Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#11

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:16 PM UTC

ptest1 wrote: post #6

aikah wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#12

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

ptest1 wrote: post #2

Some 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.

[deleted]

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#13

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

randomname2 wrote: post #4

ptest1 wrote: post #2

Some 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.

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?

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#14

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

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 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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#15

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:33 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #8

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 aske…

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...

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#16

Post by protomyth » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:38 PM UTC

ptest1 wrote: post #2

Some 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.

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#17

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #9

aikah wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've written a few comments, they might be helpful. One I just posted here: 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 My take at the time: 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…

[deleted]

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#18

Post by HarryHirsch » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #13

randomname2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#19

Post by filbertkm » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #3

ptest1 wrote: post #2

Some 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.

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?

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.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#20

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #16

ptest1 wrote: post #2

Some 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.

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…

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_Fo...