9 ms·

Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

184 points by mattl 11y ago

ptest1 11y ago
Some background here: http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/ http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/ The above conflates a lot of highly unrelated events, but it's a cool visualization. But the reality is that she lost the support of senior staff, and wasn't able to regain it. It's impossible to recover from something like that, so it's a good sign she stepped down.
- aikah 11y ago
  So there is a crisis at the WM foundation? could you explain for those who are not in the loop? is it about their search engine project?
  - ptest1 11y ago
    The crux of it is that she just lost the faith of senior staff. The cause of that probably can't be known by outsiders. But the issue blew up in the wider community when the grant was posted.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Actually, it is known by outsiders. In the end the staff were very open about their concerns. It was the secrecy, dissembling and frankly bastardry that caused good people like James Heilman to be removed from the BoT over the fiasco that was the Knowledge Engine.
      - codezero 11y ago
        Do you think she was written off from the start on account of her low edit count?
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    I've written a few comments, they might be helpful. One I just posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401 But the original story on HN has some comments from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164 My take at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262 For an excellent backgrounder, then Liam awyatt's b;oh sets things put the clearest: http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/ http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/ And: http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/ http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/
    - aikah 11y ago
      Thank you.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - filbertkm 11y ago
    I don't think the community necessarily rejects the idea of a "search engine" project, but the way it was communicated (or lack of) is the main problem. As well, the foundation has no current strategic plan at the moment. Once there is a plan (formed with community involvement) and it's decided some search project should be a priority, then I think most people would have no problem with such grant funding.
- randomname2 11y ago
  Great backgrounder. The degree of chaos and dysfunction it illustrates truly is astonishing, it seems they had an utter lack of competent, experienced managers. Very sad situation. Is Wikipedia itself severely affected by this?
  - ptest1 11y ago
    It's not just competent management: the WMF is a weird beast. Most savvy managers haven't worked in at nonprofit before, much less a nearly 100% transparent, community-driven nonprofit. Processes are very different, and I think this is what tripped up Lila.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      I'm sure. Without having a real opinion on WMF, I've known multiple people who found themselves in non-profits and basically got out in a relative hurry. And, with some exceptions, I've had many of the same experiences with many volunteer organizations that I've been involved with.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Wikipedia is still running as per normal. But this has caused a great deal of reputation so damage to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. I think until everything comes out in the open, I'd be very leery about giving them any fundraising money.
    - HarryHirsch 11y ago
      It's not about small-time donors - Wikipedia solicits these only as a PR measure, the real money invariably comes in form of large grants, such as the Knight Foundation grant, and it's inevitably with strings attached. Think Obama's 2008 campaign.
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        I know. My comment also applies to large donors.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- protomyth 11y ago
  Nice visualization. Something caught my eye looking at it "Signpost reveals that the Wikimedia Foundation initially requested $6 million from the Knight Foundation". That's pretty common actually when dealing with private foundations. They don't have the budget for a big request this funding period, but are interested so they drop a smaller amount of funding. This might lead to a bigger funding event or the interest of other foundations (a good thing). This seems like it was characterized as bad, but it actually is normal and often very good. I remember a couple projects that got a regional grant to give seed money which developed into a very large grant from a national foundation. The angel investing pattern is not limited to startups. Looking at what happened and given the demonizing of the Knight Foundation, I would imagine no private foundation will do a follow-up or even be inclined to give money for other projects.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    That's not what issue with that was. The issue is that it wasn't discussed within the BoT, it was someone's pet project and it is clear that the discovery team was ramped up before discussions even took place properly, which meant funding allocations, IMO, we're done in a decidedly underhanded way. They also made that grant application so vague that it looked like they wanted to compete with Google. Read the document. Heck, read the article that is now on Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Foundation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Fo...
    - protomyth 11y ago
      > That's not what issue with that was Ok, the lower funding number might not be the issue, but it certainly seems like the timeline and article regarded it as a bad thing. > The issue is that it wasn't discussed within the BoT Ok, well, I would expect that will probably end the likelihood of further grants from Knight Foundation or many other reputable grant givers. Poor procedure inside an grantee is frowned upon, and having their name shown in a negative light is a warning to everyone else. > They also made that grant application so vague that it looked like they wanted to compete with Google. Read the document. Heck, read the article that is now on Wikipedia! Looking at this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowledge_engine_grant_agreement.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowl... It looks pretty normal for how you write up a project. You really only put high level stuff in for some of these organizations.
- Mark222 11y ago
  Reading this, I can't help but notice that none of the people they are hiring comes from a non-profit background, doesn't it surprise anybody?
  - profeta 11y ago
    i think that is great.
  - nyuriks 11y ago
    Depends how you count - significant number of the staff (myself included) were first volunteers in the movement.
revelation 11y ago
If some more people leave, presumably the foundation can go back to hosting Wikipedia and funding the occasional project to improve it, after extensive user input. You know, instead of this playing startup thing.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  There was never a problem with developing new technology. It was the outrageous dissembling and secrecy around the Knowledge Engine that has caused this problem. You cannot go into an organization with such an extreme ethos around transparency and openness as the WMF and get away with secretly coming up with a plan to compete against Google. That's what was done, and I don't care who on the Board say it wasn't ever a plan to compete against Google with a search engine made by the WMF: that was the plan cooked up by Damon, and I'm certain Lila kept going with it, even when Damon left.
  - wl 11y ago
    What about Flow? Media Viewer? Visual Editor? The "extensive user input" came after the code was already written and the community didn't like the result.
    - araneae 11y ago
      VE was a Sue Gardner thing. Hate or love it, it had nothing to do with Lila.
      - wl 11y ago
        And Media Viewer was in development before Lila came around, even if she did preside over its release. I'm not really interested in blaming individuals. The point is that the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization has a history of pushing projects the community doesn't want. A different kind of executive director might move the foundation back towards more of a support role for the community. Of course, that's not going to happen unless the makeup of the board of directors changes drastically.
chris_wot 11y ago
What has happened here is one of the worst situations in the WMF's history. I feel the most for James Heilman, who was removed from the Board only after asking serious questions about Lila's 'Knowledge Engine". Lila's stint has had a terrible impact on the staff and community alike. Here are some emails to the Wikimedia mailing list. The one that started the beginning of the end is when she was very specifically asked for the Knight Foundation grant application, which it now appears was the catalyst for the Board removing James because he asked questions that threatened her: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081678.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... When it was finally released - which only occurred when someone from outside the Board took the initiative to speak to the Knight Foundation who said the grant was never confidential even though the WMF said it was - there was a mass exodus of staff, with the most notable from Siko Bourtese, whose email to the mailing list [1] read, in part: I’ve had the amazing privilege of serving this movement in a staff capacity for the past 4 ½ years, but I’ve now decided to move on from my role at the Wikimedia Foundation. Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge remain deeply important to me, and I believe I will be better placed to represent those values in a volunteer capacity at this time. Ido Ivri sent the following email to the same ML [2], in which he states his serious concerns around transparency, the removal of James and the steady flow of people resigning. Brion Vibber, an exceptional and well respected member of staff sent a direct email asking what was being done stop people leaving. [3] Then Lila sent out a now infamous "Why we've changed" email, and made things much, much worse. [4] it was summed up well by Brion [5]: Lila, a few notes. First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under "we" are not attributable to you. Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be promoted might be behind discontent seems not to hold water. As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it's unclear what projects you refer to. Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the organization, based on my conversations with other employees including managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a reorg. We've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's appearance and disappearance. If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have strong doubts that this is the case. James Heilman explained the problems around the Knowledhe Engine, which was pretty damning [6]. The final departure, and IMO the most damning email, was from data scientist Oliver Keyes, who resigned [7] with the following email: Dear all, I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be on 18 March. After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint. I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure. All the best, Oliver Keyes Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation It is the minutes of the Discovery Team meeting [8] that really showed me the level of Lila's dissembling, she kept trying deflect awkward questions to others and kept asking why staff didn't feel "empowered'. I'm glad she has gone. She has caused untold damage to the WMF, it is literally going to kts years to resolve the fall out of all of this and regain trust with EMF staff and community by the BoT. Many of the Board should just resign. Those who were open and engaged the community, such as Dariusz, should definitely stay! 1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081809.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 2. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081966.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 3. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081997.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 4. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082145.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 5. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082150.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 6. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082287.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 7. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 8. https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engine_with_Lila https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing...
