Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere

News and notes

Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere

WMF fundraising at the feet of a potential donor.

Wikimedia Foundation's email fundraising campaign about to kick off

The Wikimedia Foundation will start sending out its English fundraising emails to donors in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US from 6 September. According to samples of the emails provided by the WMF on Meta, each email features a photo of Jimmy Wales and gives "jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org" as the sender's name and email address.

This is what they look like:

The text portions are as follows, respectively:

Email texts

Email 1

From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org
Subject: You are one of those rare exceptions
Date: August 3, 2022 at 7:58 PM
To: nisrael@wikimedia.org

My name is Jimmy Wales, and I'm the founder of Wikipedia. In the past, you donated to keep Wikipedia online for yourself and millions of people around the world. Each year, fewer than 2% of Wikipedia readers choose to support our work. You have been one of those rare donors, and for this I want to thank you warmly. I'm grateful you agree that we can use the power of the internet for good. We will achieve this not as individuals, but as a collaborative movement of knowledge seekers. Together, we can rebuild trust in the internet, and by extension, in each other.

Will you renew your solidarity with a donation?

This is awkward to admit, but I have to be honest: 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way when we ask for an annual donation. We choose not to charge a subscription fee, but that doesn't mean we don't need support from our readers. We don't send a fundraising email every month. We respectfully ask for just one donation this year so that Wikipedia may continue to move forward and offer knowledge to the world.

If all our past donors gave a small amount today, our fundraiser would be over. Unfortunately, most people will ignore this message. We have no choice but to turn to you: please renew your gift to ensure that Wikipedia remains independent, ad-free, and thriving for years to come.

We're a non-profit. That means we aren't selling the articles that millions of people read on Wikipedia each day. We don't profit from the knowledge you seek. In fact, we firmly believe that knowledge should exist outside of the realm of supply and demand. That's hardly a given nowadays; so much of the world's digital knowledge is driven by profit.

Wikipedia is different in that it doesn't belong to the highest bidder, the advertisers, or corporations. It belongs to you, the readers, editors, and donors. You're our community, our family. You're the reason we exist. The fate of Wikipedia rests in your hands and we wouldn't have it any other way.

It's readers like you who safeguard our non-profit mission. You help us maintain our integrity, quality, and accessibility. Today, please consider giving again, or even increasing your gift, to keep Wikipedia free and independent.

Now is the time we ask: can we count on you to renew your solidarity with a small donation? It will keep Wikipedia online, ad-free, and growing for years to come.

https://donate.wikimedia.org

Thanks,
Jimmy Wales
Founder of Wikipedia

Renew your donation

Where will your donation go?

42% of your gift will be used to sustain and improve Wikipedia and our other online free knowledge projects.

31% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers who share their knowledge with you for free every day.

27% of your gift will give the Wikimedia Foundation the resources it needs to fulfill its mission and advance the cause of free knowledge in the world.

Email 2

From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org
Subject: It's non-negotiable
Date: August 3, 2022 at 8:01 PM
To: nisrael@wikimedia.org

Logo-text-english

You have been a Wikipedia donor in the past and have donated once.
You've unlocked:

Bronze Badge / Silver Badge / Gold Badge / Platinum Badge

When you gave in the past, you were one of those rare donors who kept Wikipedia thriving for yourself and millions of other readers.

Ready to earn your next badge? Please match your last gift today.

I took the liberty of emailing you a second time on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation (the organization responsible for the protection of Wikipedia), because I wasn’t sure you got a chance to read the first email we sent to nisrael@wikimedia.org, the address we have on file for you since your last gift. I hope this badge will act as a reminder of how crucial your commitment to supporting free knowledge has been and still is to us.

At every turn, we have been pressured to compromise our values, but I'll be honest: This isn’t negotiable for us. People always ask us, why not just run ads to make revenue? Or capture and sell reader data? Or make everyone pay to read? While these things seem like the norm online nowadays, we'd like to remind you that there is another way—a way that doesn’t jeopardize the neutrality of our content and threaten your personal data. We just ... ask! Not often, but it works. After 21 years of saying no, I can still say we are proud to have left that money on the table.

We’re a non-profit. Only 2% of our readers give, but we manage to serve hundreds of millions of people per month. Imagine if everyone gave? We could transform the way knowledge is shared online.

