zero surprise. Anybody who’s edited anything political on Wikipedia realizes that it’s completely gate-kept by libs and similar right-wingers to reinforce the “western” (white) hegemonic narrative.
That’s right. Many Global South topics are more likely to be affected by deletionism than the WASP ones. “Wikipedia has a left wing bias” is just a misnomer.
That was a very interesting read. I hope we get some follow-up on this, and maybe other such reports as well. It does sound highly problematic, and like a very toxic work environment.
Literally every post this bot makes is to take a shit on Wikipedia. They have an agenda.
Oh I absolutely should start reading usernames here. Didn’t notice that…
We have to use this generic username instead of more identifiable one exactly because of the fear of retaliation, which by now thanks to the blog author and so on, seems really like a pattern instead of isolated incident. If we participate on other topics apart from Wikipedia there’s the risk of people using what we’ve frequently posted to try to deanonymize us.
it_depends_man ultimately has a fair point while another probable WMF staffer kubofhromoslav just weighed in here echoing the concerns.
Thank you for the response! I did read the other comments your post has received too. While it’s fair to assume an account that solely post one specific agenda is a bot or whatever, your specific described situation also makes a lot of sense. Not only that, your responses in the comments are very civil and informative, which I do appreciate. I do hope WMF gets their shit together. A lot of people rely on them.
I mean… yeah. Duh. They say so openly on the website, that’s the point.
They observed wrongdoing, were fired for opposing it and now they are trying to highlight that and make it public.
Whether the whole thing is TRUE is the question. I don’t know that. I guess it’s a reminder that ultimately everything online could be fake and false and manipulation. We would need more sources with similar stories. But if everyone didn’t publish because they would be the first, we would never get multiple sources.
So, just read it as a biased perspective and leave it unsolved whether it’s true or false…
I’m not talking about the website that was linked. I’m talking about the bot OP that posted the link.
Their point still stands, but on the other hand you’re no different than the supporters of the Maine oystenfuhrer who dismissed concerns about his character and attacked those who raised it, or maybe some paid bots of Theranos in 2015.
Fair warning: You’d want to get a lawyer soon if you’re entangled with toxic nonsenses at Wikipedia in so many ways, because at the rate we see it, the chickens are about to come home to roost and it’s not gonna end well for you. We’ll leave the question open on what direction everything in this context are converging into.
