Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor - Daily Dot

[thekohser]

Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor
- by Tim Sampson
September 24, 2013

The Wikimedia Foundation—the group in charge of, but not really in charge of Wikipedia—faces mounting backlash as the foundation continues to implement a new user interface that has rankled the sensibilities of longtime editors.

Wikipedia's new VisualEditor interface went wide nearly three months ago, becoming the default setting for all logged-in editors on English Wikipedia. The "What You See Is What You Get"-style editing system is a ploy by the WMF to solve the site's recruitment crisis, making it easier for new editors to get involved and stay involved.

But it's a move that forsakes the wants and desires of longtime Wikipedians, who say VisualEditor is buggy and untested. They voted overwhelmingly to make the new editing platform an opt-in, rather than opt-out program, but WMF moved forward with their plans to make it the default setting.

...

Ample mention of Wikipediocracy.com!

[TungstenCarbide]

Great article. I have one small correction though;

...For years, Wikipedia has been hemorrhaging users. Between 2006 and 2011, the site lost 15,000 English language editors—roughly 30 percent of the total number of editors it had operating at its peak. Inquires into the editorial decline have uncovered a number of causes, including the difficulty of the text-based editing interface. That's why WMF made it one of their top priorities to revamp the editing process, making it more intuitive, like Tumblr or Wordpress. ...

That's not quite right. The reason so many people have left Wikipedia is its dysfunctional culture. When you put people like this into positions of power and authority, guess what happens? People leave, by the thousands, literally.

[Vigilant]

Great article. I have one small correction though;

...For years, Wikipedia has been hemorrhaging users. Between 2006 and 2011, the site lost 15,000 English language editors—roughly 30 percent of the total number of editors it had operating at its peak. Inquires into the editorial decline have uncovered a number of causes, including the difficulty of the text-based editing interface. That's why WMF made it one of their top priorities to revamp the editing process, making it more intuitive, like Tumblr or Wordpress. ...

That's not quite right. The reason so many people have left Wikipedia is it's dysfunctional culture. When you put people like this into positions of power and authority, guess what happens? People leave, by the thousands, literally.

I'm sure the scandal after scandal after scandal hasn't helped their numbers either.
List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L)

Strange that there's no mention of Little Green Rosetta in that article.
Also, no mention of VE or FLow.

Get cracking, minions!

[Midsize Jake]

Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor

Nice!

That said, anyone here who approaches, or is approached by, someone in the media regarding this issue should make one thing very clear: The text-based WikiML editor has never been seriously proposed as a significant factor in editor attrition, at least not by anyone outside the WMF itself. This is actually a fiction being proposed by the WMF to justify their empire-building and developer-staff growth.

And even the WMF didn't start spewing this particular lie until they started focusing on female editor retention, at which point they started saying - again, without independent concurrence - that women were "turned off" by the text-based editor, clearly reflecting the sexist notion that women somehow are less capable of understanding technical concepts than men.

To wit, the study nearly always mentioned as a source for the editorship decline (PDF link) carries no mention of the text-based editor whatsoever.

[Mason]

Speaking to the Daily Dot, Walsh defended the VisualEditor and the way it has been implemented. Though he admits the site has its glitches, he said they will never be ironed out without wide-scale beta testing—particularly on the kind of new users the site hopes to capture with this new interface.

If you can't fix a bug without having millions of people double-check your work, you're doing it wrong.

[dogbiscuit]

Speaking to the Daily Dot, Walsh defended the VisualEditor and the way it has been implemented. Though he admits the site has its glitches, he said they will never be ironed out without wide-scale beta testing—particularly on the kind of new users the site hopes to capture with this new interface.

If you can't fix a bug without having millions of people double-check your work, you're doing it wrong.

They seem to be in a world where they believe the issue is in "surfacing" the bugs. Unfortunately for them, they haven't grasped that having surfaced the bugs, they need to do something about them.

I think the user base would have been tolerant of the approach if we were talking about software that essentially worked but was struggling to deal with malformed pages or peculiar combinations and they wanted to flush out the different conditions. That would make sense and in a non-critical environment you could make a feature of getting people involved.

