User talk:Jimbo Wales

Jimbo Wales is ©®uźin for a bruzin and will get ©®uiźed on

Photo request petition - please help spread the word

Hi again. The photo request petition from about a month ago now has over 100 signatures. I have tried emailing, tweeting, and messaging TASS and RIA Novosti to inform them about the petition - but never received any responses. Can you please help by promoting the petition a little, and contacting the agencies (they are less likely to ignore you). Wikipedia needs these photos very much - the lack of free media to cover Russian, Soviet, and CIS history topics is one of the most important matters facing Wikipedia; the importance of getting these photos under a Commons-compatible license cannot be understated. It won't take much of your time, but it could really improve Wikipedia.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 04:02, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I'll tweet about it but that won't help much. Let me think about what the best way for me to help might be. Have you been in touch (I presume so since this is posted on ru.wikipedia.org) with the Russian chapter? If they'd like to support an effort for a more direct outreach from me, I'm happy to help.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:47, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: Yes, I have been in contact with the Russian chapter of the project. The petition was hosted on ru.wikipedia because TASS and RIA Novosti are Russian agencies, but the petition is more like Commons; users from nearly every major Wikipedia have signed it, including English, Polish, Spanish, Portugese...not just Russian. The request is so that it items can be used on Commons (which is an interwiki project). The hard part so far has been getting TASS and RIA Novosti to actually respond to us; I tried calling the phone number on their website today (which didn't work). Since they are a bit difficult to reach, I thought you might have more luck since you are a public figure and apparently TASS and RIA Novosti have donated photos to Commons in the past (I assume you had something to do with it? If not, I wonder who was involved and was able to reach them.) Either way, we really, really, really, need to get the photos under free licences - while NASA astronauts have nice portraits in their infoboxes, the way we use low-quality images used to represent Soviet cosmonauts (like this and this is a little bit embarrassing to us - but these agencies pretty much have a monopoly on the portraits. Some people on Russian Wikipedia have said that they are worried that the petition might not work because of new management of one of the companies (I forget which one - but strangely, there is lots of overlap in the content of their archives). Yet both agencies are still releasing content under free licences to several Russian government websites that want to use their materials - specifically, mil.ru, kremlin.ru, premier.gov.ru, duma.gov.ru, bashkortostan.ru, and rk.gov.ru. I think there is a 50-50% chance it will work, but if it does not, it appears that there are lots of people in Russia that are on our side on this one. Either way, the petition does need more publicity for certain.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Endowment Fundraiser Gala

	The Bearer of this Title is Entitled to One Wikimedia Foundation Endowment Fundraiser Gala
	I say, old chap. EllenCT (talk) 05:01, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

By the way, Jimbo, may I please ask you some questions about these redlinks? EllenCT (talk) 05:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I believe that it is still true that the WMF is free to dip into the principle of the endowment if times get hard. For years I have been arguing for a legally binding commitment to make the principle untouchable and to spend only the interest from the endowment if we ever get to the point where contributions are too small to cover expenses.

Last year the WMF took in $91 million USD in donations, spent $69 million USD, and had $113 million USD in non-endowment assets, so it would take a huge drop in donations combined with the WMF refusing to lower spending, and this would have to go on for several years before they were forced to choose between cutting back on spending or dipping into the endowment principle. From this I conclude that there is no real downside to making the endowment principle untouchable. The WMF just has to decide to do it and then have the lawyers work out the details. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:21, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Any chance we can try to use the leftover $ to purchase Commons-compatible licenses on photos that are needed for the project? While most photo agencies currently don't have the option of buying such license, if we made it clear to them that we were interested in purchasing such licences, they might one day include it as an option.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 14:51, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

That's a really good idea. In fact, if the usual Jimbo Appeal explained that that is one of the things we plan on doing with the money, it just might increase the amount that gets donated. I bet the photo agencies have a number of images that are currently bring in exactly zero dollars, and I suspect that they might welcome the chance to make at least a little money off of them. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:12, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I can't take credit for the idea though - User:PereslavlFoto from Russian wikinews was wondering why we have a Photo donation petition instead of us just purchasing the photos. Sadly, Commons-compatible licenses aren't for sale from either TASS or RIA Novosti as of today.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 18:08, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I am happy to bring the point about the endowment principal versus interest to the Endowment board. I do not think that a legally binding rule is either desirable or possible, but as a matter of firm policy it seems straightforward enough for the reasons you mention. To date, the Endowment is not making any grants of any kind, so it's really a moot point right now. I consider the structure - with an independent board that has to approve grants to the Foundation - to be more than adequate to ensure that this isn't simply a "really big bank account" for some future profligate CEO/board.

Why do I think it's a bad idea? Well, if it really were somehow legally binding (which is likely not possible) then even in a circumstance where we have universal and absolute agreement that the principle should be dipped into

As to the second point, this is precisely the sort of opportunity that the Endowment fund might be used for, but I would personally support it (in principle: the devil is in the details) out of the annual budget. I think it would be a fine thing to do to spend a few million a year on community-led "content liberation" programs. I say "community led" because I would want us to only buy things that are of actual value to the community in building the encyclopedia. As a silly example, a few years back David Bowie sold the copyrights to his back catalog for $55 million. The buyers raised the money by selling bonds and I suppose they probably did ok if the royalties amounted over time to more than $55 million. We could afford to buy a catalog like that and release all the songs under Creative Commons licenses - but that would be VERY pointless in terms of building an encyclopedia.

There are other examples, though, which could be much more interesting. As a hypothetical example I heard about several years ago, the family of Martin Luther King, Jr. apparently have exclusive access to vast archives of his letters and other memorabilia. They are, I was told, hoping to find a way to monetize it, but in the meantime it is hindering scholarship. Maybe the value of something like that is "only" $1 million, let's imagine. So for a tiny amount of money we could buy and release such stuff - at the very least make it available to scholars. Now, this is mostly an interesting example because it's only "half way there" in terms of helping to build the encyclopedia. But at least it seems relevant.

No, the obvious case would be back catalogs of historical images - news photos that are currently still under copyright but which would be of high encyclopedic value.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:12, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I think that the items of the top-priority for the wiki to buy, if we somehow could, would be portraits of deceased and/or retired people & irreproducable historic events whose articles have the most Wikidata links (ie, are available in many languages, including many Wikipedias that do not allow fair-use at all) but lack free media to represent them, or when such free media is de minimis. Specifically, I think it would be a good use of the foundation's funds to acquire free licences of portraits of cosmonauts to replace the very low-quality postage stamps and blurry images we have right now. (For example, buying this photo for Q433046). And of course it would be nessesary to gain access to photos of things that no longer exist (buildings that have been demolished, artifacts that were lost or even destroyed, statues that were taken down, etc) As for the Martin Luther King Archive, I don't think Wikipedia will have to buy it to make it public - the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, or one of many other public organizations might gain publication rights too. I don't think that buying music into free licences will be very useful to the wiki, with the possible exception of getting a specific rendering of a very important song, such as a national anthem, for an infobox. It would make sense to have a file of Ant etkenmen, but buying multiple renderings of America the Beautiful or The Star Spangled Banner by different artists just to write about different albums and covers by the artists would be quite excessive.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 20:19, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd thought I was pretty much up on what the Endowment was doing, but couldn't find some things, so I'll start with some questions:

• Is there a better website than https://wikimediaendowment.org/ to get info on the endowment?
• Is the Endowment legally separate from the WMF?
• How much money does it have now? Is there an IRS 990 form available?

I probably have different ideas about endowments that a lot of folks. My view is that the "continuing income stream" from interest is over-rated as the real function of an endowmwnt. For example if the endowment has $100 million in principle and gets 6% in interest or capital gains each year, then it only adds $6 million to the WMF budget - not a whole lot. Of course, if everything works well, that is what will happen.

But IMHO the real benefit, the real purpose, comes down to "what happens if everything doesn't work out as planned?" There are 2 aspects of this:

• Potential partners, whether employees or other institutions, will usually want to know whether the WMF will be around in 5 years. Sure, it looks like it is going well now, but what if something unexpected happens? Well, with a fair sized endowment, it will be certain that the WMF will be here in 5 years. We'll be able to attract better employees and other potential partners (e.g. GLAMs, universities, or foundations that might want to work with us.)
• General uncertainty - this might be technological change or management screw ups, war, depression, earthquakes, the effects of climate change or just the totally unexpected. This happens to everybody sooner or later, whether it's 5 years or 50 years down the road.

To be able to deal with general uncertainty - and thus be able to work with the best employees and other partners - dipping into the principle (rarely!) might be required. The major problem with this is distinguishing management screw ups from the other causes. Dipping into principle in the case of management screwups would not be a good idea, without first addressing the cause of the problem.

Keeping the endowment separate from management thus seems to be best. Having the endowment take on "management areas" like purchasing photos might be a bad idea. On the other hand, maybe a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity comes along - maybe a major newspaper calls it quits and wants to sell their full set of copyrights for, let's say $10-$20 million. I'd still prefer that the WMF makes the 1st decision to ask the Endowment for the money. And then have the Endowment decide whether that's a good use for the money, or a potential management screwup. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:08, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Definitely the money should be budgeted by WMF, which can ask the endowment nicely for an advance on its allowance. Otherwise Wikipedia doesn't have an endowment, it has a funding agency that it can apply to for money in competition with other ideas the funding agency comes up with on its own (good luck).

But WMF and its projects have grown massively, so we shouldn't laugh at the idea that it could buy up David Bowie's work; to the contrary, to have such a WMF would be a great goal. We should all know that copyright is immensely inefficient -- a few people pay and get access to something, but denying access to all the others does nothing to support the middlemen who dominate the industry, let alone any artist. If all the music buyers in the world could get together, pool their funds and Just Buy All The Music Together, then everyone would have access to every song all the time, and the artists would get the money they have plus all the money currently spent metering and limiting and suing and promoting. So there ought to be some way for WMF to round up a bunch of extra donors for the explicit purpose of buying stuff into the public domain and have them do so autonomously. In theory, some kind of Big Data application should make it possible to unscramble the egg - if there are 1000 Garage Band fans, and you can find and message all 1000 of them and tell them that they can pledge toward a campaign, then when you have 200 on board you can go to Garage Band and outbid the music companies who would only give them a faint whiff of the cash being collected anyway and make a better offer even in financial terms, without taking one penny out of the WMF endowment or budget. Wnt (talk) 15:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

In their comment above, Smallbones says "My view is that the "continuing income stream" from interest is over-rated as the real function of an endowment. For example if the endowment has $100 million in principle and gets 6% in interest or capital gains each year, then it only adds $6 million to the WMF budget - not a whole lot." Actually, it is a lot. The WMF spends roughly $2 million USD per year on Internet hosting. I have all of the numbers with citations at WP:CANCER. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The purpose of an endowment

The purpose of the endowment is "Ensuring free knowledge for future generations".[1] It exists so that Wikipedia, Mediawiki, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wictionary never shut down because we ran out of money to keep them open.

The endowment is NOT for buying content, nor is it for any of the other good work that the WMF does outside of keeping the servers running, fixing bugs in the software, and a few absolutely essential functions like legal and accounting. And even those things are (and should be) currently funded from the general budget. The endowment is a safety net, not a piggy bank.

There is no need to even consider using the endowment (principle or interest) to fund anything. Last year the WMF took in $22 million more than it spent and had $113 million USD in non-endowment assets. So it is fine to discuss various things we might want to spend general fund money on but nobody should suggest that we dip into the endowment to fund anything. The endowment should get bigger, not smaller. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:36, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Why not both? Also, how is "buying content" different from "fixing bugs in the software"? Patches have a positive number of bytes. EllenCT (talk) 07:14, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Re: "Why not both?", why not use the endowment to ensure free knowledge for future generations and the regular budget to do lower priority things like buying content? Do you really want to risk Wikipedia's very existence to fund your pet project when it can easily be funded from the regular budget? Bug fixing and security patches are something we simply have to do to ensure free knowledge for future generations. If we leave bugs unfixed, eventually a hacker will exploit a bug and destroy everything. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:23, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia

Sir what is your opinion regarding Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia? ImmortalWizard(chat) 19:54, 19 January 2019 (UTC)