Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

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.

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?

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-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-Febru...

2. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

3. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

4. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

5. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

6. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

7. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

8. https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing...