Swiss chapter in turmoil
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| “ | "Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world." (wikimedia.org front page) | ” |
Most of this "free educational content" that we proudly announce on the front page has been added, a few bits at a time, by countless volunteers who just want to share their knowledge and are gratified to take part in the largest encyclopedia project ever. Sadly, this wonderful online world risks being overrun by all sorts of commercial interests and government controls. If Wikipedia is to continue as a free and participatory movement we must continually do more to constrain undisclosed paid editing.
The Swiss chapter (WMCH) is going through some rough spots right now, as described in the Signpost's piece on May 2, "Wikimedia Switzerland's board and paid-editing firm". Contrary to what readers of the previous piece may believe, the chapter has not yet engaged in substantial deliberations around paid editing or whether it is acceptable for a Board member to do paid editing. Nor was the disclosure of the paid-editing activities of the board members "spontaneous".
A number of reasons lie behind this apparent lag. The Swiss chapter was made aware of this issue at its General Assembly only very recently, on April 2. People need time to form their opinion in a complicated linguistic, cultural, and social environment. Switzerland has three language-communities (German, French and Italian), and there are also significant contributions to the English Wikipedia. Chapter members contribute on their respective language-Wikipedias, according to those sites' different rules, sensibilities, and cultural traditions. The official communication language used in the chapter is English. The current paid-editing issue came up in the French-speaking community, but that doesn't mean that there are not similar issues in the German- or Italian-speaking communities, or among English-language contributors. A further complication is that quite a few Swiss Wikipedians belong to Wikimedia France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, but not to the Swiss chapter. We therefore tend to let each language community operate with relative independence.
I repeatedly added an initiative to the board meeting agenda that formal research on paid editing in Switzerland should be carried out, taking advantage of the Swiss federal election in 2015 to do an in-depth study of the edits on the candidates' Wikipedia pages across all Swiss languages. This had the potential to determine whether paid editing is being conducted on behalf of politicians, or even directly by them. Now that two board members have admitted their involvement in paid editing, we can understand why these repeated proposals received a lukewarm reception.
The Swiss board's reluctance to address the issue of paid editing is just an indicator of deeper problems in the chapter. Lack of transparency, confusion of roles, and conflicts of interest have all contributed to shifting the focus of the chapter's activities away from its core mission, which should be to support local volunteer editors. If editors start being paid instead of doing volunteer work, will that not affect how volunteer work is perceived? This attitude goes directly against Wikipedia's values and culture.