Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2021-07-25

News and notes
Wikimania and a million other news stories

Special report
Hardball in Hong Kong

In the media
Larry is at it again

Board of Trustees candidates
See the candidates

Recent research
Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

Traffic report
Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

News from the WMF
Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

Humour
A little verse

 

2021-07-25

Wikimania and a million other news stories

By Smallbones

Wikimania 2021

Wikimania, Wikipedia's annual conference, will be held virtually this year for the first time, after missing last year due to the pandemic. Conference sessions will be held from August 13 through August 17.

Registration is open using Eventbrite. Attendance is free and open to everybody as long as you register. The Friendly space policy will be in effect as usual.

Russian Wikinews tops 1.2 million articles

How did Russian Wikinews get 1.2 million articles – a number that rivals or surpasses the number of articles on the main Chinese Wikipedia? These stories were not all written by bots; they were uploaded from the now closed archive of the once famous liberal Russian broadcaster NTV. The archive was later renamed NEWSru and then closed about two months ago.

Ssr reports that the news stories were written by professional journalists about notable events and are reliably sourced.

Perhaps more important to historians, the archive represents a specific time in Russian history with a type of news coverage that may no longer be possible.

Brief notes

• New administrator: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator BusterD.

Reader comments

2021-07-25

Hardball in Hong Kong

By Smallbones

The forced closure of Hong Kong's pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, published by Jimmy Lai, has led to a crisis in the Chinese Wikipedia (zh.WP) editing community, according to two articles published in the Hong Kong Free Press. HKFP reports that several pro-Beijing editors apparently posted on the Tencent QQ messaging board used by mainland China Wikipedia editors, threatening to name pro-democracy editors in Hong Kong to the National Security Police. HKFP singled out an editor from mainland China for serious criticism: User:Walter Grassroot (henceforth, WG).

A Signpost investigation shows that WG has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that he has edited Wikipedia with a strategic purpose of "counter-reconnaissance".

Though HKFP couldn't confirm that the Tencent user "Walter Grassroot" was the same person as the zh.WP editor with that username, they stated that the Tencent user with that name replied to a posting of the Security Police's phone number with the message "We should report those from the Hong Kong user group." HKFP also posted a graphic containing screenshots of the messages in Chinese. WG told The Signpost that he denies all of the HKFP accusations.

A contentious history

Since 2004, China has intermittently blocked access to various language versions of Wikipedia from mainland China. When Wikipedia introduced support in 2015 for the secure HTTPS protocol that does not allow blocking individual articles, China has more consistently blocked all versions of Wikipedia. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, may still be used to access and edit the site, allowing some editors from the mainland to continue editing, though merely subscribing to a VPN can attract the attention of the authorities. Editors of zh.WP are believed to be approximately equal in numbers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland users.

A series of political crises in Hong Kong has led to parallel crises in the Chinese editing community, setting many mainland editors in opposition to many Hong Kong and Taiwanese editors. These crises include the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, and the anti-extradition movement of 2019–2020, which led to a new National Security Law.

The ramifications for the zh.WP community have previously been covered in a BBC documentary in 2019, reported by Carl Miller and by The Signpost in 2014 and three articles in 2019.

Carl Miller told The Signpost that Beijing's internet activity has continued on the same trajectory since 2019:

only [it has] accelerated over the pandemic. China has intensified its international messaging amidst an increasing concern for how it's perceived in the world. That's been a combination of overt strategic communication, but also a drumbeat of revelations of covert inauthentic networks that it's been deploying across social media platforms–-Facebook,Twitter and Reddit for sure, and likely Wikipedia too. This is in part about propagating good news stories about China, but also denying online spaces to critics, and online abuse, harassment and threats is one kind of tactic to do exactly that.
— Emails from Carl Miller to Smallbones, July 19-20, 2021

User:Techyan is a liaison with the group Wikipedians of Mainland China, which has 40-50 active Wikipedia editors as members. WMC is a proposed affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation that maintains contact with other Wikipedians and Wiki groups. It also runs the QQ message board referred to in the HKFP news articles. Techyan says that he has reviewed the history of the messages posted on the board and has not found the purported threats.

Techyan believes that the conflicts on zh.WP are based on politics rather than on geography. "There are plenty of pro-Beijing Hong Kongers and anti-Beijing mainlanders—and you shouldn't underestimate the numbers of them." He believes that an anti-Beijing mainlander is in a more difficult position than an anti-Beijing Hong Konger.

A national security law has been implemented in mainland China years before the one in Hong Kong, even before Hong Kong's mass protest in 2019 and China's attempt to restrict freedom in Hong Kong. Yet, no one has been arrested or harassed by the police for their activities on Wikipedia in the mainland, let alone in Hong Kong.
— Emails from Techyan to Smallbones, July 17-22, 2021

Hong Kong editors

The beliefs and fears of most, but not all, Hong Kong Wikipedians were well covered in the two HKFP articles, which The Signpost has confirmed in multiple interviews with Hong Kong editors. Some of these editors expressed deep reservations about being quoted in this article. Rather than risk indirectly exposing some of these editors to arrest, we will simply paraphrase points in the HKFP articles that most of them appear to agree on.

Since at least 2019, editing has been contentious. With recent political changes and the new national security law, editing has become more difficult. The loss of Apple Daily has made finding sources on controversial topics more difficult. Hong Kong editors believe that the posting of the threat to turn in editors to the National Security Police is authentic, a real threat to themselves that came from the mainland community, and is a substantive threat to their personal freedom. They've met to discuss how to protect themselves and some have asked the WMF for help.
— Summary of emails from various editors to Smallbones, July 2021

With this background in place, let us now turn to the case of Walter Grassroot, or WG.

Wikipedia User:Walter Grassroot

WG told The Signpost via email that he started editing Wikipedia in 2008. "Me and my bot (WalterBot) have created over 45,000 articles (Top 3) and contributed over 140,000 edits on Chinese Wikipedia in the last 13 years. Currently, I live in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China." He also wrote "I am not a member of the Chinese Communist Party, but I treasure myself as a Marxist," and that he learned to love the ideas of Marx, Trotsky, and Mao during his graduate studies in the United States.

He was accused by a Hong Kong editor in HKFP of removing references in Wikipedia articles to the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, just before the government forced that paper to close. He disputes all of the accusations in the HKFP articles against him.

He says that his editing history from that time shows he was editing 20–50 articles per day and removed several references to Apple Daily, but in many more cases he left Apple Daily references in the articles. WG denies posting the threat on the QQ message platform to identify Hong Kong editors. And he says that the graphic that purports to show the threat is a "forgery". Against this, the HKFP editor informed The Signpost that the original screenshots that were included in the graphic were verified "through a vigorous fact-checking process—including speaking to other Wikipedians [...] to verify sourcing before publishing."

WG also says that he had reason to believe that the Hong Kong User Group (an official affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation) was filing a complaint against him with the WMF's Trust & Safety group. HKFP wrote on July 14 that "representatives from the group [of Hong Kong editors] told HKFP they are hoping to seek assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation after a meeting."

According to WG, he has now filed his own complaint with Trust & Safety, which he says has acknowledged receipt of his complaint. (By policy, T&S can only confirm receipt of a complaint to the complainant.) WG expressed the hope that the WMF would soon clear his name.

WG's statements on whether he is a member of the Chinese Communist Party have been confusing or contradictory, but indicate a close relationship with the party. In 2019 he commented to the readers of The Signpost:

As [...] a citizen of Shenzhen and a CCP member, I am delighted to observe the current chaos in Hong Kong, and expact the prospective widening gap between Shenzhen and Hong Kong in next fiscal year and future. Thanks to their night efforts in streets and subways, the HK is sinking inevitably. I am a neutral to neither support or oppose any side, despite most of my friends at Zhwiki naively hope HK returns to normal ASAP.
— Comments: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong [1]

He recently explained further:

I am not a member of CCP, because I did not submit any application. Rumors are everwhere, somehow it increased issues somehow it enhanced safety, particularly in such Chinese wiki societies, haha.

CCP is not KGB, it is a public political group. My parents, wife, and most of my friends and colleagues are CCP members. I love them all very much.

— Email from WG to Smallbones, July 22, 2021

On July 24 WG explained his 2019 comment in The Signpost further. Another editor's username has been redacted by The Signpost.

I wrote that words for [username redacted] and other trash-like accounts for strategical purpose, which were mixed with some real/unreal information - similar as he did so. The strategical purpose will protect the current Chinese editor out of the threatens - these pieces of untrue information would help most Chinese editor for counter-reconnaissance.
— Email from WG to Smallbones, July 24, 2021

Techyan, the liaison for Wikipedians of Mainland China, offers a possible defense of WG: "Walter Grassroot is known to be a pro-Beijing hardliner in the community, and it sounds reasonable for him to say something such as in the alleged screenshot." However, his reputation might make it easier for WG to be "framed by those in the community who are anti-Beijing, in an attempt to delegitimize pro-Beijing editors and associate them with the CCP."

The disagreement between the Hong Kong editors and WG is stark: the Hong Kong editors say that WG removed citations to Apple Daily from zh.WP, and threatened to turn them in to the National Security Police on the Tencent QQ message board. WG says he only removed a few citations to Apple Daily and that the message was a forgery. They do agree in one area: people on both sides say they have sought help from the WMF, and would like quick action against the other side.

WMF response

On Friday, July 23 the WMF released the following statement.

The Wikimedia Foundation cannot go into great detail about the current situation of our volunteer community in Hong Kong to protect the privacy and safety of volunteers. We recognize this can sometimes be frustrating for people wanting to help with situations, but we believe a consistent approach to privacy and confidentiality is vital to protecting volunteers. With that said, we are providing more information below about our current actions.

The Legal and Trust & Safety teams at the Wikimedia Foundation consistently support our volunteers in ensuring their safety and security for their contributions to Wikipedia, with a particular focus on our volunteers in Hong Kong at this time. The Foundation has been closely monitoring the situation in Hong Kong and has been in touch directly with volunteers in that region. We will continue to have an open dialogue with volunteers in Hong Kong to determine the best way the Foundation can support them during this time.

References

For developments after this article's publication, see Meta RFC (August 2021) and WMF Office action statement (September 2021).

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2021-07-25

Larry is at it again

By Bri, Ganesha811, and Smallbones

External videos
Larry Sanger on Wikipedia's bias, LockdownTV, 31:50
Jimmy Wales on safe spaces, TED Radio Hour on NPR, 19:48

In some months all the stories in the media about Wikipedia seem to be related to one bigger story. This month the bigger story is that Larry Sanger has yet again accused Wikipedia of bias. It is not the case that this is a new story. The real news is that right-wing news outlets keep repeating it at every chance. Stephen Harrison's July 1 article on Wikipedians deprecating the Daily Mail as a reliable source appears new again. A rehash of Jimmy Wales's 2005 TED talk on NPR gains relevance as a counter argument to Sanger. Even events in Hong Kong take on a new light. This is not the news anymore, it's not really about how Wikipedia covers the news. It's about how right-wing media covers how Wikipedia deals with the right-wing news coverage. Larry, was "propaganda" the right word to use? "Disinformation" is the more popular word now. Could we apply that term to your interviews? –S

Larry Sanger on bias in Wikipedia – with opinion orthodoxy, truth becomes more elusive

Co-founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger has a history of speaking out about its shortcomings. A flurry of press coverage followed his comments on LockdownTV concerning bias and nefarious information shaping by powerful nations and corporations.

Typical headlines were "Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger blasts site for left-wing bias: 'The word for it is propaganda'" (Fox News), and "Nobody should trust Wikipedia, says man who invented Wikipedia – He says there’s a complex game being played to make an article say what somebody wants it to say", from The Independent.

In a more nuanced review of Sanger's concerns of "sinister motives" for a left-leaning bias, the conservative National Review said "those with center-left opinions, which constitute the prevailing 'establishment', are [not] necessarily sinisterly motivated by selfishness in suppressing dissenting opinion. They may simply genuinely think that the opposition is wrong and does not deserve a platform for their erroneous view...the repercussions of shrinking intellectual diversity are real. As John Stuart Mill argued, when we are left with only one set of opinion that is deemed acceptable, not only may we never know whether that narrative is in fact correct, but we may also no longer be incentivized to thoroughly understand that set of opinion and how it had come by. Hence, truth becomes more elusive."

A story in The Wall Street Journal did not reference Sanger specifically but said in "How Science Lost the Public’s Trust" that science writer Matt Ridley held "Wikipedia long banned any mention" of heterodox topics like the Wuhan lab leak theory. –B

Who are we to judge?

Stephen Harrison in Wikipedia's war on The Daily Mail in Slate reviews what is, at first glance, a very much settled question. The Daily Mail is a seriously unreliable newspaper that generally should not be used as a source on Wikipedia. At least that is the consensus among Wikipedians that is unlikely to change soon. The story covers how that consensus was reached at WP:Reliable sources/Perennial sources and how there is a general system of evaluating the reliability of individual news outlets. Editors had different opinions on the matter, but a consensus was reached. This judgement was briefly a news story on its own. Media expressed their opinions of Wikipedians sitting in judgement of the media. The Daily Mail focused on what they thought of Wikipedia's reliability. This last section is the most interesting part of the article. Who are we to judge? Who should we trust to make a better judgement? Surely not The Daily Mail. –S

The rotting web

An extreme example of link rot: Will the whole Internet look like this someday?

