On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
2009/8/28 Liam Wyatt
<liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>om>:
In the interest of creating *informed*
discussion, please note the
publication of Episode 82 of Wikipedia Weekly - an interview with Matt
Halprin.
In this, at timecode 9:15 he is specifically asked about the issue of
the donation+board membership.
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2009/08/28/episode-82-matt-halprin-interview/
I thank Wikipedia Weekly for asking the question, but he didn't really
answer it. He spent most of his answer talking about his
qualifications (which nobody disputes) and then just added on the end
that there isn't a tie between the money and the seat. It is going to
take more than that to convince me. They were announced on the same
day, to claim they are unrelated is pretty hard to believe.
It seems to me that if one is to assume good faith, the answer is that the
money and the commitment by Halprin to be on the board *were* related, in
that they were both things provided for the Wikimedia Foundation by related
parties. It all depends on how you look at it, really. You can look at it
as the WMF gave Halprin a seat, or you can look at it as Halprin agreed to
take a seat.
Who made the offer and who the acceptance isn't very important. It is
a legal technicality, but all that really matters is that both exist.