* The Community Resources Team is in place - it surveyed the community and discussed with them their technical priorities, and tailored their Idea Lab Campaign accordingly.

I know. Anthony Cole On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:17 AM, Brion Vibber &lt;bvibber(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: wrote: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081809.html _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 5:16 PM, James Alexander &lt;jamesofur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: It is probably best for me not to get into a long count/counterpoint here but I couldn't avoid not responding at all. James, several staffers have talked about feeling unappreciated and demoralized.​ ​But that's how quite a few WMF staff made us feel before Lila arrived. WMF-community relations couldn't have been worse. It certainly looks from the outside as though Lila fixed a lot of that. The question now is how we move forward, with no more casualties. The best thing is surely for WMF staff to help Lila weather this storm, which seems to have blown up around mistaken ideas about the Knowledge Engine proposal. In the longer term we need to brainstorm about how to manage Foundation-community relations. Lila wanted to speak to the community earlier about the Knowledge Engine grant, but was afraid to. Why was that? A lot of the community's suspicion of change stems from us feeling we could be separated from our work at any minute. That conservatism causes a lot of frustration within the WMF. How can it be fixed? Does the Board give enough support to the ED and leadership to the rest of us? Can something be put in place within the WMF to help staffers so that things like this don't blow up in public? We also ought to discuss asking the WMF to become a membership organization with different bylaws so that we really do elect the Board. These are the discussions that will move us forward, because the real problem here is not about individuals. It is about structure. Sarah​ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

It is probably best for me not to get into a long count/counterpoint here but I couldn't avoid not responding at all. As Ori hinted at I hope that everyone can reflect on the idea of causation vs correlation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation>. The fact that good things have happened is not necessarily because of, but despite of, current leadership. There is no doubt that there have been a lot of good things to occur in the past while but those are, very frequently, because people have been freed up some to do what they want. A lack of direction or clear strategy can, in fact, have good side effects if you have amazing people on board because they're able to make decisions they've wanted to make for a while. However at the same time it can drive them insane as they strive to keep it on that track and to avoid the taking crazy routes or stop leadership from making decisions they feel would disrupt the projects and the movement too much or go against our morals. We have a lot of great new hires but much of that was driven by the good people who already existed since it's the older ones who got into more management type roles either officially or unofficially). Even at the executive level it's telling that the 3 most long standing and solid C-levels we have are all pre-lila appointees: Katherine (just before Lila but still before), Lisa and Geoff. Our cycle of c-level replacements since then have been both hires and departures (with, unfortunately, less hires then departures still) including multiple short term hires (in roles that are traditionally very long term). I am not going to pretend I agreed with Sue at all times, or that every decision she made was right however I at least felt like I knew what they were (In fact I strongly disliked her strategy believing it bad for the org and the movement, but again, I felt I knew what it was/understood it). However I am also not going to accept the idea that Lila has made this place so much better. As someone who saw them happen internally I don't think her finger prints are really on any of the things you mention, they were all 'despite' not 'because' of her and so much more could have been done and wanted to be done. Slight exception possibly for the FDC bit but that happened after all of this started exploding internally in the past couple months and so she knew that she had no trust left internally and all of the staff close to it basically said "we can not defend you on this if you don't go the FDC" so I still don't really see it as a proactive choice on her front. James [[User:Jamesofur]]/[[User:Jalexander-WMF]] Personal capacity, as signaled by my email address, but since some complain I don't make it clear my role in WMF when I send this type of email: I am also the Manager of Trust & Safety On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 3:18 PM, Anthony Cole &lt;ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote: <javascript:;>> <javascript:;>> community Idea https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081809.html ?subject=unsubscribe> ?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;> ?subject=unsubscribe>

On Feb 20, 2016, at 5:29 PM, Danny Horn &lt;dhorn(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: You know, it's possible that the people who work for the Foundation might understand the situation in a more nuanced way than you do. I know it doesn't seem likely, but dare to dream.

