On 2 May 2016 at 15:17, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote: ...
Am I right that you were the chair of the governance committee
responsible for recommending Arnnon to the board and that you are still in that position? Why are you still involved in the governance process if you were responsible for this huge mistake and the resulting PR disaster for the WMF and Arnnon?
You are correct - the BGC recommended Arnnon, and I personally had not found about the controversy when I was reviewing his files. I stated this on the list, admitted the mistake, as well as tried to understand and explain how it happened. I also proposed the changes to the future recruitment process, which have been introduced.
My understanding is that I'm still in this position, as the Board has assumed that this mistake was systematic, not personal. However, I am not tied to my seat, or to my presence on the Board. If the community recalls me, I will step down from either the BGC or the Board in general.
cheers,
dj
That's great. Please do the right thing and take the initiative to step down from the volunteer position of chair, so that someone with a history of excellent judgment on trustee governance can take the position. Ting Chen for example, the only trustee I can recall that walked away because he felt that trustees should not hold onto their seats indefinitely, a move that later resulted in trustee positions becoming time-limited.
As for your presumptions about my bad faith, the current set of trustees are super glued to their trustee seats, despite the publicly excruciating results of the Geshuri vote of confidence and the recent factual revelations about Jimmy Wales' bullying behaviour that would result in expulsion, were he a representative from most other organizations. The WMF board can not rely on an /automatic/ presumption of good faith in the context of this terrible history, until they earn back the respect that their trustee positions deserve from the Wikimedia Community; especially the WMF trustees that nobody but fellow trustees got to vote on and have never been held to account.
Thanks for your replies, even though you are dropping the mic on further discussion.[1]
P.S. On Sydney's comment, yes Dariusz is a volunteer. There are WMF paid employees that support the committee that I would expect to do most of the hard work of drafting versions and collating research. A chair must be able to delegate, have a basic vision, and ensure that the right skills are present on the committee to deliver the targets as part of that vision/conceptual strategy. As for a new plan, I have not suggested a super duper detailed plan with schedules and gantt charts, I'm asking for the most simple commitments and meaningful deadlines in the process to get there. It's not rocket science, this could easily have been done within a couple of weeks of Geshuri's departure when it was most urgent and would have demonstrated that the board is actually interested in listing to the community, acting on their ethical failures even when they refuse to admit them in public, and doing a bit more than deflecting their critics.
Links 1. http://news.sky.com/story/1687620/boom-queen-drops-the-mic-on-the-obamas
Fae