As I believe we mentioned the last time this particular topic came up, we are unlikely to resolve the intricacies of Portuguese nonprofit law by debating them on a mailing list.
Gonçalo and his colleagues have quite clearly expressed their position: they believe that the process by which they came to control Wikimedia Portugal complies with the applicable provisions of Portuguese law. At the same time, the other side in this conflict has expressed a contrary position: that the process in question does *not* comply with those provisions.
The Affiliations Committee has obviously been unable to make any real headway here, particularly as the dispute hinges in no small part on interpretations of case law rather than a plain reading of the applicable legal codes; consequently, we've solicited advice from actual Portuguese legal experts, which we hope to receive in the near future. Until that happens, however, we are not going to be able to bring this to closure, one way or the other.
Regards, Kirill
On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 6:57 PM Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I can't tell which part of this situation is the more sad; is it the events themselves, the total absence of any comment from AffCom, or the very limited interest evinced by the rest of the folks subscribed to this list?
It seems if we follow the AffCom model described here, we should take WMPT at its word as the complainant and decide that AffCom should perhaps be disbanded - maybe to be reconstituted by others at a later date.
Perhaps those others would feel themselves responsible to a constituency beyond themselves, at least to the minimal extent that they deign to offer a response of some sort in public.
If that sounds like an extreme and unfair outcome, I might even agree... but it's clear that AffCom itself sees some logic in that approach.
On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 1:02 PM Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I think there's a question to think about, about how the movement handles this kind of situation where there are evidently serious governance problems affecting an affiliate.
There are some clear-cut situations (e.g. total inactivity) where the current de-recognition process can simply be followed by Affcom. And there are some situations where there is a large and prominent affiliate that has plenty of activity, but serious governance issues, where the WMF Grantmaking and/or Legal teams can get involved in some depth (thinking about Wikimedia UK in 2012 and Wikimedia France in 2017).
This is the only case that's "in the middle" that I am aware of - are there more that have been made public? Of course, it's possible that there may be other cases where a small/medium affiliate has been helped to have their governance problems resolved by one process or another (derecognition or something else) but it's happened silently in the background.
Chris On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 5:29 PM Paulo Santos Perneta paulosperneta@gmail.com wrote:
Just a quick message to clarify that the only conflict that ever
existed
in
Wikimedia Portugal, as far as I know, was with João Vasconcelos
himself.
Paulo
Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org escreveu no dia quinta, 11/10/2018 à(s) 15:38:
The pro forma statement bout what a chapter is is valuable, but I
think
many of us kinda got the idea that the problem was not the starting
point
(otherwise why electing him?) but came later. It's possible that
someone
else with more community experience would have never behaved such
way,
but
that's speculation.
Statistically, in this scenario this lack of community view probably
did
not help. Whatever his skills in "management and conflict resolution"
were,
even assuming they were correctly stated based on previous expertise
in
other fields, they were not the best ones to handle the conflicts
that
later emerged. Also, considering the resolution we see now, which is
not a
great resolution. The point is that in all these disputes (I think about Brazil few
months
ago) it looks like the AffCom position sounds like "you are both
wrong".
Now, this is never a healthy long-term strategy. If it occurs again,
it
gives more and more the idea that whoever is in the less correct
position
can hold still because if the matter arrives to the AffCom everybody
pays
equally. I am sure the situation is more multifaceted, but let's try
to
grasp the general vibe here.
This is not wise. King Solomon solved the issue bluffing and
spotting
the
real mother, he never actually cut the baby in two halves ... But
wisdom
comes also with experience. Il giovedì 11 ottobre 2018, 15:43:01 CEST, GoEthe.wiki < goethe.wiki@gmail.com> ha scritto:
Hi Illario,
Apologies, I probably explained myself poorly. I never said that a
chapter
is a representative of the Wikimedia community, rather I was trying
to
explain that João’s claimed experience (emphasis on claimed) in
management
and conflict resolution was a major factor in him being elected to
the
Board. At the time, WMPT thought that that could be very valuable to
the
chapter. So, we agree, a heterogeneous board is absolutely an
advantage,
but in this case the issue was not one of diversity, but rather of competence and alignment to the movement goals and principles.
In practice, he did not contribute to the management of the chapter,
and he
was not prepared to an increase of the chapter activities. He very
quickly
started demonstrating uneasiness with any procedural decision he did
not
personally vet (which are imperative in volunteer-based,
collaborative
projects), and soon after, without any previous warning, started
sending
legal threats going as far as using a lawyer to intimidate one of our
most
active members on behalf of WMPT (without discussing it with anyone beforehand), and resigned.
We have no intention to expose João even more in this public mailing
list,
so we will not provide a comprehensive list of the problems we found
with
his term on the board. But to make it clear, when this whole issue
began to
be addressed, even though we did not ask him to stay on the Board, we
did
invite him to continue on the chapter, working with us, as AffCom can confirm. Just not in any role with legal responsibilities.
Cheers, Gonçalo Themudo
*Presidente* *Wikimedia Portugal* *Email: *goethe.wiki@gmail.com *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org <
https://sites.google.com/view/themudo%3E
*Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a
soma de
todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.* _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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