Finally, someone at the Foundation has some sense: Florence recently posted on the topic, ending her post with the implied question, "No one has suggested to actually look at reasons why there are leaks". Finally, someone involved with Wikipedia who actually stops to think about what motivates people!
People leak stuff to me on a regular basis. There's at least five people who are consistently leaking stuff to me, and several more who do so on a less frequent basis. In most cases, it's plainly obvious to me that the reason they do it is because they are upset either with the process or the result, and by leaking to me they're hoping to raise public awareness of, and public outcry against, whatever decision or action the leaked communication relates to. Fundamentally, this is because (as Brianna Laugher notes) the Foundation's ability to communicate about its own activities to its stakeholders, let alone to the public at large, has been grotesquely lacking of late.
Seriously, folks, do you really think that my blog ought to be the source people go to in order to find out what is going on in Wikimedia? There ought to be a better channel available for that. Far from being a culture of transparency (I nearly choked when I read Jimmy's comments regarding Google's lack of transparency in conjunction with the launch of Wikia Search), Wikimedia has, for quite some time, fostered a culture of opacity, with very strong information controls even internally. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide who is to blame for this state of affairs.
I believe the leak that prompted this most recent discussion was the leak of what appears to be a PDF-wrapped powerpoint presentation presumably prepared by Sue in order to woo a partnership with Sun. On first glance, there is nothing particularly remarkable in the PDF or the email. What is remarkable to me, however, is apparently that the Board had never seen these documents. Florence told Wikinews that she had not seen the financial projections or staffing plans in the PDF prior to being shown them by Wikinews. Jimmy told me that he had not seen the document before and could not authenticate it, although he did say that nothing in it appeared "alarming or controversial". This is very interesting in light of the fact that the Board has been demanding financial projections from Sue for some time now, but Sue has refused to provide them claiming that she hasn't had time to produce them due to "the audit" and other demands on her time. Obviously, she had time to prepare them for Sun. So the real question raised by this seemingly innocuous leak is, "Why is Sue lying to the Board?" Don't expect an answer on that any time soon. (Just where is the audit, Sue?) I suppose there is a cold irony in the way that the Board's own past failures to be transparent are now biting them back, as the staff they've hired has apparently decided to cut them out of the loop, merely taking the culture of opacity to the next level, as it were.
(David Gerard, by the way, has descended even further in my estimation, by suggesting that the reason for such leaks is to make one "sound cool". It surprises me slightly to see someone who has put so much effort into fighting one cult descend so far into another.)
People leak stuff to me on a regular basis. There's at least five people who are consistently leaking stuff to me, and several more who do so on a less frequent basis. In most cases, it's plainly obvious to me that the reason they do it is because they are upset either with the process or the result, and by leaking to me they're hoping to raise public awareness of, and public outcry against, whatever decision or action the leaked communication relates to. Fundamentally, this is because (as Brianna Laugher notes) the Foundation's ability to communicate about its own activities to its stakeholders, let alone to the public at large, has been grotesquely lacking of late.
Seriously, folks, do you really think that my blog ought to be the source people go to in order to find out what is going on in Wikimedia? There ought to be a better channel available for that. Far from being a culture of transparency (I nearly choked when I read Jimmy's comments regarding Google's lack of transparency in conjunction with the launch of Wikia Search), Wikimedia has, for quite some time, fostered a culture of opacity, with very strong information controls even internally. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide who is to blame for this state of affairs.
I believe the leak that prompted this most recent discussion was the leak of what appears to be a PDF-wrapped powerpoint presentation presumably prepared by Sue in order to woo a partnership with Sun. On first glance, there is nothing particularly remarkable in the PDF or the email. What is remarkable to me, however, is apparently that the Board had never seen these documents. Florence told Wikinews that she had not seen the financial projections or staffing plans in the PDF prior to being shown them by Wikinews. Jimmy told me that he had not seen the document before and could not authenticate it, although he did say that nothing in it appeared "alarming or controversial". This is very interesting in light of the fact that the Board has been demanding financial projections from Sue for some time now, but Sue has refused to provide them claiming that she hasn't had time to produce them due to "the audit" and other demands on her time. Obviously, she had time to prepare them for Sun. So the real question raised by this seemingly innocuous leak is, "Why is Sue lying to the Board?" Don't expect an answer on that any time soon. (Just where is the audit, Sue?) I suppose there is a cold irony in the way that the Board's own past failures to be transparent are now biting them back, as the staff they've hired has apparently decided to cut them out of the loop, merely taking the culture of opacity to the next level, as it were.
(David Gerard, by the way, has descended even further in my estimation, by suggesting that the reason for such leaks is to make one "sound cool". It surprises me slightly to see someone who has put so much effort into fighting one cult descend so far into another.)
Kelly
ReplyDeleteIt seems obvious enough why people would leak something to you - it's the easiest way to get information to the community without having to deal with fallout. Certainly this corresponds to why I read your blog - the commentary is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but you at least touch most goings-on that're very important to know while maintaining a signal:noise greater than the anisotropies of the CMB (which I can't say for enwiki-l, #wikipedia-en-admins, or any BADSITE I'm aware of).
Mostly agree with above comment about signal-to-noise, but the Wikipedia Review has a more restrictive blog that is almost entirely signal.
ReplyDeletehttp://wikipediareview.com/blog/
Regarding "So the real question raised by this seemingly innocuous leak is, "Why is Sue lying to the Board?""
ReplyDeleteNo, no, no - that's a mistake. It's understandable, but it's naive thinking.
The game works this way:
SG wants to raise money. If she gave projections to the board, then that would constrain what she showed to potential donors - i.e. she can't keep two sets of books. But if she says to the Board that things are too scattered for her to get it all together, then she can show anything she wants to potential donors. Because if they question why what they saw doesn't match the later official numbers, she has an out - those were unofficial numbers she prepared in rush for the presentation, and later audited numbers changed the situation, but she didn't know it at the time she made the pitch to the donor.
The question raised by the leak is how you play this game with idealists in the audience :-)
Franky, I am a little confused by Jimmy's comments. In the end of the BBC article, he says: "We have no plans and no ideas about that right now." But from the transcription of the interview with the BBC's Hardtalk, he calls the idea "fabulous" and adds, "So, we are always looking at, what are some of the ways we could do that. How could we do that and make it working for everybody."
ReplyDeleteHe is always looking, but has no ideas? This is not "collaborative editing," which he says makes it more difficult. It is simply monitoring a search engine. And who is this "search engine community" of which he speaks? Perhaps he should ask Jason Calacanis and the crew at Mahalo for some ideas on how to do that. Or perhaps, when confronted with difficult questions, he should give honest answers instead of pleasing the interviewer by choking on his own foot.
Listening to Jimmy, I have always found his comments tepid, juvenile, and liberally peppered with hollow sound bytes. I suppose I will have to add "disingenuous" to that stream of adjectives.
As for Sue "lying" to the Board, that is a very serious charge. After all, she answers to the Board. In the wake of the Carolyn Doran fiasco, I would hope that the Board learned its lesson about people who take advantage of them. I certainly hope that they will investigate this, and if she has, indeed, lied to them, fire her with cause.
Here's a reason why people leak: Because they're tired of being ignored. If person A gets information about a scandal, and person A is someone "on the inside", tries to get things fixed, and constantly gets ignored, and has to sit there and watch as the lack of transparency in the foundation becomes more and more prevalent, Person A is eventually going to leak that information to person B.
ReplyDeleteThat's just one reason. Sometimes people leak to try and harm the foundation. Sometimes people leak because they feel the foundation board or staff is harming something, and they feel like they can stop it. The Doran leak to the Reg. could have been either one: someone trying to protect the foundation by getting it out there, or someone who felt like the foundation was covering it up and leaked it to make the foundation look bad. Or like I suggested, maybe they've been trying to change things from within and been ignored, and they felt they had no other choice to leak. Or maybe they're the kind of person who believes in 100% transparency, and will leak anything. Or maybe they felt it was just too important to keep covered up, but don't care either way. There's any number of reasons why people leak.
And Seth's answer is possible. I'm not sure if that's what's actually going on, but it entirely makes sense and is entirely common in certain organizations.
However, I have way more faith in Sue than Kelly does. I'm thinking that's not the case. In my experiences Sue is not afraid to change things from the inefficient, cliquish methods that the prior boards have clung to.
Gregory, I laugh at you calling Wikipedia Review's blog "mostly signal". It's utter partisan tripe.
ReplyDeleteGreg, I also laugh. Much noise, not signals.
ReplyDeleteWR has better signal to noise than any other critique site out there.
ReplyDeleteName a major problem with WP that *hasn't* been discussed on WR.
Try comparing the RFAr talk pages to the WR pages. Talk about your low signal to noise ratio as people pussyfoot around the issues while trying to fit them into WP-speak.
"Name a major problem with WP that *hasn't* been discussed on WR."
ReplyDeleteWR has discussed at length 428 of the last 5 major problems with Wikipedia. That's kind of what "low signal to noise ratio" means.
Nice to see you back, Kelly. :)
ReplyDeleteRegarding why there are leaks, I would think it would be fairly obvious. Most of the people in high-up positions have spent two hours a day for the past five years contributing to Wikipedia or some other associated wiki. Wikis are the ultimate in transparency. If I change any article, the exact changes I made, my username or IP are recorded forever and interested parties are informed of the change. I'd imagine that people who have spent so much time working on a wiki would expect that an organization whose main product is a wiki would exhibit a similar level of transparency in its dealings. Kind of sad that it doesn't.
ReplyDelete