Was Maher fired?

[Vigilant]

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/ ... 3FT36W2AU/

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1123369545

[Midsize Jake]

As I recall, our assumption at the time was that Maher's job was to "shepherd" (i.e., force everyone to accept) the UCoC, after which she would step down in order to avoid the consequences of the inevitably botched implementation. It doesn't surprise me that she scored a humongous severance package for herself, as that was probably what she felt was due her for getting the UCoC rammed down the WP'ers collective throats, which presumably is crucial to their strategy of getting the English Wikipedia folks back in line (so that they'll stop questioning WMF decisions and what-not).

I guess they could have pulled that off for far less money by just replacing her with some kid off the street, who would have been willing to take all the UCoC-related blame/abuse personally for less money, but maybe they thought that would be "too obvious" or something.

[Vigilant]

Victoria Doronina
12 May 12:23 p.m.
Andreas,

You write

...
Victoria did say
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1123369545>
last year, on-wiki: The Board has done its main job - changed the CEO.

...
(Victoria did not provide further details when asked.)

I want to say that The Board has done its main job - changed the CEO means
" by mutual agreement". If there's a mutual agreement that the current CEO
is leaving, the Board will inevitably have to find a new one, e.g. change
the CEO.

Also, I find your complete lack of good faith and attempts to catch out
everybody on anything very unpleasant and completely contradictory to the
spirit of the Movement.

Victoria

Probably not a good fit if you can't stand people looking at the filings.

[orangepi]

At her level, she isn't fired, she is offered a separation package based on industry norms to ensure a smooth transition after the mutually agreed separation.

[Hemiauchenia]

Also, I find your complete lack of good faith and attempts to catch out
everybody on anything very unpleasant and completely contradictory to the
spirit of the Movement.

Victoria

Read: Don't dare to ever question us, peasant.

[jf1970]

Also, I find your complete lack of good faith and attempts to catch out
everybody on anything very unpleasant and completely contradictory to the
spirit of the Movement.

Victoria

Read: Don't dare to ever question us, peasant.

She's right though, the spirit of the Movement being unquestioned greed and corruption.

[No Ledge]

I find executive pay levels at the WMF completely contradictory to the spirit of the Movement.

Surely the Leadership Development Working Group can develop some leaders for the Movement at a fraction of the cost of these executives.

[AndyTheGrump]

Also, I find your complete lack of good faith and attempts to catch out
everybody on anything very unpleasant and completely contradictory to the
spirit of the Movement.

Victoria

Read: Don't dare to ever question us, peasant.

She's right though, the spirit of the Movement being unquestioned greed and corruption.

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

[No Ledge]

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

So then this Leadership Development Plan is a complete fiction?

It's not possible to lead a movement that doesn't exist, is it??

[Vigilant]

Also, I find your complete lack of good faith and attempts to catch out
everybody on anything very unpleasant and completely contradictory to the
spirit of the Movement.

Victoria

Read: Don't dare to ever question us, peasant.

She's right though, the spirit of the Movement being unquestioned greed and corruption.

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

Well, the 'leadership' of the WMF is decidedly a part of the 'swine at the trough' movement.

[AndyTheGrump]

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

So then this Leadership Development Plan is a complete fiction?

It's not possible to lead a movement that doesn't exist, is it??

It is possible to imagine you are leading one. If you can convince enough people that the figment of your imagination is real, they may even pay you to do it.

See also: organised religion.

[Vigilant]

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

So then this Leadership Development Plan is a complete fiction?

It's not possible to lead a movement that doesn't exist, is it??

It is possible to imagine you are leading one. If you can convince enough people that the figment of your imagination is real, they may even pay you to do it.

See also: organised religion.

Wikipedia is Scientology for Nerds.

[AndyTheGrump]

The 'spirit of the Movement' is a complete fiction. There is no 'Movement'. Just a bunch of different people, doing different things, for different reasons, on WMF-hosted websites.

So then this Leadership Development Plan is a complete fiction?

It's not possible to lead a movement that doesn't exist, is it??

It is possible to imagine you are leading one. If you can convince enough people that the figment of your imagination is real, they may even pay you to do it.

See also: organised religion.

Wikipedia is Scientology for Nerds.

Not really. Scientologists are a group of people sharing a common belief system. The so-called 'movement' consists of people sharing a common web server. Which isn't (despite Piotrus's assertions to the contrary) sufficient to make any sort of meaningful political, social, or cultural entity out of them, sociologically speaking. The people who claim that the 'movement' exists share a common belief system. Or at least, they try to give the impression they do. Because it pays well.

[No Ledge]

How can any sort of meaningful political, social, or cultural entity be made out of Wikipedia editors, sociologically speaking?

[Zoloft]

How can any sort of meaningful political, social, or cultural entity be made out of Wikipedia editors, sociologically speaking?

$Money$.

The WMF makes a lot of money, badly managed, used for doubtful causes, and increasingly dumps cartloads of cash in the laps of their top execs. When I think of it, I can hear the filk (T-H-L) song My God How The Money Rolls In playing in my head.

Of course you need a wrapper to put the money into, so you can run off with it. That's 'The Movement.'

[No Ledge]

The so-called 'movement' consists of people sharing a common web server. Which isn't (despite Piotrus's assertions to the contrary) sufficient to make any sort of meaningful political, social, or cultural entity out of them, sociologically speaking.

I found a Wikipedia sociology page on meta, but that wasn't written by sociologist Piotrus. Rather, ChrisG is responsible for 76% of the content.

Where is Piotrus making assertions about a movement?

[AndyTheGrump]

The so-called 'movement' consists of people sharing a common web server. Which isn't (despite Piotrus's assertions to the contrary) sufficient to make any sort of meaningful political, social, or cultural entity out of them, sociologically speaking.

I found a Wikipedia sociology page on meta, but that wasn't written by sociologist Piotrus. Rather, ChrisG is responsible for 76% of the content.

Where is Piotrus making assertions about a movement?

See my debate with Piotrus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikimedia movement (T-H-L).

[Vigilant]

Motherfucker.

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

[Vigilant]

What this fuck is this edit

Benjamintchip (T-C-L)

Redlink homepage, infrequent editor jumping right to this update...

[Pelican]

Wow. She might actually be the last person I would consider when looking for a crisis manager. Although

She said she cringes at the word "content."

is a nice bit of fan service, so I guess it's not all bad for NPR.

[Vigilant]

Hired by this empty suit.

NPR board chair Jennifer Ferro, who led the search committee, said Maher offers visionary corporate leadership and proven fundraising strengths. And she cited Maher's ability to serve as a forceful ambassador for the network, including to the hundreds of public radio member stations and on their behalf.

"NPR is a powerhouse, and it needs to be more ubiquitous," says Ferro, the president of public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif. "We need to build that brand up."

Ferro says the network, which is a nonprofit corporation, needs a proven leader who will commit to the position for an extended tenure. (With Maher, NPR has cycled through 10 permanent and acting chiefs in the past 20 years.)

And Ferro notes that Maher worked to help shape Wikipedia into a trusted organization that shares similar values with NPR, such as broad access to information and democracy.

Maher will start at NPR in late March.

Shades of the WMF.

[Ron Lybonly]

Having watched a video of Maher speaking at some Wikimedia function, she was very articulate at answering questions. That may be her strongest skill in which case, she would interview very well.

That’s a good gift to have but I’m not sure it translates to what’ll be needed at NPR.

To outsiders, running Wikimedia may look like a big deal. To me, it’s not. NPR looks like a huge step up the ladder from Wikimedia- more like skipping a rung or two.

[No Ledge]

Didn't have this on my bingo card. I've thought that Wikipedia should become more PBS/NPR-like but I don't think NPR should become more like Wikipedia!

I'm not sure how much she will be "running" NPR. She never really ran Wikipedia. What they need is more, better fundraising. Especially as Republican leadership in Congress keeps pushing to cut their funding. She'll bring all the fundraising techniques she learned at WMF with her. Though I think Wikimedia's top fundraising talent is still working there. If she's as hands-off with NPR programming as she was with Wikipedia programming, operations there should just keep going, business as usual.

Her Twitter while she was leading WMF was something to behold. Thought I'd check in on that.
@krmaher

Hmm, it looks like a "best of" from her days at WMF. I think she sanitized it by deleting all the chatter from her airport layovers, and the prolific posts where she wore her politics on her sleeve.

[TheWordsmith]

Didn't have this on my bingo card. I've thought that Wikipedia should become more PBS/NPR-like but I don't think NPR should become more like Wikipedia!

I'm not sure how much she will be "running" NPR. She never really ran Wikipedia. What they need is more, better fundraising. Especially as Republican leadership in Congress keeps pushing to cut their funding. She'll bring all the fundraising techniques she learned at WMF with her. Though I think Wikimedia's top fundraising talent is still working there. If she's as hands-off with NPR programming as she was with Wikipedia programming, operations there should just keep going, business as usual.

Just what NPR needs, giant obnoxious banners at the top of every page saying things like NPR IS NOT FOR SALE. Maybe they'll dig real deep and do one that says NPR FOREVER.

