On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 7:24 PM, Chris Sherlock <chris.sherlock79(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I'm just going to quote directly from the Grant
application here [1]:
Knowledge Engine By Wikipedia will democratize
the discovery of media,
news and information—it will make the Internet's most
relevant information
more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an open data engine
that's completely free of commercial interests. Our new site will be the
Internet’s first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries
the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.
So to reiterate the words that make it hard for the WMF to deny that they
were pitching for an Internet search engine:
I guess I was focused on the grant deliverables, and not the "flavor text"
around it. You are correct that the pitch is in the direction of some kind
of internet search engine, although it does not specifically say that it
would include non-free information sources.
You can tell me the scope was intended to be only for
Wikimedia projects,
but that isn't what is said in that grant application. That document as it
stands literally states that it is to be an Internet search engine. No, I
correct myself. It says it is to be THE Internet's search engine.
Clearly there are still aspirations to include non-Wikimedia projects in
the search results. I can't speak for the board, or c-levels. But I can say
that in my work with the Discovery team, we have not been asked to, and
have not had even rough plans to, search non-free information sources.
So when you say than there is confusion between the
internal presentation
and the official external grant application, I must respectfully disagree
with you. There is no such confusion. The two parts of the application I
have quoted cover almost a third of the grant application and I'd argue are
the key parts of the application.
I would argue that the deliverables are THE key part of the application,
but I freely admit that you are correct that the other parts matter. And
are somewhat disturbing.
There has been some handwaving going on from a variety of different parties
that "oh, it's just a Grant application,
these things are very high level
and vague, it doesn't really matter what we write in it lets just put the
broadest possible objectives and vision for this thing and we'll deal the
scope later on after we've been given the grant money".
Others may not think this is not a concern. I do though, and I'm very
concerned that we are making grant applications and not really disclosing
our full intentions, and we are not making it clear what are the
corresponding scope limitations. Before someone objects, it's even worse
when I have asked about the first challenge that could threaten the project
and the response [3] is, in part:
Most of us on the Discovery team share your concerns about how this grant
was conceived, pitched, received, and (not) publicized. Most of the team
didn't see the grant until you did.
So basically, 6 months means that by midway through
this month,
we will see all of these deliverables. Could someone please advise
us how this is proceeding? I’d imagine that we should at least be
able to see the dashboard by now, but I’m curious to find out more
about the research that’s been conducted and the results of the user
testing performed.
I'm hardly the expert here, but the dashboards have been up for a while[1],
and are continually being expanded and improved. The user tests have been
documented[2]. Upcoming tests are documented in phabricator.
[1]
http://searchdata.wmflabs.org/
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discovery/Testing
Kevin