Mailing List Archive

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members
Thanks Lisa for the information.
Now that we have $100 millions, let's see if we can hire someone to solve our technology, design and community wishes enormous lag. It may be a good inversion.

Thanks

Galder
________________________________
From: Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2021 4:57 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members


Dear all,


Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].


My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board, Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.


As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as well as in nonprofit management.


You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement, and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment talk page [6].


Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.


Best regards,

Lisa


[1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/ <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay

[4]https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/ <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>

[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment

--


[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7MN96V6or1Y0lu_IHLjdwlbWcRXHAjJfO14_U7F5LdzV79DS_Jh21K8EjgdZKiRwYcN3Ts2K3M3S6D4LGae96E8kwFNo41dsp38jy8jmSHCvqKAA8JJ-mKNmVfQV9aRm4KjoMPPk]

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Wonderful news, and an amazing set of board members. Thanks to the team for
making the endowment a steady and growing pillar of support, and tending to
its governance too with care :)

????????????????

On Wed., Sep. 22, 2021, 10:58 a.m. Lisa Gruwell, <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached
> its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent
> fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>
> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to
> the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an
> endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations
> on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its
> launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has
> brought free knowledge to the world.
>
> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed
> three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber,
> bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as
> well as in nonprofit management.
>
> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
> talk page [6].
>
> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lisa
>
> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>
> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>
> [4]
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
organization.

And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)

Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.

Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!

All good news, thank you again Lisa!


--
Christophe


On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached
> its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent
> fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>
> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to
> the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an
> endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations
> on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its
> launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has
> brought free knowledge to the world.
>
> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed
> three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber,
> bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as
> well as in nonprofit management.
>
> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
> talk page [6].
>
> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lisa
>
> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>
> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>
> [4]
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this
effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the
ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something
long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!

Best,
Lisa

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <
christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:

> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
> That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
> organization.
>
> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>
> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
> supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
> remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
> invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.
>
> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>
> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>
>
> --
> Christophe
>
>
> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached
>> its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent
>> fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>
>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>
>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>
>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>> talk page [6].
>>
>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>
>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>
>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>
>> [4]
>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>
>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>
>> --
>>
>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>
>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/4KIW46G7KAFHWZFRZZSQH2F2P5LWQEJG/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org



--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been used
to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:20 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this
> effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the
> ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something
> long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!
>
> Best,
> Lisa
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <
> christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
>> That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
>> organization.
>>
>> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>>
>> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
>> supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
>> remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
>> invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.
>>
>> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>>
>> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has
>>> reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as
>>> a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>>
>>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>>
>>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>>
>>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>>> talk page [6].
>>>
>>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Lisa
>>>
>>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>>
>>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>>
>>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>>
>>> [4]
>>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>>
>>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>>
>>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> Public archives at
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/4KIW46G7KAFHWZFRZZSQH2F2P5LWQEJG/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/56ONJVVBAIZIG6SHPP544ZNG4NVY6ZWA/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Great now but now...

(https://imgflip.com/i/5o0v9y if you don't want to download the attached
picture)

Vito
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.

1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment

2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."

3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."

If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.

--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
_______________________________________________
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To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Thanks Christophe, SJ and all! Lisa, agreed - it's taken a lot of work over
the years from many people to get here. A big thanks to all of the
endowment staff past and present and especially to you Lisa, who has been
there as an advocate from the very beginning "what if we made an
endowment?!" days. Also thanks to my fellow current and former trustees on
the WMF & Endowment boards who have supported this effort. I'm honored and
excited to be a part of the next chapter of the endowment, and I hope to
hear community members' thoughts on the best way an endowment could support
the very long term future of the Wikimedia projects and free knowledge too.

Galder -- though the endowment may only ever indirectly support this, yes
to a wishlist system that fulfills more wishes. I want to see this too.
Cunctator -- this seems like a different topic for a different thread?
Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll
just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the
projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily
operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate
investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction
of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means
changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate
grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a
good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment
will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations).

cheers,
Phoebe


On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:21 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this
> effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the
> ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something
> long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!
>
> Best,
> Lisa
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <
> christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
>> That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
>> organization.
>>
>> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>>
>> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
>> supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
>> remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
>> invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.
>>
>> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>>
>> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christophe
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has
>>> reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as
>>> a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>>
>>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>>
>>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>>
>>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>>> talk page [6].
>>>
>>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Lisa
>>>
>>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>>
>>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>>
>>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>>
>>> [4]
>>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>>
>>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>>
>>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> Public archives at
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/4KIW46G7KAFHWZFRZZSQH2F2P5LWQEJG/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/56ONJVVBAIZIG6SHPP544ZNG4NVY6ZWA/
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Is not only about "fulfilling wishes". Is about solving the enormous lag of tech problems we have. We may be the only top-10 site in the world with links to features in all the pages that are not working (as the book creator). We may have 100 million USD to mantain our legacy forever. It will be a nice museum of how Internet looked in the 1990s. We may have lots of money, but we lack any strategy to invest this money in making our platform better.

thanks

Galder
________________________________
From: phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2021 1:16 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members

Thanks Christophe, SJ and all! Lisa, agreed - it's taken a lot of work over the years from many people to get here. A big thanks to all of the endowment staff past and present and especially to you Lisa, who has been there as an advocate from the very beginning "what if we made an endowment?!" days. Also thanks to my fellow current and former trustees on the WMF & Endowment boards who have supported this effort. I'm honored and excited to be a part of the next chapter of the endowment, and I hope to hear community members' thoughts on the best way an endowment could support the very long term future of the Wikimedia projects and free knowledge too.

Galder -- though the endowment may only ever indirectly support this, yes to a wishlist system that fulfills more wishes. I want to see this too.
Cunctator -- this seems like a different topic for a different thread?
Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations).

cheers,
Phoebe


On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:21 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org<mailto:lgruwell@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!

Best,
Lisa

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <christophe.henner@gmail.com<mailto:christophe.henner@gmail.com>> wrote:
Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it! That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own organization.

And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)

Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.

Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!

All good news, thank you again Lisa!


--
Christophe


On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org<mailto:lgruwell@wikimedia.org>> wrote:

Dear all,


Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].


My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board, Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.


As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as well as in nonprofit management.


You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement, and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment talk page [6].


Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.


Best regards,

Lisa


[1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/ <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay

[4]https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/ <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>

[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment

--


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Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation<https://wikimediafoundation.org/>

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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
I know the purpose of the endowment, but our fundraising relies upon a
sense of urgency which is, simply, fake. It was already not true before,
but now that we have a massive endwoment it became even more untrue. I was
once told "I see Wikipedia is in a financially dire situation" "heck! where
did you read this?" "in a banner".

Each year fundraising surpasses its goals, the endowment itself reached the
100M goal in roughly half the expected time. Do we really seek an infinite
growth?

Vito

Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 01:17 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com>
ha scritto:

> Thanks Christophe, SJ and all! Lisa, agreed - it's taken a lot of work
> over the years from many people to get here. A big thanks to all of the
> endowment staff past and present and especially to you Lisa, who has been
> there as an advocate from the very beginning "what if we made an
> endowment?!" days. Also thanks to my fellow current and former trustees on
> the WMF & Endowment boards who have supported this effort. I'm honored and
> excited to be a part of the next chapter of the endowment, and I hope to
> hear community members' thoughts on the best way an endowment could support
> the very long term future of the Wikimedia projects and free knowledge too.
>
> Galder -- though the endowment may only ever indirectly support this, yes
> to a wishlist system that fulfills more wishes. I want to see this too.
> Cunctator -- this seems like a different topic for a different thread?
> Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll
> just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the
> projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily
> operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate
> investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction
> of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means
> changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate
> grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a
> good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment
> will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations).
>
> cheers,
> Phoebe
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:21 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this
>> effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the
>> ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something
>> long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!
>>
>> Best,
>> Lisa
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <
>> christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
>>> That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
>>> organization.
>>>
>>> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>>>
>>> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
>>> supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
>>> remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
>>> invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.
>>>
>>> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>>>
>>> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christophe
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has
>>>> reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as
>>>> a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>>>
>>>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>>>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>>>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>>>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>>>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>>>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>>>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>>>
>>>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>>>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>>>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>>>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>>>
>>>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>>>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>>>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>>>> talk page [6].
>>>>
>>>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement
>>>> possible.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Lisa
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>>>
>>>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>>>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>>>
>>>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>>>
>>>> [4]
>>>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>>>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>>>
>>>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>>>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>>>
>>>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>>>
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,
>>>> guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>>>> and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>>> Public archives at
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> Public archives at
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/4KIW46G7KAFHWZFRZZSQH2F2P5LWQEJG/
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>
>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/56ONJVVBAIZIG6SHPP544ZNG4NVY6ZWA/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
> <at> gmail.com *
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
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> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Phoebe,

You say,

"Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll
just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the
projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily
operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate
investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction
of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means
changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate
grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a
good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment
will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations)."

Changing fundraising strategies for the Endowment has no impact whatsoever
on affiliate grants. This past year, for example, during the height of the
pandemic, people like Jason Adams, the WMF's Senior Planned Giving
Specialist, emailed past Wikipedia donors, impressing on them how prudent
it would be to make a will leaving money to the Wikimedia Endowment in the
event of their death. "It's a great way to protect your loved ones and the
causes you care about most all at once," he wrote. "When you leave a gift
to the Wikimedia Endowment, you become part of Wikipedia's legacy."[1]

This fulfils at least some people's definition of aggressive, if not
"creepy" fundraising.[2][3]

You can't blame Jason – it's what he was hired to do – but clearly the WMF
feels it has a captive and lucrative product, Wikipedia, and should
monetise the hell out of it in the most professional manner possible while
the going is good – to the point where its spending struggles to keep pace
with its rising revenue (which is the precise situation that led to the
Knowledge Equity Fund[4]).

Again, that approach is surely common enough in the US and elsewhere – make
money first, think about how to spend it later –, but the problem is that
Wikipedia isn't just a product, but a community of volunteers.

Monetising the hell out of a volunteer community feels different from
monetising a product.

As for "Changing fundraising strategies really means changing the size and
scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate grants", I suppose that
was meant to make people afraid they might lose funding. But the fact is
that the size and scope of the WMF annual plan "changes" constantly: it
balloons more and more each year.

While budgeted expenses for 2020/2021 were $108M[5] (and the WMF generally
underspends), this year's 2021/2022 annual plan[6] budgets for a total
expenditure of $150M – a year-on-year increase of nearly 40 per cent.
Someone clearly thought, let's throw all caution to the wind.

I am reminded of the way Mozilla ballooned ...

Meanwhile, fundraising banners continue to tell the public money is
urgently needed to "protect Wikipedia's independence", make people believe
the WMF "often struggles to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and
running"[7], and Wikimedia's upbeat, invariably "excited" PR resembles more
and more the output of an Orwellian propaganda ministry.

No doubt the architects of this development will eventually leave the WMF
with résumés highlighting by how much they increased revenue over
such-and-such an amount of time, how they built a $100M endowment in half
the time planned (this target was achieved five years early), and move to a
different employer who values these abilities.

As for how the WMF and Wikipedia will be viewed by donors, the public and
the volunteer community, time will tell what their legacy will be.

Andreas

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraising&oldid=21765717#/media/File:Wikifundraising.png
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraising&oldid=21765717#Add_a_Wikipedia_donation..._to_your_last_will_and_testament?
??
[3] https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1400129061142163460
[4]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/XI5A4FKDJUK3VWOQWZIPIZXMWAMIX5IW/
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2020-2021
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/Annual_Plan_2021-2022
[7] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/

On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 12:17 AM phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:

> Vito -- Good meme usage. I can't find the perfect meme to answer so I'll
> just say that (as I expect you know) the endowment is meant to support the
> projects in perpetuity, which means it isn't there to replace daily
> operation funding or annual fundraising. The 100M is meant to generate
> investment income (which best case scenario will still only be a fraction
> of the current WMF budget.) Changing fundraising strategies really means
> changing the size and scope of the WMF annual plan, including affiliate
> grants; the need for fundraising follows from the budget. While that's a
> good conversation to have, I don't think the existence of the endowment
> will direct it (or our larger movement strategy conversations).
>
> cheers,
> Phoebe
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:21 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you, Christophe and SJ. You both were great supporters of this
>> effort when you were on the WMF board and it wouldn't have gotten off the
>> ground without you. It takes a lot of vision and trust to do something
>> long-term like an endowment. Thanks for giving that to us!
>>
>> Best,
>> Lisa
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 1:52 AM Christophe Henner <
>> christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it!
>>> That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own
>>> organization.
>>>
>>> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>>>
>>> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been
>>> supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I
>>> remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to
>>> invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant:
>>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant.
>>>
>>> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>>>
>>> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christophe
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has
>>>> reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as
>>>> a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>>>
>>>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>>>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>>>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>>>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>>>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>>>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>>>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>>>
>>>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>>>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>>>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>>>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>>>
>>>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>>>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>>>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>>>> talk page [6].
>>>>
>>>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement
>>>> possible.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Lisa
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>>>
>>>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>>>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>>>
>>>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>>>
>>>> [4]
>>>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>>>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>>>
>>>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>>>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
I will answer to the end of your email only as it shocked me.

Le ven. 24 sept. 2021 à 10:33 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> a
écrit :

>
> No doubt the architects of this development will eventually leave the WMF
> with résumés highlighting by how much they increased revenue over
> such-and-such an amount of time, how they built a $100M endowment in half
> the time planned (this target was achieved five years early), and move to a
> different employer who values these abilities.
>

This is totally out of place. First of, it's their work and praising on
their achievements is nothing shameful. I hope they see their work as good
work.

Second, the Fundraising team is made of deeply engaged people. I will not
list them all, but I am pretty sure that teams have some of the "older"
employees in the Foundation. If you take the three first names of the staff
list, the three (Lisa, Megan and Guillaume) all have been at the Foundation
for over 10 years.

So your attack is out of place, unfounded and totally wrong. They are
staff, they are professionals, they are highly engaged people and part of
our movement as we all are.

So please, stop attacking people.
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Wording could had been better, but it's not an attack. Nobody blames
fundraising people for their ability, not even the sense of urgency in
banners is their fault in absence of an explicit guideline.

Andreas pointed out a problem which lies in the performance indicators
of fundraising along with its goals.

