User talk:Katherine (WMF)/Archive 1

Welcome to Meta!

Hello, Katherine (WMF)/Archive 1. Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 18:30, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Request for Lila

Hi Katherine, would you please ask Lila to check her Meta talk page? I have been waiting since May 25 for an answer to a post that I made there. Some of us have since posted additional comments and questions. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 06:58, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pine! I will ping her on this -- It's been a busy first month for Lila, but I know she wants to make her Talk page a priority. Thanks! Katherine (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much. --Pine^✉ 06:08, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Katherine, I'm still waiting for responses on Lila's talk page. Also, would you please ask Gayle to respond to Wikimedia-l about the discussion with Isarra? I included Gayle individually in that email chain and we're still waiting to hear from her. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 05:47, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

WMF superblocks it's community

Hi,

since Erik doesn't answer, I'm now sending this remark to some other WMF officers and board members. I apologize for using your time.

I'm a crat in german wp. The so-called super-protections that Erik Möller/User:Eloquence and User:JEissfeldt (WMF) have put on our common.js on sunday, acting officially on behalf of WMF, have left some blood on the carpet. Many fellow wikipedians are upset, even those who accept the media viewer (which had been the conflict's origin). Several long-time contributors have left or stopped editing due to this. Journalists picked up the case.

Personally, I strongly protest against the WMF's action, and it's failure to communicate afterwards. Our communities are capable, and willing, to handle problems like this without office-actions.

There have been no official or private comments from WMF in the last days, so I'd like to suggest you have a look and give some response to the criticism.

(apologize again, for my translation errors)

Rfc: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights

Links to ongoing discussions in german language: [1], [2], [3]

Greetings, -MBq (talk) 20:13, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, i second MBq's request and also e.g. this post by Rich. This issue is not taken lightly especially among german wikipedians. Regards, Ca$e (talk) 20:53, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys -- I really appreciate you reaching out to me -- please don't think you're wasting my time. I'm happy to always respond when I can add something constructive and valuable. I think the best place to start though, is with Lila's talk page where she shares her thoughts, because she speaks for herself better than I can speak for her. Let me know if I can be of more help, though? Katherine (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

A way for typical readers to see how stable a passage is

Following your comment at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2015_Strategy/Community_consultation/2015-03-03#SchreiberBike where you said "Right. It's an interesting idea", I wanted to forward a link to an article which I saw referenced in a recent Signpost. "Fine-Grained Controversy Detection in Wikipedia" might be helpful. Thank you.SchreiberBike (talk) 15:15, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

(Jumping in here as the person who put this link into that Signpost report:)

You may also be interested in the - by now inactive - WikiTrust project, or more generally Research:Content persistence. I'm not aware of plans to bring Wikitrust back online, but Revision scoring as a service, a somewhat related project, is in active development currently, supported by an IEG grant from the Foundation.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

	Mint tea
	Thanks for being helpful. --Pine✉ 18:15, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Appreciation

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	Katherine, thank you for your work to date for the Wikimedia Foundation, and especially for taking on the challenge of guiding the organization into a better era. Please do not hesitate to call on me if I can help. Pete (talk) 19:34, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

+1 to what Pete says :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Congrats

Hi, Congratulations, and good luck with the (huge) work coming... Yann (talk) 23:47, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you @Yann:. A lot of work ahead, indeed... it'll take all of us, working together. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

World Bank and Davos: WP relaive

Please tell us more about your work at the en:World Bank and the WEF (Davos, [4]). I cannot relate this to the Wiki works yet. -DePiep (talk) 23:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi @DePiep: I was a consultant to the World Bank from June 2011 until January 2013, so about 18 months. I worked on a few main projects, including:

• The launch of the Open Development Technology Alliance, which was a project to improve the transparency and accountability of World Bank governance projects (that is, projects around delivery and quality of public services), by creating different tools for citizens to interact with local and national government (these were usually technology-enabled tools, such as SMS polling or open data programs). This was in support of the World Bank's efforts to improve their open data and open information policies. You can also read more here on the World Bank's open data portal.
• The CityCamp Tunisia initiative, where we worked with three medium-sized cities to bring together citizens and municipal governments to improve transparency and accountability, identify important citizen priorities (traffic congestion, education, etc.). There was no website, but there are some videos from a conference we organized here, including a session on wikis for cities. This project was based on the CityCamp unconference model that brings citizens together with local officials and experts to identify problems and collaborative build solutions.
• WaterHackathon, which was a single day event in 10 cities around the world, including Bangladesh, Cairo, and Lagos, that was meant to help bring together people who work on water and sanitation issues with civil society and software engineers. Our partners included NASA and Random Hacks of Kindness, a 2010 effort to engage software engineers in disaster response management that grew out of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

I also worked on a few other projects at the World Bank, including communications support for the Bank's open data program, a project in Edo, Nigeria on improving municipal and security accountability to citizens, and a project in Lebanon meant to support the overall ecosystem for Lebanese startups, from computer science programs at local universities to improved broadband service.

During that same period I also worked as fellow for Access Now on digital rights in the Middle East, co-authored a chapter on the development of the internet in Tunisia, and was very involved with the Washington DC communities for information and communications for development (ICT4D) and what is now known as 'civic technology'.

I have never worked with the World Economic Forum. That is a link to the Youth for Technology Foundation, where I am on the Board of Trustees. The Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF) is a non-profit charitable organization that educates young people on computer literacy, with programs in North and South America and Africa. It looks like that image in the background is of the founder of the YTF at a World Economic Forum event. However, YTF is an independent organization.

As you have noticed, my work with the World Bank did not involve wikis. During this period of my career, I was working mostly on open government and accountability projects, serving communities in diverse countries and contexts around the world, with an emphasis on open data and software, transparency, and collaboration. Even though there were no wikis involved, there were many of the same themes, and it was very good experience in bringing together diverse stakeholders, in different cultures and contexts, to get people working together on common goals to improve their lives.

However, I did work with wikis during my time as a consultant to UNICEF from 2007-2010. Our team built some extensions for MediaWiki, resulting in our team being called the Uniwiki team for a while. I used wikis to work with young people on advocacy around health and inclusion. Eventually, the team was renamed UNICEF Innovation to reflect a broader scope of work, including hardware, other open source technologies, and program development.

Let me know if you have other questions. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Katherine, congrats on the new position. I think what you did for UNICEF and the World Bank is admirable. Some of the issues with World Bank is partly that of perception and sometimes mode of execution, many people around the MD/DC area think people who work at the bank are nasty or just not amiable and citizens receiving World Bank project sometimes feel that the projects are not sustainable. However, my question is from your expereince with the Edo State project, do you have suggestions on how Wikipedia can improve coverage of African related matters considering the dearth of accessible information.Alexplaugh12 (talk) 13:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Alexplaugh12:. Sorry for the delay in responding to you! I'm aware of some of the perception issues with the Bank, including in some of the countries where I worked. I tried to keep my work focused on projects that involved citizen feedback, in order to make them more sustainable, and respond to that criticism. Anyway! I wouldn't look to the experience in Edo only to inform how to improve coverage of African projects, but I am interested in learning from our past experiences as a movement. I know there have been a number of efforts from Wikimedians across the content, such as Wiki Loves Africa and the WikiIndaba, as well as efforts from Wikimedians outside Africa to engage and strengthen local editor communities. I'm deeply interested in these issues, after working in different African countries, but I feel as though I should learn more about these efforts - what worked and what didn't - and about the experiences of our colleagues at WMZA and elsewhere - before I make uninformed suggestions. And of course, every country is so different - what works in South Africa will be different than what works in Rwanda or Ghana. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 01:56, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Answering other questions

An editor had previously left some other questions on my page, and I hadn't responded promptly. I apologize for that. Although they've since been removed, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and answer some of them to the best of my ability.

1. The first question was about the nature of the interim ED, roughly asking whether I feel as though it is a license to make major strategic decisions, or whether I was just here to be a safe pair of hands. From my perspective, neither are the right approach. It's not my remit to fundamentally refactor the organization, but the work continues and we can't afford to lose time to drift. As I view it, at times I'll be called on to make pressing strategic decisions. At other times, I'll need to have the sense of what is better suited for resolution under permanent leadership.

The Board is looking to fill the permanent ED position position within 3-6 months, reflecting their motivation to keep the organization moving forward. We all agree it is important to give the organization and the community a sense of security and stability regarding the future of the organization, leadership, and strategic direction. However, these 3-6 months are critical ones in which important decisions are made: they encompass the annual plan process, which sets the budget and direction for the next 15 months (the fourth quarter of our current fiscal year, also known as Q4 FY15-16, and all of the next fiscal year, also known as FY16-17). This has direct implications on the work the permanent ED will be focused on in her or his first year, as they follow through the FY16-17 plan.

The Trustees have been clear with me that I'm not here to just warm the seat. It is my responsibility to move the organization through this transitional period. We've agreed on a set of interim priorities, including developing and delivering the Annual Plan, and filling critical operating gaps. These priorities may seem operational (and they are) but they have important strategic implications. You can read more about the thinking that went into these priorities, but to recap, they're as follows:

1. Supporting the permanent ED search process (e.g., operations, participation);
2. Filling critical operating vacancies, with an emphasis on strengthening the HR function:
   1. CTO;
   2. VP HR; and the employee relations specialist; and
   3. Head of Community Engagement;
3. Delivering the 2016-2017 annual plan for review and approval;
4. Delivering the 2016-2018 Foundation strategy for review and approval; and
5. Implementing a plan to address critical engagement survey results

This is what I've been focused on for the last four weeks. We've made some good progress, and I plan to share more specifics soon. As we move forward, I'm sure other issues will emerge, some of which may have strategic implications for the movement. I expect I'll work with the Board, staff, and community to determine how best to approach them within my remit.

There were a few more questions as well on improving communications and the role of innovation within the WMF. I plan to come back to them when I have a bit more time. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 02:40, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank your for that helpful response. My objective in asking was to open a dialogue that would help us to help you most effectively, by clarifying what you expected to be the focus of your activities: it's good to know what those are, and I hope we can help. For example, the 2016-2017 annual plan for review and approval is already public. However I do not think we have yet seen "the 2016-2018 Foundation strategy" --is that the same as the 2016 Strategy/Draft WMF Strategy, now closed? In general I encourage you to engage with the community in an open mode: the 2016 Strategy/Community consultation seemed to focus on closed questions, and did not encourage deeper strategic thinking or innovation.

Unable to get a response on default editor bug

November: I asked Jdforrester (WMF) if the WMF was going to try to slip in a VE-default as part of the single-edit-tab project. I was told no, the WMF would not do that without talking to the community first. I apologized for being paranoid.

December: An announcement was made at Village Pump Technical that we could see the new system at test2.wikipedia.org. VE was the default for new users. I objected. The community liaison told me that that the test server had a different configuration and assured me that it was not an accurate representation of what was going to be deployed.

January: I got an even more explicit explanation on Jdforrester (WMF)'s talk page[5] that for new users on EnWiki the first editor that loads will still be the wikitext editor.

March: An announcement was made at Village Pump Miscellaneous that we could see the new Single Edit Tab system at the test server, at Polish wiki, and at Hungarian wiki. I checked all three wikis and VE was set as default for new users at all of them. Again the liaison told me that this was not what was going to be deployed at EnWiki.

April 12: Single edit tab was deployed. VE was in fact imposed as the default editor for all new users. The WMF was immediately notified of this issue in multiple places, including Phabricator[6] and Jdforrester (WMF)'s talk page.[7] The tracking bug for this issue is Phabricator T132806.

It has now been eleven days. We are unable to get any response on the issue. The bug is still listed as untriaged, and Jdforrester (WMF) is not responding to posts on his talk page. Alsee (talk) 01:48, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

• Katherine, this is a serious problem that many at enwiki are concerned by. We realise you aren't necessarily to go-to person for this, but since the go-to person was gone to, can you please at least prod him to reply? BethNaught (talk) 07:15, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I second the above comment. — Scott • talk 14:59, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi all. I was at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin the last few days, so apologies for not seeing your messages right away. I'll look into this and let you know what I learn. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Update: Jdforrester (WMF) has replied on his talk page.. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Katherine. BethNaught (talk) 20:21, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Katherine (WMF), Jdforrester (WMF) lied to us, people are getting really pissed, and now the community discussion has turned to applying a community-written patch to the sitewide javascript to fix this. Someone has already written the javascript for it. I'm very much hoping that you consider this situation as unacceptable as I do. For the last six month Forrester and the liaison have been promising and promising that the WMF was not going to try to sneak out a VE-default as part of the single edit tab deployment. The last month has been stalling and stalling and promising that this was merely a bug and that this was going to be fixed.

I would say that this situation is corrosive to community trust in the WMF, except it isn't. It just drops another sandbag on the lack of trust. No one in the community seems surprised by the situation at all.

Please tell Jdforrester to fix this. That is much preferable to a community javascript patch to fix it. Alsee (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Hey Alsee, I think you haven't read his previous reply yet? He is going to fix the issue server-side (just not today, because doing so actually involves other changes that will affect other wikis and that I need time to communicate properly). Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Elitre (WMF) thanx, I hadn't seen it because his reply literally wasn't there when I started editing the Village pump section (I was in edit mode for quite a while).

Regarding the response there: NOT RESOLVED. Merely popping up a dialog for more people utterly fails to fix anything. If you don't intend to deploy a real fix then we will still need to deploy the community javascript to prevent VE from loading by default.

To quote Jdforrester on his talk page the fix is the first editor that loads will still be the wikitext editor. If there is a popup then the "Continue editing" button simply clears the dialog revealing the first-loaded wikitext editor, and the "Switch" dialog option needs to be rewritten to say it switches to Visual Editor. Alsee (talk) 21:35, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I just saw a new reply from Jdforrester at village pump. This is (hopefully) resolved. Alsee (talk) 21:46, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Wiktionary App

Hi. I was recently looking for an offline dictionary app on android marketplace. I noticed that we had an official app for Wiktionary, but it is no longer supported. I ended up getting another app Livio offline dictionary, which actually uses content directly from Wiktionary, in fact, quite a few other apps do as well. I was wondering why development for the official Wiktionary app was abandoned? It seems like something that would require low resources and have a high visible output. Wiktionary doesn't require as much development or editing as other projects, and it is in quite a usable state already. Maybe, you can look in to why support for this app was dropped? perhaps continue development or commission a new app. Kind regards. Theo10011 (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I believe that mw:UCOSP Spring 2012 is relevant here. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the context. I am more interested in why this was abandoned/not supported? Seems like something that could be easily achieved with a new app, considering the clones using wiktionary already, and it should have a large enough visible, impact. Something to consider for future. Theo10011 (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Interesting comment: I'd redirect it to the people who may actually be able to provide some insights about that. mw:Wikimedia_Apps/Team lists a mailing list and an IRC channel where you may find them. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:07, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Elitre. And allow me to state this, on the Interestingness of my comment. :) I actually wasn't looking for reference or communication channels (I've been here a while, I can find my way around). I am nonetheless, grateful for your help. I was trying to redirect a query/suggestion to the WMF management, which I assumed was Katherine at the moment. I don't know if Katherine checks this page herself but it was just a thought to keep in mind when making future plans. Thanks again. Regards. Theo10011 (talk) 19:30, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

This seems a common mode of miscommunication between Community and Staff: propositions, suggestions or ideas for discussion are treated as if they were requests for information. Perhaps we in the Community could keep this in mind, and make it clear when we are making a suggestion as opposed to asking for information. Equally perhaps Staff could be alert to the possibility that there may be a valuable suggestion underlying what appears to be idle curiosity. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:21, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations on your recent appointment! I wish you every success in the role.

Rich Farmbrough 12:12 24 June 2016 (GMT).

+ 1! --Holder (talk) 12:39, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

• Congrats! I'm sure that you'll continue to do a great job. Smallbones (talk) 13:22, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
• Very happy about this. --Jorm (talk) 19:03, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
• Congrats, hope you continue to find different ways to sustain this medium and keep the volunteers happy.Alexplaugh12 (talk) 13:07, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all for all the enthusiasm and support! We're going to have a lot to do, and I'm excited to be working together. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

OpenStreetMap conference and other communications

Hi Katherine, thanks for your presentation today. Would you please upload the slides to Commons?

Hopefully OSM will release the finished video in a few weeks under a Commons-compatible license.

Just so you know, I'm thinking about what the Wikiverse could learn from the OSM community. One thing I noticed at today's conference was that the gender mix seemed to be nearly 50/50better balanced than it is in Wikimedia. Besides gender diversity, I get the impression that biting the newbies and user hostility in general are less of a problem on OSM than they are in the Wikiverse. I'm going to ask some questions of OSM people about these issues, and I'll probably post to mailing lists at some point with some observations.

Regarding the Wikimedia-l thread from Friday, I need to think about that a bit further, and I'm going to be busy for the rest of the week. I just want to acknowledge your email and thank you for your candor. Hopefully I'll have some thoughts to share once I have some spare time (ha!)

