I'm just reading this before work, but it must warrant more follow up. Wales doesn't want to step down until Wikipedia is safe from "outside interests who do not understand our values". It's easy to imagine the sort of folks who'd want control of Wikipedia.<p>Was it earlier this year that we narrowly avoided the .org sale to a vague corporation? It'd be tragic to see Wikipedia meet that fate as well!
As a Wikimedian for over ten years, I'm concerned that the WMF has been listening less and less to the community over time. Examples include the Superprotect incident, Flow, and the rebranding (in which the WMF sought community feedback, and then proceeded to ignore it and do the exact opposite of the overwhelming consensus). I trust Wales more than someone nominated via the vague "community nomination process". This looks to me like a takeover by certain members of the Board who believe they know better than the community.
I like Wikipedia as it is now. I presume Jimmy is responsible for this. I feel it’s going to be 5 years before Wikipedia is plastered in ads with selective editing rights going to paid sponsors if he’s gone.
Not sure who you can trust more in this conflict. I just know that political articles are full of partisan crap, I am sorry not to find better words for such a state.<p>I also know that the optimism and perhaps naivete was the better patron. Random vandalism of some pages wasn't even a large issue, but we can see severe framing in many cases and especially hot-button topics are often unbalanced.<p>Best articles come from random individuals from all over the planet. Certainly not from the WMF, but also not necessarily from a dedicated community.
So Wales' position appears to be simply "the community needs to be more core to the leadership deciding process, and I'm the best person to see that happen."<p>I'm not disputing it, just interested in views on it - to me it seems reasonable as a default, but then I am concerned about what I see as a (political) bias on Wikipedia - mentioned elsewhere in these comments - that is presumably a reflection of a particular "type" being over-represented amongst editors (see equivalent biases each way in say, academia and the police) and wonder if having a stronger "professional" (neutral?) representation might not be such a bad idea.
WMF seems to have been colonized by the professional "nonprofit" crowd. They continue to burn ever more money and beg for more and more (rather than building an endowment).<p>In my opinion they're headed for collapse and I'd rather see more involvement from Mr Wales and less of the current crop of leadership.
That begs the interesting question that is: what are the worthwhile alternative/competition to Wikipedia today?<p>In the past, we had competing dictionaries, encyclopedias, where the multiparties existence was a concrete reminder of checking any source of information against other competing ones.<p>Today, we mostly refer to Wikipedia as the online reference encyclopedia.
What are the others? how are they operating? How would it operate if the Wikipedia monolith had to split into several forks?
Why did Jimmy Wales put himself in a position within his own organization where others can kick him out?<p>(Or am I missing something and is this not the case..?)
I was very active in Wikipedia around 2005. Amazing it's been that long. I think Jimmy has shown to be a person of great integrity over all these years, and he should stay.
i wonder if wikipedia was community owned it wouldnt suffer from this kind of footballing<p>it really seems obvious wikipedia is a prize that some private interests would love to gain control over, and this type of action would result from it
Like with many things over the last few years something that should have been apolitical has become very politically polarized and partisan<p>I wish and hope Wikipedia would return to an apolitical non-profit out to disseminate factual information, but sadly I believe that ship has sailed.
Possibly related:<p><a href="https://swprs.org/wikipedia-disinformation-operation/" rel="nofollow">https://swprs.org/wikipedia-disinformation-operation/</a><p>An example of a recent unusual executive change in an influential community:<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/k6iay8/rjoerogan_moderation_team_completely_replaced_by/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/k6iay8/rjoeroga...</a><p>Baseless conspiracy theory? See for yourself:<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/about/moderators" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/about/moderators</a><p>Another curious development:<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/k6eq7v/rconspiracy_now_requires_an_account_to_be_four/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/k6eq7v/...</a><p>And then there's the craaaaaazy theory that QAnon is a CIA PsyOp (sorry, couldn't find a decent link and I am out of time). Would controlling such an entity not be useful in many different ways, in that it can be used <i>very effectively</i> to influence the beliefs of both conspiracy theorists, as well as non-conspiracy theorists?<p>People's perception of reality is a function of what information they consume. Controlling the major information distribution channels seems like it would be a good idea if you're the type of person/organization that desires to accomplish certain goals that may require public support.<p>Is anything like this happening today? How would one know, <i>for sure</i>?
I have never given assent to Wikipedia ever since I realize that Jimmy Wales just uses it as his personal piggy bank. He’s an arrogant cancer that should have been ushered to the door long ago.