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As the former CFO and a former SRE for Miraheze, I'm going to try to save the farm. I was uninvolved in the current problems, and at first was wondering what wa

As the former CFO and a former SRE for Miraheze, I'm going to try to save the farm. I was uninvolved in the current problems, and at first was wondering what was going on so as to save my own wikis. The fundamentals at Miraheze are much better than they look; it's just that certain problems between volunteers got far out of hand, and with an all-volunteer force other people decided to leave to escape the drama. There are several months of runway, all the servers are still up, and many volunteers are still around. All we need is more leadership that is ready to focus on our core mission of offering free, ad-free, volunteer driven hosting to wikis with a lot of options. With a little networking, the finances are a solvable problem. I'm in talks with the current board to see if a group of current and former volunteers can take over, either by working in the current organization, or starting a new nonprofit and working from there. I still think Miraheze could have a bright future, and that this was a series of mistakes that got blown far out of proportion to the actual problems that the wiki farm faces. AMA. I was not involved in the current crisis, so piecing together what happened has been something of a puzzle to me, but I can try to answer most questions.

LoganDark 3y ago
Does "a former CFO and SRE for Miraheze" mean you are an SRE that used to be the CFO, or does it mean you used to be both CFO and SRE and now aren't?
- labster 3y ago
  I formerly did both, and currently hold no position with Miraheze Limited. I updated the post to make this more clear.
eudaemon 3y ago
Particularly at this point, I'd like to see better communication between the board and wiki members/crats/admins. No news has been the rule with Miraheze except for planned service outages and donation requests. The way I found out about the closure announcement was from a Tweet that rides in with a 503 error message. I know it's early days, but a message about proposing to continue Miraheze would be useful on that platform, yes?
- labster 3y ago
  No communication is standard operating procedure right now. Volunteers found out this decision at the same time as everyone else, which meant no one had time to prepare. We need to better communicate our plans and goals, and of course about downtime. But we also don’t want to flood average wiki users with sitenotices either. What kinds of communication would you like to see more of? I will put out a sitenotice soon, but I need the outgoing board to buy-in first. Which I’m hoping will happen in the next few hours.
  - eudaemon 3y ago
    Sitenotice is up. Thank you. RE:communications I'd like to see more of. 1. The shutdown notice would have been one; important news, instead of only posting on Twitter and other social media. After a few tweets like "30,000 wikis!" (not all active, ahem), this just turns into noise. 2. Decisions made by the board. A summary will do. 3. Current or ongoing technical issues. Or do we have to go through the whole of outstanding Phabricator tasks? This communication can be accomplished by subscription. I would then like to see a notification/bell made with a capsule of what's being shared and its location within the Miraheze maze. On other business, check out Lithuania as a possible location. It's a very tech-oriented country, and I've worked on a MediaWiki-based wiki based there. I don't know the specific server farm or company.
Tomte 3y ago
Your "Upvotes appreciated. Please give me karma." in Discord is not okay by HN's rules, though.
- labster 3y ago
  Yeah, it was a joke. That I backed off of right away. All I could think was that I'd like at least one voice who wasn't saying doom and gloom about everything near the top, so that we could possibly save things. Right now Miraheze is in an entirely unnecessary cascade caused by overreactions.
Nemo_bis 3y ago
On "starting a new nonprofit": yes please, it's about time to have an entity with proper accountability. Miraheze is mostly volunteer-run but it also needs a commercial side (such as selling premium features/support, and paying some people to handle them), so an obvious solution is a coop. I can help found a coop in Finland, where we have several long-standing MediaWiki devs, so that any EU person can easily participate. There might be other suitable EU jurisdictions but Finnish law is quite nice and easy: https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2001/en20011488.pdf https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2001/en20011488.pdf
- labster 3y ago
  Right now I am US based, and I'm thinking of incorporating in the US. Not because of any preference for the venue, but because of our limited resources and volunteer distribution. Honestly I'd prefer Canada, but as I am 2000 km away from there, it's not optimal for many of us. Anywhere in Europe would be better than being in the UK. In any case I'm pretty sure we could get 501(c)3 public charity status, even though Miraheze missed out on charity status in the UK. If you could follow up on-wiki about co-op status as an option, I'd appreciate it. On accountability: Members of the board need to come from the community and represent the community. Yes, it's true that no one tried to run for the board seats that were available, but people weren't encouraged to do so enough. I don't think the decisions were bad in and of themselves, but that not enough effort was made to get community support. On paid premium features: I'm not opposed, but I want to see a business model that works without taking significant resources away from our free customers.
  - Nemo_bis 3y ago
    It's very difficult to set up a proper non-profit able to handle both donations and commercial services in the USA. You'll end up spending fortunes on laywers. It's much easier to use a jurisdiction where the law already does all the legal job for you.
    - labster 3y ago
      That is a very good point. Thanks!

LoganDark 3y ago

Does "a former CFO and SRE for Miraheze" mean you are an SRE that used to be the CFO, or does it mean you used to be both CFO and SRE and now aren't?

labster 3y ago
I formerly did both, and currently hold no position with Miraheze Limited. I updated the post to make this more clear.

eudaemon 3y ago

Particularly at this point, I'd like to see better communication between the board and wiki members/crats/admins. No news has been the rule with Miraheze except for planned service outages and donation requests. The way I found out about the closure announcement was from a Tweet that rides in with a 503 error message. I know it's early days, but a message about proposing to continue Miraheze would be useful on that platform, yes?

labster 3y ago
No communication is standard operating procedure right now. Volunteers found out this decision at the same time as everyone else, which meant no one had time to prepare. We need to better communicate our plans and goals, and of course about downtime. But we also don’t want to flood average wiki users with sitenotices either. What kinds of communication would you like to see more of? I will put out a sitenotice soon, but I need the outgoing board to buy-in first. Which I’m hoping will happen in the next few hours.
- eudaemon 3y ago
  Sitenotice is up. Thank you. RE:communications I'd like to see more of. 1. The shutdown notice would have been one; important news, instead of only posting on Twitter and other social media. After a few tweets like "30,000 wikis!" (not all active, ahem), this just turns into noise. 2. Decisions made by the board. A summary will do. 3. Current or ongoing technical issues. Or do we have to go through the whole of outstanding Phabricator tasks? This communication can be accomplished by subscription. I would then like to see a notification/bell made with a capsule of what's being shared and its location within the Miraheze maze. On other business, check out Lithuania as a possible location. It's a very tech-oriented country, and I've worked on a MediaWiki-based wiki based there. I don't know the specific server farm or company.

Tomte 3y ago

Your "Upvotes appreciated. Please give me karma." in Discord is not okay by HN's rules, though.

labster 3y ago
Yeah, it was a joke. That I backed off of right away. All I could think was that I'd like at least one voice who wasn't saying doom and gloom about everything near the top, so that we could possibly save things. Right now Miraheze is in an entirely unnecessary cascade caused by overreactions.

Nemo_bis 3y ago

On "starting a new nonprofit": yes please, it's about time to have an entity with proper accountability. Miraheze is mostly volunteer-run but it also needs a commercial side (such as selling premium features/support, and paying some people to handle them), so an obvious solution is a coop. I can help found a coop in Finland, where we have several long-standing MediaWiki devs, so that any EU person can easily participate. There might be other suitable EU jurisdictions but Finnish law is quite nice and easy: https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2001/en20011488.pdf https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2001/en20011488.pdf

labster 3y ago
Right now I am US based, and I'm thinking of incorporating in the US. Not because of any preference for the venue, but because of our limited resources and volunteer distribution. Honestly I'd prefer Canada, but as I am 2000 km away from there, it's not optimal for many of us. Anywhere in Europe would be better than being in the UK. In any case I'm pretty sure we could get 501(c)3 public charity status, even though Miraheze missed out on charity status in the UK. If you could follow up on-wiki about co-op status as an option, I'd appreciate it. On accountability: Members of the board need to come from the community and represent the community. Yes, it's true that no one tried to run for the board seats that were available, but people weren't encouraged to do so enough. I don't think the decisions were bad in and of themselves, but that not enough effort was made to get community support. On paid premium features: I'm not opposed, but I want to see a business model that works without taking significant resources away from our free customers.
- Nemo_bis 3y ago
  It's very difficult to set up a proper non-profit able to handle both donations and commercial services in the USA. You'll end up spending fortunes on laywers. It's much easier to use a jurisdiction where the law already does all the legal job for you.
  - labster 3y ago
    That is a very good point. Thanks!