What if a business were to offer grant money to facilitate an investigation into and documentation of financial misdeeds at "free culture" organizations? Do you think that money would ever be accepted in good faith?

Another question might be, "Would anybody ever notice the offer?"

Greg

Since that's a totally orphaned page with a grand total of one edit by anyone other than you, I doubt it; it looks pretty obvious that someone set it up, abandoned it, and forgot to delete it.

I almost reverted his addition too.


By the way - Thekohser account would do better to state what kind of project would be able to host such material. Are you looking for some education based project? Some encyclopedic project? It is rather too vague. Why not just buy a Wikia site and devote it to such investigation?

Is that how one gains access to a new Wikia site these days? By buying a sub-domain?



What do you have against Gary Kirk?

Oops, looks like he gave up, so there's no need for you to block him.

I was referring to you posting on that page. : P

Leave it to a Wikipediot to look at a $500 grant and ask, "Where the hell are we going to host this project?"

"Free culture" has a history of ignoring sound non-profit practices and making things up as they go around. Freenode founder(?) Rob Levin used non-profit funds to purchase a a massive mobile home, pay off his person debts and student loans because he "sacrificed so much." It would have probably resulted in someone getting in serious trouble if he had not died in a bicycle car accident. Then there was Mr. Wales travel expense run up that required reimbursement in installment payments from a man who gets six figures for giving a speech. I believe that was just before the WMF chief bookkeeper was arrested at the border for something that had to do with her shooting someone.

Well, 1. 500 dollars is not enough for me to bat an eye and 2. you were very unspecific on the page. You can offer 500 dollars but if you lack any structure it makes no sense.

Maybe that's why Wikiculture makes no sense to me.

That was WMF's COO Carolyn Doran. She was free and clear on the boyfriend shooting, which had happened some time before, but still on probation from a drunk driving arrest, and had recently been arrested on yet another. Which would have violated her previous DUI parole, but this wasn't picked up at the time. This happened on a weekend (advice: try not to get arrrested on a weekend), and she'd made a first appearance for the latter the next Monday AM and posted bond to make bail (using her WMF credit card to do it, almost certainly, as that was all she had with her and she couldn't very well stay in jail), then borrowed money from someplace else to immediately write a check to WMF to re-pay the card the next day. So she thought she was off. And went off to Wikimania in Europe. She got nabbed as a felon on parole returning to the country, but for some reason wasn't arrested then, either. However, the shit hit the fan later-- I suppose when it came time for the arraignment hearing and past sins finally got looked into. It's not clear to me if she went to prison for violating parole from the second DUI, or from leaving the country while on parole from the first, or as punishment for the second. Perhaps a deal was stuck for a guilty plea that encompassed all of the above.

My guess is she got fired from WMF as soon as she had to admit that she was going to prison on the guilty plea deal. THEN they found she was a felon and did some accounting and found out about her use of the credit card to make bail ($5000 to some Florida County Court looks pretty funny), and started to sweat. No doubt she told them that it had been paid back the day after she got out of jail and hadn't used the card for anything else improper, and all that I would guess was true. She didn't steal any money, being more alcoholic than embezzler. They took a 4 months to make sure of this, and then Jimbo made his hairy-chested "I'll personally repay any money missing" statement. Which wasn't much of a risk by then. But looked dramatic.

ORLY. Must be nice to be you then... $500 pays for a lot of server space.

Well, I don't pay for server space.

Oh, c'mon...there are more interesting things to buy with 500 smackeroos!

What we really need to do is shake down the foundations for grants, get the cash, pile into a car with Charlotte, and head down to New Orleans for a week's worth of partying. And Xeno can do the driving -- I suspect he is the most responsible behind a wheel.

Do you pay rent? Mortgage? Groceries? Insurance?

Seriously, Jeff, $500 might be a small grant in the academic world, but for something volunteers are going to do, it's actually quite nice! Imagine yourself in a Girl Scout's shoes rather than an aspiring academic's/pundit's shoes and think of how many cookies you'd have to sell to get $500

You know, I cannot imagine Ottava in Girl Scout shoes. Ah, but what happens when masculine feet slip into cha-cha heels:

I'm a life long academic who picks and chooses when I want to work. I have my own money and I have no real cares about life. I might put 500 dollars towards books, but they tend to cost 300 dollars each so the money wouldn't go far.

Did it somehow become something less than a capital offense to call Ottava by his real name?

You'd rather do your work for free, so I can see how enough money to buy 152 bags of Cheetos would not faze you. Confirm for me, Ottava, you are under the age of 26 and you live with your mother, correct?

If you must know, I am 27. I spent 160k of my inheritance paying for my education (grade school, college), my own income for part of grad school for my one masters, and I received free tuition for my second/doctorate. When I lived in Annapolis for three years, I made 47k per year as an archaeological researcher. When I have time, I still perform research or lobbying (which I charge 30 dollars/hour). Oh, and I currently own about 25% of my family's farm (and more when my parents die, both are still alive). I currently spend my time finishing my dissertation, polishing up academic articles, writing my column, lobbying work, and political campaigning.

Don't forget your stint as Master of Ceremonies at the WV Post-Modern Theater of the Absurd.

So you're unemployed and exhausting inherited wealth then?

He probably got a grant for that from mom.

But she didn't make him one of those cute furry costumes like all the other kids had.

You sure about that?

What?!? You mean she was the one who dressed him up as a literary rhyming scheme?

If you are interested in investing in a Christian-themed musical starring Mickey Rooney and Shirley Jones, let me know -- my filmmaker friend John is looking for backers.

Yes, unfortunately, I agree. What does $500 buy you these days? Enough to make the teenage admins go, woo! As a bounty for anyone to spill some of the dirt, it is probably still not enough.

I think the thing to do serious is form a foundation to start approaching the funders of the Wikipedia and others for sponsorship of activity on Wikipedia.

In a way, all those big donations they gave missed the target completely. It is not the Wikimedia Foundation that make the Wikipedia, it is the editors.

It is like tipping the slave owners for the work of the slaves. Giving the slave owners an even bigger golden carrot to dangle over the heads of the donkey workers ... Crazy, insane, unethical.

Where the money needs to go is where the Wikimedia Foundation wont put it ... which is strangely contradictory ... that is to say, into quality copywriting, expertise and a fair amount of political lobby 'on wiki' to fix things. Of course, "fixing things" could also be modified to include pursuing particular social or political agendas according to whom you were applying for grants etc.

As we well know, it takes very few people to "swing consensus" and successfully oppose other parties.

I am sure the donors have never actually thought this through and never looked at the Wikipedia close enough. They probably dont realise the Wikimedia dont create the content and the content happens despite their involvement not because of it. They just got a fat glossy PR brief with lot of big numbers with the Wikimedia donation application.

So perhaps your $500 bucks would be better spent putting into creating a similar counter-application and mailing out to the charitable foundations underlining your social concerns in fairly graphic terms and offering alternative proposals?

No, I am still a lobbyist and a researcher.

Right-eee-ooo.

Check.

Checkmate.

And, in less than 17 hours, it's #1 on Google, out of 151,000 results.

Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't "wikimedia foundation scandals" or something similar be the more common search query? When I read "Wikimedia Foundation investigation," I think about investigations being done by the Wikimedia Foundation, so it wouldn't make much sense to search for that. At least not to find what you've set out.

Say, does Wikipedia Review have page view stats?