Ah, Brandon. Thanks for writing me off as "the folks at Wikipediocracy." I'm also the folks at en.Wikipedia and the folks on the board of WikiProject Med Foundation. And I give a shit about Wikipedia. This push for the removal of the ED is coming from staff. And failed staff. If you want support from the wider editor community, you'll need to bring us with you. I'm making it clear to you that presently you haven't done that yet. Maybe you don't need to. On Sunday, 21 February 2016, Brandon Harris &lt;bharris(a)gaijin.com&gt; wrote: -- Anthony Cole _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Reading an following this thread makes me feel profoundly sad. And the symptoms indicates for me that there is indeed something "rotten" going on. I feel deep sympathy for staff whose pain is seems to go very deep, and I would really want to help out to to ease the problems if it was in my capability. But there is as Risker puts it a deep information asymmetry in this thread. I am sitting far away from the SF office and have no direct contact with staff and even if I read of the pain, I do not catch any concrete facts what it is all about. The handling of Knowledge engine has not been good, but it can be remedied. The Board is not optimal and perfect, but the members are clever and loyal to our mission and I have no reason to doubt that they will take care of things on their "table", even if somewhat slower pace then people would want. And even if I feel and sympathize with the frustration of staff I would like to ask the inputs to this thread to be more factual and also show the respect of each others as we are used to in our daily Wikipedia dialogues. Anders With sympathy and love to all involved in this crisis Den 2016-02-21 kl. 04:58, skrev Oliver Keyes: _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

This isn't about how much people know. It's obvious that the KE was just a flashpoint. It's about how to move forward without further casualties. I don't believe that that isn't possible.

From the point of person who knows just a tinny bit more than the

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:23 PM, Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: just I ​Right. So can't we fix this? Lila is part of the movement too, and everyone is clearly in a lot of pain here. What can be done to help? Can an outside broker be brought in to hold a meeting with staff and Lila and find solutions?​ ​Perhaps the Board could organize something like this.

This is a difficult time for everyone. Staff, particularly staff who work out of the San Francisco office, have seen and been through things that are not well known or understood outside of that small group; even "highly involved" volunteers aren't entirely in the loop. Former staff continue to have a knowledge advantage over the vast majority of community members simply because of their continued ties to friends and former colleagues who remain on staff. I encourage everyone to treat each other with respect, even when disagreeing with the interpretations that other people have made based on the (often comparatively limited) information that they have available. I can honestly say that I know some things that perhaps SarahSV and Anthonyhcole don't know, but I certainly don't know everything - and I have been in the SF offices twice in the last six months as a volunteer and regularly converse with staff in certain areas in my role as a volunteer working on various things. One of the major barriers is the legitimate concern that many staff have in trying to communicate concerns in a manner that is not destructive, either to the WMF as an organization, or to their own professional reputations. The whistleblower provisions at the WMF are very narrow (essentially only permitting reporting directly to the Board chair/chair of the Audit Committee if there is reason to believe that a law has been broken, not just internal policies no matter how severe), as one example. I've been aware of concerns for about a year now, myself, but I've still found out quite a bit more over the last few weeks. For staff, a lot of those early concerns are practically ancient history, and that knowledge hasn't been disseminated to a much broader community. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the majority of the audience here doesn't know. Anthony, speaking for myself only, I don't think that your association with Wikipediocracy is particularly relevant; other active members of that site have expressed significantly different opinions, whether within or outside of "WMF-related" locations like this mailing list or Meta or The Signpost. I'd like to discourage anyone from assuming that there are monolithic and unified positions on the current situation amongst any particular group. That includes former and current staff, editors of particular projects, commenters on external blogs or through other non-WMF media or criticism sites, user groups, chapters, etc. There are a lot of different points of view, and a lot of different levels of knowledge and information. I'm not going to say "let's assume good faith", don't worry. I'm going to say "don't beat up on people who have different levels of information". Risker/Anne On 20 February 2016 at 20:31, Brandon Harris &lt;bharris(a)gaijin.com&gt; wrote: might _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

That is... downright brilliant. Pretend to be caring and responsible, while at the same time make an underhanded implication that the people who left are villains and that you are a poor victim for being unable to speak the Truth. I hope you choke on shame for having the gall to even so much suggest that pillars of the staff and community like Siko, Luis, and Anna left for any reason other than your "exemplary" leadership. "Information asymmetry" is right, mind you. Staffers have shown extraordinary restraint in keeping thing quiet and civilized so that what has been going on does not reflect too badly on the foundation and - by extension - the movement. After all, as Ori so eloquently pointed out earlier, the Foundation is full of passionate and dedicated people who managed to do a great deal of good things despite all the "fun" of being rudderless, leaderless and without anything resembling a vision. If you have a single iota of integrity, please leave now before more of the foundation crumbles around you. Even if you were perfectly correct in all you did and everyone else was perfectly wrong, any supposed leader that has no trust from at least 93% of their staff should realize that - if nothing else - they are a bad fit and cannot possibly salvage the situation.

Risker thanks for this. I would add that the biggest problem for outsiders is trying to sift through the emails in this thread, looking for valid concerns and first-hand accounts among the cynical and/or ironic comments only understandable to a few players. As more and more of our international community tries to read and follow along on these developments, let's please stick to some ground rules: no irony, no cynicism, no rehashing old mistakes if they are irrelevant. Challenging, but necessary if you want more foreign chapter members to hear or take part in this conversation.

From: Dan Andreescu &lt;dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org&gt; Date: February 21, 2016 at 5:03:01 AM PST To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; I certainly wish the level of discourse here would be less violent, because we have to look at ourselves in the mirror when this is resolved and build our future together.

[…]

The pageview API, which is now being integrated into the Graph extension, stats tools, iOS app, and generally making a lot of people happy, has a long history. Various members of the community have been requesting this feature with increasing fervor for over a decade. I started at WMF in 2012 and within 1 year I learned enough to be completely convinced that this was one of the most worthwhile projects we could embark on. However, at this point, we *could not* expose any kind of remotely useful data via a pageview API, for technical reasons. We overcame those reasons in October 2014, at which point it took us about 6 months to prioritize the project to actually do it.

[…]

I know.

Anthony Cole On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:17 AM, Brion Vibber &lt;bvibber(a)wikimedia.org&gt;

> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Anthony Cole &lt;ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com&gt;

> > > * The Community Resources Team is in place - it surveyed the community > and > > discussed with them their technical priorities, and tailored their

> Lab > > Campaign accordingly. > > > > FYI, the head of that team is one of those who resigned last week: >

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On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Anthony Cole &lt;ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Engine presume It was pointed out to me today that there is a court exhibit, no. 666, made public in 2014 as part of the [[High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation]] (the same case Arnnon Geshuri was involved in), which reproduces some correspondence between Sue Gardner, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and various Google managers.[1] In short, Sheryl Sandberg (who'd formerly worked for Google) helped Sue Gardner by introducing her to senior management at Google. To do so, according to the court exhibit, Sandberg forwarded an email from Sue Gardner to Jonathan Rosenberg (then Senior Vice President of Products) and others at Google: ---o0o--- From: Sheryl Sandberg Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 7:40 PM To: Jonathan Rosenberg; Omid Kordestani; David Drummond; Megan Smith Subject: Fw: Thanks + a request re Google Jonathan, Omid, David, Megan - I was introduced to Sue by Roger. As you can see below, they would love a better and more senior relationship with Google. Can I email introduce her to one of you? Please excuse blackberry-caused typos. -----Original Message----- From: Sue Gardner To: Sheryl Sandberg Sent: Mon Aug 04 10:02:01 2008 Subject: Thanks + a request re Google Hi Sheryl, It was terrific to finally meet you last week :-) Here's a recap of the Google issue that I raised: I started as Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation last summer. A few months after that, Roger McNamee began introducing me to potential Wikipedia donors in the valley. Most of that was great and successful, but in a few cases -including once with a Google board member- I was surprised to be have people cite 'loyalty to Google' as a reason to not give money to Wikipedia. Their objections, which have been echoed to me several times since then, seem to fall into three categories: * A belief that Wikia Search is an attempt by Wikipedia to compete with Google. (Many people don't realize the only thing shared between Wikipedia and Wikia is our founder, Jimmy Wales. Nor do they realize that Jimmy has no day-to-day responsibilities at the Wikimedia Foundation.) * The view that because Wikipedia is non-commercial, it is anti-advertising and anti-Google. * A belief that Knol is an attempt by Google to compete with Wikipedia. I personally don't believe any of this: I think Google and Wikipedia can and should have a complementary and positive relationship. And I gather Larry and Sergey feel the same: I believe they've told Jimmy that Google has no ill will towards Wikipedia, and that they'd be willing to make a donation to us in order to signal that publicly. I also believe that any real or perceived tensions in the Google/Wikipedia relationship may be being exacerbated at some levels inside Google by their unfulfilled desires to do business with us. Since relocating to the Bay Area in January, we've had plenty of Google folks reach out to us. But -- we have a total staff of 21 people, with just one person responsible for business development, so I am not sure we are even able to politely keep up with their pitches. IMO, rather than spending our time on multiple product-specific pitches, it would probably be more productive for Wikipedia and Google to develop a single umbrella relationship/agreement (obviously within the limits of Wikipedia's non-commercial context). So. I think a good next step would be some kind of high-level meeting between Wikipedia and Google, to talk through these issues and see if a donation and/or business deal makes sense. I appreciate your advice on this issue :-) Thanks, Sue ---o0o--- Now, some of this isn't earth-shattering news -- it's long been known that relations between Google and Wikipedia have been friendly. The lobbying partnership between Google and Wikipedia may well date back to the meetings that followed that email exchange. What wasn't known to me was that Sue found people in Silicon Valley unwilling to donate because of their "loyalty to Google". (This reasoning raises questions of its own about Google's influence, but we'll leave that aside.) Now it has become clear over the past few days that Damon Sicore, to use Jimmy Wales' words at Lila's Knowledge Engine FAQ,[2] "really was advocating for taking a run at Google", and gave "strict orders to keep it top secret". Sue referred to her wish to have "a single umbrella relationship/agreement" with Google, in part to help with the donation problems she was encountering. If such an agreement ever came into being, then being seen to be planning a campaign against Google behind Google's back, as it were, might well jeopardise that relationship, and be seen as disloyal. That would have been a compelling reason for continued secrecy, especially if these plans to compete against Google were in the end given up, meaning that any loss of face vis-à-vis Google and its friends would in effect be for nothing. Of course this is just supposition. But there are issues here worth reflecting upon. I recall plenty of volunteers over the years saying it was very good that Google seemed to treat Wikipedia favourably. Yet I don't recall the community ever being asked whether they wanted the WMF to seek any kinds of agreements with for-profit players. At any rate, whatever the facts of this case, it seems to me that maintaining transparency becomes very hard if you pursue such agreements. It becomes very easy to tie yourself into knots. [1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sandberg.pdf [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine/FAQ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

An unusually immediate comment from Wikimedia leadership following Andreas' admittedly speculative comments. It's not about the relevance to the movement. It's not about the relevance to the organization. It's about an individual's role. This just got fascinating (and a little more depressing). -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] wrote: Litigation]] summer. potential money then, has can Google -- for keep relationship/agreement reasoning use seen be agreements. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

An unusually immediate comment from Wikimedia leadership following Andreas' admittedly speculative comments. It's not about the relevance to the movement. It's not about the relevance to the organization. It's about an individual's role. This just got fascinating (and a little more depressing). -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]