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Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#51

Post by wpietri »

ianamartin wrote: post #35

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 i…

My theory is that it's about the speed and strength of feedback loops.

If you run your own restaurant and you're there every day serving food to customers, you have a very rich stream of immediate feedback on how your company is doing. The purpose is pretty clear. If you have a bad idea, people will tell you that your porkchop milkshake is terrible and you'll stop serving it.

As companies grow, the feedback loops get longer and the signals get attenuated. That allows larger companies to get more and more crazy. Especially so for companies selling to the "enterprise" market. There deals happen very rarely, allowing the crazy to metastasize.

Many non-profits have it worse, because they have broad missions. Their goal is to do good, but "good" often ends up being a broad category, so it's easy for them to end up doing a weird variety of things with varying degrees of effectiveness. Worse, even if you can get people to agree on a clear definition of "good", the feedback loops are weird. Since they rarely get money from direct service, they have to engage in a bunch of semi-related activities to fund the mission stuff. Often that's grant money, which means enterprise-like sales cycles and feedback loops that are way too long.

The non-profits I've seen do best have clear missions, specific revenue sources, frequent feedback, and a lot of discipline around picking projects. E.g., I've volunteered for the Long Now Foundation for years; they're smart, small, and scrappy. Or the California Academy of Sciences runs a damned good science museum, and I think it really helps that each and every day things have to work for their thousands of visitors. But the further non-profits get away from that, I think the easier it is for madness to creep in.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#52

Post by chris_wot »

ianamartin wrote: post #50
kafkaesq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your experience, though, does not meet the reality that there are many fine non-profit success stories. There are a lot of non-functional ones, but I think all folks are pointing out is that it isn't as dire as you have seen.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#53

Post by kafkaesq »

ianamartin wrote: post #50
kafkaesq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, we've had vastly different experiences, then.

But to state that one isn't aware of the existence of large, decades-old, indisputably functioning non-profit organizations (like e.g. Médecins Sans Frontières) seems, well... disconnected from reality.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#54

Post by wpietri »

zeruch wrote: post #29

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.

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#55

Post by chris_wot »

wpietri wrote: post #54
zeruch wrote: post #29

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.

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 tran…

This. You have captured the problem in a nutshell.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#56

Post by wpietri »

chris_wot wrote: post #43
ryan_lane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I think there's a big difference between modern American corporate culture, where CEOs are seen as in charge, and some place like the WMF, where people are service- and mission-oriented.

It's a little hard to talk about, in that most Americans don't even realize there's an alternative to the "CEO is the biggest boss" model. But both Servant Leadership and the Toyota Production System are alternatives that invert the normal hierarchy, putting those served (e.g., customers, readers) on top, the people doing the direct work second, and everybody supporting them (managers, executives) them beneath that. I think the latter would be a much better fit for the WMF style.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#57

Post by ocdtrekkie »

chris_wot wrote: post #14
revelation wrote: post #5

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.

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…

While I agree that transparency at Wikimedia is a definite concern, your tone seems to indicate competing with Google is a bad thing. Given Google has taken historic disregard for consumers to new heights this year, pushing real organic results off the visible screen before you scroll, and that Google scrapes Wikipedia data to serve users for profit, that it'd be right in Wikipedia's culture to offer a freer alternative.

Though, as you say, Wikipedia's culture also requires openness as well.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#58

Post by digi_owl »

wpietri wrote: post #51
ianamartin wrote: post #35

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 i…

My theory is that it's about the speed and strength of feedback loops. If you run your own restaurant and you're there every day serving food to customers, you have a very rich stream of immediate feedback on how your company is doing. The purpose is pretty clear. If you have a bad idea, people will tell you that your porkchop milkshake is terrible and you'll stop serving it. As companies grow, the feedback loops get…

> Many non-profits have it worse, because they have broad missions. Their goal is to do good, but "good" often ends up being a broad category

"Doing good" as a goal is not just broad, it is subjective. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Unless the goal is something practical, build something, maintain something, offer some kind of specific service, you are looking at a goal that is highly mobile and likely to be hijacked.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#59

Post by baldfat »

ianamartin wrote: post #35

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 i…

> I have never seen a functional non-profit

Worked non-profits since 1988 and I have found the best place to work and have been with them for 8 years now. Very functional and a great place to work. We provide services for children throughout our area and have around 300 employees. If your actually interested in seeing a functional non-profit we can talk further.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#60

Post by wantreprenr007 »

ianamartin wrote: post #35

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 i…

I've worked in startups and large ivy league universities... the latter has more focus on social capital than necessarily delivering value or customer service because there is less survival risk, so the emphasis is on social organizational capital (family-like, countryclub departments) than monetary profit (except for university profit-centers). I've also seen massive corruption, empire building, laughable leadership cognitive dissonance, waste, privacy disasters and embezzlement at one university which shall go nameless.

It's true that the fights can be so brutal because the stakes are often so small.

There are some exceptions where good leadership and teams exist and deliver worthy value without economic or social forces, but these are outliers.

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