On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com wrote:
I submitted a comment to the blog, but over seven hours later, it is still not published, and there is a history of my questions to that blog being ignored or censored. So, I'm going to ask here, and I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press.
I don't mean to be pugilistic here, but...so? A blog isn't really a publicly accessible forum, even if some people choose to open theirs as such. Also, which members of the press are you forwarding the traffic to?
Could we have more detail, please, on the note that "Wikia matched the best offer"? Were the other ten higher bidders also given the opportunity to match the best offer? Why was Wikia chosen on a "second and adjusted offer" basis, rather than choosing the good-faith firm that submitted the lowest offer initially? Was the first low bidder given the chance to further discount their rate? If so, what was their response? If not, why not?
I'm not sure it matters, the deal with Wikia provides an interesting opporty for a number of reasons, not just the bottom-line financial ones. Wikia has been doing a lot of work with MediaWiki, especially concerning usuability. Also, there is a location issue that's worth considering too. Close proximity to the WMF headquarters, an as-good-as-best cost, and an opportunity to work near other engineers on a similar project is quite a good package deal that isn't really worth second-guessing. Even if the next 10 closest bidders all matched or beat that same price when given a second chance, they probably could not have matched the other benefits of the Wikia offer.
Actually, it's not nepotism. And, there are no uniform laws regarding nepotism. It's potentially worse. Self-dealing, which is what this really smacks of, is covered in case law, judicial opinions, and some statutes.
It's like when companies hire new people, they like people with significant experience in the same industry. It's not nepotism to say that you want to work with, and to work near, people who are doing similar work as what you are doing. It's also not nepotism if you aren't showing undo favoritism: Wikia matched the best offer and brings additional value to the deal in a number of other ways that I doubt could be matched by any of the other bidders.
We know Wikia was recently laying off workers in the economic downturn. Presumably, Wikia now has excess office space per employee. WMF gets a grant, presumably funded by tax-deductible dollars. Expending that grant on office space is served up to an ostensibly "open" and "fair" competitive search among 12 candidate landlords. A lowest bid is received. However, a bidder who happens to have strong personnel ties to the Board of WMF and the Advisory Board of WMF, is given the opportunity to match the lowest bid, which they do, since they have empty office space doing them no good empty.
Net result: Tax-advantaged dollars will be transferred to a for-profit corporation with an "inside track" to the decision-making body of the non-profit organization.
It strikes me as fishy, to use a gentle word.
It's fishy that the WMF choose a bid that was equal to the best bid financially, and had additional non-financial value as well? That's not fishy, that's good business. Fishy would be if the WMF choose to accept Wikia's bid if it was not equal to the lowest bid on the table (and even then, it might still make sense considering the added value of the Wikia bid). That Wikia may be struggling financially is not surprising in this economy either, so I don't know why you even bring that up.
--Andrew Whitworth