"We are transparent in our operations, both to our communities and
more generally to the public."
It has been over a week since the question of whether the WMUK board
of trustees asked D'Arcy about his past Wikimedia contributions was
raised. The silence from all board members is telling. I had hoped
that the board or D'Arcy would use the opportunity to knock on the
head what appears to be a minor past mistake of judgement.
Looking over D'Arcy's public profile and past clients, I am puzzled at
how D'Arcy got invited to tender for the interim position for this
specialist open knowledge charity. Presumably both the recruitment
process and D'Arcy's contract represents a significant investment of
2013/14 Wikimedia grants and UK donations. I would appreciate it if
the board or D'Arcy would meet the charity's stated value of
transparency, by explaining for the benefit of both charity members
and readers of this email list, if any current or past board member
personally recommended D'Arcy the position, and exactly what process
was followed to meet Wikimedia UK's published obligations to ensure an
open process and competitive tendering to assure best value.
Thanks,
Fae
On 18 November 2014 at 19:24, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It would be nice to hear from the board how this was
discussed before
offering the interim position. After all, in the several interviews I took
part in for WMUK staff, pretty much the first basic question was along the
lines of 'have you ever edited Wikipedia?' as a way of assessing what the
candidate knows about Wikimedia; so I can not believe this would come as a
surprise considering how sensitive the board is on COI and its perception by
our community.
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae