2016-02-29 19:24 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock chris.sherlock79@gmail.com:
With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how could come to the conclusion that general Internet search was not a core component of the Knowledge Engine.
It's important to remember that this is a $250K grant, with a grant period that ends later this year. It's clear that this was done because everyone involved realized that the plans are likely to change. Knight has given grants to WMF in the past, including a $600K one with a longer grant period [1], so this isn't a particularly bold step for them or for WMF. Within the scope of a grant with these parameters, it's completely reasonable for WMF, at the end of the grant period, to go back to Knight and say: "We've done everything we committed to for the grant period [improve internal search etc.], but we won't be doing anything beyond that."
That is not to say that this process was managed well -- obviously it wasn't. But at least there are no catastrophic long term consequences for the organization or for the movement, as far as I can tell. That is, unless Larry Page read one of the early news stories and decided to send a DESTROY WIKIMEDIA memo to all Alphabet companies, in which case I expect Boston Dynamics robots to show up at New Montgomery Street any day now. [2]
Erik
[1] http://knightfoundation.org/grants/20123673/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY