Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The other shoe drops

As I'm sure you're all well-aware now, Erik Moeller has resigned his board membership in order to take up the role of "deputy director" of the Foundation. (See Erik's smarmy acceptance note here.)

This situation brings up a number of issues, but I think trying to talk about all of them in one blog post is a bad idea. So we'll drag this out over a few days, just so people don't get too confused. Let's start with process.

Deputy director? There was no listing on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki for this position. Apparently nobody, outside of Erik and Sue, knew that the Foundation was looking for a deputy director. My contacts in the Board tell me that the Board (except for Erik, and maybe Jimmy) was not aware that the Foundation was looking for a deputy director, and so far as far as I can find no specific authorization exists to hire for this role or to fund the position. The conclusion is that Sue has elected to staff this role herself and to fund it out of the Office of the Executive Director's budget, without consulting anyone except, presumably, Erik. This is perhaps within her discretion, but it certainly seems like a bad idea to go about this process in such a nontransparent way. Closed hiring processes are not a good way to comply with equal opportunity laws, and there are aspects of her announcement that raise at least yellow flags in the EOE sense. I also can't see how she can show compliance with immigration regulations; before she can hire Erik—who, as a German national, needs a work visa to work in the United States—she has to prove that she searched exhaustively for an American who could perform the role, and was unable to find one. With no public posting for the position, it beggars belief that she can honestly make the required affirmations for the visa application. Especially troubling was Sue's decision (as reportedly indicated in an email to the Foundation's "internal" mailing list) to make "preferably not an American" a qualification for this position; not only does that violate the Foundation's own EOE policy, but several aspects of the law as well. Earth to Mike Godwin? Hello? Are you listening?

There's also the appearance of impropriety issue. There's always inurement concerns when a nonpaid member of the board of a nonprofit organization is hired by that organization into a paid role, because there's the possibility that the board member influenced the decision to hire himself or herself, which would be an disallowed inurement under nonprofit law. In this case, I don't believe that Erik actually used his formal power as a Board member to influence the decision; as I stated above, the Board appears to not have been involved in the decision at all. However, there is still the appearance of impropriety, and given the Foundation's long history of playing hard and loose with such principles of governance, that's exactly not the sort of thing that the Foundation needs.

All in all, I find this entire episode remarkably ironic, given the near-total lack of transparency surrounding Moeller, who has run twice for the Board promising both times to increase transparency. I suspect the only reason the weight of all the irony hasn't crushed Erik outright is that his own ultraexpansive ego exactly counterbalances it.

Erik's departure does mean that the Board needs a new secretary. We can only hope that the new secretary will be more open about the Board's minutes. Perhaps now that our advocate for transparency is gone, we can actually get some transparency in the operation of the Foundation.

Update: I'm advised that the Foundation, as a "small employer", is not subject to EOE regulation, and that some of the immigration rules don't apply to them either. Doesn't change the fact that they have an internal policy that prohibits discriminatory behavior. So they're legal here -- just not terribly ethical.

28 comments:

  1. Right on the nose Kelly, as usual. This *screams* back-door, and I don't like it one bit.

    Looks more like a power grab by Erik (with Sue's help) than anything else. I knew to not get my hopes up with Erik's resignation.

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  2. It seems that the Wikimedia Foundation can't do ANYTHING right the past few months. If they keep it up, the mainstream media and the US government will be stepping in soon.

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  3. It also seems a bit odd to be restructuring the organization in the closing weeks of the fund drive.

    Perhaps Erik is a fine manager, and deserves to be paid for his valuable services, but it does smell of "bait and switch" when insiders move from an unpaid role to a paid role.

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  4. What the hell is Erik going to do...... this seems like a bloat hiring to me with no real value whatsoever.

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  5. I guess this now makes sense

    5 approval (Jimmy, Jan-Bart, Frieda, Anthere, Kat). 1 missing (Michael). 1 recuse (Erik)

    It looks like Erik could not vote to make Sue the Executive Director because she had already told him that she would make him Deputy Director.

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  6. For once, I honestly don't care about the politics, maneuvering, backbiting and backstabbing. I just want results.

    Where the fuck is our SUL and Stable Versions. The mechanics of Wikipedia has been stagnating for a couple of years now. I hope Erik can get the pumps primed.

    An old adage: "any business that isn't growing is failing". I think this applies to wikipedia - if we don't make progress with simple things like reliability, we're doomed to the competition. That progress can be glacial, but it has to be there.

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  7. A few years ago Jimbo appointed Erik as WM's technology guy, then seemed to rip the rug from under his feet, like it was a setup. Am I remembering this right?

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  8. @Anonymous

    Do you really think Erik is actually going to do anything other than collect a paycheck. It's the devs who make the magic happen and I get the impression they are not exactly thrilled about working under Erik.

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  9. How dare you make you claim that the hiring decision was nontransparent.

    It was private, but not nontransparent.

    It was secret, but not nontransparent.

    It was private, but not secret.


    I get confused myself sometimes - I need a bigger thesaurus. One that has more synonyms such as clandestine.

    The decision was clandestine, but not nontransparent.

    So, there you go - I hope everything is clear now.



    signed J (One of the J's - I forget which one I am - I am the one that is always talking about privacy, transparency, and "why didn't someone tell me?". Although that seems to cover all of us)

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  10. Re: "The mechanics of Wikipedia has been stagnating for a couple of years now."

    Well, they have more important things to worry about, like figuring out ways to get even more draconian and intolerant about the trolls, harassers, stalkers, attack site partisans, sockpuppets of banned users, and other bogeymen that are under every bed. That takes precedence over silly trivialities like improving the encyclopedia or its software.

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  11. I don't usually know much or care about all of Kelly's criticism of insider cabals and the like. But, this makes me _really_ happy that I have never donated to Wikimedia. Other than technology updates, I have seen _no_ benefits to Wikipedia from the board and all of the first fundraiser's money. We need money to keep up servers, pay for a sys-admin and to save so we can do that indefinitely. We don't need to pay for whatever the hell board members and WMF employees do. Fuck the inner politics when it doesn't really affect major parts of the encyclopedia... but I'm with the other anonymous. Where are the features we need to make a better encyclopedia? What a place.

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  12. To be fair, Erik is a longtime developer, with countless important features under his belt. Just ask the other developers: Brion, Tim, Mark, Domas, River, Rob Church. I am sure that they are as delighted as Sue.

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  13. to the anonymous above: I like your sarcasm. :)

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  14. a fair an detailed assessment. I too was very surprised by this announcement and it would seem the community is so used to hearing bad news from the foundation they just let it was over their heads now...

    What I want to know is what his *duties* are? Since there was no public tender for the role, there was also no public duty statement. Furthermore, since he only reports to Sue, will anyone ever know if he's not doing anything at all?

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  15. I would also like to commend Erik for all of his work on educational issues, as mentioned in the mailing list. I did not know that he was both a developer and an educator, as well as a manager. Perhaps Erik will give us a little background history on his professional and educational experience. And perhaps Sue will give us an overview of Erik's book since, sadly, so many of us do not read German. Who published it? Was it Hochmut Verlag?

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  16. Disgust at the Wikipedia community chased me away from Wikipedia two weeks ago, and now this may chase me away from all Wikimedia activity.

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  17. Did Erik approve his own budget? Please consider my open question
    here.

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  18. Brion will be working UNDER him? That's a travesty if ever there was one.

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  19. And from the hint I got on Cyde Weys's blog, there's another big announcement coming that'll make this one look rather minor.

    What on earth is happening with the Foundation?

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  20. I used to like Erik...he was an effective counter to Danny's bullying (and sometimes yours as well, Kell). But this does smack of a backroom game of musical chairs.
    Still, if he can do the job effectively, few will give a second thought to how he aquired it.
    RESULTS DAMMIT!

