[Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF

[Gregory Kohs]

> "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.

Bingo.

-- brion

++++++++++++

It would appear that nobody is concerned about giving the landlord a
leg up on ITS for-profit competitors by supplying them in particular
with a ready feed of intellectual capital in the form of the friendly
Stanton-funded developers?  Lucky for Wikia, Inc.!  I mean, assume
good faith all you want, but if I were a biotech firm trying to
develop a synthetic blood plasma, boy would I love to have the Red
Cross' top research scientists parked in my meeting rooms every day.
And PAYING me for the privilege, to boot?  That's just gravy.

It sounds to me that the (reasonable) criteria that ranked proximity
to WMF and cognate activities as high as, or higher than, monthly
rental rate rather "wired" this contract to Wikia, Inc. from the
get-go.  Kudos for putting on the dutiful show of obtaining 12
separate bids, but the outside world is seeing this for what it is --
a show of equanimity to gloss over a pre-determined outcome.

As for Master Bimmler's concerns about the "fear" imposed by mention
of the media watching, it's only natural for someone who has recently
and historically been censored for asking pertinent questions, to want
some sort of "back up" to assure him he is not living in a digital
version of a Kafkaesque nightmare. If your team would stop censoring
"WP:BADTHOUGHTS", maybe there wouldn't be such a rush to the media?

Gregory Kohs