On Wednesday 27 March, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, announced that she plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine, and one of only two women running a top-10 internet player, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
Shortly after her announcement, Foundation board deputy chair Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: "As a board member I will forever be grateful that she was willing to bet on a small organization with a lot of potential [and built on that potential] to make it one of the most powerful examples in the space of open knowledge and learning." Gardner's departure will not be immediate: the recruitment and transition are expected to take some six months, and she says she will be fully engaged in the job until a new person is in place.
Under her leadership, the WMF has undergone fundamental changes. In 2007, it spent only $3.5 million. By 2012, this had risen to an annual $22.3 million, the year in which a five-country fundraiser netted $25 million in just nine days. Over the same period, the Foundation has expanded beyond a simple server-supporting organization, funding programs from education to GLAM opportunities. The WMF itself was transplanted from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco and has expanded from fewer than 10 employees to 160—of these, 100 have arrived over the past two years.
The ex-CBC producer cites two reasons for her decision. "First, the movement and the Wikimedia Foundation are in a strong place now. ... If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't feel okay to leave. In that sense, my leaving is a vote of confidence in our Board and executive team and staff." Her second reason may give the movement pause: "although we’re in good shape, ... the same isn’t true for the internet itself. Increasingly, I’m finding myself uncomfortable about how the internet’s developing, who’s influencing its development, and who is not." She says, "Wikipedia has experienced censorship at the hands of industry groups and governments", and that increasingly we are "seeing important decisions made by unaccountable non-transparent corporate players, a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens".
When I joined, the Foundation was tiny and not yet able to reliably support the projects. Today it's healthy, thriving, and a competent partner to the global network of Wikimedia volunteers
— Sue Gardner
This is driving her towards a new role—"one very much aligned with Wikimedia values and informed by my experiences here, and with the purpose of amplifying the voices of people advocating for the free and open internet." While Gardner has not yet decided the exact trajectory of her next career phase, she "feels strongly that this is what I need to do."
"Until then, nothing changes. The Wikimedia Foundation has lots of work to do, and you can expect me to focus fully on it until we have a new Executive Director in place."
The Foundation board, which will be ultimately responsible for appointing the new executive director, has established a transition team consisting of board member Jan-Bart de Vreede (who will chair the team); chair of the board and community-elected trustee Kat Walsh; chapter-selected trustee Alice Wiegand (also a member of the HR Committee); Sue Gardner; her deputy, Erik Moeller; WMF General Counsel Geoff Brigham; and Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Gayle Karen Young. An outside recruitment firm will be engaged to assist in the task.
Jan-Bart de Vreede says the team will meet informally over the next few weeks, and will conduct its first first physical meeting in mid-April in Milan as part of the Wikimedia Conference, after which he will release a status report. Members of the movement are welcome to attend office hours on Saturday 30 March at 18:00 UTC, and Jan-Bart de Vreede can also talk about the matter on the list. He will set up corresponding pages on Meta over the next few days and community members are strongly encouraged to share their views there in due course.
The Signpost invites its readers' views on what talents should be looked for in a new executive director on the talk page, on Facebook, or through tweeting @wikisignpost.
German-language Wikipedians are in the vanguard of an effort to close down Wikimedia sister project Wikinews, the latest in a series of closure movements over the past few years.
The current discussion, which is currently being debated on Meta—the coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement—began from a discussion on the talk page of the Signpost's German-language cousin, the Kurier, which has been published since 2003; its motto is "not necessarily neutral [and] not encyclopedic". The newsletter recently ran a story on the future of Wikiversity, the site that is "devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university." In comments on the talk page, discussion quickly turned to Wikinews; a day later, the debate moved to Meta.
Wikinews has had a controversial history within the Wikimedia movement. Various language versions have been proposed for closure over the last several years, including in 2011, in 2012—where the English-language Wikinews was contentiously kept open—and in 2013. Additionally, several individuals have argued that Wikipedia covers recent news better than Wikinews—essentially stating that it beats its sister project at its own mission—including the Nieman Journalism Lab in 2010.
The English-language Wikinews has seen perhaps the greatest amount of controversy despite its small number of editors. A Signpost report documenting a fork of Wikinews in 2011 put the number at just two dozen active editors, not all of whom published articles. This number is most likely not aided by the project's editorial atmosphere, which has been described as "hostile". The fork, named OpenGlobe, was a direct result of this and Wikinews' complicated publishing process; it took nine of Wikinews' two dozen editors. Over time, OpenGlobe lost editors due to real life issues, leading to its end in August of last year.
