Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/Interview

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• In short the CEO has been flying around too much dealing with external stakeholders, to have the time to deal with the internal situation at the WMF. What type of CEO will you be?. The answer to this question was a typical politicians' non-answer, and sadly for one of the most important aspects in the heirarchy (or should I say 'anarchy') of WMF management and and its bloated paid 'labour force', hence the issues raised by the real stakeholders: the editors who provide the content for free, the maintenance workers and admins who keep it from falling apart - for free, and the readers who take it all for granted but contribute their donations that keep the CEOs in the luxury of near permanent business travel. Still, it's early days yet, and 'nothing pleaseth but rare accidents' . Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:21, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• I hope Ms. Iskander took seriously the suggestion she create an account & anonymously edit Wikipedia -- or one of the other projects. Reading this interview, & related articles on diff, I see no clear indication that she had done this. Doing this matters because too many Foundation staff act as if volunteers create articles simply by sitting down & deciding, "I'm going to write so many words on this subject I'm interested in"; these staff appear to be unaware or indifferent about all of the other steps required to create, revise or maintain articles. (For instance an important step is researching the subject, which usually takes far more time than the actual writing.) In the end, all of the websites live or die by their content -- not policies created by people lacking direct experience with the content. -- llywrch (talk) 18:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
  • It's pretty subtle but I think the 1st thing she should do according to the original suggestion is *keep it a secret* as much as possible. I take this sentence almost as a confirmation "Even as I’ve started making my first edits, I can see that there are many types of ways of contributing to the movement." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• I'd feel better if she did state she has an anonymous account on one of the Wikis. No more need be said. Not only for the reason we could hope that she has a sense what average contributors are doing & what they need to do a better job, but that a newbie out there is the CEO of the Foundation could encourage more civil interactions. Or less haste to act. -- llywrch (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Pretty subtle maybe, but perhaps for background while doing it WMF CEOs should read The Signpost more often. At least some relevant back issues. In the end, all of the websites live or die by their content -- not policies created by people lacking direct experience with the content., There are some good people in the WMF, but without required levels of understanding and expert leadership for what we do here, it's pretty much like herding cats and that's perhaps an argument for promoting 'managerial' CEOs from within. Wikipedia encyclopedias may amount to one of the most consulted projects in the world (disregarding its many subsidised forks), but even Big Tech has some semblance of management infrastructure. That's why they are 'BigTech' and why Apple brought Jobs back to save what was almost a bankruptcy to becoming the planet's richest company in not much longer than Wikipedia exists. It's all about having the right people in the right jobs (pun intended). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:35, 31 January 2022 (UTC)