Vito

Il giorno ven 24 set 2021 alle ore 12:09 Christophe Henner
<christophe.henner@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> I will answer to the end of your email only as it shocked me.
>
> Le ven. 24 sept. 2021 à 10:33 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>>
>> No doubt the architects of this development will eventually leave the WMF with résumés highlighting by how much they increased revenue over such-and-such an amount of time, how they built a $100M endowment in half the time planned (this target was achieved five years early), and move to a different employer who values these abilities.
>
>
> This is totally out of place. First of, it's their work and praising on their achievements is nothing shameful. I hope they see their work as good work.
>
> Second, the Fundraising team is made of deeply engaged people. I will not list them all, but I am pretty sure that teams have some of the "older" employees in the Foundation. If you take the three first names of the staff list, the three (Lisa, Megan and Guillaume) all have been at the Foundation for over 10 years.
>
> So your attack is out of place, unfounded and totally wrong. They are staff, they are professionals, they are highly engaged people and part of our movement as we all are.
>
> So please, stop attacking people.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection of copyleft
would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such as Google and Amazon.
WikiData is a Wikimedia project that converts copylefted content into (what
Wikimedia asserts to be) copyright-free content.

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been
> used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>
> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>
> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>
> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>
> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/ME3ZHE4EKPUG6XA3N53YWGZMCE7XBZKN/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Hoi,
Facts are in and of themselves not copyrightable. Collections of data may
be copyrighted.We choose not to and as a result Wikidata is the powerhouse
that it has become.The CC-by-sa license is our license of choice for
Wikipedia however, the way it has been enforced so far has been defensive,
we are quite happy when our material is used.

At Wikidata we are long past the point where the majority of the data is
from a Wikipedia. From day one Wikidata has provided essential services to
every Wikipedia, Wikidata can provide superior services to Wikipedia.
Because like Commons, we have to maintain the data only once and have it
available everywhere. Wikidata is instrumental in sychronising death
information among our projects. It has been shown over and over again to
have more complete information as can be found in Wikipedia lists and
categories. Wikipedians choose to stick with their arguably substandard
practices.

The notion that a Google or an Amazon are not capable of extracting facts
from a Wikipedia is silly. They have the capacity and the skills and the
software to do just that. Wikidata provides them additional information
making their information more complete. They have their reasons to be model
citizens and contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation. We now provide paid
for services to them making their bot activity less of a strain to our
services and provide them a (paid for) service.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 04:32, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection of
> copyleft would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such as Google and
> Amazon. WikiData is a Wikimedia project that converts copylefted content
> into (what Wikimedia asserts to be) copyright-free content.
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been
>> used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>>
>> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>>
>> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
>> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>
>> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>
>> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
>> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.
>>
>> --
>> Andy Mabbett
>> @pigsonthewing
>> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/ME3ZHE4EKPUG6XA3N53YWGZMCE7XBZKN/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RWN3E4ORWWLDHQ7PBX675KBQV5BAUPBV/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
The Cunctator's point about Wikidata's copyright-free CC0 licence is
actually one issue that I had meant to include in the list of WMF ethical
lapses in my other post .

Wikidata has imported very large amounts of content from Wikipedia, which,
as The Cunctator points out, has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
License. This was not the original plan, as it was thought doing so would
infringe the licence under which Wikipedia contributors had released their
contributions.

In 2012, for example, while he was still a Wikimedia Deutschland employee,
Denny wrote on Meta,[1]

Alexrk2, it is absolutely true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be allowed
to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does not plan to
extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will ''provide'' data
that can be reused in the Wikipedias. And a CC0 source can be used by a
Share-Alike project, be it either Wikipedia or OSM. But not the other way
around. Do we agree on this understanding? --[[User:Denny Vrande?i?
(WMDE)|Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)]] ([[User talk:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|talk]])
12:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Denny then moved to Google in October 2013, and subsequently argued
strongly in favour of making Wikidata CC0, which is the viewpoint that
prevailed and led to large-scale importation of Wikipedia content in
Wikidata.

The legal situation is admittedly fairly complex[2] but it stands to reason
that when a person moves from Wikimedia to Google, loyalties and priorities
will change along with such a move. That is only natural. Nobody would or
should make such a move if they weren't prepared to be loyal to their new
employer. (I've cc'ed Denny as a courtesy.)

What is equally certain is that the CC0 licence served the interests of
Google and other Big Tech companies. All of this of course happened at a
time when Google and Silicon Valley were particularly strongly represented
on the WMF board.[3]

As far as the Wikimedia projects are concerned, Wikidata's shift to CC0
substantially increased the risk of disintermediation that Guillaume
mentioned in his post. If content is CC0, there is no need for attribution,
so unlike the present Knowledge Graph panels, which at least have a link to
Wikipedia, there is no need for any attribution to a Wikimedia site at all
when others use Wikidata content.

Content is then widely disseminated and presented as truth without any
indication that it comes from a Wikimedia volunteer project. As Heather
Ford has pointed out in her chapter of the Wikipedia @ 20 book, "Rise of
the Underdog"[4], this obscuring of provenance is undesirable for other
reasons as well – it becomes harder to contest information. Users lose
agency.

Now, in the context of the grand aim of Knowledge Equity, I believe it is
absolutely the wrong thing for the WMF to enter into any association with
Big Tech companies that results in any preferential treatment being
extended to them.

Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are surveillance
capitalists. Their entire business model is based on tracking user
behaviour. It is diametrically opposed to professed WMF core values
concerning privacy and data protection.

Moreover, these companies have become trillion-dollar companies – really
the 21st-century equivalent in many ways of what oil companies were in the
last century, and wielding the same kind of covert influence – in part
because of their diligent effort to avoid paying taxes in the countries
they operate in.

The way these companies are set up, this will never change: shareholders
will always demand maximum return on their investments, which necessitates
minimising tax. I believe anyone who would try to change these companies'
tax-avoidance behaviour, volunteering to pay the billions of dollars of tax
these companies morally owe the global south and other jurisdictions, would
simply be axed.

What this means, given that all these companies are based in the US, is
that as their already overwhelming market share grows globally, the
economic imbalance disadvantaging the global south – which is the root
cause of unequal access to knowledge – will only grow. It's a bit like
21st-century colonialism: wealth streaming out of poor countries into a
rich one.

For both of these reasons, privacy and tax avoidance, I believe the WMF has
absolutely no business aiding these companies to any extent where it would
give them any additional advantage over regional or global competitors. Of
course I acknowledge that it is impossible to avoid interacting with Big
Tech, but where competitors such as DuckDuckGo are available whose values
are at least partially more aligned with the WMF's own, they should be
clearly preferred as WMF partners.

For that reason I was really glad to read about a joint WMF/DuckDuckGo
study the other day that shed some interesting light on another aspect of
disintermediation. This study found that knowledge panels increase rather
than diminish click-throughs to Wikipedia[5], much the opposite of what I
and others thought a few years ago. While this is a single study whose
conclusions may not necessarily hold true in all contexts, it is an
interesting and encouraging result.

