Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with.
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox. And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
And if you instead don't understand why this sort of message is chilling and terrifying and incredibly problematic, you need to step back from all of these discussions for a time and go find someone who wants to explain it to you. Because this is not productive, and this is not how leaders behave. I appreciate you think you *have* to participate as some kind of movement moral compass, but, you aren't, and you don't. And even if you did, the morality demonstrated by that email is, I suspect, not something any of us want a part of.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting [1] for other examples of this kind of language, and the thing my brain immediately jumped to, see how ultrarationalists deal with people asking if individuals could please stop harassing them for disagreeing with an idea http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/bnrr
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
Oliver
I have also been in the movement for over a decade, and I am sick of people on all sides distorting facts, gaming the system / manipulating the community.
IMO, this came to a boil in Dec 2006 when WMF altered its structure and purpose and relocated followed by the "COO scandal" [1] and other things.
I'm glad that community people are now revisiting those early days and trying to figger out how it all happened so secretly and without a whimper from the community reps on the BoT who we entrusted to protect our stake in our work,and who let us down very badly.
David
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/
On 3/10/16, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox. And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
And if you instead don't understand why this sort of message is chilling and terrifying and incredibly problematic, you need to step back from all of these discussions for a time and go find someone who wants to explain it to you. Because this is not productive, and this is not how leaders behave. I appreciate you think you *have* to participate as some kind of movement moral compass, but, you aren't, and you don't. And even if you did, the morality demonstrated by that email is, I suspect, not something any of us want a part of.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting [1] for other examples of this kind of language, and the thing my brain immediately jumped to, see how ultrarationalists deal with people asking if individuals could please stop harassing them for disagreeing with an idea http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/bnrr
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
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
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
*Unfortunately, I'm going to have to second this pretty loudly.
--- Kevin Gorman
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 5:48 PM, David Emrany david.emrany@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver
I have also been in the movement for over a decade, and I am sick of people on all sides distorting facts, gaming the system / manipulating the community.
IMO, this came to a boil in Dec 2006 when WMF altered its structure and purpose and relocated followed by the "COO scandal" [1] and other things.
I'm glad that community people are now revisiting those early days and trying to figger out how it all happened so secretly and without a whimper from the community reps on the BoT who we entrusted to protect our stake in our work,and who let us down very badly.
David
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/
On 3/10/16, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox. And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
And if you instead don't understand why this sort of message is chilling and terrifying and incredibly problematic, you need to step back from all of these discussions for a time and go find someone who wants to explain it to you. Because this is not productive, and this is not how leaders behave. I appreciate you think you *have* to participate as some kind of movement moral compass, but, you aren't, and you don't. And even if you did, the morality demonstrated by that email is, I suspect, not something any of us want a part of.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting [1] for other examples of this kind of language, and the thing my brain immediately jumped to, see how ultrarationalists deal with people asking if individuals could please stop harassing them for disagreeing with an idea http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/bnrr
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com
wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
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
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
I'm really not sure how this relates to this thread. If you're interested in discussing the decision in 06, there's another thread for that.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 8:48 PM, David Emrany david.emrany@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver
I have also been in the movement for over a decade, and I am sick of people on all sides distorting facts, gaming the system / manipulating the community.
IMO, this came to a boil in Dec 2006 when WMF altered its structure and purpose and relocated followed by the "COO scandal" [1] and other things.
I'm glad that community people are now revisiting those early days and trying to figger out how it all happened so secretly and without a whimper from the community reps on the BoT who we entrusted to protect our stake in our work,and who let us down very badly.
David
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/
On 3/10/16, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox. And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
And if you instead don't understand why this sort of message is chilling and terrifying and incredibly problematic, you need to step back from all of these discussions for a time and go find someone who wants to explain it to you. Because this is not productive, and this is not how leaders behave. I appreciate you think you *have* to participate as some kind of movement moral compass, but, you aren't, and you don't. And even if you did, the morality demonstrated by that email is, I suspect, not something any of us want a part of.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting [1] for other examples of this kind of language, and the thing my brain immediately jumped to, see how ultrarationalists deal with people asking if individuals could please stop harassing them for disagreeing with an idea http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/bnrr
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
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
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
There is not much one can say in response to an email such as that. During the last month many within the community have come to a similar conclusions as I did back in Oct following seeing the documents surrounding the Knight Foundation grant.
The decision I had pushed for back in November has now been made. While we have lost a lot of amazing people at the WMF, greater losses I believe have been avoided. I would like to thank everyone who stuck through it all and thank all the staff who raised concerns. I heard them loud and clear.
I think we have the opportunity not only to learn a lot from all of this but to become stronger as a movement. I believe we need to make a few changes. We need to remove the ability of the board to remove community elected members "without cause" and without community involvement. We need to have a staff representative at the board table. And I believe Jimmy Wales should stand for community re election (at which I imagine he would succeed).
I am here because what we do matters. The content we create has a positive effect on people's lives. And while I do not plan to go anywhere it is unfortunate that one needs to be so thick skinned within this movement.
James
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 6:48 PM, David Emrany david.emrany@gmail.com wrote:
Oliver
I have also been in the movement for over a decade, and I am sick of people on all sides distorting facts, gaming the system / manipulating the community.
IMO, this came to a boil in Dec 2006 when WMF altered its structure and purpose and relocated followed by the "COO scandal" [1] and other things.
I'm glad that community people are now revisiting those early days and trying to figger out how it all happened so secretly and without a whimper from the community reps on the BoT who we entrusted to protect our stake in our work,and who let us down very badly.
David
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/
On 3/10/16, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox. And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Jimmy, if this is genuinely how you are comfortable behaving, intentionally, and if this is the standard that you wish to set, I would ask you to do it in a new community. Resign from the Board. Abrogate your status as a founder. Go create these standards somewhere new, with people who have signed up for them.
And if you instead don't understand why this sort of message is chilling and terrifying and incredibly problematic, you need to step back from all of these discussions for a time and go find someone who wants to explain it to you. Because this is not productive, and this is not how leaders behave. I appreciate you think you *have* to participate as some kind of movement moral compass, but, you aren't, and you don't. And even if you did, the morality demonstrated by that email is, I suspect, not something any of us want a part of.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting [1] for other examples of this kind of language, and the thing my brain immediately jumped to, see how ultrarationalists deal with people asking if individuals could please stop harassing them for disagreeing with an idea http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/bnrr
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com
wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
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On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
I've been in the Wikimedia movement for over a decade now. I've seen Wikimedia-l. I've seen internal-l. I've had death and sexual assault threats show up in my inbox.
Me too.
And this, /this/, is genuinely the most horrified I've ever been by any message I've seen yet.
Nope. I've read worse from you, Oliver.
This email is not a good faith email. it is not, despite the neutrality of its language, a civil email. It's the kind of blinkered, detached, ultrarationalist gaslighting[0] I associate with people in LessWrong.[1]
No assumption of good faith. No discussion of the issues. No admission that different people can legitimately and normally interpret things in different ways. The framing of things so that the options are that James is a liar, stupid, or suffering from PTSD. Whether deliberately or not, it is deeply manipulative and frames the entire discussion with assertions that James is disconnected from reality.
Many of the active posters write like this to this very public list on a daily basis, and it is quite hurtful to many people. Much more hurtful than this private email.
But whatever, let's open up yet another thread for people to go after each other.
Brilliant move, you civilized people.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 9:26 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
But whatever, let's open up yet another thread for people to go after each other.
Keegan, we've been told since the end of December that Jimmy favours
radical transparency regarding James's removal and surrounding issues. But it's now March, and nothing has been released except under pressure or thanks to others. The result has been a huge loss of trust. Trying to stifle discussion will only make things worse.
Sarah
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:55 AM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 9:26 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
But whatever, let's open up yet another thread for people to go after
each
other.
Keegan, we've been told since the end of December that Jimmy favours
radical transparency regarding James's removal and surrounding issues. But it's now March, and nothing has been released except under pressure or thanks to others. The result has been a huge loss of trust. Trying to stifle discussion will only make things worse.
He can favor radical transparency all he wants, that doesn't mean in the real world role that he currently occupies as a WMF Board of Trustee member that *he can actually do that*. Airing his private emails as a pressure tactic to get people to break what is probably legal advice is just absurd and below board.
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I'm a firm believer in two wrongs not making a right.
This email has zero context aside from what the reader would like to infer, as we (the reader) are not the audience.
Publishing this email was just as, if not, more irresponsible than Jimmy was in sending it.
Those that wish to continue histrionics, take pause before *you* hit send.
Hoi, A few things are clear. Having a WMF project intended to compete with Google is bonkers. The mudslinging and power grabbing tone of many of these messages seriously turn me off. The only thing they accomplish is that people like myself are moving in their emotions from depressed to furious.
I do not care for all this bullshit. I sat in on a board meeting in Rotterdam. It was with Jimmy, Angela and Anthere. It is unlikely to be in any minutes and I only give it as an indication that I have been on the inside of what is the Wikimedia Foundation for a longer time. I do not think that either Jimmy or James is crazy but I do know that when people get into situation that are crazy that they will become erratic.
At a time I asked Pete pointblanc for his opinion on something that had to do with the quality of Wikipedia. I provided him with all the arguments how and why it would benefit Wikipedia and its quality. I asked him for his opinion. I asked him what could be done about it. The only result I got was suspicion. What was it that I wanted from him, why was it that I asked him all this. I did not get an response that indicated to me that Pete was interested at all in Wikipedia.
Pete may share the emails. My memory is known to be erratic but not in this.
Ask yourself. What is it that we want to achieve. How can we achieve it. What does it take and who is on board.
The WMF is not a democracy. Intentionally so. There is a structure with a balance of power for stakeholders. The only stakeholder lacking is personnel. In an optimal world it is the ED that speaks for them. Clearly this did not happen recently and, sadly so.
The disgust that I feel for what is happening is resulting in many negative effects complementary to what has been widely mentioned. I will describe how it affects me. I feel more and more disconnected from the Wikimedia crowd. It is involved in things that are interesting from a sociological point of view but it increasingly detracts from what the real issues should be. This mailing list is more than enough, I can not stomach more and consequently I do not frequent Meta anymore. This sadly means that all the legitimate reasons for frequenting Meta are lost for me as well. Given that I associate many of the "pundits" with Wikipedia, I increasingly grow antagonistic towards Wikipedia. This is spite of my wish for Wikipedia to do better than that it does. In spite of my preparations for a project that I am pushing. A project where I hope to engage James in a positive and meaningful way (and yes we have had initial communications).
Ask yourself what do all these "analysis" bring us but distrust? When the board comes with a way forward, it is dismissed with "everything we discussed is not heard". GOOD. Why should they? Pundits do not represent us.Some of them I know, some of them I respect. But PLEASE concentrate on what we do. It is not the politics and stuff of the WMF. It is sharing the sum of all knowledge as widely as possible. Our immediate challenge is to share in what we already have. That takes a much improved search engine, that argument I have made for years now, Magnus added an important missing part to it and I am sure that most readers of this list did not get this far <grin> and have never seen it </grin> Thanks, GerardM
On 10 March 2016 at 05:46, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb.
I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I'm a firm believer in two wrongs not making a right.
This email has zero context aside from what the reader would like to infer, as we (the reader) are not the audience.
Publishing this email was just as, if not, more irresponsible than Jimmy was in sending it.
Those that wish to continue histrionics, take pause before *you* hit send.
-- ~Keegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. _______________________________________________ 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
Gerard, et al
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, A few things are clear. Having a WMF project intended to compete with Google is bonkers.
I agree totally, but didn't Jimmy once have plans for a Google-killing machine with a view to buying himself a new jet?
Warm regards,
Ruslan Takayev
Hoi, He is (as far as I know) flying coach. It was his own project with his own money. So what is the point? Thanks, GerardM
On 10 March 2016 at 07:19, Ruslan Takayev ruslan.takayev@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard, et al
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi, A few things are clear. Having a WMF project intended to compete with Google is bonkers.
I agree totally, but didn't Jimmy once have plans for a Google-killing machine with a view to buying himself a new jet?
Warm regards,
Ruslan Takayev _______________________________________________ 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
I was glad when I saw Jimbo indicate he was reaching out to James. At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, maybe Jimbo should send James another email, this time extending a clearer olive branch. If we're past the point of no return on that, then so be it, but I would be happy to know that after three months of talking about and at each other, you guys _sincerely_ tried talking to each other.
On 3/10/16 8:18 AM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
I was glad when I saw Jimbo indicate he was reaching out to James. At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, maybe Jimbo should send James another email, this time extending a clearer olive branch. If we're past the point of no return on that, then so be it, but I would be happy to know that after three months of talking about and at each other, you guys _sincerely_ tried talking to each other.
I agree completely. My email, which seems so horrifying to a few people, was meant exactly as that. The truth is, I am genuinely bewildered and finding it very hard to understand why James says things that the entire rest of the board find contrary to fact.
There is nothing horrible about encouraging him to think about whether emotion has blinded him. When so many other people who know the facts are telling you that you have it wrong, it's a good idea to pause and reflect.
And yes, it would have been more charitable and kind to include other options in that email. I wrote it as an opening to a dialogue, not as a formal statement of position to be analyzed in public. I invite people to think whether Pete's publishing of it was done in the interests of healing and harmony, rather than to further inflame and create drama.
There's a lot more to respond to on wikimedia-l, and I may do so this weekend. But there's one thing that is worth saying quite strongly: There was never a project at the Wikimedia Foundation to build a search engine to compete with Google. This has been confirmed by engineers working in that area. I have been very straightforward in telling people what I know about it, and I have not seen any evidence that the people who have told me what happened have lied to me about that.
What there was, and this has become clear only recently, was a proposal by Damon, passed around with great cloak-and-dagger, with his ideas about how we could and should do that. Those ideas never got traction and never made it to the board level. What was proposed to the board was an investment in internal search and discovery.
There's also the side issue - and I don't mean it is unimportant, I mean it is a side issue - of the language in the Knight Foundation some of which apparently survived from Damon's early brainstorms. I am not happy about that language, but my understanding is that the Knight Foundation is fine, that they understood and understand that the deliverables in the grant - which is what matters - are modest and reasonable as an exploration of what we should do next in this area.
--Jimbo
On Mar 10, 2016, at 1:25 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote: ... Those ideas never got traction and never made it to the board level. ...
I don't think you are lying or being deceptive, but it seems apparent in the various half-explanations that it did, to James, who either got mangled explanations and assumed worse or heard worse from someone incorrectly. Thence to mistrust.
Assuming nobody is evil or insane, we have clear evidence and now open admissions of communications breakdowns at several levels and confused, contradictory explanations about who thought what secrecy was required and why.
It seems like those fed upon each other into misunderstandings and mistrust.
Have you not considered that lack of transparency and openness would have the same internal effect as external?
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
Jimmy, a lot of us are bewildered and are finding it very hard to understand, why you continue to spin and distract. I do understand that your current strategy is to pin a bunch of this on Damon. That is not going to fly.
You are not accountable to anyone, Jimmy. That you can write things like what you write below to this whole list, is a testament to that. That is not good for anyone. Not you, and not the movement.
What you apparently cannot see in your email to James, is the arrogance in it, and that the certainty that you are correct and James is incorrect, dressed in nice clothes. Wikipedia is a laboratory of human behavior, where all too often we all watch people flounder and persist in IDHT behavior. You apparently cannot see how transparent your behavior is.
I cannot understand why you continue digging.
Outside the sea of perception - here are three facts - both you and Patricio lost a boatload of credibility by misrepresenting the board's stance in November. That was incredibly damaging to the movement. None of you have done anything in public to address that.
Here is my perception - your refusal in particular to deal in a straightforward manner with James' dismissal and the whole KE debacle has further made anything you say hard for me to believe. I believe this is true for a growing number of people.
My preference would be that you all pivot, disclose what has gone on over the last year or so, and apologize. I do not see that anywhere on the horizon.
Why? It is transparent to me, that it is because neither you nor the board is accountable to anyone. You all can behave as you did, and talk now about that as you are talking now, and ... nothing happens. Asking you to be straightforward, has no effect.
I intend to work with others to make a significant number of board seats elected. This is coming down to a matter of power; we cannot rely on values.
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
On 3/10/16 8:18 AM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
I was glad when I saw Jimbo indicate he was reaching out to James. At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, maybe Jimbo should send James another email, this time extending a clearer olive branch. If we're past the point of no return on that, then so be it, but I would be happy to know that after three months of talking about and at each other, you guys _sincerely_ tried talking to each other.
I agree completely. My email, which seems so horrifying to a few people, was meant exactly as that. The truth is, I am genuinely bewildered and finding it very hard to understand why James says things that the entire rest of the board find contrary to fact.
There is nothing horrible about encouraging him to think about whether emotion has blinded him. When so many other people who know the facts are telling you that you have it wrong, it's a good idea to pause and reflect.
And yes, it would have been more charitable and kind to include other options in that email. I wrote it as an opening to a dialogue, not as a formal statement of position to be analyzed in public. I invite people to think whether Pete's publishing of it was done in the interests of healing and harmony, rather than to further inflame and create drama.
There's a lot more to respond to on wikimedia-l, and I may do so this weekend. But there's one thing that is worth saying quite strongly: There was never a project at the Wikimedia Foundation to build a search engine to compete with Google. This has been confirmed by engineers working in that area. I have been very straightforward in telling people what I know about it, and I have not seen any evidence that the people who have told me what happened have lied to me about that.
What there was, and this has become clear only recently, was a proposal by Damon, passed around with great cloak-and-dagger, with his ideas about how we could and should do that. Those ideas never got traction and never made it to the board level. What was proposed to the board was an investment in internal search and discovery.
There's also the side issue - and I don't mean it is unimportant, I mean it is a side issue - of the language in the Knight Foundation some of which apparently survived from Damon's early brainstorms. I am not happy about that language, but my understanding is that the Knight Foundation is fine, that they understood and understand that the deliverables in the grant - which is what matters - are modest and reasonable as an exploration of what we should do next in this area.
--Jimbo
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On 10 Mar 2016, at 8:25 PM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
On 3/10/16 8:18 AM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
I was glad when I saw Jimbo indicate he was reaching out to James. At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, maybe Jimbo should send James another email, this time extending a clearer olive branch. If we're past the point of no return on that, then so be it, but I would be happy to know that after three months of talking about and at each other, you guys _sincerely_ tried talking to each other.
I agree completely. My email, which seems so horrifying to a few people, was meant exactly as that. The truth is, I am genuinely bewildered and finding it very hard to understand why James says things that the entire rest of the board find contrary to fact.
Christ Jimmy, you sincerely told him he was either a liar, emotionally stunted, or psychologically damaged! You think *that* is extending an olive branch?!?
There is nothing horrible about encouraging him to think about whether emotion has blinded him. When so many other people who know the facts are telling you that you have it wrong, it's a good idea to pause and reflect.
Then it’s a good idea to stick to, you know, the facts. Did you really think that telling James that one option is he is a liar would be conducive to reflections?
And yes, it would have been more charitable and kind to include other options in that email. I wrote it as an opening to a dialogue, not as a formal statement of position to be analyzed in public. I invite people to think whether Pete's publishing of it was done in the interests of healing and harmony, rather than to further inflame and create drama.
“Charitable and kind”? What options might these have been?
If that email was the opening to a dialogue, then you might want to consider your own level of EQ!
