On 28 September 2012 22:39, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On Sep 28, 2012 9:45 PM, "Nathan" nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Wow. I honestly didn't think the conflict of interest issue was this serious.
The conflict wasn't that bad, but the very poor handling of it casts serious doubts on how well Wikimedia UK leadership understands its responsibilities and its ability to carry them out. I suspect that is why the wmf has insisted on this.
I respectfully disagree. As I see it, the crux of the problem comes not from the WMUK leadership's handling of the situation, but the continuous hounding by outsiders against the Wikimedians involved in the conflict, which from my point of view made it largely impossible for the WMUK board to navigate through the conflict unscathed.
Perhaps that means I do agree there's doubt on how much ability WMUK's leadership can deal with the conflict; but I simply don't see how it could've been better handled given the situation WMUK was in.
Over the last two years WMF has become increasingly conservative over how payment-processing should work, so much as to cause constant decry from the local chapters, though it still comes as a surprise that WMF is retracting payment-processing from WMUK. I can but guess that WMF is now becoming so overly conservative that they would rather stop supporting local groups altogether than risk the local groups bringing WMF into any trouble, a move which I understand but am very disappointed to see.