David Goodman writes:
> Yes, the board must have the discretion to choose the appropriate
> course, and in this instance it chose wrongly. It takes good
> judgement to know how much to release, and the judgment proved not to
> be good. The bias towards secrecy would be the apparent reason.
Apart from my disagreement about Goodman's evaluation of our
judgments, I am charmed to have been accused, for the first time in my
life, with a "bias towards secrecy." Anyone familiar with me or my
work would have presumed my bias had been in the opposite direction.
As Kant pointed out, acting against one's inclinations is often an
indicator of moral judgment.
--Mike
Anthony writes:
>> There's plenty that you apparently don't know about. For example,
>> did
>> you know that a company is legally liable if it mishandles a criminal
>> background check, and that this is why this service is now contracted
>> to specialized services?
>>
> That question is far too vague to answer. Yes, I'm aware that certain
> mishandling of criminal background check's can result in legal
> liability. I'm not aware of any legal liability which can be had for
> checking the county court records on someone who's already left the
> company, in order to not get blindsided by a newspaper story about
> that former employee.
There are several hidden assumptions in that comment that are simply
wrong. While I am not at liberty to spell them out for you (because
doing so might disclose things I am not at liberty to disclose), I
think anyone else here (besides Foundation board members and staff and
agents) can certainly do so.
> Thomas and I were both clearly talking about the period of time
> between the interview and the publishing of the story.
About two hours, then? Do you want a minute-by-minute accounting of
how I spent the two hours between the time of the interview and the
time the story appeared, because in your wisdom you know you could
have spent those minutes much better than I did? I think that would
be a ridiculous exercise.
>>> As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation
>>> should have done their own investigation and then broken the
>>> story. It
>>> would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information
>>> together
>>> to spoil The Register's scoop.
>>
>> Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few
>> days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations
>> made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us
>> to
>> confirm or refute.
You seem to be under the impression that Cade Metz hinted in his
interview with me about all the criminal acts alleged to have been
committed, in all the states he listed. Or else you have forgotten
that Florida county records were not exactly the heart of the story.
Thomas Dalton writes:
> Precisely. Judging by the quotes in the article, Mike must have known
> The Register was intending to publish a story about Carolyn Doran
> having a criminal record. That's pretty much all the information the
> Wikinews people needed to do their research in a matter of hours, so I
> see no reason why the WMF couldn't have done the same.
Wikinews had the Register story to work from when they wrote their
story. The Foundation staff did not. See the difference?
--Mike
Hello all,
This is to formally announce that the official bidding for Wikimania 2009 is
now open. All "unofficial" bids have been removed to another page as the
official process is now begun.
Please see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Official_requirements_for_bid
ding_cities> for the official requirements.
New bids may be placed at
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids>
Thank you all!
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Phone: 727.231.0101
Fax: 727.258.0207
E-Mail: cbass(a)wikimedia.org
Hello
The board held a meeting on irc yesterday.
Kat, Frieda, Jimmy, Jan-Bart, Anthere were present. Erik excused.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#December_2007
4 resolutions were immediately passed, a few others are pending minor
tweaks or further input.
I'd like to mention that WMF agreed to sign the Cape Town Declaration,
as suggested by Melissa Hagermann.
http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
Next irc board meeting to occur during january. Next real life board
meeting probably to be expected 8-9-10th of february in San Francisco.
Longuer report to summarize year 07 and introduce year 08 to be expected
early january :-)
Cheers
Florence
Anthony writes:
> It took me about 10 minutes to search the Pinellas County court
> records and find the two DUIs and the fugitive warrant from Virginia,
> and that's without using her maiden name. That Jimbo says he was
> "stunned" when he read it suggests you didn't even know about that.
There's plenty that you apparently don't know about. For example, did
you know that a company is legally liable if it mishandles a criminal
background check, and that this is why this service is now contracted
to specialized services?
You seem to be advising me to act in ways that make the Foundation
more likely to be legally vulnerable. I'm sorry, but I must politely
refuse.
Thomas Dalton writes:
>> Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few
>> days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations
>> made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us
>> to
>> confirm or refute.
>
> So the Wikinews volunteers are better at legal research than the WMF
> General Counsel? Great...
It has nothing to do with legal research or with my abilities to
conduct it.
Perhaps you should do some research on your own regarding how
corporations avoid liability when conducting background checks.
> We're not talking about hiring and firing, we're talking about giving
> the community a heads-up rather than letting The Register be the one
> to break the story.
Thomas, I'm beginning to think you've gone a little nuts. You've
confused two different things:
(1) a general background check on a WMF employee *before* the Register
story was published, and
(2) a specific check of the Register's references *after* the story
was published, which can be done a lot quicker.
If you are under the impression that Cade Metz called us and read to
us the text of his story over the phone, you are entirely mistaken.
He alluded vaguely to some issues when he called me after letting us
know his story would be running in a couple of hours.
And, in any case, because I think the insanity has gotten out of hand,
I want to underscore the fact that in no way was the Foundation going
to rush to publication of a story about a personnel matter in order to
beat the Register. Seriously. What a crazy idea.
> The foundation seems to have a great deal of difficulty realising that
> they can say something without saying everything.
