Inside the 'Wikipedia of Maps', Tensions Grow Over Corporate Influence (Bloomberg) examines "digital gentrification" of OpenStreetMap which between 2015 and 2018 saw a sixfold increase in features edited by corporations, led by Apple. Lyft, Facebook, the International Red Cross, the U.N., the government of Nepal and Pokémon Go all depend on its data. In turn, "hundreds of millions of monthly users" depend on the organizations' use of the data. Commercial firms are protecting their investment in the data by editing and contributing more data. One startup, Mapbox, has raised $200 million to develop ways to format and transfer OSM data to its customers. Is this just another example of the benefits of crowdsourcing, or just another corporate takeover of the commons? "Hobby mappers" are worried that corporate representatives will be elected to the site's governance positions. Frederik Ramm, an OSM volunteer and consultant states "These companies don’t map for the same reasons we do, and because of that, I question deeply if our goals can align."

Wikipedia's Sprawling, Awe-Inspiring Coverage of the Pandemic in The New Republic joins dozens, likely hundreds, of articles on Wikipedia's coverage of the COVID pandemic, the first of which was published 384 days ago in Wired by Omer Benjakob.

Though this ground has been thoroughly plowed, Shaan Sachdev in TNR reports with a different angle. He states that with 86 million pageviews "the Covid-19 pandemic (article) is in a two-way tie for the thirty-fourth most viewed Wikipedia article, ranking alongside Miley Cyrus. It isn’t far behind thirty-first place, which is currently a three-way tie between Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and China."

Some of the other articles that link to COVID-19 are listed (in no special order) as: Mink, Racism in China, Royal Australian Navy, Graffiti, Cockfight, and Ricky Martin. Ultimately almost all articles of this genre focus on Wikipedia's volunteer editors, as they should. Editors included in this article include Andrew Lih, Netha Hussain and Liam Wyatt.

Fox News interviewed Larry Sanger in Inside Wikipedia's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried. Sanger's views on Wikipedia's "leftist bias" and chaotic governance have been well-known since 2007. Over the years he's made a few good points, for example his claims that Wikimedia Commons contained some child pornography, but Fox's claim that he told them that "many Wikipedia pages have become merely left-wing advocacy essays" is exaggerated. Bias is difficult to define without having a grasp of the range of views typically accepted within a population. Fox's hard right views do not define bias within the US. Wikipedia's editors come from many countries beyond the US that generally have views to the left of the US. Fox does score points when looking at Wikipedia's coverage of Communism. Coverage of genocide by Communist governments is all but missing on Wikipedia – even when we call it "mass killings".

• Fox gives a specific example of possible bias in another article Wikipedia restricts edits to Lincoln Project page amid sex scandal, claiming 'vandalism, as if there was no vandalism to the article.
• The Daily Mail repackages Fox's reporting on Sanger in Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger slams the site's left wing 'woke' bias and claims its days of 'neutrality are long gone'. Needless to say, Fox's original is better.
• Co-founder says Wikipedia's neutrality 'long gone,' cites leftist bias in The Washington Times says "Sanger tweeted that leftist activists gradually move in 'to take control of any influential institution not explicitly conservative … and they just work harder, and in more subtle ways, on the ones that are explicitly conservative.' " The attribution to Sanger is questionable and makes him sound like a conspiracy theorist. Folks who question why these sources aren't considered reliable by Wikipedians need only read these articles.

Wikipedia’s political science coverage is biased. I tried to fix it. in The Washington Post. Samuel Baltz, a Ph.D. candidate at the U. of Michigan in political science and computing, spent a year trying to correct the biases he sees in Wikipedia articles on political science.

• Why Is This Flower on Wikipedia Suddenly Getting 90 Million Hits Per Day? published on Vice.

• Wikidata for journalism and beyond: DataJournalism.com from publisher European Journalism Centre and author Monika Sengul-Jones report Wikimedia editors' views on how their Wikidata editing improves the media ecosystem for good journalism.
• Science fiction in Wikipedia's style: The science fiction community of the SCP Foundation is a non-Wikimedia wiki network that's growing in popularity. Wikipedia science fiction fans should like the recently published "Lena", in which the author qntm presents a story in the format of a Wikipedia article written some time after 2073. The article is roughly about a brain scan and the "first immortal". It is copyrighted so cannot be used to update Wikipedia in real time.
• Wikimedia CEO: Technology could be used for great harm: Katherine Maher has a 25 minute interview with Al Jazeera.
• Happy hump day: A Wikipedia page appears as an easter egg ... or trolling? ... from Henry Cavill. (Yahoo! News)
• Turkey's pro-gov't media still trying to get Wikipedia banned by Wikipedian John Lubbock. "Turkey's pro-government media have not given up accusing Wikipedia of various crimes."
• Click! on the BBC includes an interview with Jimmy Wales.
• Editathon on EDSA Revolution-related topics hosted by Wiki Society of the Philippines (Philippine Daily Inquirer)
• IDF Asks Wikipedia to Edit 'Hezbollah' Entry to Reflect Terror Designation (The Jerusalem Post)
• Myanmar blocks Wikipedia in all languages (India TV)
• Someone at Apple is editing ZZ Top's Wikipedia articles (iMore)

• Digital Unionism is Generally is Quite New interview on WikiProject Labor's edit-a-thon. Read their report back. (netzpolitik.org)

• World in Progress: Wikipedia's past, present and future - extended interview: (audio) Deutsche Welle interviews Dr. Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute.
• An Oral History of Wikipedia, the Web’s Encyclopedia: Tom Roston in OneZero conducts extensive interviews including Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, Katherine Maher, Andrew Lih, Britta Gustafson, Magnus Manske and Jeremy Rosenfeld.
• The Economist: Readers responding to The Economist's extensive coverage of Wikipedia's 20th birthday had very interesting comments, including these two:

Anyone who has ever tried to correct errors in a Wikipedia entry, only to find them repeatedly reinserted by other contributors with a competing agenda, will attest to the site's unreliability. Even counting on Wikipedia as a repository of basic information, such as names, dates and places, is a crap shoot. Perhaps the vast majority of its articles are indeed accurate, but which ones constitute that majority, and at what point in time? Literally no one knows; it has become so vast that moderating its millions of entries in any comprehensive way would be impossible. This is how the site is designed to work.

— b.e.

Wikipedia may be unique online because it "sells no advertising". However, it does provide a free platform for companies to display their corporate messages, written by their marketing departments. Are these true statements vetted by Wikipedia? No. Wikipedia also has a devil’s bargain with Google. No matter what you search for on Google, from "cats" to "Catullus", Wikipedia is positioned first. If you do enter "cats", to learn about the animal, you get what reads like a Wikipedia advertorial for the movie "Cats".

— p.t.

The Wikimedia Foundation is taking away your freedom to elect community representatives to their board.

In 2017 some 5,500 contributors to Wikimedia projects elected three members to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation for a three year term. Their mandate ended nearly a year ago. The Board decided to extend their terms for a year. The ongoing pandemic was an excuse to postpone an election, yet the Board of Trustees launched a very intensive consultation with the community. This consultation is probably more time- and energy-consuming than an actual election.

They want to discuss changes to the way Trustees are selected. They aim at greater diversity. They have concerns about skills and experiences of community elected board members.

This consultation isn't the only ongoing consultation with the communities. There are a whole range of Global Conversations about implementation of the recommendations of the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy process. And some other consultations are also running. One of the strategy recommendations – which is priority 1 – is to ensure equity in decision making. To include underrepresented voices in governance and to assure diversity, it was recommended to have a Global Council in the future. The Global Council would be a large body, representing the diversity of the movement.

There will be a Global Council at the earliest at the end of Wikimania 2022. Depending on your point of view that is either very far away, or pretty soon. In the interim, there will be an Interim Global Council to draft a Movement Charter and oversee the implementation of the strategy recommendations. The current timeline projects having an Interim Global Council seated in April or May 2021. That is pretty soon, and probably at the same time or even before new community representatives will be elected to the Board of Trustees.

The movement has recognized and acknowledged a lack of diversity of our representation in governing bodies over the past years, and has resolved this issue by proposing an (Interim) Global Council (IGC). The current call for feedback about community seats is not only badly timed – in the midst of a pandemic, on top of multiple other consultations, but also tries to seek to solve a problem – diversity – which has already been solved by having an IGC soon. And the board failed to integrate this consultation within the overall framework of conversations about implementation of strategy recommendations. Just like they failed at integrating the branding discussion within the strategy process.

The other part of the 'problem' the Board seeks to solve is with respect to skills and experiences. Five trustees on the board are selected by communities and affiliates from volunteers who contribute to Wikimedia projects. Those volunteers have multiple years of experience within the Wikimedia Movement, are skilled in editing Wikimedia projects, and skilled in contributing in other ways to the Wikimedia Movement. Most notably, those volunteers have taken initiatives both online and offline to organize projects and programs. It looks like the current board doesn't value these skills and experience as relevant to governing the Wikimedia Foundation.

Half the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation consist of appointed trustees chosen for their specific skills and experiences. Most of them aren't contributors to the Wikimedia projects. Most of them had no idea how Wikimedia projects function and operate, and are unaware how Wikimedia volunteers have organized themselves online and offline over the past.

Most notably there is a total lack of diversity among appointed trustees, most of them being US residents. The five volunteers on the board all speak different native tongues, and are all born in different countries, originating from four different parts of the world. The current diversity among community and affiliate seats is at a maximum given the number of available seats. If there is a diversity problem on the board, then it is within the appointed seats, not within the community seats.

In 2019 a woman from Ukraine (Eastern Europe) and a woman from Israel (Middle-East) were selected by affiliates to become board members. The call for feedback states as problem the election process favors men from the US and Western Europe. The latest election outcome fully contradicts this part of the problem statement.

The Board amended the bylaws in 2020. They proposed expanding the board from 10 to 16 seats. There will be even more appointed seats, not selected by contributors to Wikimedia projects, in the future. The call for feedback is restricted to community seats. The Board didn't ask the community for advice how to fill in the extra appointed seats they created.

What the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation actually does is mostly boring stuff. They have to read piles of paper, approve annual plans and annual budgets, review financial reports and go through tons of legal stuff. The board also does hire and fire the CEO or Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the person who actually leads the 450+ staff of the Wikimedia Foundation on a daily basis.

Apparently the Board sees an urgent need to hear from a voice from Africa. They created three extra appointed seats, and no one is blocking the Board to handpick someone from Africa to become one of the Trustees. And maybe another one from South-East Asia. Apparently they want someone on their board who has previous experience as CEO or Executive Director of a non-profit of comparable size working in the same field as the Wikimedia Foundation. No one is blocking the Board appointing Katherine Maher to the Board, as she has announced her departure as CEO/ED of the Wikimedia Foundation by April 15. All in all, this leaves ample room for the community and affiliates to select their representatives through their preferred method, that is by having a free and open election.

Apparently the Board has a dislike for elections, and wants to get rid of the system of election by the community and the affiliates of Trustees. In preparing this article I have reached out to all board members, asking them whether they would prefer appointment of parliamentarians rather than electing them by the people in their country. Some of the board members engaged in email conversation, and I raised more questions. The ensuing conversation stopped soon after the moment someone realized they were stepping out of line, and ranks were closed. I could get a quote from an official voice from the board. That quote ended up being 462 words long, not answering any of my questions directly.

The call for feedback about community seats proves the Board of Trustees is not capable of governing the Wikimedia movement, and the call for feedback on community seats is a distraction from the conversation on implementing the Wikimedia movement strategy recommendations. The Wikimedia movement has an urgent need of a Global Council inclusive of all Wikimedia project wiki communities.

Whether or not Wikimedia project wiki communities actually do support the creation of an (Interim) Global Council and drafting a Movement Charter, which are highly preferred by some people from Wikimedia affiliates, is a topic for a Signpost article in the future.

The Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director (ED) and Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher announced February 4 that she would be leaving the WMF on April 15. She has been with the WMF seven years, first as chief communications officer, then as interim ED in March 2016, and as ED in June 2016.

She became ED at a very difficult time for the movement, reported on in The Signpost as The WMF's age of discontent. Many in the community and WMF staff were outraged by a search engine project known as the knowledge engine. Doc James was voted off the Board of Trustees by the Board itself. Maher's predecessor, Lila Tretikov, resigned under pressure. A new trustee resigned within weeks of his appointment. Following Maher's appointment the community, staff, and Board experienced a period of peace and cooperation for about three years.

Maher's announcement was surprising since just the day before she announced the approval of the Universal Code of Conduct by the Board of Trustees. Together with the 2030 strategy recommendations, the UCC may be the chief achievement of her term as ED. Both still require implementation or enforcement, which may be just as difficult to achieve as the agreement on the policy and goals.

The WMF described the major improvements reached during Maher's term as:

• Increasing global reach and readership
• Reversing editor decline, and generating editor growth
• Increasing editor diversity
• Growing a global movement

Maher was an unapologetic advocate for a diverse community. She told The Signpost in a 2019 interview:

Diversity is baked into our vision statement: the sum of all knowledge, every single human being. And feminism is a foundational part of diversity: if we’re talking about every single human being, we need to be talking about every single human being, including women and non-binary people. So, not only is this part of my values, it’s absolutely part of the Foundation’s mission.

Relations among the community, WMF staff, and the Board of Trustees became contentious at times. A consultant's report published in 2020, meant to better organize WMF governance, recommended that communications between the Board and the ED should be strengthened and that the ED's office should be better staffed to handle the many challenges.

In a note to Wikipedians on diff, Maher said "I’m going to take a break, and a research fellowship, as a place to think about what’s next." Axios stated that she'll be moving to the United States east coast.

General Counsel Amanda Keton, Chief of Talent and Culture Robyn Arville, and Chief Financial Officer Jaime Villagomez will act as the executive transition team. The Transition Committee leading the search for Maher's replacement includes four trustees: Dariusz Jemielniak, Tanya Capuano, Raju Narisetti, and Board Chair María Sefidari. Viewcrest Advisors will assist the committee's global search.

See this formal announcement.

The Signpost wishes Katherine all the best. – S

TonyBallioni opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) on February 20 to streamline a process to remove administrators, driven more directly by the community. It has 126-80 support as of February 27.

Current procedures to remove an administrator on the English Wikipedia (desysop) are outlined at WP:Administrators § Review and removal of adminship and do not include a direct path for the editors in the community to remove an administrator. Not counting procedural and reversible desysop due to inactivity, or desysops initiated by WMF which are counted in single digits, desysop virtually always happens through the admin's own request or by Arbcom action. Currently 146 of 512 currently-active admins, listed at Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, have voluntarily specified their own ad-hoc criteria and procedures for desysop that they have pledged to follow. Thus over 70% of active admins are only removable by themselves or by Arbcom.

A new process has been a recurring topic on the English Wikipedia, with discussions going back to 2004 listed at Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship. A 2009 discussion to formalize the process, Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Admin Recall, resulted in a 2010 RfC which failed: 167 for, 190 against; and a 2019 RfC failed to result in a procedure [that] gathered enough support to be favored by a clear consensus.

Conditions outlined by the current RfC in order to initiate a desysop request include (condensed for The Signpost):

• A recent AN or ANI discussion where the closing statement indicates that there was consensus that the administrator behaved inappropriately
• Endorsement by a qualifying number of editors, including three admins

The desysop will be performed by a bureaucrat if there is 60% support for removal at the end of a 7-day voting period. The word "vote" is not used in the initial RfC statement and it is being debated whether the proposed process will use a straight-up vote or a discussion to determine the outcome. – B

• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator, TJMSmith.