The famous Hong Kong skyline—an image from the winning bid for Wikimania 2013: happy days, but who was keeping track of the money?
On 2 May 2012, the Wikimania juryannounced that Hong Kong's bid to hold the 2013 event had beaten four other proposals. Moderator James Forrester wrote: "The Jury has confidence that the Hong Kong bidding team will pull off a magnificent Wikimania"—and indeed there were positive comments about the event from many attendees.
On the other hand, "Budget & Finances" was one of seven factors the jury focused on, according to the moderator—and among the key judging criteria for the competition were "financial logistics", "chapter support", and experience with "financial accountability for events of similar scope". The event enjoyed basic financial support from the Wikimedia Foundation of $300,000, with donors bearing additional costs of transport and accommodation for what appeared to have been at least 70 people; these include WMF employees and nine out of ten members of the volunteer Affiliations Committee—which by itself provoked a squabble on both Meta and the Wikimedia mailing list ("$40,000 Hong Kong junket")—and $17,000 for an associated WikiSym conference. Sponsorship apparently also involved serious cash: three gold sponsors were claimed in the bid, at $19,000 each; wikiHow was listed among seven silver sponsors ($10,000 each), and the company Dot.Asia was named as "co-host".
In late July the organising team declined to respond to the Signpost'srequest for an update on the finance and sponsorship arrangements in the bid.
Further half year of delaying
In the interests of probity and transparency, the organisers had agreed to a three-month deadline for delivering a financial statement. Well after the expiry date we made inquiries of the organising team; on 28 November, team member Deryck Chan responded that the treasurer [Tango Chan] was coordinating the process, and referred to the "many who handled money" as a difficulty in preparing the accounts. He also blamed the breaching of the deadline on the "WMF’s reluctance to fund administrative staff". This may have been a reference to the FDC's recommendation just months before the event to refuse funding for an annual grant to the Hong Kong chapter, due to concerns about "internal governance, financial management capacity, and capacity of its volunteers to manage a plan of this size", noting critically that "WMHK is currently out of compliance with its previous WMF grants." This had been followed by an angry protest from the chapter.
We sent a reminder email on 7 December. On 20 February, the WMF’s chief of finance and administration Garfield Byrd advised us that "Ellie and I have been working with the Hong Kong team to get a final financial report on Wikimania 2013. To date we have not received a report, but have received indications that they are working on it and plan on having it to us soon".
On 4 April, Byrd wrote to us: "I currently have an understanding in place to have a report on Wikimania 2013 completed by April 15, 2014. If the report is not complete at that time, then WMF is reserving the right to have an independent accounting done of the Wikimania 2013 grant and expenses." A week after that deadline, he told us that "I did receive the report and we are reviewing it now. Once we have agreement on the report with Wikimedia Hong Kong, we would expect the Wikimedia Hong Kong will post it on Meta where comments and feedback can be posted."
The Wikimania 2013 organising team, a month before the eventWe followed up with a further email on 6 May, this time to four members of the organising team: Jeromy-Yu Chan (coordinator in chief), Tango Chan (treasurer), Simon Sheck (community coordinator of program and scholarships, and chief advisor, WMHK Advisory Board), and Deryck Chan. We received no reply.
A week later we wrote again—this time copied to the general email address of the Hong Kong chapter, which owns the Wikimania 2013 trademark—posing six questions about financial probity for the event. Nearly nine months after the event, we gave notice that unless, by copy-deadline, we received a reply or a prima facie satisfactory financial report was posted on Meta, we would publish these questions; we advised that "the story would raise the possibility that significant issues of probity and/or process may explain the non-appearance of the financial statement, and would call for a wider investigation by the WMF."
The six questions the organisers have not answered
In the absence of a financial report, these are the questions we put to the organisers of Wikimania 2013 concerning the finances for the event:
Were adequate accounting procedures used for controlling, monitoring, and verifying income and expenditure?
