Katherine Maher Quotes

In 8 hours I’ll put on a mask, leave my home, head to the airport, fly for 6 hours, quarantine for 14 days, and hopefully by mid-July I’ll be able to see my mom. I would not be going if there were not urgent family issues, but I won’t lie: I am afraid.

We realised a few years back that of all the biographies on English Wikipedia, only 16 per cent were about women. That's out of more than 1.3 million biographies. So that in and of itself is an opportunity to think about how we write in the remaining 34 per cent [of the female population]... We forget how valuable knowledge is to the development and furthering of our society. Accuracy of information, continued inquiry, this has always propelled us forward. If we lose value and appreciation for that, then some of the other structures start to crumble.

Lowkey excited about all the innovation in videoconferencing. We went from standard-awful to Brady Bunch to multi-grid to Together in about 3 months. Keep it up.

We operate Wikipedia as a public trust. Our vision statement says: “Imagine a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge. That’s our commitment.” At best, this is an aspiration; in reality it is a beautiful, if slightly mad, ambition. But even knowing the challenges, we forge onwards because we believe in people — the contribution every human can make, and the things humanity can do together.

Yeah, this is 100% BS. California, the most fire-prone state in the country, contracts prisons to fight our deadly wildfires. When prisoners are released, their firefighting experience does not usually qualify them for salaried (unionized and pensioned!) work... Furthermore... it is our imprisoned fellow citizens who are at high risk of Covid-19 exposure. They're 40% of CA firefighters, and they’re fighting for basic preventative care... As I’ve said before, my much-bigger little brother is a firefighter in CA. He sits with the weight of 60lbs of gear and fear and frustration with the multitudinous ways his profession is our society’s last resort for everything from addiction to policing to climate change... It doesn’t work. We cannot stop our lands from burning by exploiting a burning injustice of our nation. We cannot douse our apathy by sending in the engines.

This election is the most important election of our lifetime, and potentially will determine how many lifetimes our children and their children have to come. Vote Climate.

It’s a good thing to do the right thing today. It’s a better thing to recognize the people who did it yesterday, when it was hard.

Love you, SF. EMTs walking through Dolores Park handing out free, cozy cotton masks, without judgment, as everyone enjoys the sun (and enjoys their open containers and other things...)

Ran without pain for the first time since quarantine! Yes, only a mile, and yes, it was very slow, and yes, I am woefully out of shape. But it was a run and it was glorious.

In my experience, it is perfectly possible to have opinions and also produce valuable, fact-based information for the world.

If our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, then all knowledge has to be written by all people, which means that it has to represent all people... We really need to think about what kind of language we are using to talk about the value of free knowledge, because free knowledge is valuable to absolutely everyone and we want to make sure that we are communicating that in a way that resonates... If we have more women editing Wikipedia, do I expect more articles about women scientists and novelists? Absolutely... But do I expect more articles about things that are just of interest to anybody. Yeah, I expect that too.

At the same time, women make up a majority of senior leadership at the Wikimedia Foundation — including the chief executive, chief operating, chief advancement, chief creative, and chief engagement officers as well as the vice president of human resources... we’re just willing to hire people who, perhaps when we first see their resume, are not necessarily the exact right fit for the job... If you believe that a bunch of amateur, volunteer, nonspecialists can write an encyclopedia and then have it be the fifth most popular website on the planet, then you also have to believe that there are talents that exist within society that may not match what we actually think a COO or a CTO should look like.

The COVID-19 epidemic is something that makes clear our global human interconnectedness and the responsibility we have to one another. We don’t have precedent for its challenges, but we do know that our best response relies on the sort of global empathy, cooperation, and community building that sits at the heart of this organization.

Love my bank's credit card declining donations to Lebanese charities. Super cool.

Rather than replacing humans, A.I. is best used to support our capacity for creativity and discernment. Wikipedia is creating A.I. that will flag potentially problematic edits — like a prankster vandalizing a celebrity’s page — to a human who can then step in. The system can also help our volunteer editors evaluate a newly created page or suggest superb pages for featuring. In short, A.I. that is deployed by and for humans can improve the experience of both people consuming information and those producing it... We must defend a web that is free and unfettered, and improve connections that allow creativity and collaboration.