For what it's worth, In early October 2015, the Discovery department was very clearly told by Wes (who I believe was not yet a c-level) that the mysterious term "Knowledge Engine" was being deprecated, and that the Discovery team was not working on any huge product-like initiative. The team was to remain focused on the work they were already doing: improving and enhancing search within and across wikimedia projects, Wikidata Query Service, maps, portal improvements, etc.
It sounds like there were ongoing communication disconnects between board<->execs and/or execs<->managers. The good news is that regardless of what was happening at higher levels, the team was never pulled into any work on moon shots. For context, I was the agile coach for the search team in April 2015, and then became the agile coach for the Discovery department when it was created as part of the re-org shortly after that. Kevin Smith Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 6:04 AM, James Heilman <jmh...@gmail.com> wrote: > The project formally know as the Knowledge Engine was frequently referred > to as a "moon shot" in November 2015 by a number of my fellow board > members. This terminology I believe accurately highlighted the size, > expense, and risk that this proposal was. > > How we have described the KE to our movement has been significantly > different. All efforts appear to be to minimize what was proposed. And > efforts to explain it at all have only occurred after greater community > understanding became inevitable. > > I find it disappointing to see the ED and some board members try to deny > and downplay the plans that previously existed. While the ED has recently > apologized for the lack of transparency, this was brought to her attention > many times before, and thus I am not convinced her apology will result in a > change in her approach. > > -- > James Heilman > MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian > > The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine > www.opentextbookofmedicine.com > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