How many people had access to spending capacity from the budget, and how many people were involved in on-the-ground monetary transactions? Was this restricted to "section leaders", and how many such personnel were there?
Did the recorded details of cost-centres and budget lines satisfy the WMF’s standards for financial reportage; if not, in what respect?
Is any money unaccounted for?
What was the nature of the financial and other relationships with sponsors of the event? Were there any exchanges of gifts or benefits in either direction? Were these relationships transparent?
Why is it taking so long to produce a financial statement, and when will a full financial report be published?
Future safeguards
The WMF's chief of finance and administration, Garfield ByrdHaving copied the correspondence to the WMF's chief of finance and administration, Garfield Byrd, the Signpost asked him what steps the Foundation can take in future to avoid such a failure of financial transparency and possibly of probity:
“
... we have already implemented some changes, based on our experiences with Wikimania 2013. In cases where we do not have a team with a proven track record of accountability and reporting on movement funds, the Wikimedia Foundation will act as fiscal sponsor for the event and pay all expenses directly and take responsibility for the financial reporting on the event. In other cases, when possible, we will look at providing funding on a reimbursement basis upon submission of a complete event expense report or some combination of both of these approaches. ... ... The goal here is greater cooperation and pre-planning with the local Wikimania or Wikimedia Conference teams to resolve any issues with the awarded Wikimania bid or Wikimedia Conference proposal well in advance of the event. It is the objective of WMF to maintain Wikimania and the Wikimedia Conference as community events, led by local volunteers and adjusting the level of support based on the capabilities of the local team.
”
An additional process added to the Wikimania 2015 selection process, he said, is that key elements for an awarded Wikimania bid will be confirmed by the WMF within 60 days of the award announcement (30 days for Wikimedia Conference proposals) and that any material discrepancies will be reported to the jury to determine whether they are sufficient to prompt a review of the decision.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Puerto Rico? Have you lived on the island group? Do you contribute to articles about any other Caribbean islands?
Tony the Marine: My son, Antonio, Jr. who is a long time contributor, and the desire to share my knowledge freely with others. I have written many articles about people born in other countries and about historic structures in the United States and elsewhere.
Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good Articles? What challenges do editors face when improving articles about Puerto Rico to FA or GA status?
Tony: I have five featured articles and 21 good articles under my belt. One of the challenges is dealing with the exaggerated scrutiny which the articles are put under by people who have no knowledge or know little about Puerto Rico and it's people. I no longer nominate the articles which I have written for any of the so-called status'. I know that my articles are good by the positive feedback that I receive.
Do Wikipedia's articles experience any neutrality issues relating to Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated territory of the United States? How well does Wikipedia cover attempts to gain statehood or independence?
Tony: There are many people who edit Wikipedia and who attempt to promote their political ideas by making biased edits to the different political related articles. This includes Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans who believe that Puerto Rico should be a state of the United States, an independent nation or that it should remain with the its' current political status of "Commonwealth". Wikipedia per se, does nothing to keep the articles from becoming politically biased. It is the Puerto Rican community in Wikipedia who try their best in making sure that these articles remain unbiased and neutral.
Do some cities receive greater attention than others? Is the main island better covered than the smaller ones? What can be done to improve articles about neglected regions of Puerto Rico?
