I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press.

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.

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?

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.

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.

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu> wrote: of at Wikia's content is nearly entirely orthogonal to Wikimedia Foundation projects. It's hosting community projects (for profit, using ads for revenue) which aren't encyclopedic or educational. There's no more conflict of interest in what they're doing (as a business model) than a conflict with Google, Facebook, Myspace, etc. The personnel overlaps are a potential conflict of interest. The board's job is to review and avoid actual conflicts of interest. If this was in fact the same cost as any other reasonable alternative, and had the additional proximity benefits with Wikia personnel doing the same general type of work, then the Board having reviewed it and OKed it is fine by me. Leaping from "obviously needs scrutiny" to "assuming bad faith" is poor form, Brian. That is not helpful. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I'm curious, how did that happen exactly? You didn't get the office that long ago and most of the recent hires have been planned a fair amount of time in advance.

Erik Moeller wrote: [snip] To clarify, did Wikia match the lowest bid?

I know that Wikia/WMF related stuff is pretty exciting, but really, we have work to do. We're not going to not make a decision that is right just because it creates fodder for trolling. (And I hope that if this turns into a troll-fest, the list moderators will take appropriate action.)

Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> writes: Could you please keep the amount of crackpotish kookery at a minimum at this list?

2009/1/23 Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>rg>: Is that common practice for US charities? I'm not sure that would cut it in the UK... You don't just need to avoid a COI, you need to avoid the perception of one. This deal will, undoubtedly, be interpreted by many as an inside job. I'm sure it isn't, but that's how a lot of people will see it. Did you consider the PR cost when weighing it all up? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hoi, Having an office close to the main office, having an environment that is shared with colleagues who way are sharing their impressive usability improvements are tangible benefits.

The cost of the office space conforms to market rates.

Anders Wegge Keller wrote:

> Could you please keep the amount of crackpotish kookery at a minimum > at this list?

In what respect is it "crackpottish" or "kookery" to suggest that even appearance of impropriety, even where none exists, is damaging to nonprofit organizations that depend on public goodwill?

Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> writes: Except for being the umpteent person to continue the line of aggressive questioning, none. You just happened to be the unlucky roll of the dice.

George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> writes: Request denied. I stand by what I said, and you can be polite from here to eternity, but I consider Delerium a kook in his own right, nonwithstanding a seemingly thin veneer of civility in this case.

Most people, however, neither know the board nor have any particularly great knowledge of Wikimedia's internals. Were it any other organization, as in my Sierra Club example, I wouldn't believe the explanation, so I wouldn't blame non-Wikimedians who read about this in the newspaper if they were a bit skeptical. That seems like it'll inevitably be damaging from a PR and fundraising perspective. I believe Erik's explanation of the space's benefits, I just think the Board is underestimating the negative effects to the Foundation's reputation.

2009/1/23 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: Of course. It's a normal transaction and any noise about it is likely going to be ephemeral. We will continue to calmly and sensibly explain it to reasonable people, and that's all there is to it.

The natural state of these discussions is that there are always people pissing in the wind. That spoils things somewhat.

2009/1/23 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: I already named some of them - greater proximity, shared kitchen use, shared speakerphone use, established Internet connectivity. The other space we were looking at also had noise issues: open concept with two other tenants, and some noise every day at 6PM due to music lessons in the same building.

This time next year I have no doubt Wikipedia will be much more usable. Delphine, this sentence is the first time I have ever typed the word 'cabal'.

I do hope people continue to express concern about the Wikipedia/Wikia relationship. The existence of Wikia doesn't make a whole lot of sense, except the $$$ kind.

Delphine Ménard wrote: Likewise, I was not thrilled that we ended up reopening this can of worms, after the effort that had gone into removing all financial connections to Wikia. But I'm persuaded that it is the right choice for Wikimedia as a business decision, and our responsibility is to make such choices, not avoid them in deference to those who will believe the worst.

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: And what better way to do that then to have people come down to the Wikia office and work on improving Wikia's software, while the Wikimedia Foundation pays for not only the developers, but rent on the space they use while developing!

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com And what better way to do that then to have people come down to the Wikia office and work on improving Wikia's software, while the Wikimedia Foundation pays for not only the developers, but rent on the space they use while developing!

2009/1/24 Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org>rg>: use Who cares if Wikia benefits? It's the benefit to WMF that matters. As long as it is an undeniably good business decision for WMF, the fact that it's also a good deal for Wikia doesn't factor into it.

2009/1/24 Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>rg>: Depends. The wikia is a large user therefor we should work with them argument is somewhat worrying because well we know the CIA is also a large user.

I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press.

I'd appreciate answers to those questions as well.

"Wikia has been doing intensive work on the usability front and making the code available to public, so I look forward to collaborating with the Wikia technical and product teams to exchange ideas and learn from their work." There is a certain amount of logic in working with one of the biggest non-WMF MediaWiki users on this project.

* We've suggested to Wikia a fair market rate based on the average of the other options we obtained; * After some negotiation, Wikia accepted. Weighing other pros and cons of the space against other options, we decided to go with Wikia;

Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> writes: Could you please keep the amount of crackpotish kookery at a minimum at this list?

Its the same software for both parties, and its open source. Please just drop it.

2009/1/24 Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>rg>: Depends. The wikia is a large user therefor we should work with them argument is somewhat worrying because well we know the CIA is also a large user. -- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Saturday 24 January 2009 08:48:56 Gerard Meijssen wrote: something some this anyone CIA is evil by definition. If they offer you something, it will be something that may seem to be beneficial for you, but will in fact benefit them. Given that CIA has much more resources than you, you can never be sure if their help will in fact be detrimental to you. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Saturday 24 January 2009 08:48:56 Gerard Meijssen wrote: CIA is evil by definition. If they offer you something, it will be something that may seem to be beneficial for you, but will in fact benefit them. Given that CIA has much more resources than you, you can never be sure if their help will in fact be detrimental to you.

Is the NSA also evil, because the created selinux and gave it to the open source community?

Sorry, I stated a fact. The CIA fact book has been used for years now. It was obvious that you would find it an excellent example, but it does show how much removed you are from this daily practice.

2009/1/24 Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.yu> > On Saturday 24 January 2009 09:31:13 Gerard Meijssen wrote: > > whatever it is we get in the sense of code. In the mean time we have > > been using the CIA fact book for years now. They indeed have more > > resources > > and > > That is an excellent example, CIA fact book is full of CIA's propaganda > and you can never be sure what is propaganda and what is a fact.

So the fact that the CIA and the NSA are evil helps us understand why we are paying market prices to Wikia, why we are likely to benefit from the Wikia developed software and why people, all coding MediaWiki, meeting at a water cooler is a great idea.. and incidentally there is no music practice at the Wikia office.

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk(a)eunet.yu> wrote: And how does that relate to selinux, or how does the CIA activities relate to their contributions to MediaWiki ?

2009/1/24 Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:

> I would also say that I am happy we're talking about this, and I hope > the people asking questions are finding the answers reasonably > reassuring :-)

Depends. The wikia is a large user therefor we should work with them argument is somewhat worrying because well we know the CIA is also a large user.

Beating on a dead horse is not a valid point.

Mr Kohs; Some of your points have merit as there are many areas in which we can and should improve. However, I must respectfully note that your comments here serve only to divide a already fractured community even further. As a Californian, I disagree with your assertions of nepotism and favoritism most vehemently. Since you live in Pennsylvania, you may not be aware of this but rents in California tend to be fairly exorbitant. San Francisco is no exception. Office space has always been at a premium. When looking at bids, I assume that our hard working staff took many factors into consideration, as price is one out of many important items. One major factor would be the working dynamic and utilization. Wikia and Wikimedia, although different types of corporations, utilize the same software for similar purposes. This means that the Wikia office space would be usable by Foundation staff, as it would already be designed for those working with wikis. With another landlord, the Foundation might need to reconfigure the space, which costs time and money. Also, Wikia staff would be competent enough to assist with problems and capable of making changes. Another landlord might be difficult to reach or unable to work with staff to alleviate problems. Also they might not be able to understand what staff would need and be difficult to work with. The real cost is never just the sticker price, its all the hidden surprises. Renting from a similar organization eliminates these hidden surprises and makes for a smooth transition. You also make the assertion of nepotism and impropriety. I fail to see why this is improper. Big whoop, Jimbo owns Wikia. Everybody knows it and it has never been hidden. He isn't going to profit from a simple subletting deal. Wikia has bills too and I assume has to pay rent. This makes the transfer of money moot, as money goes into private coffers all the time to keep nonprofits going. There is nothing wrong with this agreement, and it in no way means that Wikia and Wikimedia are joined. My final point is that you have made these allegations without access to Board and staff documents. You therefore do not have the whole picture and have no standing to criticize those who do. This attempt to create division has no place and distracts us from the Foundation's goal. Sincerely; Geoffrey Plourde ________________________________ From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 11:37:37 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF I was very surprised to read on the Wikimedia blog a post from Naoko Komura, the WMF program manager heading up the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, funded by the Stanton Foundation. Post: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/01/21/a-note-on-the-wikipedia-usability-init… To quote Komura, "On the space front, we had outgrown our current space in the South of Market area of San Francisco, and we were in search of space specifically for this project. I am happy to announce that Wikia has agreed to sublease two of their conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the project duration (Jan'09-Mar'10). Daniel [Phelps] collected a dozen bids for the space in SOMA, and Wikia matched the best offer." 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. 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 have to agree with Steven Walling's comment on the blog. He said, "I find the idea of the Foundation working that closely with Wikia, literally and figuratively, discomforting. We already have enough people confused about the difference between the two organizations, and to be honest, this feels like nepotism." 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. I have been assured in countless places that "Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation are complete separate organizations" and that there were "no business relationships" between the members of a past WMF Board that was 60% comprised of Wikia employees/owners. Considering the past Wikia/Wikipedia fiasco of Ryan "Essjay" Jordan, I would have thought the WMF would be hyper-sensitive to working in concert yet again with their neighbor down the street. In summary: 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. -- Gregory Kohs Cell: 302.463.1354 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure

Nikola Smolenski wrote: there easier contributions If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. You could very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open source. They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, like any other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA. Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So if they add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time make it easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems spied by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to apply it). Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier. OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great heading 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code' _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

PHP is an interpreted language. Surely you wouldn't use someone elses byte code. On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Nikola Smolenski wrote: >> Given that we know that NSA conducts massive illegal spying operations, > there >> is possibility that selinux is altered in a fashion that will make it > easier >> for NSA to spy on selinux' users. I don't know what are CIA's > contributions >> to MediaWiki, but unless it is trivial to review them, I would not accept >> them. > If the CIA were to hand you a improved-mediawiki binary, sure. You could > very well be suspicious about it. But we're talking about open source. > They would be providing the changes, which are to be reviewed, like any > other code, or perhaps even more, due to coming from the CIA. > > Take into account that CIA and NSA need good software, too. So if they > add a backdoor, they would need to add it *and* at the same time make it > easy to protect from it, as they wouldn't want their own systems spied > by their own rootkit (and someone will end up forgetting to apply it). > > Instead, contributing good fixes, make everything easier. > > OTOH I encourage you to review selinux. That would make a great heading > 'Nikola Smolenski discovers NSA backdoor on Linux code' >

Brian wrote: byte wrote: accept This is getting rather off-topic, especially for this thread, and possibly for the list as well. -- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

It was a clear factual error which I corrected. If you aren't going to criticize the original comment you have no basis for criticizing the correction. At any rate, what exactly is the topic of this thread, in your opinion? On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Alex <mrzmanwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: operations, could any it heading _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I'm criticizing the switch from "Wikia leasing office space to WMF" to "Is the CIA evil?" I just responded to the most recent email in my inbox; I thought that would be more appropriate than responding to all 17 CIA/NSA-related emails. I was not criticizing you in particular. The topic of this thread is "Wikia leasing office space to WMF," that should be rather clear from the subject. And the topic of the list is "Wikimedia related issues." Its almost on topic for the list (MediaWiki is at least mentioned occasionally), its certainly not at all related to the topic of the thread. Brian wrote: operations, could any it heading -- Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I think that in the future the office staff may need to look at preemptive press releases. That would have eliminated this thread quickly.

2009/1/24 Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com>om>: You're a troll. You spend tremendous time and effort around the blogosphere posting attacks on Wikipedia and Wikimedia wherever you can. Your comments get deleted from the WMF blog when they're trolling, and it so happens they almost always are. You're *still* furiously sockpuppeting on en:wp as well. Given this, of course I'll assume you're trolling here as well, because, well, you are. - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Yeah, agreed. While on-topic for the list, it's off-topic for this thread. U.S. intelligence agency involvement in the development of open source products, especially media wiki, however *IS* a topic I am very much interested in seeing further discussion about; to that end I would much rather fork this thread into a different title than see it be killed totally.

Has anyone actually asked the CIA for MediaWiki extensions and enhancements? It'd be worth asking.

2009/1/25 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>om>:

This is a fairly silly topic, but I'll say two things: 1) If the CIA or NSA or whoever contributed source code, we would review them like any other patches. Period. If they're committing illegal activities or whatever, that's something for the courts to rule on, and is no business of ours. Our goal (of MediaWiki developers) is to make good software, nothing else. Someone working for Microsoft was trying to get commit access to work on MSSQL a while back, too, and we weren't going to hold it against him. As for adding subtle "tell the NSA about Wikipedians' browsing habits" stuff, I very much believe that anyone who would review the patches would be competent enough to spot deliberately malicious or obfuscated source code before committing it.

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:27 PM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: No offense intended, but I'm curious: do you do any software development?

Personally I would see no problem with any degree of association between Wikimedia and the CIA, as long as it didn't compromise transparency or anything. Then again, I'm a neocon and have no objections to the CIA whatsoever. I'm not sure if the CIA was meant to be an example of an indisputably evil organization, because it doesn't work for me.

2009/1/25 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com<Simetrical%2Bwikilist@gmail.com> No. But we know that accidental security issues slip through. Betting you can beat the NSA's ability to hide deliberate flaws is not the safest of options. That said I doubt they would take the risk. geni

I am of the understanding that none of the members of the WMF Board or staff are related by blood or marriage to any of the owners or staff of Wikia, Inc.