Andreas

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes
[4] https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2
[5]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 7:35 AM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Facts are in and of themselves not copyrightable. Collections of data may
> be copyrighted.We choose not to and as a result Wikidata is the powerhouse
> that it has become.The CC-by-sa license is our license of choice for
> Wikipedia however, the way it has been enforced so far has been defensive,
> we are quite happy when our material is used.
>
> At Wikidata we are long past the point where the majority of the data is
> from a Wikipedia. From day one Wikidata has provided essential services to
> every Wikipedia, Wikidata can provide superior services to Wikipedia.
> Because like Commons, we have to maintain the data only once and have it
> available everywhere. Wikidata is instrumental in sychronising death
> information among our projects. It has been shown over and over again to
> have more complete information as can be found in Wikipedia lists and
> categories. Wikipedians choose to stick with their arguably substandard
> practices.
>
> The notion that a Google or an Amazon are not capable of extracting facts
> from a Wikipedia is silly. They have the capacity and the skills and the
> software to do just that. Wikidata provides them additional information
> making their information more complete. They have their reasons to be model
> citizens and contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation. We now provide paid
> for services to them making their bot activity less of a strain to our
> services and provide them a (paid for) service.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 04:32, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection of
>> copyleft would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such as Google and
>> Amazon. WikiData is a Wikimedia project that converts copylefted content
>> into (what Wikimedia asserts to be) copyright-free content.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been
>>> used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>>>
>>> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>>>
>>> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
>>> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>
>>> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>
>>> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
>>> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andy Mabbett
>>> @pigsonthewing
>>> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> Public archives at
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/ME3ZHE4EKPUG6XA3N53YWGZMCE7XBZKN/
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RWN3E4ORWWLDHQ7PBX675KBQV5BAUPBV/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/BN5BMT6YPILRPMZJQX4MJQDUL7DXP7BV/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Congratulations on developing a useful service for the most profitable and
powerful corporations on the planet.

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 2:34 AM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Facts are in and of themselves not copyrightable. Collections of data may
> be copyrighted.We choose not to and as a result Wikidata is the powerhouse
> that it has become.The CC-by-sa license is our license of choice for
> Wikipedia however, the way it has been enforced so far has been defensive,
> we are quite happy when our material is used.
>
> At Wikidata we are long past the point where the majority of the data is
> from a Wikipedia. From day one Wikidata has provided essential services to
> every Wikipedia, Wikidata can provide superior services to Wikipedia.
> Because like Commons, we have to maintain the data only once and have it
> available everywhere. Wikidata is instrumental in sychronising death
> information among our projects. It has been shown over and over again to
> have more complete information as can be found in Wikipedia lists and
> categories. Wikipedians choose to stick with their arguably substandard
> practices.
>
> The notion that a Google or an Amazon are not capable of extracting facts
> from a Wikipedia is silly. They have the capacity and the skills and the
> software to do just that. Wikidata provides them additional information
> making their information more complete. They have their reasons to be model
> citizens and contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation. We now provide paid
> for services to them making their bot activity less of a strain to our
> services and provide them a (paid for) service.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 04:32, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection of
>> copyleft would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such as Google and
>> Amazon. WikiData is a Wikimedia project that converts copylefted content
>> into (what Wikimedia asserts to be) copyright-free content.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has been
>>> used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>>>
>>> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>>>
>>> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
>>> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>
>>> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>
>>> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
>>> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andy Mabbett
>>> @pigsonthewing
>>> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>>> Public archives at
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/ME3ZHE4EKPUG6XA3N53YWGZMCE7XBZKN/
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RWN3E4ORWWLDHQ7PBX675KBQV5BAUPBV/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/BN5BMT6YPILRPMZJQX4MJQDUL7DXP7BV/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Hi Andreas and Cunctator,

I partially agree with you with the WMF's budget and fundraising. It's a
lot of money that is being raised, and there seems to be a big
disconnect between the fundraising messages being used and the actual
expenditure. The money is being well spent and on worthwhile things,
though, which mitigates - but doesn't solve - the issue. It's a big
ethical problem that I hope the WMF can improve on in the near future.

With CC-0, though, I disagree. From my perspective/understanding, it's
not about supporting big businesses, and I think your comments about
Denny and Google are off the mark.

A key part of the Wikimedia movement is that we understand, and follow,
copyright law. We may not like it much, but we follow it as accurately
as we possibly can (given legal ambiguities etc.). When it comes to
Wikidata, we're storing factual information in short segments (triples),
which by law can't be copyrighted. It doesn't matter where the
information comes from - whether CC-BY-SA, full copyright, or elsewhere.
You can argue about database rights, but on the whole, it's not
information that *should* be CC-BY-SA, it's public domain information,
so CC-0 makes the most sense.

It's like planting trees. They produce oxygen, which benefits us all.
They may also benefit big tech as well, but that's not why we plant them.

(Full disclaimer: I run bot scripts that copy info from Wikipedias into
Wikidata, including short descriptions, via Pi bot. My understanding is
that none of the information copied is copyrightable. Feel free to argue
about this on-wiki if you want.)