I've been happily stunned by the response from our donors, but we haven't reached our fundraising goal and we don't have a lot of time left. We’re not salespeople. We’re librarians, archivists, and information junkies. We rely on our readers to become our donors, and it’s worked for over 20 years.

This year, please consider making another donation to protect and sustain Wikipedia.

We know people’s circumstances have changed a lot in

the last year. Some find themselves with less to spare, but

a lucky few happen to have a bit more. If you’re one of

the lucky ones, will you give a little extra to keep

Wikipedia growing?

Renew your donation

Give 5

Give 20

Give 35

Give another amount

Any gift will unlock your next badge.

Thank you,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder

DONATE NOW

Email 3

From: jimmy@wikipedia.org donate@wikimedia.org
Subject: Our final email
Date: August 3, 2022 at 8:01 PM
To: nisrael@wikimedia.org

I know you've heard from me twice already, so I'll get straight to the point. In the past, you were among the extremely rare readers who made a donation to invest in the future of free knowledge. If you've made it far enough to open this email, could you take a minute to help us out?

Many of our readers see our emails and think they'll get round to it later, but life happens and of course they forget. Our annual email fundraiser is coming to an end, so if you've been holding off until “later”, this is your moment.

I'm asking you respectfully: Please, renew your donation; it matters.

Around the time our fundraising campaign starts, I hear from friends, family, and long-lost classmates who see our fundraising messages while they're looking something up on Wikipedia. It's a reminder of how many folks, from all walks of life, rely on Wikipedia.

This incredible public support is crucial for our organization and our movement to thrive. It allows us to serve the world, and to do so with independence and integrity. We don't belong to anyone, because we belong to everyone.

You donated in the past and we sincerely thank you. If you still see value in Wikipedia, please sustain your support in 2022 and keep Wikipedia thriving.

This is our biggest fundraising moment of the year. It's when we launch the online campaign that brings in donors who will propel us throughout 2022 and beyond. I'm one of them. I'm a regular donor.

We are the non-profit that supports one of the world's most visited websites. We don't generate revenue by selling off our users' data to the highest bidder. We don't run ads that could jeopardize the integrity and neutrality of our content.

Though our size requires us to maintain the server space and programming power of a top site, we are sustained by the support of our donors who give an average of about $16. This year, will you take one minute to keep our work going?

5 / 20

35 / Other

Renew your donation

Give less this year

Thank you,
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia Founder

DONATE NOW

(In addition to the texts shown above, each email also has small print explaining how to unsubscribe.)

The English email campaign will run until 20 November. It will be followed by the annual banner campaign for these countries, which this year is scheduled to run from 29 November to 31 December.

The content of the above emails is currently being discussed at the Village Pump: WP:Village pump (proposals)#Review of English Wikimedia fundraising emails. The discussion was started by the author of this article. – AK

Farsi Wikipedia blocks IP editing for six months; blocks and reversions fell, but so did total contributions

An experiment was conducted on Farsi Wikipedia between October 20, 2021 and April 20, 2022 in blocking IP edits to mainspace.

The study concluded that "the restriction on Farsi effectively reduced vandalism on the wiki. We can say this based on the fact that reverts were down 68% compared to the previous six months and down 70% compared to same time period last year. Blocks were also down by over 50% in both comparisons."

But the restrictions were not without negative consequences: "[T]he restriction also prevented good-faith edits. The total number of content edits was down 24% compared to the previous six months."

See related Signpost coverage, "Portuguese Wikipedia bans IP editing" (November 2020). – B

Administrators up, no down, wait what?

In a Special report almost exactly three years ago, we reported on how a then-new active admin low count of 500 was of concern. Since then, the English Wikipedia community has hit significantly lower counts of active administrators in a calendar year, shown here:

In 2019, 493 active administrators on 10 December
In 2020, 493 active administrators again on 25 October
In 2021, 460 active on 5 December^[a]
In 2022 so far, 449 active on 4 April, an all-time low

When the active count recently fell again to 452 on 13 August, it looked like we were close to hitting another all-time low. However, since then, the active count has rebounded somewhat, and there has been a nearly simultaneous recent run of successful Requests for adminship. 2022 is already up by two from last year's all-time low of just seven successful RfAs in a calendar year. So, is it good that we're not at all-time lows for the admin corps? Or is it bad that we are close? Are we on an improving trajectory yet? Or are we seeing admins "walk away in silence" as it was put by an Administrators' noticeboard commenter on an action by Arbcom this March? Only time will tell. – B

^ discounting some data glitches in September

Open letter to WMF asking for PageTriage updates attracts several hundred signatures

An open letter from the English Wikipedia's New Page Review (aka NPP) has attracted well over 400 signatures in support from Wikipedians over the past month. The open letter asks the Wikimedia Foundation to allocate resources to the maintenance of the PageTriage software, something the Foundation has been unwilling to do.

