Pete,

According to his Signpost piece three weeks ago[1], James Heilman emailed the board in mid-October about the Knight Foundation grant to warn the board, and I quote –

*"4) There is a serious lack of transparency around this new "sister project". This has not been discussed with our communities as far as I am aware. Please correct me if I am wrong. As such it has the potential to worsen WMF / community relations. Starting a new sister site without community discussion is not the wiki way."*

No board member has come forward to deny that James sent this email. In the same piece, James also said:

*"I emailed the board list offering to write up an overview of these ideas for the Signpost, which was met with negative comments by some board members."*

Nobody has denied that that happened, either. Now, Jimmy said on-wiki[2] two days ago, and I quote:

*"I didn't see anything particularly unusual or controversial about the concepts being presented to us about the evolving ideas around improving search and discover, and I simply assumed that there was community discussion and consultation **[...] had we **understood that a disconnect was going on, and that the community was not being consulted, we absolutely would have pushed harder for community engagement sooner. As it is, I think most likely other board members, like me, simply assumed that it was being talked about and not treated as some kind of super top secret thing. Is that helpful?"*

Can you help me figure out how Jimmy and the board could have "assumed" that there was community discussion and consultation about the Knowledge Engine project when James Heilman

1. had started a board discussion in mid-October specifically to point out that there was no community discussion and consultation,

2. had offered to write an article for the Signpost about the project to inform the community,

3. was told by his colleagues on the board that the idea of a Signpost article was not welcome?

I'm finding it impossible to reconcile. And like Sarah, I am struck by the fact that so far, everything James Heilman has said about this turned out to be true.

Andreas

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=70... Quote in full: *"The board has broadly encouraged open discussion and disclosure, and I'm unaware of anyone individually giving her advice to hide anything about long term strategy. Going into slightly more depth than that, I didn't see anything particularly unusual or controversial about the concepts being presented to us about the evolving ideas around improving search and discover, and I simply assumed that there was community discussion and consultation about it. The grander concept which, as I now understand, Damon was pitching via cloak-and-dagger PGP encrypted files (one employee told me that he had to give his PGP key on a USB stick because Damon didn't trust the public keyservers), didn't really get traction and was quickly abandoned. By the time of the board meeting in Mexico City, we specifically discussed that this would not be anything like a "Google competitor". As to the exact details of every single discussion with funders, obviously the board is not privy to those as a practical matter. Certainly had we understood that a disconnect was going on, and that the community was not being consulted, we absolutely would have pushed harder for community engagement sooner. As it is, I think most likely other board members, like me, simply assumed that it was being talked about and not treated as some kind of super top secret thing. Is that helpful?--Jimbo Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales(talk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#top) 23:25, 27 February 2016 (UTC)"*

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 6:53 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

Jimmy and James, I'm glad to see you both agreeing on some facts. That's encouraging. But IMO you should both put some careful thought into this part:

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 9:36 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:

...

Finally facts are not determined by a vote. That you got unanimity for

"The

...

board.. has offered no objections to any board member discussing long

term

...

strategy with the community at any time" should make all of us worry. I have provided evidence that refutes this claim here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

As somebody who's following this, but who's not locked in a dispute, it seems there is a very natural explanation for this, that should not especially make us worry:

Different people, reasonable people, can reasonably disagree about what constitutes "discussing long term strategy" and what does not.

For the entire board to agree to a statement like that does not strike me as especially bad; perhaps there was a dominant idea of what constituted strategy and what didn't, and everybody voted with that idea in mind, without insisting on a clearer definition in the text of the statement. Not ideal, I think -- but also not the end of the world.

But Jimmy, you have repeatedly claimed that vote as evidence that James told a lie.

That claim introduces a lot of drama into the discussion -- and does exactly something you stated you didn't want to do, which is publicly assaulting James' reputation.

I would suggest you both stop accusing each other of lying, long enough to figure out what facts you *can* agree on. You're both Wikipedians, we do this all the time. It might involve getting out of some of the language patterns you've been using, e.g. getting away from abstract notions like "long term strategy."

A skilled, professional mediator, facilitator, or ombudsman can be an excellent resource for working through stuff like this.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

On 1 Mar 2016, at 12:36 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:

In mid-October, before he emailed the board, James wrote me with a huge misconception - that we had a secret project to build a Google competing search engine. Of course we didn't have such a project We had a few emails back and forth in which I explained that was not the case.

Jimmy, how does this square with the June 24 document entitled “Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia”? [1]

That appears to have been written by Lila. Part of the document reads:

"Our new site will be the Internet’s first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.”

I would appreciate it if you could please “declassify” this document (and in fact, could you please have them all released) and tell us who authored it, once and for all.

Unfortunately though, the WMF very much did have internal documents that were positioning the WMF into building a search engine. In fact, it was a grand idea. But one that was done in secret. James was not wrong, and he wasn’t lying. You may not have been aware of it at the time, but there were indeed confidential documents that showed that someone was developing an internal search engine.

The language used in the document is very clearly *not* Damon Sicore’s, incidentally. I assume it was Lila who wrote the document as the entire document is written in her signature style.

We went back and forth in pleasant emails discussing the situation and as a part of that I said: "I am always in favor of more community consultation." I went on to discuss a bit that I didn't think we were at the point where a full-scale community consultation (like the one that legal did on revising the terms of service) was necessary for a mere $250,000 grant. But I was supportive of consulting the community.

In the interests of transparency, could you please release these emails? They sound innocuous enough, it would be nice to be able to verify this and read the email discussion you and James had.

...

2. had offered to write an article for the Signpost about the project to

inform the community,

3. was told by his colleagues on the board that the idea of a Signpost

article was not welcome?

I've tried to find this in my email records and have no record of it. I don't know when this offer was made nor who responded. If James knows, and wants to share the board emails with me directly, that would be appreciated.

Under Fl. St. § 617.0808(1) [2] James is not allowed to possess any such email records. In fact, James would have needed to return these to the board of directors within 72 hours. If he didn't, then a circuit court may summarily order him to do so.

This isn’t an issue though, under that same statute - § 617.0808(5)(d) [2] to be precise! - all written communications have to be kept for three years. And you have the right to inspect and copy this information under § 617.1602. [3]

At least, I think this is correct - I’m not a lawyer, so it’s not legal advise, just me geeking out on Florida non-profit law :-) And it’s also in the handbook. [4] The point being is that you can request this information and it will be provided :-)

Chris

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-10/In_foc... 2. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&S... 3. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&S... 4. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Handbook#Removal_...

On 1 Mar 2016, at 2:00 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:

On 2/29/16 6:46 AM, Chris Sherlock wrote:

...

Unfortunately though, the WMF very much did have internal documents that were positioning the WMF into building a search engine. In fact, it was a grand idea. But one that was done in secret. James was not wrong, and he wasn’t lying. You may not have been aware of it at the time, but there were indeed confidential documents that showed that someone was developing an internal search engine.

There are a lot of confusions here and I think you've not been very precise, so let me work through this slowly. Apologies for the tedium but I'm sure you'll agree there has been too much that has been too vague.

Not at all, I apologise for any confusion I may have brought to bare here.

First, before we start, let's clarify some terminology. There is "an internal search engine" which we have now, have had for many years.[1] There was and is a project to improve it - this is part of what the Knight grant is all about, and I think it's great. It's also not controversial. The controversial part is "search engine" in the sense of a Google-competitor. It's important to recognize that using the term 'search engine' as a standalone can lead to misconceptions.

Drat. Autocorrect’ed by my iPad. That *should* have read “Internet”, not “internal”.

FWIW, I don’t think anyone is opposed to a better search engine. I’m rather impressed you had built one back in the day :-) In fact, I don’t think anyone is opposed to a search engine that indexes the wider Internet, taylored to the WMF’s purposes. I think even Google would find this a total non-issue. In fact, if it was truly open, they could just use it as a source of index data. Google knows just how hard it is to develop a search engine, it’s taken them years and years and a LOT of expertise, and they have to bypass bad actors and goodness only knows what else.

Second, I am now aware that a former employee was advocating for the idea of building a direct competitor to Google. His presentation about this was shared under rather extreme "cloak and dagger" with PGP encryption, etc. This idea did not get traction, and never rose to being something presented to the board for approval. As far as I understand it, some of the dramatic language did survive here and there, but if you read it independently you'd not really interpret it that way.

Yeah, I’ve read those emails on this mailing list. Its very… odd.

I was very harsh in a reply to a blogpost by Lila on the 16th [1], and frankly I regret the degree of hostility in that comment - I read it now and cringe a little. Nevertheless my conclusions stand. If the dramatic language in the Knight Foundation document is the language that talks about being a transparent Internet search engine by Wikimedia, then that document was very badly put together.

If the grant application that was put to the Knight Foundation had specific language that talked about Internet search, then it appears that we may have inadvertently misled the Knight Foundation. There’s no real way of putting it I’m afraid - that’s just sheer incompetence.

Is what I’m saying is the truth, then I do hope someone has gotten in contact with the Knight Foundation to clarify the application? Surely if they are giving us money though, it’s on the proviso that we do what we say we will do? Part of what we were telling them was that we want to make an amazing transparent Internet search engine, one that does away with the opaque and potentially damaging search algorithms of proprietary search engines - and we made it worse by stating that Google could be a risk due to interference and wasted effort working on the same thing?

Forgive me for harping on about this, but that document *did* give the *very strong* impression to almost everyone, including I’d hazard the Knight Foundation, that we were applying for a grant into searching the wider Internet. Whilst I’m not exactly a fan of the global media, that was their take on the matter also - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was one of the first to pick this up, and they are (despite being a state-funded institution) quite a reliable and reasonably neutral source of news.

If you could please advise then why we added dramatic language that gave an impression we were building something we aren’t to the Knight Foundation, who then funded the first tranche, then I’d appreciate it.

If you could clarify that if this is an accurate summation of a big problem in that grant application, to a big and well respected grant funder, then what has the WMF done to reach out to the Knight Foundation to clarify what they were actually funding?

James had gotten, from somewhere, the idea that there really was a secret project to build a Google-competing search engine. We had a discussion where I told him that wasn't right. We had further discussions at the board level of what it means, and eventually James himself made the motion to approve the Knight grant, and voted in favor of it.

Yes, well as much as I respect James (and I think from my previous emails that’s abundantly clear) he made a big mistake in approving the grant given what he suspected.

...

In the interests of transparency, could you please release these emails? They sound innocuous enough, it would be nice to be able to verify this and read the email discussion you and James had.

I'd like to do that. I'm starting a private conversation with James that I hope will be productive.

Thank you Jimmy! This is great news. I really appreciate you doing this.

...

Under Fl. St. § 617.0808(1) [2] James is not allowed to possess any such email records.

I think you are badly misreading that. I think the point is that he's not allowed to withhold "records" (which probably meant paperwork at the time the statue was written), not that he's not allowed to keep copies. I've never heard of the idea that a board member has to delete all their old board email archives!

Actually, that’s precisely what it says, though of course I am not a lawyer, the language is refreshingly unambiguous.

(g) Any director removed from office shall turn over to the board of directors within 72 hours any and all records of the corporation in his or her possession. (h) If a director who is removed does not relinquish his or her office or turn over records as required under this section, the circuit court in the county where the corporation’s principal office is located may summarily order the director to relinquish his or her office and turn over corporate records upon application of any member.

It might be nice if WMF legal counsel could clarify this. A bit off topic though I guess.

Anyway, the issue is probably just about finding a particular discussion in a mountain of correspondence.

Oh, agreed! I was just pointing out that James probably does have a copy of the emails, that’s all.

Appreciate you responding so quickly Jimmy. I’d really appreciate you clearing up these other questions. Sorry to all if I’m hitting my post limit, I’m trying hard to ensure that I don’t spam everyone unnecessarily!

Chris Sherlock

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 8:00 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:

James had gotten, from somewhere, the idea that there really was a secret project to build a Google-competing search engine. We had a discussion where I told him that wasn't right. We had further discussions at the board level of what it means, and eventually James himself made the motion to approve the Knight grant, and voted in favor of it.

​Jimmy, this is something I find disturbing.

In October 2015 James opposed accepting the grant application because of the lack of clarity and transparency around it. [1] But on 7 November he not only formally supported its acceptance, but actually proposed it to the Board. [2]

James has written that he did this "following pressure which included comments about potentially removing members of the Board." [3] He wrote: "Jimmy Wales had made comments about removing other board members during the days before the Knight grant vote. I believed that my opposing at that point in time would have changed nothing (because there were not enough opposing votes to block it), and doing so would have led to my removal." [4]

After his removal, you used that he had proposed accepting the grant to show that he was being inconsistent. You later called it a "flat out lie" that any board member had put pressure on him. [5]

James is an honest and independent-minded person. If he says he acted under pressure, he did. That doesn't mean anyone intended him to feel that way, of course. But please say whether you said anything about removing board members during, or in the days leading up to, that meeting.

If James did feel so much pressure that he acted against his own views, it raises the question of whether other trustees have been similarly affected, now or in the past. When we elect trustees, we need to know that they're going to make their own decisions.

This is one of the many reasons we need all the emails to be released, as well as all documentation around the Knowledge Engine and Knight grant.

Sarah

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

[2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07#Knight_Foundation_Gr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr...

Kevin,

Those were quotes from the current WMF documentation explaining the Discovery project and its underlying strategy. I linked the sources in my post.

Federated open data sources and Kindle are mentioned here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ADiscovery_Year_0-1-2.pdf&...

That slide show is part of the current Discovery FAQ here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ&oldi...

Public (volunteer-based) curation of relevance is mentioned here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File:Discovery_Year_0-1-2.pdf&am...

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File:Discovery_Year_0-1-2.pdf&am...

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ&oldi...

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Discovery/RFC&oldi...

It's about the long-term strategy, not what is covered by the $250,000 grant. The grant is expressly restricted to Stage 1 – even though the grant agreement provides descriptions of the subsequent stages which still tally substantially with what's outlined on the pages linked above.

If you're telling me that those pages are out of date as well, then I'll take note of that. My impression was they reflected current thinking.

Andreas

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 12:12 AM, Kevin Smith ksmith@wikimedia.org wrote:

I think some people aren't realizing the difference between the leaked presentation (which outlined a general search engine) and the actual grant. The former was just an idea, while the latter is official. By my reading, the grant clearly is NOT for a general internet search engine, although it (unfortunately) did retain a bit of the language from earlier documents.

Also, I think I disagree with this statement:

...

It envisages a volunteer-curated search engine drawing on a whole host of sources from within and outside of the Wikimedia universe, with output vectors including "Mobile", "API", "Kindle" and "Apps".

This is part of the overall strategy to this day. Consultation would

really

...

be appropriate here.