Tony: The larger cities do receive greater attention than the smaller ones and that is because, as expected, these cities have had a greater impact on the historical, cultural, economic and political structures of the island. There is always room for improvement in both. This also applies to the regions in Puerto Rico. Just because the main island receives more coverage than the smaller islands, which make up Puerto Rico as a whole, can not say that they have been neglected. That is not the case at all. For example, it would be ridiculous to compare an article about the history of the United States with that of one about the history of Alcatraz island.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Tony: One of the main focuses of the project should be to attract new contributors. New contributors can help by writing new articles about the island and/or by improving those which are currently already posted. If they wish to have their work noticed by others, I suggest that they write about subjects that most people do not know about, subjects that for unknown reasons have been omitted from our history books and have fallen into the cracks of history only to be forgotten. New contributors are always welcomed as long as they are honest, unbiased and do not push or promote their political agendas. They must follow the policy established by Wikipedia and provide reliable verifiable sources.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Tony: One of the problems which the members of the Puerto Rican community has faced is that there some editors who are prejudiced against Puerto Ricans. They try to destroy the work of our community by pushing an Anti-Puerto Rican, Anti-Hispanic or pro-American point of view. There are others (non-Puerto Ricans) who have dedicated themselves to harassing and witch hunting respected contributors and editors because of their dedication to the subject which they love and know about, Puerto Rico. Thereby, with their actions discouraging the continued participation in the project. As far as I know, Wikipedia has done nothing or very little to discourage this type of situation. Something has to be done to keep this from happening.
Until next week, check out our previous reports in the archive.
The National Library of Australia, which is now running a new research librarian service linked from relevant English Wikipedia talkpages.
Editors of Australian-related topics on the English Wikipedia may have noticed an odd addition if they viewed the article's talk pages. For example, on Talk:Darwin, Northern Territory, they might be drawn in by the question mark, nested within what is often a sea of WikiProject templates: "Need help improving this article? Ask a librarian at the National Library of Australia, or the Northern Territory Library."
Just what is this?
It's the newest development in GLAM-Wiki. The National Library of Australia (NLA), the largest reference library in the country, is collaborating with WikiProject Australia on the English Wikipedia to "make authoritative information about Australia available to the world". The initiative has been led by Wikimedian Liam Wyatt—the Library's social media coordinator—and Renee Wilson, one of the institution's reference librarians, who now coordinates the ask a librarian service. Liam has brought his experience of WMF sites to the NLA, and has been responsible for marketing and communication surrounding the program.
Wyatt said "it's a great precedent for the library community here (and also internationally) to see Wikimedians as a potential usergroup of their services that they really want to engage with. After all—answering a reference enquiry from one person helps that person, but answering a Wikipedian helps thousands!"
The partnership will give Wikipedia editors of any nationality the chance to use the library's research services on articles related to Australia; the arrangement is that a research librarian can spend up to one hour on the questions asked of them. While many GLAM-Wiki efforts have focused on uploading new content and editing articles related to the institutions involved, this project will break new ground by connecting Wikimedians with the NLA's research librarians. Instead of new content, Wikimedians will be provided with verifiable information backed up with reliable sources from the library's holdings.
Liam Wyatt as Wikipedia Fellow, bringing GLAM to the Gulf state of Qatar in 2013We asked Wyatt about the library's intentions. He stressed the centrality of search and verification to the professional motivation of librarians: "if there’s anyone who loves a well-structured footnote better than Wikipedians it’s reference librarians, so ... we wanted to find a way to work together that was mutually beneficial and in accordance with our respective missions."
He said the library has collaborated with the Wikimedia movement before, most recently in uploading a scan of a letter by Jane Austen to memorialise one of the recently deceasedAdrianne Wadewitz's favorite subjects. Their Trove collection of digitised newspapers can give fully formatted Wikipedia citations; librarians from the State Library of New South Wales have been creating Wikipedia articles on the newspapers in the archive.
How did it come about? "We were very careful to allow the Australian Wikipedians' noticeboard to come to its own consensus about this project, recognising that large proportions of external links are often seen as spam. We also spent a lot of time internally to the organisation thinking about what kind of information Wikimedians might ask for, building contingency plans in case we get too many questions, and informing our partner libraries across the country—whose equivalent Ask a librarian service is also linked (when applicable to the subject of the article)—so they knew what was happening."
Could other institutions from other countries replicate this model? "Having a reference desk—and the ability to ask questions by computer—is a standard and very important free service that every reference library offers. It's possible that other libraries might also wish to work with their local community to be involved in a similar way. One of the big questions for us was to have an appropriate scope—therefore these links only appear on articles that have the Wikiproject Australia template in the English Wikipedia. Perhaps in language editions where the country border and the language community have a strong overlap it would make sense for links to appear on all articles, or for a dedicated reference desk to be set up on-wiki, but not on the English Wikipedia."
Editors interested in participating should be aware of the library's privacy statement and policy, which do not allow the editor's name or article being worked on to be released by the library (unless they are asked in a public forum; public inquiries on their Facebook page, for instance, are responded to via the same medium). In short, Wyatt stated that "we won't publish information about an individual or their question that could enable the person to be identified, without seeking permission."
Wyatt will soon take leave from the National Library to take up a role in Bologna, Italy, as the GLAM-Wiki coordinator for Europeana; this internet platform—a "meta-GLAM", in Wyatt's words—gives users access to "millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe", according to its Wikipedia article. Wyatt told us that it has a long history of working with GLAM projects across Europe—including, to take just two small examples, the uploading of images of the Mona Lisa and recordings of Mozart's music. His primary task will be to support the development, integration, and usage of the GLAMwiki toolset project on Commons.
In brief
Cracking Wikipedia: As we reported last week, an ad agency released a video that detailed their supposed efforts to promote Pirelli, a tire manufacturing company, on Wikipedia. While the Signpost could find no evidence that they had actually done so on the English, Spanish, or Portuguese Wikipedias, and it may have been just a proposal or mockup, the video's privacy settings were altered shortly after we published to make it unavailable to public viewing. In anticipation of such a move, the Signpost stored a copy of the video, and you may view it online at vidd.me. We invite readers to comment on it below.
Wikimedia Foundation and movement affiliates
Foundation marches on Internet surveillance: The WMF has announced that it will be signing onto the Necessary and Proportionate Principles on the application of human rights to surveillance. The move comes after a short consulation period on the advocacy advisors mailing list (subject line "Coalitions on mass surveillance"), something that has been challenged ("Use of this list as evidence of consultation") on the same list.
FDC: The Funds Dissemination Committee's deadline for letters of intent is coming on 1 June, and four new members will be appointed by the WMF in July.
The first window that will appear when an anonymous user clicks "edit".
New effort to get anon users to register: The WMF's Growth team is going to trial interface screens that will ask anonymous users to register. The first window will appear when the user clicks 'edit', while the second will appear after the edit is saved. Steven Walling, the product manager for the growth team, stated that currently "the only time that unregistered users are told they may want to log in is mid-edit, forcing them to abandon their work." This move is presumably part of the WMF's long-standing efforts to reverse the steady decline in the total number of active users of Wikimedia projects, and it does have the potential for impact: on the English Wikipedia, about a third of all contributions coming in each month are made from anonymous IP addresses.
Historians approaching Wikipedia: A new blog post ("Improving Wikipedia: Notes from an Informed Skeptic") on the American Historical Association's website highlights Stephen Campbell's editing experience on Panic of 1837 in the winter of 2012. He found that as a historian, writing on Wikipedia could be antithetical to everything he had been previously taught; historians are trained to analyze and make inferences from the facts, something that Wikipedia does not allow unless it is backed by reliable sources. He continued: "With the recognition that some of these issues will never go away entirely, I call on historians to dedicate their precious few hours of spare time to improving Wikipedia ... One of the long-standing criticisms of monographs is that they suit only a narrow, specialized audience, gathering dust on quiet library shelves. Perhaps Wikipedia is the ideal venue for broadcasting our own research expertise to a larger public, which, theoretically, should improve public discourse and historical thinking. Many in the hard sciences already take electronic publications into account, and as others have suggested, we risk being marginalized as a discipline if we do not join in."