PageTriage, the suite of NPP tools comprising the New Pages Feed and Page Curation used by New Page Reviewers, is an important firewall against inappropriate new pages and also used to encourage users to improve their article submissions. NPP volunteers say the software is essentially unmaintained by the WMF, who created it in 2012. Dozens of Phab reports for bugs and upgrades are stalled at "unassigned" or "needs triage". Active reviewers (only around 100 out of about 750) are at present unable to keep the backlog at a sustainable level, and software improvements are urgently required.

Editors interested in helping with NPP can check the criteria, read the tutorials, and apply at PERM for access to the tools. New Page Patrol even provides a school for reviewers. There is a particular need for reviewers who can accurately judge the quality of foreign-language sources.

The open letter and its signatories to date can be viewed at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Coordination/2022 WMF letter. – AK

Brief notes

New Movement Strategy Forum: The Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team at the Wikimedia Foundation launched a proposal for a new Movement Strategy Forum (MS Forum) on 24 May 2022. The proposal was open for a 2-month community review period, ending on 24 July 2022. During that time, the MS Forum was operational for community members to try it out. A report on the community review is now available on Meta-Wiki. The feedback received on the MS Forum ranged from very supportive to cautiously accepting. The forum's automatic translation capabilities were particularly well received. Outside of the MS Forum, several long-term Wikimedia contributors criticized the creation of a new space, preferring to focus on the use of Meta-Wiki. The MSG team has committed to the long-term maintenance of the MS Forum and its integration into the Movement Strategy processes and will announce a call for new moderators and administrators.
New user-groups: The Affiliations Committee announced the approval of this month's newest Wikimedia movement affiliates, the Tyap Wikimedians User Group and the Women in Religion User Group
New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrators: DanCherek (9 August), DatGuy (15 August), Femke (18 August), and Z1720 (29 August).
Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this month or last:
- 500,000 articles: Turkish Wikipedia
- 50,000 article: Ladin Wikipedia
- 5,000 articles: Tumbuka Wikipedia
- 2,000 articles: Dagbani Wikipedia
Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in India: This year's edition of the contest runs from 1–30 September.
Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is cartoonist (29 August – 4 September), to be followed by gender studies next week. Please be bold in helping improve these articles!
Wikipedia for Improvement: The Scots Wikipedia is having a September Writin Drive. Its aim is "to fix all of the bad Scots Wikipedia articles, help out the site's admins by teaching them proper Scots, and generally improve the quality of the Wiki." (See prior Signpost coverage "Scots Wikipedia language quality problems ripple around the Internet...")

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31 August 2022 (all comments)

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NPP letter

It's a shame the NPP community has to resort to such an action to obtain any engagement from the WMF, particularly while the Foundation is wallowing in money but is making a desperate need for cash a fundraising claim for needing more. There does still seem to be a disconnect between the Foundation and its flagship projects whose voluntary work brings in the donations. Having been involved with NPP for well over a decade, the community's action has my total support. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:12, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I must be missing something. The last sentence but 1 in the NPP section says:"There is a particular need for reviewers who can accurately judge the quality of foreign-language sources" Why can't/don't foreign-language Wikipedia's help out here? It shouldn't be that hard for any language WP to begin an inventory of their language sources, pass some form of judgement and make it available for other WP–languages. Add a section where foreign editors can submit a source for judgement and there's a handy and valuable tool IMO. I'm sure I'm not the first 1 to think along these lines, so what gives? Dutchy45 (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Dutchy45 multilingual editors who speak English are probably already active on enwp out of necessity, due to enwp's dominance/popularity. That said, enwp's policies on notability may different from other language editions of Wikipedia, so we couldn't easily transpose notability of sources. That could change if a project like meta:WikiCite/Shared Citations became a reality. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As the author of the Shared Citations proposal, I'm always pleased to see it mentioned and recommended 'in the wild' like this - thank you Shushugah. While I do wish to reiterate the implication of your point Shushugah that this is indeed merely a proposal and makes no promises of funding/prioritisation, all good ideas have to start somewhere :-) I would appreciate if people who are interested in the issues of assessing reference quality on en.wp would have a look at the proposal and see if they think its a viable solution. As I hope is obvious to people who read it - especially the "principles" section - it would permit each language WP to still make its own sovereign choices about the visual display/format of references, and its own policies about what counts as "reliable", but to centralise the task of all the data entry required to maintain and monitor it all. LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fundraising emails

I'm going to be blunt here, those fundraising emails are awful and misleading. They're the kind of thing you'd expect to show up in your spam email. Even if there wasn't anything ethically wrong about them (which is definitely the case), it also just bad for Wikipedia's overall credibility. I've also met a lot people IRL who find persistant fundraising campaigns in general to be annoying... the more they're asked, the more they feel like they're being forced and the less likely they are to feel like they want to of their own volition. Clovermoss (talk) 01:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Clovermoss: Thanks. May I ask you – and indeed anyone who has an opinion on these fundraising emails – to please go visit the ongoing RfC at the Village Pump and copy whatever you say here and say it there at the RfC as well:
- Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC_(WMF_fundraising_emails)
If we want to have our voice heard, we need to have a well-visited RfC we can point to. Cheers, --Andreas JN 466 08:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to see the acknowledgement and promise that "42% of your gift will be used to sustain and improve Wikipedia and our other online free knowledge projects. 31% of your gift will be used to support the volunteers who share their knowledge with you for free every day." Which confirms one use of the 31% number referred to in past discussions. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody seems to have any idea what that number actually includes. However I am certain that what readers imagine does not match the reality.

As I mentioned before on Meta, "31% of your gift" in 2020/2021 would have been 31% of $163 million, i.e. about $50 million. That's an order of magnitude more than all Awards and grants combined. (Note that the total $9.8M "Awards and grants" figure shown on that page includes the annual $5 million to the Endowment at the Tides Foundation, see p. 14.)

When I asked for more information what this 31% figure is supposed to include, I received no reply. Andreas JN 466 17:40, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is certainly a risk that without a good explanation, the Foundation could be seen as a self-licking ice cream cone by some. I mean, even taking the 31% figure at face value, that means 69% of the gifts do not support volunteers who create content... hmmm. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
About the self-licking ... the other day, I compared the top salaries in the 2018 Form 990 versus the 2020 Form 990.

I found that from 2018 to 2020 –
the CEO's total compensation incl. benefits increased by 7% (to $423,318),

the DGC's and GC's by 10%,

the CFO's by 11%,

the CTO's by 17%,

the CAO's by 22%,

the CCO's by 25%,

the CT/CO's by 28%, and

the CPO's by 32%

– all over a two-year period when the annual US inflation rate was at 2%. All but three (the GC, CTO and CT/CO) were the same person in 2020 as in 2018. I'm pretty sure those are better raises than most donors got. Andreas JN 466 19:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I just read about what happens with Thomas. That is such a crappy behavior from Wikipedia. It happened in 2021, now is 2022, and nothing had changed. I am sure average people thought that Wikipedia is on the verge of being taken offline and the boards of WMF are paid very low and working so hard to keep Wikipedia running, while the truth is completely the opposite. I didn't expect a change either this year, as long as editors like us kept working to keep the project online. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 07:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree that those, roughly, are the most prevalent (mis)perceptions. And those are misperceptions deliberately fostered by the WMF, using this project as the vehicle to spread them – for financial gain.

I also think that these messages, about how it's "awkward" to ask, but there is "no choice but to turn to you", etc., "resonate" particularly with people who are not well off – like this senior, Thomas, with $18 in the bank, promising to donate as soon as his social security check clears.

VRT/OTRS volunteers have commented on this as well (e.g. User:Elli here: "I can't go into the specifics, but as a VRT agent I've received numerous emails from people on limited incomes who are donating money they need because they believe that Wikipedia is in trouble and that they need to give money to keep it online. I'm absolutely disgusted by this, and I think it will catch up to us in the long-run, as people won't want to give once they realize how deceptive these campaigns are."). --Andreas JN 466 09:30, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466: Done. The Thomas example breaks my heart, by the way. Clovermoss (talk) 17:22, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The more I hear about the WMF, this as well as the way the new Vector skin is being developed, the more alienated they seem from the goals, concerns, and efforts of Wikipedia and its editors. Good thing they don't own the rights to any of the content. small jars tc 09:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, but they do have a product to be sold for profit! Courtesy of their own editors that are working for free of course. I am sure WMF didn't put this on their email. WMF clearly have achieved their donation target several times over they need, and they are planning for a "profit arm" (using free labor, I must say), but still they seem to be begging for donation. I have received donation requests from Salvation Army or others and they didn't beg this much, despite they may be in need of more money than WMF. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 11:34, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SunDawn: this statement is inaccurate, and a failure of assume good faith. A rule that still apply to staffers. product to be sold for profit! - putting aside that it's a service providing, how is it to be sold for profit? The Foundation can't make profit - anything that comes in through that arm is added to the general fundraising pot. It's commercial-generated fundraising, not profit that can go to shareholders. In a sense, Enterprise is the fundraising aspect that is least on the basis of editors' free labour (I mean, no-one else is donating except because they like one project or another, I assume?) - it's generating value on the basis of a more reliable provision of that information in a better format. The WMF has numerous projects where it's been terribly untransparent - but Enterprise is not one of them. It's on Diff, it had multiple office hours, their base document was amended from feedback and you can just talk to the team and they answer. I'd be surprised if they have met their donation target given where they are in their fiscal year. And we've never got to several times the donation target, although it's certainly heavily exceeded. Now, that was the source of one of my other complaints, where they indicated they hadn't met it. Which I believe is correct...but they wouldn't have expected to do so yet. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do assume good faith with fellow editors, but I don't think it applied to WMF. On the other hand, I do understand that there is nothing inherently wrong in making a profit, but the general tone of WMF is that they are "running out of money", "in the brink of shutdown", "can only rely on donations from the readers", while in fact they are not running out of money. I know many charities are running "for profit" - Goodwill, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, are running "profitable" thrift stores. I have no problem with them because of their tone. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:01, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hacker News thread on the fundraising email RfC. --Andreas JN 466 17:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Admins

I'd love to be an admin, but I've been around for only a year and haven't made a single article, and my one AfD proposal went up in flames. I'm not sure my RfA would ever pass. Minkai (boop that talk button!-contribs-ANI Hall of Fame) 12:23, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why you couldn't pass with some more experience. Time-wise, a year should be enough, but you should probably get some content experience and demonstrate that you understand policies in administrative areas before running. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:11, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would agree. We've all had AfDs that didn't turn out the way we expected; if that were a disqualifier we'd have no admins at all. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:03, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I think there is barely anyone here these days that really do want to be an admin. RfAs get a bad reputation for a reason. GamerPro64 03:49, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This would require technical changes, obviously, but could the adminship crisis be averted by further breaking down 'the mop' into more specific permission roles? For example, the area of Wikipedia I am most experienced with is RC patrol and counter-vandalism, but for the brief moment I considered applying for an admin permissions it became obvious that with my lack of article writing I would never even be considered. The standards have only gone up since then, and I would never under any circumstances subject myself to the current RfA process, even if my editing history could support admin rights. But if there was a 'Counter-vandalism admin' who only had the rights to do things like delete recently created pages and block non-confirmed users, it might be something that the community might see fit to grant to people of my profile.
In any case, it seems to me that the most fundamental problem Wikipedia has as a project is dwindling editorship, and the dwindling adminship is an extension of that. It seems to me like fixing this should be one of the top priorities for the project to ensure the long-term success of Wikipedia. Melmann 16:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Farsi Wikipedia IP block experiment

Despite what the study's highlights claimed, it appears that disabling IP edits had no identifiable effect on the total number of good-faith edits—the decline that was observed was also observed on other wikis in the same region that did not disable IP edits.

(I have started a discussion on Meta.) —Emufarmers^(T/C) 07:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Scots Wikipedia editing drive

I know this isn't the fault of the Signpost because they were just quoting sco:Wikipedia:September 2022 Writin Drive, but "help out the site's admins by teaching them proper Scots, and generally improve the quality of the Wiki" makes it sound like CiphriusKane (the only active admin) can't speak Scots. They are a native speaker, though. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 23:32, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cobra 3000 was reusing the text from 2 years ago, should probably be updated, seeing as the non-Scots writers from that period have left the wiki now CiphriusKane (talk) 15:57, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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