Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-12-22/Year in review

The Wikimedia community's shared history took center stage in 2016. On January 15, Wikipedians and news media around the world celebrated the site's 15-year anniversary with cake and reflections. Two other important milestones were greeted with less fanfare: the Wikimedia movement's five-year strategic plan—produced in 2010 at an expense of US$1 million and with the input of 1,000 individuals—had expired; and an endowment fund was finally established following years of discussion, with high ambitions but little in the way of published governance structures. Neither received much attention from either external media sources or the Wikimedia world.

The celebratory mood surrounding the anniversary was diminished by unprecedented turmoil in the Foundation's leadership. As former Signpost editor Gamaliel wrote on January 13,

The celebration of Wikipedia's 15th birthday threatens to be overshadowed by debates concerning governance of the various Wikimedia projects and how much of a voice the community will have in the future direction of the Wikimedia movement. These debates also threaten to overshadow another debate we should be having about the future of the community, regarding what lies at the heart of the movement and its community: the encyclopedia itself.

Upheaval in the organization, of course, need not directly impact volunteers' work of building an encyclopedia and other online resources. The curation of all human knowledge into a free repository continued without apparent interruption. Our projects continued their perpetual growth; the English Wikipedia, for instance, grew to exceed 5.3 million articles. However, some trends offered less cause for celebration: there was no substantial change in the overall decline in Wikipedia contributors that began in 2007, (inaccurate; note comment below) or in the various demographic skews, like the oft-noted "gender gap", among our ranks.

WMF leadership struggles

Gamaliel's January 13 editorial reflected only the first of several events that would rock the Foundation throughout 2016. Community-nominated trustee James Heilman had just been summarily ejected by the votes of all but one of his fellow board members. In an unrelated case, the appointment of trustee Arnnon Geshuri was about to be rejected by community members. And the story behind the

• Numerous longtime staff were departing, in a sharp upward trajectory of a trend analyzed by Terry Chay, former WMF director of features engineering, in September 2015.
• The board unilaterally appointed María Sefidari to Heilman's vacated, community-elected seat, and then made her vice chair. (Sefidari had the strongest finish of the unsuccessful candidates in the most recent election.)
• Another trustee departed prematurely—this time, community-nominated trustee Denny Vrandečić
• Two more trustees departed, including the board chair; both were replaced with new selections from affiliate organizations
• Two seats remained vacant through most of the year; Vrandečić's seat, vacated in April, will presumably be filled upon its normal expiration, in the 2017 election, while the effort to fill Geshuri's appointed seat, vacated in January, appears to have started in September.
• All appointments to the WMF's Advisory Board expired without formal comment from the WMF; no new members were appointed. The WMF's page on the body, however, has listed no personnel changes since 2013, suggesting that the expiration of all memberships may result from an oversight, rather than an intentional disbanding.
• The board's Governance Committee proceeded with efforts to review board practices, but appeared to eschew some of the more politically challenging possibilities, such as eliminating the founder's seat (the only position on the board without term limits, reserved exclusively for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales)

(See Wikipedian Molly White's timeline for further details.)

Against a backdrop of internal unrest, the board took little substantive action in 2016. Beyond managing the membership of the board itself, it appointed Katherine Maher as executive director (first interim, and then ongoing), addressed logistics around the endowment fund, increased the threshold for gifts requiring board approval, and approved the annual plan.

Amid growing concerns about the Foundation's formal leadership, the volunteer Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)—formed in 2012 with the primary purpose of advising the WMF on how to fund eligible affiliate organizations—strongly asserted its own voice. The FDC's May 2016 report highlighted the Foundation's "extended period of turmoil" in its May 2016 report, reiterating a sentiment first expressed in its November 2015 report. While the FDC praised the "passion and professionalism" in leaders' efforts to resolve the organization's issues, it reiterated its previous recommendation to solicit an "external assessment ... of the various constituent parts of the WMF", and called for the appointment of an ombudsperson, to "act as a bridge between the Board and any person or entity who is not already a member or officer of the Board."

In October, the long-vacant post of chief technical officer was filled with the hire of Victoria Coleman.

Relationships between WMF and volunteer communities

Volunteer communities have had their own governance structures for producing and maintaining Wikimedia sites, many of which predate the existence of the WMF. Many volunteers also take a strong interest in the work of the WMF itself, and its efficacy in serving the Wikimedia vision and mission. Governance and transparency issues, which impact communication around strategic and tactical work, are closely entwined with the WMF's relationships with the volunteer community. 2016 saw much discussion about governance issues, in various venues.

The WMF increasingly advertises specific ways for community members to weigh in on decisions in a variety of areas. For instance, the Community Wishlist process, now in its second iteration, has successfully invited community input, in a structured format that first collects and then ranks proposals, to help determine the priorities for developing technical features. The process has produced worthy results, and has earned praise from many quarters.

In another example, the WMF's most recent strategy consultation presented three strategic priorities, and an open invitation for responses in a two-week window in March, after a similar "Stage 1" comment period on the same three priorities in January. For anyone who wanted to express views in that relatively narrow scope, the opportunity was straightforward and efficient; but community members wishing to address strategic questions more broadly may not have had much opportunity to do so.

Community members often self-organize to express concerns where feedback has not been explicitly solicited. But fully absorbing unsolicited input presents challenges, and the WMF lacks the structures to do so effectively. According to trustee Dariusz Jemielniak, "currently, [the WMF doesn't] have the staff bandwidth" to be substantially more transparent, which suggests it also may not be adequately staffed to process input.

2016 was the third year in which the WMF declined to formally acknowledge receipt of a 2014 letter signed by more than 1,000 people, concerning the controversial "Superprotect" software feature. Tretikov's vacuous statement upon removing Superprotect—that it had created a "precedent of mistrust"—is all the organization's leadership has had to say in public on the matter; it was made at a moment of extraordinary political upheaval in the WMF. In April 2016, Tretikov became the third and final recipient of the letter to leave the organization (after deputy director Erik Möller and board chair Jan-Bart de Vreede). It has become clear that the organization considers the matter closed, and expects to address its communication challenges to the community without reference to this significant event.

There were bright spots during 2016. In October, the WMF's grantmakers provided a substantive accounting of the impact of 2014 criticism of the Foundation's funding of a controversial Wikipedian in residence program at Harvard University's Belfer Center. And of course, a great deal of effective staff–volunteer collaboration took place in day-to-day improvements on technical features—to which the Signpost's Technology Report section offers frequent testimony.

In January, as the controversies around Heilman and Geshuri were unfolding, WMF staffer Adam Wight started the Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap page on Meta, and encouraged staff and community members to engage. The page saw a flurry of activity, with several dozen editors building a list of 21 areas in need of improvement. Although there was no explicit connection, newly appointed trustee Nataliia Tymkiv started a similar page in October, opening with the bold statement that "Board transparency needs improvement. We lack understanding of what it means to be transparent."

Fundraising

The 2011 strategic plan predicted that the WMF's budget "might grow to approximately $50 million by 2015." In this respect, the plan's goals were massively exceeded: the WMF's 2014–15 revenue was more than $75 million. The WMF continued its success in substantially increasing its revenue every year for a decade. It also established a new endowment fund; and beyond that, formally and informally affiliated organizations—such as the German, Swiss, and Indonesian chapters, and the Wiki Education Foundation—all generate additional revenue of their own.

The WMF's fundraising success was accompanied by efforts to improve the messaging of its banner ads, a perennial source of criticism from members of the Wikimedia community. In particular, many have questioned the propriety of messaging that conveys a sense of Wikipedia's impending doom. An October presentation from the fundraising team highlighted their evolving approach and efforts to incorporate feedback.

But criticism didn't end entirely. When the banner campaign achieved its target ahead of schedule, former Signpost editor in chief Andreas Kolbe argued in several venues that the campaign should not continue, as scheduled, through the end of 2016. A detailed rebuttal from the WMF's Lisa Seitz Gruwell and Jaime Villagomez argued for continuation, but seemed to draw little support outside the organization. The discussion spread to other sites, including Slashdot and Reddit. In the view of Slashdot user careysub, "it appears that Jimmy Wales has broken new ground in "charity engineering", operating a charity in such a way that the various scoring factors for a well-run charity are met, without actually providing any real transparency."

Curating and disseminating knowledge continued apace

Organizational challenges aside, Wikipedia's 15th anniversary was indeed a cause for much celebration. The WMF coordinated efforts to rally goodwill around the world via the site 15.wikipedia.org; India alone hosted 14 events as local communities around the world marked the occasion. Numerous media outlets around the world took note.

Wikimedians continued to build, curate, and disseminate knowledge resources. The Wiki Education Foundation ran the Year of Science, engaging higher-education institutions in North America in an ambitious effort to improve Wikipedia's science coverage. The WikiProject Med Foundation worked with Wikimedia Switzerland and Kiwix to produce mobile apps that present medical information in several languages. The Signpost archives from 2016 contain many stories about enterprising volunteers and novel organizational initiatives to realize the Wikimedia mission.

Wikidata, one of the more important yet less prominent Wikimedia projects, transitioned from funding via Wikimedia Germany to direct funding from the Wikimedia Foundation. A recent blog post, 10 cool queries for Wikidata that will blow your mind. Number 7 will shock you, highlighted the use of SPARQL queries on Wikidata, which were enabled in 2015.

The annual Wikimania conference was held in a small village in Italy—a substantial shift from recent venues in major world cities like London, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. National Wikimedia conferences in France, India, and North America earned praise from many quarters. Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, who edit as Keilana and Rosiestep (respectively), were named co-Wikipedians of the year due to their work with anti-harassment on Wikipedia. Months earlier, Temple-Wood had been featured in several news outlets for using harassment as motivation to write articles on women scientists. National conferences were held as well, including the second-ever WikiConference India and its notably successful hackathon.

Note: Story was updated after publication to reflect the 2016, rather than 2015, strategy consultation.