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_ Bureaucracy _ Open Source Diva named CTO

Posted by: anthony

So who is this Danese Cooper? I see that http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Danese_Cooper&oldid=25277426. On that point alone I'm skeptical.

Posted by: Zoloft

That BLP is very different today. It links to her blog and other sources. She's had a long tech career, appears to be an Open Source evangelist, coder, and advocate for women in IT.

Seems like an excellent choice, really.

I would hire her if i wanted to energize a team.

Posted by: thekohser

She looks like a Napa Valley "real estate agent of the stars".

I should also add, her IQ is likely 20 points higher than mine, and she's got about 6 times more hair than me, so I'm not one to talk.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Thu 28th January 2010, 11:44pm) *

That BLP is very different today. It links to her blog and other sources.


Yeah, the DivaBlog of the Open Source Diva, the title of which I think would have counted as a strike against her even if I hadn't associated the name with David Gerard.

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Thu 28th January 2010, 11:44pm) *

She's had a long tech career, appears to be an Open Source evangelist, coder, and advocate for women in IT.

Seems like an excellent choice, really.


A very fitting one, anyway.

I was just talking to a friend of mine two days ago about how Sun totally screwed up a successful business (and making fun of the fact that its ticker symbol is JAVA). Not sure how much of that was Cooper's fault, though.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:17am) *

She looks like a Napa Valley "real estate agent of the stars".

I should also add, her IQ is likely 20 points higher than mine, and she's got about 6 times more hair than me, so I'm not one to talk.

She's http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Danese_Cooper.jpg, too.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(TungstenCarbide @ Thu 28th January 2010, 7:50pm) *

QUOTE(thekohser @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:17am) *

She looks like a Napa Valley "real estate agent of the stars".

I should also add, her IQ is likely 20 points higher than mine, and she's got about 6 times more hair than me, so I'm not one to talk.

She's http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Danese_Cooper.jpg, too.

Sure enough. That right eye is bigger than life, not smaller.

That's a rare condition in intelligent early-readers, who usually end up myopic.

Good catch, O optometrically knowlegable one. blink.gif

Posted by: Somey

Seems to me they need someone whose OSS background is LAMP, not Java and OO.o...? hmmm.gif

Sorry, I just thought it would be fun to use a few buzzword acronyms.

The main thing to be concerned about now is who drives feature prioritization. If it's still going to be Jimbo and Erik Moeller, then we can probably expect more of the same, i.e., vaporware, or nothing of any value whatsoever. If it's Cooper, then it remains to be seen, but the mere fact that Cooper is female is probably a good sign. Females tend to be more compassionate and less narcissistic, though of course we've seen plenty of exceptions to that in Wikiland. Still, almost anybody is likely to be more compassionate and less narcissistic than Erik Moeller and Jimbo.

Anyway, it's always best to give people a chance to show what they're about before assuming the worst. I say we give her at least a couple of weeks before concluding that her tenure as CTO is a complete failure.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 29th January 2010, 7:35am) *

Seems to me they need someone whose OSS background is LAMP, not Java and OO.o...? hmmm.gif

Sorry, I just thought it would be fun to use a few buzzword acronyms.

The main thing to be concerned about now is who drives feature prioritization. If it's still going to be Jimbo and Erik Moeller, then we can probably expect more of the same, i.e., vaporware, or nothing of any value whatsoever. If it's Cooper, then it remains to be seen, but the mere fact that Cooper is female is probably a good sign. Females tend to be more compassionate and less narcissistic, though of course we've seen plenty of exceptions to that in Wikiland. Still, almost anybody is likely to be more compassionate and less narcissistic than Erik Moeller and Jimbo.

Anyway, it's always best to give people a chance to show what they're about before assuming the worst. I say we give her at least a couple of weeks before concluding that her tenure as CTO is a complete failure.

I'm confused, wasn't Erik chosen as the GodKing of technology? Presumably, at least we can conclude that HIS tenure as CTO was a complete failure? Presumably he gets to hang around on a nice salary.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:41am) *
I'm confused, wasn't Erik chosen as the GodKing of technology? Presumably, at least we can conclude that HIS tenure as CTO was a complete failure? Presumably he gets to hang around on a nice salary.

Erik is the Deputy Director - Brion Vibber was the CTO. Other than that, you probably presume correctly... smile.gif

If the job mostly entails keeping the servers running, and/or keeping the back-end software up-to-date and so on, then Cooper has the wrong background - she seems to be a software development person whose expertise is in Java stuff, not LAMP, which is what I believe Wikipedia runs on. I did notice on her blog (http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog/2009/10/start-the-revolution-without-me.html) that her last job was essentially with a "cap-bait" operation. In other words, someone with a million dollars hired her to provide name-recognition (i.e., credibility) in his effort to get a startup company to the point at which he could obtain 10 million dollars from someone else, and once the 10 million was obtained (I'm making wild guesses as to the numbers) he "let her go," since he now had the money in hand and no longer needed someone with a recognizable name. (That isn't quite how she described the situation, but it's fairly obvious, reading between the lines.)

An experience like that can turn a person into a cynic very easily - and it's easy to see why she'd be drawn to the WMF CTO job, since the WMF calls itself a non-profit and therefore doesn't look like a cap-bait operation, at least on the surface. However, it is still a fairly small operation, and if she's going to be working under the same terms as Brion Vibber, i.e., answerable to Erik Moeller, that could be worse than unemployment.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 29th January 2010, 4:20am) *

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:41am) *
I'm confused, wasn't Erik chosen as the GodKing of technology? Presumably, at least we can conclude that HIS tenure as CTO was a complete failure? Presumably he gets to hang around on a nice salary.

Erik is the Deputy Director - Brion Vibber was the CTO. Other than that, you probably presume correctly... smile.gif

If the job mostly entails keeping the servers running, and/or keeping the back-end software up-to-date and so on, then Cooper has the wrong background - she seems to be a software development person whose expertise is in Java stuff, not LAMP, which is what I believe Wikipedia runs on. I did notice on her blog (http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog/2009/10/start-the-revolution-without-me.html) that her last job was essentially with a "cap-bait" operation. In other words, someone with a million dollars hired her to provide name-recognition (i.e., credibility) in his effort to get a startup company to the point at which he could obtain 10 million dollars from someone else, and once the 10 million was obtained (I'm making wild guesses as to the numbers) he "let her go," since he now had the money in hand and no longer needed someone with a recognizable name. (That isn't quite how she described the situation, but it's fairly obvious, reading between the lines.)

An experience like that can turn a person into a cynic very easily - and it's easy to see why she'd be drawn to the WMF CTO job, since the WMF calls itself a non-profit and therefore doesn't look like a cap-bait operation, at least on the surface. However, it is still a fairly small operation, and if she's going to be working under the same terms as Brion Vibber, i.e., answerable to Erik Moeller, that could be worse than unemployment.


I think the CTO has quite a challenge ahead. It can't be easy to justify the expenditure of the bulk of $10,000,000 per year to accomplish exactly what had previously been achieved for $300,000. A better choice might have been the toilet seat guy at the Pentagon or the GM executive who coined the term "burn rate" to described corporate sending in the run-up to bankruptcy.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Fri 29th January 2010, 9:15am) *

I think the CTO has quite a challenge ahead. It can't be easy to justify the expenditure of the bulk of $10,000,000 per year to accomplish exactly what had previously been achieved for $300,000. A better choice might have been the toilet seat guy at the Pentagon or the GM executive who coined the term "burn rate" to described corporate sending in the run-up to bankruptcy.


It might be a tough sell if you were talking about anyone but Wikipediots and Blogheads.

Jimme dat new time religion —
Jimme dat new time religion —
Any ole new time religion —
Is good enuff for me !!!


Jon dry.gif

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Social entropy typical of big time voluntary sector operations. First the idealists burn out then a second class of individuals move in. Obviously a bit part of the game is, "we have to spend the money to attract the type of candidate commensurably to the job at all" because ... obviously ... we need someone responsible when we are dealing with these types of money.

In other words, we have to pay them so they pay be well. And we will keep squeezing it upwards. Altruism in the higher echelons goes out the windows and, gradually, the operation keep requiring more and more time, energy and money in ... and more and more to bring it in ... give less and less out ... and become less and less relevant.

The only ones that last are one that actually do some good ... it will be interesting to see if the Pornopedia can actually deliver.

I, personally, doubt it right now.

Expenditure of $10,000,000 per year ... gosh, that is easy. All those consultants and experts and reviews and meetings and new furniture and own trumpets to blow. Spending is what this second class of individuals are good at.

Hell, they could even spend a few hundred bucks on making the software better and easier for modest, ordinary, informed people ... imagine how much that will cost in consultants to review and oversee?

Are all dem gurls now even going to push for a little race and gender equality amongst contributors? It oughtn't to have been boy toys Lacriox watches in golf magazine ads ... it ought to have been handbags and women's lifestyle magazines.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:15pm) *

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 29th January 2010, 4:20am) *

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:41am) *
I'm confused, wasn't Erik chosen as the GodKing of technology? Presumably, at least we can conclude that HIS tenure as CTO was a complete failure? Presumably he gets to hang around on a nice salary.

Erik is the Deputy Director - Brion Vibber was the CTO. Other than that, you probably presume correctly... smile.gif

If the job mostly entails keeping the servers running, and/or keeping the back-end software up-to-date and so on, then Cooper has the wrong background - she seems to be a software development person whose expertise is in Java stuff, not LAMP, which is what I believe Wikipedia runs on. I did notice on her blog (http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog/2009/10/start-the-revolution-without-me.html) that her last job was essentially with a "cap-bait" operation. In other words, someone with a million dollars hired her to provide name-recognition (i.e., credibility) in his effort to get a startup company to the point at which he could obtain 10 million dollars from someone else, and once the 10 million was obtained (I'm making wild guesses as to the numbers) he "let her go," since he now had the money in hand and no longer needed someone with a recognizable name. (That isn't quite how she described the situation, but it's fairly obvious, reading between the lines.)

An experience like that can turn a person into a cynic very easily - and it's easy to see why she'd be drawn to the WMF CTO job, since the WMF calls itself a non-profit and therefore doesn't look like a cap-bait operation, at least on the surface. However, it is still a fairly small operation, and if she's going to be working under the same terms as Brion Vibber, i.e., answerable to Erik Moeller, that could be worse than unemployment.


I think the CTO has quite a challenge ahead. It can't be easy to justify the expenditure of the bulk of $10,000,000 per year to accomplish exactly what had previously been achieved for $300,000. A better choice might have been the toilet seat guy at the Pentagon or the GM executive who coined the term "burn rate" to described corporate sending in the run-up to bankruptcy.


Brion and Tim were legends in their own time for what they did on a shoestring, with mostly opensource software. This was after Wikipedia got popular but before the Foundation started getting lots of money and employees.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(dogbiscuit @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:41am) *
I'm confused, wasn't Erik chosen as the GodKing of technology? Presumably, at least we can conclude that HIS tenure as CTO was a complete failure? Presumably he gets to hang around on a nice salary.
Erik was Brion's boss, which I've always assumed was done because Sue couldn't be bothered to supervise Brion (who needed supervision; Brion is a technically gifted individual but his organizational and management skills need a lot of honing). It remains to be seen, I suppose, if this individual will also report to Erik das Wunderkind.

I've always assumed Brion's decision to leave was predicated on two things: one, his job mutating from "hack on interesting things" to "prepare budget projections", and two, having to report to Erik. Wikimedia needs a CTO with management experience more than it needs technical wizardry. I honestly believe she was chosen, however, primarily because she's female. Wikimedia is very very upset at the low rate of female participation in Wikimedia projects, and I think this is part of their program to boost that. In addition, she is socially well-connected to the San Francisco open source scene, which is, of course, the playground Jimmy and Co. want to play in.

From the standpoint of her role as a CTO, I don't think she adds a whole lot to Wikimedia. However, in the social networking game that Wikimedia is playing, she probably adds quite a lot.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Fri 29th January 2010, 4:20pm) *

From the standpoint of her role as a CTO, I don't think she adds a whole lot to Wikimedia. However, in the social networking game that Wikimedia is playing, she probably adds quite a lot.


So, would it be fair to say she's the Mike Godwin of computer scientists?

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 29th January 2010, 7:33pm) *

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Fri 29th January 2010, 4:20pm) *

From the standpoint of her role as a CTO, I don't think she adds a whole lot to Wikimedia. However, in the social networking game that Wikimedia is playing, she probably adds quite a lot.


So, would it be fair to say she's the Mike Godwin of computer scientists?
No, Godwin is actively incompetent. I have no reason to believe that Ms. Cooper is incompetent; in fact, I strongly suspect that she's quite competent in a set of technologies that Wikimedia is not using, and is unlikely to use in the future. It'd be like hiring Julia Childs to run a Vietnamese restaurant.

No, Ms. Cooper's value to Wikimedia is that she is well-known in the open-source open-culture community as an activist, and so she provides name recognition, prestige, and access within that community. Unfortunately, I think she's rather on the outs with Snoracle these days, an entity with whom Wikimedia has had decently good relations in the past. If they brought her in to try to shore up that relationship, which is undoubtedly changing with Larry Ellison calling the shots now, I think that'll be a fail. In any case, none of this has anything to do with her competency as CTO qua CTO, but instead with her ability to expand Wikimedia's social (and fundraising) network.


Posted by: Alison

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Thu 28th January 2010, 3:44pm) *

That BLP is very different today. It links to her blog and other sources. She's had a long tech career, appears to be an Open Source evangelist, coder, and advocate for women in IT.

Seems like an excellent choice, really.

I would hire her if i wanted to energize a team.

Sounds great to me - give her a chance, folks smile.gif

And hey - she's a Mac gal wink.gif

Full-Width Image

Posted by: Krimpet

QUOTE(Alison @ Sat 30th January 2010, 12:45am) *

And hey - she's a Mac gal wink.gif

The Open Source Divaâ„  uses a proprietary, closed-source platform? tongue.gif

Posted by: Alison

QUOTE(Krimpet @ Fri 29th January 2010, 10:14pm) *

QUOTE(Alison @ Sat 30th January 2010, 12:45am) *

And hey - she's a Mac gal wink.gif

An Open Source Divaâ„  using a proprietary, closed-source platform? tongue.gif

Smartypants!! laugh.gif

* http://opensource.apple.com/
* http://publicsource.apple.com
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
* http://kernel.macosforge.org/

Lemme know when Microsoft™®© release their http://opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1062/, mm-kay? biggrin.gif

Posted by: Krimpet

QUOTE(Alison @ Sat 30th January 2010, 1:18am) *

Smartypants!! laugh.gif

* http://publicsource.apple.com
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
* http://kernel.macosforge.org/

Lemme know when Microsoft™®© release their kernel sources, mm-kay? biggrin.gif

Releasing a dozen pieces of a hundred-piece puzzle doesn't count. smile.gif (GNU has been trying to http://www.gnustep.org/ Cocoa for years, since when it was still "OpenStep," but Apple doesn't seem very interested in helping...)

This actually gets at the heart of the whole "Free" versus "Open Source" battle. The Free Software folks want the entire system to be free for ideological reasons, while Open Source folks just think it's a better methodology to use to build software in certain cases, and are willing to mix and match open-source components with closed-source components in their products as is convenient or profitable. Cooper seems to be strongly affiliated with the latter camp, being involved with the Open Source Initiative.

Wiki[pm]edia has always been about "free content" and "free culture"; the Open Source approach would be akin to Bomis starting Wikipedia so they could package it up as one free part of an otherwise all-rights-reserved "Bomis Encyclopedia of Boobs."

"Open source" buzzwords and posturing aside, the Diva's experience and technical chops seem perfectly acceptable for the job.

Posted by: Lar

QUOTE(Alison @ Sat 30th January 2010, 12:45am) *

And hey - she's a Mac gal wink.gif

Nobody's perfect! laugh.gif biggrin.gif

KIDDING.



Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Krimpet @ Sat 30th January 2010, 1:43am) *

QUOTE(Alison @ Sat 30th January 2010, 1:18am) *

Smartypants!! laugh.gif

* http://publicsource.apple.com
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)
* http://kernel.macosforge.org/

Lemme know when Microsoft™®© release their kernel sources, mm-kay? biggrin.gif

Releasing a dozen pieces of a hundred-piece puzzle doesn't count. smile.gif (GNU has been trying to http://www.gnustep.org/ Cocoa for years, since when it was still "OpenStep," but Apple doesn't seem very interested in helping...)

This actually gets at the heart of the whole "Free" versus "Open Source" battle. The Free Software folks want the entire system to be free for ideological reasons, while Open Source folks just think it's a better methodology to use to build software in certain cases, and are willing to mix and match open-source components with closed-source components in their products as is convenient or profitable. Cooper seems to be strongly affiliated with the latter camp, being involved with the Open Source Initiative.

Wiki[pm]edia has always been about "free content" and "free culture"; the Open Source approach would be akin to Bomis starting Wikipedia so they could package it up as one free part of an otherwise all-rights-reserved "Bomis Encyclopedia of Boobs."

"Open source" buzzwords and posturing aside, the Diva's experience and technical chops seem perfectly acceptable for the job.



Yes, I believe she can accomplish what has already been achieved with much, much less. Somebody should be asking about the positions of Program Director: BLPs; Editorial Standards; Public Safety and Accountability; etc. These are probably positions commanding salaries of $40,000 - $60,000 and require minimum additional infrastructure. Many positions on less than a Director level are also needed paying less and possibly even telecommuting. $10,000,000 could buy 150 positions on these levels and still pay the Divas, old and new.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(anthony @ Thu 28th January 2010, 4:27pm) *

So who is this Danese Cooper?


I think she's related to http://12.media.tumblr.com/mAN1CkU1ypoj6bc6xB658k1Jo1_400.jpg.

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sat 30th January 2010, 5:48pm) *

I think she's related to http://12.media.tumblr.com/mAN1CkU1ypoj6bc6xB658k1Jo1_400.jpg.

I don't know who that is, only that I clicked on it expecting to see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/DBCooper.jpg

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(CharlotteWebb @ Sat 30th January 2010, 12:21pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sat 30th January 2010, 5:48pm) *

I think she's related to http://12.media.tumblr.com/mAN1CkU1ypoj6bc6xB658k1Jo1_400.jpg.

I don't know who that is, only that I clicked on it expecting to see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/DBCooper.jpg

That D.B. actually never had a middle initial (the press gave it to him). He signed himself "Dan Cooper". But could have been "Dan(ese) Cooper" ermm.gif . fear.gif Nah, she's not old enough.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Just as an aside, I have to guess she is damned grateful her father did not own a Morris Mini.

Either she would have gone through life as Mini Cooper ... or perhaps even Issigonis Cooper (which, all the same does have a kind of elegant Pre-Raphaelite ring to it that would match her titian looks).

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sat 30th January 2010, 7:33pm) *

That D.B. actually never had a middle initial (the press gave it to him). He signed himself "Dan Cooper". But could have been "Dan(ese) Cooper" ermm.gif . fear.gif Nah, she's not old enough.

Okay, but did the press give him an Italian sports-car? hmmm.gif

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 29th January 2010, 2:35am) *

Seems to me they need someone whose OSS background is LAMP, not Java and OO.o...? hmmm.gif


Wrong, Somey. For this job, you want a CTO with http://blog.laptopmag.com/2011-most-important-women-in-mobile-tech/7.

Posted by: Somey

Whoa, thread necromancy.

QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 22nd February 2011, 9:42pm) *
For this job, you want a CTO with http://blog.laptopmag.com/2011-most-important-women-in-mobile-tech/7.

Hmm... She has a degree in French Literature, but that doesn't preclude her from having some talent for managing a technology operation. However, this statement about how "learning a language helped form the neural pathways that eventually helped her learn programming" is some of the worst and most obvious bullshit we've seen from a WMF executive yet, other than Jimbo himself - and that's really saying something.

"Neural pathways," my ass. You learn programming because someone hands you a computer and a task that requires it, and you have sufficient confidence in your brain-power to give it a shot. The point is, she shouldn't feel compelled to make excuses for her degree in French Literature. Rather, she should take every possible opportunity to expound on the relative merits of Voltaire and Rabelais, and how they're more readable than the execrable Marcel Proust, whom I've never been able to tolerate in unsummarized form.


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 22nd February 2011, 11:26pm) *

Rather, she should take every possible opportunity to expound on the relative merits of Voltaire and Rabelais, and how they're more readable than the execrable Marcel Proust, whom I've never been able to tolerate.


Can't read any more French than I find on wine bottles, but a big part of the problem with Proust is supposedly accountable to the execr(et)able translations. There is however a recent one that actually made it possible for me to get past the first few hundred pages with some of my faculties intact.

Proust, Marcel (1913–1927), In Search of Lost Time, Christopher Prendergast (general editor), Penguin Books, London, UK, 2002, 6 volumes:
  1. The Way by Swann's (1913), Lydia Davis (trans.)
  2. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), James Grieve (trans.)
  3. The Guermantes Way (1920–1921), Mark Treharne (trans.)
  4. Sodom and Gomorrah (1921–1922), John Sturrock (trans.)
  5. The Prisoner (1923), Carol Clark (trans.) & The Fugitive (1925), Peter Collier (trans.)
  6. Finding Time Again (1927), Ian Patterson (trans.)
Jon wink.gif

Posted by: Zoloft

Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D):
No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.

Posted by: Somey

Mmm, cake!


Posted by: thekohser

I wonder if the fact that http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/07/brion-vibber-rejoins-wikimedia-foundation./ is any indication of:

  1. Danese doesn't know enough about computers to do Brion's job
  2. Once you're a Wikimediot, you can't last long in the "outside" work world

Maybe a little bit of both?

Posted by: Alison

QUOTE(thekohser @ Mon 7th March 2011, 7:57pm) *

I wonder if the fact that http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/07/brion-vibber-rejoins-wikimedia-foundation./ is any indication of:
  1. Danese doesn't know enough about computers to do Brion's job
  2. Once you're a Wikimediot, you can't last long in the "outside" work world
Maybe a little bit of both?

... or a little bit of neither? Let's be fair ...

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 23rd February 2011, 4:44am) *

Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D):
No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.
This seems very droll but I think I'm missing the point. Is this a parody of Proust's style?

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I think this is a little more up our alley …



Yeah, I know, I said “up our alley” …

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I think part of it is that the two main reasons he left Wikimedia have been abated: he would no longer have to report directly to Erik, nor would he have to do the CTO's job, which he never wanted to do in the first place.

Posted by: Zoloft

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Mon 7th March 2011, 8:16pm) *

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 23rd February 2011, 4:44am) *

Editing Madeleine_(cake) (T-H-L-K-D):
No sooner had I clicked on the 'save page' button than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An annoying humming sound had invaded my head, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the meaning of the subject I was editing had become indifferent to me, but my opinion now paramount, and others illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which indigestion has of filling me with a bloated feeling; or rather this gaseous sensation was not in me it was me.
This seems very droll but I think I'm missing the point. Is this a parody of Proust's style?

No, Marcel Marceau. Watch out for the http://acerminaro.blogspot.com/2009/08/famous-madeleine-scene.html.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Alison @ Mon 7th March 2011, 10:04pm) *
QUOTE
Maybe a little bit of both?
... or a little bit of neither? Let's be fair ...

No, let's be unfair! hrmph.gif

I actually agree with Ms. Martin about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller... but Mr. Kohs has actually made an interesting point here, as he often does. Sometimes the WMF management reminds me of kids let loose in a candy store (when they're not reminding me of Lord of the Flies, at least). They have lots of money, no appreciable oversight, no definable performance metrics other than just their ability to keep the websites online... it sounds like loads of fun for an IT person, and a helluva lot better for a dev/DBA than the average corporate IT shop, consulting firm, or software VAR.

That's not to say there wouldn't be some downside - in particular, the guilty-conscience thing could cause lack of sleep, what with knowing you were participating in a corrupt, socially-irresponsible fake-charity operation. But as it turns out, some people aren't really affected by that silly "conscience" stuff at all, so maybe Brion is one of the lucky ones.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 1:24am) *
That's not to say there wouldn't be some downside - in particular, the guilty-conscience thing could cause lack of sleep, what with knowing you were participating in a corrupt, socially-irresponsible fake-charity operation. But as it turns out, some people aren't really affected by that silly "conscience" stuff at all, so maybe Brion is one of the lucky ones.
From Brion's point of view, he's getting paid to hack on software that he'd be hacking on anyway even if he weren't being paid. The lack of meaningful performance-based management is just bonus for him, and with Danese doing the annoying "beg for money for servers" aspect of the job he can relax and get paid to play.

There was never any chance that Danese could replace Brion; her experience is on an entirely different platform and there was no chance in hell that WMF would pony up the development dollars to recode MediaWiki for the J2EE universe that Danese is from (even though doing so would likely yield them substantial performance gains). Brion is certainly one of the world's top PHP hackers, but PHP is starting to lose its twinkle (the space PHP inhabits is very faddish, and PHP is so 2004), and the clever hacks he's developed that keep Wikimedia's data farm from exploding in a BFBVFS are simply not useful in most other environments, where either (a) the hit rate simply isn't high enough to need them (nearly everyone else) or (b) they're not remotely enough to get the job done (Facebook; Google). Brion's the king of a fairly large, but rather isolated lake, and outside of that lake he's just another peasant.

Posted by: carbuncle

Perhaps the timing of this has something to do with their experiences rolling out the recent Wikimedia 1.17 release?

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 8th March 2011, 3:57am) *

I wonder if the fact that http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/07/brion-vibber-rejoins-wikimedia-foundation./ is any indication of:
  1. Danese doesn't know enough about computers to do Brion's job
  2. Once you're a Wikimediot, you can't last long in the "outside" work world
Maybe a little bit of both?


The roles of CTO and Lead Architect are very very different. It is extremely rare for someone to simultaneously be the best candidate for both positions.

I think this position will be much better suited for Brion.

Of course, I couldn't help but catching this nugget: "Since I joined WMF in February 2010, I have been looking for a Lead Architect to work on the future of the platform (both for our use and for the thousands of wikis that run on our engine)." (Translation: "both for our use and for the use of Wikia")

Posted by: Zoloft

Ultimately, if MediaWiki fails to move away from PHP, this by itself could be what kills Wikipedia.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Tue 8th March 2011, 10:48am) *
Ultimately, if MediaWiki fails to move away from PHP, this by itself could be what kills Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales, and by extension Wikimedia, is far too conservative to "gamble" on a platform change at this late stage of the game. In Wikipedia's ten years there has been almost no functional or technical change in the Wikipedia platform. Contrast Facebook, whose current platform bears absolutely no technical resemblance and fairly little functional resemblance to what it was like when it premiered.

Posted by: Zoloft

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Tue 8th March 2011, 10:10am) *

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Tue 8th March 2011, 10:48am) *
Ultimately, if MediaWiki fails to move away from PHP, this by itself could be what kills Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales, and by extension Wikimedia, is far too conservative to "gamble" on a platform change at this late stage of the game. In Wikipedia's ten years there has been almost no functional or technical change in the Wikipedia platform. Contrast Facebook, whose current platform bears absolutely no technical resemblance and fairly little functional resemblance to what it was like when it premiered.

In agreeing with you, I will differ to this extent; the WMF has enough cash to parallel-develop MediaWiki 2.0 while maintaining the 1.x line, then bringing up servers with the newer, faster, more scalable version and importing the database and links.

Properly managed, very low risk, really high upside.

I'm lazy enough to assume without even looking that no such development is actually planned.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:52pm) *
Properly managed, very low risk, really high upside.

Ehh, it's that "properly managed" part that seems to be the real sticking point...

I myself am sort of a programmer... It's an interesting question, to me, anyway, what programming language/platform they'd use if they rebuilt MediaWiki from the ground up to take advantage of the "latest technology." I know J2EE isn't bad, but they could do better than that, couldn't they? And isn't it the database (MySQL) that causes the real bottlenecks, as opposed to PHP, or is it the fact that they use both, or that they use an interpreted server-side language in the first place?

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 10:38pm) *
I know J2EE isn't bad, but they could do better than that, couldn't they? And isn't it the database (MySQL) that causes the real bottlenecks, as opposed to PHP, or is it the fact that they use both, or that they use an interpreted server-side language in the first place?
Given that MediaWiki doesn't have any real need for a fully ACID compliant database, there is no good reason not to use something like HBase (which is what Facebook uses) for the database. The other big performance win would be to rewrite the parser; right now it's a crazy mess of regular expression abuse combined with an XML parser that ends up being expensive in both time and space. Recoding it using either traditional or more modern parsing techniques would likely be a big win on multiple fronts; however, doing so would likely require making some small changes to the markup language. MediaWiki markup is definitely not in LL(n) for any n, and I think it's also not in LR(n) for any n; also, the parser currently requires database access, as the correct parsing of some constructs is dependent on database content. Making a few minor changes to the language "specification" (there really isn't one, just a reference implementation) would avoid both of these problems and make writing a proper parser much easier (that is, possible), but there is considerable reticence to making any change that would "break" Wikipedia.

Posted by: Cla68

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 7:24am) *


I actually agree with Ms. Martin about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller... but Mr. Kohs has actually made an interesting point here, as he often does. Sometimes the WMF management reminds me of kids let loose in a candy store (when they're not reminding me of Lord of the Flies, at least). They have lots of money, no appreciable oversight, no definable performance metrics other than just their ability to keep the websites online... it sounds like loads of fun for an IT person, and a helluva lot better for a dev/DBA than the average corporate IT shop, consulting firm, or software VAR.


Ms Cooper will have earned her salary the day the WMF's main server farm burns down or floods and the backup plan (COOP, or whatever you want to call it) kicks in with a flawless changeover which allows all the wiki-activists to continue trying to save the world using Wikipedia to continue their efforts without pause. Does anyone know where the WMF's main server farm is located and what their COOP plan dictates will happen if it does blow up?

Posted by: Zoloft

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Wed 9th March 2011, 2:57pm) *
QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 7:24am) *
I actually agree with Ms. Martin about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller... but Mr. Kohs has actually made an interesting point here, as he often does. Sometimes the WMF management reminds me of kids let loose in a candy store (when they're not reminding me of Lord of the Flies, at least). They have lots of money, no appreciable oversight, no definable performance metrics other than just their ability to keep the websites online... it sounds like loads of fun for an IT person, and a helluva lot better for a dev/DBA than the average corporate IT shop, consulting firm, or software VAR.
Ms Cooper will have earned her salary the day the WMF's main server farm burns down or floods and the backup plan (COOP, or whatever you want to call it) kicks in with a flawless changeover which allows all the wiki-activists to continue trying to save the world using Wikipedia to continue their efforts without pause. Does anyone know where the WMF's main server farm is located and what their COOP plan dictates will happen if it does blow up?

Well, a lot of information about their two server clusters is at the http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Main_Page.
One cluster is in Tampa, Florida and the other is in Amsterdam.

I don't know anything about their COOP plan, but I've seen them manually fail over from one cluster to the other recently when they had bandwidth issues.

Edit:
Here's a http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/global-outage-cooling-failure-and-dns/ about the failure of the automatic failover a year ago:
QUOTE
Due to an overheating problem in our European data center many of our servers turned off to protect themselves. As this impacted all Wikipedia and other projects access from European users, we were forced to move all user traffic to our Florida cluster, for which we have a standard quick failover procedure in place, that changes our DNS entries.

However, shortly after we did this failover switch, it turned out that this failover mechanism was now broken, causing the DNS resolution of Wikimedia sites to stop working globally. This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects.

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.


Further Edit:
They are right now provisioning a http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/wikimedia-engineering-february-report/ although I'm not sure if that's Wikimedia or Wikipedia or both.

Hey! I found their http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Disaster_Recovery *snicker heehee chortle gasp*

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 6:20pm) *

Hey! I found their http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Disaster_Recovery *snicker heehee chortle gasp*


Psst... the Disaster Recovery Plan was outlined in WikiVoices Episode #45. Find the audio tape of that episode, and you'll find the Plan.

fear.gif

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:20pm) *
One cluster is in Tampa, Florida and the other is in Amsterdam.

I don't know anything about their COOP plan, but I've seen them manually fail over from one cluster to the other recently when they had bandwidth issues.
They cannot fail from the Tampa cluster to the Amsterdam cluster, not completely: they are using single-master MySQL replication and thus "there can be only one". If they lose the master database server in Tampa, nobody can edit until they get it back (or make a new one: there is supposedly some way to make a slave into a master, although I don't imagine doing so is a pretty process). What "fails over" are the squids and the PHP front ends, of which there are hundreds to make up for the fact that Mediawiki is remarkably slow and inefficient software.

Wikimedia does not have a meaningful disaster recovery plan; rather, when things break they scurry about like mad trying to figure out how to recover from whatever it was that broke. They're fairly good at scurrying, though, so they usually get back up within a fairly short time, and what data losses they've had (and there have been several instances of data loss, for various reasons) have not been serious enough to generate significant upset.

Posted by: Cla68

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Thu 10th March 2011, 1:30am) *

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:20pm) *
One cluster is in Tampa, Florida and the other is in Amsterdam.

I don't know anything about their COOP plan, but I've seen them manually fail over from one cluster to the other recently when they had bandwidth issues.
They cannot fail from the Tampa cluster to the Amsterdam cluster, not completely: they are using single-master MySQL replication and thus "there can be only one". If they lose the master database server in Tampa, nobody can edit until they get it back (or make a new one: there is supposedly some way to make a slave into a master, although I don't imagine doing so is a pretty process). What "fails over" are the squids and the PHP front ends, of which there are hundreds to make up for the fact that Mediawiki is remarkably slow and inefficient software.

Wikimedia does not have a meaningful disaster recovery plan; rather, when things break they scurry about like mad trying to figure out how to recover from whatever it was that broke. They're fairly good at scurrying, though, so they usually get back up within a fairly short time, and what data losses they've had (and there have been several instances of data loss, for various reasons) have not been serious enough to generate significant upset.


If I understand you right, it sounds like software limitations prevent them from having a seamless hot-site transfer ability if the Tampa location goes belly-up. Hopefully their new CTO, the subject of this thread, is aware of this and is using some of those millions of dollars in donations to find a solution. Trying to plan and implement a permanent solution on the fly in response to an unforseen emergency probably isn't a very good idea.

Are they doing complete daily data dumps between the two sites so that if they lose Tampa they would only lose one day of data?

Posted by: Zoloft

Although this is just trivia, I find it amusing that they have a server named 'sanger' but none named 'jimbo' or 'wales' - IT people have their own sense of history.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Wed 9th March 2011, 7:44pm) *
Are they doing complete daily data dumps between the two sites so that if they lose Tampa they would only lose one day of data?
Last I heard there was no comprehensive backup solution whatsoever. For quite a long while there were no complete replicas of anything that weren't in the Tampa data center, but I think they do now have database slaves in Amsterdam from which, in theory, new database masters could be created. The media collection (that is, all the pictures and other nontext digital assets that live in the assorted File: namespaces) is, as far as I know, not replicated in any systematic way, and the loss of the Tampa data center would probably destroy 60% to 90% of the content in Commons. (We can only hope.) As far as I know, there is no systematic offsite backup of any aspect of the environment; they are completely and utterly vulnerable. It makes me twitch just thinking about it.

One outage, a few years ago, was caused by the nonredundant NFS mount point that contained the Mediawiki code being used by all the PHP servers going poof. It took them something like four hours to recover from that, and that was done by grabbing another box, installing the requisite components on it, and scrabbling about for copies of the relevant bits from where ever they could found or reconstructed. Not by restoring a backup, as you'd expect to happen. A responsible operation would have (a) not had such a critical function being served nonredundantly and (b) had multiple forms of backups of the relevant servers in the event that all of them failed simultaneously (or some process caused all replicas to become corrupted). The Wikimedia server team has displayed significant cleverness in keeping Wikimedia running at all, but they are seriously lacking in methodology and discipline.

I think part of their problem is that very few of their people are experienced in operational management; they're mainly developers and the like, and thus they're not experienced in thinking about all the things us professional sysadmins think about all the time. There's also a culture of "getting by with as little as possible", which made sense in the early years but they're flush with cash now and there's no reason to persist in running on a shoe string.

Posted by: Gruntled

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:20pm) *
One cluster is in Tampa, Florida and the other is in Amsterdam.

If they have servers in Amsterdam, and if you view a page it may have come from there, why isn't Wikipedia subject to Dutch law on copyright and responsibility for the contents of these pages?

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Thu 10th March 2011, 6:05pm) *

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 9th March 2011, 5:20pm) *
One cluster is in Tampa, Florida and the other is in Amsterdam.

If they have servers in Amsterdam, and if you view a page it may have come from there, why isn't Wikipedia subject to Dutch law on copyright and responsibility for the contents of these pages?


Why do you assume it isn't?

Posted by: gomi

Does anyone want this disaster recovery/server config discussion split out from the CTO/Vibber talk?

Posted by: Zoloft

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 10th March 2011, 10:36am) *

Does anyone want this disaster recovery/server config discussion split out from the CTO/Vibber talk?

That might be good.

Judging by the actual text of the Disaster Recovery Plan...
QUOTE
Disaster Recovery
On Brion's todo list


We might be working on the COOP/DRP more than the techs are... tongue.gif


Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 10th March 2011, 12:36pm) *

Does anyone want this disaster recovery/server config discussion split out from the CTO/Vibber talk?
It's all part and parcel of the issue of how WMF (mis)manages technology.

Posted by: Cla68

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Thu 10th March 2011, 4:34am) *

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Wed 9th March 2011, 7:44pm) *
Are they doing complete daily data dumps between the two sites so that if they lose Tampa they would only lose one day of data?
Last I heard there was no comprehensive backup solution whatsoever. For quite a long while there were no complete replicas of anything that weren't in the Tampa data center, but I think they do now have database slaves in Amsterdam from which, in theory, new database masters could be created. The media collection (that is, all the pictures and other nontext digital assets that live in the assorted File: namespaces) is, as far as I know, not replicated in any systematic way, and the loss of the Tampa data center would probably destroy 60% to 90% of the content in Commons. (We can only hope.) As far as I know, there is no systematic offsite backup of any aspect of the environment; they are completely and utterly vulnerable. It makes me twitch just thinking about it.


You've got to be kidding me. Somehow, however, I'm not surprised.

To the moderator, perhaps we should split out the posts about the WMF's COOP/disaster recovery plan, or lack thereof. If I get a chance to ask some of the WMF leadership about this, I'd like to link to this conversation.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Cla68 @ Thu 10th March 2011, 5:08pm) *
If I get a chance to ask some of the WMF leadership about this, I'd like to link to this conversation.

Don't give them any ideas! hrmph.gif

It isn't as unusual as one might think for a company to have little or no effective disaster-recovery plan in place. CEO's are often given the choice between expensive backup/mirroring/failover solutions on the one hand, and larger executive bonuses on the other, and it's not hard to guess which they choose. Anyway, I've seen companies with all sorts of critical data on MSSQL and Oracle DB servers that didn't even have simple daily/weekly maintenance plans that could easily be set up by any intern in under 15 minutes, which apparently is also the same amount of time it takes to get a better deal on car insurance. And yet everyone has car insurance.

Posted by: Gruntled

QUOTE( @ Thu 10th March 2011, 6:13pm) *

Why do you assume it isn't?

Because I find it amazing that to my knowledge, nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts by now if it's possible. For example, the copying of reproductions from the National Portrait Gallery would not be allowed under European copyright law, enforceable in Dutch courts. If you know of a Dutch case, I'd love to hear details.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 11th March 2011, 12:55am) *
It isn't as unusual as one might think for a company to have little or no effective disaster-recovery plan in place. CEO's are often given the choice between expensive backup/mirroring/failover solutions on the one hand, and larger executive bonuses on the other, and it's not hard to guess which they choose.
I've seen prominent Wikimedians comment that they're not that concerned; they figure that if Wikimedia ever does experience a major disaster, people will come forward with mirrors and archives and quickly repopulate any lost content. In a very real sense, they've elected to crowdsource their disaster recovery plan.

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Fri 11th March 2011, 7:41am) *

I've seen prominent Wikimedians comment that they're not that concerned; they figure that if Wikimedia ever does experience a major disaster, people will come forward with mirrors and archives and quickly repopulate any lost content. In a very real sense, they've elected to crowdsource their disaster recovery plan.

I will be the first to step forward with the lost article about SEO 2.0, and various others of my clients' deliverables.

evilgrin.gif

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 11th March 2011, 12:12pm) *

Because I find it amazing that to my knowledge, nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts by now if it's possible. For example, the copying of reproductions from the National Portrait Gallery would not be allowed under European copyright law, enforceable in Dutch courts.


I think it's quite a stretch from "National Portrait Gallery hasn't sued WMF" to "Wikipedia isn't subject to Dutch law on copyright".

Posted by: Cedric

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 11th March 2011, 6:12am) *

QUOTE( @ Thu 10th March 2011, 6:13pm) *

Why do you assume it isn't?

Because I find it amazing that to my knowledge, nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts by now if it's possible. For example, the copying of reproductions from the National Portrait Gallery would not be allowed under European copyright law, enforceable in Dutch courts. If you know of a Dutch case, I'd love to hear details.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=25249&view=findpost&p=183326 had occurred to me also.

Posted by: Gruntled

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 11th March 2011, 1:59pm) *

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 11th March 2011, 12:12pm) *

Because I find it amazing that to my knowledge, nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts by now if it's possible. For example, the copying of reproductions from the National Portrait Gallery would not be allowed under European copyright law, enforceable in Dutch courts.


I think it's quite a stretch from "National Portrait Gallery hasn't sued WMF" to "Wikipedia isn't subject to Dutch law on copyright".

I did say For example; it was the first that came to mind. And there are all those litigious individuals like Jeff Merkey who would surely find life far easier in the Dutch courts than in US ones.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Sun 13th March 2011, 9:33am) *

QUOTE(anthony @ Fri 11th March 2011, 1:59pm) *

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 11th March 2011, 12:12pm) *

Because I find it amazing that to my knowledge, nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts by now if it's possible. For example, the copying of reproductions from the National Portrait Gallery would not be allowed under European copyright law, enforceable in Dutch courts.


I think it's quite a stretch from "National Portrait Gallery hasn't sued WMF" to "Wikipedia isn't subject to Dutch law on copyright".

I did say For example; it was the first that came to mind. And there are all those litigious individuals like Jeff Merkey who would surely find life far easier in the Dutch courts than in US ones.


So, basically, you know of several people who would want to do it, and none of them have done it, so you assume it's impossible?

I'm not even sure what you're assuming. First your comment is that "Wikipedia [isn't] subject to Dutch law", which is pretty absurd. Then you say "nobody's sued WMF in the Dutch courts", implying that doing so is impossible, which is even more absurd. The two assumptions, while both absurd, are not at all the same. A lawsuit in the US courts can sometimes be decided based on Dutch law, and a lawsuit in the Dutch courts can (I believe) sometimes be decided based on US law. It's unclear which, if either, you are claiming to be "impossible" for a case involving the WMF, in addition to the Dutch courts deciding a case involving the WMF under Dutch law (which also is quite possible - presumably a dispute between WMF and Kennisnet over the colocation terms would take place in Dutch courts under Dutch law).

I'm no expert on international copyright and international libel law. With that said, I don't think the mere fact that WMF has a server located in Amsterdam means that a US citizen living in the US and with no particular ties to Amsterdam, can successfully sue a US company for libel, in Amsterdam , applying Dutch laws. I also don't think that the mere fact that WMF has a server located in Amsterdam means that a British company can successfully sue, in Dutch court, under Dutch laws, a US company for allowing a US citizen to upload a public domain image which they obtained in violation of a terms of service which no doubt said it was to be governed under the laws of a country other than Amsterdam (probably the UK). But as I said, I'm not expert, so maybe I'm wrong. (Then again, I have no evidence that Merkey is an expert on international copyright and/or international libel law and/or that National Portrait Gallery has a salaried staff expert on international copyright and/or international libel law, so the fact that they chose not to engage in such a case means very little to me.)

EDIT: In any case, maybe this is what you were trying to say, in which case I believe you are correct: "The mere fact that Wikipedia has servers in Amsterdam does not imply that any and every case against the WMF could be decided by Dutch courts under Dutch law, if only the forum shopping litigant chooses for it to be so. There are generally other factors in a case beyond where some of the servers are located."

Posted by: Gruntled

QUOTE(anthony @ Sun 13th March 2011, 2:20pm) *

So, basically, you know of several people who would want to do it, and none of them have done it, so you assume it's impossible?

No, I'm asking if it's possible and expressing amazement that it hasn't been done if it is possible.

Posted by: anthony

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Mon 14th March 2011, 9:25am) *

QUOTE(anthony @ Sun 13th March 2011, 2:20pm) *

So, basically, you know of several people who would want to do it, and none of them have done it, so you assume it's impossible?

No, I'm asking if it's possible and expressing amazement that it hasn't been done if it is possible.


Ah, my bad. Sorry.

Posted by: thekohser

QUOTE(Somey @ Fri 29th January 2010, 3:35am) *

Anyway, it's always best to give people a chance to show what they're about before assuming the worst. I say we give her at least a couple of weeks before concluding that her tenure as CTO is a complete failure.


How about 70 weeks?

Posted by: Zoloft

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Thu 28th January 2010, 4:44pm) *

... She's had a long tech career, appears to be an Open Source evangelist, coder, and advocate for women in IT.

Seems like an excellent choice, really.

I would hire her if i wanted to energize a team.

So naturally she was doomed from the start.

Posted by: Somey

I doubt we'll ever know for certain, though Ms. Cooper could conceivably start blogging again (she stopped just before joining the WMF) and drop a hint or two. If I had to guess, I'd say it was her idea, not theirs - she probably got frustrated with being, for all intents and purposes, a glorified bandwidth optimizer and patch installer (applyer?), which wouldn't have been what she signed up for.

What she didn't stop doing (after being hired as the WMF CTO) was tweeting. At least half of http://twitter.com/#!/DivaDanese is about bandwidth and server problems being fixed, another 30 percent is her announcing her arrival at various airports, and the rest is just links to various OSS articles that (mostly) have little relevance to WP.

It was broadly hinted at here on WR 70 weeks ago (by K. Martin, myself, and others) that if her job was mostly going to consist of sticking band-aids on wounded servers, she wasn't a good choice for it and she wasn't going to be happy doing it. I'd say the victim here, if there is one, is probably Cooper herself. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that her job interview with the WMF board consisted of them reassuring her that she wasn't going to have to do any of the down-and-dirty stuff, and that she'd instead be concentrating on "high-level strategic technology planning" and various other things that the WMF has never cared about one iota.

If they were realistic about the nature of their organization, the WMF would give the CTO job to Brion Vibber and give him a nice big raise along with it. But they never have been, and in any event, Erik Moeller probably wouldn't stand for it.

Posted by: melloden

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 7th June 2011, 9:16pm) *

I doubt we'll ever know for certain, though Ms. Cooper could conceivably start blogging again (she stopped just before joining the WMF) and drop a hint or two. If I had to guess, I'd say it was her idea, not theirs - she probably got frustrated with being, for all intents and purposes, a glorified bandwidth optimizer and patch installer (applyer?), which wouldn't have been what she signed up for.

What she didn't stop doing (after being hired as the WMF CTO) was tweeting. At least half of http://twitter.com/#!/DivaDanese is about bandwidth and server problems being fixed, another 30 percent is her announcing her arrival at various airports, and the rest is just links to various OSS articles that (mostly) have little relevance to WP.

It was broadly hinted at here on WR 70 weeks ago (by K. Martin, myself, and others) that if her job was mostly going to consist of sticking band-aids on wounded servers, she wasn't a good choice for it and she wasn't going to be happy doing it. I'd say the victim here, if there is one, is probably Cooper herself. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that her job interview with the WMF board consisted of them reassuring her that she wasn't going to have to do any of the down-and-dirty stuff, and that she'd instead be concentrating on "high-level strategic technology planning" and various other things that the WMF has never cared about one iota.

If they were realistic about the nature of their organization, the WMF would give the CTO job to Brion Vibber and give him a nice big raise along with it. But they never have been, and in any event, Erik Moeller probably wouldn't stand for it.


And unfortunately, this is one reason why Wikipedia hasn't really exploited its technical potential yet--it's being directed by non-tech people. People like Brion Vibber, who know MediaWiki in-and-out, should be the ones making the technical decisions--not Sue or Erik, to say the least. Sue is nothing more than a ruthless businesswoman--but when she dictates the WMF's tech directions, it usually ends up as nothing very special. The CTO could be responsible for so much more, given that the WMF has relatively few employees anyway but they have an enormous collection of tech and server stuff.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

QUOTE(melloden @ Tue 7th June 2011, 6:55pm) *
And unfortunately, this is one reason why Wikipedia hasn't really exploited its technical potential yet--it's being directed by non-tech people. People like Brion Vibber, who know MediaWiki in-and-out, should be the ones making the technical decisions--not Sue or Erik, to say the least. Sue is nothing more than a ruthless businesswoman--but when she dictates the WMF's tech directions, it usually ends up as nothing very special. The CTO could be responsible for so much more, given that the WMF has relatively few employees anyway but they have an enormous collection of tech and server stuff.
Spoken by someone who clearly knows absolutely nothing about technology in business. You don't want your techies making decisions about how to use technology in your business, because they'll just pick whatever technology they think is the coolest, whether or not it's the most efficient way to facilitate your business processes. The role of the CTO is to find efficient ways to facilitate business processes with technology. Brion is demonstrably unable to fill this role; as are both Sue and Erik, but all of them for different reasons.

What I'm wondering about is what Brion will do now that Danese is gone and he's back to reporting to Erik. Will he leave again?

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(melloden @ Tue 7th June 2011, 6:55pm) *
And unfortunately, this is one reason why Wikipedia hasn't really exploited its technical potential yet--it's being directed by non-tech people. People like Brion Vibber, who know MediaWiki in-and-out, should be the ones making the technical decisions--not Sue or Erik, to say the least. Sue is nothing more than a ruthless businesswoman--but when she dictates the WMF's tech directions, it usually ends up as nothing very special. The CTO could be responsible for so much more, given that the WMF has relatively few employees anyway but they have an enormous collection of tech and server stuff.

A very good point, indeed. The technology that drives the accumulation of publicly-contributed content on the largest and best-known crowdsourced site shouldn't be under the control of people who define success primarily in terms of how much "churn" they can generate, and the extent to which they can convince a few rich suckers that they're a "movement." Preferably, it should be in the hands of scholars and educators, or barring that possibility, actual technologists. The WMF is mostly a recruiting and fundraising organization (which just happens to call itself a "charity").

I suppose the counter-argument might be that too much software innovation might actually get in the way of contributors and contributions, but it's not like they've made much of an effort in terms of ergonomics and ease-of-use, either.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 7th June 2011, 9:41pm) *

A very good point, indeed. The technology that drives the accumulation of publicly-contributed content on the largest and best-known crowdsourced site shouldn't be under the control of people who define success primarily in terms of how much "churn" they can generate, and the extent to which they can convince a few rich suckers that they're a "movement." Preferably, it should be in the hands of scholars and educators, or barring that possibility, actual technologists. The WMF is mostly a recruiting and fundraising organization (which just happens to call itself a "charity").

I suppose the counter-argument might be that too much software innovation might actually get in the way of contributors and contributions, but it's not like they've made much of an effort in terms of ergonomics and ease-of-use, either.

There are good reasons not to have the ultimate-software-engineers in charge, since they are (after all) engineers who think like engineers. They would rather have the system be logical than easy-to-use, and that is why many engineers should be sentenced to use the technology of OTHER engineers, without benefit of even a poorly written user manual.

Consider the main claim-to-fame of Steve Jobs: which is that he's able to act in some cases like a one-man focus-group and beta-tester. ohmy.gif huh.gif You know, you could hire people for that....

Engineers are the sort who provide a gizmo that locks all the control surfaces of an airplane, but no failsafe that doesn't allow the thing to take off with them still locked. Engineers design a warning light and chime for every possible thing that can go wrong, with no heirarchy, so that in a bad situation in a iced-up jetliner (the recent Air France Airbus disaster, per its black-boxes just recovered from 12,000 feet down in the Atlantic), you can't tell the "low airspeed" and "stall" chimes from any of severa dozen other chimes, warning signals, and whatnot. And they do the same with nuclear powerplants (see the history of Three Mile Island).

I was reminded of how bad engineering for non-engineers can be the other day when I bought a (very clean and perfectly maintained) red 1998 Volvo as a backup car. Boxy, but good. Since it was for the US market, it had an 18 gallon fuel tank guage. MARKED IN GALLONS. Which is good, but not something you saw much in the first century of automobile making. When nearly empty, I put 12 gallons in it and it read 12.5 gallons. ermm.gif I've lived all my life with cars that (mostly) have not been able to tell you other than with the manual how much fuel your tank holds, or how much of it you have left (except as a fraction). Anything more than that, is a 21st century innovation. ermm.gif

If a software engineer had designed my Volvo in 2011, it would have one gigantic LCD touch screen on the dash, and no default readouts at all. After touching START it would give a tree with a dropdown menu, one of which would be "consumable fluids status." Happy day: "gasoline" is in alpabetical order before "oil" and "wiper fluid." Let me see, do I want "gallons" or "liters"? Press "unit set mem." wink.gif

Posted by: EricBarbour

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 8th June 2011, 8:52am) *
If a software engineer had designed my Volvo in 2011, it would have one gigantic LCD touch screen on the dash, and no default readouts at all. After touching START it would give a tree with a dropdown menu, one of which would be "consumable fluids status." Happy day: "gasoline" is in alpabetical order before "oil" and "wiper fluid." Let me see, do I want "gallons" or "liters"? Press "unit set mem." wink.gif

And very likely, you would have mysterious software bugs and crashes and data losses. Because it would be running a real-time OS like a "minimal" Linux distro or Wind River, all of which make the earlier mainframe OSes like Unix or OS/370 seem laughably primitive and tiny. Modern OSes run massive numbers of background services, especially if databases or other large datasets have to be maintained, used and updated.

This is why I gave up on programming in the 1980s--the happy, obscure, wasteful world of object oriented programming was upon us, and I was constantly being told that piling up layers of abstraction between the processor hardware and the code developer was a "good thing".

When I owned an Amiga in 1990, it ran a multithreaded operating system that was even better than what the Mac had at the time--and it did it in 1 megabyte of memory, with one floppy drive. Complete with GUI, color graphics, etc.
My shiny new Mac Mini has 2 gigabytes of memory and a 320 GB hard drive, and running more than three large applications on it at once is a nightmare. It barely handles OpenOffice. (I just checked the activity monitor---other than OS kernel and services, the only process running is Firefox, and it's consuming almost 450 megabytes of RAM.......)

And let's not forget what Zoloft pointed out 2 months ago: the official Wikimedia http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Disaster_Recovery.

Posted by: EricBarbour

And btw, the Mozilla developers http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/06/10/2125227/Mozilla-MemShrink-Set-To-Fix-Firefox-Memory?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed that Firefox wastes RAM.
Still waiting for them to do something.

Posted by: thekohser

Erik Moeller (yes, that http://gawker.com/372140/) makes it http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-June/066412.html Danese Cooper was so easily replaceable, that she doesn't even need replacement!

QUOTE
"I’m taking on the role of VP of Engineering and Product Development,
on an interim basis for now. We’re not going to immediately hire
either for that role or a CTO role. Thanks to Mark, Tim and Brion, we
have very strong architectural leadership in the department. Moreover,
we’ve got more than enough disruptive change as an engineering
organization to absorb for now, so we’ve decided that it doesn’t make
sense to immediately bring in a new person to lead the department
."

Enjoy your last few days of superfluousness, Danese!


QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 3:24am) *

...about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller...

Guess who Brion's reporting to now?

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(thekohser @ Tue 21st June 2011, 9:53am) *

Erik Moeller (yes, that http://gawker.com/372140/) makes it http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-June/066412.html Danese Cooper was so easily replaceable, that she doesn't even need replacement!

QUOTE
"I’m taking on the role of VP of Engineering and Product Development,
on an interim basis for now. We’re not going to immediately hire
either for that role or a CTO role. Thanks to Mark, Tim and Brion, we
have very strong architectural leadership in the department. Moreover,
we’ve got more than enough disruptive change as an engineering
organization to absorb for now, so we’ve decided that it doesn’t make
sense to immediately bring in a new person to lead the department
."

Enjoy your last few days of superfluousness, Danese!


QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 8th March 2011, 3:24am) *

...about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller...

Guess who Brion's reporting to now?


Not Erik Moeller?

I found this very funny old (Jan 2008) org chart, which has Erik working DIRECTLY UNDER Sue, despite the fact that as Deputy Director he doesn't have (on this chart) any other responsibilities than to buffer the CTO, which at that time was indeed Brion. So he should really go on the top of that stack, rather than DIRECTLY UNDER Sue. tongue.gif fear.gif

Now that Danese has been lateralized, no doubt due to Brion's return, why is it that he doesn't get his old title back from her? What am I missing?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_staff_org_chart.svg

Posted by: mydog

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 21st June 2011, 4:10pm) *



Now that Danese has been lateralized, no doubt due to Brion's return, why is it that he doesn't get his old title back from her? What am I missing?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_staff_org_chart.svg


Do you think he wants his title back? I was under the impression that he came back because we wouldn't have to do boring CTO stuff anymore.