Chris
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 2:25 AM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
... The truth is, I am genuinely bewildered and finding it very hard to understand why James says things that the entire rest of the board find contrary to fact.
With one exception that I can think of, everything James has said has
so far turned out to be true. The exception is that he said Dariusz had seconded the motion to accept the Knight grant, but in fact it was Denny. When the error was pointed out, he corrected himself. [1]
If you're saying he got other things wrong, i t would be better to show us where.
For example, in your 29 February 2016 email to James, you wrote that James had "said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now [sic] way to get that from what I said ..."
It would help if you would publish the October 2015 exchange so that we can judge it for ourselves. James has published his 7 October email to the Board. [2]
Also, please point to where James said publicly that you more or less said you were fine with building a Google-competing search engine. I don't recall him saying anything like that. (If he had, someone would have asked for more information about your statement, and I don't recall anyone asking that either.)
Sarah
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AWikimedia_Foundation_Boa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2016-02-03/In_foc...
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible -- like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make things right. By violating that private channel you're making it implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.
Meatball Wiki, as you know, has some wise words on this kind of stuff. http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ForgiveAndForget is a good page to remember.
And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances. But this isn't how we should move forward. Criticizing people's actions is fair game, even calling for resignation or other types of structural and organizational change. This kind of picking out of lines from private emails ought _not_ to be, in my view.
Erik
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 11:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances. But this isn't how we should move forward.
Erik, what do you see as the alternative?
There is a pattern here. For example, when James was removed in December, Jimmy said he was not releasing information about it out of concern for James.
He wrote: "a man's reputation is at stake here." [1] "Our choice might have been to post something blunt and damaging to him ... Remember, a man's public reputation is at risk here." [2] And "Because a man's reputation is at stake here, I think it wise to take it slow here. I care more about James' future than I care about your foot stamping impatience." [3]
Those posts were troubling – on a par with someone on the Board making James feel that he ought to propose accepting the Knight grant, when in fact he was the one who objected to it. That James proposed it was then held up as evidence that he wasn't telling the truth about other issues. [4]
Is this the kind of Board we want? How are we to move forward if we're not allowed to talk about it?
Sarah
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=pr...
2016-03-09 23:21 GMT-08:00 SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com:
And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances. But this isn't how we should move forward.
Erik, what do you see as the alternative?
To clarify, I was specifically objecting to the leaked private email, not to addressing the issues with James' ejection from the Board. I know James and worked with him especially on the Wikivoyage migration; I understand well why he is so widely trusted and why this matter has cut deep wounds.
I would suggest the following.
* I would still ask to give the Board a little time to finalize their decision regarding the interim ED, which seems imminent. That means not just announcing, but also some time to provide support and orientation in that person's first weeks. (E.g., the interim ED will need to build a relationship with the Board itself.)
* Until then, I suggest focusing on documenting rather than debating. What Molly did with the timeline is a fine example of "collaborative journalism" and the Wikimedia community is at its best when it collects the facts in an NPOV manner. Coordinating this on a single page can reduce the forest fire nature of this conflict. I strongly recommend avoiding one-sided leaks of private emails and such for the reasons I gave.
* Once the Board has a bit of bandwidth, the Chair of the Board (Patricio) really is the primary person to look to for bringing closure to this matter. Dealing with issues with current and former Board members is _precisely_ the kind of thing a Board Chair needs to demonstrate leadership on, because it can't be done by committee.
* To do this in a manner that's both transparent and consistent with community norms, I've suggested engaging a professional facilitator. (I believe Pete has also said so several times.) There could be a private/public meeting, where there's a private discussion with James and the facilitator, and a public joint statement that comes out of this, even if it ends up being "agree to disagree". It's the facilitator's job that this comes to pass.
* That public bit could lead into a general public discussion with the Board. I would recommend a metrics meeting style format (video + IRC backchannel) with a wiki page to submit questions beforehand, and +1 them.
If that plan seems sensible, I would also suggest Jimmy disengage on the James Heilman matter from here on and leave this issue to the Board Chair to bring closure to.