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Zittrain writes that The Internet Is Rotting. Zittrain dives into the issue of link rot, and the common misconception that once something is on the Internet, it is forever. Citing Wikipedia as a chief example, he lays out what he calls the "Procrastination Principle", arguing that too much planning ahead can burden a project, stopping it from getting off the ground. In essence, he has hit upon what has been oft-said before – that Wikipedia works in practice, but not in theory. The article is also a useful reminder that Wikipedia can do its part to keep important links alive and unrotted by using User:IABot to create Internet Archive backups of any cited webpages. –G

Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't

When women go missing from Wikipedia, that absence goes reverberating through the 21st century.
— Francesca Tripodi

The NPR news show All Things Considered featured a four minute interview "Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't: Gender Bias On Wiki" with researcher Francesca Tripodi, whose work identifies some of the ways women's biographies face differential hurdles in both becoming created and then remaining posted here. See further Signpost coverage of Tripodi's work at Recent research. – B

Murderous mistakes in Google knowledge panels

How well does Google summarize Wikipedia articles for their Knowledge panels? Not very well in some cases. In Got the same name as a serial killer? Google might think you’re the same person, Vox Recode reports that that a knowledge panel for Hristo Georgiev contained correct information from the now-deleted Wikipedia article Hristo Georgiev (serial killer), but omitted that this Georgiev was executed in 1980. Google's algorithm also added a non-Wikipedia photo from a living person of the same name, who was not amused. The Signpost notes that the serial killer is also not a canoeist or the historical patron of Sofia University. Google explained to Vox how difficult the problem was to solve, but did not explain how they would fix it. Might we suggest not including a photo that's not from a Wikipedia article when they summarize any Wikipedia article about a criminal?

The Atlantic gave similar examples, one involving a mass murderer without a photo, in a 2019 article. The examples also included some odd photos, some antisemitism and slurs originating from Wikipedia's infoboxes, and some just-plain-weird coincidences. – S

In brief

Just what the doctor ordered?

• Wikipedia and a pint of gin (Desert Review): A Wikipedia editor recounts their attempts to change "erroneous" to "controversial" in the description of public testimony about ivermectin prophylaxis for COVID-19 in a doctor's biography.
• Wikipedia wars - Hong Kong / China editing Hong Kong Free Press reports that mainland Chinese editors are allegedly threatening to turn in Hong Kong editors to the National Security police. Get further coverage in our Special report.
• The answer to vanished institutional authority: A member of Stanford Internet Observatory said in a piece published in The Atlantic that "The same model [used by Wikipedia]—tapping distributed expertise rather than relying on institutional authority—could be useful for other government agencies [like CDC] that find themselves confronting rumors."
• "Make NO Mistake – Wikipedia is at WAR with the Jews", written by David Collier, was posted on the 22nd of July. The blog post is hosted by The Jewish Press, a 60 year old NYC-based newspaper with >2M online views per month.

Do you want to contribute to "In the media" by writing a story or even just an "in brief" item? Edit next month's edition in the Newsroom or leave a tip on the suggestions page. You may find further information on media coverage of Wikipedia at WP:PRESS 21.

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2021-07-25

See the candidates

By Smallbones

Elections for four community seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees will be held from August 18 through August 31 on Meta. You should be eligible to vote if you have made at least 300 edits before 5 July 2021 across Wikimedia wikis; and have made at least 20 edits between 5 January 2021 and 5 July 2021. Special rules apply to developers, WMF employees, and others. Try the AccountEligibility tool if you are still confused.

The single transferable voting method will be used to tabulate the votes. It's believed this method will favor candidates that have broad support rather than candidates who have intense support from a particular group. Contact your nearest math professor for a simple description of how the method works.

Twenty candidates are running for the four open seats, which will have 3-year terms. How are you going to get enough information to decide which candidates to vote for? The full list of candidates is here with links to lengthy summaries of their qualifications, short essays, and answers to selected questions. But as an experiment this year, the candidates were encouraged to make a short video to introduce themselves. Eight candidates uploaded at least one video, with some providing multiple language versions. Two considerate candidates even provided short versions along with their longer versions. We include these videos below, together with some very basic information taken from the information page for each of the 20 candidates. The order of the list was selected randomly.

But let's start with 36 minutes of about 16 candidates in a ZOOM-style video. (video now deleted at Commons!)

Delay

On August 2, the WMF announced that the election would be delayed "This election was due to open on August 4th. Due to some technical issues with SecurePoll, the election must be delayed by two weeks. This means we plan to launch the election on August 18th, which is the day after Wikimania concludes."

The candidates

Adam Wight

Location: Berlin, Germany, Languages: en-N, es-2; Wikimedian since: 2012; Active wikis: mediawiki, meta.

Gerard Meijssen

Location: (left blank); Languages: English, Dutch;n Wikimedian since: March 2008; Active wikis: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Commons.

Farah Jack Mustaklem

Location: Palestine; Languages: ar-N, en-N, fr-3, he-3, es-2, nl-1; Wikimedian since: 2005; Active wikis: arwiki, enwiki, commons, meta.

Raavi Mohanty

Location: New Delhi, India, Languages: English, Hindi, Oriya, Punjabi, Wikimedian since: 2015, Active wikis: en.Wikipedia, Commons, hi.wikivoyage.org, and 10 other ptojects

Victoria Doronina

Location: Manchester, UK; Languages: Russian, English, Belarusian, Ukrainian; Wikimedian since: 2007; Active wikis: Russian Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Commons, Russian Wiktionary

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight Video in English.

Location: Nevada City, California, United States; Languages: sr-2 (it is my first language but I speak it poorly now), en-N, es-2, fr-2; Wikimedian since: June 2007; Active wikis: English Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata

Ravishankar Ayyakkannu

Location: India, Languages: Tamil, English, Wikimedian since: 2005 Active wikis: Tamil Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikidata, Commons

Ivan Martinez Video in English. See also Spanish.

Location: Mexico City, Mexico; Languages: es-N, en-3, nah-0; Wikimedian since: March 2006; Active wikis: Spanish Wikipedia, Spanish Wikinews, Wikidata, Commons.

Reda Kerbouche Video in English.

Location: Batna, Algeria / St Petersburg, Russia; Languages: arq-N, shy-N, ar-4, fr-4, ru-4, en-3 , de-1; Wikimedian since: 2010; Active wikis: French Wikipedia, Arabic Wikipedia, Tacawit wiktionary (Sysop), Commons.

Douglas Ian Scott Video in English.

Location: Cape Town, South Africa; Languages: en-N, af-2, cmn-2, python, R; Wikimedian since: 2006; Active wikis: English Wikipedia, Commons.

Dariusz Jemielniak Video in English with subtitles. See also English (Spanish subtitles), shorter version.

Location: Warsaw, Poland / Cambridge, MA US; Languages: pl-N, en-4, de-1, ru-1; Wikimedian since: 2007; Active wikis: plwiki, enwiki, Commons.

Ashwin Baindur

Location: Pune, India, Languages: Konkani (first language) (kok-5), fluent in Hindi (hi-4) and Marathi (mr -4), English (near professional) (en-4), German (de-1), Wikimedian since: 26 March 2006, Active wikis: Wikipedia (English), Wikimedia Commons

Pavan Santhosh Surampudi

Location: Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India, Languages: Telugu (Te-N), English (Fluent) (en-4) and Hindi (hi-1), Wikimedian since: December 2013, Active wikis: Telugu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikisource, Commons

Location: Walcourt, Belgium; Languages: French as native, English and Portuguese as good level and all textual world languages through my computer or smartphone ;o); Wikimedian since: June 2008 and very active since early 2011; Active wikis: fr.Wikiversity - fr.Wikipedia - Commons - etc.

Mike Peel

Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain; Languages: en-N, es-1, pt-BR-1, fr-1, python, C; Wikimedian since: 2005; Active wikis: English Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata

Lorenzo Losa Video in English with subtitles. See also Italian, Spanish.

Location: Milano, Italy; Languages: it-N, en-3, es-2; Wikimedian since: April 2004; Active wikis: Italian Wikipedia, Wikidata.

Md. Abdul Ahad Khan

Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh; Languages: English (en-3), Bengali (bn-N), Hindi (hi-2); Wikimedian since: 2018; Active wikis: English Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource.

Vinicius Siqueira

Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Languages: pt-BR-N, pt-5, en-4, es-4; Wikimedian since: 2007; Active wikis: ptwiki, Commons.

Eliane Dominique Yao

Location: Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; Languages: French; Wikimedian since: 2013; Active wikis: Wikipedia

Pascale Camus-Walter Long version video in English. See also short version.

Location: Strasbourg, France; Languages: fr-N, en-3 , de-3; Wikimedian since: 2011; Active wikis: French Wikipedia

Reader comments

2021-07-25

Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

By Tilman Bayer

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

New study claims to have found quantitative proof of gender bias in Wikipedia's deletion processes – but has it?

Almost half a century ago, officials at the University of California, Berkeley became concerned about apparent gender bias against women at their institution's graduate division: 44% of male applicants had been admitted for the fall 1973 term, but only 35% of female applicants – a large and statistically significant difference in success rates. The university asked statisticians to look into the matter. Their findings, published with the memorable subtitle

"Measuring bias is harder than is usually assumed, and the evidence is sometimes contrary to expectation."

became famous for showing that not only did such a disparity not provide evidence for the suspected gender bias, rather, on closer examination, the data in that case even showed "small but statistically significant bias in favor of women" (to quote from the Wikipedia article about the underlying paradox). The Berkeley admissions case has since been taught to generations of students of statistics, to caution against the fallacy that it illustrates.

But not, apparently, to Francesca Tripodi, a sociology researcher at the UNC School of Information and Library Science, who received a lot of attention on social media over the past month (and was interviewed on NPR by Mary Louise Kelly) about a paper published in New Media & Society, titled "Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia". Her summary of one the two main quantitative results mirrors the same statistical fallacy that had tripped up the UC Berkeley officials back in 1973:

"I sought to compare if the overall percentage of biographies about women nominated for deletion each month was proportionate to the available biographies about women. If the nomination process was not being biased by gender, the proportions between these datasets should be roughly the same. [...] From January 2017 to February 2020, the number of biographies about women on English-language Wikipedia rose from 16.83% to 18.25%, yet the percentage of biographies about women nominated for deletion each month was consistently over 25%." [my bolding]

And while Tripodi correctly points out that this overall discrepancy between articles about male and female subjects is statistically significant (just like the one in the Berkeley case), further arguments in the paper veer towards p-hacking (a term for a kind of data misuse that consists of repeating an experiment or measurement multiple times, cherry-picking those outcomes that resulted in a significant result in the expected direction, and dismissing those that did not):

"In January 2017, June 2017, July 2017, and April 2018, women’s biographies were twice as likely as men’s biographies to be miscategorized as non-notable (p < .02 for each month). The statistical significance and the real significance of the observed difference of these findings strongly support the patterns identified during my ethnographic observations. Wikipedians trying to close the gender gap must work nearly twice as hard to prove women’s notability [...] Only once (June 2018) were notable men more frequently miscategorized, but this was not statistically significant (p > .15). Three times over the three-year period my data could not reject the null hypothesis. The proportion of miscategorized biographies was equal between men and women in October 2018, November 2018, and May 2019. However, these proportions were not statistically significant (p > .85)."

Does this mean that disparities such as the one found by Tripodi here can never be evidence of gender bias? Of course not. But (again quoting from the aforementioned Wikipedia article), it requires that "confounding variables and causal relations are appropriately addressed in the statistical modeling" (with several methods being used for this purpose in bias and discrimination research) – something that is entirely lacking from Tripodi's paper. And it is easy to think of several possible confounders that might have a large effect on her analysis.

• For example, the ratio of female article subject among biographies of living people, or those born within, say, the last 50-70 years, is much larger than the ratio among English Wikipedia's biographies as a whole (as would be expected from historical considerations) – and at the same time, it is very plausible that issues of notability are less likely to be settled for living subjects.
• Another plausible confounder is the age of the article itself: More recently created articles are presumably more likely to be scrutinized for notability (for example as part of the New pages patrol) than those that have survived for many years already. And as Tripodi points out herself, "the number of biographies about women on English-language Wikipedia rose from 16.83% to 18.25%" in the timespan analyzed (plausibly at least in part thank to "activists [who] host 'edit-a-thons' to increase the visibility of notable women" and increase this ratio, as highlighted in the paper's abstract). But this indicates that the female ratio of newly created articles was much higher during that time than in the existing article corpus that forms the reference point of Tripodi's headline comparison.

It is also noteworthy that several previous research publications who started from similar concerns as Tripodi (e.g. that the gender gap among editors – which is very well documented across many languages and Wikimedia projects, see e.g. this reviewer's overview from some years ago – would cause a gender bias in content too) but applied more diligent methods, e.g. by attempting to use external reference points as a "ground truth" against which to compare Wikipedia's coverage, ended up with unexpected results:

• Consider, for example, the paper we previously reviewed here: "Notable women "slightly overrepresented" (not underrepresented) on Wikipedia, but the Smurfette principle still holds".
• Or a paper titled "Exploring Systematic Bias through Article Deletions on Wikipedia from a Behavioral Perspective", which started out from the observation that "Malicious forms of bias towards women on Wikipedia has been well-documented in numerous accounts of online harassment" but found contrary to the authors' expectations "that content of supposed interest to men is more likely to be nominated for CSD [which] runs contrary to common ideas regarding biases in content [...] Bluntly, there does not appear to be significant qualitative differences in the rates of AfD or CSD for articles of supposed interest to women compared to articles of supposed interest to men."

To be sure, other papers found evidence for bias in expected directions, for example in the frequency of words used in articles about women. But overall, this shows that Tripodi's conclusions should be regarded with great skepticism.

Tripodi's second quantitative result, the "miscategorization" concept highlighted in the paper's title, is likewise more open to interpretation than the paper would like one to believe. The author found that once nominated for deletion, articles about women have a higher chance of surviving than articles about men. She interprets this as evidence for sexist bias against women (apparently taking the eventual AfD outcome as a baseline, i.e. postulating the English Wikipedia community as a whole as a non-sexist neutral authority against which to evaluate the individual AfD nominator's action). Other researchers have taken the exact opposite approach, where it would have counted as evidence for bias against women when pages about them would be more likely to be deleted than pages about men, e.g. Julia Adams, Hannah Brückner and Cambria Naslund in the paper reviewed here (which also, as Tripodi acknowledges, "found that women academics were not more likely to be deleted" in a sample of 6,323 AfD discussions – in contrast to Tripodi's sample, where women in general were deleted less often than men).

The quantitative results only form part of this mixed methods paper though. In its qualitative part, Tripodi draws from extensive field research, namely

hundreds of hours of ethnographic observations at 15 edit-a-thons from 2016 to 2017. Edit-a-thons are daylong events designed to improve the representation of women on Wikipedia while also providing a safe space for new editors—primarily women—to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia [...]. In addition to edit-a-thons, I also attended two large-scale Wikipedia events, smaller meetups, happy hours, and two regional chapter meetings. In-depth interviews with 33 individuals (23 Wikipedians and 10 new editors) were conducted outside participant observation spaces.

Tripodi's report about the impressions and frustrations shared by these participants are well worth reading. For example:

"In interviews following the event, newcomers said that they enjoyed the process, but would not likely edit on their own because they still found the experience too frustrating. Most had attended the event in the hopes of adding hundreds of women. They were dismayed to learn that adding just part of an article had taken the entire day. Only one person I interviewed recalled their username/password just days following their participation in an edit-a-thon and none of the new editors had added the articles they created to their “watchlist” ..."

Still, even the validity of some of the paper's qualitative observations have been questioned by Wikipedians. For example, Tripodi opens her paper with a misleading summary of the Strickland case:

"On March 7, 2014, a biography for Donna Strickland, the physicist who invented a technology used by all the high-powered lasers in the world, was created on Wikipedia. In less than six minutes, it was flagged for a “speedy deletion” and shortly thereafter erased from the site. This decision is part of the reason Dr. Strickland did not have an active Wikipedia page when she was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics four years later. Despite clear evidence of Dr. Strickland’s professional endeavors, some did not feel her scholastic contributions were notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia biography."

However, this deletion within minutes did not at all rely on examining "evidence of Dr. Strickland’s professional endeavors" – rather, it was done based on the "Unambiguous copyright infringement" speedy deletion criterion, as can be readily inferred from the revision history that Tripodi cites here.

It is worth noting that the author of this deeply flawed paper has testified twice before U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the past, on different but somewhat related matters (bias in search engine results in particular).

Briefly

• See the page of the monthly Wikimedia Research Showcase for videos and slides of past presentations.
• This edition of Recent research/the Wikimedia Research Newsletter marks the tenth anniversary of our inaugural issue. Thank you for reading and contributing over this decade, and consider following the WikiResearch feeds on Twitter, Facebook or Mastodon for more frequent updates – the Twitter account celebrated the milestone of 15,000 followers earlier this month.

Other recent publications

Other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue include the items listed below. Contributions, whether reviewing or summarizing newly published research, are always welcome.

"Wikipedia successfully fended off disinformation" on COVID-19

From the abstract:

"...we asked which sources informed Wikipedia’s growing pool of COVID-19-related articles during the pandemic’s first wave (January-May 2020). We found that coronavirus-related articles referenced trusted media sources and cited high-quality academic research. Moreover, despite a surge in preprints, Wikipedia’s COVID-19 articles had a clear preference for open-access studies published in respected journals and made little use of non-peer-reviewed research up-loaded independently to academic servers. Building a timeline of COVID-19 articles on Wikipedia from 2001-2020 revealed a nuanced trade-off between quality and timeliness, with a growth in COVID-19 article creation and citations, from both academic research and popular media. It further revealed how preexisting articles on key topics related to the virus created a frame-work on Wikipedia for integrating new knowledge. [...] Lastly, we constructed a network of DOI-Wikipedia articles, which showed the landscape of pandemic-related knowledge on Wikipedia and revealed how citations create a web of scientific knowledge to support coverage of scientific topics like COVID-19 vaccine development. [...] Wikipedia successfully fended of disinformation on the COVID-19 [sic]"

"The Influence of Multilingualism and Mutual Intelligibility on Wikipedia Reading Behaviour – A Research Proposal"

From the abstract:

"This article argues for research on the effects of multilingualism and mutual intelligibility on Wikipedia reading behaviour, focusing on the Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Initial exploratory analysis shows that while residents of these countries use the native language editions quite frequently, they rely strongly on English Wikipedia, too."

Using Wikidata to help organize the COVID-19 research literature

From the abstract:

"... the Covid-on-the-Web project aims to allow biomedical researchers to access, query and make sense of COVID-19 related literature. To do so, it adapts, combines and extends tools to process, analyze and enrich the "COVID-19 Open Research Dataset" (CORD-19) that gathers 50,000+ full-text scientific articles related to the coronaviruses. [...] The dataset comprises two main knowledge graphs describing (1) named entities mentioned in the CORD-19 corpus and linked to DBpedia, Wikidata and other BioPortal vocabularies, and (2) arguments extracted using ACTA, a tool automating the extraction and visualization of argumentative graphs, meant to help clinicians analyze clinical trials and make decisions. On top of this dataset, we provide several visualization and exploration tools ..."

"Unveiling the veiled: Wikipedia collaborating with academic libraries in Africa in creating visibility for African women through Art+Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thon"

From the abstract:

From the abstract: "Findings showed that the library has created or edited digital content for various categories of women, such as women in academia, industry and politics. These entries have received more than eight million views over a period of two years, which shows that the entries are being utilised. However, the editing exercise had been confronted with challenges such as accessing reliable citations in terms of the notability and verifiability policy of Wikipedia amongst others."

How much does Wikipedia really diverge from traditional, "authoritative" encyclopedias?

From the abstract:

"Scholarship and journalism about Wikipedia often consider the ways it carries forward, diverges from, or takes to an extreme the various qualities commonly ascribed to encyclopedias. In doing so, it is taken for granted that encyclopedias are authoritative sources of summarized knowledge based on values like accuracy and comprehensiveness, and the question becomes how Wikipedia compares. Through this dissertation, I argue that these commonly held beliefs about encyclopedias are not inherent in the text but the result of centuries of external associations and internal efforts to cultivate a particular kind of authority. Encyclopedias have had close relationships with powerful institutions throughout their history and use a variety of techniques to frame the ways readers should think about them. Furthermore, these cultivated 'encyclopedic virtues' obscure the way that encyclopedists negotiate competing priorities and influences in the knowledge production process. Rather than being perfect, neutral summaries of the world, they often reflect nationalist, religious, or capitalist interests, sometimes even requiring the consent of the powerful in order to be published at all, or in rare cases, they can even prioritize direct critique of those same institutions."

The author is an experienced editor on the English Wikipedia (as User:Rhododendrites) and former longtime employee of the Wiki Education Foundation.

References

Supplementary references and notes:

Reader comments

2021-07-25

Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

By Igordebraga, Mcrsftdog, SSSB, Kingsif

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Mcrsftdog, SSSB, and Kingsif

The grass was greener, the light was brighter (June 20 to 26)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 20 to 26, 2021)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	UEFA Euro 2020		3,826,236		To celebrate 60 years of the European football championship (though in the 61st anniversary due to the pandemic), the tournament was spread across 11 countries – including Romania, whose national team didn't qualify, and 3 of the 6 squads who crashed in the group stage, namely Scotland, Hungary and Russia. And now it's time for the knockout stages to have its victims.
2	John McAfee		2,276,607		Did you know the creator of McAfee VirusScan was a larger-than-life character who had many brushes with the law? And indeed, McAfee was incarcerated in a Spanish prison when he apparently hanged himself, hours after the local authorities authorized his extradition back to the United States to face tax evasion charges. The Internet is already making an "Epstein didn't kill himself" out of his death.
3	Critical race theory		1,067,224		School boards around the United States are filled with talk about "critical race theory," a specific academic field that, to some eyes, encompasses everything from The 1619 Project to white genocide. In Washoe County, Nevada, parents even proposed equipping teachers with body cams to prevent the dastardly CRT.
4	Britney Spears		893,108		The pop star has been under a conservatorship since a highly publicized episode in 2008. Despite being thirty-nine years old, her parents have control over her finances, and she had to politely ask in court for permission to remove an IUD. A Wednesday court hearing, wherein Spears read a statement detailing her conservatorship, has transformed the online "free Britney" movement from Marina Joyce-style conspiracy into a disability rights movement—disabled people often have to deal with conservatorship.
5	Cristiano Ronaldo		862,066		Ronaldo continues his campaign to make Portugal the second team to win consecutive titles at #18, (Spain being the first with wins in '08 and '12). On his match on June 23, he equalled the record for most international goals. His team play the number 1 ranked team (Belgium) in the next round, on June 27 (just after this report's cut-off).
6	Deaths in 2021		856,530		To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die To die by your side Well the pleasure and the privilege is mine
7	Loki (TV series)		771,341		Marvel Comics' interpretation of the Norse god of mischief was portrayed by Tom Hiddleston in the movies, and people loved it. And Loki now stars in his Disney+ own show, where he jumps around time and space in pursuit of a criminal screwing with history (said criminal is Loki, in female form). And Loki seems intent on matching predecessor WandaVision in leaving viewers confused (if not frustrated at finishing episodes on cliffhangers...) and inspiring massive speculation every week from fans.
8	Carl Nassib		756,106		Nassib, defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders, came out as gay on June 21; he is the first active NFL player to do so.
9	F9 (film)		736,803		A few weeks after its international debut, the ninth – technically tenth – Fast & Furious hit North American theaters. The film also marks the long-awaited (if only sarcastically) moment where the series goes to space (!).
10	Matt Hancock		682,227		A Secretary of State for Health and Social Care breaking social distancing rules by kissing someone? Well, everyone is allowed to err once. But not when he did so in an extramarital affair, escalating this to full-blown scandal and leading to Hancock's resignation.

Alive and kicking (June 27 to July 3)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 27 to July 3, 2021)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	UEFA Euro 2020		2,920,042		In the time since the last report and this one, the last-16 and quarter finals are complete, with some shocks. Firstly, Czechia beat the Netherlands. But then, the reigning world champions were knocked out by Switzerland. In the other matches, Belgium beat Portugal, Ukraine beat Sweden, England beat Germany and Spain beat Croatia (with some dramatic comebacks along the way). Of these teams, England, Denmark, Italy and Spain have made it through to the semi-finals.
2	Loki (TV series)		949,996		Disney+'s show about Thor's deceptive adoptive brother continues to air weekly, while also ending episodes in just the right way to make viewers spend the following 6 days wondering what happened and what will follow.
3	The Tomorrow War		845,059		In another one of those movies that got screwed out of a theatrical release due to the pandemic (Prime Video picked it up), the 2022 FIFA World Cup final is interrupted by people arriving from the future to warn us that mankind will become nearly extinct by aliens and they want help, leading Chris Pratt to jump forward in time to fight alongside the grown-up version of his daughter.
4	Deaths in 2021		833,746		Who knew the other side of you? Who knew that others died to prove? Too true to say goodbye to you Too true to say, say, say
5	UEFA European Championship		832,438		The latest edition (#1) will end next Sunday. And of the four semifinalists, only England have never won before.
6	Emma Raducanu		812,282		Raducanu made her WTA debut at the 2021 Nottingham Open, and gained a wildcard entry into Wimbledon. Ranked 333 in the world she proceeded to beat Vitalia Diatchenko, Markéta Vondroušová and Sorana Cîrstea (ranked 137, 41 and 54 respectivly) to make it into the fourth round. With this result she is guaranteed to make it into the top 200. She's also the youngest British woman to reach Wimbledon's last 16, a good relief for the country's tennis after Johanna Konta withdrew due to COVID concerns.
7	F9 (film)		808,866		Vin Diesel and co. driving fast cars for the ninth time has broken half a billion worldwide to become Hollywood's highest-grossing movie of the year. Let's see how much gas it has left, as a Russian racer arrives this week to make the race tighter.
8	Bill Cosby		729,750		The former innovative comedian turned convicted rapist was released after his judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania due to violations of due process rights, as they remembered that a non-prosecution agreement had been struck between Cosby and a former District Attorney.
9	Cristiano Ronaldo		726,449		Last week I reported that Ronaldo was attempting to take his team to consecutive European Championships. This week I get to report that he failed. To make matters worse he failed to score against Belgium, meaning he still has to share the record for most international goals. His next chance to get the outright record comes against Republic of Ireland (September 1), a game in which his team are the clear favourites.
10	Raj Kaushal		699,144		Bollywood lost this director, producer and stunt director who died at 49 of a heart attack.

Red blooded women, it's too hot inside (July 4 to 10)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 4 to 10, 2021)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Dilip Kumar		2,517,717		This storied Bollywood actor and producer, spending over 50 years championing his industry, passed away on Wednesday. One of the few Bollywood stars to earn mainstream recognition outside India, but the pageviews coming from such a big country surely did the heavy lifting here.
2	Black Widow (2021 film)		1,920,846		Due to the pandemic, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had to skip 2020. And now it has returned to theaters with Natasha Romanoff fighting a personal war between the Civil and Infinity wars. Like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it's a spy thriller as much as a superhero movie (but with much more fake Russian accents). In any case, it provides a fun experience while introducing Natasha's successor and should be making some money and getting some Wikipedia views during its run.
3	UEFA Euro 2020		1,559,343		In this week's semi-finals, Italy defeated Spain and England defeated Denmark. On Sunday, Italy will face England at Wembley Stadium; this will be the second time (since 1996) that England has hosted the UEFA Euro finals, and the first time they've actually played in said match. Remember the last European contest, which Italy won and England lost? Perhaps fortunately for England, there's no popular vote this time.
4	The Tomorrow War		1,139,779		Yes, the summer blockbuster has truly returned, even if you'll be watching this one on streaming. It's... well, it exists. There's the internet's least-favorite Avenger in it. So, yeah. Movies.
5	Ashleigh Barty		1,117,914		Two years after her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, this Australian tennis player got her second championship by beating Karolína Plíšková at Wimbledon.
6	Loki (TV series)		1,044,964		Only one episode left, and no one knows what to expect, especially when the last one had an alligator version of Loki!
7	Deaths in 2021		890,837		They built you a temple and locked you away Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay For things that you might have done Only the Good Die Young
8	UEFA European Championship		881,069		Happens every 4 (well) years, the 2020 (one year late) installment (#3) ramped up this week.
9	Jovenel Moïse		872,387		The president of Haiti was assassinated on Wednesday. According to the Haitian government, the assassins are a group of foreign mercenaries—mostly Colombian, but joined by two Floridians. Moïse had previously been the center of a constitutional crisis, refusing to step down from the Presidency.
10	Emma Raducanu		836,533		In the quarterfinals, #5 beat compatriot Ajla Tomljanović, who had just defeated this young British player. She'd entered as a wild card, something the home country are wont to do, even though tennis isn't as nationalistic as a certain other sport, and has quickly become a national treasure since making it to the singles fourth round is the furthest a British woman has gone in the Open era (sorry, Jo). Though she had to retire ill, given Raducanu is just 18, hopefully it's the start of a victorious career.

It's Marvel's world, we're only living in it (July 11 to 17)

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 11 to 17, 2021)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes/about
1	Black Widow (2021 film)		1,640,488		It's hard to be a superheroine: the CEO doesn't believe their solo movies will be profitable, said production is only greenlit as they are filming another movie where the character dies, and then one month before the premiere a global pandemic closes theaters everywhere. Yet Natasha Romanoff finally got her day in the limelight, and got good reviews and box office (even if in the latter's case, there's the alternative of shelling out $30 to watch at home), no matter if many fans objected to how the movie includes popular villain Taskmaster only to make it barely resemble the comics version.
2	Loki (TV series)		1,367,459		Still on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone's favorite Asgardian villain saw his Disney+ show end in the most teasing if not downright frustrating way possible: on a cliffhanger while announcing there will be a season 2! Said season finale also introduced what will possibly be the next overarching villain of the MCU, a 31st century multiversal conqueror, even if disguised by both referring to Kang as 'He Who Remains' and making him Black instead of blue.
3	Kang the Conqueror		1,337,907
4	UEFA Euro 2020		1,260,242		The finals of two continent-wide association football tournaments were played this week. In Europe, Italy beat England, foiling the latter's dreams of it coming home. To make matters worse, the loss was due to a penalty shootout—the same reason England had lost the semi-finals in 1996. In South America, Argentina beat their longtime rivals in Brazil.
5	Copa América		1,211,256
6	Richard Branson		1,142,708		If you work a shitty job with no benefits on a planet that is both on fire and underwater, you might stop and ask yourself: what is this all for? The answer: funding a billionaire space race. Jeff Bezos was set to personally enter space on July 20, but as soon as this was announced, Branson decided that he wanted to be in space before Bezos. The Virgin Galactic Unity 22 launched on July 11, went to the lowest point that could implausibly be called "space," and landed forty minutes later.
7	Novak Djokovic		1,047,457		The record of Grand Slam titles held by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was tied by this Serbian once he won Wimbledon. Maybe later this month Djokovic can do what he couldn't five years ago, show all his prowess at the Olympic Games instead of crashing and burning?
8	UEFA European Championship		1,046,210		The quadrennial (aside from #4, which had to wait an extra year) European football tournament of nations. Ten teams have won, including the now defunct Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Italy got its second instead of allowing England to become the eleventh.
9	Lionel Messi		917,978		Argentina's second best footballer ever finally won something with the national team, namely #5 – and Brazil didn't care about losing to him! (in normal conditions, losing to your arch-enemy at home is a national tragedy; but when the government shows very skewed priorities, making little of a pandemic that took half a million lives while jumping in at the opportunity of hosting a football championship, the populace can do the unthinkable and turn their backs on the team)
10	Space Jam: A New Legacy		877,696		The 2021 NBA Finals are on the way, and yet people were more interested in fictional basketball, as LeBron James copies his idol Michael Jordan and stars in a movie alongside Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes. And instead of being an informal Nike ad, A New Legacy is a literal HBO Max promo showcasing all the properties owned by Warner Bros., including family-unfriendly fare such as Game of Thrones and Mad Max – and to think Pepé Le Pew was cut for being problematic, but a gang of rapists and a nymphomaniac nun get courtside seats!

Exclusions

• These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

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2021-07-25

Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

By Elena Lappen

James Baldwin. Photo credit:Myleen Hollero / Wikimedia Foundation / CC BY-SA 3.0

This interview of James Baldwin by Elena Lappen was originally published in Diff as Foundation 360: Uncapping our growth potential. Interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department on June 24, 2021 (edited for clarity and length by Diff). The Foundation 360 series on Diff profiles important work happening at the Wikimedia Foundation, and the people behind it. It is licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0

James Baldwin, Director of Finance, is always among the best dressed people at the Wikimedia Foundation offices in San Francisco. Often the first to arrive and the last to leave, he somehow manages to keep his demeanor calm and his button-down wrinkle-free while solving complex problems hurled at him from all teams at all times.

He has been keeping his shirt pressed since 2016, when he had his first finance job as a contracts negotiator for an Aboriginal community in the arid bushland of Pilbara, Australia. The contracts he works on today may be different from the ones he negotiated between that community and the mining companies operating on their land, but he brings that experience, and his passion for social impact, with him.

In the middle of one of his regularly overscheduled workdays, James made time to talk to us about what being part of the Wikimedia movement means to him, and how the Finance and Administration Department's work feeds the movement more than you might think.

Q: James, You have been at the Wikimedia Foundation since 2016. What keeps you here?

JB: As a numbers person, I am always thinking about the scale of the impact of Wikimedia. It's just so massive. No matter how many times I think about it, I can never wrap my head what it means to get over 15 billion monthly page views. It's just a number I can't conceptualize. It's mind boggling, and it's humbling.

As finance people, we often get associated with Wolf of Wall Street types. Most people would probably be surprised to know how many finance professionals are out there that really do care about social good. Those of us working in finance at the Foundation could really be doing this work anywhere, but we are here because we are driven by impact.

Q: The Finance and Administration Department has a number of different functions. It seems like all impact the movement, either directly or indirectly, even though people might not be aware of that. Can you tell us about each function?

JB: There are five buckets within Finance and Administration: Financial Strategy, Operations, and Compliance, as well as Information Technology Services, and Administration. Strategy oversees how we use our resources in service of our mission outcomes. Within Strategy, we work to provide finance consulting to the Grantmaking Team and directly to affiliate grantees. Operations powers the operational infrastructure of the Foundation like accounting, procurement billing, payroll, expense reports, and we do it for the movement as well through Grants Administration and processing grants through Accounting. Compliance is all the work related to keeping our 501(c)(3) (non-profit) status, which is critical to our movement's ability to continue to receive funding–if no one can donate, we can't fund anything! We also extend our compliance expertise to the movement by giving guidance to affiliate grantees on receiving funds from us in their countries, down to the most complicated cases. Internal Information Technical Services and Administration may not seem related to the movement upon first glance, but even they do work that supports the movement. They are in charge of running the laptop donation program to give used laptops to volunteers, and are in charge of booking all travel for community members that get scholarships to attend Foundation-coordinated events. So you can see why, for mission and impact-driven finance professionals, the Foundation would be a really engaging place to work.

Q: That's a lot of different functions! Help us out: can you give us a sound bite about the work that Finance and Administration does in support of the larger movement?

JB: We make sure that the Wikimedia Foundation maintains our status as a charitable organization so that we can accept donations to fund free knowledge. We do this according to best practices in our sector, which is how we continue to receive a top 4-star Charity Navigator rating. We ensure that we can pay the cost of the servers and other critical infrastructure so that knowledge on our projects is available anytime, anywhere. And we make sure we can send millions of dollars to community groups across the globe – $15.6 million next year, an increase of over 90% from this year – while giving as equitable access as possible to those funds to groups in different countries.

That last point of the sound bite is important and it is sometimes overlooked. We have grantees all over the world, each with their own national situations. As a US-based organization, we can send funds to almost anywhere in the world. Issues that generally arise are a result of the grantee not being able to receive those funds in their countries, or the funds being severely affected by local inflation. We work closely with grantees to set them up to receive funding from us, and to make any necessary adjustments based on inflation that allow our contributions to be meaningful. This is a whole body of work, and, without it, we would not be able to make sure that grantees and potential future grantees have equitable access to resources. There are some exceptions, of course, and we are always looking for ways to reduce the number of exceptions, but for the most part we are able to resolve issues and get the movement groups the funding they need to do their work.

Q: What's one impact you were proud of contributing to this past year?

JB: The Community Resources team put together a new grants strategy with communities this year, and I was part of figuring out the financial side of that. Historically, we had been looking at grants data through the lens of programs: how much money goes towards the Annual Plan Grant program, versus the Rapid Grants program, versus the Project Grants program. We helped the Community Resources team slice the data to look at regions, to understand where the money is being sent. We saw immediately a big gap between what is being spent in the North Atlantic areas and the rest of the globe. So we asked, “What would it take to bridge that gap? What could we do to increase spending in these communities, without negatively impacting the grantees in regions with more access?”

We were able to use that data to build a big increase in our grants budget next year. We are increasing the budget by over $7 million (approximately 95%), with the majority going to grantees in underserved regions. This will help us significantly decrease the gap in funding without negatively impacting current grant recipients. From a compliance standpoint, we also looked at what the operational barriers were in the grants process. We found ways of reducing reporting requirements for grantees to make them more efficient and trust-based.

Q: How do you think the Wikimedia world will be different as a result of these changes?

JB: I think these shifts will better reflect where we are as a movement. It will help us match our resourcing with the intentions of Movement Strategy by funding people across the movement to lead initiatives that serve those goals. Our grant programs hadn't evolved in a long time, and it's always challenging to change how funding is allocated. There is so much inertia when funding processes have been built up over time. To change that requires a lot of will and conviction, and an appetite to think differently, which can be rare. I was glad to see that conviction from Community Resources in Advancement and from the Finance and Administration Department. I think, as a movement, we're going to uncap a lot of potential in areas that are growing, and we're going to accelerate that growth. In Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific, for example, we see a lot of active affiliates already there that haven't really gotten the resources to grow. Ten to fifteen years ago, the European chapters grew pretty quickly, and now we will have the structures and resources in place to help affiliates in these regions do that, too. It is going to be an important time for the movement, and I'm excited to see how we work together to unlock new possibilities.

Read more about the new grants strategy on Meta.

Reader comments

2021-07-25

A little verse

By Ganesha811 & Isaacl

Two rhymes in jest.

The Co-Founder's Lament

There once was a learnèd philosopher,
Who was hired as Nupedia's first officer,
But over the years,
His hopes turned to fears,
"Expert must never lag amateur!"

But now the co-founder's lament,
Has hardened his heart to cement,
He publishes jeers,
He sees puppeteers,
"It's biased one hundred percent!"

Quatrain for An IP With Only One Edit

Out from the vast eternal Web they stretched a helping hand,
As ants with grains of sand help build beyond their own short span,
Just like a relay runner passing on the track baton,
Ten dot three dot two dot one writes "This should be 'an', not 'and' :-)"

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