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Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#81

Post by runn1ng »

chippy wrote: post #80
runn1ng wrote: post #79

Huh. I absolutely hated the new "Media Viewer" and the WYSIWYG editor, but I didn't know there is this big drama behind it. (Plus all the Knowledge Engine thing, which I didn't hear about. But neither did more senior editors, it seems.) Truth to be said, I do really like Wikipedia's mobile layout and mobile website in general. I still think they should do something with the discussion system, as I think having wiki-s…

I really like the Visual Editor, as a novice editor - it makes things such as adding citations and links wonderfully easy.

Interesting. Maybe it's just me being used to wiki syntax for such a long time that it just irritates me to use WYSIWYG.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#82

Post by Angostura »

ianamartin wrote: post #61
chris_wot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Success is not the same as functional. One could argue that wikimedia has been very successful in its mission and it is at the same time also disfunctional. I wouldn't call any of the non-profits I've worked at failures. Hell, many people have described companies like Microsoft as badly disfunctional, but it would be hard to argue that they are not successful. If I stepped on anyone's toes with my post, I apologize.…

By the criteria you're using, I'm struggling to think of many fully 'functional' for profits that I've worked for.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#83

Post by Chris2048 »

toxicFork wrote: post #77
aaron695 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You worked internally in of all these and more? Sorry if I'm a little doubtful but that's quite a resume.

I don't think they ever implied they "worked internally in all of these and more".

"I know" would imply that, and "I could go on" implies more. If not, experience with those organisations is not as close as OP.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#84

Post by Chris2048 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #42
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. 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…

Wouldn't you need to know of OPs experience to know whether it is hyperbole? You're pushing your own experience as more canonical, and putting the difference down to a 'drama queen' label attributed to OP.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#85

Post by aaron695 »

jacalata wrote: post #75
aaron695 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You worked internally in of all these and more? Sorry if I'm a little doubtful but that's quite a resume.

How do you define functional such that the only way to identify it is to work there?

The Australian "National Heart Foundation" for instance has killed a lot of people, fucked up shit.

But people love them cause they are functional. Lot's of PR.

The op topic (On topic to the parent link) was they are very broken internally. So much so they fail the the cause of good.

They do, and they don't, on topic is how good they are, is 500 million the red cross spent on 6 houses true, and right. What's the real story. Are NPO that bad really?

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#86

Post by karlkatzke »

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. For whatever reason, non-profits seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only describe as "weird."

I interviewed there for a Systems Administrator position. Part of the interview was a code sample -- solve a specific problem using a scripting language. I submitted a 'mvp' -- a script that worked well, took about an hour of effort, and performed the required task in two environments, one of which was a chrooted jail that the person who graded it was welcome to log in to just in case the code did not work on their workstation.

The feedback from the examiner relayed via the HR recruiter was that it was the "worst code they had ever seen," and they were offended that I did not write it in an object oriented manner and that it completely lacked any testing and validation -- which was wrong, actually, I validated inputs with a regular expression.

Remember, this was for a systems administrator position, not a developer position.

And after that feedback, I didn't want to work for Wikimedia anymore.

Re: Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation

#87

Post by Grishnakh »

huskyr wrote: post #25
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…

Note that it's Brion Vibber, not Brian Vibber. Apart from that, excellent summary of events.

>Note that it's Brion Vibber, not Brian Vibber.

According to my browser's spell-checker, Mr. Vibber is misspelling his name.

Who are you going to trust, some guy who apparently can't spell his own name right, or a multibillion dollar corporation that spends tons of money on developing state-of-the-art software tools like spell-checkers?

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