Hi Dan,
I think that there are a couple of lines of thought here. I think that
we should make a distinction between individuals and the institution
of WMF.
For the former, I think that you make a good point. Along the same
lines, there were probably people who worked at WMF at the time and
had no involvement in the decisions regarding Superprotect, or may
have done internal advocacy against it.
For the latter, the institution of WMF remains, and so does the
loosely defined organization which I call "the community". WMF's
actions in 2019 with regards to English Wikipedia's governance had
some disturbing parallels with Superprotect.
An issue to which I've been giving increasing thought recently is the
distinction between an individual WMF employee/contractor and WMF as
an institution. I especially try to be mindful of this distinction
when employees communicate in public and say that they are
communicating individually, that is, not in a WMF role. They take some
personal risk in doing this, and I usually think that their comments
which are made in their personal capacities are constructive and made
in good faith. The same goes for WMF employees who volunteer for
projects such as Commons photo campaigns or in the strategy process
outside of their work hours. Where the situation becomes more complex
is when WMF employees are participating in what appear to be their
normal staff roles. Sometimes a decision that is made by one person in
the organization in their staff role will not be a decision that other
people in the organization would have made in the same way, but when
someone uses a staff account then I generally attribute their actions
to their employer.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )