Denny, with all due respect, I think you have things backwards.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Pledge_of_personal_commitment
"committed to Wikimedia Foundation’s goal to establish and maintain the highest level of public confidence in its accountability"
Your interpretation seems to be "committed to Wikimedia Foundation". But you need to read that whole sentence. The *goal* of the Foundation, to maintain the highest level of public confidence, is the important part. This goal can be threatened by members of the Foundation, and defended by members of the movement at large. Which is what's happening right now, and which is why your interpretation is met with such disagreement.
"In every instance in which I represent the Wikimedia Foundation, I will conduct my activities in a manner to best promote the interests of Wikimedia Foundation."
Again, the *interests* of the Foundation, not the Foundation itself. Which, again, are threatened by this crisis.
I hope this has just been a temporary lapse in understanding that you are suffering from due to difficult times and elevated emotions. But it's clear that we need the board to protect the movement, which of course is the *interest* and *goal* of the Foundation.
I am a relatively insignificant staff member, sure. But still, I want to say to the community at large that most of my friends and people I've talked to are fully committed to the movement, and not to some abstract useless loyalty to a Foundation that does not operate in the movement's best interest. But that does not mean that the crisis we face now is a simple cut and dry problem. The movement includes many voices that are not heard on this list, and we have to think hard about how to account for all those voices, and do the best thing for free and open knowledge.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
What I will disagree on is with the notion that the board has to take the org's side against the movement by definition. It is my understanding
that
the board has the role of oversight of the org -- that is, it's the
board's
job to ensure that the Foundation is effectively accomplishing the goals
it
was created to perform.
As much as I agree with Brion, probably Denny's message is telling us a lot. I haven't read carefully the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment, but this is not the first time this issue is discussed: see for example Cristian mail, two months ago, tackling the very specific thing. [1]
Maybe the Board "feels" a lot of pressure about this, and this is a problem on itself. We all know that "toxicity" of an environment doesn't need laws or written rules, but people being people, social pressure, etc. If Board members feels without power, bound to the WMF and not the Movement, that's a real problem we need to look into.
Aubrey
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080600.html _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe