3 ms·

akolbe's posts are almost universally about Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising. The research is poorly sourced, mostly inaccurate, and has a strong bias against

akolbe's posts are almost universally about Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising. The research is poorly sourced, mostly inaccurate, and has a strong bias against using funding for anything other than paying for hosting costs (which to akolbe, shouldn't include paying the staff). akolbe's strongest stance is against using money for "social causes", even though not much of the funding is used for that. Overall, akolbe is using multiple platforms to troll this particular issue. It used to be limited to wikimedia-l and to the community pump, but times change.

akolbe 4y ago
Let us note that of the six candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation board in this year's (s)election process, three endorsed the statement: "WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Answers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio... One of these candidates (Mike Peel) was elected. The other successful candidate, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, said on the same page, "I do feel that the online campaign can be improved. See videos for more." She did indeed comment further in the videos, saying (in reply to question 6), "The one thing that I think we can improve is our on-wiki campaign. It is sometimes too aggressive to my taste." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Questions_for_Candidates/Sorted https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio... The rest in your post you have made up. It does not reflect my opinions at all.
- ryan_lane 4y ago
  I agree with the fact that the messaging is deceptive. I'd like it to change. I've specifically called WMF out for it in the past. You're going well past complaining about the messaging, though. I did not make up the rest, and we've had numerous exchanges here, and on twitter, where you were pretty explicit about what things you dislike WMF funding, and most of those happen to be related to funding social issues related to Wikimedia (lack of representation, for example). You source from places with obvious bias that also include outright lies. You specifically call out how much is being spent on hosting, even though it's been pointed out to you numerous times by numerous people that it doesn't include the cost of engineering, legal, HR, internal IT, etc. which are vital to running and maintaining the sites. You're purposely being misleading, to the point of being deceitful. You point to a post by an old VP, that mentions a price wikipedia could be run for, but fail to take the word of folks (like me) who worked there at the time, that can tell you WMF was woefully understaffed (and poorly led by that VP) when he made that statement. Today's headcount is way more realistic in terms of what's needed to keep things going. It also doesn't take into account that the employees were woefully underpaid (and continue to be underpaid).

akolbe 4y ago

Let us note that of the six candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation board in this year's (s)election process, three endorsed the statement: "WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of money while it is in fact richer than ever." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Answers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio... One of these candidates (Mike Peel) was elected. The other successful candidate, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, said on the same page, "I do feel that the online campaign can be improved. See videos for more." She did indeed comment further in the videos, saying (in reply to question 6), "The one thing that I think we can improve is our on-wiki campaign. It is sometimes too aggressive to my taste." https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Questions_for_Candidates/Sorted https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_electio... The rest in your post you have made up. It does not reflect my opinions at all.

ryan_lane 4y ago
I agree with the fact that the messaging is deceptive. I'd like it to change. I've specifically called WMF out for it in the past. You're going well past complaining about the messaging, though. I did not make up the rest, and we've had numerous exchanges here, and on twitter, where you were pretty explicit about what things you dislike WMF funding, and most of those happen to be related to funding social issues related to Wikimedia (lack of representation, for example). You source from places with obvious bias that also include outright lies. You specifically call out how much is being spent on hosting, even though it's been pointed out to you numerous times by numerous people that it doesn't include the cost of engineering, legal, HR, internal IT, etc. which are vital to running and maintaining the sites. You're purposely being misleading, to the point of being deceitful. You point to a post by an old VP, that mentions a price wikipedia could be run for, but fail to take the word of folks (like me) who worked there at the time, that can tell you WMF was woefully understaffed (and poorly led by that VP) when he made that statement. Today's headcount is way more realistic in terms of what's needed to keep things going. It also doesn't take into account that the employees were woefully underpaid (and continue to be underpaid).