3 ms·

Since you're familiar enough with the activities of the knowledge equity fund to be confident that it's a waste, can you fill in more detail about which grants

Since you're familiar enough with the activities of the knowledge equity fund to be confident that it's a waste, can you fill in more detail about which grants that it has issued that ended up being wasteful? I understand that you're not "going straight to OMG, the SJWs", so surely you have some knowledge of how these millions of dollars were allocated and at least some vague understanding of their particular failures. Unless of course you read "racial equity" and assumed that there could not possibly be a valuable distribution of funds based on that idea. Assuming that's not the case, could you give an example of a grant writing fund that ostensibly supports the idea and has created value?

aliswe 5y ago
there should be a pie chart specifying where the Wikipedia budget is going
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Close enough[1]? That breakdown doesn't seem too unreasonable, the 'community' bucket is large, but not larger than 'direct support to websites' (which I take to mean Keeping The Lights On). The overhead for admin and fundraising looks fairly typical for a nonprofit. 1: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...
hitekker 5y ago
That's a few too many passive aggressive questions to be asking with a sockpuppet account. If you could rewrite it to be less leading and resentful, I think the GP would be more willing to engage.
- PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
  I'm not really sure how I am supposed to retroactively go back in time and register earlier. Since you are handing out free advice, is it normally considered polite or helpful here to accuse people of using fake accounts? Is assuming that a person speaking with confidence about a topic may have some direct knowledge of that topic somehow rude or against the rules? If you're speaking confidently on behalf of the person that I was responding to, are you sure that you reflect their opinion faithfully? If the GP wanted to say "I refuse to give more details about the fund due to the phrasing of your request for details," surely they could have typed that themselves. Namaste!
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    Since you arent a sockpuppet and just new, do you really feel confident to have hit the right tone here, even after somebody gave you a heads up how a conversation is more likely to be fruitful? You dont need to speak on behalf of OP to give you a heads up about a common problem with your approach, its pretty universal. Picture it this way, there is list of common problems which make a sensible discussion less likely. Which might be overlooked if you havent heard about it before. For example your sentences being too convoluted or having a bad structure. Another one of those is needlessly escalating a conversation. That kind of boils down to what the aim of your post is. If its not aimed at having a fruitful engaging conversation that might proof your wrong, then you are either doing it for yourself or to set an atmosphere. Which is where the assumption of a sockpuppet comes from. Differently put, what good does your post if its not aimed at getting somebody to engage in a meaningful way? And if that is your aim, you might want to take his advice, you generally get better results.
    - PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
      >do you really feel confident to have hit the right tone here, even after somebody gave you a heads up how a conversation is more likely to be fruitful? Considering that the person whom I was addressing responded to my post in a productive manner and we were able to have a civil and thoughtful exchange... Yes? Do you think it's productive to police the conversations of others in a way that is entirely off topic to the threads? I understand that neither you nor hitekker enjoyed my wording. In the future, when I am speaking to you about a topic in a thread, I'll try to imagine what one's reaction might be if they interpret it as meaning offense before I post. I can't guarantee that I'll always be able to align with your preferred style of decorum, especially since I'm not sure what the rules are here; my post was bad and hitekker's post (an unprovoked off-topic personal attack on me under the auspices of speaking for another person who didn't appear to share their sentiment in the first place) was good. I won't be engaging any further on the minutae of posting best practices in the discussion thread for the future of the wikimedia project. Have a nice day!
  - mst 5y ago
    Different registers of english are an interesting conversational issue. Your phrasing read to me as being close to passive aggressive, but had I been the author of the top level post you were replying to I would have assumed good faith too. My most common failure mode in HN comments is coming across as more combative than I intended because I tend towards blunt in my communication style. If you look at my comments, you'll note quite a few have a disclaimer in a parenthetical at the end to try and avoid that happening. Whether or not adopting a similar approach would be remotely useful to you, I genuinely have no idea.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
Just from the grants on that page, none of them are designed to actually result in concrete wiki-relevant activity. This is, apparently, deliberate[1]. The metrics of success are not defined in a measurable way with respect to the wiki projects; whatever they do result in won't be published until the end of the year. Maybe we will see 4.5 million worth of value. Maybe we will not. I'm not saying that it's a waste in absolute terms: the initiatives are likely a net good to humanity. But I don't think they are going to improve Wikipedia very much when the money is withheld from the platform itself. Yes, that's a false dichotomy, because if you have enough cash, you can have both racial justice funds and engineering excellence. But somewhere a decision was made that one is more important than the other, and I suggest that if you can have only one, going the other way will help Wikipedia more. And no, I don't have an example of an racial justice grant that resulted in a value, but I don't claim that they are axiomatically without it. The WMF does do quite a few other grants that I think have been and are valuable in wiki-adjacent areas. A lot of Wikipedian in Residences are very interesting, and these can have vast potential for increasing access to non-Western cultural resources. Something that I'd say is more in the WMF wheelhouse. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund#What_do_these_projects_have_to_do_with_Wikimedia%3F https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund#W...
- PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
  Thanks for the link! I can see being sceptical about the fund given the somewhat nebulous nature of the descriptions of their grants, and I look forward to seeing how they shake out by the end of the year. The reason why I asked is because it seemed like a strong position to take to say that the money was being "sprayed up the wall" given the little information we have about the outcomes of the fund. ? That being said, "what is best for Wikipedia" is in itself a nebulous proposition in the first place because different people have different requirements and visions for the project. Personally to me, the investments in investigative journalism (1) seem like they could have a direct value contribution since it could expand original reporting of facts for the site. That is of course debatable, but we'll see. Thanks for clarifying! 1 https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/power-of-knowledge-for-good-ee94e5681a3b https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/p...

aliswe 5y ago

there should be a pie chart specifying where the Wikipedia budget is going

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Close enough[1]? That breakdown doesn't seem too unreasonable, the 'community' bucket is large, but not larger than 'direct support to websites' (which I take to mean Keeping The Lights On). The overhead for admin and fundraising looks fairly typical for a nonprofit. 1: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/financials/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annu...

hitekker 5y ago

That's a few too many passive aggressive questions to be asking with a sockpuppet account. If you could rewrite it to be less leading and resentful, I think the GP would be more willing to engage.

PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
I'm not really sure how I am supposed to retroactively go back in time and register earlier. Since you are handing out free advice, is it normally considered polite or helpful here to accuse people of using fake accounts? Is assuming that a person speaking with confidence about a topic may have some direct knowledge of that topic somehow rude or against the rules? If you're speaking confidently on behalf of the person that I was responding to, are you sure that you reflect their opinion faithfully? If the GP wanted to say "I refuse to give more details about the fund due to the phrasing of your request for details," surely they could have typed that themselves. Namaste!
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  Since you arent a sockpuppet and just new, do you really feel confident to have hit the right tone here, even after somebody gave you a heads up how a conversation is more likely to be fruitful? You dont need to speak on behalf of OP to give you a heads up about a common problem with your approach, its pretty universal. Picture it this way, there is list of common problems which make a sensible discussion less likely. Which might be overlooked if you havent heard about it before. For example your sentences being too convoluted or having a bad structure. Another one of those is needlessly escalating a conversation. That kind of boils down to what the aim of your post is. If its not aimed at having a fruitful engaging conversation that might proof your wrong, then you are either doing it for yourself or to set an atmosphere. Which is where the assumption of a sockpuppet comes from. Differently put, what good does your post if its not aimed at getting somebody to engage in a meaningful way? And if that is your aim, you might want to take his advice, you generally get better results.
  - PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
    >do you really feel confident to have hit the right tone here, even after somebody gave you a heads up how a conversation is more likely to be fruitful? Considering that the person whom I was addressing responded to my post in a productive manner and we were able to have a civil and thoughtful exchange... Yes? Do you think it's productive to police the conversations of others in a way that is entirely off topic to the threads? I understand that neither you nor hitekker enjoyed my wording. In the future, when I am speaking to you about a topic in a thread, I'll try to imagine what one's reaction might be if they interpret it as meaning offense before I post. I can't guarantee that I'll always be able to align with your preferred style of decorum, especially since I'm not sure what the rules are here; my post was bad and hitekker's post (an unprovoked off-topic personal attack on me under the auspices of speaking for another person who didn't appear to share their sentiment in the first place) was good. I won't be engaging any further on the minutae of posting best practices in the discussion thread for the future of the wikimedia project. Have a nice day!
- mst 5y ago
  Different registers of english are an interesting conversational issue. Your phrasing read to me as being close to passive aggressive, but had I been the author of the top level post you were replying to I would have assumed good faith too. My most common failure mode in HN comments is coming across as more combative than I intended because I tend towards blunt in my communication style. If you look at my comments, you'll note quite a few have a disclaimer in a parenthetical at the end to try and avoid that happening. Whether or not adopting a similar approach would be remotely useful to you, I genuinely have no idea.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

Just from the grants on that page, none of them are designed to actually result in concrete wiki-relevant activity. This is, apparently, deliberate[1]. The metrics of success are not defined in a measurable way with respect to the wiki projects; whatever they do result in won't be published until the end of the year. Maybe we will see 4.5 million worth of value. Maybe we will not. I'm not saying that it's a waste in absolute terms: the initiatives are likely a net good to humanity. But I don't think they are going to improve Wikipedia very much when the money is withheld from the platform itself. Yes, that's a false dichotomy, because if you have enough cash, you can have both racial justice funds and engineering excellence. But somewhere a decision was made that one is more important than the other, and I suggest that if you can have only one, going the other way will help Wikipedia more. And no, I don't have an example of an racial justice grant that resulted in a value, but I don't claim that they are axiomatically without it. The WMF does do quite a few other grants that I think have been and are valuable in wiki-adjacent areas. A lot of Wikipedian in Residences are very interesting, and these can have vast potential for increasing access to non-Western cultural resources. Something that I'd say is more in the WMF wheelhouse. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund#What_do_these_projects_have_to_do_with_Wikimedia%3F https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Knowledge_Equity_Fund#W...

PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
Thanks for the link! I can see being sceptical about the fund given the somewhat nebulous nature of the descriptions of their grants, and I look forward to seeing how they shake out by the end of the year. The reason why I asked is because it seemed like a strong position to take to say that the money was being "sprayed up the wall" given the little information we have about the outcomes of the fund. ? That being said, "what is best for Wikipedia" is in itself a nebulous proposition in the first place because different people have different requirements and visions for the project. Personally to me, the investments in investigative journalism (1) seem like they could have a direct value contribution since it could expand original reporting of facts for the site. That is of course debatable, but we'll see. Thanks for clarifying! 1 https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/power-of-knowledge-for-good-ee94e5681a3b https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/p...