
Lila Tretikov Has Resigned from Wikimedia Foundation - mattl
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082470.html
======
ianamartin
Honestly, this all sounds pretty typical of non-profit organizations. I've
been working with various different ones since I was 7. Sometimes as a
volunteer, sometimes as an employee, sometimes as an executive, and sometimes
as a board member.

I have never seen a functional non-profit. For whatever reason, non-profits
seem to attract all kinds of people who are motivated by things I can only
describe as "weird." And it's not just at the management levels. Volunteers
and employees tend to have an irrational sense of entitlement, as though the
mission of the group and the fact that they are in some way devoted to it
earns them a right to a voice in the leadership.

But there are also issues with the personalities that the management roles
attract, particularly with boards. There are two types of board members: those
who are doing the work because they think they should, so they want to get in,
make decisions, and get out. Then there are the ones who are passionately
invested in "the cause", and the passionate ones are complete wild cards. You
never know what you are going to get. Narcissists, martyrs, and drama queens,
most often. But sometimes other.

I haven't been following this situation at all, but if I had to make a guess,
the truth is somewhere in the middle. Lila was probably doing her honest and
straightforward best to deal with a situation that was _way_ over her head and
made some mistakes.

The board and other employees are probably a mixed bag of honest, good-heated
people trying to make a difference, some complete nutbags, and a lot of people
in between.

In many ways, non-profits are like academia. Important and necessary
organizations, but extremely disfunctional in the same ways. They tend to be
sanctuaries for people who do not really function all that well in public
society or companies. The pay stakes are generally lower, so people fight
militantly over issues of status and control that seem trivial to the rest of
the outside world.

~~~
flashman
You're painting with a broad brush and your characterisation is greatly at
odds with many of the functional non-profit organisations I know here in
Australia:

* the St Vincent de Paul Society

* the National Heart Foundation

* Cancer Council of Australia

* Opera Australia

* Unicef

* National Disability Services

I could go on. My point is, non-profit organisations encompass a huge spectrum
of activity. Many operate like any other company and pay wages for the
majority of employees. I would argue that 'the mission' actually makes a non-
profit more likely to succeed, as everybody knows what they're working towards
and what team they're on.

Wikipedia is a different beast entirely.

~~~
aaron695
You worked internally in of all these and more?

Sorry if I'm a little doubtful but that's quite a resume.

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

~~~
aaron695
The Australian "National Heart Foundation" for instance has killed a lot of
people, fucked up shit.

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

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

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

------
ptest1
Some background here:

[http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-timeline/](http://mollywhite.net/wikimedia-
timeline/)

The above conflates a lot of highly unrelated events, but it's a cool
visualization.

But the reality is that she lost the support of senior staff, and wasn't able
to regain it. It's impossible to recover from something like that, so it's a
good sign she stepped down.

~~~
aikah
So there is a crisis at the WM foundation? could you explain for those who are
not in the loop? is it about their search engine project?

~~~
chris_wot
I've written a few comments, they might be helpful. One I just posted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177401)

But the original story on HN has some comments from me:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101164)

My take at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11101262)

For an excellent backgrounder, then Liam awyatt's b;oh sets things put the
clearest:

[http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-
controversy/](http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/)

And:

[http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-
part-2/](http://wittylama.com/2016/01/30/strategy-controversy-part-2/)

~~~
aikah
Thank you.

------
zeruch
I worked for Lila when we were both at SugarCRM, and I never got the sense of
what is being claimed at WMF was her modus operandi (I found dealing with her
a fairly transparent affair, which is why I thought she landed at WMF). It's
really quite dumbfounding.

~~~
wpietri
I know little about current WMF circumstances, but my guess is that fairly
transparent for a corporation would be seen as fairly secretive at WMF.

I think part of the problem here is that she had never edited Wikipedia before
joining, which means it would have been very hard for her to understand the
vast cultural differences.

Wikipedia comes out of the open-source and open-culture world, which has a
very strong transparency bias, and which has had to fight hard to maintain
that openness. And my experience is that Wikipedia even stronger than that, in
that the editor communities organize many thousands of people all in public.
Making that work requires very strong habits of transparency.

It's very different than current American business culture, where executives
get a substantial level of deference and assumed control of information.

~~~
chris_wot
This. You have captured the problem in a nutshell.

------
runn1ng
Huh. I absolutely hated the new "Media Viewer" and the WYSIWYG editor, but I
didn't know there is this big drama behind it. (Plus all the Knowledge Engine
thing, which I didn't hear about. But neither did more senior editors, it
seems.)

Truth to be said, I _do_ really like Wikipedia's mobile layout and mobile
website in general. I still think they should do something with the discussion
system, as I think having wiki-style discussions that nobody ever opens is not
really good for anything, but I don't know what to do instead. :)

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

~~~
runn1ng
Interesting. Maybe it's just me being used to wiki syntax for such a long time
that it just irritates me to use WYSIWYG.

------
chris_wot
What has happened here is one of the worst situations in the WMF's history. I
feel the most for James Heilman, who was removed from the Board only after
asking serious questions about Lila's 'Knowledge Engine".

Lila's stint has had a terrible impact on the staff and community alike.

Here are some emails to the Wikimedia mailing list. The one that started the
beginning of the end is when she was very specifically asked for the Knight
Foundation grant application, which it now appears was the catalyst for the
Board removing James because he asked questions that threatened her:

[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081678.html)

When it was finally released - which only occurred when someone from outside
the Board took the initiative to speak to the Knight Foundation who said the
grant was never confidential even though the WMF said it was - there was a
mass exodus of staff, with the most notable from Siko Bourtese, whose email to
the mailing list [1] read, in part:

 _I’ve had the amazing privilege of serving this movement in a staff capacity
for the past 4 ½ years, but I’ve now decided to move on from my role at the
Wikimedia Foundation._

 _Transparency, integrity, community and free knowledge remain deeply
important to me, and I believe I will be better placed to represent those
values in a volunteer capacity at this time._

Ido Ivri sent the following email to the same ML [2], in which he states his
serious concerns around transparency, the removal of James and the steady flow
of people resigning.

Brion Vibber, an exceptional and well respected member of staff sent a direct
email asking what was being done stop people leaving. [3]

Then Lila sent out a now infamous "Why we've changed" email, and made things
much, much worse. [4] it was summed up well by Brion [5]:

 _Lila, a few notes._

 _First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under "we"
are not attributable to you._

 _Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from
all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be promoted
might be behind discontent seems not to hold water._

 _As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it 's unclear what
projects you refer to._

 _Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the
organization, based on my conversations with other employees including
managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely
manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a
reorg. We 've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's
appearance and disappearance._

 _If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have
strong doubts that this is the case._

James Heilman explained the problems around the Knowledhe Engine, which was
pretty damning [6].

The final departure, and IMO the most damning email, was from data scientist
Oliver Keyes, who resigned [7] with the following email:

 _Dear all,_

 _I am leaving the Wikimedia Foundation to take up a job as a Senior Data
Scientist at an information security company. My last day will be on 18
March._

 _After 12 months of continual stress, losses and workplace fear, I no longer
wish to work for the Wikimedia Foundation._

 _While I appreciate that the Board of Trustees may take steps to rectify the
situation, I have no confidence in their ability to effectively do so given
their failure to solve for the problem until it became a publicity issue as
well as a staff complaint._

 _I wish the movement and community the best of luck in building a fairer,
more transparent and more representative governing structure._

 _All the best,_

 _Oliver Keyes_

 _Of these last 5 years, Wikimedia Foundation_

It is the minutes of the Discovery Team meeting [8] that really showed me the
level of Lila's dissembling, she kept trying deflect awkward questions to
others and kept asking why staff didn't feel "empowered'. I'm glad she has
gone. She has caused untold damage to the WMF, it is literally going to kts
years to resolve the fall out of all of this and regain trust with EMF staff
and community by the BoT. Many of the Board should just resign. Those who were
open and engaged the community, such as Dariusz, should definitely stay!

1\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081809.html)

2\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081966.html)

3\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/081997.html)

4\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082145.html)

5\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082150.html)

6\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082287.html)

7\.
[https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082313.html)

8\.
[https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing...](https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/2016-02-16_Discussing_Knowledge_Engine_with_Lila)

~~~
huskyr
Note that it's Brion Vibber, not Brian Vibber.

Apart from that, excellent summary of events.

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

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

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

------
revelation
If some more people leave, presumably the foundation can go back to hosting
Wikipedia and funding the _occasional_ project to improve it, after extensive
user input.

You know, instead of this playing startup thing.

~~~
chris_wot
There was never a problem with developing new technology. It was the
outrageous dissembling and secrecy around the Knowledge Engine that has caused
this problem.

You cannot go into an organization with such an extreme ethos around
transparency and openness as the WMF and get away with secretly coming up with
a plan to compete against Google. That's what was done, and I don't care who
on the Board say it wasn't ever a plan to compete against Google with a search
engine made by the WMF: that was the plan cooked up by Damon, and I'm certain
Lila kept going with it, even when Damon left.

~~~
wl
What about Flow? Media Viewer? Visual Editor? The "extensive user input" came
after the code was already written and the community didn't like the result.

~~~
araneae
VE was a Sue Gardner thing. Hate or love it, it had nothing to do with Lila.

~~~
wl
And Media Viewer was in development before Lila came around, even if she did
preside over its release. I'm not really interested in blaming individuals.
The point is that the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization has a history of
pushing projects the community doesn't want. A different kind of executive
director might move the foundation back towards more of a support role for the
community. Of course, that's not going to happen unless the makeup of the
board of directors changes drastically.

~~~
chris_wot
I think that's not entirely accurate. The VE was wanted, and clearly is
needed. There have been valid concerns around Wikimarkup that lead to a less
than great UX experience for many editors, and it is a barrier to entry.

It was discussed for a long time when I was active in the community. People
who were active in the community championed it.

The execution seems to have been less than successful. The way that some
things were introduced were also less than stirling. Rolling do,etching like
the VE on a shoestring budget is also quite difficult, on such a massive
project.

Sue didn't always get things right, and during her tenure mistakes were made.
She was, IMO, amazing though. When she left, she had bedded down an amazing
amount of important processes, including governance and other important
organizational matters. Her technical skills weren't perhaps as good as her
other skills (but actually, they weren't that bad really). There were issues
that needed addressing by the next ED, but there always will be matters that
need addressing! Nobody leaves an organization in 100% perfect running order.

Lila has not only left the WMF with issues, she has destroyed a good deal of
trust, and left the WMF's governance, openness and transparency in tatters.

------
samstave
Wow that timeline was FANTASTIC and amazing.

I just cant believe how tumultuous this was.

I really found the Jobs/Apple/Google salary debacle part fascinating.

------
sneak
Why?

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tetraverse
imho: The longer the same people stay with an organization, the more
personality issues come to the surface. As you end up with a self appointed
dictator and his/her sidekick, assorted followers, the opposing team and the
rest regulated to the sidelines. Meanwhile it's sad watching a sinking ship.

"Narcissistic personality disorder"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder)

ps: I don't like you so I am going to vote you down regardless as to the
quality of your postings ;)

