Andreas,
While I understand your interest in asking these questions, I feel that Meta would be the best venue for this discussion, preferably on a page that is designed for Q&A with the Board candidates. This way, the vast majority of the questions for Board candidates can be located in the same place.
Thanks,
Pine
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:02 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Fae,
Thanks. I've also had a conversation off-list about this with another Wikimedian whom I greatly respect, and they have shared similar impressions of Susanna with me. I truly appreciate the input.
For the record, I do sincerely regret writing "But she is clearly part of a government-sponsored effort to control the Armenian Wikipedia". I hope Susanna will forgive me my rash comment.
Where does that leave us?
It is entirely possible that Susanna's interest in Wikipedia is a mere hobby, and unrelated to her long and distinguished government career. And indeed, unless she tells us otherwise, we should assume that this is so.
But we still need to account for the fact that the Armenian Minister of Education and Science and his deputy have both made appearances as featured speakers at Wikimedia Armenia events (along with similar appearances by the country's president, prime minister and minister of culture).[1][2][3]
These politicians are, at however many levels' remove, Susanna's bosses in her professional life if she is a manager at the State Committee of Science. And they cannot be unaware of her role, given that she introduced them at the events where they spoke.
So I would like to hear from Susanna how easy it would be for her to disobey direct instructions from her superiors related to her Wikimedia volunteer work, because *they* are clearly taking a keen interest in the development of Wikimedia projects in Armenia.
There is another matter I would like to ask Susanna about. At the 2012 WikiConference in Yerevan, Susanna introduced Igor Klimko as a featured speaker, according to the event's page on Meta[1]. Klimko was then the CEO of Armenia Telephone Company ("ArmenTel"), the major provider of telephone and broadband services in Armenia (part of the VimpelCom group).
Klimko was more recently named in media reports as the prime suspect in a $500 million money laundering scandal.[4] Klimko, who has reportedly fled to Moscow,[4] claimed last week to have acted on instructions of Armenia's National Security Service.[5] The National Security Service denies that, and the case is ongoing.[5]
I would be interested in hearing from Susanna whether Klimko financially supported the Wikimedia Armenia effort, and if not, how he came to speak at the 2012 WikiConference.
A number of people have mentioned the need to "assume good faith". Let's not forget that we've had this kind of situation involving state leaders before, where people were "assuming good faith" and got burnt.[6] The sheer concentration of political leaders crowding in on the Wikimedia Armenia effort was eerily reminiscent of that situation to me. But I should not have said what I did, the way I said it, and I'm sorry.
So let's assume good faith of Susanna, but please let's also do due diligence, in as respectful and kind manner as we can muster.
I've made Susanna aware of this discussion.
Andreas
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_Yerevan_2012/Schedule [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_Yerevan_2015/Schedule [3]
http://www.president.am/en/press-release/item/2015/06/19/President-Serzh-Sar... [4]
https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss-releases/4871-occrp-rise-e... [5]
http://hetq.am/eng/news/65992/armentel-$500-million-swindle-employees-phone-... [6] http://www.eurasianet.org/node/72831
On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 4:14 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 2 March 2016 at 23:15, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote: ...
I don't know Susanna, and in fact until yesterday had never heard of
her.
She may well be a delightful and charming person with a genuine
enthusiasm
for open knowledge. There are after all many encyclopedic topics that
have
no political sensitivity or relevance at all. But she is clearly part
of
a
government-sponsored effort to control the Armenian Wikipedia.
I did have the pleasure of meeting Susanna a few years ago, and because she was a bit embarrassed about her hesitant spoken English, I took care to spend a little extra one to one time to encourage her to share a few views and explain what she had been up to in Armenia and her thoughts on getting a new chapter going in a small community. She's incredibly passionate about Wikipedia and its power to share information about Armenia and its people with the rest of the world. I'm sure that others would get the same impression if she made a video pitch rather than just the written word.
I can be suckered by a skilled politician (though I'm more likely to get irritated!), however Susanna just came over as a terribly nice, completely genuine woman, with the type of energetic enthusiasm for open knowledge that it is a delight to encounter. This is an open election process, so if any questions were put to her through the election meta pages about possibly appearances of conflict of interest, funding etc., I have no doubt she would take them seriously and try to address them up front.[1] Try doing that, and be polite about it, I would regret her leaving the election process feeling her fingers had been burnt just for daring to put her name forward.
Links
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2016/Nominati...
Fae
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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