[tarantino]

What this fuck is this edit

Benjamintchip (T-C-L)

Redlink homepage, infrequent editor jumping right to this update...

03:28, 6 June 2009 Benjamintchip uploaded File:HilaryHahnSpringfieldOH03032009.jpg ({{Information |Description = Hilary Hahn, violin, and Valentina Lisitsa, piano, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, March 3, 2009 |Source = I created this work entirely by myself. |Date = 03/03/2009 |Author = Ben Murphy)

[Vigilant]

What this fuck is this edit

Benjamintchip (T-C-L)

Redlink homepage, infrequent editor jumping right to this update...

03:28, 6 June 2009 Benjamintchip uploaded File:HilaryHahnSpringfieldOH03032009.jpg ({{Information |Description = Hilary Hahn, violin, and Valentina Lisitsa, piano, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, March 3, 2009 |Source = I created this work entirely by myself. |Date = 03/03/2009 |Author = Ben Murphy)

So, why is this guy johnny on the spot updating her article?

[Zoloft]

What this fuck is this edit

Benjamintchip (T-C-L)

Redlink homepage, infrequent editor jumping right to this update...

03:28, 6 June 2009 Benjamintchip uploaded File:HilaryHahnSpringfieldOH03032009.jpg ({{Information |Description = Hilary Hahn, violin, and Valentina Lisitsa, piano, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, March 3, 2009 |Source = I created this work entirely by myself. |Date = 03/03/2009 |Author = Ben Murphy)

So, why is this guy johnny on the spot updating her article?

[Giraffe Stapler]

Ao, why is this guy johnny on the spot updating her article?

I'm going to guess he has NPR on in his workplace and they announced the news?

[tarantino]

NPR’s new CEO Katherine Maher scrubs hyper-partisan posts

[MrErnie]

I had a long write up in mind about why the signing of Maher to head the NPR is close to the death-knell of the mainstream media and subsequently finally the hasten the day type hurrah a lot of critics have been waiting for, but I really just don’t care anymore. But it is. Wikipedia is now written for a small audience of progressive westerners and will no longer reflect a global pursuit of knowledge.

[No Ledge]

NPR’s new CEO Katherine Maher scrubs hyper-partisan posts

I noticed that.

Her Twitter while she was leading WMF was something to behold. Thought I'd check in on that.
@krmaher

Hmm, it looks like a "best of" from her days at WMF. I think she sanitized it by deleting all the chatter from her airport layovers, and the prolific posts where she wore her politics on her sleeve.

If I had a chance to give her career advice, I would have warned her that stuff could come back to bite her.

But what do I know. I've caught foot-in-mouth disease several times in my life.

It’s unclear when or why Maher deleted the post from her account, or if it was related to her new gig at NPR, which touts its “fact-based reporting; opinion and commentary are secondary.”

That's the one thing about her that grated on me the most. She didn't understand that at the world's de facto encyclopedia, opinion and commentary are secondary. They should be even more secondary there than they are in the "reliable sources" Wikipedia gets its facts from.

[orangepi]

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/npr-ce ... anization/

Ms. Maher's social media is in the news, again. The discussions are largely by people who neither know nor care that she had nothing to do with any content on enwiki.

[Randy from Boise]

WMF, doing WMF things.

Fuck 'em.

t

[Midsize Jake]

WMF, doing WMF things.

Fuck 'em.

You first!

Right-wing "critiques" of Ms. Maher's tweets from her WMF days never mention the WMF or Wikipedia, because they're worried people might figure out that her so-called "woke tendencies" were reflective of the WMF's need to close the "gender gap" and appeal to the supposedly vast and untapped editor/donor resources of the global south, not of her own lefty political leanings.

That's not to say Ms. Maher is good or even competent at her new job — I have no idea really, and it's probably too soon to tell anyway, though I wouldn't be super-hopeful personally. But the commenters are right — this Isaac Schorr dude is basically the Derp State in action, and he and many other right-wing folks basically just want to turn NPR into their own version of Pravda.

[Midsize Jake]

Just as a quick update, yesterday Uri Berliner, the NPR reporter who wrote the essay for Bari Weiss's The Free Press site in support of Christopher Rufo's Twitter-targeting of Katherine Maher, was suspended by NPR for not having obtained authorization before having stuff published in other new outlets. And today, Berliner resigned. Reactions to this are already falling predictably along party lines, and Berliner will probably be working for NewsNation, OAN, or Fox News by the end of next week.

[Vigilant]

Maher's vapid verbal diarrheal response.

[Charliebware]

Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be."
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 8949614848

[Vigilant]

Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be."
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 8949614848

Does anyone have a dingbat to English translator available?

[The Blue Newt]

Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be."
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 8949614848

Does anyone have a dingbat to English translator available?

I’ll settle for some updated Buzzword Bingo sheets.

[rnu]

Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be."
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 8949614848

Does anyone have a dingbat to English translator available?

I'm told that Comic Sans understands dingbats:

[EmilyP]

Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" and "did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be."
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 8949614848

She also said that during her time as the Wikimedia Foundation's CEO "We took a very active approach to disinformation and misinformation looking at how we supported our editing community in an unprecedented moment where we were not only dealing with a global pandemic...[comments on how novel the pandemic was]...and so we really set up in response to both the pandemic but also in response to the upcoming US election and as a model for future elections outside of the U.S....the model was around how do we create sort of a clearinghouse of information the brings the institution of the Wikimedia Foundation with the editing community in order to be able to identify threats early on through conversations with government, of course, as well as other platform operators to understand what the landscape looks like."https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/statu ... 0437316738

Did she just make that up or did this really happen? Did the Wikimedia Foundation create "sort of a clearinghouse of information" through its institutional (paid staff) talking to government and other platforms and then interact around that clearinghouse "with the editing community" to "identify threats early on"? Did any of that actually happen?

[Kraken]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... iner_Story

[Vigilant]

Someone from inside NPR should interview a bunch of en.wp, WMF and WPO types and ask them if Maher was truthful in her enumeration of her accomplishments during her tenure.

[tarantino]

Musk chimes in.

[Bezdomni]

I've always been struck with how articulated Katherine Maher is.

Free and open has the best of intentionality, but in the end [...] we ended up seeing that [...] radical openness really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be...

First-class may be "expensive and closed" but it really lets you lean into the extensionality of Connecti-cutter class structure.

[Midsize Jake]

Look, people are constantly making fun of What-Openness-Can-Be's level of intentionality, and how hard it is for non-living entities (like websites, for example) to live into it, and that's fine because everyone appreciates a good intentionalized laugh. And sure, it's easy to say that NPR brought this upon themselves by failing to read all the Wikipediocracy threads about Ms. Maher's general lack of circumspection on Twitter, or in press interviews, or in public restrooms, and then hiring her in spite of all that. Indeed, that's why I say it — because it's easy. Nobody likes doing things that are hard. Except for mountain climbing, some people enjoy that, I guess.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that all of this is our fault. I mean, we were the ones who criticized Wikipedia all those years for being heavily male-dominated and, at the same time, being unwilling — and later, unable — to effectively do anything about it. We were also the ones who criticized them for trying to become more internationalist, and falsely defining themselves as a "movement" when nobody in the rest of the world trusted them due to being based in the USA... We even criticized them for all the factual inaccuracies and, arguably, "disinformation" found in lots and lots of Wikipedia articles! Shame on us! What was Katherine Maher to do, just ignore all those criticisms and do whatever the heck she wanted, as if they didn't even exist? I mean, sure, that's exactly what she did in terms of actual management policy, but this is Twitter we're talking about. Not, like, reality.

So yes, I have mixed feelings about these Twitter attacks on Ms. Maher by the far-right. On the one hand, sure, they have a point about NPR's wisdom in hiring her, but on the other, they're not bashing her (or NPR) because they really think the non-right-wing media is "unfair" to them, they're doing it because they were thwarted, at least temporarily, in their effort to take over yet another "mainstream" outlet so as to make it their own, and serve their interests exclusively.

They'll probably succeed next time, though. We Americans are stupid that way, apparently, what with our dumb First Amendment and all.

[tarantino]

There's a funny thread about this on /r/stupidpol/.

Fellas, is it misogyny to want freedom of speech online?

Yes. It’s also internalized racism.

This is why I only externalize my racism

[Hemiauchenia]

All this I guess goes to show how little scrutiny the WMFs bigwigs actually get from the mainstream press. I wonder if that will change from this point on. Some of her statements do seem very careless in retrospect for someone looking to take a prominent position like the head of NPR.

[Zoloft]

People have failed to realize what a lightweight Maher is. I have sat next to her and heard her talk on the phone. I have read her social media takes, which often have the depth of one coat of paint. I have sat through her speeches and consumed a lot of her blithe and clueless business communications. She has no gravitas, no lifelong commitments to justice. There is nothing there.

Her internal discourse if made audible would be, to use an Internet meme, the sound of a potato cooking in a microwave.

I have known rodeo clowns that would have been better choices to run NPR.

[EverDissever]

Hey I'm a rodeo clown