Comment by akolbe

The culture war aspect of it, sure. On the one hand you have people coming into the Wikimedia C-suite who have had little to no affinity with the "encyclopedia" part of Wikipedia at all in their professional lives – people coming from pure tech, political, government or NGO backgrounds who wouldn't dream of volunteering their time on Wikipedia. They often stay only a year or two and are replaced by others like them. So the culture of the places they come from defines them much more than the culture of Wikipedia as built over twenty years.

They bring management consultants' jargon that alienates volunteers because to them it sounds phony. They want to do things top-down, because that is what they are used to, and what they feel they have to do make "their mark" which will look good on their CV when they move on in a couple of years' time to another job that hopefully pays them more. Meanwhile, the volunteers are there year after year, observing fads coming and going while often not getting the services they would actually like.

Above all, there is a such a growth in talk fests and bureaucracy. Grand plans and strategies are developed over years ("By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision will be able to join us") and then everything moves at a glacial pace. "Strategy started 7 years ago and yet we still havent even reached the implementation of anything" said one long-time volunteer on the mailing list the other day who felt like the WMF is actually moving things backwards:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

Even editors usually loyal to the Foundation – former board members – are beginning to voice gentle complaints. "Bureaucracy is defeating us":

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@list...

Their pleas are falling on deaf ears.