samstave 11y ago
Wow that timeline was FANTASTIC and amazing. I just cant believe how tumultuous this was. I really found the Jobs/Apple/Google salary debacle part fascinating.
zeruch 11y ago
I worked for Lila when we were both at SugarCRM, and I never got the sense of what is being claimed at WMF was her modus operandi (I found dealing with her a fairly transparent affair, which is why I thought she landed at WMF). It's really quite dumbfounding.
- shmerl 11y ago
  Was she making all those decisions about secrecy?
- wpietri 11y ago
  I know little about current WMF circumstances, but my guess is that fairly transparent for a corporation would be seen as fairly secretive at WMF. I think part of the problem here is that she had never edited Wikipedia before joining, which means it would have been very hard for her to understand the vast cultural differences. Wikipedia comes out of the open-source and open-culture world, which has a very strong transparency bias, and which has had to fight hard to maintain that openness. And my experience is that Wikipedia even stronger than that, in that the editor communities organize many thousands of people all in public. Making that work requires very strong habits of transparency. It's very different than current American business culture, where executives get a substantial level of deference and assumed control of information.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    This. You have captured the problem in a nutshell.
tetraverse 11y ago
imho: The longer the same people stay with an organization, the more personality issues come to the surface. As you end up with a self appointed dictator and his/her sidekick, assorted followers, the opposing team and the rest regulated to the sidelines. Meanwhile it's sad watching a sinking ship. "Narcissistic personality disorder" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor... ps: I don't like you so I am going to vote you down regardless as to the quality of your postings ;)
ianamartin 11y ago
Honestly, this all sounds pretty typical of non-profit organizations. I've been working with various different ones since I was 7. Sometimes as a volunteer, sometimes as an employee, sometimes as an executive, and sometimes as a board member. I have never seen a functional non-profit. For whatever reason, non-profits seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only describe as "weird." And it's not just at the management levels. Volunteers and employees tend to have an irrational sense of entitlement, as though the mission of the group and the fact that they are in some way devoted to it earns them a right to a voice in the leadership. But there are also issues with the personalities that the management roles attract, particularly with boards. There are two types of board members: those who are doing the work because they think they should, so they want to get in, make decisions, and get out. Then there are the ones who are passionately invested in "the cause", and the passionate ones are complete wild cards. You never know what you are going to get. Narcissists, martyrs, and drama queens, most often. But sometimes other. I haven't been following this situation at all, but if I had to make a guess, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Lila was probably doing her honest and straightforward best to deal with a situation that was way over her head and made some mistakes. The board and other employees are probably a mixed bag of honest, good-heated people trying to make a difference, some complete nutbags, and a lot of people in between. In many ways, non-profits are like academia. Important and necessary organizations, but extremely disfunctional in the same ways. They tend to be sanctuaries for people who do not really function all that well in public society or companies. The pay stakes are generally lower, so people fight militantly over issues of status and control that seem trivial to the rest of the outside world.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  I have never seen a functional non-profit. I've seen quite a few. For whatever reason, non-profits seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only describe as "weird." Not sure how to put my finger on it, but your overall depiction does seem a bit, how to put this, "drama queen"-ish. As in, yes, we've all known of certain horror stories, meltdowns, etc, among non-profits. But overall your characterization (not specific to the sentence above) seems rather hyperbolic. People join non-profits with all kinds of motivations, just like they do for-profits. Yes, you do find narcissists -- but you also find a lot of solid, highly principled (and highly skilled) people. It's just that their stories usually aren't the ones that trigger open letters, blogposts, and interactive timeline visualizations.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sneak 11y ago
Why?
runn1ng 11y ago
Huh. I absolutely hated the new "Media Viewer" and the WYSIWYG editor, but I didn't know there is this big drama behind it. (Plus all the Knowledge Engine thing, which I didn't hear about. But neither did more senior editors, it seems.) Truth to be said, I do really like Wikipedia's mobile layout and mobile website in general. I still think they should do something with the discussion system, as I think having wiki-style discussions that nobody ever opens is not really good for anything, but I don't know what to do instead. :)
- chippy 11y ago
  I really like the Visual Editor, as a novice editor - it makes things such as adding citations and links wonderfully easy.
  - runn1ng 11y ago
    Interesting. Maybe it's just me being used to wiki syntax for such a long time that it just irritates me to use WYSIWYG.

184 points by mattl 11y ago

Some background here: http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/ http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/ The above conflates a lot of highly unrelated events, but it's a cool visualization. But the reality is that she lost the support of senior staff, and wasn't able to regain it. It's impossible to recover from something like that, so it's a good sign she stepped down.

aikah 11y ago
So there is a crisis at the WM foundation? could you explain for those who are not in the loop? is it about their search engine project?
- ptest1 11y ago
  The crux of it is that she just lost the faith of senior staff. The cause of that probably can't be known by outsiders. But the issue blew up in the wider community when the grant was posted.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Actually, it is known by outsiders. In the end the staff were very open about their concerns. It was the secrecy, dissembling and frankly bastardry that caused good people like James Heilman to be removed from the BoT over the fiasco that was the Knowledge Engine.
    - codezero 11y ago
      Do you think she was written off from the start on account of her low edit count?
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I've written a few comments, they might be helpful. One I just posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401 But the original story on HN has some comments from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164 My take at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262 For an excellent backgrounder, then Liam awyatt's b;oh sets things put the clearest: http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/ http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/ And: http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/ http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/
  - aikah 11y ago
    Thank you.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- filbertkm 11y ago
  I don't think the community necessarily rejects the idea of a "search engine" project, but the way it was communicated (or lack of) is the main problem. As well, the foundation has no current strategic plan at the moment. Once there is a plan (formed with community involvement) and it's decided some search project should be a priority, then I think most people would have no problem with such grant funding.
randomname2 11y ago
Great backgrounder. The degree of chaos and dysfunction it illustrates truly is astonishing, it seems they had an utter lack of competent, experienced managers. Very sad situation. Is Wikipedia itself severely affected by this?
- ptest1 11y ago
  It's not just competent management: the WMF is a weird beast. Most savvy managers haven't worked in at nonprofit before, much less a nearly 100% transparent, community-driven nonprofit. Processes are very different, and I think this is what tripped up Lila.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    I'm sure. Without having a real opinion on WMF, I've known multiple people who found themselves in non-profits and basically got out in a relative hurry. And, with some exceptions, I've had many of the same experiences with many volunteer organizations that I've been involved with.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Wikipedia is still running as per normal. But this has caused a great deal of reputation so damage to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. I think until everything comes out in the open, I'd be very leery about giving them any fundraising money.
  - HarryHirsch 11y ago
    It's not about small-time donors - Wikipedia solicits these only as a PR measure, the real money invariably comes in form of large grants, such as the Knight Foundation grant, and it's inevitably with strings attached. Think Obama's 2008 campaign.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      I know. My comment also applies to large donors.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 11y ago
Nice visualization. Something caught my eye looking at it "Signpost reveals that the Wikimedia Foundation initially requested $6 million from the Knight Foundation". That's pretty common actually when dealing with private foundations. They don't have the budget for a big request this funding period, but are interested so they drop a smaller amount of funding. This might lead to a bigger funding event or the interest of other foundations (a good thing). This seems like it was characterized as bad, but it actually is normal and often very good. I remember a couple projects that got a regional grant to give seed money which developed into a very large grant from a national foundation. The angel investing pattern is not limited to startups. Looking at what happened and given the demonizing of the Knight Foundation, I would imagine no private foundation will do a follow-up or even be inclined to give money for other projects.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  That's not what issue with that was. The issue is that it wasn't discussed within the BoT, it was someone's pet project and it is clear that the discovery team was ramped up before discussions even took place properly, which meant funding allocations, IMO, we're done in a decidedly underhanded way. They also made that grant application so vague that it looked like they wanted to compete with Google. Read the document. Heck, read the article that is now on Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Foundation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Fo...
  - protomyth 11y ago
    > That's not what issue with that was Ok, the lower funding number might not be the issue, but it certainly seems like the timeline and article regarded it as a bad thing. > The issue is that it wasn't discussed within the BoT Ok, well, I would expect that will probably end the likelihood of further grants from Knight Foundation or many other reputable grant givers. Poor procedure inside an grantee is frowned upon, and having their name shown in a negative light is a warning to everyone else. > They also made that grant application so vague that it looked like they wanted to compete with Google. Read the document. Heck, read the article that is now on Wikipedia! Looking at this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowledge_engine_grant_agreement.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/a/a7/Knowl... It looks pretty normal for how you write up a project. You really only put high level stuff in for some of these organizations.
Mark222 11y ago
Reading this, I can't help but notice that none of the people they are hiring comes from a non-profit background, doesn't it surprise anybody?
- profeta 11y ago
  i think that is great.
- nyuriks 11y ago
  Depends how you count - significant number of the staff (myself included) were first volunteers in the movement.

revelation 11y ago

If some more people leave, presumably the foundation can go back to hosting Wikipedia and funding the occasional project to improve it, after extensive user input. You know, instead of this playing startup thing.

chris_wot 11y ago
There was never a problem with developing new technology. It was the outrageous dissembling and secrecy around the Knowledge Engine that has caused this problem. You cannot go into an organization with such an extreme ethos around transparency and openness as the WMF and get away with secretly coming up with a plan to compete against Google. That's what was done, and I don't care who on the Board say it wasn't ever a plan to compete against Google with a search engine made by the WMF: that was the plan cooked up by Damon, and I'm certain Lila kept going with it, even when Damon left.
- wl 11y ago
  What about Flow? Media Viewer? Visual Editor? The "extensive user input" came after the code was already written and the community didn't like the result.
  - araneae 11y ago
    VE was a Sue Gardner thing. Hate or love it, it had nothing to do with Lila.
    - wl 11y ago
      And Media Viewer was in development before Lila came around, even if she did preside over its release. I'm not really interested in blaming individuals. The point is that the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization has a history of pushing projects the community doesn't want. A different kind of executive director might move the foundation back towards more of a support role for the community. Of course, that's not going to happen unless the makeup of the board of directors changes drastically.

chris_wot 11y ago

What has happened here is one of the worst situations in the WMF's history. I feel the most for James Heilman, who was removed from the Board only after asking serious questions about Lila's 'Knowledge Engine". Lila's stint has had a terrible impact on the staff and community alike. Here are some emails to the Wikimedia mailing list. The one that started the beginning of the end is when she was very specifically asked for the Knight Foundation grant application, which it now appears was the catalyst for the Board removing James because he asked questions that threatened her: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081678.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... When it was finally released - which only occurred when someone from outside the Board took the initiative to speak to the Knight Foundation who said the grant was never confidential even though the WMF said it was - there was a mass exodus of staff, with the most notable from Siko Bourtese, whose email to the mailing list [1] read, in part: I’ve had the amazing privilege of serving this movement in a staff capacity for the past 4 ½ years, but I’ve now decided to move on from my role at the Wikimedia Foundation. Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge remain deeply important to me, and I believe I will be better placed to represent those values in a volunteer capacity at this time. Ido Ivri sent the following email to the same ML [2], in which he states his serious concerns around transparency, the removal of James and the steady flow of people resigning. Brion Vibber, an exceptional and well respected member of staff sent a direct email asking what was being done stop people leaving. [3] Then Lila sent out a now infamous "Why we've changed" email, and made things much, much worse. [4] it was summed up well by Brion [5]: Lila, a few notes. First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under "we" are not attributable to you. Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be promoted might be behind discontent seems not to hold water. As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it's unclear what projects you refer to. Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the organization, based on my conversations with other employees including managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a reorg. We've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's appearance and disappearance. If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have strong doubts that this is the case. James Heilman explained the problems around the Knowledhe Engine, which was pretty damning [6]. The final departure, and IMO the most damning email, was from data scientist Oliver Keyes, who resigned [7] with the following email: Dear all, I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior Data Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be on 18 March. After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no longer wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to rectify the situation, I have no confidence in their ability to effectively do so given their failure to solve for the problem until it became a publicity issue as well as a staff complaint. I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a fairer, more transparent and more representative governing structure. All the best, Oliver Keyes Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation It is the minutes of the Discovery Team meeting [8] that really showed me the level of Lila's dissembling, she kept trying deflect awkward questions to others and kept asking why staff didn't feel "empowered'. I'm glad she has gone. She has caused untold damage to the WMF, it is literally going to kts years to resolve the fall out of all of this and regain trust with EMF staff and community by the BoT. Many of the Board should just resign. Those who were open and engaged the community, such as Dariusz, should definitely stay! 1. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081809.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 2. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081966.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 3. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081997.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 4. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082145.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 5. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082150.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 6. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082287.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 7. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru... 8. https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engine_with_Lila https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing...

