[Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF

[Thomas Dalton]

> 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'd appreciate answers to those questions as well.

> 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."

It does seem likely to confuse. Only a couple of days ago I had to
explain to someone that we had nothing to do with Wikia and had to
qualify that by mentioning that there was some sharing of personnel,
in future I'll have to qualify it even more.

> 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.

I don't see the connection there, I'm afraid. Essjay's employment at
Wikia had nothing to do with WMF, it just happened to be how we all
found out about his true identity.

In WMF's defence, this sentence from the blog may at least partly
explain the decision:

"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.