Well, well, Rogol “hasten-the-day” Domedonfors has just shit all over the Wikimedia mailing list. Again. Never mind that he’s clueless about finance; Rogol has decided to take it on himself to micro-manage whoever’s job it is to do just that.
The opening move was by Pine, who sometimes tag-teams with Rogol, and who seemed deeply concerned about the cost of the strategy process.
Could you also discuss what measures are being taken to control costs in the strategy process?
Perhaps he is worried there won’t be any money left over for his Cascascia (Seattle) user’s group.
This was followed by some America-bashing by Rogol and some gender-trashing by some WikiData people.
The next round went to Anna Stillwell, the new Chargée d’Affaires:
Rogol,
The statement, “the Foundation and all the external consultants advising it on this exercise are all US-based“, is not accurate.
There are four streams of research and discovery in this phase:….
Five hundred words later, everyone’s eyes have glazed over and Rogol has absolutely no chance of waking anyone up to the clear and present danger of …what was it again?
But Pine posts two times more and Rogol three, and is finally answered by another staff member, responding to Pine only, and completely ignoring the existence of Rogol, who after all doesn’t use his Meta name on the mailing list:
You may not know this, but these kinds of requests are costly, particularly when it escalates with a strongly negative comment and a demand to speak to a Board member. I share these figures on the cost of this request thus far in the service of transparency.
• 6: Number of staff involved in responding, including 3 senior leaders
• 2: Number of Board members now involved
• 1.5 hours: Estimated amount of Board time spent thus far
• 10 hours: Estimated amount of staff time spent thus far
• $1,500: Estimated cost of staff time (considering expenses beyond just salary)
Providing the detailed answer you have requested would require considerably more time and increase the cost more. We have decided not to provide that response because we have ample financial oversight and we would like not to set a precedent of spending resources discussing this level of detail on financial matters.
Way to go dudes. Way to hasten the day. You just cost the foundation $1,500.
And that doesn’t even count Anna Stillwell, who was probably hired specifically for the Pine and Rogol Show, and who probably makes more than all three of us put together. But then, they probably didn’t read Mau–Mauing the Flak Catchers.
Step back for a minute and watch what is going on with the empire building. Every time someone points out a problem, the WMF creates a new layer of bureaucracy. Got harassment issues? Poof! An entire new department, new hires left and right – a new fiefdom with a shiny new budget. Rogol and Pine decide go off on one of their bitch sessions? Billable hours for all! This time it was $1,500, but next time they will already know the drill, so who knows how high it can go.
But think about this. How much did Rogol get paid for his trouble? Will Kohs now give him a bonus? I doubt it. Everyone here is laughing all the way to the bank, everyone except Rogol.
I have taken this to heart and hired myself a new Chargée d’Merde du Taureau. This is my Evil Twin, Gender Desk. She is telling me not to close the comments just quite yet.
In the meantime, my fans may not know this, but I count myself somewhat of a finance pundit. Here is my expert advice about why Pine and Rogol were stupid to do what they did:
“You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table, there’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing’s done.” ¹
~~~~
See also:
Gender Desk 
It’s always nice to be appreciated. If only it were true that the WMF appointed a new staff member every time I sent them an email. Pine and I would only have to send two a day each for a year to exhaust the $70M or so they bring in. Just to clarify, though: I get paid nothing for my criticism, it’s a hobby, just as I suppose running a blog would be.
A couple of points. “Clueless about finance”? Oh dear – would you like to give an example or reason why you would say that? “America bashing”: no, some of my best friends are American, etc. But appointing entirely US-based consultancies to advise a US-based organisation is unlikely to produce the global view that the WMF claim to want. If you look at what those compnaies do, though, it’s not about advising global organisations on how to achieve global reach, it’s about advising US-based non-profits with a leftish lean to get more money from US-based donors and foundations. After all, that’s the business the WMF is in.
And you choose to make your demand two days before the end of the fiscal year, when they have all the time in the world and are not pressured or anything. Tsk.
I don’t think I made any demand on this occasion. I commented on Pine’s request and on the rather lacklustre nature of the response. I did suggest something about “next time”, which I think was entirely constructive, and hardly adds to the pressure.
The general point, I think, is that in a well planned budget and profiling process, the data Pine requested would have been explicitly available at the time the decision to extend the consultation was taken, and would have been taken into account in the decision-making process. It would therefore have been an entirely trivial task to extract it from the data for that decision-making process and publish it. I do not believe that the WMF takes decisions in a way that I would recognise. Perhaps that means I’m “clueless”, as you suggest; probably I’m old-fasioned; and it’s just possible that I’m right.
It looks to me like 1) the WMF made a particular effort to listen to the community 2) halfway through, they discovered something new because the community was telling them about it 3) they decided to change the design of the survey based on what the community was telling them.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the WMF had ignored the community input and not acted on it, that you would now be on them like white on rice complaining about it.
I have said before that this blog is not meant to be a forum for extended discussion, and that I have limited time, but I did wish to give you the opportunity to respond. There are a number of outstanding questions: why the WMF says their consultants are not all US-based and you say they are, what your qualifications are to make so many unsupported assertions, and how the WMF should restructure their finance department, including details of the budget impact of such a restructuring, in order to be able to respond to randos who post comments on a mailing list on the Friday before the annual fiscal reporting is due, just before a major holiday weekend. If you wish to host the discussion on your own website, I would be happy to post a link.
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