Oddly enough, I've been doing just that. The problem is that
sometimes people aren't listening when you're saying something but not
saying everything. Not that I'm pointing any fingers here.*
*Reminder: Americans aren't good at irony! We know sports!
--Mike
Thomas Dalton writes:
> They must have given you a general idea of the story when they were
> interviewing Mike. You can't ask "Were you aware of Mrs. Doran's
> criminal record?" without revealing the fact that she has a criminal
> record...
Without revealing an *allegation* that is unsubstantiated by anything
other than a Register reporter's willingness to make it over the
phone. If you're saying the Register is a reliable source, all of a
sudden, you hold it in much higher opinion than I do.
> As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation
> should have done their own investigation and then broken the story. It
> would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information together
> to spoil The Register's scoop.
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few
days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations
made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to
confirm or refute. (I assume, without knowing more, that most of this
stuff was simply handed to Cade Metz by someone else who spent
significant time trying to put a scandal together.) Plus, I don't
think we should be in the business of trying to beat the Register in
publishing a thinly sourced, largely unsubstantiated story. And,
finally, it bears repeating that we have legal considerations that
prevent us from discussing most personnel matters, much less
publishing stories about them.
> If it's common practice to make agreements which don't benefit you in
> any way, then it's not me that is seriously deficient...
Confidentiality agreements at the end of a term of employment
generally benefit both parties (that's what makes them contractually
binding), and are quite commonplace.
> I've been paying attention, and I've not seen any reason given for
> signing an NDA that forbids you from revealing that your former COO
> was a convicted felon.
You are mischaracterizing the nature of the agreement here. You're
also, I think, assuming we had a lot of advance knowledge that we did
not in fact have -- not even after talking with the Register.
--Mike
Florence writes:
> In fall 2006, we did not perform criminal
> background checks afaik.
>
> Are we doing that now ?
> From what I understood, Mike took care of this and this is now being
> done. It is fairly recent, the board did not get any report on this,
> so
> I can not further comment.
I can confirm that the Foundation has retained an independent firm
that conducts criminal background checks, consistent with state and
federal law in the USA.
> I asked Mike to work on a policy related to conflict of interest
> for the
> staff. We already have made that policy at board level several months
> ago, and it is successfully implemented. However, the policy at staff
> level is a bit broken and was never implemented. I told Mike I would
> like him to work on this.
This is in progress.
> There comes a point when we must balance between telling you guys
> stuff,
> and shutting up to avoid further troubles. Unfortunately.
I wholly agree with Florence on this point, especially the
"Unfortunately" part. My own inclination is to be as upfront and
open as possible. So when you see me cautioning against public
statements, you should infer that it's for some compelling legal
reason, and not out of disregard for the importance of community
information and participation.
--Mike
In light of the circumstances I accept the Foundation's decisions about how
it responded to the Register query. Thank you for explaining what you
could; that makes sense.
-Durova
Nathan writes:
> Perhaps, though, you can answer some general questions?
>
> * Does the Foundation perform criminal background checks on
> prospective new hires at any level of responsibility?
We have put a policy in place in the last couple of months, and we
have contracted with a background-check firm to conduct checks for us.
> * If it does, has it always?
No. This does not disturb me, however, since quite a few startups
(profit or nonprofit) that undergo rapid success and growth don't have
a framework of policies and procedures to start with. We're at a point
now where staff is working to create that framework -- this is a
problem all new and growing organizations face.
(I don't think EFF, when I was there, did criminal background checks
for the first nine years of its existence -- we were operating on a
shoestring for much of that period.)
> * Have you considered a general policy of informing the community
> prior to the anticipated publication of news concerning Wikipedia,
> when you have knowledge that would allow you to do so?
I think informing the community whenever possible is not only helpful
but potentially quite efficient. In this instance, however, we had a
very short time span, and we also didn't know enough about what was
going to be published to be able to prepare the community for what
appeared. (It turns out that what was actually published, while
disturbing with regard to a former employee, was mostly an effort to
somehow link that employee's departure to the audit in some way. I
think the story failed on that point.) Plus, as I've said, we had and
continue to have legal constraints.
I think everyone recognizes and values the roles the community plays
in protecting and advancing the projects and the Foundation generally.
I also think that one thing the community is probably better-situated
to do than anyone else is figure out where the Register story
originated. It seems clear to me that the original theory, including
the allegations about Carolyn and the attempt to link them to the
audit, was fed to the Register at some point, since I don't think the
Register did a lot of original reporting all of a sudden.
--Mike
Given that the Register was going to break the story, would it not
have been appropriate to have broken it ourselves first--or given also
an interview to some other publication? Or at least be prepared to do
so simultaneously, by at least posting on slashdot.
This was not a good way to handle negative information As well as
making sure we are legal, we should have perhaps consulted someone who
knows PR.
******
I wholeheartedly agree. With respect for the time pressures that
undoubtedly applied in this case, a Register exclusive is not a good
thing--particularly if the story turns out to be legitimate. Perception
matters and that would lend credibility to notion that other recent things
they've run are substantive. I write these words in the good faith hope
that this publication is so seriously mistaken that no other press will pick
up the story.
-Durova