Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Election guide/Candidate Op-Ed, Kunal Mehta

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A big thank you to the Signpost team for publishing my op-ed as well as the other candidate statements. Given that the opportunities for interactions with candidates have been very limited this year, I'm happy to answer any questions or respond to comments that people might have about my candidacy. Legoktm (talk) 15:55, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

This isn't really a question more than a general endorsement. As one of BAG members (me that is), I've seen first Legoktm's work on bots and other technical areas behind the scenes, where a staggering amount of grueling, unglamourous, and unrecognized work is going on. He's got a solid head on his shoulders and definitely has the actual interests of the community at heart, not HR/PR talking points. Once I saw his name as a candidate, I knew who one of my votes would be for.

The WMF would benefit from his expertise, passion, and knowledge, and would we all benefit from him being on the board to represent the interests of the community. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:15, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Here's a few questions I'm going to ask of everyone.

In the community, it's a widely acknowledged issue that the WMF has a hearing problem. Its financial resources are larger than ever, and yet we can't get the most of the support we want from the WMF, who instead spends time and ridiculous amounts of money on issues like branding. It took YEARS of screaming from the community, culminating in an open letter with 1000+ signatories to drive the very simple point that the WMF does not, should not, and will not ever stand for the Wikipedia Foundation with any legitimacy.

At the same time, we have huge amounts of support for increasing the modest resources of the community team. There are very tangible projects that have massive amounts of community support that get dropped because of this lack of resources.

So my questions are these. 1) Do you think the WMF has a hearing problem? If so, why do you think is the root cause, and what do you plan to do about it? 2) What do you make of the proposal to allocate at least 1% of the WMF warchest/yearly budget to the Community Tech team, broadly speaking?

Thanks for your time. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:39, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Headbomb, thanks for the questions.

1) I think it's important to remember that the WMF isn't a monolith. Some of the WMF teams I observe do a pretty good job of interacting with community members, genuinely taking in their feedback, resulting in a better outcome because the solution was developed collaboratively. However, I agree that in general there is a sense that WMF upper management and the Board are just out of touch with the situation on the ground. It's not too surprising that upper management is like that, none of them were originally Wikimedians, but the Board is more perplexing. I don't think there's a single root cause, it just gets ingrained over time (would love to learn if other people have specific ideas/thoughts on this).

OK, so what do I plan to do about it? First, as I mentioned in my op-ed, push for bottom-up prioritization. That means community members and staff on the ground are providing input and determining what gets worked on, not just upper management. I don't expect this to be an immediate switch, it'll probably happen gradually. E.g. start with the WMF actually publishing its annual and quarterly (draft) plans so people can provide feedback. Then start publishing plans earlier and soliciting feedback earlier, and so on until the feedback becomes the actual plans. Second, we can also start promoting people internally. As I pointed out on Wikimedia-l earlier this year, the two longest serving (and IMO, best) CTOs/VPs of Engineering were originally community members who got into those positions. We have a decent number of talented low level managers who I think would do a good job in higher-level positions. Instead of needing to onboard people from outside the WMF for 6 months, have them spend a year and a half doing something and then leaving, resetting the whole process, we could promote people who are already a good fit for the WMF, understand our cultural values, etc. (This is not meant to be any commentary on the new CPTO who I have yet to work with and wish the best of luck, just a general point.)

2) I sympathize with the proposal and agree in principle that we should be devoting more resources to things the community asks for (again, bottom-up prioritization!), but I don't agree with the specific proposal because I don't believe we should have a Community Tech team. Fundamentally, ALL the WMF tech teams should be working in service of the community's needs, not just one. To give a more specific example, the CommTech team recently implemented expiring watchlist entries, which is great! But, why don't we have a dedicated team that is working on all the other issues around watchlists and notifications and figuring out whats going on?

I hope this answers your questions, but if not I'm happy to expand (or be more concise). Legoktm (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. The questions were deliberately open ended. I can live with a board that has different opinions (especially if they're more informed opinions), but the character of the answers is what's important. I already knew what that was going to be (see the above endorsement), but it will let others assess your candidacy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:57, 1 August 2022 (UTC)