What evidence have they that the widespread usage has garnered more bugs that:

a) could not be found by a reasonable set of test scripts planned out by a testing team versed in the ways of the wiki.

b) would not have been found through a traditional beta test with an appropriately invited audience;

and

c) have been successfully resolved.

With Flow on the way where the WMF team are imagining their own way of doing things and stridently ignoring the anxieties of the community who are the ones who are going to be using this, one reflects that there is no evidence that the WMF team ever did any research on what editors need to do when editing articles. I assume that they thought that they knew it all so didn't need external input and it looks like Flow will go the same way.

I think Flow will end up being a buggy phpBB with a massive performance hit on Wikipedia and they'll do things like blocking search because it overloads the database (I noted a comment along the lines of "you don't need to know how this is stored.").

[DanMurphy]

I just don't get this. If you need to test something this big why not budget, say, $50,000 to pay testers. Pay 500 inexperienced people $100 each for a week in which they promise to make 100 edits to Wikipedia. Is there some reason why this sensible approach wouldn't be wise? Or yield reams of data on what works, what doesn't work, what trips up inexperienced users, etc...?

They could have also recruited a control group of experienced Wikipedia editors who would have done the work on their side for free.

Why did they not do this? Why are they not now talking about what (to me at least) sees like a blindingly obvious solution?

[Mancunium]

See also:

Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut'n'paste Visual Editor into the bin
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Wiki Man?
The Register, 25 September 2013

link to The Visual Editor is a huge failure WO thread: link

[Vigilant]

I just don't get this. If you need to test something this big why not budget, say, $50,000 to pay testers. Pay 500 inexperienced people $100 each for a week in which they promise to make 100 edits to Wikipedia. Is there some reason why this sensible approach wouldn't be wise? Or yield reams of data on what works, what doesn't work, what trips up inexperienced users, etc...?

They could have also recruited a control group of experienced Wikipedia editors who would have done the work on their side for free.

Why did they not do this? Why are they not now talking about what (to me at least) sees like a blindingly obvious solution?

They wouldn't have had to pay anyone.
Plenty of people would have volunteered out of goodwill.

Plenty of people did volunteer.
They ignored the responses, did not fix the already found bugs and bulled ahead because they wanted to meet their artificially aggressive schedule.

They have 800 bugs outstanding on bugzilla.
They do not need live testing at this point. They have PLENTY of work to do.

They do need to get a real regression environment up with voluminous atomic tests that ensure they are not reintroducing problems into the code base.
That's one thing that drives people mad.

The reason that they aren't doing these things?
EGO.
ARROGANCE.
INCOMPETENCE.

They know better than everyone else who's been through the wringer for decades on big projects.
They've figured it all out by uncritically reading Agile marketing materials.
Its a panacea. We're so much smarter than those old school programmers. Ha!
We're young and smart and AGILE and ... OH FUCK! OH FUCK! NO NO NO NO

well, shit



I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen this play out many times in the past.
I'd also be lying if I said I didn't hold similar attitudes to the WMF devs in the past.
The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

[Vigilant]

See also:

Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut'n'paste Visual Editor into the bin
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Wiki Man?
The Register, 25 September 2013

link to The Visual Editor is a huge failure WO thread: link

You forgot the link to the article

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25 ... ts_revolt/

[Vigilant]

Some cogent comments there from disaffected wikipedians

Fixing where the problem ain't

The reason the number of volunteer editors is dwindling has nothing at all to do with the editing system and everything to do with the bureaucratic nightmare pricktards from hell who relentlessly harass good-faith editors with real and valuable knowledge to contribute; harass them until they just give it up and go elsewhere to work on some other cooperative project where their co-workers actually *cooperate* on the task rather than maniacally defend their own petty power trips.

And yes, I made thousands of contributions there, but that was many years ago and like so many others I won't ever go back unless they deal with the real problem instead of being so absurdly blind to it that they invest thousands of expensive man hours in a technological "cure" for completely the wrong disease.

Get a clue, Wikipedia administrators: it's not the technology. It is you.

Re: Fixing where the problem ain't

It's the same with me. I've made thousands of Wikipedia edits in the past, but except for only one unimportant article, I haven't bothered to make any other edits since 2008. Even the most minor edit of fixing someone's poor grammar gets a revert and a warning.

It's like I wrote before - if you are an expert in your field, you are too busy a person to hover over and protect a Wikipedia article. And if you have nothing better to do all day than edit Wikipedia then you clearly are not an expert in your field.

[Mason]

Plenty of people did volunteer.
They ignored the responses, did not fix the already found bugs and bulled ahead because they wanted to meet their artificially aggressive schedule.

Chef: Would you like to try my new dish, la soupe agile?

Patron: OK. (samples some) Hmm. Interesting, but way too salty.

Chef: OK, thanks for letting me know. (a few minutes later) Could I get your thoughts on it now?

Patron: Sure. (samples some) This is exactly what you gave me last time. It's still way too salty.

Chef: Oh, we'll be fixing the saltiness issue in due course. In the meantime, it is important that we get your feedback. Shall I bring you some more?

[Mason]

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.

Another difference: reading Mr. Forrester's decrees, I see no learning going on. Just petulance.

[Moonage Daydream]

Plenty of people did volunteer.
They ignored the responses, did not fix the already found bugs and bulled ahead because they wanted to meet their artificially aggressive schedule.

Chef: Would you like to try my new dish, la soupe agile?

Patron: OK. (samples some) Hmm. Interesting, but way too salty.

Chef: OK, thanks for letting me know. (a few minutes later) Could I get your thoughts on it now?

Patron: Sure. (samples some) This is exactly what you gave me last time. It's still way too salty.

Chef: Oh, we'll be fixing the saltiness issue in due course. In the meantime, it is important that we get your feedback. Shall I bring you some more?

Soupe agile comes with all meals unless you opt out. If other people choose to have the soup it may get into your food and spoil it. We are aware of this issue.

[Vigilant]

Plenty of people did volunteer.
They ignored the responses, did not fix the already found bugs and bulled ahead because they wanted to meet their artificially aggressive schedule.

Chef: Would you like to try my new dish, la soupe agile?

Patron: OK. (samples some) Hmm. Interesting, but way too salty.

Chef: OK, thanks for letting me know. (a few minutes later) Could I get your thoughts on it now?

Patron: Sure. (samples some) This is exactly what you gave me last time. It's still way too salty.

Chef: Oh, we'll be fixing the saltiness issue in due course. In the meantime, it is important that we get your feedback. Shall I bring you some more?

Soupe agile comes with all meals unless you opt out. If other people choose to have the soup it may get into your food and spoil it. We are aware of this issue.

La soupe agile also comes during the apéritif, appetizer, salad, soup (but, of course), main course, digesitif, dessert, coffee and billing portions of the meal.

Failure to eat your soupe agile during any course will result in your waiter bringing you another course of soupe agile.

At some point, your soupe agile may spontaneously generate hair. This is a known problem. Please eat it all.

[Alison]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

[TungstenCarbide]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

... the rights of passage of a design engineer. Not many people know the pain.

[lilburne]

Something like this is almost always a management failure, and a failure to learn from past mistakes.

We run a no-blame system. IOW if something goes wrong we focus more on why it went wrong and how we stop a similar occurrence than the fact that Fred or Wilma messed up. Experience has shown us that its just as easy for anyone of us to make the same mistake. Therefore put some process in place to make it less likely that a similar mistake is made. We used to have an area of code that was always prone to leaking great big globs of memory. The problem was that as data was passed about within tyhe subsystem it was unclear as to what eventually owned the data. Simple low tech solution - change the function names or API such that it was obvious when a call to a method transfers ownership. No longer are coders in doubt when calling into the subsystem and the subsystem is no longer a cause of memory leaks.

[Cla68]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

[dogbiscuit]

What is really interesting to me is that the way the developers are performing with Wikipedia is exactly how Wikipedians react to those they perceive as outside of Wikipedia.

In the past, we have speculated about the impact of the distorted culture of Wikipedia and how it might affect Wikipedians ability to interact in the real world. Unwittingly, it seems to me that the WMF have created a Wikipedian culture within the development department with all the traits of Wikipedia being performed.

We have the inability to accept outside criticism, with the "you don't understand how we work" being used to fob off any criticism.

We have the allergic reaction to any suggestion that is presented from outside. It does not fit with their rule set, it can safely be ignored.

We have the complete disdain for those not of the body, transparently presented. Civility is something that is reserved for those of the body while those not of the body are treated with condescension and rudeness.

We have a supposedly new and untried way of working which is actually not novel and although the problems of these ways of working are known in the real world, the developers blindly ignore the advice and are convinced that they know best.

I think in a way VE is a very important lesson in why the toxic culture of Wikipedia is more dangerous than simply producing a third rate encyclopedia but is potentially producing damaged people who could not function properly in the real world if they absorb the Wikipedian mindset too thoroughly. Of course, the WMF development environment concentrates those traits in spades.

[Vigilant]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

[Zoloft]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

Talk pages soon will be the intersection of Parsoid, Flow, and VisualEditor. That's a lot of possible ways to go wrong.

[Vigilant]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

Talk pages soon will be the intersection of Parsoid, Flow, and VisualEditor. That's a lot of possible ways to go wrong.

Hasten the day.

[Cla68]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

I was once involved with a project to design a case management system for one certain type of military legal procedures. A military lawyer was the project manager because the thing was his idea. The scope of the program really wasn't that big, just designed to automate some paperwork processes between several involved government agencies. But, man, was it a huge headache. It seemed simple on paper, but there were so many unpredicted issues and problems that came up. The project manager was almost constantly in reactive rather than proactive mode. I don't know if it ever got implemented. A competent, experienced project manager is really, really important.

[Vigilant]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

I was once involved with a project to design a case management system for one certain type of military legal procedures. A military lawyer was the project manager because the thing was his idea. The scope of the program really wasn't that big, just designed to automate some paperwork processes between several involved government agencies. But, man, was it a huge headache. It seemed simple on paper, but there were so many unpredicted issues and problems that came up. The project manager was almost constantly in reactive rather than proactive mode. I don't know if it ever got implemented. A competent, experienced project manager is really, really important.

Too bad the WMF will probably think, "There's got to be a few more on en.wp that we can get for way, way below market rate."

[HRIP7]

What is really interesting to me is that the way the developers are performing with Wikipedia is exactly how Wikipedians react to those they perceive as outside of Wikipedia.

In the past, we have speculated about the impact of the distorted culture of Wikipedia and how it might affect Wikipedians ability to interact in the real world. Unwittingly, it seems to me that the WMF have created a Wikipedian culture within the development department with all the traits of Wikipedia being performed.

We have the inability to accept outside criticism, with the "you don't understand how we work" being used to fob off any criticism.

We have the allergic reaction to any suggestion that is presented from outside. It does not fit with their rule set, it can safely be ignored.

We have the complete disdain for those not of the body, transparently presented. Civility is something that is reserved for those of the body while those not of the body are treated with condescension and rudeness.

We have a supposedly new and untried way of working which is actually not novel and although the problems of these ways of working are known in the real world, the developers blindly ignore the advice and are convinced that they know best.

I think in a way VE is a very important lesson in why the toxic culture of Wikipedia is more dangerous than simply producing a third rate encyclopedia but is potentially producing damaged people who could not function properly in the real world if they absorb the Wikipedian mindset too thoroughly. Of course, the WMF development environment concentrates those traits in spades.

Yep. The same narcissism, the same overestimation of their abilities, the same obsession with buzzwords.

[Randy from Boise]

The metaphorical beatings I suffered at the hands of my consulting clients, employers, peers and customers eventually opened my eyes.

One substantial difference: I did my suffering/learning out of the public eye. These fuckers are branded with their very, very public failing.
I would not want to have been responsible for humiliating myself and my team in such a lasting manner.
I would wear that brand of shame for a looooong time.

I think this process is part of the rite-of-passage of *any* software engineer as they start out in their career. I know this happened to me before, in my twenties, and I took a humiliating dressing-down from my manager in front of our entire team. And I never forgot it either. That was in the early days of the internets, so no trace remains. We do stupid things in our youth.

For many of the people working on VE, it'll likely haunt them for ages & I feel bad for them as they're mostly in their early 20s and full of confidence and wide-eyed wonder. I don't think it's their direct fault that this project has run completely off the rails; that's down to their management team. But the code-monkeys will be the ones who have to take the shaming, and I feel bad for them ...

The WMF apparently needs to hire an experienced software project manager to be in charge of these kinds of projects. Such an individual is not cheap, he or she would probably demand a six-figure salary. But, you can see that it's probably worth the money.

How could it not be given the cumulative cost for developing VE and Parsoid?
Amortizing paying double for a talented project manager would be a pittance over the number of man years they have into this disaster.

One itty bitty problem: who is gonna hire a talented project manager? WMF and its various national user clubs are not a meritocracy, they are participants in a vast crony system... It takes talent to recognize talent.

RfB

[dogbiscuit]

One itty bitty problem: who is gonna hire a talented project manager? WMF and its various national user clubs are not a meritocracy, they are participants in a vast crony system... It takes talent to recognize talent.

RfB

Isn't that the fundamental problem with the power structure at the WMF? There is no accountability, not shareholders, not even a donor who can hold them to account because they have a massive slush fund. Sue has now bailed (perhaps she more than anyone else understood the dysfunctional nature of the organisation and recognised it was beyond her to manage it).

There is a high percentage chance that Erik will slide into the top seat, yet he is the one person, if anyone, who has driven VE into the ground.

I think it is also interesting that we conceive of the WMF as a lightweight organisation, yet the dev team has expanded into a massive uncontrolled monster with no realistic goals.

[Vigilant]

One itty bitty problem: who is gonna hire a talented project manager? WMF and its various national user clubs are not a meritocracy, they are participants in a vast crony system... It takes talent to recognize talent.

RfB

Isn't that the fundamental problem with the power structure at the WMF? There is no accountability, not shareholders, not even a donor who can hold them to account because they have a massive slush fund. Sue has now bailed (perhaps she more than anyone else understood the dysfunctional nature of the organisation and recognised it was beyond her to manage it).

There is a high percentage chance that Erik will slide into the top seat, yet he is the one person, if anyone, who has driven VE into the ground.

I think it is also interesting that we conceive of the WMF as a lightweight organisation, yet the dev team has expanded into a massive uncontrolled monster with no realistic goals.

I think Erik Mo:eller may have foot-gunned himself with the VE debacle.
I have a sneaking suspicion that VE was to be his resume for the executive director spot.

I can't imagine what a hew and cry would go up from the community i he were chosen now.

[HRIP7]

Shameless puff piece in Finnish newspaper Kauppalehti (T-H-L). Here is what Google Translate makes of it (slightly edited for readability):

Wikipedia Founder: Evolve Faster
Thursday, 26/09/2013 at 18:49
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales admitted that Wikipedia's management is not always easy, but a lot of companies could learn something from it.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said social media companies need to evolve faster and faster to keep pace with the consumer.

"When Wikipedia experienced wild growth, we were really busy and there was little planning for the future," Wales said at a Nordic Business Forum.

About four years ago, Wikipedia made a company five-year plan, which taught a lot.

"It provided a good framework in which to act. But it also taught us that plans can change quickly if the situation demands it," Wales said.

In his opinion, today's companies are well advised to have a clear goal towards which to proceed. At the same time, they have to be ready for more rapid changes of direction.

Wikipedia is developing a new Visual Editor feature, which is updated on a weekly basis. Its purpose is to expand the community and to attract new users to the people who can not, are not a computer expert.

Wales acknowledged that Wikipedia's management is not always easy, but a lot of companies could learn something from it.

"Our writers can not say that, do as I say or go home." [?]

"I think that in general people do not get the best out of their workforce. If all based on fear of losing their jobs and pay if you do not do as they say," Wales said.

According to Wales businesses need more atmosphere in which employees feel that they are together creating something new.

Network revenue models in the App Store model is Wales's view, what are the future of money. Whether it's about the game industry, or online journalism.

[Vigilant]

Oh man, that is NOT a flattering picture.

[dogbiscuit]

In what way does Jimbo's description of the WMF relate to reality?

[Poetlister]

In what way does Jimbo's description of the WMF relate to reality?

"When Wikipedia experienced wild growth ... there was little planning for the future" sounds pretty accurate to me.

[Vigilant]

Wales acknowledged that Wikipedia's management is not always easy

That seems pretty accurate.

If only he worked as the head of a Russian massage conglomerate.