WMF Board of Trustees: A Fish Rots from the Head Down

[Zoloft]

In another topic, a Wikipediocracy member asked, "Who exactly are these people and why do we never pay attention to them at WPO???"

So let's pay the Board some attention.

Their page on the Wikimedia Foundation site: link

List of members as of June 2014:
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Phoebe Ayers
Stu West
Bishakha Datta
Jimmy Wales
Samuel Klein
Alice Wiegand
Patricio Lorente
Ana Toni
María Sefidari

[Vigilant]

Can you break them out by the groups that elect them?

[Streaky]

Why did that one lady (Kat something) fail in her reelection bid? I thought she was fairly popular in wikicircles...?

[Kelly Martin]

Why did that one lady (Kat something) fail in her reelection bid? I thought she was fairly popular in wikicircles...?

Kat Walsh is now an attorney for Creative Commons, and remains on Wikimedia's Communication Committee. Did she actually stand for reelection?

[thekohser]

Why did that one lady (Kat something) fail in her reelection bid? I thought she was fairly popular in wikicircles...?

Kat "Mindspillage" Walsh. She came in 6th in a race for 3 board seats. She was the chairperson for the twelve months leading up to the election. If I do the math, that tells me that the electorate wasn't impressed with her leadership of the board for those 12 months. (Keep in mind this was approximately the same time that the board seemed to be floundering about, looking for a replacement for Sue Gardner, while Visual Editor was in the early fail stages.)

[Streaky]

Why did that one lady (Kat something) fail in her reelection bid? I thought she was fairly popular in wikicircles...?

Kat Walsh is now an attorney for Creative Commons, and remains on Wikimedia's Communication Committee. Did she actually stand for reelection?

She came in 6th, the top 3 got in. link

[greybeard]

Can you break them out by the groups that elect them?

Community Trustees (3 community-elected):
Samuel Klein (User:Sj, VP at "One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)" project)
Phoebe Ayers (User:phoebe, former Chapter Trustee)
María Sefidari (User:Raystorm, Spanish chapter founder)

Chapter Trustees (2)
Alice Wiegand (term expires July 2014)
Patricio Lorente (term expires July 2014)

"Outside" Trustees (typically 4):
Jan-Bart de Vreede (Chair 2013-2015, Director since 2006)
Stu West
Bishakha Datta
Ana Toni (CEO of Brazilian "Public Interest" consulting company)

Special "Founder" Trustee (da one 'n only!):
Jimmy Wales

The Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws call for a "minimum" of 9 Trustees, but specify that a majority of the Trustees be community or chapter Trustees. Oddly for an organization like this, the Executive Director is not even an ex-officio Trustee. Wales' position is not ex-officio. Given the Bylaws at written, the Board consists of "at least" 9 Trustees, and also at most 9 Trustees, unless the number of Community and Chapter Trustees are increased, because of the majority requirement.

Because of this, and another unusual bylaw, that the Board may remove a Trustee with a simple majority, means that the Community and Chapter members could (in theory) throw out all the outside directors with a single vote. This is quite irregular for a non-profit of this stature, as most such organizations require some form of super-majority.

These Bylaws are also irregular in another way: there is no specification of standing Committees, no mechanism specified by which Board Committees are created or abandoned or staffed, etc. So there is no Finance Committee, no Investment Committee, no Development (Fundraising) Committee, no Operations Committee, etc. Mature organizations tend to have these structures.

[Kelly Martin]

These Bylaws are also irregular in another way: there is no specification of standing Committees, no mechanism specified by which Board Committees are created or abandoned or staffed, etc. So there is no Finance Committee, no Investment Committee, no Development (Fundraising) Committee, no Operations Committee, etc. Mature organizations tend to have these structures.

Nonetheless there are a number of standing committees (I used to serve on the Communications Committee); it's just that the resolutions establishing these committees have never been incorporated into the bylaws. The WMF is not long on disciplined governance, or (despite constant bleating to the contrary) on transparency in governance.

[greybeard]

These Bylaws are also irregular in another way: there is no specification of standing Committees, no mechanism specified by which Board Committees are created or abandoned or staffed, etc. So there is no Finance Committee, no Investment Committee, no Development (Fundraising) Committee, no Operations Committee, etc. Mature organizations tend to have these structures.

Nonetheless there are a number of standing committees (I used to serve on the Communications Committee); it's just that the resolutions establishing these committees have never been incorporated into the bylaws. The WMF is not long on disciplined governance, or (despite constant bleating to the contrary) on transparency in governance.

Thanks for that clarification. I should have said that there are no standing committees that cannot be dissolved by the Board.

[Anthonyhcole]

... Their page on the Wikimedia Foundation site: link

List of members as of June 2014:
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Phoebe Ayers
Stu West
Bishakha Datta
Jimmy Wales
Samuel Klein
Alice Wiegand
Patricio Lorente
Ana Toni
María Sefidari

It's all your fault. The lack of a serious child protection structure, unprotected BLPs, unfiltered porn, the complete unreliability of every article in the encyclopedia. You've swallowed Godwin's "We mustn't control the projects or we'll be liable for any harm they do." Well, board, you have control. That you do not exercise it is your choice, but that failure to act doesn't absolve you of a jot of responsibility. You are responsible for any harm the project does, and for its unreliability. How do you morally justify your complete abrogation of responsibility simply to immunise yourselves against possible damages claims? I'm pretty sure if Wikipedia's survival was challenged by such claims, our readership would ante up the necessaries to protect us.

Shame on you.

[eagle]

Well, board, you have control. That you do not exercise it is your choice, but that failure to act doesn't absolve you of a jot of responsibility. You are responsible for any harm the project does, and for its unreliability. How do you morally justify your complete abrogation of responsibility simply to immunise yourselves against possible damages claims? I'm pretty sure if Wikipedia's survival was challenged by such claims, our readership would ante up the necessaries to protect us.

Shame on you.

Anthonyhcole's point is important. The WMF is the major funders of the Chapters, of Wikimania, of WikiConference USA, etc. If these organizations and conferences are given funds with no expectations that they adhere to the norms of decent, adult behavior, you should express your disappointment to each Board member personally. It is the collective vision of the Board, as lead by its Chair and the Executive Director, that counts. If I were a Board member, I would ask the group to agree on a list of the ten biggest problems confronting the organization and then ask the Executive Director to recommend an action plan to address them. The Board would then approve the action plan and monitor progress. If they are doing this, why is this not reflect in their strategic plan? WMF's plan reads as though the high priority problems are "Fundraising not sufficiently aggressive" and "Obscure languages not represented by large encyclopedias" rather than "toxic editing environment" and "corporate culture that attracts mediocre staff."

Perhaps WPO should advocate expanding the Board to 17 members. (I like odd numbers.) 6 Community-elected trustees (3 per year), 4 chapter elected trustees (2 per year), and 7 Board-elected trustees.

[neved]

Mr. Samuel Klein has been very active on Wil's page. In particular he commented on WO
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =611758200

Similarly, WO is among other things a source of regular attacks on community members; AIUI mainly focused on a few dozen highly active en:WP editors, Commons editors and WMF staff. Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem: they are caricatured, framed to be offensive and disruptive. When you promote the forum as a place to have conversation, the targets of this abuse see this as endorsing such attacks. (e.g., You would not participate in a community that allowed bigotry or hate speech, but you want others to participate there, so you must think their choice of language and tactics are fine.)

This can be particularly difficult for staff. They receive some of the harshest treatment; groundless but hurtful attacks. (Central organizations bear the brunt of most conspiracy theories & related rage.) They will be particularly sensitive to the fact that you are the ED's partner.
In these ways, without attacking anyone yourself, you can cause others to start spending mental energy reading and worrying about attacks.

A parallel: Wikimedia projects also have a hard time maintaining civility. While most wikis have solid civility policies, it is possible to game such things, and our model is not great: we are less civil than many online communities (WikiHow in particular springs to mind). So you can absolutely find here on en:WP similar unkind and counterproductive attacks, if you seek that out. However here it is explicitly against the spirit of the site, however hard that is to enforce; and the angry exceptions are diluted by the tens of thousands of contributors working peacefully together, focused on a shared positive purpose.

[thekohser]

Samuel Klein pontificates about Wikipediocracy:

Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem...

We stopped framing concerns to resolve the problem after the Wikipedia governance and underlying community successfully disregarded the first hundred or so of our concerns that were framed to resolve a problem.

When we learned that the only way Wikipedia's leadership responds to problems is when the mainstream press points out the problems, we formed a "Campaign Room" to work on serious press relations, while the public forum was allowed to explore the almost-equally effective tactics of public shaming and ridicule of the shameful and the ridiculous.

[dogbiscuit]

When we learned that the only way Wikipedia's leadership responds to problems is when the mainstream press points out the problems, we formed a "Campaign Room" to work on serious press relations, while the public forum was allowed to explore the almost-equally effective tactics of public shaming and ridicule of the shameful and the ridiculous.

It's a sort of ad hominem defence - you aren't allowed to point out a problem if you are not able to provide a solution. I wonder how that would sit with Microsoft Office or complaining about terrorism?

Wikipedia in a nutshell: you can't fix it so there can't be a problem.

[Vigilant]

Mr. Samuel Klein has been very active on Wil's page. In particular he commented on WO
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =611758200

Similarly, WO is among other things a source of regular attacks on community members; AIUI mainly focused on a few dozen highly active en:WP editors, Commons editors and WMF staff. Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem: they are caricatured, framed to be offensive and disruptive. When you promote the forum as a place to have conversation, the targets of this abuse see this as endorsing such attacks. (e.g., You would not participate in a community that allowed bigotry or hate speech, but you want others to participate there, so you must think their choice of language and tactics are fine.)

This can be particularly difficult for staff. They receive some of the harshest treatment; groundless but hurtful attacks. (Central organizations bear the brunt of most conspiracy theories & related rage.) They will be particularly sensitive to the fact that you are the ED's partner.
In these ways, without attacking anyone yourself, you can cause others to start spending mental energy reading and worrying about attacks.

A parallel: Wikimedia projects also have a hard time maintaining civility. While most wikis have solid civility policies, it is possible to game such things, and our model is not great: we are less civil than many online communities (WikiHow in particular springs to mind). So you can absolutely find here on en:WP similar unkind and counterproductive attacks, if you seek that out. However here it is explicitly against the spirit of the site, however hard that is to enforce; and the angry exceptions are diluted by the tens of thousands of contributors working peacefully together, focused on a shared positive purpose.

Let's hear some of the groundless attacks.
Every fucking time we take on a WMF employee, it's for good reason.

How many times do we have to be right before the WMF takes notice?

[EricBarbour]

Mr. Samuel Klein has been very active on Wil's page. In particular he commented on WO
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =611758200

Let's hear some of the groundless attacks.
Every fucking time we take on a WMF employee, it's for good reason.

How many times do we have to be right before the WMF takes notice?

No one is ever "right" with Mr. Klein. He went to Harvard, and is friends with Nick Negroponte and people from the Berkman Center.
His nose is buried deeply in Jimbo's ass. Therefore he is always right. And everyone else is dumber/lesser.

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

Well, Mr. Klein should have some empathy for those giving into the temptation to make ad hominem comments about Kevin Gorman, who does look like the love child of Beavis and a clownfish.

[Midsize Jake]

Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem...

We stopped framing concerns to resolve the problem after the Wikipedia governance and underlying community successfully disregarded the first hundred or so of our concerns that were framed to resolve a problem.

Personally, I would take issue with the original statement on its face. Most of our discussions are "framed" to resolve Wikipedia-related problems - the truth is that Mr. Klein, like most Wikipedians, simply ignores solutions that involve removing the existing members of the WP hierarchy or firing various WMF employees. That doesn't magically make them non-solutions, it just means he doesn't like them because they might have a negative effect on him personally.

I would agree that there have been a few (unusual) cases where someone here brings up a problem and nobody can suggest anything whatsoever to fix it, but that doesn't mean the site is failing or deliberately being "offensive." It could just as easily mean that some of Wikipedia's problems are simply insoluble, even if it were possible (in cases where the problems are non-systemic) to replace the people who cause them.

[Vigilant]

Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem...

We stopped framing concerns to resolve the problem after the Wikipedia governance and underlying community successfully disregarded the first hundred or so of our concerns that were framed to resolve a problem.

Personally, I would take issue with the original statement on its face. Most of our discussions are "framed" to resolve Wikipedia-related problems - the truth is that Mr. Klein, like most Wikipedians, simply ignores solutions that involve removing the existing members of the WP hierarchy or firing various WMF employees. That doesn't magically make them non-solutions, it just means he doesn't like them because they might have a negative effect on him personally.

I would agree that there have been a few (unusual) cases where someone here brings up a problem and nobody can suggest anything whatsoever to fix it, but that doesn't mean the site is failing or deliberately being "offensive." It could just as easily mean that some of Wikipedia's problems are simply insoluble, even if it were possible (in cases where the problems are non-systemic) to replace the people who cause them.

Hear, hear!

[Abd]

Mr. Samuel Klein has been very active on Wil's page. In particular he commented on WO
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =611758200

So you can absolutely find here on en:WP similar unkind and counterproductive attacks, if you seek that out. However here it is explicitly against the spirit of the site, however hard that is to enforce; and the angry exceptions are diluted by the tens of thousands of contributors working peacefully together, focused on a shared positive purpose.

Sj runs an very old game: our ideals are better than their reality. That game fuels wars, maintains ancient enmities, people die because of it. Basically, he excuses incivility on Wikipedia in two ways: it's "rare," and "it is not the spirit of the place."

He is not entirely incorrect, but completely misses the point, or there is a darker side to this, which I'll get to below.

Wikipediocracy is explicitly a Wikipedia-criticism site. From the Welcome section:

Welcome to Wikipediocracy, the Wikipedia Forum. We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with the structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world's most frequently visited websites, the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

All are welcome to participate here. Be advised, however, that this site is strictly moderated; Posts which are off-topic or otherwise annoying will be moved or deleted at the discretion of our august team of moderators, all veterans of the Wikipedia Review during its better days.

That's not a "neutral," encyclopedic statement. Wikipediocracy, however, does not pretend to be a neutral encyclopedia. It's simply a site where refugees from Wikipedia, victims of abuse, experienced Wikipedians who retired from the site in disgust, or who are still active, may talk about the place, generally openly, generally without censorship. As such, there will be some raw talk, incivility, etc.

There are, indeed, vast reaches of Wikipedia with no visible conflict. There are also vast reaches, overlapping with this, where the quality is very poor.

Where people seriously engage with content, there can be periods where people cooperate, but most editing is done in relative solitude. When people do work together on some project, and are congenial, it can be an enjoyable experience. And then someone shows up who is not congenial, and then all hell can break loose. What we are seeing now, with Gorman and the List of Wikipedia controversies (T-H-L), is a veritable torrent of incivility, with a clear, non-neutral, and very obvious agenda behind it. (I'm not talking about the opinion that the exclusion incident is not adequately notable yet, as such, but the clear reaching for arguments that are actually irrelevant, and the personal attacks on alf.laylah, who is far from a Wikipediocrat.

That incident was triggered by Wllm's edit, an innocent one, I think. It's not that the incident, in itself, is so terribly important; rather it is what the incident, and the controversy over it, reveals about the culture that is of interest.

And now to the darker possibility. This person having a chat with Wllm on his talk page is a member of the Board of Wllm's partner's employer. Just a nice friendly chat. No pressure, of course.

Similarly, WO is among other things a source of regular attacks on community members; AIUI mainly focused on a few dozen highly active en:WP editors, Commons editors and WMF staff.

Notice the ascription to WO as the "source." The source of Wikipedia content is not Wikipedia, i.e., the WMF, it's the "community," and if there is anything problematic there, it is not the WMF's fault, or Wikipedia's fault, just the fault of those few bad apples. But the source of criticism ("attacks"), for Sj, is WO, not the community. It's the same community as for Wikipedia, that is, the community of interest in Wikipedia, and most WO participants are or have been major contributors to Wikipedia. Kumioko is an example, but there are many, many others. To Sj, these are non-persons, all. And if they complain, it's uncivil and to be dismissed. In fact, many of us are not exactly complaining, we are describing. The distinction seems to be lost on some. When I described steward locking practice on meta, it was deleted as "harassment." The pages were in my user space, not yet asserted as part of any process that anyone needed to pay attention to. There was no incivility there, but actions were being described, neutrally, with links to logs. It's obvious what happened. Observation is not allowed.

