Let's get real. Let's stop apologising for Jimmy Wales or pretending he's our Royal family and can never be correctly held to account for his actions.

We can say without any doubt that Jimmy is a bully, he misuses "confidentiality" as a political weapon, and he has repeatedly been emotionally unable to back down from any of his obviously misleading statements, even when directly caught out with demonstrable facts. If any trustee should be removed "for cause", it would be Jimmy. The community should be able to hold up a mirror and call his misuse of his trustee position "utter fucking bullshit". He is the only trustee with a very direct commercial conflict of interest, yet his ownership of Wikia has never been publicly declared, nor has Jimmy ever recused from open WMF board discussions and decisions because of that direct and highly profitable interest.

This nonsense has been going on for a decade. Jimmy is never going change, and he's never going to give up his honorary Founder's seat without being forced off it with a massive political crowbar. A meta RFC to get rid of the Founder's seat, and thereby force Jimmy to stand for election, may be appropriate and necessary now, certainly the current WMF trustees are incapable of discussing Jimmy in any frank way, despite their private views.

P.S. Andreas, I suggest adding to your list of failed promises his recent speedily arranged trip to San Francisco where he made several claims that he was going to meet WMF employees to get the facts behind their discontent, and the results were going to be published. I do hope that the board covered all his expenses, which were perfectly legitimate. However presumably the WMF board were expecting a published outcome and report to the board. Presumably the meetings either failed to happen, or went very badly, perhaps they were critical of the board and Jimmy, as there has been a profound silence from Jimmy and the rest of the trustees about what those meetings. Surely everyone now gets the idea that the WMF board has a serious lack of transparency without Jimmy rubbing everyone's nose in it?

Thanks, Fae

On 5 May 2016 at 14:26, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:09 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:

...

In a Dec 30th, 2015 personal email JW touched on two potential reasons but they are unfounded.

I've lost count of the number of times Jimmy Wales said in recent months that he would know "within a few days" whether it was fine to publish that Dec 30th personal email, that he was urging the board towards full transparency, that all would be clear on Monday ... and then ... nothing. Just empty promises, without any follow-up to say whether the email will or will not be published.

Is anyone on the board actually preventing Jimmy (or James) from publishing that personal email?

Then without further delay, his reappointment should happen ASAP. I don’t understand why it should go back to the community for reelection when it was a Board decision to remove him. The Board should simply apologize and reinstate James Hellman now.

Betty Wills (Atsme)

On May 5, 2016, at 12:06 PM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:

Jimmy, thank you for retracting this statement.

James

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 5:02 PM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@ymail.com wrote:

...

I was speaking only for myself, and I am happy to retract the comment fully and without reservation.

The reasons for the removal have been recently put forward with significant clarity in Denny's statement.

I was speaking colloquially in the sense that the removal was not done capriciously or randomly but for reasons that the board thought meaningful. I did not know and do not know the full legal meaning of the phrase "for cause" and meant nothing more than that people had reasons that they thought sufficient.

As I told James before the meeting, I decided to vote with the majority, whatever that may be, on the principle that if he really had lost the support of the rest of the board, he would not be able to function effectively. As I have said, if James were to be re-elected by the community, I would agree with his return to the board.

On 05/05/2016 02:09, James Heilman wrote:

Following my removal from the WMF board, Jimmy Wales publicly stated

“But in this case, it isn't relevant as this was a removal for cause.--Jimbo Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales (talk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#top) 08:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_201 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_201

If I was removed “for cause” by my fellow board members I would like to request a written statement outlining what this cause was. In a Dec 30th, 2015 personal email JW touched on two potential reasons but they are unfounded. If these are indeed the reasons I was removed, I feel a public discussion would be useful.

If JW was not speaking in an official capacity and I was not removed “for cause”, I would like to request a statement from the board to that effect.

Sincerely

James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com

-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe