Tim Starling wrote:
On 04/05/16 12:02, MZMcBride wrote:
My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation
Board of Trustees
sought out and then appointed a tech-minded chief executive, who came
from a tech organization, in order to "transform" the Wikimedia
Foundation from an educational non-profit to be more like a traditional
tech company. Many employees of the Wikimedia Foundation disagreed with
this decision and the chief executive made a series of poor hires who
ran amok (looking at you, Damon), but I don't think anything rose to the
level of illegal behavior.
You are just regurgitating Lila's email. No transformation was
attempted or executed. The first time I heard about this supposed
conflict over strategy was when Lila posted her claims about it to
this list, shortly before her resignation.
Here's an April 2015 e-mail from Lila announcing a large reorganization of
the Wikimedia Foundation's engineering team:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-April/077619.html
I think a transformation was both attempted and executed. I'm citing a
specific example, but there are others from Lila's two-year stint. As
<http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/> notes, "The reorganization is
later described as poorly handled, and it is criticized for being based on
assumptions of an impractically large budget increase." When people were
making a case for removing Lila as Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, this departmental reorganization was repeatedly mentioned.
Comments from individual Board members and community members lead me to
believe that there continues to be an enormous amount of uncertainty about
the direction and strategy of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia
movement. How large should the Wikimedia Foundation be, in terms of
full-time staff and in terms of annual budget? How much and what work
should the Wikimedia Foundation be doing this year and over the next five
years? The Wikimedia Foundation's previous strategic plan expired at the
end of 2015. In my opinion, there's unquestionably ongoing, unresolved
conflict over strategy, among Wikimedia Foundation staff, Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees members, and among the Wikimedia community.
In my view, a previous iteration of the Board of Trustees and Wikimedia
Foundation leadership, in choosing Lila to head the Wikimedia Foundation,
made a decision, perhaps implicitly and obliquely, about at least the
short-term future of the Wikimedia Foundation. I don't believe Sue and
members of the Board of Trustees were unaware of Lila's background or how
she would likely influence the direction of the organization.
In fact, employees disagreed with Lila's decision
to pursue large
restricted grants for a stupid pet project, in secret, supported by
almost nobody, without Board knowledge let alone approval. This has
nothing to do with education versus technology (if such a dichotomy
can even be said to exist).
In most contexts, that's the nature of having a boss and working for an
organization. You won't agree with every decision, in substance, in
execution, in visibility and transparency. In the specific case of the
Knight Foundation grant, the Board of Trustees both knew about it and
specifically approved it. This is noted at
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11>. Are there other
stupid pet projects or grant applications you're referring to?
The point I was making with the specific whistleblower policy and policies
similar to it is that they are explicitly not intended to be used to
subvert authority or promote insubordination among staff who disagree with
a decision of the head of the organization.
Damon merely suggested the project in question, he did
not "run amok".
I used the phrase "run amok" based on comments at
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine/FAQ>. Specifically,
Brion Vibber writes:
"Former VP of Engineering Damon Sicore, who as far as I know conceived the
'knowledge engine', shopped the idea around in secret (to the point of
GPG-encrypting emails about it) with the idea that Google/etc form an
'existential threat' to Wikipedia in the long term by co-opting our
traffic, potentially reducing the inflow of new contributors via the
'reader -> editor' pipeline. [...]"
Jimmy Wales replies:
"It is important, most likely, that people know that Damon's secrecy was
not something that was known to me or the rest of the board. I've only
yesterday been sent, by a longtime member of staff who prefers to remain
anonymous, the document that Damon was passing around GPG-encrypted with
strict orders to keep it top secret. Apparently, he (and he alone, as far
as I can tell) really was advocating for taking a run at Google. [...]"
These same individuals posted to this mailing list:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082150.html
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/083163.html
This reported secrecy and cloak-and-dagger behavior is what I'm referring
to when I say Damon ran amok. I suppose we can leave it as an exercise to
the reader whether "run amok" is accurate phrasing given the evidence
presented. Upon reading the previous comments that Damon, not Lila, was
responsible for the secrecy, I'm perplexed by your recent comment
regarding "Lila's decision." What am I missing?
MZMcBride