Thanks again for your presentation. --Pine^✉ 05:54, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Pine: I thought I would jump in here as I have just uploaded Katherine's presentation she gave at the State of the Map US 2016 conference on Commons here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katherine_Maher%27s_keynote_presentation_at_OSM_State_of_the_Map_US_2016.pdf. Thanks, SLien (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks SLien (WMF). --Pine^✉ 19:30, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Community involvement in planning

I would like to draw to your attention what I believe to be a systemic failing in WMF planning of software projects. There have been several instances recently of projects which have proved less than satisfactory because of a mismatch between what planners think that communities want and the reality of the way those communities behave. The common denominator is, to put it bluntly, that WMF assumes that volunteers will do extra unwanted work without demur. We saw this in Gather, where it was assumed that editors would be happy to spend time curating the social media aspects of Gather lists. We saw vestiges of this in the Knowledge Engine, where I have every reason to believe that it was initially intended that queries would be hand-curated by colunteers. We see it again in the Content Translation tool, which has made it fatally easy for novice editors without adequate language skills to upload articles which are of unacceptably poor quality and which have to be read, assessed and improved or deleted by volunteers. Closer involvement of communities at the initial stages of these projects would have made it clear that there were significant potential downsides: in the case of Gather, there are community policies in place against using Wikipedia as a social media platform for precisely the reason that no-one wants to invest the extra effort in moderating it. This casual assumption that the volunteer community will cheerfully undertake any extra tasks that arise out of WMF software design is pernicious and needs to be challenged forthrightly. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:23, 29 July 2016 (UTC) Just to follow up my own suggestion by pointing out that the request in the next section refers to the fallout from one example of this failure. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:28, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

To quote a three year old page Flow/Community engagement:

What we've learnt so far
Bringing users into the conversation at the end of the development process makes it hard for their feedback to be incorporated. Ideas gather inertia, particularly when implemented, so it's hard to change course.

The WMF has been saying for many years that the best way to avoid problems is to get community input on projects early. Somehow the WMF finds it really hard to invite community input before the build phase. If Gather hadn't been built in secret, almost any community member could have alerted the team to critical issues. The entire foundation of Flow is a disaster because there was exactly zero community input. I am currently extremely concerned about the Workflow project (presently paused). I stumbled across the documentation for it in the planning stage. The team did interviews asking some community members how we work - but managed to gather less than zero input on the project. (I spoke to one of the people they interviewed - he was appalled at how the team interpreted his answers and appalled at what they planned to build.) I did my best to alert the relevant staff that the current design draft is all wrong and that the project desperately needs community input. It's hard to tell if my message was effectively received. The answer I got was that the project had just been put on hold, and apparently there wouldn't be any response or discussion until the project started up again. I'm afraid the project will quietly start up again and just start building something that the community doesn't want and won't use. Alsee (talk) 11:23, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Community involvement in planning

I would like to draw to your attention what I believe to be a systemic failing in WMF planning of software projects. There have been several instances recently of projects which have proved less than satisfactory because of a mismatch between what planners think that communities want and the reality of the way those communities behave. The common denominator is, to put it bluntly, that WMF assumes that volunteers will do extra unwanted work without demur. We saw this in Gather, where it was assumed that editors would be happy to spend time curating the social media aspects of Gather lists. We saw vestiges of this in the Knowledge Engine, where I have every reason to believe that it was initially intended that queries would be hand-curated by colunteers. We see it again in the Content Translation tool, which has made it fatally easy for novice editors without adequate language skills to upload articles which are of unacceptably poor quality and which have to be read, assessed and improved or deleted by volunteers. Closer involvement of communities at the initial stages of these projects would have made it clear that there were significant potential downsides: in the case of Gather, there are community policies in place against using Wikipedia as a social media platform for precisely the reason that no-one wants to invest the extra effort in moderating it. This casual assumption that the volunteer community will cheerfully undertake any extra tasks that arise out of WMF software design is pernicious and needs to be challenged forthrightly. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:23, 29 July 2016 (UTC) Just to follow up my own suggestion by pointing out that the request in the next section refers to the fallout from one example of this failure. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:28, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

To quote a three year old page Flow/Community engagement:

What we've learnt so far
Bringing users into the conversation at the end of the development process makes it hard for their feedback to be incorporated. Ideas gather inertia, particularly when implemented, so it's hard to change course.

The WMF has been saying for many years that the best way to avoid problems is to get community input on projects early. Somehow the WMF finds it really hard to invite community input before the build phase. If Gather hadn't been built in secret, almost any community member could have alerted the team to critical issues. The entire foundation of Flow is a disaster because there was exactly zero community input. I am currently extremely concerned about the Workflow project (presently paused). I stumbled across the documentation for it in the planning stage. The team did interviews asking some community members how we work - but managed to gather less than zero input on the project. (I spoke to one of the people they interviewed - he was appalled at how the team interpreted his answers and appalled at what they planned to build.) I did my best to alert the relevant staff that the current design draft is all wrong and that the project desperately needs community input. It's hard to tell if my message was effectively received. The answer I got was that the project had just been put on hold, and apparently there wouldn't be any response or discussion until the project started up again. I'm afraid the project will quietly start up again and just start building something that the community doesn't want and won't use. Alsee (talk) 11:23, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Staffing issues

Katherine, I have recently been told twice that certain important initiatives are unlikely to proceed because of lack of staff time. In February, Maggie Dennis told me that a community hub project was on hold because Right now, we could not staff it. Just today, Nataliia Tymkiv said that a transparency initiative would be slow because we cannot expect the staff to help us a lot. Frankly it beggars belief that the WMF with a staff of over 200 and a budget of tens of millions of dollars cannot provide the resources to deliver these initiatives. What this means is that they are simply not regarded as important enough. This is a dismal message to send out. Please would you review the way you balance your resources and I hope that you will find these initiatives important enough to support. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:13, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, one part of the discussion is here Talk:Wikimedia Foundation transparency gap#Further steps and I have never stated that "a transparency initiative would be slow". Ben Creasy expressed a wish to "figure out a way to have staff help out however they can so that board members don't burn out" diff, and I have answered that "we shall work as we work now for some time and see how we can organize the work better and include any additional resources we might need in the next WMF budget" diff. I do not want to waste staff's time (and accordingly) the Movements money on tasks we are not yet sure we want to do. I want to have a clear vision of how much time and what kind of support we need to move forward. We all know that we want more transparency and accountability. But let's first find how it can be achieved. At the moment I see only one solution: to get better at documenting stuff we do (or reasons we do not do this or that). As I have written before, I am going to talk with Juliet Barbara about things that can be done now (after August 9, 2016). And the things we discuss and agree upon will be documented here: Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee/Board transparency --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

My apologies to Nataliia, it seems that I misunderstood her comment -- it is of course entirely for her to say whether or not she is receiving the support she needs from the staff, and I withdraw that part of my comment. My concern was over a pattern that seemed to be developing about the lack of staff time available to support important activities, and I think this is an issue irrespective of this particular case: see Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee/Board transparency#Visibility & Access for yet another example. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 08:55, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Moving forward

Congratulations and best wishes. May I offer some suggestions for things you might like to pay attention to now that you have been confirmed in post. I suggest that engagemwnt with the volunteer community, especially at a strategic and early stage in your decision making will be vital, as will driving that engagement down medium term goals and activities. Of course by engagement I mean an intellgient and intelligible two-way discussion in which all sides participate in a spirit of freedom, frankness, fairness and constructive dialogue. You may wish to develop a more cohenrent and consistent set of portals or other specific and well-resourced vehicles for that engagement for the medium term, aligned with the WMF planning and delivery processes, sufficiently well-resourced to make a different to the coherence and effectivness of your operations. I may venture to suggest that you may wish to foster a more rigorous culture of planning and effective delivery to plans than has been universal in the past, coupled with transparancy and accountability in the full view of the community who are their ultimate customers. There are some specific strategic objectives where that engagement has been absent and where that absence has been hampering effectiveness. It would be a good idea to give a clear concise and measurable set of obectives around the areas of Visual Editor, Wikitext, Parsoid, Flow, Workflow and Discovery. I believe it is essential that you involve the Community in an effective way in testing the direction and delivery of your plans in those areas. Currently you d not have th community buy-in that you need to make these plans effective. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:15, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Rogol. I agree with the majority of your suggestions, but as you also probably know, the devil will be in the details - how we as a Foundation not only approach these issues, but implement effectively against them. We will need to consistently assess our efforts against our intentions, and calibrate accordingly. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I specifically asked you to publish the objectives around certain projects. Are you able and willing to do so, please? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 19:24, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Under-ambitious, under-resourced, under-managed and under-performing

Katherine, I am sorry that you have not been able to give us your views on the development projects I mentioned. In the absence of an authoritative statement, I shall make do by putting in my personal view, which of course you may wish to complement or contradict. Those views are not positive, and will probably not be welcome to you or to your staff. They are nonetheless a genuine view of those projects as seen by a member of the community keen to be a critical and constructive -- and they are summarised by the four words above, namely under-ambitious, under-resourced, under-managed and under-performing. The VE/Parsoid/Flow complex suffers from scope mismatch. As a vehicle for delivering a WYSIWYG editor and discussion board it is over-complex, while VE and Flow are under-ambitious. Can these really be regarded as cutting edge in 2016? If correctly scoped they could and should have been delivered and finalised long ago, if not brought in from pre-existing open source projects. And yet in terms of the wider project, an engine for handling unidirectional linear text fails to capture even the richness of current projects let alone future knowledge modalities, such as complex text (hieroglyphics, chemistry, mathematics, music), higher-dimensional data (genomic, proteomic, 3D printing), data in time (audio, video), interactive, computational, ... all of which could and should have been scoped out by your innovation work. The execution of the VE project has been lacklustre. Such a straightforward product should have been finished long since, and it was clearly inadequately resourced and managed. Indeed, it has been explained to me in patronising terms at least twice that this is the way Agile looks. No, this is the way a badly managed project looks. Your culture appears not to pritise such issues as timeliness and grip. Finally, Workflow has already failed. In the absence of resources to undertake the required research into the huge complexity of work flows within the projects, whatever is designed will be designed in ignorance, and hence simply can not succeed. Ever. It is already a waste of time.

So, what can be done? The answer is simple, but requires a change in attitude as much as one of process. You must stop thinking of the community as a burden which you have to support (a position explicitly taken by your predecessor in 2015) or at best a lumpenproletariat to work at your direction (a position explicitly taken by the Board Chair in 2014). The community is here to work with you if you will let it. You, and your CTO (a post which needs filling with the utmost urgency) need an open frank constructive and imaginative dialogue on planning and future direction, termination of currently failed or failing projects, resourcing of those which are jointly agreed on, and drive and grip by leaders who are can provide a strong rigorous and supportive framework that delivers what the community needs. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:19, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I think a change of attitude is needed. I think that we need to stop considering the "community" to be just the hyper-active and noisy editors who engage in the political side of the project. There are millions of people that edit and read Wikipedia, and the Foundation has a responsibility to them to make the site as use-able as possible. I feel like useability has been pushed to the side in favour of the old guard feeling comfortable with nothing changing. That is bad. Wikipedia thrived initially due to the technology; we made it easier than ever to contribute and interact online. Now we lag behind every other major website. I hope the WMF continues to display leadership in developing new technology that moves Wikipedia into 2016, while working with the community in the broad sense of involving everyone, not just the noisy few. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Sadly being hyper-active and noisy may be seen by some volunteers as the only way to get any kind of attention from WMF seniors. In my experience, being polite and reserved has a high probability of being ignored. However you are certainy right that this does not tend to make WMF insiders feel positive about engaging with outsiders if their experience of those outsiders is rebarbative. But a well-managed engagement which encourges sensible people to contribute constructively will tend to minimise the negative effect of the strident and unconstructive minority. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:24, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I agree that Wikimedia's interface for both readers and editors is showing signs of age. The Discovery team is making some progress on improving search functions which benefit readers and editors alike, and the I get the impression that readers are happy with WMF mobile web and mobile apps. On the other hand, I worry about WMF interpreting negative reactions from the community to new features aimed at editors as saying that editors want nothing to change. I disagree with that; we have lots of custom tools, scripts, and bots that are being built and modified. However, I do think that WMF can do a better job of making editors' lives easier, both for novice editors and power editors. I edited on mobile web over the weekend and had a largely painful experience doing what should have been simple tasks. So rather than seeing the editing community as resistant to change, I think the better way to conceptualize it as wanting tools that suit its needs. In the past, WMF has harmed rather than helped community workflows with its attempts to build new tools, which is a WMF habit that is particularly worth breaking. I am under the impression that the situation is improving with better design research and more surveys being done in advance of deploying new tools, and am glad to see this; now I'd like WMF to accelerate the pace of development of improvements in internal search, VisualEditor, and mobile editing which are domains in which both the editing community and WMF have common interests in improving ease of use and performance. --Pine^✉ 20:23, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but just catching up with the 2000's is not going to be good enough, and it will be necessary to ruthlessly terminate some of the pet projects. I would look for a vibrant innovation programme (after all, it was I who started the Innovation page, to rather little support from almost everyone else) to engage the enthusiasm and energy of all parties, supported by really good resources, management and support. In other words, turn all four words in the subtitle around. What does Katherine think? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:55, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

What you are referring to as the community, Pine, is the noisy group that I mentioned above. I definitely agree that the WMF needs to get rid of the "pet projects", and instead hire actual software engineers under competitive salaries to design systems which work for the overall community - including the vast majority who only view or occasionally edit the sites. An organization with 200+ staff should be able to accomplish this. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 21:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer

It has been one hundred and two weeks since the community Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer, which was signed by a thousand concerned editors. The task Provide a reply appears to be stalled, awaiting executive input. Is there any chance we can get this thorn resolved before the two year mark (Aug 19)? I, and others, find it disconcerting that the WMF has been unable to put this matter to rest. Alsee (talk) 05:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

The two year mark is the end of this week (Friday). Resolving this would be good. Or at least a comment. Alsee (talk) 07:18, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Katherine, with your background in Communications, I am sure you are well aware of the message you are sending out by failing to address this issue. Is that really the message you want the Community to receive? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:35, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Innovation

It seems to me important that the WMF should have an active innovation programme, and yet there seems no significant activity in this area. Please consider appointing a strategic lead for innovation and resourcing this adequately. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:16, 4 August 2016 (UTC) Oh, and Grants:IdeaLab/Innovate Beta might be of interest too. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 20:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Chief Research Coordinator

Katherine, there is apparently a position of wmf:Chief Research Coordinator, a volunteer position that reports to you. Is this position still in existence? If so, are there public reports of their activity? Perhaps the post is currently vacant, and if so do you wish to select a successor? If it has been discontinued, perhaps the Foundation wiki should be brought up to date (this is not a wiki that mere volunteers are able to edit). Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 11:26, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

I found some background on this position. "Update August 2010: This Board-created volunteer role has expired and no longer exists.". I can't speak much for the rest of your question. As for editing the Foundation wiki, volunteers can request an account. Or, if that's not your thing, you can create a new topic on Foundation wiki feedback. Hope that helps. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for that information. It's a pity the role no longer exists, it might still have value. Perhaps Katherine will consider it along with my other suggestion of a strategic lead for Innovation. As for keeping the Foundation wiki up to date, I prefer to leave that to the paid staff whose job it is to do so. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:20, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol. I have seen your multiple questions. However, I've been traveling quite a bit lately to support community events and WMF workflows (WikiCon India, State of the Map, etc.), and with the travel, I've been under the weather. I plan to respond at a point in the near future when I have the opportunity to do so. Many thanks. Katherine (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I quite understand that you are a busy person and that replying to points raised here may not be your highest priority. Nonetheless, if you wish to use this page as an effective vehicle for communicating with the Community, may I suggest that you quickly review the first paragraph of a posting I made on 16:55, 28 June 2015 (UTC) to a very similar discussion with your predecessor at User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)/Archive 8#Talk page management. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:36, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Rogol, I am going to ask a favor. Please let Katherine have a break for a bit. WMF is a sprawling organization with many diverse problems and opportunities. I would rather have a well-rested, highly functioning executive director than a weary and stressed out executive director. Business travel is not everyone's favorite activity, particularly when one is expected to act cheerful and be one's best self at conferences while simultaneously doing remote management of a needy organization. I can be as assertive as anybody about WMF problems and opportunities, but I would also like to have the WMF ED in good condition for the long run, and this is one of those times when some patience may be for the best. Katherine has a lot of issues to manage, and I would like her to be rested and healthy so that she can do her best work. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 05:46, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Pine, thank you for your concerns. If Katherine wishes not to respond to suggestions here, whether mine specifically or those of the community in general, or feels that I or any other volunteer contributor here is being importunate or impatient, she has only to say so. I am sure she is fully capable of managing her own time and activities. If you actually read the link in my post it is to a suggestion that would help her to manage the business of this page more effectively, by making it easier for her to do other equally important things while members of the community can still get the better enagagement which they want and which, I think we all agree, is badly needed. Do you have any further suggestions for that? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol, on the subject of talk page communications, I made a similar suggestion to Lila. If my memory is correct, I suggested that she appoint someone to be a communications coordinator who would direct community inquiries to the appropriate people in WMF. This would, I hope, increase the timeliness of responses and ensure that all good-faith inquiries actually get responses. A colleague of mine at Cascadia Wikimedians made the suggestion that WMF should have a Wikimedian-in-Residence who would increase the transparency of WMF. WMF has made some steps toward improved communications with the community, such as the appointment of community liasons for technical teams. I too would like to see more reliable and timely responses from WMF staff to community inquiries. I'm currently waiting for multiple responses from inquiries that I made weeks ago to a couple of people. Perhaps after Katherine has had a chance to recover from travel, she will share some thoughts about these issues. --Pine^✉ 07:54, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Funnily enough, so did I, see link above and elsewhere. So I fail to see why you choose to criticise me for making the same suggestion here: or indeed, why you feel that you have some special right to criticise me, or why you choose this section of this page to do so. The precise issue under discussion here is a suggestion to Katherine that the position of Chief Research Coordinator might still be of value; and the only constructive element of the wider discussion that resulted is what we can do to help Katherine manage her interactions with the Community in an effective and efficient way: neither of these encompass your opinions of my alleged deficiencies as a communicator. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 16:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rogol, I didn't intend to criticize and I apologize if I came across that way. However, I am suggesting that we give Katherine a little time to respond. I realize that there is some irony in asking for patience when some of WMF's shortcomings involve lengthy delays or complete lack of responses to communications, but the distinction is that Katherine is in the best position to address communications in a systematic way, and she's asked us for a little time to recover from travel. WMF's communication problems have been there for years, and a delay of another week or two to have this problem addressed in a systematic way is a trade that I'm willing to make. (: Regarding the chief research coordinator, I'm wondering if that overlaps with Dario's existing position. Hopefully Katherine or another WMF employee will have a response to that inquiry. I need to leave this conversation for now, but I will check back here as time allows; I'm particularly interested in the communications issue. --Pine^✉ 18:18, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. It seems that we have no alternative to wait. Again. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

• Returning to the issue of Chief Research Coordinator, I would see a revival of this position as being not so much an internal position (such as the Chief Research Officer which it replaced), nor cutting across the position of Head of Research, but as a link between WMF and external research into wider issues around knowledge management, representation, presentation and curation: in short, a lead for innovation. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 18:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Knowledge Engine

What is the status of the Knowledge Engine? Has it been abandoned? It would be useful with a statement saying anything at all. Silence is not reassuring. If nobody is willing to talk about this anymore, something is wrong in the Foundation. --146.140.210.15 12:47, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

You reiterate part of a request ("... and Discovery") I posted in June [8] and repeated in July [9]. It seems that Katherine is not yet in a position to make a statement on these matters. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 15:43, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Strategy/2016-2017

Katherine, I wlecomed your posting of the Strategy/2016-2017 page in which you outline the steps you are taking to develop a discussion about the future strategy for the movement. You made it clear that those steps fall into two parts: developing the process for the discussion, and putting that process into practice. It's that first part, defining, scoping and planning the engagement that I am concerned about here. I am disappointed to read this announcement that "This process is still being formed" (good, that's what your posting made clear) "you are welcome to continue to use the discussion page" (good, that's what discussion pages are for) "the Wikimedia Foundation staff will not be able to properly monitor discussions right now" and that last part although clear, is in my view quite unacceptable. You are saying that you do not wish to hear from the community about how to structure your discussion: that the community's experience about what has and hasn't worked in the past in trying to interact with the WMF at a strategic level is of no account. I am not completely surprised, since as I pointed out at Talk:Strategy/2016-2017#Learning and listening versus Community engagement the current timelne shows much more engagement with staff and board, followed by a period of communication to the community rather than engagement with it. Please reconsider your approach and involve the community with the planning of a process which will be as effective as possible in delivering a strategy that involves all sections of the community. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 06:26, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

A plea

Dear Katherine,

I believe that I am not the only person who would very much appreciate it if you would indicate your policy for dealing with discussions, suggestions and questions at this page. If you do not expect to be able to respond to all the messages, then by all means post an appropriate banner at the top of the page indicating where and how you wish strategic discussions to be held. Alternatively, I would strongly suggest that you detail a member of your staff to handle the postings here and respond on your behalf. But I may say that allowing messages here to go unacknowledged and unanswered for months at a time sends out a message to the community that may not be the one you wish to send: namely, that you care nothing for them or their concerns and advice. Please don't alienate the community like this – you would find that they can help you enormously if only you let them.

Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:18, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Please? Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Katherine has been working on a lot of issues lately and she haven't had time to think how better to receive the input, so she can answer timely. I'll ping her about it. It would be really better to have a way to communicate without disturbing the work process, but getting answers soon enough --NTymkiv (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I see that I raised the point here originally on 24 June, so I do hope that it will not take too much longer to evolve a mechanism that does not involve intervention by equally busy members of the Board. Funnily enough, I'm quite busy too, as I imagine are you, and many of the other volunteers who donate time for free to the mission. So it would be much appreciated if we could devise a way in which we can all work together on this. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 21:55, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

• Katherine, I am sorry to see that you have not been able to reply to my request, or to follow up on the reminder that Nataliia so kindly sent, and so I think that after nearly three months of silence on your part it is now reasonable to assume that we have your answer, even if only by inaction. The situation is that various individual members of the volunteer community have attempted to engage in discussion of various topics relating to the WMF strategy and activity, and although you have expressed yourself willing to do so, you have not in fact given any substantial response, nor have you indicated whether, where, how or when you wish to pursue that form of engagagement. As I see it, then, your position is that you do not wish to engage in any substantial serious discussion here, or in any oher public forum, on matters of WMF strategy or activity, nor do you wish to indicate any other venue in which you wish to engage. There is simply no other viable interpreation of your silence – in summary, you do not wish to engage at all, anyhow, anywhere or at any time, with individual members of the volunteer community.

I think this is regrettable and counter-productive. The Foundation would be better served were you to allow yourself access to points of view from among the 100,000 or so active volunteers who between them almost certainly have expertise on any given topic not otherwise available to you. You in your role as ED would be better served were you to allow yourself access to serious constructive criticism of the WMF activities rather than hearing only from your own staff about how well they are doing. The volunteer editors, contributors and readers would be better served had they better access to, and engagement with, strategic decision-making at an earlier stage, and those deisions would be better informed and more effective. Sadly you have chosen not to avail yourself of all this help and support. I think this is the wrong decision, and hope that you will revisit, reconsider and reverse that decision in the not-too-distant future. Rogol Domedonfors (talk) 22:37, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello Rogol Domedonfors. You're correct in noting that I don't often engage on my talk page. There are a few reasons for this, but some of the most pertinent ones are as follows.

I don't find discussions on my talk to be a particularly effective way to communicate with a large variety of people. Personally, I have found that I prefer to participate in the relevant talk pages describing ongoing WMF planned work, in question-and-answer sessions at monthly Metrics Meetings or Office Hours, or on relevant mailing lists. And of course, I deeply enjoy the opportunity to meet Wikimedians in person at global and regional Wikimedia events. (Because I know not everyone can or wishes to attend or participate in some of these venues, I do make a point of publishing all relevant recordings and presentations on Commons, whenever possible.)

My talk page is often not the most appropriate venue for many issues. Many discussions regarding ongoing WMF work are better placed for their relevant talk pages, where they can be directly attended to by those who have day-to-day responsibility for those efforts. For other issues, such as strategy, this principle still applies. For example, I have been sharing updates on the 2017 movement strategy pages on Meta, and on the Wikimedia-l mailing list. As you probably have seen from these updates, my hope is both the process and the strategy will both be developed with the community, through discussion on-wiki and through work understanding the needs of our users and stakeholders. Given the intent to engage more broadly within the community, it seems correct that those discussions happen on the more neutral venue of the strategy pages themselves, rather than bidirectional interactions on the personal page of the ED.

And of course, there's another very simple reason: it isn't the most effective use of my time during working hours. I like to write, and as Pascal observed more eloquently, poor writing is done quickly, while good writing takes time. Therefore, I prefer to spend that time engaging in more highly-trafficked venues. You may find me here from time to time - such as this evening, still at the office, with a moment of calm - but for the reasons above, it isn't currently my preferred forum. Perhaps I will have more flexibility in time, though I do believe there's an expression about the danger of idle hands.

In the meanwhile, I regret your frustrations, and appreciate your persistence. I do hope this helps clarify. Yours, Katherine (WMF) (talk) 03:15, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I see that Rogol has given up, and it is clear that this page is not intended to be a two-way communication channel. For those curious about what Katherine is up to, I suggest her twitter feed.

Sorry to read that 2016 was such a horrible year for you. I'm surprised about that, given your promotion to chief exec of this top Internet site (I'd fondly remember it as a good year for that if it were me -- if you hate your job, please do go and find one you like). I hear you about the decline and fall of democracy. You might empathize with my feeling that community elections for the Foundation board are a sham and that the rank-and-file editors producing the content that pays Foundation salaries have absolutely no influence on how the Foundation conducts its business. The US Congress is sadly no different. We are all just pawns in elections contested between two factions of billionaires (though some billionaires try to be on both sides). Hoping 2017 is better for you. Enough for now, I'll let you get back to your democratic lobbying and I'll get back to supporting this neutral POV encyclopedia. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:30, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Dear Wbm1058, please note that my Twitter account does clearly state that my opinions are my own, and I've been sharing them there for nearly ten years now - good, bad, and banal. I experienced 2016 as an annus horribilis for many people and places in this world, with far too much loss of life and erosion of fundamental rights. And while I wake up each morning impassioned to advance the Wikimedia vision, I am a regular person subject to life's vagaries and hold my own view on this most recent trip around the sun.

Fortunately, like many others before me, I would suggest that a diversity of perspectives is one of our core strengths in building a neutral encyclopedia used and beloved by folks of differing viewpoints. So while we may well disagree on politics or the recent passage of time, I am heartened we seem to both agree on the essentiality of the Wikimedia mission. For that, I'm grateful. Happy editing, Katherine (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Your pageviews are probably a function of your lack of participation here. I'm sure if you chose to participate on your talk page in a similar manner to the way Jimmy does on his, you would draw a lot more traffic to here. But it's your choice, and that's fine. I appreciate the opportunity to read your twitter now and then, though I don't have a twitter or facebook account myself. Our politics may not differ as much as you think. Recent events should be kept in perspective. On my summer break last July I visited an internment camp in Canada where Japanese residents were held against their will during World War II, which is maintained now as a museum. The USA did it too, and under arguably the most liberal Democratic administration in history (the one that brought us Social Security). One thing I appreciate about Trump, while I disagree with many but far from all of his policy positions, is that he is actually doing the things that he promised he would. If Obama had actually signed some executive orders on Guantanamo during his first week in office, we might not be where we are today. The Democrats have only themselves to blame. My great grandfather may have been a socialist (100+ years ago), my grandfather was an Eisenhower-era elected Republican officeholder, and there's perhaps a little of both of them in me. You should either let Kohs inside the doors at Montreal, or publicly explain why you won't. The optics of that are giving the Foundation bad P.R. and you should do something to fix that. Make peace with him, mediate the dispute between him and Jimmy if necessary. Feel free to respond or not, I won't feel slighted if you don't. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:39, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I should correct myself, per en:Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Obama actually did try to do something there. The problem is the lasting perception that, practically speaking, nothing substantial happened on that front. Except perhaps improved relations with Cuba late in his second term. On the other hand, there's the en:Guantanamo Bay files leak, though much of that was on Bush's watch. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Wbm1058 for the observation about the correlation between participation and pageviews, and your other general reflections on politics and promises. I was being truthful when I said I don't have as much free time as I'd like to write here, but I will make an effort to be more responsive when others do. As you can see, I'm only popping by on a Saturday morning here in San Francisco! Katherine (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 11 February 2017 (UTC)