Wikimedia Germany asks for "reworking" of Funds Dissemination Committee; should MP4 be allowed on Wikimedia sites?

Wikimedia Germany (WMDE), the largest national affiliate, has authored an extensive critique of the Funds Dissemination Committee's process for issuing funding recommendations for the various large organizations in the movement.

The FDC is a major component in the Foundation’s global grantmaking apparatus, within the organization's annual plan grants. Composed entirely of volunteers and supported by WMF staff, the FDC makes recommendations to the Foundation's Board of Trustees on funding levels for large Wikimedia entities. In the most recent round, WMF staff assessment scores for the 11 affiliates (10 of them national chapters) were largely positive, though they came with significant criticism. Four returning chapters' scores were sharply reduced compared with those a year ago—for the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel. This year's FDC recommendations saw no affiliate receive all of its requested funding, with cuts of 6–70% to initial requests; even so, the amounts awarded to returning applicants were mostly significant increases over last year's allocations.

While the FDC recommended that WMDE receive €1,296,000 for its first round (2013–14; two rounds per year), the chapter had requested €1,800,000—losing roughly a quarter of its original request. The staff assessment, while downgrading WMDE's score from an enviable 53 last year to 44 this year (falling significantly in ratings of "impact", "ability to execute", and "measures of success"), detailed extensive risks in WMDE's budget proposal, including its planned staffing:

WMDE's message to the FDC focused on what they see as three key "risks" inherent in the FDC's approach to this round of funding.

1. With all of the chapters not receiving their requested funding, WMDE believes that this could lead to inflated requests, where chapters would ask for far more than actually desired in the hope they will get all they desire.
2. More seriously, WMDE critiqued the FDC's recommendations, which in their view reduced the funding requests without giving sufficient cause. "In general, it is not clear from the FDC’s explanations of its decisions what applicants should have done differently in order to receive the full funding amount. Its explanations often mention the 'growth rate', but how does one define healthy growth and unhealthy growth?", said WMDE. "It is difficult to grasp why a budget has been described as 'large' or certain metrics as 'poor' if no frame of reference is given. This prevents the entities in question—as well as future applicants—from learning from their previous mistakes."
3. Applying only to WMDE's funding request for this year, the last point emphasized that the FDC cut WMDE's request because, in part, it had not spent all of the funding granted in the year previous. Continuing such practices with other chapters could lead to an "end-of-year spending frenzy" from chapters unwilling to lose money.

Other complaints range from "inappropriate expectations" of small and/or young chapters and organizations, with the argument that they are currently held to the standards of the established chapters, and the expanded bureaucracy such an accountable process requires. Piggybacking on their desire to cut through the red tape is the issue of the FDC applications themselves: "An unbelievable amount of effort goes into this entire process—on the part of the chapter, the WMF and the FDC", WMDE stated. "Do we have any statistics on the number of staff and volunteer hours ... that the process entails?"

Wikimedia Germany's "way forward" combines "reworking" and simplifying the process with finding a "joint and truly global strategy that has been accepted by all members", a line that has received little comment but would presumably decentralize the Wikimedia grantmaking structure by requiring agreement from major players. The message closed with an invitation to the upcoming Wikimedia Conference with the aim of a "thorough reworking of the FDC process."

Reception to the proposal on its talk page ranged from Pundit faulting the German chapter in a bulleted list, noting that they did not mention that many of the chapters received more money than the year before and did not list what WMDE thought of as the FDC's "mistakes", though also praising the chapter for remarking on the amount of bureaucratic overhead. Jan-Bart de Vreede, the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, commented that "I might not agree with all of [the feedback], but it is very useful to have nonetheless ... [an] evaluation [of the FDC process] is currently planned at the end of May. [WMDE's executive director] is a member of this group so I have no concerns that the experiences described here will get lost somewhere." Kevin Gorman remarked that "It's great to see sincere, good faith engagement between major movement entities about serious matters such as the FDC."

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has asked for comment (RfC) on the future of video formats in the Wikimedia movement. The RfC, which as of publication is failing, asks participants about the use of MP4 videos, which is the most popular video format used today and is prevalent on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, but the use of it is encumbered by patents, and license arrangements would have to be made with MPEG-LA. The RfC asks the community to give opinions on whether to move forward with some steps: embracing MP4 in some form for uploaded files, transcoding them to open formats, or some combination of these.

If implemented in full, the change would allow the uploading and viewing of freely licensed MP4 videos on Wikimedia projects; there are also options to only allow their viewing or uploading.

Such a change has been prominent in the planning of the Foundation's multimedia team, because despite Wikimedia, Mozilla and Google's efforts, free video formats have yet to enjoy widespread use:

Surprisingly, the proposal falls far short of what might potentially have been put to the community. A key part of the request—perhaps lost in the lengthy textual background—is that uploaded MP4 videos would be stored in both MP4 and a free file format, such as WebM or Ogg Theora. If the vote is successful, the Foundation has committed to developing tools that would convert uploaded files from MP4 to a free format, and vice versa.

However, the proposal faces significant opposition from Wikimedia users. The MP4 format is not free software; some of the patents on it will not expire until 2028. Their position is summarized by the Foundation as an ideological conflict: "They view MP4 support as a fundamental shift in our values—and a major setback for the open and free software movements. They are prepared to stick with the current status quo, even if this means that millions of users are unable to view or contribute MP4 video content on our sites." Martijn Hoekstra commented that adding patented formats to Wikimedia sites means stepping back from the goal of being a free repository, while darkweasel94 went farther: "We should apply pressure on others to support free formats, not surrender to others' pressure to support patent-encumbered formats. It's already bad enough that Firefox is going to support it—we don't need Wikimedia to become yet another traitor to the movement (free software/free culture, broadly construed). Then the companies with an interest in MP4 can really declare their victory."

Other opponents were far more pragmatic. Geni was the first to oppose the vote, quoting a camera manual's stipulations on recording in MP4 and contrasting it with the free CC-by-SA standard: "This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video. No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4 standard."

• Wikipedia, Wikivoyage birthdays: On 15 January, Wikipedia turned 13 and Wikivoyage marked the first anniversary of its reincarnation under the Wikimedia Foundation.
• English Wikipedia
  • Quarterly update: The quarterly update consisting of all changes to the English Wikipedia's content policies has been published at Wikipedia:Update. Volunteers to restart updates of deletion and enforcement policies are requested.
  • Pending changes: The request for comment on pending changes, level two—a function that is not actually described on the relevant Wikipedia page—is steadily lengthening, with 11 proposals.
  • Surveillance awareness day: English Wikipedians are hoping to take "special steps" with the main page's content to promote awareness of intrusive surveillance mechanisms that have been put in place around the world, but the idea has received significant resistance from community members.
• The Great Book of Knowledge, Part 1: A CBC Radio One program with moderator Paul Kennedy and contributor Philip Coulter explored Wikipedia's effect on the world. Part 2 will be aired next week.
• Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): The Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel, in consultation with community members, has authored a blog post on the EFF's website exploring the importance of the public domain on Wikimedia projects (see related Signpost op-ed: "Why the year 2019 is so important").
• Wikimania 2015: Bids for Wikimania 2015 have opened. There are currently five open unofficial bids: three in Africa, one in Europe, and one in Asia.

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CBC Radio player

The link mentioned in your article required Flash to play... isn't wikipedia supporting free audio playback?! 81.173.136.211 (talk) 21:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Alas we don't control the world. Bawolff (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TK's

Ahem. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ack, right in the lead too—I've fixed them now. Thanks for the comment. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:13, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

mp4 rfc

I'm not sure if I would consider the RFC a pass/fail type of things (Although I will admit that taken literally, it is "failing"). My impression was it was more meant as a finding of fact - The Multimedia team needed to know how the Community stood on this complex issue in order to figure out where to go from here. I would characterize it not as a barrier they are trying to overcome, but instead as a fork in the road. This is of course just my personal opinion based on the discussion taking place. I have no idea if this is how the multimedia team actually views the RFC or not. Bawolff (talk) 03:12, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• 1st I'd like to ask "How many people can actually easily view the videos that are in this article?" My guess is that it is very low.
• 2nd, we should realize that Wikipedia still looks very much like a printed encyclopedia. It's probably the least video-friendly major site on the web, and that this hurts our overall educational mission.
• 3rd, the opponents of allowing MP4 state their opposition in terms of freedom, but rejecting MP4 on Commons reduces our freedom. Ultimately freedom is defined as enabling individual choices. Having the WMF ban MP4 does not enable individual choice. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:13, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Smallbones: Using non-free file formats will make the situation for re-users of our content unnecessarily burdensome. You view freedom through the lens of giving the "individual" (I am unclear as to whether you are referring to the contributor of the work, the writer of the content, or the viewer) choice. I view freedom instead as being able to easily re-use Wikimedia projects' content, without worrying about royalties or the madness that is the copyright system. They are both noble goals, but I feel that my take is more in line with Wikipedia's mission. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As an entirely practical matter, I don't see that having an mp4 file in Commons will cause anybody any burden for reuse. But not allowing mp4 does cause them harm, since a lot of material is simply not there in so-called "free formats". Does anybody charge individuals for using mp4 now? Does anybody sue anybody else for reusing CC-BY licensed mp4 files? I think the answer is no, and they are not expected to in the future, but theoretically they might. Please allow people the free-est use possible, and if something comes along to make it un-free then we can adjust. Not having video on Wikipedia does not seem to be a viable option. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your first question (Since its an objective, factual questions, the others are probably best debated on the RFC page) - based on [1], 59.3% should be able to view videos (and if they encounter problems, it would be a generic bug in mediawiki, the type that would affect both MP4 and the free formats equally). Additionally once java fallback (ie cortado) is un-broken, this number will increase by an unknown amount (A very rough estimate would be 14.3 percentage point increase based on 17.14% of users using browsers that would benefit from the java fallback, and about 84% of all people having java enabled [2] (Using other people's stats since we have no info about java enabled rates on Wikimedia). On the other hand, those java enabled stats could be unreliable or perhaps reflect a different demographic. Additionally java enabled-ness is probably not evenly distributed across browsers, however I would expect that the distribution be biased towards Safari and MSIE on desktop, since pretty much all mobile browsers do not have java, and java is less popular with technical-savy users, who also tend towards using firefox and chrome. Last of all, some may argue that java playback isn't really that good an experience (relative to native html playback like in firefox and chrome. Some may take this further and even claim native free format playback in android is not a good experience as its battery heavy), and thus discount these people as being people who can easily view video content. Anyhow, lots of not very well supported assumptions here when it comes to level of java support. Really all we can say is somewhere between 60-77% of viewers in total can view videos. If we enabled MP4, about 88% of viewers would be able to view video (The browser stats also include bots, as well as obscure browsers which aren't going to be playing video of any type) Bawolff (talk) 01:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FDC critique

hello, I want to make clear that I do not fault WMDE! :) In fact, I agree with many of the comments (although many have been already recognized by the FDC and either addressed or left for discussion). I think that the overall net result of WMDE feedback will be positive. I basically commented on its shortcomings. The main problem for now, I think, is a lack of concrete suggestions. The only thing I do not particularly like in WMDE critique is the proposal to redesign the FDC process during the forthcoming chapters' conference, organized by WMDE, in a way planned, scheduled, and guided by WMDE. The exercise itself is not a bad idea, but its timing is very unfortunate. Most of the FDC members will not be present at the conference and they will be deeply involved in Round 2 of the current funding process. Also, the FDC review process scheduled 2 years ago is to happen in May - possibly offering a better starting point for improvement than the chapter conference itself (and Pavel from WMDE is a member of this review committee). Finally, as discussed on the mailing list, while imagining a total redesign of the process is a good approach (it allows to think outside of current constraints), perhaps involving Wikimedia activists outside of the chapters community would be beneficial, too. Pundit|utter 12:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]