I know this has been proposed before, but: the obvious solution
is to have spoiler warnings enabled by default, but with a
"dismiss" box, just like WMF fund drive announcement banners
and the like. No mucking about with user css files required.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7350
This posits Knol as something to get knowledge out of employees. Much
like an intranet wiki but somehow more efficient for useful
braindumping.
(I'm a *tremendous* fan of office wikis. Best idea ever IMO.)
- d.
on 12/15/07 11:48 AM, wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org at
wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:09:32 +0000
> From: Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <BAY103-W1447A14AD4C19BFE091A49E8600(a)phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> Because I thought it would be redundant! That it would be a waste of an email!
> Look, I knew nothing about this Register article. Bored one afternoon, I just
> followed the same trail of deduction and investigation that one has to assume
> the Register followed - all the stuff is there online - and I thought "Oh, no
> wonder they (WMF) kept that quiet!" I realise now that, sadly, I was wrong.
>
> Jimbo, don't look at me. Look at your staff/Board. Someone there must have
> known - the COO can't just vanish to jail and no one on the staff/Board knows
> anything - \
Forgive me if I have got the timeline wrong, but my reading of the relevant
articles is that she was arrested in May for DUI and driving on a suspended
license but was released the same day on bond. In July the Foundation
terminated her employment, and in August she was arrested and extradited on
a parole violation (leaving the country in June for a Foundation meeting).
(She was detained by Customs and Immigration in June but does not seem to
have been arrested at that time, otherwise officer Smagowicz would have been
described as the arresting officer, not merely the officer who interviewed
her.)
It certainly was sloppy of the Foundation to hire someone for the position
of "COO" without the simplest of background checks, but the allegation that
she vanished off to jail and no one noticed seems to be a misreading of the
timeline.
Thatcher
Some companies do background checks for standard office jobs, some don't. However, a company that doesn't do an extensive background check before promoting someone to COO is really playing with fire and putting themselves in a very bad position.
Do I think a drunk driving conviction should get not hired from a COO position? Not necessarily, although it does show a lack of judgement - especially multiple DUI convictions. One conviction is I drank too much and didn't realize I was impaired. Multiple DUI convictions show that you don't know how to say when. However the other convictions would be something that would cause me not to hire the person on any level that has to do with Foundation funds.
I work for a non-profit and we're just now publishing our financials for the past fiscal year, so the fact the the WMF hasn't published financials yet is not something I'm hugely concerned about. However, the Board needs to get a handle on things and give accurate information to the community and the press. Being involved in marketing and investor relations, I always under promise and over deliver. It's much better to say that the financials will be ready at the end of the year and then get them done in October than to say they will be ready in September and still not have them available three months later. Throw in this latest scandal and people have every right to question how their donations are being spent. But, to be honest, if I were the foundation, I'd be a lot more worried about the people that give the WMF grants than I would be at any group of individual donors.
Sue Anne
sreed1234(a)yahoo.com
----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com
Why would you do a background check for a pretty standard office job?
I don't know about the US, but in the UK such background checks are
usually only done for jobs where the person will be working with
children, or similar. Pretty much every application form I've seen has
the question "Do you have any criminal convictions, other than any
legally spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?" (or words to
that effect), and they just take your word for it. If WMF didn't ask,
then that was a serious mistake (although an understandable one - by
the time she was employed directly, she had been working as a temp for
a while, so it's entirely possible that no-one thought to ask when
checking for such things changed from being the agency's
responsibility to being WMF's - of course, it may be time to pick a
new temp agency...), if they asked and she lied, then its not really
WMF's fault. You can't go around refusing to trust anything anybody
says.
I've missed out the possibility of them asking and her telling the
truth, since The Register says Mike Godwin said the WMF knew nothing,
and I'm assuming The Reg is reporting this correctly. I'm also
assuming The Reg isn't just talking complete nonsense about the whole
thing. I'm not entirely comfortable with either of those
assumptions...
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"Teach the controversy" is a phrase that encapsulates NPOV perfectly
IMO. Except it's been popularised by advocates of Intelligent Design
and is strongly associated with them.
Is there a way to put it into [[WP:NPOV]] that wouldn't seem to be pushing ID?
- d.
Despite the recent interest in secret lists this message from
Blissyu2/Zordrac appears to have gone unnoticed.
Blissyu2 describes the existence of a secret forum on Wikipedia Review,
which he belongs to, that has been used to coordinate attacks on
Wikipedia and its editors. On his blog he described an even more secret
mailing list. (The entry has since been deleted). While he appears
contrite, the actual players in the coordinated attack have not
expressed any regret that I'm aware of.
Are we more concerned about a list intended to improve Wikipedia than we
are about a list and forum used to harm Wikipedia? Certainly good
intentions with bad execution can mess up a project, but bad intentions
with good execution are much worse. Wikipedia needs and benefits from
the criticism of those who want to see it improved. It isn't improved by
the plots of those who want to see it destroyed.
Will Beback
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Private Musings scam
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:28:32 +0900
From: u/n - adrianm <adrianm(a)octa4.net.au>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear good people of Wikipedia,
I am writing here as the owner of Wikipedia Review, and
also as someone who would like to apologise to you, the
Wikipedia community, in addition to the Wikipedia Review
community, for some actions that a member of our forum,
Kato, performed recently, which relate to various other
topics discussed on Wikipedia, surrounding the user name
Private Musings, the administrator JzG, and the article
and person Robert Black.
First and foremost let me say that I do not approve of
what Kato did. I was so angry about what he did that I
stood up to it, and Somey, who is managing the forum,
decided to give me a "mandatory holiday" over it, and
right now as we speak we are negotiating as to whether I
will just take my forum back and clean up this whole mess,
or whether he will do it and I won't have to. Needless to
say this entire incident created more problems on
Wikipedia Review than it did on Wikipedia. However, I
would like to state that this was done by one person and
one person alone - Kato - and should not be seen to
reflect the opinions and views of people who use Wikipedia
Review as a whole.
I wrote on my blog about this incident here:
http://therealadrian.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D338A8729E83EAB!892.entry
Put simply, Kato was trying to hurt SlimVirgin and
Wikipedia as a whole through some well-placed lies. The
entire thing was a set up. Kato abused Wikipedia Review's
trusted members forum, and his newly appointed position as
moderator in doing this. And I believe that it was
actually done with an aim for him to try to take over
Wikipedia Review. Certainly, his actions prior to doing
this were consistent with this aim, when he attacked a
number of high profile members in relation to the "child
grooming" issue. He has succeeded wonderfully, too, as
Wikipedia Review is absolutely shattered thanks to this
issue, with nobody really being able to make heads or
tails of it, and to this day they still refuse to openly
discuss what Kato did (instead they are discussing my
complaining about Kato and various conspiracy theories
about what my secret agenda was, since they refuse to
accept that Kato actually did something wrong here).
Quite frankly I am disgusted at this. We at Wikipedia
Review have always prided ourselves on being "the good
guys", who expose lies and always tell the truth. In this
incident, we became "the bad guys", who lied to you (and
to ourselves) and who then had to have our lies exposed by
you guys over there at Wikipedia. What is the point of
having a forum to expose lies if we are the ones making up
the lies?
And while I haven't been fond of SlimVirgin for a long
time, and perhaps we could suggest that a few people who
probably deserve to be hurt did get hurt in this, the
amount of innocent bystanders who got hurt is far too
many, and attacking a group, hurting innocent people along
the way to hopefully perhaps hurting someone who in your
opinion deserves it is the wrong way to go about things.
A number of people on Wikipedia who had nothing to do with
any of this were banned, and they are completely innocent
of all wrongdoings. I don't know if anyone on Wikipedia
can take the time to wade through this to figure out who
was innocent and who was not. Because of the sheer level
and complexity of Kato's lies, realistically its probably
not even possible to do this, and I understand the idea of
banning people "just in case".
I can offer no reassurances that Wikipedia Review are
going to clean everything up, because right now I am
standing here as someone who got banned from my own forum,
and if I do take it back, then the whole place may well
fall apart (that is the threat I have been given to try to
suggest to me that I shouldn't go in and take my forum
back). Right now most people on there are refusing to
accept the truth of the situation, and are instead
insisting that this whole thing was my set up. That Kato
didn't actually bully anyone, didn't actually set anyone
up, and that the whole thing was my fault for making
"unfounded accusations" against Kato.
I just want to reassure everyone here that that is not
what Wikipedia Review is meant to be about. We are meant
to be there to make Wikipedia accountable, to discuss the
various issues with the site, to make sure that people are
aware of the various problems and to educate people. This
whole incident goes further against what Wikipedia Review
stands for than anything else in its 2 year history. This
is not who we are. And if I have anything to do with it,
this is not who we will become.
I know that a number of admins have offered to let me back
on Wikipedia over this, for showing integrity, and have
wanted me to betray people over at Wikipedia Review. But
I am not going to do that. If my Wikipedia ban is to be
reviewed, it should be on its merits. No, of course my
ban wasn't fair and no of course it doesn't have any
legitimacy. But that doesn't mean that I am going to
betray all that I have worked for just to get back in. I
have more integrity than that. I would rather be
somewhere for the right reasons, and to do things in the
right way.
Again, I would like to apologise to everyone who got hurt
over this, and all of the Kato-inspired drama that this
created, in the mailing list, on AN/I, and everywhere
else.
And for the record, I do think that Private Musings is an
abusive account. But they should be exposed legitimately,
not in this way.
Thank you.
Adrian, owner of Wikipedia Review
Wikipedia Review username: Blissyu2
Wikipedia username: Zordrac
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