The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed upon in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is not mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that when Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no history of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the years, Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was welcome to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html).This was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought the Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in
Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/private/wikimedia-pt-internal/2018-July/002414.html. In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April GA, and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7]. In that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and held a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us (with the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an audio recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording is also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message claims that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the actions of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation of Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without the proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating. We still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is what you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are planned. After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts with other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the collaboration between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is in peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the disciplinary procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result in his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image of the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our future, but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly counterproductive. How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each new message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations of a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet. We are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and inexplicable lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization for Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo Gonçalo Themudo
*Presidente* *Wikimedia Portugal* *Email: *goethe.wiki@gmail.com *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org https://sites.google.com/view/themudo *Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a soma de todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.*
As a wikimedia Portugal board member I totally agree with Gonçalo's statement. Despite what I believe where AffCom best efforts, they clearly didn't knew how to properly deal with this situation. They took official positions without hearing us, they've imposed a roadmap that we had to accomplish in order to lift the suspension, and now that we've accomplished it, some unexplained accusations came out of the blue. I feel that AffCom put us chasing ghosts during the last months and that all we've done so far was in vain, and more importantly, is making us reach the limit of our capacities. This last message is a clear example of what shouldn’t be done: we’ve been working with special motivation knowing that we were doing all what was requested in order to get our suspension lifted, and then AffCom sends us that opaque accusation, without any previous attempt to get any confirmation or information.
Wikimedia Portugal is currently in a sustainable path, despite all the entropy, we’ve been able to fulfill all legal obligations, AffCom roadmap, improve our governance and transparency and organize activities. We intend to keep this path, continuously improving our capacities, but AffCom is clearly making it more difficult.
Best regards,
André
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:12:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed upon in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is not mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that when Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no history of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the years, Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was welcome to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought the Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] < https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April GA, and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7]. In that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and held a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us (with the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an audio recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording is also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message claims that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the actions of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation of Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without the proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating. We still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is what you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are planned. After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts with other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the collaboration between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is in peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the disciplinary procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result in his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image of the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our future, but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly counterproductive. How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each new message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations of a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet. We are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and inexplicable lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization for Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo Gonçalo Themudo
*Presidente* *Wikimedia Portugal* *Email: *goethe.wiki@gmail.com *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org https://sites.google.com/view/themudo *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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I do not know Wikimedia Portugal's situation but I am sympathetic to their claim of difficulty staying in compliance.
Over the years I have heard many Wikimedia community organizations claim that staying in compliance with Wikimedia Foundation and Affiliations Committee requests are difficult. As a Wikimedia community member, I have no idea how I am supposed to interpret these claims. I also worry a lot that Wiki organization members feel shame and pressure to not report their challenges for fear of getting a reprimand, like dis-affiliation.
I have a general wish for more information to understand the problem. Information could include encouraging more Wikimedia community groups to report in public how they feel about the compliance expectations and more information from the Wikimedia Foundation / Affiliations Committee about the extent to which they grade various groups as being in compliance or not. So far as I know, the aggregate information about this is not accessible in an easy to read report.
I imagine that a good report would contain a regular survey of Wikimedia affiliates grading the Wikimedia Foundation and AffCom, and AffCom grading the various affiliates. I feel like it is extremely difficult and tense to surface problems and challenges and I wish we could normalize the sharing of difficulties so that we can collectively address them.
I feel shock and hurt to suddenly hear that Wikimedia Affiliates get downgraded and then entire countries lose their long-established representation. If any affiliate has problems, then that is not just a problem for its regional members, but also a problem for the entire Wikimedia community and the billions of Wikipedia readers. We all have an obligation to care for the community health of each other, and none of us can operate organizations independently.
Although I cannot speak to the Portuguese case specifically, the entire Wikimedia affiliate structure makes me anxious. Volunteers put so much labor into this, get so little credit, take so many personal risks, and are still so vulnerable. Managing a national media enterprise with volunteer administrative labor is a major challenge, but each Wikimedia chapter is exactly this. I wish for all organizational processes to run transparently, smoothly, and in a way that Wikimedia community members all say is fair and according to a consensus-driven process. When I see one claim like this I worry that the problem actually is happening in other places but that no plan is in place to identify, record, report, discuss, and fix the difficulties.