Today, the English Wikinews still ranks as among the top language Wikinews sites. The report card reveals that the site has just 17 active editors, with four being "highly active", correlating to five or more and 100 or more edits per month, respectively. The number of new articles per month, a key barometer in a news-geared site, has slowly declined from a high of over 400 in April 2005 to below 50 today.
In contrast, the Russian Wikinews has seen recent success, with over 250 new articles being created in January 2013. However, the Russian and French Wikinews sites are the only ones with over 100 articles created in a single month in 2013; the Serbian Wikinews may also fall in this category, but the report card does not cover it.
The Meta debate has included many of these arguments and has a statistical analysis of all active or semi-active Wikinews projects. In a related discussion, Liliana stated:
| “ | Wikinews is flawed by its very definition. Normally, the wiki principle dictates that content with time grows and becomes better by gathering information from secondary sources (or, in the case of Wikibooks, first-hand knowledge). However, this principle doesn't work for Wikinews. News by definition are current and their value diminishes with time. There is no reason why anyone would want to use Wikinews when the big news portals are much more up-to-date and have much more content. Given that we have no correspondents across the world who are able to directly write reports on what's happening, we are forced to copy from the other news portals, which makes us pretty much useless. ... Wikinews across the board has failed completely as a WMF project. It may be relaunched at a later date, but then there would need to be a proper plan on how to get a constant stream of news going so we can establish ourselves as a useful news source. I fail to see anything like that in our current Wikinews projects. |
” |
Those in support of Wikinews, such as odder, have focused on a perceived lack of Wikimedia Foundation support for Wikinews:
| “ | Let me also just point out that the costs of keeping Wikinews — all its language versions — alive, as compared to the English Wikipedia, are negligible. No current WMF employee works with the Wikinews community, and the number of page views, the size of the database, etc. of all Wikinews language editions is much smaller than of the English Wikipedia alone. Seeing that the Foundation focuses the vast majority of its resources on that single wiki — especially employee time, which is the most expensive of all — the financial argument being brought up above doesn't seem in touch with the reality. | ” |
Still, as Gestumblindi says in the Meta debate, "A small random selection of (mostly) retold news is not a news site." Should the various-language Wikinews sites be closed? The Signpost encourages our readers to post their thoughts on the talk page.
Discuss this story
Sue Gardner leaving
Sue Gardner has done a lot of great work from what I have read over the years.
I think this comment of hers merits a lot of thought: "a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens". It is happening on Wikipedia too. The main problem in my opinion is the walled garden at Meta-Wiki.
Please move Meta-Wiki to the Wikimedia Commons. The Commons is the place far more people go to and watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am looking forward to hearing about next steps, best wishes! FYI, the article's link to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Education_Program is no longer active and I believe should point to http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grantbow (talk • contribs) 15:57, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WikiNews
I think WikiNews could work for Wikicomunity as a central of what is going on just like signpost which includes news from other sister project but is held inside wikipedia. I'm not sure if meta is the right place to such information but wikinews could be used perfectly (IMHO) to this missicn: A central mission of what is going on inside wiki comuunity in all projects. About arguments I read here, I agree that news don't grow over time such kind of fails about the wiki process. Regards!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 16:15, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Serbian Wikinews
Signpost journalistic standards on display
Wonderful! It is fantastic to see that the Signpost bothered for non-neutral reporting, where verifiability is not even on the agenda. Well, despite one or two of the contributors to the signpost obvious vendetta against the project (because they could never get their work published on Wikinews because they wouldn't know neutral and verifiable if it reached over and bit them in the ass), it is extremely highly unlikely that the Foundation will close the project. Let's see the Signpost editors try to meet Wikinews standards for reporting in their next update. (hint: it will never happen.) --LauraHale (talk) 01:54, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make it very clear
To Nemo and Laura Hale, yes, I did suggest specifying the authorships, but this might have been lost in the hefty last-minute job of editing that was left to Ed, who like other Signpost journalists is exceptionally busy at the moment. Now that I've returned from a brief trip, with very bad connectivity, I'll do what I'd always intended: declare that I had nothing to do with the WN story; this was on purpose, since to have been involved would have breached our standards of neutrality and played into the hands of those who are keen to see bad faith. Sorry, we have to disappoint you on this occasion. But it's good to see that you both read the story. I haven't yet read it myself, and will soon. It was rather generous of Ed to put my name first: he did most of the work for this week's "News and notes". Tony (talk) 12:40, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of support
Of course Wikinews – as most other Wikimedia projects do – lacks of support by the foundation. But worse: they do not just only not give support but indeed the WMF does not have any idea how to promote Wikinews, Wikibooks or Wikiversity. For instance, about ten months ago we asked, after the question was discussed in the German wikinews pressroom, how the foundation sees the legal circumstances concerning a change the configuration for the German Wikinews so that if an image is not available locall< the fall-back source was first the German Wikipedia and only after that Commons. There are images like logos or freedom of panorama works which are legal within the U.S. and Germany but can't be uploaded to the Commons for other reasons. The last news from Frisco was they'll tell us within ten days. That was ten months ago. Another thing was when I requested a feature like the gadget which helps to include citations, three years ago or so, just a short time after the Cite drop down was implemented here in the English Wikipedia. It is just boring to copy and paste title, URL and date from the source you're using while a smart browser widget similar to the since Firefox 3.0 not continued add-on WPCITE.xpi could save work and time. I don't have a clue how to code such a gadget but I think a professional could finish this within half an hour if so long at all. I never heard from the so-called "usability initiative". And like this, most of the Wikmedia projects other than Wikipedia do need just some little tricks to dealing better with the fact that MediaWiki wasn't developped for writing a newspaper or a book but we're don't get anything. We don't know where to ask, who to ask and still if we ask we wait for answers months and years. As a German Wikinews editor for five years and sysop for three years I know that Wikinews is serious business. But does the foundation know as well? --Matthiasb (talk) 22:02, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Should never have split from wikipedia
If I remember my history correctly, wikinews was formed as topics currently in the news received lots of attention from editors here. So it was decided to fork this off to its own site. I always though this was a problematic fork for a number of reasons: it created a divide between wikipedia editors and wikinews editors, separate log ins enhanced this split you could not easily go from editing a history article to a current event. This split created specialist journalist editors as opposed to the generalists on wikipedia. The other big problem was visibility, as the news site didn't have the en.wikipedia.org domain name the outside would simply didn't find the site, the domain name was the most valuable asset and we threw that away. There are numerous examples of current event articles receiving lots of edits here, and for some stories wikipedia can be the best source there is, so the concept of a wiki-news articles can work, but it needs to be part of a bigger pool of editors on a high visibility site. I'd propose creating a [[News:]] namespace here and merging the site back in.--Salix (talk): 13:24, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Benefits of Wikinews
I've read in this page that Wikinews is useless. Well, we can discuss about which of the current Wikinews edition is good or bad, and how they can be improved. But I strongly believe that it's a very relevant format and should be strengthened.
Having actual journalists who cover events, search for news and do interviews would be amazing, and I hope that we eventually do that. Doing just rehashes of press agancy pieces isn't so great, I agree. But Wikinews can get much better articles than that, even without professionals.
Most of current news articles have the format "somebody said something". Once a news company has journalists, it's cheap, their journalists put a microphone in front of people, ask them questions, and publish the answers. News isn't just that: it requires to describe the context in a historic perspective, compare opinions of different people, etc. We can do that. I've done that with a few articles on motorsport this past March. The news could be written in two sentences, but I wrote several paragraphs about the rest of the story. It takes quite a bit more effort, but it's worth it.
One of the arguments is that the wiki format is meant for things that grow over time, whereas news are finished once they are released. That's true. But I disagree that news are useless after a few hours or days. News articles are useful to see how people thought back then. So, the news about a politician getting elected president will describe the political context at that time. A Wikipedia article would be rewritten over and over, so when you read the latest version, you have a different perspective. It's good to have the original one too. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:22, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikinews is a failed project
Wikinews cannot cover even major news stories to any depth, and its hostile environment means that very, very few editors work on it.
The only reason it still exists is because Wikimedia lacks any real way to shut down vanity projects, which can mobilise a few supporters to "snowball" polls before anyone else can come in. The project itself has to be notified - which seems fair enough, except that no other projects have to be, so the votes are skewed to the few people that actually put up with the site.
Wikinews should have died years ago. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia Armenia
Hi,
as far as I can see Wikimedia Armenia is the 39th chapter and not the 40th, as Wikimedia Kenya was disapproved some months ago. Regards, --Jcornelius (talk) 22:48, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]