German Wikipedia writing contest hits ten-year anniversary: The twice annual writing contest on the German Wikipedia is now ten years old, according to a blog post by Dirk Franke. Somewhat analogous to the English Wikipedia's Core Contest but without the emphasis on important articles, the winners of the Schreibwettbewerb is selected at an in-person meeting by a jury of German-language Wikipedians (with expenses paid by Wikimedia Germany). Prizes are, according to Franke, typically small but "unpredictable, often creative, and frequently surprising": they have included "tickets to the opera with a post-performance talk and drinks, wild game shot by the donor, Bulgarian egg-carrying bags, bicycle tours of Hamburg’s harbor, [and] hand-knotted Wikipedia bookmarks".
The wreck of SMS Emden, one of Germany's warships active during World War I. It was forced to run aground to avoid sinking after being severely damaged by Australia's HMAS Sydney. Emden is a new featured article.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from May 4 through May 11.
Infinity Blade(nominated by PresN) A swordfighting video game for iPhones and iPad, in which one plays the bloodline of heroes, trying to defeat the immortal God King. Should the player fail at their quest, their descendant is brought in to replace them. It was the fastest-grossing iOS app of all time when it was released, and has spawned sequels and several free expansions.
Grand Theft Auto V(nominated by CR4ZE) The fifth in a line of sandbox games by Rockstar Entertainment, released five years after its predecessor. It's likely everyone's heard of the series whether they're interested in it or not, suffice to say, players take on the role of a criminal in a large American city, and are given goals to complete, though most of the gameplay comes in sidequests and exploration.
Ontario Highway 402(nominated by Floydian) A highway stretching from near Sarnia to London, Ontario. Highway articles are a bit hard to summarize, but this is a well-written article, including history, construction, and notable events that happened upon it, including a First Nations protest.
Oliver Bosbyshell(nominated by Wehwalt) Soldier for the Union in the American Civil War, and Superintendent of the Philadelphia branch of the United States Mint from 1889 to 1894. He claimed to be the first Union soldier injured by enemy action: a bruise caused by having an object thrown at his forehead by a Confederate sympathizer while his unit was marching through Baltimore in 1861.
Thopha saccata(nominated by 99of9) A species of Austalian cicada said to be the loudest insect in the world. Also known as the "double drummer".
Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915(nominated by Étienne Dolet) Considered the start of the Armenian Genocide, this event marked the arrest and deportation of Armenian leaders in Constantinople, eventually leading to their murder by the state. Although a good portion of this is a list, it actually has quite a lot of information in it, and could easily be a featured article as well.
The Impact of Wikipedia by Adrianne Wadewitz, Wikipedian campaigner, feminist, and academic.
The Raising of Lazarus (Rembrandt)(created by Rembrandt, nominated by Crisco 1492) With a subject taken from the Bible, The Raising of Lazarus shows one of Jesus' most significant miracles, when he brought back to life someone who had died days previously, and had already been buried. The article on the painting is excellent, and includes a gallery of an initial drawing and early etchings based on the painting.
This painting by Rembrandt, The Raising of Lazarus, shows the culmination of the miracles listed in the Gospel of John: Jesus showing his power over death, just before his crucifixion. It is a new featured picture.
Eurovision is known for being political, and it was a doozy this week. Anger over Vladimir Putin's anti-gay laws manifested both positively (in the form of victory for Austriandrag queenConchita Wurst) and negatively (the booing of the guileless teenage Russian entrants). In other news, the transition from spring to summer in the Northern Hemisphere meant that TV and movies share roughly equal space. Expect movies to overtake TV sometime near the end of June.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.
For the week of 4 to 10 May, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:
The Oscar-winning actress, UN children's ambassador, epitome of 60s style and embodiment of the "gamine" got a Google Doodle on her birthday this week; she would have been 85 if she hadn't died 22 years ago.
One of the most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia ever, this celebration of Mexican-American culture (originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French) occurred, conveniently, on May 5.
