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Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#42Honestly, 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 i…
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.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, and I think the rot started around the time that Terry Chay left the WMF. He clearly saw the writing on the wall very early. I highly recommend reading his Quora answer to the question "What has caused so many people to leave jobs at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) in 2015-16?": https://www.quora.com/What-has-caused-so-many-people-to-leav...
It started well before then. There's been numerous occurrences of dramatic employee burnout that end up in people losing their shit on the WMF internal staff list then quiting. For this particular case it got so bad that the meltdowns were on the public list instead.
That's terrible. I really feel for WMF staff. They work in the WMF because they want to be part of something that improves humanity. Then people with their own narrow agendas come in, with no experience with the project, look around without listening to those on the coal face and make stupid, half baked changes in secret, which they then seem to have to change every three months, making it impossible for staff to do the work they need to do.
That's my impression anyway.
I have nothing but good will and the utmost respect for those who work at the WMF as employees.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#44Honestly, 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 i…
You're painting with a broad brush and your characterisation is greatly at odds with many of the functional non-profit organisations I know here in Australia:
* the St Vincent de Paul Society
* the National Heart Foundation
* Cancer Council of Australia
* Opera Australia
* Unicef
* National Disability Services
I could go on. My point is, non-profit organisations encompass a huge spectrum of activity. Many operate like any other company and pay wages for the majority of employees. I would argue that 'the mission' actually makes a non-profit more likely to succeed, as everybody knows what they're working towards and what team they're on.
Wikipedia is a different beast entirely.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#45Some background here: 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.
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?
i think that is great.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#46I 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.
Was she making all those decisions about secrecy?
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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, a…
No, it's not normal. Thst grant application was ambiguously worded. It repeatedly said it was for “the Internet”. It reads that “today, commercial search engines dominate search engine use of the Internet, and they’re employing proprietary technologies to consolidate access to the Internet’s knowledge and information. Their algorithms obscure the way the Internet’s information is collected and displayed”. How on eart…
"Thst grant application was ambiguously worded."
I was commenting on the actual application. Its pretty normal for what you submit and, yes, technical perfection is not a hallmark of granting. Ambiguously worded happens a lot particularly if there is a size limit to the application. I didn't comment if the intent actually matched what they told other people. If they mislead people is not really something I have knowledge of.
I will say once again that I doubt they (or their successors) will have a shot of outside grants given the governance problem and the negative light it cast on Knight Foundation. It is an amazingly small world of grant organizations.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the "personnel" (not personal) issue under which he left - sexual harassment or something?
Even if I knew, I couldn't and wouldn't say. That would be unethical and illegal. But Damon was definitely going around with secret plans to compete with Google. And he had a number of odd, almost paranoid, emails to the foundation ML with what looks like hashes of documents.
Thanks - thats really odd to me.
The whole timeline reads really weird to me as well - with people entering and exiting the WMF so fast - I am of the external subjective opinion that at least some of them were simply extracting money from the WMF.
It reads as if they may have negotiated some exit packages and literally just took them.
That is a LONG list of "directors" which I could be completely off-base here, but unless the env was far more toxic than is being presented, SOME of these people certainly extracted personal value from being there a short period.
The fucked up bit though is none of that; it is that wikipedia is now a foundation of who we are digitally as a species, and to see that there is SIGNIFICANT apparent risk to it falling apart is extraordinarily alarming to me.
One of the emails sent said that the risk to domain/innate/tech memory leaving with the exodus impending from eng is super scary prospect.
If I were someone well monied at Google, I'd step in and buy the whole ordeal as it is a major part of who we now are, both digitally and organically.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if I knew, I couldn't and wouldn't say. That would be unethical and illegal. But Damon was definitely going around with secret plans to compete with Google. And he had a number of odd, almost paranoid, emails to the foundation ML with what looks like hashes of documents.
Thanks - thats really odd to me. The whole timeline reads really weird to me as well - with people entering and exiting the WMF so fast - I am of the external subjective opinion that at least some of them were simply extracting money from the WMF. It reads as if they may have negotiated some exit packages and literally just took them. That is a LONG list of "directors" which I could be completely off-base here, but u…
You can't buy Wikipedia :-) but you are right, it's fucked up. Lila and the a majority of the Board of Trustees have taken something amazing and pissed it away.
The entire BoT should be disbanded, new members appointed and Jimmy Wales should take a break for 6-12 months and have no direct say in anything or participate in any way, then come back. His "Founder" status should be modified to allow for greater accountability.
Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation
#50Honestly, 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 i…
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 c…
I'm calling it as I've seen it from my experience. I think I made that pretty clear.
I'm not trying to make a general case that there is some specific quality of non-profits that makes it impossible for them to be functional.
As I said pretty clearly above, the wikimedia story sounds typical, based on my interactions with non-profits.