Florida Search and destroy: the Knowledge Engine and the undoing of Lila Tretikov: Examining the impact of the knowledge engine← Back to ContentsView Latest Issue17 February 2016
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75%the top 25% stays the same, everyone above that gets cut down tothe 75th percentilewhat the lower 75% make. If some major personalities want to leave, great - if not, we can reevaluate and try a bigger cut. The problem with laying out big bucks for decision makers is they make decisions, and we don't really want people making decisions, we just want them closing out tasks in Phabricator that have been sitting around unanswered for years on end. The problem with laying out big bucks for career software designers is they want to make careers, have some big piece of software with a fancy name they can say they built for a top website, not say they closed out a bunch of miscellaneous user requests.The community consultation was particularly effective in highlighting the needs and wants of our readers, as well as those of the editing community, and this has informed the ongoing strategy design process - a process that has deep community input. That strategy, in turn, informs funding decisions.
The Community Resources Team surveyed the community and discussed with them their technical priorities, and tailored their current Idea Lab Campaign accordingly.
The WMF have accepted the FDC's proposal that the WMF submit to the same reporting standard they expect of their chapters.
Lila could and should have been more candid about the Knowledge Engine project as the idea was evolving, and I hope she's learned from that, but under her the WMF has developed institutional structures that are intrinsically respectful of and responsive to the volunteers and readers. I hope she survives this crisis but, if she doesn't, I hope those structures do. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Here’s some very important specifics pertaining to the grant process:
The widely circulated grant agreement PDF was not written by the WMF. It was written by junior staff members at the Knight Foundation. Here’s how it works: you have a conversation with staff at the Knight Foundation about ideas you have for program areas you’d like to fund, throw these ideas back and forth through a phone call or two, and then send the Knight Foundation a 1 page summary of what you’re looking to do. Knight junior staff then turns this into a document that they send to their VP, and then once the VP signs it, it’s done.
Importantly, the language on the grant agreement is not written by the grantee, but instead by the Knight Foundation, and usually by junior staff. I could show you some of our old grant agreements, and you’d be blown away by how “off” the language is on the agreement versus on the proposals we sent in. The grant agreement language is designed to be informal, and is written largely based on conversations.
Given the funding amount of $250k, this was *not* a long, drawn out grant process. This grant must have gone from “quick first chat” to “grant agreement” in a week or less. Grants of less than 250k are not approved by the Knight Foundation Board and are instead approved by VPs. They happen very quickly. This is likely why many people at the WMF felt blindsided.
The last Knight Foundation grant I got took two weeks from conversation to grant agreement. The final text in the grant agreement was written by staff at the Knight Foundation and had several important mistakes present in it.
I’m not sure why senior WMF didn’t explain this more clearly. My best guess is they didn’t want to malign the Knight Foundation. Nothing about this grant process seems incompetent to me.
I could not disagree more with your call for Lila Tretikov’s resignation. It’s completely ridiculous. This is just a growing pain associated with WMF applying for foundation funding, something they’ve only done a literal *handful* of times in the past. Grant funding is an extremely important part of WMF being able to innovate outside of existing budget areas. Grants are also typically opaque. I don’t think the WMF has applied for many grants, at least based on its size. I’m willing to bet that no other nonprofit the size of WMF has taken as little grant money as WMF has. So this seems like both a growing pain and a necessary growing pain. 2600:1010:B001:974D:A1FF:B07E:3146:626B (talk) 12:20, 20 February 2016 (UTC) (not logged in so as to not burn my own grant relationship bridges)[reply]
A story in desperate search for a conspiracy. Sorry, but this is completely out of proportions. Jeblad (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nov. 20 Grant for payment within 60 days and the announcement
The timeline some are discussing seems a little off. The Knight Grant was not completed until it was signed on November 20, 2015 (November was also when the Wikimedia FAQ page was created [2]). They then had 60 days to payout, and during that 60 days Knight made the joint announcement, which says it is:
So, regardless of the boilerplate in the agreement - Knight and WMF clearly have a common understanding that it is for early research into the Wikipedia.org search function of Wikipedia (aka., Wikimedia) projects, not any sort of Google. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:24, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"I strongly object to the notion that I have been unwilling to discuss the Knight grant, "knowledge engine" or anything else. There is no evidence offered for this because it simply isn't true.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2016 (UTC)"[reply]