The only "volunteer curation" I see in the actual grant can be covered by the curation of Wikidata that volunteers are already doing. I don't see anything in the grant that relies on volunteers signing up for additional work.

To my knowledge, drawing on non-Wikimedia sources is still in the "strategy" (or more accurately the roadmap) in two ways: 1) OpenStreetMap data is already being used in limited ways, and 2) other free information sources are only being considered in a vague "maybe someday but not this year" way.

I don't recall hearing of any plans for Kindle support, but we do already support APIs and mobile apps, and will (presumably) continue to expand both. If Kindle support were considered at some point (past or future), that wouldn't seem like a radical step to me.

I say all of this as someone who works closely with the Discovery team. If I'm mistaken on any of the facts, please let me know.

Kevin Smith Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 3:41 PM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 8:00 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:

...

James had gotten, from somewhere, the idea that there really was a secret project to build a Google-competing search engine. We had a discussion where I told him that wasn't right. We had further discussions at the board level of what it means, and eventually James himself made the motion to approve the Knight grant, and voted in favor of it.

​Jimmy, this is something I find disturbing.

In October 2015 James opposed accepting the grant application because of the lack of clarity and transparency around it. [1] But on 7 November he not only formally supported its acceptance, but actually proposed it to

the

...

Board. [2]

James has written that he did this "following pressure which included comments about potentially removing members of the Board." [3] He wrote: "Jimmy Wales had made comments about removing other board members during the days before the Knight grant vote. I believed that my opposing at

that

...

point in time would have changed nothing (because there were not enough opposing votes to block it), and doing so would have led to my removal." [4]

After his removal, you used that he had proposed accepting the grant to show that he was being inconsistent. You later called it a "flat out lie" that any board member had put pressure on him. [5]

James is an honest and independent-minded person. If he says he acted

under

...

pressure, he did. That doesn't mean anyone intended him to feel that way, of course. But please say whether you said anything about removing board members during, or in the days leading up to, that meeting.

If James did feel so much pressure that he acted against his own views,

it

...

raises the question of whether other trustees have been similarly

affected,

...

now or in the past. When we elect trustees, we need to know that they're going to make their own decisions.

This is one of the many reasons we need all the emails to be released, as well as all documentation around the Knowledge Engine and Knight grant.

Sarah

[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

...

[2]

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07#Knight_Foundation_Gr...

...

[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

...

[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Doc_James&diff=prev...

...

[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr...

...

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On 1 Mar 2016, at 11:12 AM, Kevin Smith ksmith@wikimedia.org wrote:

I think some people aren't realizing the difference between the leaked presentation (which outlined a general search engine) and the actual grant. The former was just an idea, while the latter is official. By my reading, the grant clearly is NOT for a general internet search engine, although it (unfortunately) did retain a bit of the language from earlier documents.

With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how could come to the conclusion that general Internet search was not a core component of the Knowledge Engine.

I'm just going to quote directly from the Grant application here [1]:

Knowledge Engine By Wikipedia will democratize the discovery of media, news and information—it will make the Internet's most relevant information more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an open data engine that's completely free of commercial interests. Our new site will be the Internet’s first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.

So to reiterate the words that make it hard for the WMF to deny that they were pitching for an Internet search engine:

Our new site will be the Internet's first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.

For context, this is the answer to the grant application question "Opportunity: What is the overall challenge being addressed? What is the proposed approach? And what evidence is there that this approach will work?"

The grant application also states that one challenge that could disrupt the project is:

Third-party influence or interference. Google, Yahoo or another big commercial search engine could suddenly devote resources to a similar project, which could reduce the success of the project. This is the biggest challenge, and an external one.

It truly strains credibility that an internal search engine merely indexing internal sites could be threatened by either Google or Yahoo devoting resources equal to or greater than the grant money allocated to this project, just to index Wikimedia properties. Similarly, it makes no sense to me how you can "democratize the discovery of media, news, and information" to "make the Internet's most relevant information more accessible and openly curated" without pulling that information from...the Internet!

And of course, to risk repeating myself, the next line states that "our new site will be the Internet's first transparent search engine".

You can tell me the scope was intended to be only for Wikimedia projects, but that isn't what is said in that grant application. That document as it stands literally states that it is to be an Internet search engine. No, I correct myself. It says it is to be THE Internet's search engine.

So when you say than there is confusion between the internal presentation and the official external grant application, I must respectfully disagree with you. There is no such confusion. The two parts of the application I have quoted cover almost a third of the grant application and I'd argue are the key parts of the application.

If fully one third of the grant application seem to be ambiguous or even flat wrong - and key parts at that! - then it's not just "unfortunate" that a "bit" of the language of the presentation remained in the grant application accidentally. That's sheer downright incompetence. Lila signed off on this document, and it was reviewed by others. I don't know who vetted and drafted this, but the buck stops with Lila, and she has never acknowledged her part in the language and scope of this application aside from once stating in a Discovery team meeting [2] that:

How do we explain the story now? The original idea was a broader concept. Never a crawler. We abandoned some ideas during the ideation phase, but we haven’t been clear what/when we abandoned.

I mean, we have here an admission from Lila that it is unclear to the wider community and even WMF staff what they have and haven't abandoned! Why have they assumed that the Knight Foundation would take anything from that grant application that most of us here, the Press, and interested members of the general public would not conclude from merely reading the document?

There has been some handwaving going on from a variety of different parties that "oh, it's just a Grant application, these things are very high level and vague, it doesn't really matter what we write in it lets just put the broadest possible objectives and vision for this thing and we'll deal the scope later on after we've been given the grant money".

Others may not think this is not a concern. I do though, and I'm very concerned that we are making grant applications and not really disclosing our full intentions, and we are not making it clear what are the corresponding scope limitations. Before someone objects, it's even worse when I have asked about the first challenge that could threaten the project and the response [3] is, in part:

Why is Google mentioned? Because they are the undisputed giants of search. If they wanted to dedicated even a small amount of their resources to creating a “Wikisearch” or “Free Knowledge Search” they could do so with ease. This is a risk because the foundation could invest both money and time into improving our search capabilities in an attempt to better surface Wikimedia content, only to be upended by those with more fiscal, staff, and technical resources. When submitting grants you have to be honest about stuff like this so that the grantor doesn’t get surprised down the road.

[...]

Please do understand that grant language is not the same as technical writing. The knight foundation is not a technical organization. The grant, again written my many authors over a substantial period of time, is written to entice and explain simply how we might use the funds.

This is very, very worrying. The explanation given in that comment is given in no more than three sentences, yet if it is a clearer and more accurate reflection of the stated threat than that given in the original document! I mean, we aren't talking about paragraphs of written, turgid prose written by someone like myself on internal Wikimedia mailing lists. It's a pithy, well written and rather excellent explanation on the apparent threat to the project.

And this comment that grant writing isn't like technical writing... Well yes and no. More yes than no. But grant applications - especially ones that are applying for millions of dollars in funds for charitable endeavours - must be clear and not ambiguous about the purpose(s) of the funding.

Nobody can say that the Knight Foundation grant application was clear.

So... I think I've made myself clear now. We can and do understand the differences between those two documents. I don't think anyone is terrible confused by them.

Chris

1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowledge_engine_gran...

2. https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engin...

3. https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/16/wikimedia-search-future/#comment-25090

On 1 Mar 2016, at 5:00 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:

2016-02-29 19:24 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock chris.sherlock79@gmail.com:

...

With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how could come to the conclusion that general Internet search was not a core component of the Knowledge Engine.

It's important to remember that this is a $250K grant, with a grant period that ends later this year. It's clear that this was done because everyone involved realized that the plans are likely to change.

That’s rather missing the point though. The plan may change, but from the very start we have been told the plan is not the one that was proposed to the Knight Foundation.

We have been told, over and over again, that the application is for internal search. I have quoted the relevant sections in my previous email that show that the Knight Foundation proposal, as written, was not at any stage what was being planned for (apparently) within the Board.

The only other option is that there were indeed plans afoot within the Board of Trustees for an external search engine, but these got changed after the grant was submitted. In which case, James Heilman is entirely vindicated.

This raises an interesting point though. Is this grant still active? If this grant is still active, who is actively working on it? What is currently being done in the Discovery team around this particular grant application?

I’m very interested to hear who is in charge of getting this grant going if that’s the case. Have I entirely missed something (possible) or has there been no announcements about who or what is working on the requirements of this grant? The grant was issued in September last year, and the grant specifies that the initial $250,000 was for activities to be run over a 6 month period, after which the Discovery team needs to show some quite measurable results from the “discovery” stage. [1] In particular, the team need to establish core usage and performance metrics to work out core usage and performance metrics, and will need to have show test results of how well content can be found, the results of research and user testing, an improved search engine and API for Wikipedia searches, a public-facing dashboard of the core metrics used in product development, and a sample prototype based on a small dataset.

So basically, 6 months means that by midway through this month, we will see all of these deliverables. Could someone please advise us how this is proceeding? I’d imagine that we should at least be able to see the dashboard by now, but I’m curious to find out more about the research that’s been conducted and the results of the user testing performed.

Knight has given grants to WMF in the past, including a $600K one with a longer grant period [1], so this isn't a particularly bold step for them or for WMF. Within the scope of a grant with these parameters, it's completely reasonable for WMF, at the end of the grant period, to go back to Knight and say: "We've done everything we committed to for the grant period [improve internal search etc.], but we won't be doing anything beyond that.”

I’m in complete agreement. The Knight Foundation I’m sure feels the same way. Sadly, that is definitely NOT the point I was making. From what I can tell, the Knight Foundation was given an application for increasing mobile access to those on lower end, less well powered devices. This has been a rousing success, and from what I can tell (as I can’t see the grant application anywhere) achieved every one of the criteria that were specified by the Knight Foundation.

That’s very different than saying, however, that we will be making an Internet search engine, building up a team within the WMF, and then pivoting the direction from what was stated radically.

That is not to say that this process was managed well -- obviously it wasn't. But at least there are no catastrophic long term consequences for the organization or for the movement, as far as I can tell. That is, unless Larry Page read one of the early news stories and decided to send a DESTROY WIKIMEDIA memo to all Alphabet companies, in which case I expect Boston Dynamics robots to show up at New Montgomery Street any day now. [2]

If I hear about any weaponized Roombas in Wikimedia Australia I’ll be sure to advise everyone immediately.

Personally, I think the idea of an open search engine is great. I think it should be largely based on Wikimedia projects, but the whole idea has a lot of merit. The governance, as I have said a number of times, and debacle about how various people have been treated and the loss of trust within the wider community due to closed an opaque processes, and abusive comments from the top of Wikimedia management, have made what *should* be a positive and lasting project into an absolute nightmare. We’ve lost an ED and a trusted member of the Board already, and a steady exit of very good staff.

Chris

1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowledge_engine_gran... - see page 2 and 3.

2016-02-29 23:19 GMT-08:00 David Emrany david.emrany@gmail.com:

so reading your email, we also recall these quotes from the time of the Stanton Foundation fiasco ? [1]

"The Executive Director and Chief Revenue Officer agree that in the future, any grants that are not unrestricted will receive a special high level of scrutiny before being accepted." .. "The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014."

I'm not sure if there's a question for me here? I wasn't involved in the Belfer project until the postmortem. The ED transition happened shortly thereafter. Regardless of whether it came up in that context (I don't know for sure, but I doubt it), the follow-up was lost in the shuffle. Nemo pointed that out a few months later, and Lila's final response on the issue is here:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-March/077339.html

Erik

On 16-03-01 03:57 AM, David Emrany wrote:

What nobody is prepared to acknowledge is that only under Lila's term some of the most blatant and egregious instances of coordinated PR socking and on-wiki abuses could come out.

I was tangentially part of the investigation that led to many of those things being ferreted out and I can tell you with absolute certainty:

(a) The Foundation did not in any way prevent those investigations for abuse in the past (before or after Lila), so saying that "only under Lila's term [they] could come out" is at best misguided.

(b) The single biggest help we have had in being able that kind of abuse were the revised terms of use, that were put in place in 2012 and started being worked on at least a year prior. As far as I know the ED had minor to no involvement in this - that was a long-overdue initiative from Legal. But even *if* it had ED involvement, it would have been all Sue.

(c) The foundation has always given volunteers support when we needed Legal/Comm help getting rid of significant abuse, for as long as I can remember (At least since 2008). The help they were *able* to give at the time was more limited because the LCA team was tiny and overworked, but they always tried their best.

So, nobody is "prepared to acknowledge" your assertion because it has no relationship with reality.

-- Coren / Marc

Dave, you're simply mistaken.

The paid editing amendment was passed by the Board in April 2014 (before Lila was hired); it was merely *announced* in June.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 8:59 AM, David Emrany david.emrany@gmail.com wrote:

Dear Coren

I think you are mistaken. The paid editing amendment was added in 2014 (16th June) during Lila's term.[1] Lila took over the reins from Sue on 1 June 2014.

I'm appalled that you credit Sue for the steps taken (under Lila) to widen the volunteer base by exposing many rotten apples, including through better technology.

I equally state with certainty that your claim re the WMF's not preventing in any way the investigations is tremendously flexible with the truth and is completely divorced from reality. The enforcement of the Terms of Use lies exclusively with the WMF. There is no point repeating here the legal defeats WMF has suffered in many international courts during Sue's regime. We can discuss this privately.

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Terms_of_Use&type=revi...

BTW, its unclear how someone "tangentially involved" can state facts with "absolute certainty".

Dave

On 3/1/16, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:

...

On 16-03-01 03:57 AM, David Emrany wrote:

...

What nobody is prepared to acknowledge is that only under Lila's term some of the most blatant and egregious instances of coordinated PR socking and on-wiki abuses could come out.

I was tangentially part of the investigation that led to many of those things being ferreted out and I can tell you with absolute certainty:

(a) The Foundation did not in any way prevent those investigations for abuse in the past (before or after Lila), so saying that "only under Lila's term [they] could come out" is at best misguided.

(b) The single biggest help we have had in being able that kind of abuse were the revised terms of use, that were put in place in 2012 and started being worked on at least a year prior. As far as I know the ED had minor to no involvement in this - that was a long-overdue initiative from Legal. But even *if* it had ED involvement, it would have been all Sue.

(c) The foundation has always given volunteers support when we needed Legal/Comm help getting rid of significant abuse, for as long as I can remember (At least since 2008). The help they were *able* to give at the time was more limited because the LCA team was tiny and overworked, but they always tried their best.

So, nobody is "prepared to acknowledge" your assertion because it has no relationship with reality.

-- Coren / Marc

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Philippe

There is no public evidence of your misleading statements re years of careful planning.and execution.

What there is public evidence of is that the WMF has systematically evaded its enforcement responsibilities under the Terms of Use.