I know nothing whatsoever about Portugal or the Portuguese language Wikimedia community but I feel great emotion over any Wiki community in distress anywhere.
On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 8:48 AM Alchimista alchimistawp@gmail.com wrote:
As a wikimedia Portugal board member I totally agree with Gonçalo's statement. Despite what I believe where AffCom best efforts, they clearly didn't knew how to properly deal with this situation. They took official positions without hearing us, they've imposed a roadmap that we had to accomplish in order to lift the suspension, and now that we've accomplished it, some unexplained accusations came out of the blue. I feel that AffCom put us chasing ghosts during the last months and that all we've done so far was in vain, and more importantly, is making us reach the limit of our capacities. This last message is a clear example of what shouldn’t be done: we’ve been working with special motivation knowing that we were doing all what was requested in order to get our suspension lifted, and then AffCom sends us that opaque accusation, without any previous attempt to get any confirmation or information.
Wikimedia Portugal is currently in a sustainable path, despite all the entropy, we’ve been able to fulfill all legal obligations, AffCom roadmap, improve our governance and transparency and organize activities. We intend to keep this path, continuously improving our capacities, but AffCom is clearly making it more difficult.
Best regards,
André
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:12:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
upon
in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
not
mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
when
Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
history
of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
years,
Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
welcome
to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
the
Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] <
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
GA,
and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
In
that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
held
a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
(with
the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
audio
recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording
is
also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
claims
that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
actions
of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation
of
Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
the
proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating.
We
still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
what
you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
planned.
After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
the
resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
with
other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
collaboration
between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
in
peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
disciplinary
procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
in
his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image
of
the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
future,
but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
counterproductive.
How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
new
message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations
of
a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet.
We
are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
inexplicable
lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
for
Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Alchimista http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizador:Alchimista _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
The best mistake you do is to consider the wikimedia chapter as a representative of the Wikipedia community while this statement is basically wrong.
When you say that Vasconcelos had no Wikipedia editing experience and continue to support your position using this motivation, you probably have no clear meaning of what is a chapter.
I have no position about the wikimedia Portugal conflict but i would stress this point.
I Think that there is a clear and well known position inside the wikimedia movement that any chapter is not responsible of the content of Wikimedia projects.
A board should have an heterogeneous composition. If a wikipedia editing Experience is welcome, that's is not sufficient. Having someone with conflict management Experience in the board would be important and In some cases more important than Wikipedia' s editing In this case I dont understand why you did not invite to Vasconcelos to stay.
Kind regards
On Tue, 9 Oct 2018, 14:48 Alchimista, alchimistawp@gmail.com wrote:
As a wikimedia Portugal board member I totally agree with Gonçalo's statement. Despite what I believe where AffCom best efforts, they clearly didn't knew how to properly deal with this situation. They took official positions without hearing us, they've imposed a roadmap that we had to accomplish in order to lift the suspension, and now that we've accomplished it, some unexplained accusations came out of the blue. I feel that AffCom put us chasing ghosts during the last months and that all we've done so far was in vain, and more importantly, is making us reach the limit of our capacities. This last message is a clear example of what shouldn’t be done: we’ve been working with special motivation knowing that we were doing all what was requested in order to get our suspension lifted, and then AffCom sends us that opaque accusation, without any previous attempt to get any confirmation or information.
Wikimedia Portugal is currently in a sustainable path, despite all the entropy, we’ve been able to fulfill all legal obligations, AffCom roadmap, improve our governance and transparency and organize activities. We intend to keep this path, continuously improving our capacities, but AffCom is clearly making it more difficult.
Best regards,
André
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:12:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
upon
in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
not
mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
when
Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
history
of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
years,
Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
welcome
to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
the
Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] <
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
GA,
and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
In
that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
held
a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
(with
the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
audio
recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording
is
also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
claims
that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
actions
of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation
of
Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
the
proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating.
We
still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
what
you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
planned.
After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
the
resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
with
other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
collaboration
between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
in
peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
disciplinary
procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
in
his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image
of
the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
future,
but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
counterproductive.
How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
new
message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations
of
a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet.
We
are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
inexplicable
lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
for
Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Alchimista http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizador:Alchimista _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
While I have limited knowledge of the facts in this situation, I am concerned about the possibility that AffCom is insufficiently investigating facts before making judgments.
Interventions from Affcom which are undertaken with an insufficient knowledge of the facts risk doing more harm than good.
I encourage AffCom and WMF to consider whether improving AffCom's capacity to independently investigate the facts of affiliates' situations should be increased, for example by authorizing AffCom to contract with legal counsel who are licensed to practice in countries where AffCom has concerns and who can independently investigate the facts of affiliates' situations on AffCom's behalf.
Another difficulty with this situation is AffCom's lack of transparency. If AffCom was more transparent about its investigations and actions then outsiders would be able to better understand AffCom's work and evaluate AffCom's actions. Because AffCom withholds so much information, it is difficult to say whether AffCom is right or wrong with regards to Wikimedia Portugal. What I can say is that the lack of transparency, in my opinion, is a problem, is a poor governance practice, and is difficult to reconcile with the open source nature of Wikimedia.
I don't want to underestimate the challenge of evaluating compliance of Wikimedia affiliates around the world. This a big job, and if AffCom members volunteer their time in good faith and valuable relevant skills then I'm grateful for that. But I have some concerns about AffCom regarding transparency, investigative capacity, investigative skills, and adjudicative process.
Some time ago, a Wikimedian friend told me AffCom is like the physician that comes to help with the cure when an Affiliate is ill. But that's really what they were in this WMPT case? This is a very bizarre situation, of which I'm personally having a lot of difficulties finding rational answers to it, let alone any conclusion. All I can offer is a personal account of the situation, to those who would be kind enough to have an interest on this case.
Last May we at WMPT were really not expecting seeing AffCom bursting through the room in an emergency intervention, fixing what didn't need to be fixed, and willing to moderate what didn't need any moderation. As in the proverbial Monty Phyton scene[1], they quickly became the problem themselves.
Many of us at WMPT are long-term Wikimedian volunteers, some of us for more than a decade already, in perfect good standing in our communities, where we hold and held responsibility roles. It includes current and former bureaucrats, sysops, ArbCom members, very active contributors to a number of Wikimedia projects. Most of us are founding members or directly connected to WMPT since its inception in 2009.
Last March, when we took on ourselves this mission of fix and rebuild Wikimedia Portugal, who had been dormant for about 5 years, we were not expecting to face such a mighty and impenetrable adversary as AffCom has proven to be. For six months already we have been embroiled by AffCom in this Kafkian suspension process, where we are generally not told what the accusations are, and much less who is accusing us. It has been extremely painful, exhausting, and frustrating for everyone involved.
We reached our limit. A number of us are now seriously considering abandoning not only the chapter, but the Wikimedia projects entirely, if we continue not being treated with the fairness and transparency we deserve. It truly begs the existential question of what are we all doing here, dedicating countless and very valuable hours of our lives for a Movement that lets this happen, for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all costs.
Personally, I'm still confident that we'll successfully pass through this probation, and everything will become again the very optimistic scenario we all had last April, when we successfully elected a working board, and started working with great dedication in the many projects we have now running here in Portugal. I can only imagine how painful it was and is being for Gonçalo, to came here making this situation public and sharing it with everybody. We all have our dignity, nobody at WMPT likes this at all. For many months we tried to cope with this discreet and silently. But everything has a limit.
Regards,
Paulo
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python) [2] - As AffCom seems to be, despite what is written in their Meta page( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee)
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:13:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed upon in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is not mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that when Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no history of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the years, Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was welcome to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought the Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] < https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April GA, and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7]. In that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and held a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us (with the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an audio recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording is also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message claims that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the actions of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation of Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without the proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating. We still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is what you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are planned. After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with the resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts with other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the collaboration between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is in peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the disciplinary procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result in his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image of the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our future, but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly counterproductive. How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each new message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations of a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet. We are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and inexplicable lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization for Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo Gonçalo Themudo
*Presidente* *Wikimedia Portugal* *Email: *goethe.wiki@gmail.com *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org https://sites.google.com/view/themudo *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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hello, I'm really sorry to hear about the situation in Wikimedia Portugal. I hope everything works out for the best soon. I would really love to hear the side of the AffCom on the matter since, from what I understand, there are many things unclear and we already counding a similar situation in Wikimedia Brazil.
Regards Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής
Στις Τετ, 10 Οκτ 2018 - 15:47 ο χρήστης Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> έγραψε:
Some time ago, a Wikimedian friend told me AffCom is like the physician that comes to help with the cure when an Affiliate is ill. But that's really what they were in this WMPT case? This is a very bizarre situation, of which I'm personally having a lot of difficulties finding rational answers to it, let alone any conclusion. All I can offer is a personal account of the situation, to those who would be kind enough to have an interest on this case.
Last May we at WMPT were really not expecting seeing AffCom bursting through the room in an emergency intervention, fixing what didn't need to be fixed, and willing to moderate what didn't need any moderation. As in the proverbial Monty Phyton scene[1], they quickly became the problem themselves.
Many of us at WMPT are long-term Wikimedian volunteers, some of us for more than a decade already, in perfect good standing in our communities, where we hold and held responsibility roles. It includes current and former bureaucrats, sysops, ArbCom members, very active contributors to a number of Wikimedia projects. Most of us are founding members or directly connected to WMPT since its inception in 2009.
Last March, when we took on ourselves this mission of fix and rebuild Wikimedia Portugal, who had been dormant for about 5 years, we were not expecting to face such a mighty and impenetrable adversary as AffCom has proven to be. For six months already we have been embroiled by AffCom in this Kafkian suspension process, where we are generally not told what the accusations are, and much less who is accusing us. It has been extremely painful, exhausting, and frustrating for everyone involved.
We reached our limit. A number of us are now seriously considering abandoning not only the chapter, but the Wikimedia projects entirely, if we continue not being treated with the fairness and transparency we deserve. It truly begs the existential question of what are we all doing here, dedicating countless and very valuable hours of our lives for a Movement that lets this happen, for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all costs.
Personally, I'm still confident that we'll successfully pass through this probation, and everything will become again the very optimistic scenario we all had last April, when we successfully elected a working board, and started working with great dedication in the many projects we have now running here in Portugal. I can only imagine how painful it was and is being for Gonçalo, to came here making this situation public and sharing it with everybody. We all have our dignity, nobody at WMPT likes this at all. For many months we tried to cope with this discreet and silently. But everything has a limit.
Regards,
Paulo
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python) [2] - As AffCom seems to be, despite what is written in their Meta page( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee)
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:13:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
upon
in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
not
mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
when
Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
history
of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
years,
Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
welcome
to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
the
Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] <
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
GA,
and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
In
that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
held
a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
(with
the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
audio
recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording
is
also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
claims
that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
actions
of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation
of
Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
the
proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating.
We
still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
what
you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
planned.
After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
the
resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
with
other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
collaboration
between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
in
peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
disciplinary
procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
in
his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image
of
the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
future,
but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
counterproductive.
How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
new
message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations
of
a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet.
We
are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
inexplicable
lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
for
Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Gonçalo, Goethe, and all: Thank you for your work, which I appreciate dearly, and for the public discussion. I can also imagine this was a very hard letter to write.
Paulo, to your concerns:
for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all
costs.
Euh... surely not .v_v. These troubles can come up in good faith, when two groups work intently and separately on the same issue, ando d not talk openly to one another for reasons of imagined duty + propriety. Tossing insults back and forth just makes it easier for people to shut down communication.
Somehow I suspect that invocations of The Law and the intervention of legal anxieties (with their preoccupations with secrecy) has led to much of the trouble here. So Pine, to your point: /more/ legal counsel reporting to only one of the parties involved might not help. On the other hand, we as a movement deciding to share more openly our internal discussions around legal concerns — even if this means taking on slightly more legal risk — would reduce some of these evident social risks.
