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Comment by randomname2 | Hacker News Reader

Great backgrounder.

The degree of chaos and dysfunction it illustrates truly is astonishing, it seems they had an utter lack of competent, experienced managers.

Very sad situation. Is Wikipedia itself severely affected by this?

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It's not just competent management: the WMF is a weird beast. Most savvy managers haven't worked in at nonprofit before, much less a nearly 100% transparent, community-driven nonprofit. Processes are very different, and I think this is what tripped up Lila.

I'm sure. Without having a real opinion on WMF, I've known multiple people who found themselves in non-profits and basically got out in a relative hurry. And, with some exceptions, I've had many of the same experiences with many volunteer organizations that I've been involved with.

Wikipedia is still running as per normal. But this has caused a great deal of reputation so damage to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. I think until everything comes out in the open, I'd be very leery about giving them any fundraising money.

It's not about small-time donors - Wikipedia solicits these only as a PR measure, the real money invariably comes in form of large grants, such as the Knight Foundation grant, and it's inevitably with strings attached. Think Obama's 2008 campaign.

I know. My comment also applies to large donors.

That's nonsense. Small-time donors are what makes up more than 75% of the total budget. Major gifts are only 13%.

See: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2014-2015_Fundraising_R...

Yes, for a foundation with $80M in assets overseeing the Wikipedia project the leadership sounds dangerously incompetent, considering that timeline.

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