On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 2:44 PM, Denny Vrandecic <dvrandecic(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
-- James was not removed from the Board because he was demanding more
transparency.
-- James was not removed from the Board because of a difference in opinion
about the strategy of the Foundation.
Denny, you say James was not removed from the board because he demanded
more transparency, or because of a difference in opinion on strategy.
However, there are glaring issues of transparency around the Knowledge
Engine project, which does signal a major strategic shift. Nobody in the
community has to my knowledge seen the grant application, the grant
agreement; nor do we know how and when this effort really started, who
initiated it, what the envisaged end point is, and who all the stakeholders
are that will profit from it.
All we can do is speculate – and I can think of third parties to whom data
on user interactions with open content would be commercially very useful.
As mentioned previously, as long ago as last May someone like Risker, who
looks at WMF spending, was perplexed just why so many resources were being
devoted to Search and Discovery – resources whose deployment seems to cost
far more than the published grant by the Knight Foundation will pay for:
$250,000 is nothing compared to the costs of Search & Discovery, and a
pittance compared to the $30+ million the WMF has just taken last month.
WMF spending on this means that resources are not available for other
things, like measures to improve content quality, software improvements the
community has asked for, and so forth. There has been no debate about this
with the community.
The first Knight Foundation announcement of funding for the Knowledge
Engine[1] predates the official grant announcement by more than four
months.
This is absolutely baffling to me. And it falls well within the period of
when the board's troubles with James appear to have started.
The Knowledge Engine is an issue James has repeatedly raised on-wiki over
the past few hours and days, on both Wikipedia and Meta, and I dare say but
for the events of the past couple of weeks we would still not be talking
about this even now.
What is and has been going on with the Knowledge Engine project, and why
has there been so little transparency about it?
[1]
http://www.knightfoundation.org/grants/201551260/