Sometimes there are valid concerns underlying the attacks, but they are generally not framed to resolve a problem: they are caricatured, framed to be offensive and disruptive.

Complaints are many, solutions are few. It is a common belief that problems are caused by bad people. That is certainly behind a great deal of Wikipedia response to disruption: instead of fixing the system, which can be difficult, ban the bad people. Obviously, if everyone was good, problems with the system would not bite, because people would just naturally get along. What I wonder is for how many years will the situation have to continue before people like SJ wake up and realize that, hey, this isn't working!

And then, by that time, he will be out of power, on the outside looking in, finding that whatever he says is ignored.

Anyway, with the common belief, it's natural that complaints about Wikipedia problems would point to and identify the Bad Guys. It's very, very human. One would think that a serious organization would have serious board members who would understand normal human responses. But Wikipedia didn't set up structure that would do this. It promotes from within the dysfunctional community, so it ends up with people like Sj. Smart, to a degree, but nowhere near smart enough to actually transform the situation.

Actually, it wouldn't take "smart." It would take honesty and a willingness to listen. But Sj doesn't have that. He is, after all, in charge, he's the In of the In.

He did invite conversation on meta, where "everyone" could join in. Nice idea, I thought. Sj, not everyone can edit meta. I can, great, though I've been threatened with a block if I so much as point to logs in a neutral study, or simply ask for undeletion of the study. I don't feel safe on meta, and I need meta on occasion for Wikiversity work. So far, there is little risk on Wikiversity, but events have shown that it is also not really safe. Nowhere under the WMF umbrella is safe, not with the lock tool being so freely used with no oversight, and not with content suppression being used to hide, even from administrators, harmless content considered critical (though, in fact, neutral.)

The exclusion of Kohs from the WikiConference based on a policy of making the place safe is irony upon irony. Kohs and many others others have demonstrated that Wikipedia is not safe. Does the WMF care about that? It looks like not.

When you promote the forum as a place to have conversation, the targets of this abuse see this as endorsing such attacks. (e.g., You would not participate in a community that allowed bigotry or hate speech, but you want others to participate there, so you must think their choice of language and tactics are fine.)

What Sj totally misses is that what he calls "targets of abuse" are mostly those who have abused others. Sj is utterly unconcerned about these people, the abused, because to him they are not important. They are easily dismissed as trolls, POV-pushers, malcontents, etc., whereas the people he is defending are the important people, the workers who make Wikipedia successful, in his view.

The fact is that the vast majority of abused Wikipedians don't come to Wikipediocracy, they simply disappear, as far as Wikipedia is concerned. There could be millions of such. It's totally unclear how many of the registered editors that don't edit, i.e., the very large majority of them, do so because they found the environment less than congenial. Does the board want to know? Is it making any efforts to find out? Does the board have any measure of the damage that has been done by the ruling clique on Wikipedia?

I know the reputation of Wikipedia among academics I meet, of all kinds. Very poor. They have stories to tell, sometimes personal, more often it's about some colleague who attempted to edit in their area of expertise.

It is very easy for a Wikipedia like Sj to dismiss stories like this. Those academics violated policies, they didn't understand, etc. And of course, they did.

But who established those policies? Who interpreted them in such a way as to make them toxic to experts? There were many ways Wikipedia could have turned out, but people like Sj will assume that the way it is, is ideal, except maybe for this or that tweak. They will never acknowledge that there might be irresolvable contradictions in what was set up.

I was successful, on Wikipedia, intervening in a dispute between a professor, in his field of expertise, and someone who might as well have been Randy from Boise. The result was that they started cooperating. It didn't take much more than listening to both of them and encouraging them to open up. That's the kind of work that I was explicitly prohibited from doing by ArbCom. They did not show any cause for that, it came out of the blue. I do understand why they passed that "remedy," but, basically, the technical term for it was "stupid." They were trying to fix a different problem, the wordiness.

This can be particularly difficult for staff. They receive some of the harshest treatment; groundless but hurtful attacks.

Which is why they are paid! However, it is not written in stone that someone is "harshly treated" just because they are staff. Staff is not attacked here qua staff, not usually, anyway. People who have done specific things are criticized, and, yes, often uncivilly. But that's the real world. What Sj fails to notice is the radically uncivil criticism on his side, in his own comments and actions, and in those of the community he defends. He is not part of the solution, that's quite obvious. Not so far, anyway. He could be so, and all it would take would be for him to stop telling us how it is, and start listening. He has his experience and we have ours. His experience is not "wrong," but it's missing something. It's incomplete, quite incomplete.

The collective experience of the WPO critical community dwarfs his personal experience, because it *includes* insider experience.

(Central organizations bear the brunt of most conspiracy theories & related rage.)

So, now, he is essentially dismissing Wikipedia criticism as a conspiracy theory, and as "rage."

They will be particularly sensitive to the fact that you are the ED's partner.

Bingo! He's getting to the point. We wouldn't want to frighten the staff, would we? Or the generous volunteers who do all the work?

Subtext: we wouldn't want there to be any backlash from the Board against your partner, would we? Surely that would be a shame, right? So, Wllm, how about you shut up. Your choice, of course. However, from what I'm telling you, you can tell how I'll vote on the board if you continue your IRRESPONSIBLE CREATION OF FEAR IN OUR STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS.

In these ways, without attacking anyone yourself, you can cause others to start spending mental energy reading and worrying about attacks.

Reading this, what occurs to me is: Evil. I'm surprised, I wasn't thinking this way. I don't particularly believe in evil. But there it is: the seductive voice, the smooth argument, the sly and deniable threat, as creepy as it comes.

[tarantino]

Reading this, what occurs to me is: Evil. I'm surprised, I wasn't thinking this way. I don't particularly believe in evil. But there it is: the seductive voice, the smooth argument, the sly and deniable threat, as creepy as it comes.

His eyes are kind of reptilian.

[Zoloft]

It would be an interesting exercise to ask the Wikimedia Trustees individually if any of them were registered at Wikipediocracy.
I'm just sayin'. I ain't tellin'.

[wllm]

Reading this, what occurs to me is: Evil. I'm surprised, I wasn't thinking this way. I don't particularly believe in evil. But there it is: the seductive voice, the smooth argument, the sly and deniable threat, as creepy as it comes.

His eyes are kind of reptilian.

He is a person. I suggest we avoiding objectifying him, or, in this case, reptilifying him. :/ I won't speculate on your motives here, but I can say that this is the kind of thing that cowards do so that they don't feel so bad about saying things that are unjust to others.

We are all humans. We all have our points of pride and our challenges. So does he. At the very least, you should be able to empathize with him at this most basic level.

Put another way, he could be the spitting image of Mothra for all I care. It's his ideas that count.

Had to step in on this one.
,Wil

[Midsize Jake]

Put another way, he could be the spitting image of Mothra for all I care. It's his ideas that count.

Maybe so, but I had him over to my house for dinner once, and not only did he refuse to even touch my signature cheese soufflé, after he'd left I went into the den to check the terrarium and every single one of Gorgo's mealworms was gone.

Had to step in on this one.

Who are you, again?

[Zoloft]

Reading this, what occurs to me is: Evil. I'm surprised, I wasn't thinking this way. I don't particularly believe in evil. But there it is: the seductive voice, the smooth argument, the sly and deniable threat, as creepy as it comes.

His eyes are kind of reptilian.

He is a person. I suggest we avoiding objectifying him, or, in this case, reptilifying him. :/ I won't speculate on your motives here, but I can say that this is the kind of thing that cowards do so that they don't feel so bad about saying things that are unjust to others.

We are all humans. We all have our points of pride and our challenges. So does he. At the very least, you should be able to empathize with him at this most basic level.

Put another way, he could be the spitting image of Mothra for all I care. It's his ideas that count.

Had to step in on this one.
,Wil

I don't like this sort of shot either, but tarantino is usually tongue-in-cheek. This is the type of post I sometimes strangle quietly in the dark of night, though.
Welcome back, wil, if only for a moment.
*picks a few arrows and knives out of wil's back*
Wow, some of these are monogrammed. Quality.

[Midsize Jake]

I don't like this sort of shot either, but tarantino is usually tongue-in-cheek. This is the type of post I sometimes strangle quietly in the dark of night, though.

Y'all did notice the word "velociraptor" on his t-shirt, right? I mean, the lizard reference wasn't just a random insult, now was it.

[wllm]

Mr. Samuel Klein has been very active on Wil's page. In particular he commented on WO
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =611758200

Let's hear some of the groundless attacks.
Every fucking time we take on a WMF employee, it's for good reason.

How many times do we have to be right before the WMF takes notice?

No one is ever "right" with Mr. Klein. He went to Harvard, and is friends with Nick Negroponte and people from the Berkman Center.
His nose is buried deeply in Jimbo's ass. Therefore he is always right. And everyone else is dumber/lesser.

How is that remotely useful? You all quote stuff that he said on my talk page. I don't agree with all of what he said, but none of it was beyond the realm of reason. He had a lot of good points.

So, what to do? Are we going to be putting a fine point on his characterizations of WO by doing and saying exactly what he's accusing people here of doing and saying? Or are we going to show people that there is more to WO than a bunch of personal attacks? How bout this time we try stepping up?

[wllm]

Put another way, he could be the spitting image of Mothra for all I care. It's his ideas that count.

Maybe so, but I had him over to my house for dinner once, and not only did he refuse to even touch my signature cheese soufflé, after he'd left I went into the den to check the terrarium and every single one of Gorgo's mealworms was gone.

Had to step in on this one.

Who are you, again?

It really bugs me when everyone here starts picking on anybody who doesn't happen to be me. In every other case, I think it's hilarious.

Gorgo? Actual pet or another giant monster reference?

[wllm]

I don't like this sort of shot either, but tarantino is usually tongue-in-cheek. This is the type of post I sometimes strangle quietly in the dark of night, though.

Y'all did notice the word "velociraptor" on his t-shirt, right? I mean, the lizard reference wasn't just a random insult, now was it.

All's I see is a person. And a pretty smart-looking one, at that. It immediately occurs to me that I would probably be dismissive of this guy at my own peril. Another thought quickly follows my original impulse for self preservation: I bet he's got some interesting things to say. I'd like to find out what those things are before getting in to the whole Wikipedia thing with him. Maybe it has something to do with dinosaurs. . .

[Midsize Jake]

So, what to do? Are we going to be putting a fine point on his characterizations of WO by doing and saying exactly what he's accusing people here of doing and saying? Or are we going to show people that there is more to WO than a bunch of personal attacks? How bout this time we try stepping up?

What, exactly, do you think he accused us of doing and saying? Because I can guarantee that what he wrote is not what he meant. These people don't read Wikipediocracy threads unless someone notifies them of something they think is an "attack," so of course they think everything here is an "attack" - they don't read anything else on this site.

Meanwhile, could you get him to explain what "One Velociraptor Per Child" means, on the t-shirt? Does he actually want to assign "Jurassic Park"-style killer dinosaur clones to living children, and if so, what does he think the result of that would be?

Klein is actually not one of the worst, but he's plenty smug and arrogant all the same.

[Midsize Jake]

All's I see is a person. And a pretty smart-looking one, at that. It immediately occurs to me that I would probably be dismissive of this guy at my own peril...

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Tarantino made a joke about Klein having eyes that are "kind of reptilian" because the words "One Velociraptor Per Child" is on the t-shirt he is wearing in the photo. This was not a random insult, OK? You know what a random insult is, right? And you know what wry, sardonic humor is? (Hint: This was the latter!)

Come on, man, you're supposed to be smarter than this, FFS.

[dogbiscuit]

All's I see is a person. And a pretty smart-looking one, at that.

So, as much as you object to someone taking the piss out of someone's appearance (mistakenly or not), you are now able to judge people positively by their appearance. You know that is the same thing? You can't have it both ways. People pretend that appearance doesn't matter when in fact we live in a world absolutely dominated by appearance.

I would note that although it is appearing to be dangerous ground to suggest this, many Wikipedians and WMF people actually are making statements with their appearance, whether it is tattoos or the way they dress or the cut of their hair (Sue Gardner is a prime example who is saying "I may be a high paid CEO but I am down with the kids.") and at that point appearance does become noteworthy. The typical member here is probably more conscious of it being middle aged.

[Hex]

It's a sort of ad hominem defence - you aren't allowed to point out a problem if you are not able to provide a solution.

Yep. Seen all the time as "WP:SOFIXIT". Poison.

[Poetlister]

I don't like this sort of shot either, but tarantino is usually tongue-in-cheek. This is the type of post I sometimes strangle quietly in the dark of night, though.

Y'all did notice the word "velociraptor" on his t-shirt, right? I mean, the lizard reference wasn't just a random insult, now was it.

[pedant]A velociraptor wasn't a lizard, despite the etymology of dinosaur.[/pedant]

[Vigilant]

I don't like this sort of shot either, but tarantino is usually tongue-in-cheek. This is the type of post I sometimes strangle quietly in the dark of night, though.

Y'all did notice the word "velociraptor" on his t-shirt, right? I mean, the lizard reference wasn't just a random insult, now was it.

[pedant]A velociraptor wasn't a lizard, despite the etymology of dinosaur.[/pedant]

OP said "reptilian"... jus' sayin'

[Abd]

It's a sort of ad hominem defence - you aren't allowed to point out a problem if you are not able to provide a solution.

Yep. Seen all the time as "WP:SOFIXIT". Poison.

SOFIXIT is a rational response if the complainant has the power to fix it. However, some problems are complex and fixing them not obvious. Before we can "fix" a problem, we need to identify it. Otherwise, we may just be putting a band-aid on gangrene.

[Randy from Boise]

It's a sort of ad hominem defence - you aren't allowed to point out a problem if you are not able to provide a solution.

Yep. Seen all the time as "WP:SOFIXIT". Poison.

SOFIXIT is a rational response if the complainant has the power to fix it. However, some problems are complex and fixing them not obvious. Before we can "fix" a problem, we need to identify it. Otherwise, we may just be putting a band-aid on gangrene.

I make reference to SOFIXIT in edit summaries all the time to explain why I'm pulling off inapplicable or barely applicable or downright dumb flags from the top of articles.

/////My graphics posting abilities seem to have been moderated away...///////
Edit: checking this out. --Zoloft

RfB

[Randy from Boise]

I've got a few minutes this morning before I need to get busy and thought I'd take some time exploring the Wikimedia links at the very top of this thread.

First off, here are the minutes of the plenary sessions of the board: link

Initial structural observations:

(1) We see that the board engages in regular physical meetings, not video conferences. As there are board members from several continents, this is a costly and cumbersome way to run the operation. It means that sessions will, of necessity, be of limited duration and infrequent occurrence.

(2) The Wikipedia board is nominally like the structure that governed the Socialist Party of America about 100 years ago: four quarterly physical meetings, sometimes at party headquarters in Chicago, sometimes elsewhere in association with a scheduled convention. Actual day-to-day authority in that situation devolved to the professional Executive Secretary. Implication to me is that the WMF Board has formal control of the WMF organization, but actual power is probably in the hands of the ED and the circle of managers in San Francisco.

(3) WMF Board schedules 4 quarterly face-to-face sessions and adds additional "meetings" by phone or IRC. The physical meetings in the last few years have been twice per year at HQ in SF, once at a European location, and once at the site of Wikimania. The additional meetings, ranging from 1 to a small handful each year, are irregular and dedicated to some specific issue or theme.

(4) Physical meetings are usually two days in duration, historically on a Friday & Saturday — although the convention of those two specific days of the week seems to have been abandoned last year.

Meeting Content:

(1) Again, harkening back to the old Socialist Party, WMF Boards started the year with a presentation from the Executive Secretary (ED) outlining achievements and goals for the year. Obviously, the ability of a casual, occasionally meeting board to actually supervise this content was nominal. Beginning in 2012-Q1 the Executive Secretary's presentation was supplemented by presentations from the three main departments of WMF: Technology, Community, and Global Development. These chiefs were at that time Erik Möller, Zack Exley, and Barry Newstead, respectively. One assumes that along with Sue Gardner these were the primary decision-makers at WMF on a day-to-day basis.

(2) Interestingly, the term "deep dive" appears in the 2012 summary report from the 2012-Q1 meeting (pg. 3, defined parenthetically as a "narrative story") — it is a WMF jargon phrase, not Angloized Russian jargon favored by Ms. Tretikov. link

(3) The presentation of the Executive Director and the three Department chiefs seems to have been carefully coordinated. The "report" of this leadership group was essentially a PowerPoint show (downloadable from the link above), which indicates to me that the SF group were definitely the key decision-makers and the Board exercised nominal authority over them: general strategic planning, but were fed information from below and were probably in no position to challenge or even question it intelligently. If the board were in control, the report would have taken a far more academic form, it seems to me.

(4) All agenda items were tightly scheduled for time. Again, this would seem to indicate a carefully orchestrated process rather than the free give-and-take needed for authentic supervision.

...I'll pick up on this again later...

[Vigilant]

The ONLY reason they have in-person meetings is to expend the travel budget.

[Randy from Boise]

The ONLY reason they have in-person meetings is to expend the travel budget.

They get to go to the annual convention and to some exotic locale at least once a year that way also. Euros go to the USA twice, Yanks go to Europe once...

I'm not saying this is unexpected or unreasonable, only inefficient given modern communications technology.


RfB

[Vigilant]

The ONLY reason they have in-person meetings is to expend the travel budget.

They get to go to the annual convention and to some exotic locale at least once a year that way also. Euros go to the USA twice, Yanks go to Europe once...

I'm not saying this is unexpected or unreasonable, only inefficient given modern communications technology.


RfB

Let me be more explicit.

* It's a waste of donor dollars.
* It's incredibly inefficient.
* It's a sop to the wikirati.
* To anyone who pays attention, it looks really bad.
* It probably prevents actual governance lest their perqs be discontinued.

[Hex]

It's a sort of ad hominem defence - you aren't allowed to point out a problem if you are not able to provide a solution.

Yep. Seen all the time as "WP:SOFIXIT". Poison.

SOFIXIT is a rational response if the complainant has the power to fix it.

Technically, the majority of regular editors have the power to fix almost all of the typical problems that are identified in articles. What they don't have is infinite time, or patience, or the desire to do grunt work for free above and beyond what they're already doing. People also stretch SOFIXIT beyond its reasonable bounds. "AfD is not cleanup", and "there is no deadline", I saw paired with it recently. And yet it took the threat of deletion - after most of a decade of garbage accreting continuously on an article - to make anything happen at all, because of the incredibly unappealing prospect of finding 450 references for a single article meant that nobody was ever likely to "fix it". And soon it will be forgotten and unmaintained again and we'll be back to square one, with people making the same "so fix it" arguments that they did when it was taken to AfD the first time, 7 years ago. (And big-mouthed douchebags like mega-edit-count-freak Lugnuts (T-C-L) treating us to their "personality", as here.)

However, some problems are complex and fixing them not obvious. Before we can "fix" a problem, we need to identify it. Otherwise, we may just be putting a band-aid on gangrene.

That's the converse of SOFIXIT, a THEREIFIXEDIT if you will. "We made some more policy, now everything is fine." No, look deeper.

[Randy from Boise]

The ONLY reason they have in-person meetings is to expend the travel budget.

They get to go to the annual convention and to some exotic locale at least once a year that way also. Euros go to the USA twice, Yanks go to Europe once...

I'm not saying this is unexpected or unreasonable, only inefficient given modern communications technology.


RfB

Let me be more explicit.

* It's a waste of donor dollars.
* It's incredibly inefficient.
* It's a sop to the wikirati.
* To anyone who pays attention, it looks really bad.
* It probably prevents actual governance lest their perqs be discontinued.

What structure would you propose?

RfB

[Midsize Jake]

If I might interject something a bit contrarian here, I personally suspect that the reason for the seemingly-unnecessary face-to-face meetings is that the board members are mostly long-term Wikipedians, and as such they're conditioned by the years of endless online bickering and scheming to have pretty much zero trust or confidence in their colleagues, at least when they're encountered via a computer. In person, most of them are probably fairly nice, reasonable people, who wouldn't dream of plotting against each other or stabbing each other in the back for no good reason, at least if they're all physically present in the same room.

The real point to be made here, at least as I see it, is that these are people who fully understand the realities of internet-based social interaction, to the point where they actually spend enormous amounts of donor money to avoid it in conducting their own business. A business that just happens to involve running the one website that most readily epitomizes the problem with internet-based social interaction.

[Randy from Boise]

If I might interject something a bit contrarian here, I personally suspect that the reason for the seemingly-unnecessary face-to-face meetings is that the board members are mostly long-term Wikipedians, and as such they're conditioned by the years of endless online bickering and scheming to have pretty much zero trust or confidence in their colleagues, at least when they're encountered via a computer. In person, most of them are probably fairly nice, reasonable people, who wouldn't dream of plotting against each other or stabbing each other in the back for no good reason, at least if they're all physically present in the same room.

The real point to be made here, at least as I see it, is that these are people who fully understand the realities of internet-based social interaction, to the point where they actually spend enormous amounts of donor money to avoid it in conducting their own business. A business that just happens to involve running the one website that most readily epitomizes the problem with internet-based social interaction.

My sense is that this is not right. These are the "go along to get along" types, who believe in collaboration and the notion of Assuming Good Faith and see their wiki world as a mostly happy place marred by "trolls"...

This structure of a board with formal authority but actual authority in a professional staff, which then leads the nominal decision-makers by the nose, is extremely common. It takes a big "situation" for a board like that to intervene in the day-to-day workings of the organization.

The implication here is that Ms. Tretikov is in an extremely powerful position if she can forge alliances and gain the trust of the Board. In a fairly short period of time she should emerge as the chief decision-maker in the organization and the one best able to cause it to shift directions — although it is a lot like steering a big ship, a turn of the wheel takes a little while to change the vessel's course.

The Board, I am already convinced, is neither the cause of the problem nor the solution to it. They are probably, individually and collectively, good and well-meaning people. They are also not fitted, it seems to me, to create change in San Francisco. The Executive Director in the National Office is the real center of power, not the quarterly get-togethers of the National Executive Committee. Whoops, that's the Socialist Party, 1920.

RfB

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

I've got a few minutes this morning before I need to get busy and thought I'd take some time exploring the Wikimedia links at the very top of this thread.

First off, here are the minutes of the plenary sessions of the board: link

Initial structural observations:

(1) We see that the board engages in regular physical meetings, not video conferences. As there are board members from several continents, this is a costly and cumbersome way to run the operation. It means that sessions will, of necessity, be of limited duration and infrequent occurrence.

(2) The Wikipedia board is nominally like the structure that governed the Socialist Party of America about 100 years ago: four quarterly physical meetings, sometimes at party headquarters in Chicago, sometimes elsewhere in association with a scheduled convention. Actual day-to-day authority in that situation devolved to the professional Executive Secretary. Implication to me is that the WMF Board has formal control of the WMF organization, but actual power is probably in the hands of the ED and the circle of managers in San Francisco.

(3) WMF Board schedules 4 quarterly face-to-face sessions and adds additional "meetings" by phone or IRC. The physical meetings in the last few years have been twice per year at HQ in SF, once at a European location, and once at the site of Wikimania. The additional meetings, ranging from 1 to a small handful each year, are irregular and dedicated to some specific issue or theme.

(4) Physical meetings are usually two days in duration, historically on a Friday & Saturday — although the convention of those two specific days of the week seems to have been abandoned last year.

Meeting Content:

(1) Again, harkening back to the old Socialist Party, WMF Boards started the year with a presentation from the Executive Secretary (ED) outlining achievements and goals for the year. Obviously, the ability of a casual, occasionally meeting board to actually supervise this content was nominal. Beginning in 2012-Q1 the Executive Secretary's presentation was supplemented by presentations from the three main departments of WMF: Technology, Community, and Global Development. These chiefs were at that time Erik Möller, Zack Exley, and Barry Newstead, respectively. One assumes that along with Sue Gardner these were the primary decision-makers at WMF on a day-to-day basis.

(2) Interestingly, the term "deep dive" appears in the 2012 summary report from the 2012-Q1 meeting (pg. 3, defined parenthetically as a "narrative story") — it is a WMF jargon phrase, not Angloized Russian jargon favored by Ms. Tretikov. link

(3) The presentation of the Executive Director and the three Department chiefs seems to have been carefully coordinated. The "report" of this leadership group was essentially a PowerPoint show (downloadable from the link above), which indicates to me that the SF group were definitely the key decision-makers and the Board exercised nominal authority over them: general strategic planning, but were fed information from below and were probably in no position to challenge or even question it intelligently. If the board were in control, the report would have taken a far more academic form, it seems to me.

(4) All agenda items were tightly scheduled for time. Again, this would seem to indicate a carefully orchestrated process rather than the free give-and-take needed for authentic supervision.

...I'll pick up on this again later...

You are making Vigilant get all warm and fuzzy.

[Randy from Boise]

It seems to me, thinking about these things a bit, that for the WMF Board to actually take control they would need to teleconference once a week or so. That's technologically possible these days, but not anything like what they're currently doing.

I really don't see that happening. The current "highly relaxed" leadership style, phrasing things generously, suits them just fine.

RfB

[Kelly Martin]

It seems to me, thinking about these things a bit, that for the WMF Board to actually take control they would need to teleconference once a week or so. That's technologically possible these days, but not anything like what they're currently doing.

I really don't see that happening. The current "highly relaxed" leadership style, phrasing things generously, suits them just fine.

This is in part reactive to the daily-interventional management of the Board in the 2005-2007 era, which was exceedingly tiresome for the Board (and was due to the fact that during that timeframe the WMF had a tiny handful of employees) and especially for Florence Devouard, who worked her ass off trying to run things after Jimmy stepped down as chairman, without receiving any compensation and without anywhere near the community support that Jimmy had.

[Vigilant]

The ONLY reason they have in-person meetings is to expend the travel budget.

They get to go to the annual convention and to some exotic locale at least once a year that way also. Euros go to the USA twice, Yanks go to Europe once...

I'm not saying this is unexpected or unreasonable, only inefficient given modern communications technology.


RfB

Let me be more explicit.

* It's a waste of donor dollars.
* It's incredibly inefficient.
* It's a sop to the wikirati.
* To anyone who pays attention, it looks really bad.
* It probably prevents actual governance lest their perqs be discontinued.

What structure would you propose?

RfB

Sorry Tim, I missed this post.

I'd have the board meet by Skype once a week.
Public logs of the meetings available on wikipedia commons.
I'd have the agendas published every week prior to the meeting.
I'd have the video transcribed voice to text and searchable.

[thekohser]

I'd have the board meet by Skype once a week.

Any non-profit board that required volunteer trustees to meet once a week would soon be an empty board.

Correction: Empty of any serious and successful people. I'm sure folks like Fae and Gorman and Gerard would be happy to meet by Skype once a week.