On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:13 AM, John Mark Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 6:51 AM, SarahSV
<sarahsv.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:42 PM, John Mark Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Are we still waiting for Jimmy to agree/reject to
James' request to
release an email?
Yes. Jimmy said on 28 February that he wanted to speak to others about
whether it was okay to release his 30 December 2015 email to James. [1]
There's also the question of releasing the more recent email he sent to
James and cc-ed to Pete.
James has said nothing needs to be kept confidential for his sake. [2]
Sarah
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/083058.html
[2]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082815.html
Jimmy, could you please treat this request with the absolute highest
priority. It has gone on too long.
If some parts must be redacted because you cant get agreement from
other parties, then so be it -- just tell us why (broadly) some part
was redacted.
As far as I am aware, we are still waiting for an answer from Jimmy here.
The same applies to the question Sarah posed here[1] and others repeated
here.[2]
There is a very understandable sense of fatigue that sets in when things
drag out like this. Everybody gets tired of the topic after a while. But I
submit that there is a systemic issue here that has blighted communication
in this movement for long enough.
Walking away rewards and encourages the strategy that Jimmy has consciously
or unconsciously applied here: tell people that their questions are
justified, setting up an expectation that their queries will be looked
into, and then ignore any further questions. Give people something that
sounds like a promise, to pacify them, and then hope that everyone forgets.
We saw this in action when Jimmy said about the Knight Foundation grant, in
early January,[3]
Quote: "I'll have to talk to others to make sure there are no contractual
reasons not to do so, but in my opinion the grant letter should be
published on meta. The Knight Grant is a red herring here, so it would be
best to clear the air around that completely as soon as possible."
The excuse, having "to talk to others" first (the same excuse as was used
above), sounded plausible. The community is conditioned to "assume good
faith", making non-transparency a viable strategy: after all, a "good
Wikimedian" should assume the best.
Yet today we know that there *were* no contractual reasons to keep this
information private. The Knight Foundation was all in favour of full
transparency. The only ones who *didn't* want this information to be
published were the board and/or ED.
To my mind, this sort of communication strategy is toxic and manipulative.
Can we please put an end to it?
If Jimmy is not forthcoming on the above by John Vandenberg, I suggest we
start a public vote of no confidence for him, as we did for Arnnon. It has
gone on long enough.
Having a WMF transparency officer tasked with tracking and resolving
queries would help as well, as recently discussed in another thread.[4]
Andreas
[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/083190.html
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=…
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=p…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Transparency/Practices#Transparency_of…