TheWikimedia Foundation Executive Director (ED) and Chief Executive OfficerKatherine Maherannounced February 4 that she would be leaving the WMF on April 15.She has been with the WMF seven years, first as chief communications officer, then as interim ED in March 2016, and as ED in June 2016.

She became ED at a verydifficult time for the movement, reported on inThe Signpost asThe WMF's age of discontent. Many in the community and WMF staff were outraged by a search engine project known asthe knowledge engine.Doc James was voted off the Board of Trustees by the Board itself. Maher's predecessor,Lila Tretikov, resigned under pressure. A new trustee resigned within weeks of his appointment. Following Maher's appointment the community, staff, and Board experienced a period of peace and cooperation for about three years.

Maher's announcement was surprising since just the day beforeshe announced the approval of the Universal Code of Conduct by the Board of Trustees. Together with the2030 strategy recommendations, the UCC may be the chief achievement of her term as ED. Both still require implementation or enforcement, which may be just as difficult to achieve as the agreement on the policy and goals.

The WMF described the major improvements reached during Maher's term as:

• Increasing global reach and readership
• Reversing editor decline, and generating editor growth
• Increasing editor diversity
• Growing a global movement

Maher was an unapologetic advocate for a diverse community. She toldThe Signpost in a 2019 interview:

Diversity is baked into our vision statement: the sum of all knowledge, every single human being. And feminism is a foundational part of diversity: if we’re talking about every single human being, we need to be talking about every single human being, including women and non-binary people. So, not only is this part of my values, it’s absolutely part of the Foundation’s mission.

Relations among the community, WMF staff, and the Board of Trustees became contentious at times. Aconsultant's report published in 2020, meant to better organize WMF governance, recommended that communications between the Board and the ED should be strengthened and that the ED's office should be better staffed to handle the many challenges.

In a note to Wikipedians ondiff, Maher said "I’m going to take a break, and a research fellowship, as a place to think about what’s next."Axios stated thatshe'll be moving to the United States east coast.

General Counsel Amanda Keton, Chief of Talent and Culture Robyn Arville, and Chief Financial Officer Jaime Villagomez will act as the executive transition team. The Transition Committee leading the search for Maher's replacement includes four trustees:Dariusz Jemielniak, Tanya Capuano,Raju Narisetti, and Board ChairMaría Sefidari.Viewcrest Advisors will assist the committee's global search.

See thisformal announcement.

The Signpost wishes Katherine all the best. –S

TonyBallioni opened a discussion atWikipedia:Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) on February 20 to streamline a process to remove administrators, driven more directly by the community. It has 126-80 support as of February 27.

Current procedures to remove an administrator on the English Wikipedia (desysop) are outlined atWP:Administrators § Review and removal of adminship and do not include a direct path for the editors in the community to remove an administrator. Not counting procedural and reversible desysop due to inactivity, or desysops initiated by WMF which are counted in single digits, desysop virtually always happens through the admin's own request or by Arbcom action. Currently 146 of 512 currently-active admins, listed atCategory:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, have voluntarily specified their own ad-hoc criteria and procedures for desysop that they have pledged to follow. Thus over 70% of active admins are only removable by themselves or by Arbcom.

A new process has been a recurring topic on the English Wikipedia, with discussions going back to 2004 listed atWikipedia:Requests for de-adminship. A 2009 discussion to formalize the process,Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Admin Recall, resulted in a2010 RfC which failed: 167 for, 190 against; and a2019 RfC failed to result in aprocedure [that] gathered enough support to be favored by a clear consensus.

Conditions outlined by the current RfC in order to initiate a desysop request include (condensed forThe Signpost):

• A recent AN or ANI discussionwhere the closing statement indicates that there was consensus that the administrator behaved inappropriately
• Endorsement by a qualifying number of editors, including three admins

The desysop will be performed by a bureaucrat if there is 60% support for removal at the end of a 7-day voting period. The word "vote" is not used in the initial RfC statement and it is being debated whether the proposed process will use a straight-up vote or adiscussion to determine the outcome. –B

• New administrators:The Signpost welcomes the English Wikipedia's newest administrator,TJMSmith.

• In my view, Maher did a great job. There will always be some disagreements between the WMF and Wikimedians, but on the whole her tenure was productive and effective. Can only hope her replacement is equally committed to the idea of Wikipedia.Ganesha811 (talk)21:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll second that. I'm very sorry to see her go.Smallbones_(smalltalk)21:48, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I honestly can't think of anything she's done for the other non-Wikipedia projects. They're just as ostracized as before. ~★nmaia^d23:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Maher's tenure will always be a mixed bag. Most editors will probably remember FRAMBAN when they think of her, though things were mostly smooth the first few years she was here. I think she chose the right time to leave. UCOC was controversial idea, and its probably for the better that a new executive director will have the chance to shape its implementation. -Indy beetle (talk)23:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• She's been a particularly good spokesperson when representing the projects to a non-wiki audience. I saw her speak and answer questions at Melbourne Knowledge week back in 2017 and she did a good job of advocating for the movement and community to an audience that was still relatively suspicious of the concepts.T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk04:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't have an opinion either way, but I wish her well. Regarding the image up above, Carlos Figueroa is a great photographer. I would like to see more from him.Viriditas (talk)07:57, 6 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• The strangest thing about Maher to me was hiring Victoria Coleman as CTO. Why was a DARPA official who had built surveillance circuitry into Intel coprocessors after being involved in privacy scandals considered a good choice? Coleman went off to a NGO nominally about Africa, and then on to lead DARPA until the end of the Trump administration, and now is back at the NGO.2601:647:4D00:2C40:5DE9:6342:9B8:27CC (talk)19:27, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Maher did a very good job as a roving ambassador for the WMF and was certainly a good talker and understood Wikipedia policies, but she obviously got bored with being grounded. She was probably not so good at engaging in day-to-day management tasks in the way that the community expected her to be, but to go by her talk page, perhaps she didn't consider ground control as part of her brief - and maybe in fact it wasn't, and it left D/B Level running around with no practical guidance and making up their own rules on an ad hoc basis.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)11:25, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Despite some of her questionable decisions at WMF, I still respect Maher and wishing her all the best.--Vulphere05:58, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]