The WMF boss targets the 25-39 year old female with this insightful and hard-hitting interview in Marie Claire magazine.

Ladies, you can do better than serve touring tech execs coffee! You could be mismanaging millions of tax-exempt dollars!

Note that she tiptoed around the "dating" question.

Well? Did she or didn't she?

Whether or not she dated Jimbo, she is right about the Silicon Valley media. But wrong about the WP community, which is largely sexist (and heteronormative). Not deliberately, overtly, or consciously so perhaps, but sexist nonetheless. This is mitigated by the fact that the most sexist and heteronormative parts of the community tend to cluster around certain areas.

Tiptoed? She kicked the question, booted it. The question did not ask her if she had dated Wales. It asked her how she handled it. She didn't answer that question at all. Zilch. She reported that her friend gave her advice to "avoid media coverage."

How? By not reading media coverage? How do you do "everything you could" to "avoid media coverage"? Live in a cave? What?

Or, with the alternate meaning, avoid getting a high-profile job? Wear dark glasses?

The most interesting issue that came up, she hardly touched. Female editors may be less likely to participate because they don't like the raging conflicts on Wikipedia. It's possible that there are true gender differences here, but the solution would be sane process, and Gardner is not about to go there.

Correct. The Beast must be fed content, and nothing (even processes to encourage female editors) will be allowed to interfere with the flow of content.
No matter how crappy. No matter how many raving lunatics end up running the thing.

In this, Sue displays her true hypocrisy. You'd think she was running for dogcatcher or something.

I found this Q and A more than a little telling:


First, Sue's answer isn't really responsive--she was not asked about "CEOs, venture capitalists, and hedge-fund managers" or anyone else that she had been meeting with. Moreover, the fact she had been meeting with CEOs, venture capitalists, and hedge-fund managers at the time points to what was likely the real reason for the move to San Francisco: to be much closer to a major potential source of donor dollars. At the time, we here at WR were mystified by what seemed to be a hasty and ill-considered decision. There may have been much method to their seeming madness after all.

Recall that at the time (fall 2007) Sue and most of the other WMF staff had acquired their positions just that year. There were 9 staffers and 3 independent contractors then, but today that number has swelled to 65 staffers. The move came nearly a year before the collapse in the financial markets; a time when hedge fund managers and other investors were making out like bandits and would have been keen on finding tax write-offs and tax shelters.

I don't recall any of this grandiose talk of a "Wikipedia Movement" from Jimbo, Sue or the Frei Kultur Kinder until well after the move. That doesn't mean it was not already being planned, however. We know from the WMF's own financials that the cost of meeting the hosting and technical requirements of all the Wikimedia sites is between $2 to $3 million US annually. The ever increasing bloat in both the budget and the staff is way in excess of what is needed to serve the Foundation's mission as a support organization. The bloat in the tech staff (from two staffers and two contractors to 27 staff) only represents 43% of the total staff increase.

I would not be surprised to learn that Jimbo's buddy Craig Newmark suggested the move to SF and may have even arranged some of the meetings Sue had.

Thing is, last year they rather dramatically switched to a strategy that wooed thousands of small donors, rather than dozens of major donors. It seems to me that could have been accomplished just as easily from St. Petersburg as from Frisco.