https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-Febru...

The grant application you are looking at was only revealed due to a MASSIVE amount of controversy and pressure within the Wikimedia Foundation.

The community representative (James Heilman) on the board was let go the other day, in part because of concerns around this grant. You might want to look at the Wikipedia Signpost article he wrote about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Many people have questioned this. Lila, their Executive Director, seems to have conjured this up out of thin air, without consultation of any WMF staff members, or anyone in any of the various communities. Even highly influential, well respected people like Tim Starling appear to have been broadsided by this.

Here is what Lila Tretikov wrote about the search engine:

It was my mistake to not initiate this ideation on-wiki. Quite honestly, I really wish I could start this discussion over in a more collaborative way, knowing what I know today. Of course, that’s retrospecting with a firmer understanding of what the ideas are, and what is worthy of actually discussing. In the staff June Metrics meeting in 2015, the ideation was beginning to form in my mind from what I was learning through various conversations with staff. I had begun visualizing open knowledge existing in the shape of a universe. I saw the Wikimedia movement as the most motivated and sincere group of beings, united in their mission to build a rocket to explore Universal Free Knowledge. The words “search” and “discovery” and “knowledge” swam around in my mind with some rocket to navigate it. However, “rocket” didn’t seem to work, but in my mind, the rocket was really just an engine, or a portal, a TARDIS, that transports people on their journey through Universal Free Knowledge.

From the perspective I had in June, however, I was unprepared for the impact uttering the words “Knowledge Engine” would have. Can we all just take a moment and mercifully admit: it’s a catchy name. Perhaps not a great one or entirely appropriate in our context (hence we don’t use it any more). I was motivated. I didn’t yet know exactly what we needed to build, or how we would end up building it. I could’ve really used your insight and guidance to help shape the ideas, and model the improvements, and test and verify the impacts.

However, I was too afraid of engaging the community early on.

Why do you think that was?

I have a few thoughts, and would like to share them with you separately, as a wider topic. Either way, this was a mistake I have learned enormously from.

(this can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LilaTretikov_(WMF)...)

That's a very, very real problem. An executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation should never have felt too afraid of engaging with the wider community on an issue as fundamental as this one.

It's even more concerning that a half-thought through idea didn't get discussed and yet a grant application was made. All those who say that the application is only for $250,000 are entirely missing the point - the entire project would be $2.5 million, this is just the first, initial stage.

It's even worse when Jimmy Wales states that:

"To make this very clear, no one in top positions has proposed or is proposing that WMF should get into the general "searching" or "try to be Google". [1]

Yet that is precisely what is being done here.

The WMF appear to have known about this, because they seem to have done a large number of hirings to be dedicated to search - which I hear through contacts was questioned at the time as it seemed an odd way to allocate WMF resources.

There have been, in the last week, I believe 5 or 6 influential staff leave the WMF. IN fact, they appear to be haemorrhaging staff currently, with no real sign of any abatement.

None of this is at all satisfying to me. I was very, very involved in Wikipedia years ago. I started their Admin Noticeboard, and I did lots of article work, and helped kick off some key things, one of which was the [citation needed] tag which I have to admit I have some mixed feelings about. But for such an important project, it saddens me greatly to say that as an outsider now, it looks like things are being badly mismanaged.

I hope for everyone's sake (and not just the folks at the WMF) that this can be resolved. It's not like governance issues can't be addressed - when Sue Gardener was in charge of the WMF, things not only ran like clock-work, but she ensured maximum transparency and we all trusted her implicitly because she earned that trust. I can't say the same for the current Executive team.

1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/12/wikipedia_grant_buil...