[WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.

[Ray Saintonge]

George Herbert wrote:
> On Dec 16, 2007 8:31 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>   
>>  A non-profit organization
>> with roughly a million dollars in cash and equipment isn't "tiny".
>> Small, maybe, but not tiny.  A big mistake was made entrusting the
>> operation of such an organization to someone without properly
>> investigating her background.
>>     
> Many small charity or volunteer organizations don't do detailed
> background checks.  It's only very recently that schools started doing
> it with staff and teachers and volunteers around here.  I know of
> charities which haven't done checks on anyone on staff.  I know a
> number of companies that haven't checked anyone either, though some of
> the ones I worked for and worked at as a consultant do.
>   
Clean criminal records checks carry a false sense of security.  Many of 
the more sensational child abuse cases involve first time offenders in 
the sense that it is the first time they were caught, even though the 
abuse may have carried on secretly for many years. 
>> Maybe the principle of "assume good
>> faith" is being relied on too heavily here.  We are told a process is
>> in place to make sure it doesn't happen again, but there doesn't seem
>> to be an acknowledgment that such a big mistake was made in the first
>> place.  No one has stepped up and taken the blame, and I think there's
>> a lot of blame to go around.  I guess legal considerations make it
>> difficult.  But I also think there are some people who really don't
>> understand how negligent they were.
>>     
> I have seen Jimmy and Mike and Anthere step up and accept responsibility.
>
> Accepting "the blame" is more complicated and presumes that someone in
> the Foundation did something actively wrong, as opposed to a passive
> mistake.
The need to have someone to blame, even if it happens to be the victim, 
is a common moral ill.

Ec