That's a great wrap-up - thanks Molly! For something a bit different, here is an outsiders view. I found this on reddit, posted by a user named Ken_Thomas (I don't know who this is, but it seems to be someone vaguely aware of, but not heavily involved in, the off-wiki side of things). I thought it was worth sharing - even if there are some factual inaccuracies and savage opinion - because it offers a much different point of view from everyone here.
(Note that this is a copy of his post verbatim, and is *not my opinion)* *"From reading through the various articles, following the story for awhile, and picking up data nuggets here and there, this is what I think is going on.Wikimedia is a non-profit. Salaries there are pretty low for the tech sector, and the workload is high. People who end up working there do it because they believe in the mission. Over time, this has created a pretty unique culture. The place is saturated with purists and idealists who have good intentions but can be pretty insufferable about the whole thing. They are also, generally speaking, not particularly disciplined and not great business people.Tretikov was brought onboard to tighten things up, basically. She comes from a business background. When she was hired all the stories were about how she was going to 'save' Wikipedia by putting it on a firm financial foundation and cracking the whip with the workforce. I'm sure she admires the mission and thinks it's important and all that, but I wouldn't put her in that 'purist and idealist' category at all.So you've got this culture clash at the top, and the frustration from that has been building for awhile.Some people had this idea to build a search engine that would only search sites that offered 'free' information, probably public domain or CC images, that sort of thing. Other people were irked that Google is snagging Wikipedia's content and pasting it on their search result pages. You get the impression that these two ideas came together and they started some preliminary work on a search engine, saw how expensive it was going to be, and applied for a grant to do it. The grant they got was like 1/20th of what they requested, so they pretty much shut the project down but were still noodling with the concept.None of that is really the problem. Well, it was probably a dumb idea, but the search engine is kind of the red herring here. The problem is that it was being done in secret.Why? Because if you're from the business world, that's how things are done.If you're a purist Wikipedian, it means you're literally Hitler.Now it's coming out in the open and everybody is mad and no one can understand why the other side is mad.Did that help?"* Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/46rz1i/the_wikimedia_foundation_in_crisis_how_fast_is_it/d07tv95 Regards, Charles / User:Chuq On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 11:43 PM, Steven Crossin <cro0...@gmail.com> wrote: > minor correction - the ? in my reply was meant to be a period. I'll be > keeping an eye on this timeline and watch the events unfold. > > *Steven Crossin* > *cro0...@gmail.com <cro0...@gmail.com>* > > On 22 February 2016 at 23:37, Chris Keating <chriskeatingw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Yes - very handy - thanks GorillaWarfare! > > > > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Steven Crossin <cro0...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > > > Thank you Molly. This is indeed helpful? > > > > > > *Steven Crossin* > > > *cro0...@gmail.com <cro0...@gmail.com>* > > > > > > On 22 February 2016 at 23:20, GorillaWarfare < > > > gorillawarfarewikipe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > Recent discussion of the Knowledge Engine/Wikimedia Discovery > project, > > > > issues with senior leadership, lack of transparency, and the like has > > > been > > > > fairly well spread across several Wikimedia projects and mailing > lists, > > > as > > > > well as on Facebook, in the media, and in other venues. > > > > > > > > I just published an attempt to aggregate some of the events that I > > think > > > > are particularly informative given what's been going on: > > > > http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/ > > > > > > > > I hope it's helpful, and please feel free to suggest changes if it's > > > > incomplete. > > > > > > > > – Molly (GorillaWarfare) > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > > Unsubscribe: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
