Two top employees of the Wikimedia Foundation have resigned, citing disagreements with the board. Both publicly tendered their resignations to the community yesterday on a foundation mailing list, but say their resignations are unrelated and the timing coincidental.
Danny Wool, who has worked out of the foundation's St. Petersburg, Florida, office since October 2005 under the title of grants coordinator, and who is widely regarded as the number two guy at Wikimedia, discussed his resignation first in a message to the foundation list.
That note was later followed by one from Brad Patrick, general counsel and interim Executive Director of the foundation, who resigned formally to the foundation earlier this month but decided to announce it publicly to the community after seeing Wool's note go up. Patrick will continue with the foundation until March 31 and has retained executive headhunting firm Phillips Oppenheim to help find a permanent director for the foundation.
The heart of the article at Wired addresses some major concerns. I have used Wiki since it's inception...but lately I have found articles which were misleading or were incorrect. I now check their citations if I feel unsure about something and if they have NO citations I won't use the wiki writeup at all. Another WiredNews article cites how the founder of Wiki has changed his own Bio 18 times. Seems he had a problem with the co-founder of Wiki receiving credit for what he contributed to the site.
Change is good, but its not easy and personalities can ruin a good thing. Good luck to Wiki..a great idea that gives knowledge to the world for free.
Tags: Wikipedia
