On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:00 AM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Nathan wrote:
In any case, its irritating to see people
providing cover for the Board's
lack of transparency or failure to be forthcoming in a timely manner.
The removal resolution was approved on December 28, 2015, according to
wikimediafoundation.org. Unlike most Board resolutions, it was publicly
posted the same day. The posted Board resolution was accompanied by two
separate e-mails to this public mailing list (one from James, one from
Patricio) on the same day. What kind of transparency and timeliness are
you looking for, exactly? What level of explanation would be satisfactory?
Why not let them make their own excuses?
Excuses for what, exactly? The Chair of the Board announced the decision
and other remaining Board members have chosen not to publicly discuss the
issue here. This is hardly unusual. Regarding the removal itself, at least
in the United States, it's fairly common for members of a body to be able
to remove/expel one of their own. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees bylaws explicitly allow for removal of a member, with or without
cause. Unlike in older Board resolutions, there's a clear public
accounting of how each of the Board members voted (as opposed to simple
numeric totals). James posted that he will work with Patricio to provide
a fuller explanation of the removal. It seems most prudent to wait for
that. While this will sound trite, perhaps we could extend a little good
faith to the members of the Board, most of whom are long-time trusted and
respected Wikimedians and all of whom take their role seriously.
MZMcBride
If you aren't sure what I or others are still looking for from the Board,
please refer to the various other posts to this and other threads. I
suspect you've read them already, so I'm not sure why you think it helpful
to pretend like you don't understand.
Asking for the board to be forthcoming isn't an attack or an unreasonable
expectation. No one on the board should be surprised to discover the
subscribers to this list and others have high expectations for
communication and transparency. If they had time to fully consider their
decision to remove James, then they had time to plan for how to communicate
that decision. If they are scrambling behind the scenes to do that now,
then it suggests the decision to remove him was either rash or an
emergency. In either case, that is something many of us would like to know.
~Nathan