Wikimedia Foundation elections/Board elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/2: Difference between revisions

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

Long term planning is the most important form of planning, and with that in mind, I am 1000% in favor of an endowment. Over the long haul, an endowment will significantly impact Wikimedia's ability to do business, particularly in down years. Significant money should be independently raised for an endowment, and if necessary, it is preferable to slightly stunt current growth in favor of the future security offered by an endowment.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

I do not see endowment as requirement for next few years - building an endowment would require way more aggressive fundraising - and more resources would have to be spent on actual fund management, and now it may be more efficient to direct those resources to other parts of organization. Growing our platform, volunteers, relations, connections - it all is investment too, that can yield good returns too. We will eventually grow our own alumni, which may be great contributing force to endowment, but at the moment we rely on small contributions, which scale with the mindshare. Once we reach mindshare saturation - then different kind of financial planning might be needed.

Also, we're still quite agile organization, which may scale down certain projects in case of financial problems. We are in somewhat uncharted lands, and endowment would commit us to certain way of financial planning way too early.

Of course, we may consider endowment as restricted funding option - if any grant makers are ready to switch from institutional funding to endowment building.

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Excellent question, Jeremy. I am very cautious about the need for a Wikimedia Foundation endowment fund at this time. For the past couple of years, the Foundation has been socking away money in a "rainy day" bank account, in excess of annual expenditures. So, thus far, security against future fundraising shortfalls would seem to be a weak argument for an endowment. Endowment funds are tricky things. Outlays from the fund are restricted; typically, only the interest gained from the principal may be spent. Furthermore, only a portion of the earnings from the endowment are spent annually, to help assure that the original capital will continue to grow over time. Donors who direct gifts to an endowment fund are almost always more "hands on" in making sure their gift is shepherded ethically and responsibly.

An unfortunate but true side-effect of having a large endowment (no giggling, children) is that the WMF may be criticized for having one, or too large of one. Annual giving could erode if too many potential donors begin to view the endowment as alleviating the need for more funds. Smaller non-profits (like Wikimedia) are often criticized for not spending the lion's share of funds on current needs. Grant-making organizations might even pass over an organization that already has significant endowment capital.

Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but the Wikimedia Foundation needs to stop practices like underspending the Technology budget by 65%, and dealing Stanton Fund gift money directly to the privately-held company (Wikia, Inc.) of the Foundation's founding trustee, before it even dares consider launching an endowment fund campaign!

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Ting Chen (Wing)

It depends on which kind of endowment. I am against any incentive programs that is initiated by the Foundation to encourage edits. I know that Hoodong does that, actually Hoodong Baike is almost entirely driven by incentives. But this is not the way of Wikimedians. We have a mission, and that is FREE knowledge, not incentive driven knowledge. What I would support is programs that can benefit us on fields where we need help. One such field is for example research. I would support endowment on research projects about Wikimedia projects, its outreach, its development, its community, our image in the public. We need to know a lot about ourselves, but good studies are rare.

Adam Koenigsberg (CastAStone)

I don't particularly have a problem with taking a timeout from an article to cover all of our bases. This is how I read the OFFICE dictum. It is temporary, I think that that is the key to it. I don't love it, however, I do not foresee it causing a long term conflict with the object of the encyclopaedia projects, which is of course to build the sum of all human knowledge, in every language. As to POV issues, if WP:OFFICE leads to the removal of notable, well sourced material, I think that the community will be right to take issue with that. I do not expect that to happen.

Beauford Anton Stenberg (B9 hummingbird hovering)

Brady Brim-DeForest (Bradybd)

Dan Rosenthal (Swatjester)

Domas Mituzas (Midom)

Our General Counsel suggests that we should do as few as possible 'office actions' - and I support him. It is not much of an issue lately, and I think that foundation should always try to have best possible dialogue between community and staff - and have bidirectional support on all the issues, that previously required unilateral actions. This is definitely scaled down activity from few years ago, and I think that everyone involved now is happier :)

Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)

Gregory Kohs (Thekohser)

Wikimedia "office actions" are exceedingly rare, and even more so when executed by Trustees lacking the surname "Wales". Thus, without any offense to the person asking the question, I am struggling to see the merit of providing anything more than the following response: if you trust the Board member to take care of more than $6 million of your money, then you ought to trust that the Board member will exercise an appropriate balance between caution and action when faced with questionable or illegal Wikimedia content that happens to be drawing complaints.

José Gustavo Góngora (Góngora)

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (Cimon Avaro)

Kat Walsh (mindspillage)

Kevin Riley O'Keeffe (KevinOKeeffe)

Lourie Pieterse (LouriePieterse)

Ralph Potdevin (Aruspice)

Relly Komaruzaman (Relly Komaruzaman)

Samuel Klein (Sj)

Steve Smith (Sarcasticidealist)

I do not believe that office actions of the sort that you describe should be limited to the WMF's counsel, but I do believe that they should be limited to persons holding some sort of executive role in the WMF, which Trustees do not. Trustees should not have any privileged position in on-project edits.

Thomas Braun (Redlinux)

Ting Chen (Wing)

From all "office actions" in the last year that I am aware of or I was involved in I can say that they are carried out very sensitively and very carefully. They are all justified. I handled such a case in the last year because we received a letter from a lawyer of a hongkongnese company. The staff member asked me if the accusation is correct. I checked the article on zh-wp, found that the section that was mentioned in the letter was without citation and not reliable. I informed the user who put the passage in on his or her talk page, informed the community through village pump and the administrators through the Skype chatroom and removed the section. Part of the section was put in later again with sources and citations by other users. I don't see in such cases the staff abused their power in any way. Naturally, your concern is legitimate. I can only assure you that our staff is in awareness of their responsibility and the trustees take their control duty very seriously.