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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-12-28/News and notes

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Jimbo's NFT, new arbs, fixing RfA, and financial statements

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By Bri and Smallbones
Is it live, or is it Memorex?

Jimbo's Strawberry iMac and non-fungible token

In a controversial move, Jimmy Wales auctioned an NFT of the "first Wikipedia edit", as well as his personal iMac which he used during the early days of Wikipedia, through the Christie's auction house. The NFT included a reconstructed website based on how the Wikipedia website appeared to him after its first edit, which Jimbo recalled in 2019 as him typing as "Hello, World!" before erasing it. However, some pointed out that the original timestamp of his reconstructed "first edit" was a couple minutes after a separate edit previously recorded as the first.

NFTs are controversial because they require proof of work in order to be recorded on a blockchain, an extremely energy-intensive method of recording transactions, and because they depend on cryptocurrencies (controversial for their use in ransomware attacks and their association with a large number of other scams). Other criticisms of the NFT sale include objections to the idea of Wales trying to create a type of ownership, or artificial scarcity, of a freely-licensed work − "Hello, World!" − whereas Wikipedia is dedicated to breaking down barriers to public access to knowledge. A recent Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network discussion grappled with this issue, as well as its implications for the Wikimedia Movement.

The final auction hammer prices were $150,000 for the iMac and $600,000 for the NFT, according to Wales. The more commonly reported prices of $187,500 and $750,000 include the buyer's premium.

See also coverage in this issue's In the media – S

Eight newly elected arbitrators

Three veteran ArbCom members (Worm That Turned, Opabinia regalis and Beeblebrox) were again elected to two-year terms on the committee in this year's elections. Five other editors were elected for the first time, all for two-year terms: Wugapodes, Enterprisey, Donald Albury, Izno, and Cabayi. The Signpost congratulates all these recently elected arbs, and also thanks Guerillero, Thryduulf, and Banedon for their participation in the election.

Our special thanks for a job well done go to the arbitrators who have completed their arbitration service and declined to run again. Casliber, David Fuchs, Newyorkbrad and SoWhy will also relinquish their oversight and checkuser permissions. KrakatoaKatie will retain these permissions, which she received before becoming an arbitrator, to work in areas which require them.

See more coverage in this issue's Arbitration Report. – S

Requests for Adminship 2021

For the sixth month this year, there were no successful RfAs in December, with only seven new administrators chosen all year: Hog Farm, TJMSmith, Ashleyyoursmile, Less Unless, Trialpears, BusterD and Blablubbs. There were only four unsuccessful results, with the most spectacular RfA being that for Eostrix who gained 123 supports against only one oppose and two neutrals before being blocked as a sockpuppet. (See earlier Signpost coverage).

This year's seven represented the lowest number of new administrators appointed in one year since 2003, when the RfA process began. The previous low was ten, in 2019; the all-time high was 408, in 2007. There are currently 1,066 administrators, with only 463 considered active (having made more than 30 edits in the last two months). – S

Requests for Adminship 2022 and beyond

The general health of the administrator community, as demonstrated by the figures above, appears to be low. In an effort to fix these problems, a process of RfC-based reform began earlier this year (see earlier Signpost coverage). The 2021 RfA reform ended with the passing of a modest list of proposals:

Proposal 8B, the "admin elections" scheme involving an express method of selecting admins via secret ballot, was closed with a controversial "no consensus" and a review of the closure at the administrators' noticeboard. – B

WMF's audited financial statements released

An audited Fiscal Year 2020-2021 financial statement was posted by the Wikimedia Foundation on December 15, as well as a FAQ published by WMF for its interpretation.

Highlights from the balance sheet include $209 million in current assets – of which $87 M were in cash or cash equivalents and $117 M was in short-term investments. Total assets amount to $240 M, which includes $20 M of long-term investments and only $10 M in property and equipment. Note that we're leaving out several of the smaller categories.

Total support and revenue was $163 M, which mostly comes from $153 M in donations and contributions. Total expenses were $112 M, which include $68 M for wages and salaries, $10 M for awards and grants, and $12 million for professional services as well as other categories. This resulted in an increase in net assets by $51 M, raising total net assets to $231 M as of June 30, 2021.

The 2020-21 Fundraising Report, released in October, breaks down contributions across several categories. Across continents donors in

  • North America gave $89.6 million
  • Europe – $45.9 million
  • Asia – $7.8 million
  • Australia and New Zealand – $5.6 million
  • South America – $1.05 million
  • Africa – $61,999

Note that anonymous donors are excluded from the totals and this report is not formally audited. The English language campaign, which covers Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK, the US, and New Zealand, contributes almost half of all donations. – B, – S

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"Jimbo's Strawberry iMac and non-fungible token"

  • Good for Jimbo. I hope the computer ends up in the Smithsonian some day, kind of like one of the artifacts in Warehouse 13. In the meantime if he could sell some kind of token for $600,000 it proves his momma didn't raise no fool (EDIT: and after going back and checking his article here in case he was raised by wolves or something and I was off-base about his mother, turns out she was much more of an influence on Jimbo and his path towards forming Wikipedia than is commonly known). Randy Kryn (talk) 21:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This website managed to find out more about the buyer:
"Prominent Web3 investor Santiago Santos purchased the NFT for PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization most commonly known for buying the one-of-kind WuTang album [...]. 'I bought it because I think it’s priceless,' Santos said.
The bidder, who was initially anonymous, told Blockworks that he spent almost $1 million on the collectible because it was 'emblematic of Web3.'
'Wikipedia also open-sourced knowledge [sic],' Santos said, adding that the website has also gone through similar stages as cryptocurrency. 'There’s a lot of parallels. We’ve [also] gone through this phase of [people seeing] crypto as a scam.'"
He also said that he was "shocked" at the low price and had been prepared to pay "$2.5 million or more," considering that there is "so much emotional and historical attachment attached [sic] to Wikipedia."
Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • $600,000 does seem low. – The Grid (talk) 21:50, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • NFTs are simply a version of LuLaRoe for tech bros. They create an impression that you can get rich quick via supposedly valuable "unicorns" but the only value you can get from one is if you can sell it for a higher price to someone else. In other words, a classic pyramid scheme. There are only so many people in the world gullible enough to spend money on that, and eventually the bubble will burst and whoever is holding NFTs at that point loses out. If $600k for this NFT is low, I'm glad it is, because it is a sign that people are starting to wake up from this unsustainable craze. feminist (talk) 01:29, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    NFTs aren't going anywhere though - especially with GME going full force with them next year. – The Grid (talk) 14:21, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course NFTs are going somewhere. It just a question of whether they get there faster or slower than the mother of all speculative bubbles. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    It's all fun and games until the music stops and the your left without a chair holding a worthless gif of a monkey. But, there are some things can have lasting value. The NFT for the computer is a certificate of authenticity and ownership that can never be lost (well it could if the keys are lost) and never destroyed or copied. You could store the computer at the Smithsonian and still sell the NFT around frictionless. -- GreenC 05:18, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There are some misconceptions here. 1st:what are you actually buying? What does the bundle of rights called an NFT actually include. As I understand it, you could issue an NFT for a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, but this would give the buyer no more rights than if you just told him that he was buying the Brooklyn Bridge. In any practical sense of the word you can lose an NFT, just like people lose bitcoins all the time. Perhaps you might prefer "misplaced and unable to access them" but it's the same thing.You can destroy an NFT simply by wiping the memory from the right computer. Can an NFT be copied? You can copy the photo of the Brooklyn Bridge and sell another NFT on it. Sounds like copying to me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:25, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    IMHO, if there is some tangible object attached to these NFTs (e.g., a paper or solid certificate of some kind) they will always have some value. Assuming the worst -- this is just the Internet version of a pet rock -- the tangible objects will become collectable items that commemorate a silly fad of the distant past. If no such tangible object exists, well, how many suckers are born every minute again? -- llywrch (talk) 19:03, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • NFTs are controversial because they require proof of work - this is inaccurate. Search on "proof of stake" in Non-fungible_token. -- GreenC 05:03, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • People miss the woods for the trees when discussing NFTs: what they are is a modern art industry. That should be the starting position, and then the monetary value of "edits" to reconstructed websites that might look something like how Wikipedia once did and that abstractly symbolise something about the website but don't actually entitle you to anything, legally... is the same as the monetary value of a few random bits of paint on a canvass. For my part, I am a little bit concerned that Wales is willing to give this elitist attention-seeking the time of day, and I also don't think he's been public about where the money goes. If it goes to non-profits then at least scamming a moron out of half a million dollars is relatively better than partnering with Big Tech or scamming people in poverty by lying to them. — Bilorv (talk) 11:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • The modern art industry in the sense of a scam, and a great way to launder money(?). I'm not sure I'd even be satisfied with the money going to non-profits - not when the impact on the environment is considered. Look, kids, I'm donating money to help you - don't mind the fact that the energy for this NFT is why you're experiencing blackouts...--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) ({{ping}} me!) 16:06, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you pardon my French, adapting a contemporary Mexican Spanish insult into English: hahaha Jimbo you're a naco and foolish -Gouleg🛋️ harass/hound 14:30, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Requests for Adminship 2022 and beyond"

