Thomas Dalton writes:
They must have given you a general idea of the story when they were interviewing Mike. You can't ask "Were you aware of Mrs. Doran's criminal record?" without revealing the fact that she has a criminal record...
Without revealing an *allegation* that is unsubstantiated by anything other than a Register reporter's willingness to make it over the phone. If you're saying the Register is a reliable source, all of a sudden, you hold it in much higher opinion than I do.
As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation should have done their own investigation and then broken the story. It would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information together to spoil The Register's scoop.
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to confirm or refute. (I assume, without knowing more, that most of this stuff was simply handed to Cade Metz by someone else who spent significant time trying to put a scandal together.) Plus, I don't think we should be in the business of trying to beat the Register in publishing a thinly sourced, largely unsubstantiated story. And, finally, it bears repeating that we have legal considerations that prevent us from discussing most personnel matters, much less publishing stories about them.
If it's common practice to make agreements which don't benefit you in any way, then it's not me that is seriously deficient...
Confidentiality agreements at the end of a term of employment generally benefit both parties (that's what makes them contractually binding), and are quite commonplace.
I've been paying attention, and I've not seen any reason given for signing an NDA that forbids you from revealing that your former COO was a convicted felon.
You are mischaracterizing the nature of the agreement here. You're also, I think, assuming we had a lot of advance knowledge that we did not in fact have -- not even after talking with the Register.
--Mike
On Dec 15, 2007 9:09 AM, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to confirm or refute.
It took me about 10 minutes to search the Pinellas County court records and find the two DUIs and the fugitive warrant from Virginia, and that's without using her maiden name. That Jimbo says he was "stunned" when he read it suggests you didn't even know about that.
As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation should have done their own investigation and then broken the story. It would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information together to spoil The Register's scoop.
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to confirm or refute.
So the Wikinews volunteers are better at legal research than the WMF General Counsel? Great...
On 15/12/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
So the Wikinews volunteers are better at legal research than the WMF General Counsel? Great...
To an extent they got lucky. The information they found was in this case fairly available. There are various ways it could have been rather less easy to find. Their search count not really be considerd a complete criminal background check. But yes wikimedians do tend to acquire pretty good searching skills after a while.
That's hardly legal research. If the Wikinews volunteers are that good at real legal research they can help me write my next memo.
-Dan On Dec 15, 2007, at 9:31 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation should have done their own investigation and then broken the story. It would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information together to spoil The Register's scoop.
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to confirm or refute.
So the Wikinews volunteers are better at legal research than the WMF General Counsel? Great...
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Dan Rosenthal wrote:
That's hardly legal research. If the Wikinews volunteers are that good at real legal research they can help me write my next memo.
Exactly. The process carried out by Mike and Jason was digging for corroborating sources for a news report. While that might be held to a fairly high standard it is not enough from a liability viewpoint to base hire and fire decisions upon. For liability reasons I would assume it would be common sense to use a background checking service as opposed to DIY dirt-digging.
As a FYI for all the people doing "chicken little" impersonations about this, I have just waded, chronologically, through every single Google-listed story right back to when the Register broke their "scoop". There is ONE listed source that also covered the story.
Everyone else is drooling over their keyboards in an effort to spin Google's "knol"s as a "Wikipedia killer".
Brian McNeil
Exactly. The process carried out by Mike and Jason was digging for corroborating sources for a news report. While that might be held to a fairly high standard it is not enough from a liability viewpoint to base hire and fire decisions upon. For liability reasons I would assume it would be common sense to use a background checking service as opposed to DIY dirt-digging.
We're not talking about hiring and firing, we're talking about giving the community a heads-up rather than letting The Register be the one to break the story.
The foundation seems to have a great deal of difficulty realising that they can say something without saying everything. We know there are legal reasons for not telling us everything, but that doesn't mean you can't tell us that there is something you're not telling us.
Mike, here's what led to the discussion over the period of time between the interview and the publishing of the story:
On Dec 15, 2007 9:09 AM, Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Thomas Dalton writes:
As soon as Mike was asked that question the foundation should have done their own investigation and then broken the story. It would have taken a couple of hours to get enough information together to spoil The Register's scoop.
Criminal background checks take at least a day, and possibly a few days, to do properly, at least in the United States. The allegations made in the Register story would have taken significant time for us to confirm or refute.
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