On 7 October 2011 12:03, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
I am saying that you are questioning the decision of an independent body to select a person for membership in the same way that he questioned the WMF for selecting a person he did not consider appropriate. In short, he sought a non-project sanction for on-project activities/concerns. I do not see a difference between that behaviour, and members of this list seeking a non-project sanction (i.e., removing someone from a chapter Board of Directors) for on-project activities/concerns, particularly when the on-project concern was....well, doing exactly what seems to be proposed here.I agree that we need to be sensitive in general about how we discuss these type of issues on a public mailing list. And in this case since one party to the case is an active participate to this mailing list, we need to take extra caution that we are not only hearing one side of the story.

That said, I don't think that it is actually a parallel comparison. We don't want users escalating disputes by calling employers because it can have loads of negative repercussions for Wikipedia as well as the person who is reported. But I see no reason that users shouldn't take into consideration whether they support having someone who has been banned on one WMF project in a position of trust in a WMF related organization or another wiki. ArbCom does the same type of thing when it vets users for positions of trust such as checkuser. People take into account an users past history when they vote for steward or WMF Board members. So, I don't have a problem with someone raising a concern about it in this situation.


Sydney, I'd agree with you if the "employer" involved wasn't the WMF.  There is much that has not been sorted out between various layers of the intersecting WMF communities; it's commonplace and quite acceptable on some projects to criticize the actions of WMF employees directly (indeed, there's a goodly chunk of it on the English Wikipedia), and there have been fairly regular and public calls for the dismissal or sanctioning of WMF employees. Now, I don't think that's a great working environment, but certainly the widely held overall community view is that WMF employees sort of work on behalf of the community as a whole, and that their actions reflect on the movement/community as a whole. In fact, that is essentially what is being argued for in this case, with the exception that it's a chapter member and not a WMF employee involved.  However, that viewpoint was soundly repudiated in this particular arbitration case; ironically, the position being taken by members of this mailing list effectively contradict the ruling that has led to the sanctions that the members of this list have expressed a concern about. 

That is what I am getting at here.

Risker/Anne