Thanks,
Mike

On 27/9/21 14:02:23, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> The Cunctator's point about Wikidata's copyright-free CC0 licence is
> actually one issue that I had meant to include in the list of WMF
> ethical lapses in my other post .
>
> Wikidata has imported very large amounts of content from Wikipedia,
> which, as The Cunctator points out, has a Creative Commons
> Attribution-ShareAlike License. This was not the original plan, as it
> was thought doing so would infringe the licence under which Wikipedia
> contributors had released their contributions.
>
> In 2012, for example, while he was still a Wikimedia Deutschland
> employee, Denny wrote on Meta,[1]
>
> Alexrk2, it is absolutely true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be
> allowed to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does
> not plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will
> ''provide'' data that can be reused in the Wikipedias. And a CC0 source
> can be used by a Share-Alike project, be it either Wikipedia or OSM. But
> not the other way around. Do we agree on this understanding?
> --[[User:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)]] ([[User
> talk:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|talk]]) 12:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
>
> Denny then moved to Google in October 2013, and subsequently argued
> strongly in favour of making Wikidata CC0, which is the viewpoint that
> prevailed and led to large-scale importation of Wikipedia content in
> Wikidata.
>
> The legal situation is admittedly fairly complex[2] but it stands to
> reason that when a person moves from Wikimedia to Google, loyalties and
> priorities will change along with such a move. That is only natural.
> Nobody would or should make such a move if they weren't prepared to be
> loyal to their new employer. (I've cc'ed Denny as a courtesy.)
>
> What is equally certain is that the CC0 licence served the interests of
> Google and other Big Tech companies. All of this of course happened at a
> time when Google and Silicon Valley were particularly strongly
> represented on the WMF board.[3]
>
> As far as the Wikimedia projects are concerned, Wikidata's shift to CC0
> substantially increased the risk of disintermediation that Guillaume
> mentioned in his post. If content is CC0, there is no need for
> attribution, so unlike the present Knowledge Graph panels, which at
> least have a link to Wikipedia, there is no need for any attribution to
> a Wikimedia site at all when others use Wikidata content.
>
> Content is then widely disseminated and presented as truth without any
> indication that it comes from a Wikimedia volunteer project. As Heather
> Ford has pointed out in her chapter of the Wikipedia @ 20 book, "Rise of
> the Underdog"[4], this obscuring of provenance is undesirable for other
> reasons as well – it becomes harder to contest information. Users lose
> agency.
>
> Now, in the context of the grand aim of Knowledge Equity, I believe it
> is absolutely the wrong thing for the WMF to enter into any association
> with Big Tech companies that results in any preferential treatment being
> extended to them.
>
> Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are surveillance
> capitalists. Their entire business model is based on tracking user
> behaviour. It is diametrically opposed to professed WMF core values
> concerning privacy and data protection.
>
> Moreover, these companies have become trillion-dollar companies – really
> the 21st-century equivalent in many ways of what oil companies were in
> the last century, and wielding the same kind of covert influence – in
> part because of their diligent effort to avoid paying taxes in the
> countries they operate in.
>
> The way these companies are set up, this will never change: shareholders
> will always demand maximum return on their investments, which
> necessitates minimising tax. I believe anyone who would try to change
> these companies' tax-avoidance behaviour, volunteering to pay the
> billions of dollars of tax these companies morally owe the global south
> and other jurisdictions, would simply be axed.
>
> What this means, given that all these companies are based in the US, is
> that as their already overwhelming market share grows globally, the
> economic imbalance disadvantaging the global south – which is the root
> cause of unequal access to knowledge – will only grow. It's a bit like
> 21st-century colonialism: wealth streaming out of poor countries into a
> rich one.
>
> For both of these reasons, privacy and tax avoidance, I believe the WMF
> has absolutely no business aiding these companies to any extent where it
> would give them any additional advantage over regional or global
> competitors. Of course I acknowledge that it is impossible to avoid
> interacting with Big Tech, but where competitors such as DuckDuckGo are
> available whose values are at least partially more aligned with the
> WMF's own, they should be clearly preferred as WMF partners.
>
> For that reason I was really glad to read about a joint WMF/DuckDuckGo
> study the other day that shed some interesting light on another aspect
> of disintermediation. This study found that knowledge panels increase
> rather than diminish click-throughs to Wikipedia[5], much the opposite
> of what I and others thought a few years ago. While this is a single
> study whose conclusions may not necessarily hold true in all contexts,
> it is an interesting and encouraging result.
>
> Andreas
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379>
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion>
> [3]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes>
> [4] https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2
> <https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2>
> [5]
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia
> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia>
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 7:35 AM Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com <mailto:gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> Facts are in and of themselves not copyrightable. Collections of
> data may be copyrighted.We choose not to and as a result Wikidata is
> the powerhouse that it has become.The CC-by-sa license is our
> license of choice for Wikipedia however, the way it has been
> enforced so far has been defensive, we are quite happy when our
> material is used.
>
> At Wikidata we are long past the point where the majority of the
> data is from a Wikipedia. From day one Wikidata has provided
> essential services to every Wikipedia,  Wikidata can provide
> superior services to Wikipedia. Because like Commons, we have to
> maintain the data only once and have it available everywhere.
> Wikidata is instrumental in sychronising death information among our
> projects. It has been shown over and over again to have more
> complete information as can be found in Wikipedia lists and
> categories. Wikipedians choose to stick with their arguably
> substandard practices.
>
> The notion that a Google or an Amazon are not capable of extracting
> facts from a Wikipedia is silly. They have the capacity and the
> skills and the software to do just that. Wikidata provides them
> additional information making their information more complete. They
> have their reasons to be model citizens and contribute to the
> Wikimedia Foundation. We now provide paid for services to them
> making their bot activity less of a strain to our services and
> provide them a (paid for) service.
> Thanks,
>        GerardM
>
> On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 04:32, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com
> <mailto:cunctator@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection
> of copyleft would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such
> as Google and Amazon. WikiData is a Wikimedia project that
> converts copylefted content into (what Wikimedia asserts to be)
> copyright-free content.
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett
> <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk <mailto:andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>>
> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator
> <cunctator@gmail.com <mailto:cunctator@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data
> work has been used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>
> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>
> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has
> been used
> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>
> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's
> copyleft."
>
> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data,
> please start
> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to
> make.
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk <https://pigsonthewing.org.uk>
> _______________________________________________
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Thanks, Mike.

My comments about Denny were definitely off the mark in one respect: in the
2012 snippet I was quoting, Denny was already arguing for CC0.

What changed was that at that time, Denny felt and said that CC0-licensed
Wikidata would not (and should not) extract content out of ShareAlike
Wikipedia.

That position was later abandoned, as we all know, and Wikidata imported
masses of content from Wikipedia.

It's a subtle, but material difference, and I am really sorry about getting
that bit wrong.

I really don't want to relitigate the CC0 issue or lay into Denny; what's
done is done.

However, going forward, I do stand by my comment that I'd much rather see
the WMF partner with, say, DuckDuckGo, who are committed to not tracking
and monetising users' online behaviour, than with the Googles of this world.

And I hope every care will be taken to make sure Wikimedia Enterprise and
its pricing structure will not unfairly advantage Big Tech, and will not
help to further entrench their monopolies.

Andreas

On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 10:18 PM Mike Peel <email@mikepeel.net> wrote:

> Hi Andreas and Cunctator,
>
> I partially agree with you with the WMF's budget and fundraising. It's a
> lot of money that is being raised, and there seems to be a big
> disconnect between the fundraising messages being used and the actual
> expenditure. The money is being well spent and on worthwhile things,
> though, which mitigates - but doesn't solve - the issue. It's a big
> ethical problem that I hope the WMF can improve on in the near future.
>
> With CC-0, though, I disagree. From my perspective/understanding, it's
> not about supporting big businesses, and I think your comments about
> Denny and Google are off the mark.
>
> A key part of the Wikimedia movement is that we understand, and follow,
> copyright law. We may not like it much, but we follow it as accurately
> as we possibly can (given legal ambiguities etc.). When it comes to
> Wikidata, we're storing factual information in short segments (triples),
> which by law can't be copyrighted. It doesn't matter where the
> information comes from - whether CC-BY-SA, full copyright, or elsewhere.
> You can argue about database rights, but on the whole, it's not
> information that *should* be CC-BY-SA, it's public domain information,
> so CC-0 makes the most sense.
>
> It's like planting trees. They produce oxygen, which benefits us all.
> They may also benefit big tech as well, but that's not why we plant them.
>
> (Full disclaimer: I run bot scripts that copy info from Wikipedias into
> Wikidata, including short descriptions, via Pi bot. My understanding is
> that none of the information copied is copyrightable. Feel free to argue
> about this on-wiki if you want.)
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> On 27/9/21 14:02:23, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> > The Cunctator's point about Wikidata's copyright-free CC0 licence is
> > actually one issue that I had meant to include in the list of WMF
> > ethical lapses in my other post .
> >
> > Wikidata has imported very large amounts of content from Wikipedia,
> > which, as The Cunctator points out, has a Creative Commons
> > Attribution-ShareAlike License. This was not the original plan, as it
> > was thought doing so would infringe the licence under which Wikipedia
> > contributors had released their contributions.
> >
> > In 2012, for example, while he was still a Wikimedia Deutschland
> > employee, Denny wrote on Meta,[1]
> >
> > Alexrk2, it is absolutely true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be
> > allowed to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does
> > not plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will
> > ''provide'' data that can be reused in the Wikipedias. And a CC0 source
> > can be used by a Share-Alike project, be it either Wikipedia or OSM. But
> > not the other way around. Do we agree on this understanding?
> > --[[User:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)]] ([[User
> > talk:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|talk]]) 12:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
> >
> > Denny then moved to Google in October 2013, and subsequently argued
> > strongly in favour of making Wikidata CC0, which is the viewpoint that
> > prevailed and led to large-scale importation of Wikipedia content in
> > Wikidata.
> >
> > The legal situation is admittedly fairly complex[2] but it stands to
> > reason that when a person moves from Wikimedia to Google, loyalties and
> > priorities will change along with such a move. That is only natural.
> > Nobody would or should make such a move if they weren't prepared to be
> > loyal to their new employer. (I've cc'ed Denny as a courtesy.)
> >
> > What is equally certain is that the CC0 licence served the interests of
> > Google and other Big Tech companies. All of this of course happened at a
> > time when Google and Silicon Valley were particularly strongly
> > represented on the WMF board.[3]
> >
> > As far as the Wikimedia projects are concerned, Wikidata's shift to CC0
> > substantially increased the risk of disintermediation that Guillaume
> > mentioned in his post. If content is CC0, there is no need for
> > attribution, so unlike the present Knowledge Graph panels, which at
> > least have a link to Wikipedia, there is no need for any attribution to
> > a Wikimedia site at all when others use Wikidata content.
> >
> > Content is then widely disseminated and presented as truth without any
> > indication that it comes from a Wikimedia volunteer project. As Heather
> > Ford has pointed out in her chapter of the Wikipedia @ 20 book, "Rise of
> > the Underdog"[4], this obscuring of provenance is undesirable for other
> > reasons as well – it becomes harder to contest information. Users lose
> > agency.
> >
> > Now, in the context of the grand aim of Knowledge Equity, I believe it
> > is absolutely the wrong thing for the WMF to enter into any association
> > with Big Tech companies that results in any preferential treatment being
> > extended to them.
> >
> > Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are surveillance
> > capitalists. Their entire business model is based on tracking user
> > behaviour. It is diametrically opposed to professed WMF core values
> > concerning privacy and data protection.
> >
> > Moreover, these companies have become trillion-dollar companies – really
> > the 21st-century equivalent in many ways of what oil companies were in
> > the last century, and wielding the same kind of covert influence – in
> > part because of their diligent effort to avoid paying taxes in the
> > countries they operate in.
> >
> > The way these companies are set up, this will never change: shareholders
> > will always demand maximum return on their investments, which
> > necessitates minimising tax. I believe anyone who would try to change
> > these companies' tax-avoidance behaviour, volunteering to pay the
> > billions of dollars of tax these companies morally owe the global south
> > and other jurisdictions, would simply be axed.
> >
> > What this means, given that all these companies are based in the US, is
> > that as their already overwhelming market share grows globally, the
> > economic imbalance disadvantaging the global south – which is the root
> > cause of unequal access to knowledge – will only grow. It's a bit like
> > 21st-century colonialism: wealth streaming out of poor countries into a
> > rich one.
> >
> > For both of these reasons, privacy and tax avoidance, I believe the WMF
> > has absolutely no business aiding these companies to any extent where it
> > would give them any additional advantage over regional or global
> > competitors. Of course I acknowledge that it is impossible to avoid
> > interacting with Big Tech, but where competitors such as DuckDuckGo are
> > available whose values are at least partially more aligned with the
> > WMF's own, they should be clearly preferred as WMF partners.
> >
> > For that reason I was really glad to read about a joint WMF/DuckDuckGo
> > study the other day that shed some interesting light on another aspect
> > of disintermediation. This study found that knowledge panels increase
> > rather than diminish click-throughs to Wikipedia[5], much the opposite
> > of what I and others thought a few years ago. While this is a single
> > study whose conclusions may not necessarily hold true in all contexts,
> > it is an interesting and encouraging result.
> >
> > Andreas
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379
> > <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379
> >
> > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion
> > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion>
> > [3]
> >
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes
> > <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes
> >
> > [4] https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2
> > <https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2>
> > [5]
> >
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia
> > <
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia
> >
> >
>
>
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Hoi,
Again, your English Wikipedia background shows. Wikipedia exists in 200+
languages, knowledge panels in English are of interest to some 50% of our
public. The aggregated data at Wikidata is able to service all the
languages we support. For the nds.wikipedia.org just recently, it was
announced that they now support Listeria lists. Given a mission of "sharing
the sum of all knowledge", there is more data to share in Wikidata than
there is in all the Wikipedias combined.

When you consider the data stream provided to those who want to pay for it;
this data stream makes much of the bot traffic we used to have redundant.
So it is not as if any party could not get at the data, this way is more
convenient to us and to them.
Thanks,
GerardM



On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 15:03, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator's point about Wikidata's copyright-free CC0 licence is
> actually one issue that I had meant to include in the list of WMF ethical
> lapses in my other post .
>
> Wikidata has imported very large amounts of content from Wikipedia, which,
> as The Cunctator points out, has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
> License. This was not the original plan, as it was thought doing so would
> infringe the licence under which Wikipedia contributors had released their
> contributions.
>
> In 2012, for example, while he was still a Wikimedia Deutschland employee,
> Denny wrote on Meta,[1]
>
> Alexrk2, it is absolutely true that Wikidata under CC0 would not be
> allowed to import content from a Share-Alike data source. Wikidata does not
> plan to extract content out of Wikipedia at all. Wikidata will ''provide''
> data that can be reused in the Wikipedias. And a CC0 source can be used by
> a Share-Alike project, be it either Wikipedia or OSM. But not the other way
> around. Do we agree on this understanding? --[[User:Denny Vrande?i?
> (WMDE)|Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)]] ([[User talk:Denny Vrande?i? (WMDE)|talk]])
> 12:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
>
> Denny then moved to Google in October 2013, and subsequently argued
> strongly in favour of making Wikidata CC0, which is the viewpoint that
> prevailed and led to large-scale importation of Wikipedia content in
> Wikidata.
>
> The legal situation is admittedly fairly complex[2] but it stands to
> reason that when a person moves from Wikimedia to Google, loyalties and
> priorities will change along with such a move. That is only natural. Nobody
> would or should make such a move if they weren't prepared to be loyal to
> their new employer. (I've cc'ed Denny as a courtesy.)
>
> What is equally certain is that the CC0 licence served the interests of
> Google and other Big Tech companies. All of this of course happened at a
> time when Google and Silicon Valley were particularly strongly represented
> on the WMF board.[3]
>
> As far as the Wikimedia projects are concerned, Wikidata's shift to CC0
> substantially increased the risk of disintermediation that Guillaume
> mentioned in his post. If content is CC0, there is no need for attribution,
> so unlike the present Knowledge Graph panels, which at least have a link to
> Wikipedia, there is no need for any attribution to a Wikimedia site at all
> when others use Wikidata content.
>
> Content is then widely disseminated and presented as truth without any
> indication that it comes from a Wikimedia volunteer project. As Heather
> Ford has pointed out in her chapter of the Wikipedia @ 20 book, "Rise of
> the Underdog"[4], this obscuring of provenance is undesirable for other
> reasons as well – it becomes harder to contest information. Users lose
> agency.
>
> Now, in the context of the grand aim of Knowledge Equity, I believe it is
> absolutely the wrong thing for the WMF to enter into any association with
> Big Tech companies that results in any preferential treatment being
> extended to them.
>
> Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are surveillance
> capitalists. Their entire business model is based on tracking user
> behaviour. It is diametrically opposed to professed WMF core values
> concerning privacy and data protection.
>
> Moreover, these companies have become trillion-dollar companies – really
> the 21st-century equivalent in many ways of what oil companies were in the
> last century, and wielding the same kind of covert influence – in part
> because of their diligent effort to avoid paying taxes in the countries
> they operate in.
>
> The way these companies are set up, this will never change: shareholders
> will always demand maximum return on their investments, which necessitates
> minimising tax. I believe anyone who would try to change these companies'
> tax-avoidance behaviour, volunteering to pay the billions of dollars of tax
> these companies morally owe the global south and other jurisdictions, would
> simply be axed.
>
> What this means, given that all these companies are based in the US, is
> that as their already overwhelming market share grows globally, the
> economic imbalance disadvantaging the global south – which is the root
> cause of unequal access to knowledge – will only grow. It's a bit like
> 21st-century colonialism: wealth streaming out of poor countries into a
> rich one.
>
> For both of these reasons, privacy and tax avoidance, I believe the WMF
> has absolutely no business aiding these companies to any extent where it
> would give them any additional advantage over regional or global
> competitors. Of course I acknowledge that it is impossible to avoid
> interacting with Big Tech, but where competitors such as DuckDuckGo are
> available whose values are at least partially more aligned with the WMF's
> own, they should be clearly preferred as WMF partners.
>
> For that reason I was really glad to read about a joint WMF/DuckDuckGo
> study the other day that shed some interesting light on another aspect of
> disintermediation. This study found that knowledge panels increase rather
> than diminish click-throughs to Wikipedia[5], much the opposite of what I
> and others thought a few years ago. While this is a single study whose
> conclusions may not necessarily hold true in all contexts, it is an
> interesting and encouraging result.
>
> Andreas
>
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikidata&diff=3876137&oldid=3875379
> [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights#Conclusion
> [3]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-01-13/News_and_notes
> [4] https://wikipedia20.pubpub.org/pub/fcgjp9ul/release/2
> [5]
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/23/searching-for-wikipedia-duckduckgo-and-the-wikimedia-foundation-share-new-research-on-how-people-use-search-engines-to-get-to-wikipedia
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 7:35 AM Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Facts are in and of themselves not copyrightable. Collections of data may
>> be copyrighted.We choose not to and as a result Wikidata is the powerhouse
>> that it has become.The CC-by-sa license is our license of choice for
>> Wikipedia however, the way it has been enforced so far has been defensive,
>> we are quite happy when our material is used.
>>
>> At Wikidata we are long past the point where the majority of the data is
>> from a Wikipedia. From day one Wikidata has provided essential services to
>> every Wikipedia, Wikidata can provide superior services to Wikipedia.
>> Because like Commons, we have to maintain the data only once and have it
>> available everywhere. Wikidata is instrumental in sychronising death
>> information among our projects. It has been shown over and over again to
>> have more complete information as can be found in Wikipedia lists and
>> categories. Wikipedians choose to stick with their arguably substandard
>> practices.
>>
>> The notion that a Google or an Amazon are not capable of extracting facts
>> from a Wikipedia is silly. They have the capacity and the skills and the
>> software to do just that. Wikidata provides them additional information
>> making their information more complete. They have their reasons to be model
>> citizens and contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation. We now provide paid
>> for services to them making their bot activity less of a strain to our
>> services and provide them a (paid for) service.
>> Thanks,
>> GerardM
>>
>> On Sun, 26 Sept 2021 at 04:32, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry for not being explicit; the connection is that protection of
>>> copyleft would be inconvenient to major endowment donors such as Google and
>>> Amazon. WikiData is a Wikimedia project that converts copylefted content
>>> into (what Wikimedia asserts to be) copyright-free content.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 23 Sept 2021 at 19:27, The Cunctator <cunctator@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > It's really disappointing to me that the Structured Data work has
>>>> been used to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft.
>>>>
>>>> 1. Your message has nothing to do with the endowment
>>>>
>>>> 2. You offer no evidence that "the Structured Data work has been used
>>>> to blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>>
>>>> 3. You do not explain what you mean by "blow up Wikipedia's copyleft."
>>>>
>>>> If you wish to discuss copyright and/or structured data, please start
>>>> a new thread; and be clear there about the point you wish to make.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Andy Mabbett
>>>> @pigsonthewing
>>>> https://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org,
>>>> guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
So having totally missed this news last week I have to (belatedly) agree with Christophe and SJ.

Many congratulations to Lisa and the team for proposing the endowment and making it a succes. It is amazing to see how many donors have been willing to contribute to reaching this milestone so quickly.

Secondly great to see Doron, Phoebe and Patricio on the board! Their collective knowledge of the movement and our challenges will be of great value!

Thank you!

Jan-Bart




> On 23 Sep 2021, at 10:50, Christophe Henner <christophe.henner@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Congratulations Lisa and team, I know how much energy you pour into it! That is an amazing step. And great to see the endowment becoming its own organization.
>
> And "welcome" to the "new" endowment board members! :)
>
> Few people might know Doron, but he is not a stranger. He has been supporting the movement for a very very long time and knows us very well. I remember back in 2016, he understood very very fast why it was critical to invest in Wikidata and that lead to the Structured Data grant: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Structured_data/Sloan_Grant>.
>
> Phoebe, Doron and Patricio are great additions to the endowment board!
>
> All good news, thank you again Lisa!
>
>
> --
> Christophe
>
>
> On Wed, 22 Sept 2021 at 16:58, Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org <mailto:lgruwell@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>
> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board, Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>
> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>
> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement, and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment talk page [6].
>
> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>
> Best regards,
> Lisa
>
> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/ <https://wikimediaendowment.org/>
> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/  <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay>
> [4]https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/  <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment  <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment>
>
> --
>
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
> Chief Advancement Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines> and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l>
> Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/ <https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/>
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org>_______________________________________________
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
Dear Lisa and all,

According to Meta and the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter
tuning session deck, the Endowment actually passed the $100-million mark
not this month, but three months ago – in June, before the start of this
current financial year. The Meta page e.g. says:

The Endowment reached our initial $100 million goal in June 2021. The goal
was set as part of a ten-year plan from 2016-2026.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=22056029&oldid=21872920

This means the Endowment grew by around $40 million in the 2020/2021
financial year alone – about as much as in the three previous years
together – based on this Meta edit by Endowment Director Amy Parker, who
stated that on June 30, 2020, the Endowment stood at $62.9 million:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=next&oldid=20308708

I say "around $40 million" because if the Endowment grew from $62.9 million
on June 30, 2020, to over $100 million sometime during June, 2021, at least
$37.1 million (and probably a little more) must have been added to it in
the 2020/2021 financial year.

Now, according to the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter tuning
session deck, in the 2020/2021 financial year the Foundation raised ...

– $154 million for the Foundation (vs. an initial target of $108 million)
– $18.9 million (vs. a target of $5 million) for the Endowment

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_fourth_quarter_2020-2021_tuning_session_-_Advancement.pdf&page=12

I've been told by WMF staff that the WMF receives two kinds of moneys for
the Endowment:

– Some are "pass-through" donations to the Endowment. These are moneys
received by the Foundation that are passed straight on. They enter the
Endowment directly and do not appear in the Foundation's Revenue, Assets or
Expenses figures.
– Some are ordinary WMF revenue, reflected in WMF Support and Revenue
totals, which is then used to make a Foundation grant to the Endowment.
Such WMF grants to the Wikimedia Endowment are included in the Foundation's
expenses total, under Awards and Grants. My understanding was that this has
been $5 million per annum (equalling the target mentioned in the above
slide), for the past six years.