Warmly, SJ
On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 8:47 AM Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
Some time ago, a Wikimedian friend told me AffCom is like the physician that comes to help with the cure when an Affiliate is ill. But that's really what they were in this WMPT case? This is a very bizarre situation, of which I'm personally having a lot of difficulties finding rational answers to it, let alone any conclusion. All I can offer is a personal account of the situation, to those who would be kind enough to have an interest on this case.
Last May we at WMPT were really not expecting seeing AffCom bursting through the room in an emergency intervention, fixing what didn't need to be fixed, and willing to moderate what didn't need any moderation. As in the proverbial Monty Phyton scene[1], they quickly became the problem themselves.
Many of us at WMPT are long-term Wikimedian volunteers, some of us for more than a decade already, in perfect good standing in our communities, where we hold and held responsibility roles. It includes current and former bureaucrats, sysops, ArbCom members, very active contributors to a number of Wikimedia projects. Most of us are founding members or directly connected to WMPT since its inception in 2009.
Last March, when we took on ourselves this mission of fix and rebuild Wikimedia Portugal, who had been dormant for about 5 years, we were not expecting to face such a mighty and impenetrable adversary as AffCom has proven to be. For six months already we have been embroiled by AffCom in this Kafkian suspension process, where we are generally not told what the accusations are, and much less who is accusing us. It has been extremely painful, exhausting, and frustrating for everyone involved.
We reached our limit. A number of us are now seriously considering abandoning not only the chapter, but the Wikimedia projects entirely, if we continue not being treated with the fairness and transparency we deserve. It truly begs the existential question of what are we all doing here, dedicating countless and very valuable hours of our lives for a Movement that lets this happen, for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all costs.
Personally, I'm still confident that we'll successfully pass through this probation, and everything will become again the very optimistic scenario we all had last April, when we successfully elected a working board, and started working with great dedication in the many projects we have now running here in Portugal. I can only imagine how painful it was and is being for Gonçalo, to came here making this situation public and sharing it with everybody. We all have our dignity, nobody at WMPT likes this at all. For many months we tried to cope with this discreet and silently. But everything has a limit.
Regards,
Paulo
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python) [2] - As AffCom seems to be, despite what is written in their Meta page( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee)
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s) 11:13:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can access it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
upon
in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message, you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
not
mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
when
Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
history
of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
years,
Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
welcome
to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
the
Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case, including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] <
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts, and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations, but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
GA,
and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
In
that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
held
a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
(with
the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal, which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
audio
recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording
is
also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
claims
that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
actions
of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests, even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation
of
Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied, but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
the
proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating.
We
still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
what
you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
planned.
After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
the
resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
with
other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
collaboration
between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
in
peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation, nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
disciplinary
procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
in
his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’ actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image
of
the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
future,
but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
counterproductive.
How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
new
message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations
of
a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet.
We
are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
inexplicable
lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
for
Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hello SJ,
Thank you very much for those words, and for help dispelling the idea that we are fatally bound to de-recognizement. I do hope we are not, but when everything is done by the chapter according to what is asked, even ahead of time and in a overzealous way, and we receive a new message from AffCom with yet a new set of obscure accusations by unstated actors, that scenario do come to mind. And seeing what Teles wrote here[1] about the affiliate he belonged to being de-recognized with no warning from the AffCom, really did rang all bells that we could be next in line if something was not done.
Anyway, from my part I just want this to end, so that we can return to normality here, the way we were back in April before AffCom had come into the scene. To the extent that it is still possible, after all the heavy burnout caused by this whole situation.
Warm regards, Paulo
[1] - https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-September/091050.html
Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com escreveu no dia quarta, 10/10/2018 à(s) 18:32:
Gonçalo, Goethe, and all: Thank you for your work, which I appreciate dearly, and for the public discussion. I can also imagine this was a very hard letter to write.
Paulo, to your concerns:
for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all
costs.
Euh... surely not .v_v. These troubles can come up in good faith, when two groups work intently and separately on the same issue, ando d not talk openly to one another for reasons of imagined duty + propriety. Tossing insults back and forth just makes it easier for people to shut down communication.
Somehow I suspect that invocations of The Law and the intervention of legal anxieties (with their preoccupations with secrecy) has led to much of the trouble here. So Pine, to your point: /more/ legal counsel reporting to only one of the parties involved might not help. On the other hand, we as a movement deciding to share more openly our internal discussions around legal concerns — even if this means taking on slightly more legal risk — would reduce some of these evident social risks.
Warmly, SJ
On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 8:47 AM Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
Some time ago, a Wikimedian friend told me AffCom is like the physician that comes to help with the cure when an Affiliate is ill. But that's really what they were in this WMPT case? This is a very bizarre
situation,
of which I'm personally having a lot of difficulties finding rational answers to it, let alone any conclusion. All I can offer is a personal account of the situation, to those who would be kind enough to have an interest on this case.
Last May we at WMPT were really not expecting seeing AffCom bursting through the room in an emergency intervention, fixing what didn't need to be fixed, and willing to moderate what didn't need any moderation. As in the proverbial Monty Phyton scene[1], they quickly became the problem themselves.
Many of us at WMPT are long-term Wikimedian volunteers, some of us for
more
than a decade already, in perfect good standing in our communities, where we hold and held responsibility roles. It includes current and former bureaucrats, sysops, ArbCom members, very active contributors to a number of Wikimedia projects. Most of us are founding members or directly connected to WMPT since its inception in 2009.
Last March, when we took on ourselves this mission of fix and rebuild Wikimedia Portugal, who had been dormant for about 5 years, we were not expecting to face such a mighty and impenetrable adversary as AffCom has proven to be. For six months already we have been embroiled by AffCom in this Kafkian suspension process, where we are generally not told what the accusations are, and much less who is accusing us. It has been extremely painful, exhausting, and frustrating for everyone involved.
We reached our limit. A number of us are now seriously considering abandoning not only the chapter, but the Wikimedia projects entirely, if
we
continue not being treated with the fairness and transparency we deserve. It truly begs the existential question of what are we all doing here, dedicating countless and very valuable hours of our lives for a Movement that lets this happen, for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all costs.
Personally, I'm still confident that we'll successfully pass through this probation, and everything will become again the very optimistic scenario
we
all had last April, when we successfully elected a working board, and started working with great dedication in the many projects we have now running here in Portugal. I can only imagine how painful it was and is being for Gonçalo, to came here making this situation public and sharing
it
with everybody. We all have our dignity, nobody at WMPT likes this at
all.
For many months we tried to cope with this discreet and silently. But everything has a limit.
Regards,
Paulo
[1] -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python)
[2] - As AffCom seems to be, despite what is written in their Meta page( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee)
GoEthe.wiki goethe.wiki@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018
à(s)
11:13:
The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you
can
access it here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above
for
the full version. __________
Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is:
Wikimedia
Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was
held
conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For
the
sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l. _________
Dear members of AffCom,
(cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
upon
in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that
message,
you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
not
mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity
to
get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it.
While
you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole process.
As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
when
Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he
wasn’t
elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
history
of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his
self
proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!).
Despite
the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
years,
Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and
a
number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the
new
Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him
to
stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't. Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly. Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on
the
Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
welcome
to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April) before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent, inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned
according
to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new
governing
bodies, including the Board of Directors.
In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we
stop
taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5] <
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
).This
was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal
about
this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for
this
demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
the
Board was a part of it.
From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference
in
Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General
Assembly
of 15 April was legally void.
We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the
case,
including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6] <
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/privat...
.
In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal
texts,
and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our
declarations,
but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’ version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
GA,
and so on. Things were getting on track...
We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
In
that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that,
if
followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
held
a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
(with
the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding
illegal,
which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly
had
the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
audio
recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video
recording
is
also available on request.
We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated
support
from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception
of
the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my
(quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly
and
the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
claims
that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well
as
with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open,
organizational
process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message
questions
whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our] organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even
though
we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from Vasconcelos.
If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a
stale
organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly,
it
was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable
future
ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
actions
of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred
some
founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a
number
of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap
requests,
even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we
found
that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s
validation
of
Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to
lock
the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank
until
he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not
been
locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos
implied,
but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
the
proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone
participating.
We
still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the
pressure
that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
what
you put us through.
Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
planned.
After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
the
resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
with
other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana, newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora, where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
collaboration
between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November
are
using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with
a
local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
in
peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted,
received
multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to
escalate
the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct
confrontation,
nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to
clear
our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have
dealt
with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
disciplinary
procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
in
his removal from the chapter.
We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with
Vasconcelos’
actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public
image
of
the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re
reaching
the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along
this
process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
future,
but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
counterproductive.
How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us
for
information or confirmations?
Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
new
message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our
expectations
of
a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our
feet.
We
are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed
our
“road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
inexplicable
lack of support and transparency.
It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
for
Wikimedia Portugal.
Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let
us
proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
Regards,
Gonçalo 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
SJ, maybe I should explain my comments about involvement of legal counsel in more detail. My understanding of the situation, which is far from complete and may be wrong, is that AffCom decided to intervene in this situation (1) before they had undertaken an effort to gather facts "on the ground", and (2) with disregard for local laws that could apply to the situation. (I wouldn't accept an excuse that AffCom lacked the time to do legal research. It is my opinion that AffCom and WMF both should know better, and that WMF should ensure that AffCom has access to knowledgeable legal counsel when needed). If AffCom had taken the time to first gather the facts of the situation from someone who could investigate it "on the ground", and had taken the time to obtain knowledgeable legal counsel about local laws, I wonder whether a significant amount of volunteer time and stress could have been saved both for AffCom members and for WMPT members.
I don't mean to suggest that nothing is wrong at WMPT or that AffCom should have remained uninvolved, but my impression is that there are changes that should be made in AffCom regardless of whether there are problems with WMPT, starting with AffCom's lack of transparency in general.
It's possible that what we're hearing from WMPT is entirely wrong and that AffCom did everything well, but even if that is true, I think that AffCom should be much more transparent.
When I read such mails, I think there is something that it's not 100% working in the workflow of AffCom. If i might say how i feel it, I would say that it is not perceived like a "catalyst" of good practices, but more like a bottleneck of processes.
Maybe more transparency could help. UG and chapters are an important part of our ecosystem and the interaction with communities should be put at the core of the process. Maybe there is some overflow, and they need more support and resources. Or we need a better system to minimize problems before they become so large. In any case, I feel the current situation is not optimal. Many things aren't of course, so it's probably not critical. It's a delicate topic of course but that's also why it should need more long-term discussion. Soon or later, someone should gather the feedback produced by these occurrences and start a discussion about possible improvement.
Il mercoledì 10 ottobre 2018, 22:54:30 CEST, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com ha scritto:
SJ, maybe I should explain my comments about involvement of legal counsel in more detail. My understanding of the situation, which is far from complete and may be wrong, is that AffCom decided to intervene in this situation (1) before they had undertaken an effort to gather facts "on the ground", and (2) with disregard for local laws that could apply to the situation. (I wouldn't accept an excuse that AffCom lacked the time to do legal research. It is my opinion that AffCom and WMF both should know better, and that WMF should ensure that AffCom has access to knowledgeable legal counsel when needed). If AffCom had taken the time to first gather the facts of the situation from someone who could investigate it "on the ground", and had taken the time to obtain knowledgeable legal counsel about local laws, I wonder whether a significant amount of volunteer time and stress could have been saved both for AffCom members and for WMPT members.
I don't mean to suggest that nothing is wrong at WMPT or that AffCom should have remained uninvolved, but my impression is that there are changes that should be made in AffCom regardless of whether there are problems with WMPT, starting with AffCom's lack of transparency in general.
It's possible that what we're hearing from WMPT is entirely wrong and that AffCom did everything well, but even if that is true, I think that AffCom should be much more transparent.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ 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: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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