  • @Bri: The close review for RfA proposal 8B took place at AN, not ANI. You've got the discussion linked properly, but the text afterwards says ANI. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:18, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Commenting on the RfA reform process itself, as a participant in all stages I am going to come right out and call it a near total failure. Barkeep49 did an excellent job attempting to get the community to figure out how to improve the issues with the process, but the community at large shot down every proposal which might have made a real difference. Some were awful and deserved to fail (PROD style adminship was a terrible idea) but others were not given a chance or rejected over nitpicks without giving ideas a chance to grow. The problem with RfA is not the process, it's the community, writ large (and I include myself in that group, I'm no better than anyone else). There's no easy fix for that. Everyone has different standards for RfA candidates, ranging from reasonable to utterly absurd. Candidates are rightfully scared to come forward after seeing several RfAs go down in flames, and even successful candidates are scarred by the process. There's no way in hell I'd run for RfA now, even if I were qualified (I'm obviously not based on my edit count, though there used to be a time that 6,000 edits was enough to pass). I wish I could say I had the answers, but I don't, not at all. I'm as lost as everyone else. This problem won't go away, we will have to deal with it again sometime down the road, and when we do we will regret not acting sooner. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      Wikipedia doesn't have a formal way of trying out a change of a policy or a procedure. If there was such a way, then some of Barkeep49's suggestions could be given a trial run. Since there are not that many RfAs, the trial couldn't really be timed, but limiting the trial by amount of RfAs could work. For example, running an RfA procedure change for four or five RfAs would have shown if it was a good change or not empirically. —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:07, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      English Wikipedia's consensus-based decision-making traditions hamper all major changes as consensus doesn't scale up. So all RfCs ought to be judged within this context. There was a failure to adopt new RfA procedures, but I think there was progress in getting more editors willing to try a very different system. (Sure, there are many examples of processes that we'll regret not changing earlier. Unless we change the decision-making process, though (another future regret), reaching agreement is inevitably slow.) isaacl (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      @Andrybak, @Isaacl, both good points. I think part of the issue is that editors aren't willing enough to try out trials of new things. One could start an RfC directly proposing a change or one could start an RfC proposing we conduct a trial of that change, and I suspect the result would not differ that much, even though the trial option would be a lot safer. I also think closers could do more to err on the side of experimentation with a trial as a kind of middle ground when a proposal is on the border between succeeding and no consensus. This is especially true when the discussion has an exasperated "I'm not sure this is precisely the right solution but we've got to try something" vibe. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:14, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Trainsandotherthings, you echo my thoughts entirely and I've already made very similar comments. I will add that it's just possibe that this long debate process may even have had a further chilling effect on the enthusiasm to be an admin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:38, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The section on admin elections was originally closed as "unsuccessful," not no consensus. It was corrected to no consensus following the discussion at AN. Calidum 14:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The low RfA numbers may have been in part a byproduct of RfA reform discussion. If I were an admin hopeful, I'd probably wait until the discussion's resolution before trying to proceed. Here's hoping for good numbers in 2022. --BDD (talk) 19:59, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a stretch to claim seven new admins this year when one of them already moved without leaving a forwarding address. That leaves six, or one every other month. We elected more arbitrators in 2021 than administrators! Any potential administrator waiting for the community to change its expectations to conform with theirs should refocus their efforts on trying harder to conform to what the community expects. wbm1058 (talk) 19:36, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • retired/vanished and requested removal of [admin] permissions (WP:BN) ☆ Bri (talk) 19:58, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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