Open Source Diva named CTO Options

[anthony]

So who is this Danese Cooper? I see that David Gerard created her BLP in 2005. On that point alone I'm skeptical.

[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 her Twitter feed 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.

[melloden]

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 her Twitter feed 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.

[Somey]

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.

[Milton Roe]

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. 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. 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.

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."