Sue visits her German speaking dependency Bearbeiten
Christmas, Hanukkah, and L. Ron Hubbard Day this year came early for German speaking followers of the Church of Wikimedia: After stops in fast London and stylish Vienna, Wikimedia’s heroine Her Royal Highwikian Sue Gardner on her roughly two week long European business vacation visited grim Hanover to give an audience to German Wikipedians. She took a grand total of two hours of her precious time to discuss with the German-speaking community matters of Wikimedia and Wikipedia policy. About 35 persons were physically present, among them mainly functionaries and employees of Wikimedia, a few rank-and-file members of the German Wikimedia chapter, around five local residents (almost all of them also members of Wikimedia), and three people I could not allocate to any of the aforementioned groups. The discussion took off on a promising note: Sue’s introductory lecture, which covered a wide range of topics from Sue’s nationality (she’s Canadian, in case she hasn’t told you that yet) to all sorts of things Sue deemed we should know about Wikimedia and which we dutifully already knew. It ended 50 minutes into the event with her remark that we should learn to listen to each other. And, boy, we DID learn to listen! There were three more lectures with up to 35 slides per lecture from Sue to come. The introductory lecture covered topics like, what is Sue’s nationality (Canadian!! From Toronto!). Or, that Wikipedia is something like ebay or Google, but, then again, something different from ebay and Google. Importantly, she reminded us that the Wikipedia Foundation will Be Bold, I guess in implementing their will against the communities will. But Sue also wikicharmed the German community, exclaiming “Ich bin ein Wikipedian! I made 1,200 edits!” And in the short, or shall we say, concise Q&A session, she revealed at least to me some news: Wikipedia communities should “train” the Wikimedia Foundation.
The remaining three topics, to be sure, were more interesting, at least to my taste. These were:
- the up and coming image filter (a hotly debated topic in the German speaking community, which sort of despises it);
- declining editor retention rates;
- the gender gap.
Sue summarized her position towards the image filter as follows: The referendum, which probably wasn’t one, showed that the majority of editors embraces the image filter, while there is a minority of editors, not necessarily professional whiners, trolls, and similar criminals, opposed to it. In addition, the image filter would enable a maximum of individuals to read Wikipedia, as it embraces multicultural policies akin to those implemented in her home country, Canada, the beautiful. Finally, Sue just executes the orders from the Wikimedia Board, which asked her to introduce the image filter on the basis of an extremely well researched and totally scientific report by an old pal of Sue’s. But, on an intellectual level, Sue comprehends all of the arguments against the image filter. Attending Board Member Arne Klempert elected to stay blissfully silent.
The topic then shifted to editor retention rates. Sue showed us all sorts of colorful charts about what all present in the room already knew: editor retention rates are declining. She showed us charts about the English speaking community, but similar and even more daunting charts could be produced about the German speaking community. Sue’s explanation of the decline was not totally off the point: She mentioned life cycle changes (like starting up a family, starting a professional career) as well as bot-generated, discouraging and overly bureaucratic looking welcome messages for newbies as factors for project departure. However, to Sue’s (and my) disappointment, large parts of the German speaking community don’t consider this decline to be a problem. I also mentioned to Sue that while editor contributions are in decline, there is no such decline in financial donations for the Foundation and its satellite chapters. And this rise in donations might exacerbate the decline in editor retention, as, while it is okay for some editors to create free content, the same editors might not want to support with their unpaid volunteer work the salaries of a phalanx of employees at the Wikimedia Foundation, who in turn even decide about the direction of the volunteer work. Sue, however, does not see this problem. Anyways, probably only a self-centered, selfish Communist sociologist like me might harbor absurd ideas such as not wanting to work for free to get Sue some sushi onto her dinner table.
The last and, when measured by time, apparently least important topic was the gender gap. Sue reiterated that she personally has never encountered any misogyny within Wikimedia. And a former functionary of Wikimedia Germany was quick to point out, how to solve the problem of the gender gap: Hire tens of additional developers to create a mesmerizing, more colorful, and more comfortable editor interface in Wikipedia! With such diagnostic and therapeutic social engineering skills, I am sure Wikimedia will achieve a target of 8% female participation by 2020 (the current rate is about 9%).
Altogether, I deemed the talk to be more professional and even more substantial (no irony here) than most talks I have heard from German Wikimedia officials. Nevertheless, next time, Wikimedia hires a journalist for CEO, I’d recommend Bill Maher or Arianna Huffington: Not only is their rhetoric even better than Sue’s; but they are also rightfully unashamedly American.
the author, fossa, is a local german wikipedia starlet; the article is a free translation from his own article in the german signpost. disclaimer: this article is not intended to be anti-canadian.