To cite 1 specific instance, Sue Gardner was repeatedly informed about the pedo on-wiki grooming by User Demiurge1000

"Who is responsible for child protection ?" https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Sue_Gardner&oldid...

It is deeply unsettling to have your confirmation that Sue Gardner sat on this for years and it was only Lila (an outsider with no great ties to the community) who could globally ban this user out.

PS: You surely recall “I won’t allow the accusations that the anon is making to stand on my talk page. I’ve redacted them. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2014 (UTC)”

David

On 3/2/16, Philippe Beaudette philippe@beaudette.me wrote:

Additionally, I believe Coren was referring to the expanded TOU as a whole, not to that amendment alone. And I agree with him, for the record.

Lila's support in expanding the size of the CA team was useful in helping to combat the abuses mentioned, but the vast majority of the systemic work took place under Sue, and was the result of years of careful planning and execution.

pb

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 3:50 AM, Philippe Beaudette philippe@beaudette.me wrote:

It is deeply unsettling to have my WHAT? I confirmed no such thing, and your misrepresentations do you no favors.

One thing I have learned over the last few years is that it is impossible to have a conversation in a spirit of openness when one party so wildly misrepresents the statements of the other. That's not good faith dealing.

Therefore, I won't be continuing this discussion with you.

It's only been fifteen minutes, but it seems that Richard managed to beat me to moderating him.

He won't be continuing any discussion, until he can bring something approaching sanity to the table.

Austin

On 2 Mar 2016, at 5:24 AM, Kevin Smith ksmith@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

You can tell me the scope was intended to be only for Wikimedia projects, but that isn't what is said in that grant application. That document as it stands literally states that it is to be an Internet search engine. No, I correct myself. It says it is to be THE Internet's search engine.

Clearly there are still aspirations to include non-Wikimedia projects in the search results. I can't speak for the board, or c-levels. But I can say that in my work with the Discovery team, we have not been asked to, and have not had even rough plans to, search non-free information sources.

It’s not even the wrong thing to do :-) Thank you for clarifying this though.

...

So when you say than there is confusion between the internal presentation and the official external grant application, I must respectfully disagree with you. There is no such confusion. The two parts of the application I have quoted cover almost a third of the grant application and I'd argue are the key parts of the application.

I would argue that the deliverables are THE key part of the application, but I freely admit that you are correct that the other parts matter. And are somewhat disturbing.

That’s a fair perspective for those actually doing the important work of making sure the grant is fulfilled. The deliverables are extremely important, but from my POV, the deliverables for the “discovery” phase inform the rest of the project, which is where the rubber hits the road. The deliverables ask to set the core and usage and performance metrics, which must be determined from the overall overall grant objective. User research and testing, similarly, can’t just be executed but the study and testing has to be designed and scoped, which again has to come from the overall grant objective, which is what I highlighted earlier.

There has been some handwaving going on from a variety of different parties

...

that "oh, it's just a Grant application, these things are very high level and vague, it doesn't really matter what we write in it lets just put the broadest possible objectives and vision for this thing and we'll deal the scope later on after we've been given the grant money".

Others may not think this is not a concern. I do though, and I'm very concerned that we are making grant applications and not really disclosing our full intentions, and we are not making it clear what are the corresponding scope limitations. Before someone objects, it's even worse when I have asked about the first challenge that could threaten the project and the response [3] is, in part:

Most of us on the Discovery team share your concerns about how this grant was conceived, pitched, received, and (not) publicized. Most of the team didn't see the grant until you did.

I feel need to tell those on the Discovery team who may think that my questions seem to be denigrating those on the team - I’m sorry if in any way I’ve written something that could give you a perception that I don’t believe in the worth of what you are doing. I want to put my hand up and take responsibility for it, because it’s absolutely not the case. My issues are literally with the Board of Trustees and the way they went about getting that grant, and set (or rather, didn’t set) effective and clearly-communicated strategy.

Shortly after I sent that last email, I reread the Discovery FAQ again to see if I’d missed anything. And I realised that I had missed that there was a portal and a whole bunch of material already prepared by folks in that team. I mean, there is a gerrit reviewer hooked into the version control system and everything, so it’s all being done in the open, exactly in the way that I’ve been rabbiting on about in a number of emails. I can see that Chris Koerner has attempted to ensure that all the material has been communicated and centralised on the team’s Wiki, the team’s goals are tracking very nicely [1] Oliver did a study which I was going to go back to read but for the life of me I can’t find it… the portal is up and running [2] and I can see that the team have been continuing to hold their meetings and publish their minutes in a very open and accessible manner.

So I’d like to not only apologise if I’ve offended or upset anyone in the Discovery team. That was never my intent. Actually, now that I’ve found how to view the work you are doing, I’m actually very impressed!

My only feedback is that information is *really* scattered. I’m finding it hard to follow what is going on, not that this should be a concern as I’m not doing the work. It might be nice to have a slightly reorganized page for this project so we can see what is being done. I’d love to see blog posts from the team showing off their work. It really helps to get to grips with what is going on.

Anyway, it’s heartening to see that the Discovery team is getting on with it, even through all this turmoil.

Chris

1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2015-16_Q3_Goals 2. http://discovery.wmflabs.org/metrics/#kpis_summary

Chris

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:

We went back and forth in pleasant emails discussing the situation and as a part of that I said: "I am always in favor of more community consultation." I went on to discuss a bit that I didn't think we were at the point where a full-scale community consultation (like the one that legal did on revising the terms of service) was necessary for a mere $250,000 grant. But I was supportive of consulting the community.

Here is what I don't understand: both Dariusz and James have said that they pushed hard for transparency and community engagement about the project at that time, and expressed concern that there hadn't been any. Do you not remember that? Yet nothing happened.

If they were in favour, and you were in favour, why didn't it happen? Who resisted?

Why was there resistance from other board members to even show James and Dariusz the documentation that was later leaked?

And there are things in the FAQs even today, like the plans for "public curation or relevance",[1][2] that are of material interest to volunteers, because they are the ones envisaged to be doing that work.

Wikimedia volunteers have never been called upon to determine search engine rankings. It's a whole new field of activity.

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/RFC [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

Here is what I don't understand: both Dariusz and James have said that they pushed hard for transparency and community engagement about the project at that time, and expressed concern that there hadn't been any. Do you not remember that? Yet nothing happened.

My recollection is that we were given a plausible explanation that all the big visions and brainstorming never went into production. Yes, there were ideas floating around, but they did not go anywhere.

This is why James motioned to approve the grant, as I understand. I don't think either of us would support the grant if we were unconvinced at the time. We did, however, insist that any work going outside of the simple "improve internal search" scope should be consulted.

My personal view is also that we need to be careful not to commit any resource in the future by agreeing on some relatively small grants in the present.

If they were in favour, and you were in favour, why didn't it happen? Who resisted?

I don't think that anyone resisted - we basically came to an understanding that the grant was not a big project, and that while there may have been grand(iose) visions about it, they never materialized to the level that would require board or community involvement.

On 1 Mar 2016, at 3:09 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

Jimmy - the limit is a "soft limit" of 30 posts per month. If someone goes well over you might get an e-mail from Austin or another moderator to cut back, but otherwise there is no need to ask for an exception.

Chris Sherlock - It is certainly not "unambiguous" what qualifies in that statute as a corporate record; feel free to google "corporate record" or "business record" in search of the many different definitions offered by various states and federal agencies. My suggestion is that you let this tangent go.

I appreciate your legal advise here.

I’m not quite sure why you think I’m going to say any more on the matter, I thought the fact that I had already said it is rather off-topic might have been a clue that I’ve got no intention of making any further comment on this :-)

Chris

The message below went without response on the list, but there was a significant off-list response.

Jimmy Wales wrote to James Heilman, and CC'd me. His message professed to praise this one, but missed its main points: * There was no mention of professional mediation or facilitation to work through disagreements * Jimmy Wales had *even worse* things to say about James Heilman than he has said in public.

I won't repeat those words on a public list, but I am unimpressed with the tactic of moving personal attacks off list. Jimmy's message was sent 48 hours ago, and I immediately told him the things I've said here, but there has been no response.

We should not use off-list messages to convey thoughts that would be completely unacceptable if said in public. I don't want to be involved in stuff like that -- and I'd much rather it didn't happen to begin with.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 10:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

Jimmy and James, I'm glad to see you both agreeing on some facts. That's encouraging. But IMO you should both put some careful thought into this part:

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 9:36 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:

...

Finally facts are not determined by a vote. That you got unanimity for "The board.. has offered no objections to any board member discussing long term strategy with the community at any time" should make all of us worry. I have provided evidence that refutes this claim here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...

As somebody who's following this, but who's not locked in a dispute, it seems there is a very natural explanation for this, that should not especially make us worry:

Different people, reasonable people, can reasonably disagree about what constitutes "discussing long term strategy" and what does not.

For the entire board to agree to a statement like that does not strike me as especially bad; perhaps there was a dominant idea of what constituted strategy and what didn't, and everybody voted with that idea in mind, without insisting on a clearer definition in the text of the statement. Not ideal, I think -- but also not the end of the world.

But Jimmy, you have repeatedly claimed that vote as evidence that James told a lie.

That claim introduces a lot of drama into the discussion -- and does exactly something you stated you didn't want to do, which is publicly assaulting James' reputation.

I would suggest you both stop accusing each other of lying, long enough to figure out what facts you *can* agree on. You're both Wikipedians, we do this all the time. It might involve getting out of some of the language patterns you've been using, e.g. getting away from abstract notions like "long term strategy."

A skilled, professional mediator, facilitator, or ombudsman can be an excellent resource for working through stuff like this.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:45 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

We should not use off-list messages to convey thoughts that would be completely unacceptable if said in public. I don't want to be involved in stuff like that -- and I'd much rather it didn't happen to begin with.

I told Jimmy Wales a couple of years ago that emails he sent to me privately, in an effort to remove conversations that should be public from the public domain, would be forwarded to journalists. That worked. I haven't had one since.

Andreas