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  21. Kelly can you *please* stop mixing personal vendetta and justified commentary/criticism?

    Shall I point you to your "agenda" that you simply disagree with the Foundation's current goal of actively founding Wikipedias and related projects in non-european languages? That you want to drop everything else but Wikipedia (maybe even only in English...)?

    This mixing of things really weakens your point and this is sad cause there are things that need to be done better (and I myself criticised Erik in the past).

    I don't want your "open every bit of communication" mantra. I don't want our Foundation people to become glass people everyone can tramp on. And that's what you are doing currently. Quite often you need some privacy on decission taking and at the same time you need a substantial group of people that decides/votes in order to make it right.

    What the Foundation needs is the possibility to become a member like in Wikimedia Deutschland (or another formal membership like chapters beeing a formal member). That way you can make democratic decissions in the general member assembly and don't need to have an extreme public that starts criticising everything even previous to start doing it.

    However inventing some conspiracy seems to make more fun for you...

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  22. Arnomane: That was perhaps the most uninformed, confused comment I've ever seen made in my blog. You've got me confused with someone, but I haven't a freaking clue who.

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  23. Oh damn sh... I really confused you with River. ;-(

    I am really sorry and shamefaced that I made this mistake. So please ignore my allegation on your agenda (I admit I am as well vulnerable to wild theories, cause I simply disliked the style not that much the content of your blog posting...)

    However I still think that the real problem of the Foundation is that there is only a small group of decission makers.

    The Wikipedia community can't be a substitute for some things that need more privacy (and I think decissions on employees are such a thing) and so there is now the problem that a tiny group instead of a broader yet well defined group of people takes important decissions.

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  24. Arnomane, I suspect you'd find that we agree far more than you might realize, if you took the time to actually familiarize yourself with my positions. Once this current crisis has passed, perhaps I'll write up some position papers on what I think the Foundation should do to move forward.

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  25. 1. Erik has always wanted to end up in charge of Wikipedia
    2. Jimbo didn't want Erik in change of Wikipedia
    3. #1 is much closer to happening.
    4. Erik is happy
    5. Many others are not.

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  26. "Once this current crisis has passed, perhaps I'll write up some position papers on what I think the Foundation should do to move forward."

    There is the minor detail that anyone you would need to have acting on your ideas would now be much less willing to act on them. That's what we call a failure in diplomacy.

    "1. Erik has always wanted to end up in charge of Wikipedia"

    Someone's in charge of Wikipedia?

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  27. (Re: the 5 points) Well, almost. Maybe the following is closer to the truth?

    Erik and Anthere both ran for foundation chair. Both were highly respected with their home communities (German and French WP, respectively). But there can only be one chair, so Jimbo appointed Anthere, while Erik became the chief research (or was it technology) officer. (Was this an honor title or a paid job?) It seems Erik and Anthere (he reported to her?) didn't get along, so Erik quit that position. But I haven't heard of any conflicts between Erik and Brion or the other developers. Some years passed. Erik was elected to the board. Sue was hired. Erik's new position is apparently very similar to his old chief role, except that Sue is now a cushion between him and Anthere. Or Erik is a cushion between Sue and Brion?

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  28. yea this post does not seem to assume good faith :P... grinding axes will only get you so far. The proprietary services are quickly moving into peer knowledge production spaces. As a flagship of free knowledge it makes for an easy target of hypocrisy but on the scale of corruption in our societies this is almost insignificant.

    To move quickly decisions are made in which everyone wont be consulted on or agree with. We do what we can with "democracy". Its good to call for more transparency but understand we all can't micro manage everything. If the board does continue down a path you can't agree with or positively influence then at least all the software and content created so far is free to reuse. The level of potential coercion is relatively thin when copyleft is the foundation

    The social capital of wikimedia can be transfered to a "more free" structure if thats the direction we need to go. But if you have reached that point start building instead of tearing down.

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