It wouldn't be Eurovision without some unsettling political subtexts, and while Russia's not-quite-invasion of Ukraine may have had less impact than expected (they both gave each other points, albeit not a lot) the same cannot be said for its antediluvian restrictions on the LGBT community, (Eurovision is known as the "gay Superbowl", after all) reaction to which almost certainly played a part in this Austriandrag queen's triumph over bookies' favourite, Sweden's Sanna Nielsen.
A franchise that no one asked for has proven a bitter pill to swallow, at least in America. While the series's box office numbers as a whole are flat, it has had to rely increasingly on worldwide sales to attain them. The original Spider-Man film in 2002 made half its money at home and half overseas. For the rebooted Amazing Spider-Man, (this film's predecessor) the split was 2-1 for overseas grosses and, while this movie might just attain its series's standard tally of between $700 and $800 million, the overseas share is holding steady at 3-1. This declining domestic interest is even more obvious once inflation is accounted for. How it will affect the franchise's future is uncertain; at least one more sequel and a Venom spinoff are planned, but it's possible later instalments may be retooled to better attract international audiences.
The second Sunday in May (that's May 11 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day, and, even as the day fell, panicked college students in all participating countries rushed to their computers to see if they'd blown it.
This article suddenly reappeared in the top 25 after a long absence, but at least it has a reason: Amazon Fire TV; a digital streaming device to watch online content on a HDTV. How it distinguishes itself from the three or four other such devices currently on the market is a matter of some dispute.
There's always a political undercurrent to Eurovision, but it surfaced pretty nastily this year. Even for such a gay-friendly event, it was perhaps a bit untoward to boo the Russian entry, the winsome, 17-year-old Tolmachevy Sisters, simply for the homophobic decrees of their leader. Still, from the looks of things, they bore the abuse with grace.
A few weeks ago, I decided to jump in and take on a responsibility that, as I now know, I am not quite up to. Gathering information and picking up the signals of any notable technology news requires some editorial talent that I don't have. So after a brief stint, I will step down as editor for the Technology report and demote myself to incidental contributor.
There are now sources like Tech News that basically supersede the Technology Report, and I feel copying another periodical publication in whole or part, does not add any value to the Signpost. I invite anyone to step up, as this will be my last issue as editor.
Media Viewer launches next week on the English Wikipedia
The Wikimedia Foundation's Fabrice Florin, a product manager, posted this announcement at the English Wikipedia's Village Pump. The views expressed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpostwelcomes proposals for opinion pieces.'
As discussed in earlier posts, Media Viewer is scheduled to launch on the English Wikipedia next week, to provide a better viewing experience for our users.
Media Viewer has been tested extensively on many large wikis around the world, and the feedback collected from thousands of users suggests that this tool is generally useful to them, as outlined in these survey results. More importantly, the rate of favorable feedback keeps increasing across all languages over time: for example, the French approval rate started out at about 64% a few weeks ago, and is now up to 70%, which is very encouraging.
Here on the English Wikipedia, over 13,874 beta users have been testing it, since the tool was first deployed as a beta feature in November 2013. Thanks to all their helpful feedback, Media Viewer has been greatly improved in recent months, and we are now getting ready to roll it out on all wikis worldwide.
Media Viewer will be enabled by default on the English Wikipedia on Thursday, May 22 at about 20:00 UTC. We will deploy this tool very carefully and keep a close eye on this release, to make sure it all goes smoothly. The tool will then be released to all wikis the following week, as described in this release plan.
Many thanks to all the community members who helped make Media Viewer possible! This tool was created with active community participation from its early planning phase -- all the way to its final release. This has been an exceptionally productive partnership, which we hope to build on for future projects.
In brief
Vector navigation menu: As you can read in the Tech report below, the navigation menu in the Vector skin will no longer be able to collapse. This may trigger a few people to report the menu is 'broken'. The developers feel that cutting this feature (using JavaScript) will make the site faster. It will probably be turned into a gadget.
April engineering report: The report covering Wikimedia engineering activities in April 2014 is now available in several formats:
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