samstave 11y ago

Wow that timeline was FANTASTIC and amazing. I just cant believe how tumultuous this was. I really found the Jobs/Apple/Google salary debacle part fascinating.

zeruch 11y ago

I worked for Lila when we were both at SugarCRM, and I never got the sense of what is being claimed at WMF was her modus operandi (I found dealing with her a fairly transparent affair, which is why I thought she landed at WMF). It's really quite dumbfounding.

shmerl 11y ago
Was she making all those decisions about secrecy?
wpietri 11y ago
I know little about current WMF circumstances, but my guess is that fairly transparent for a corporation would be seen as fairly secretive at WMF. I think part of the problem here is that she had never edited Wikipedia before joining, which means it would have been very hard for her to understand the vast cultural differences. Wikipedia comes out of the open-source and open-culture world, which has a very strong transparency bias, and which has had to fight hard to maintain that openness. And my experience is that Wikipedia even stronger than that, in that the editor communities organize many thousands of people all in public. Making that work requires very strong habits of transparency. It's very different than current American business culture, where executives get a substantial level of deference and assumed control of information.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  This. You have captured the problem in a nutshell.

tetraverse 11y ago

imho: The longer the same people stay with an organization, the more personality issues come to the surface. As you end up with a self appointed dictator and his/her sidekick, assorted followers, the opposing team and the rest regulated to the sidelines. Meanwhile it's sad watching a sinking ship. "Narcissistic personality disorder" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor... ps: I don't like you so I am going to vote you down regardless as to the quality of your postings ;)

ianamartin 11y ago

Honestly, this all sounds pretty typical of non-profit organizations. I've been working with various different ones since I was 7. Sometimes as a volunteer, sometimes as an employee, sometimes as an executive, and sometimes as a board member. I have never seen a functional non-profit. For whatever reason, non-profits seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only describe as "weird." And it's not just at the management levels. Volunteers and employees tend to have an irrational sense of entitlement, as though the mission of the group and the fact that they are in some way devoted to it earns them a right to a voice in the leadership. But there are also issues with the personalities that the management roles attract, particularly with boards. There are two types of board members: those who are doing the work because they think they should, so they want to get in, make decisions, and get out. Then there are the ones who are passionately invested in "the cause", and the passionate ones are complete wild cards. You never know what you are going to get. Narcissists, martyrs, and drama queens, most often. But sometimes other. I haven't been following this situation at all, but if I had to make a guess, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Lila was probably doing her honest and straightforward best to deal with a situation that was way over her head and made some mistakes. The board and other employees are probably a mixed bag of honest, good-heated people trying to make a difference, some complete nutbags, and a lot of people in between. In many ways, non-profits are like academia. Important and necessary organizations, but extremely disfunctional in the same ways. They tend to be sanctuaries for people who do not really function all that well in public society or companies. The pay stakes are generally lower, so people fight militantly over issues of status and control that seem trivial to the rest of the outside world.

kafkaesq 11y ago
I have never seen a functional non-profit. I've seen quite a few. For whatever reason, non-profits seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only describe as "weird." Not sure how to put my finger on it, but your overall depiction does seem a bit, how to put this, "drama queen"-ish. As in, yes, we've all known of certain horror stories, meltdowns, etc, among non-profits. But overall your characterization (not specific to the sentence above) seems rather hyperbolic. People join non-profits with all kinds of motivations, just like they do for-profits. Yes, you do find narcissists -- but you also find a lot of solid, highly principled (and highly skilled) people. It's just that their stories usually aren't the ones that trigger open letters, blogposts, and interactive timeline visualizations.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

sneak 11y ago

Why?

runn1ng 11y ago

Huh. I absolutely hated the new "Media Viewer" and the WYSIWYG editor, but I didn't know there is this big drama behind it. (Plus all the Knowledge Engine thing, which I didn't hear about. But neither did more senior editors, it seems.) Truth to be said, I do really like Wikipedia's mobile layout and mobile website in general. I still think they should do something with the discussion system, as I think having wiki-style discussions that nobody ever opens is not really good for anything, but I don't know what to do instead. :)

chippy 11y ago
I really like the Visual Editor, as a novice editor - it makes things such as adding citations and links wonderfully easy.
- runn1ng 11y ago
  Interesting. Maybe it's just me being used to wiki syntax for such a long time that it just irritates me to use WYSIWYG.