Just a few points of clarification:
* I have, to the best of my memory, passed on information only with the understanding of my sources. If any of my sources disagrees with that, please send me a message - I want to know and understand that I made a mistake there. * We are not talking about the information being shared with the whole Board (this was not clear from my account, sorry). No one was asked to forward information to the whole Board. Instead, external legal counsel was collecting the documents: they were sent to the lawyers, under attorney-client privilege, not to the whole Board or the Task Force. * I am surprised to see James state that he was informed at a later point that his duty as a trustee is towards the WMF, although that explains a few things. He was sitting in the same room when we received legal training at our first Board meeting, and he also signed (and, I assume, read) the same documents I had.
I am rather sad to see so many assumptions of bad faith. I was hoping that by being more open about the events, it would help with transparency and healing. It was not easy to have this account published in the first place, and now I start to see that it was possibly a mistake.
It strengthens my resolution to stay away from Wikimedia politics, and I hope that this will free up the time and energy to get more things done. I am thankful and full of respect for anyone who is willing to deal with that topic in a constructive manner.
On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 3:46 AM Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
04.05.2016 22:00 "Katie Horn" khorn@wikimedia.org napisał(a):
Either way, I would be deeply encouraged to see progress in creating a
more
robust and predictable connection between the board and WMF staff.
Whether
that connection ends up being a board liaison or something else, I
suspect
that well-established lines of communication would go a very long way toward eliminating the possibility that large numbers of staff will feel like they have to disassemble the whistleblower policy in the first
place.
A conversation on how to address (a) connection with the staff and (b) revise the whistleblower policy has started and we will try to address both of these issues in the near future. Best,
Dj
-Katie
On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 04/05/16 12:02, MZMcBride wrote:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Whistleblower_policy
You mention anonymous complaints and serious concerns, but the
current
whistleblower policy seems to be pretty clear that it only applies to laws, rules, and regulations. The text of the policy indicates, to me
at
least, that even alleged violations of other Wikimedia Foundation
policies
would not be covered by the whistleblower policy. Would you extend
the
Wikimedia Foundation whistleblower policy to cover regular (i.e., non-legal and non-regulatory) grievances?
The third and fourth paragraphs are not so narrow, but otherwise, yes, I think it should be extended.
My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
sought
out and then appointed a tech-minded chief executive, who came from a
tech
organization, in order to "transform" the Wikimedia Foundation from
an
educational non-profit to be more like a traditional tech company.
Many
employees of the Wikimedia Foundation disagreed with this decision
and
the
chief executive made a series of poor hires who ran amok (looking at
you,
Damon), but I don't think anything rose to the level of illegal
behavior.
You are just regurgitating Lila's email. No transformation was attempted or executed. The first time I heard about this supposed conflict over strategy was when Lila posted her claims about it to this list, shortly before her resignation.
In fact, employees disagreed with Lila's decision to pursue large restricted grants for a stupid pet project, in secret, supported by almost nobody, without Board knowledge let alone approval. This has nothing to do with education versus technology (if such a dichotomy can even be said to exist).
Damon merely suggested the project in question, he did not "run amok".
-- Tim Starling
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