Anders, thank you for your thoughtful message; I understand your position much better now, and see much to agree with:
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
I used the word Superprotect but could just as well said the disastrous implementation of Visual Editor, which definitely was not the doing of Lila. And the very positive response to Community Wishlist i have read on this list (and on the talkpages), I have not co,me across any real negative feedback.across
Yes, I agree -- the organization's software development processes are improved under Lila's leadership. Significant positive steps have been taken, no question -- and she certainly deserves some credit for that.
I am happy to read that there were several in the tech org who initiated
this, and that there is a positive feeling of it. I was 25 years ago for seven years was a manager of a org developing sw tools for 3000 sw developer (very similar the WMF setup) and I went through the process of going from inside-out. And I learned that the setup of "wishlists" etc was the easy part. I learned that when this was in place the internal org and roles had to be redefined (it was not upwards you had to look what to implement but to the community).
I don't know for sure, but my impression is that in this case, much of this has been done simultaneously; internal structures have been changing alongside the processes for community engagement. I expect there is much credit for that to be shared among various parties, including Lila.
And there were a lot of squeaks before the org got sorted out, but then the
people got very stimulated working in a outside-in organisation.
Glad to hear of this experience.
And from this perspective I actually think the Board made a very good work identifying the competence Geshuri has which I believe is just what the Board and WMF needs just now.
That very well may be the case. I do not have a strong opinion on Mr. Geshuri's competencies, and am happy to defer to your more-informed perspective. I am heartened to hear that the Board may have done good work in identifying and addressing certain missing competencies (even if there may be separate issues with the specific choice).
I do think there are two significant issues with Mr. Geshuri's appointment, though -- the second of which has not been brought up yet: (1) The Board did not apparently do basic due diligence in looking into his background (2) Mr. Geshuri himself did not highlight the Google firing issue to the board prior to his appointment, which makes me wonder about his judgment.
The problems associated with him is already identified and I am not denying
these, but please give the Board also credit for their good work, not just blaming when (and if) they make mistakes
I am happy to do so, but I must say -- so much of the board's work is invisible to me, that I rarely have enough information to do so.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]