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Posted by: thekohser

Phoebe's http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-August/067163.html...

Sounds like some of the chapters were having some wild parties, where they'd roll around in the piles of foreign currency.

Posted by: Emperor

That's pretty funny. Bring in the pros, to waste the money in the right way.

Posted by: Vigilant

Get the fuck out of the cash flow. That's our money to decide how to distribute.

Posted by: Somey

I'd have to agree, there's a clear subtext here that one or more of these operations is misappropriating, or at least wasting, donor funds.

I guess the way I see it, their basic problem is that in order to support the "Wikimedia is a charity" lie, which really is The Big Lie as far as the WMF is concerned, they have to define their "mission" and "goals" in very nebulous, unrealistic terms for which the fudge-factor is enormous. And if they had things like program quotas, documentation requirements, or even systematic performance appraisals for the activities of these "chapters," we'd probably have heard of it. Personally, I doubt they have any of those things, because they don't even know themselves what they should be expecting from these folks.

The Big Lie is also self-sustaining, because if they didn't at least pretend to have a "mission" (and disburse money for pursuing it internationally), then people would be more likely to ask why the WMF isn't doing anything with the money it's getting. The WMF is basically saying, "look, we funded all these international chapters!" ...and if someone asks, "to do what, exactly?" that someone gets a lot of circular pie-in-the-sky blather, nothing particularly meaningful or specific. Occasionally they might mention that they had someone visit a college campus somewhere, or give a conference presentation. I'm sure some of these things cost a fair amount of money, but personally, I'm not convinced, and frankly I never have been.

This is not to say that any given WMF chapter is necessarily a boondoggle, at least from their perspective. But the potential is certainly there, and if they're talking about it in public, it suggests that it could be more serious than they've let on in the past.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Srsly-- would YOU turn down a random chance to literally roll in a pile of shekels?

Some things are worth doing just to be able to say later that you did it. You don't even need the T-shirt.