So what are the $18.9 million for the Endowment in the tuning session deck?
Does that mean that the WMF, in the last financial year, took $172.9
million in revenue ($154M + $18.9M) and made an $18.9 million grant to the
Endowment?

Or are these $18.9 million pass-through gifts to the Endowment, which won't
show up in the Foundation's financial statements at all, and the annual $5
million came on top of that, out of the $154 million?

At any rate, given that the Endowment evidently grew by at least $37.1
million in the last financial year, the $18.9 million mentioned in the
tuning session deck are about $20 million short. Where did the other money
come from, given that it seems to have been so much more than in previous
years?

Were there any particularly large gifts from companies or foundations? The
only major gift mentioned on the Meta page is a $1 million gift from Amazon.

I am sorry for the many questions, and apologise in advance for any errors
or misunderstandings on my part, but I find the Endowment set-up completely
impenetrable and non-transparent.

There is no Form 990 documentation, because the Foundation says on the Form
990 it does not have any Endowment assets, and there are no timely updates
or audited financial statements about money going into the Endowment or
coming out of it. I wish this were different.

I will copy these questions to the Endowment talk page as well.

Regards,
Andreas

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 3:58 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached
> its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent
> fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>
> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful to
> the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of an
> endowment years ago, to those who participated in community conversations
> on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions regarding its
> launch, and to all contributors whose work creating Wikimedia content has
> brought free knowledge to the world.
>
> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also welcomed
> three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron Weber,
> bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and priorities as
> well as in nonprofit management.
>
> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
> talk page [6].
>
> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lisa
>
> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>
> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>
> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>
> [4]
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>
> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>
> --
>
> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>
> Chief Advancement Officer
>
> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Endowment reaches initial $100 million goal and welcomes new board members [ In reply to ]
The other source of income for the endowment is investment earnings.

On Mon, Oct 4, 2021 at 11:03 AM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Lisa and all,
>
> According to Meta and the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter
> tuning session deck, the Endowment actually passed the $100-million mark
> not this month, but three months ago – in June, before the start of this
> current financial year. The Meta page e.g. says:
>
> The Endowment reached our initial $100 million goal in June 2021. The goal
> was set as part of a ten-year plan from 2016-2026.
>
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=22056029&oldid=21872920
>
> This means the Endowment grew by around $40 million in the 2020/2021
> financial year alone – about as much as in the three previous years
> together – based on this Meta edit by Endowment Director Amy Parker, who
> stated that on June 30, 2020, the Endowment stood at $62.9 million:
>
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Endowment&diff=next&oldid=20308708
>
> I say "around $40 million" because if the Endowment grew from $62.9
> million on June 30, 2020, to over $100 million sometime during June, 2021,
> at least $37.1 million (and probably a little more) must have been added to
> it in the 2020/2021 financial year.
>
> Now, according to the just-released WMF Advancement fourth-quarter tuning
> session deck, in the 2020/2021 financial year the Foundation raised ...
>
> – $154 million for the Foundation (vs. an initial target of $108 million)
> – $18.9 million (vs. a target of $5 million) for the Endowment
>
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_fourth_quarter_2020-2021_tuning_session_-_Advancement.pdf&page=12
>
> I've been told by WMF staff that the WMF receives two kinds of moneys for
> the Endowment:
>
> – Some are "pass-through" donations to the Endowment. These are moneys
> received by the Foundation that are passed straight on. They enter the
> Endowment directly and do not appear in the Foundation's Revenue, Assets or
> Expenses figures.
> – Some are ordinary WMF revenue, reflected in WMF Support and Revenue
> totals, which is then used to make a Foundation grant to the Endowment.
> Such WMF grants to the Wikimedia Endowment are included in the Foundation's
> expenses total, under Awards and Grants. My understanding was that this has
> been $5 million per annum (equalling the target mentioned in the above
> slide), for the past six years.
>
> So what are the $18.9 million for the Endowment in the tuning session
> deck? Does that mean that the WMF, in the last financial year, took $172.9
> million in revenue ($154M + $18.9M) and made an $18.9 million grant to the
> Endowment?
>
> Or are these $18.9 million pass-through gifts to the Endowment, which
> won't show up in the Foundation's financial statements at all, and the
> annual $5 million came on top of that, out of the $154 million?
>
> At any rate, given that the Endowment evidently grew by at least $37.1
> million in the last financial year, the $18.9 million mentioned in the
> tuning session deck are about $20 million short. Where did the other money
> come from, given that it seems to have been so much more than in previous
> years?
>
> Were there any particularly large gifts from companies or foundations? The
> only major gift mentioned on the Meta page is a $1 million gift from Amazon.
>
> I am sorry for the many questions, and apologise in advance for any errors
> or misunderstandings on my part, but I find the Endowment set-up completely
> impenetrable and non-transparent.
>
> There is no Form 990 documentation, because the Foundation says on the
> Form 990 it does not have any Endowment assets, and there are no timely
> updates or audited financial statements about money going into the
> Endowment or coming out of it. I wish this were different.
>
> I will copy these questions to the Endowment talk page as well.
>
> Regards,
> Andreas
>
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 3:58 PM Lisa Gruwell <lgruwell@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Today I am very happy to announce the Wikimedia Endowment [1] has reached
>> its initial $100 million goal. The Endowment was started in 2016 as a permanent
>> fund to support the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity [2].
>>
>> My deep gratitude goes out to our generous donors, the Endowment board,
>> Foundation staff, and volunteers who made this possible. I am grateful
>> to the future-focused community members who began considering the idea of
>> an endowment years ago, to those who participated in community
>> conversations on Meta [3] to help us think through initial decisions
>> regarding its launch, and to all contributors whose work creating
>> Wikimedia content has brought free knowledge to the world.
>>
>> As part of this milestone, the Wikimedia Endowment Board has also
>> welcomed three new members: Phoebe Ayers, Patricio Lorente, and Doron
>> Weber, bringing in important expertise of the Wikimedia movement and
>> priorities as well as in nonprofit management.
>>
>> You can read more about this milestone, what it means for the movement,
>> and what comes next for the Endowment on Diff [4] and the Endowment Meta
>> page [5]. We invite you to share any questions or feedback on the Endowment
>> talk page [6].
>>
>> Thank you to everyone who has made this incredible achievement possible.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>> [1] https://wikimediaendowment.org/
>>
>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
>> <https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/>
>>
>> [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Endowment_Essay
>>
>> [4]
>> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/
>> <https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/09/22/the-wikimedia-endowment-reaches-100-million-milestone-and-welcomes-three-new-members-to-its-board-more-on-what-these-developments-mean-for-the-projects-and-movement/>
>>
>> [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment>
>> [6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Endowment
>>
>> --
>>
>> Lisa Seitz Gruwell
>>
>> Chief Advancement Officer
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
>> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
>> Public archives at
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LUHSNVCRIHQCGADJM5GHXGLX6R6A7LNW/
>> To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines
> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> Public archives at
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--

Lisa Seitz Gruwell

Chief Advancement Officer

Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>