Hope that helps. I know this has all been exhausting for lots of folks, so please take it in the spirit in which it is intended, i.e. to help bring closure to it in a step-by-step way.
Warmly, Erik
On 10 Mar 2016, at 5:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible -- like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make things right. By violating that private channel you're making it implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.
Erik, that was an unsolicited email sent to James *and* Peter. It was addressed to James, but yet Jimmy sent it to Peter, and in it he alleged that “one possibility” is that James is a liar. The other is that he is too emotionally involved and it coloured his thinking. Why did Jimmy feel the need to send such a potentially damaging set of accusations to James and cc in Peter?
Oliver has said it best - that’s emotional gaslighting and it’s highly manipulative. Telling James that he has a low EQ is focusing on James’ emotions and has nothing to do with what James wanted answering. He wants Jimmy to give a clear understanding as to why he was removed.
James’ concerns about a search engine are still legitimate. There was indeed a secret plan that Jimmy claims he didn’t know about until well after October - WAY after October. It’s understandable and quite justifiable that in October James was very concerned that there was a plan in the WMF for a competing search engine for Google.
So now Jimmy is still maintaining the line, which he has repeated more than a number of times now, in public and evidently in private (yet takes care to cc in Pete) that James is a liar, or has serious emotional or psychological issues. That’s a strange tactic, and I for one am very glad that it’s now in the open. Trying to suggest that there is emotional trauma is a good way to undermine someone’s confidence. And the way this was done was to use the fallacy of the undistributed middle; which is:
James could be a liar James could have poor memory or low emotional intelligence James might be emotionally traumatised James’ statements therefore don’t line up with the facts
In fact, James in my view is none of those things. Frankly, it would be laughable to think that someone who deals with life and death situations in an ER for as long as James has would be as emotionally traumatised as Jimmy suggests. And nothing in James’ emails or public utterances has been crazy, and everything he’s written so far is level-headed and attempted to deal with facts and events. Possibly James got some things wrong, but that doesn’t make him any of the alternatives given by Jimmy.
Furthermore, Jimmy’s language (“liar”, “low emotional intelligence”, etc.) is not language I would expect to see in an email attempting to reconcile and hold a reasonable discussion. Imagine that James was someone who did have, as Jimmy said, “low emotional intelligence” or who is “emotionally traumatised”. I wonder what the effect on them when they get an email like this from a powerful person who helped remove the individual from a hard-fought for position within a movement that person holds dear and is dedicated to working on?
As for the drama - Jimmy can hardly be complaining about drama. Calling someone a liar, which he has done publicly now a few times, can possibly be excused the first time as an outburst due to a highly stressful situation. When it is said over and over, and inside “private” communications then it needs to be called out as publicly as possible.
So Erik, Peter did a very difficult thing. In fact, it’s very brave because it leaves him open to accusations that he was “leaking” private correspondence. If Peter reveals it, then he knows some will see it poorly. Yet that email was unsolicited. None of the information in that email is private, except for the appalling way that Jimmy wrote it. There’s nothing in that email that Jimmy couldn’t have stated publicly. Except, of course, if he’d written that directly to the mailing list there would have been an uproar because it was out of line and manipulative.
I am incredibly surprised by this behaviour, and deeply saddened by it. It’s not acceptable.
Chris
On Mar 10, 2016 07:19, "Erik Moeller" eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible -- like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make things right. By violating that private channel you're making it implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.
I share this opinion.
Rupert
Manipulative behavior thrives in an environment where a person can say different things to different audiences, and can speak freely with the expectation they will not be held accountable for their words.
Erik, thank you for articulating your views. As for my own actions, you have either made some incorrect assumptions about the background, or you operate on a set of principles that I don't entirely share. I'm pretty sure it's the former. I carefully considered whether to publish this email before doing so. I'm confident I'm on solid ethical ground (i.e., didn't violate anyone's rights), and I'm pretty sure the impact on Wikimedia will be positive in the end as well. Jimmy Wales sending this email, in my view, tends to damage our project. It's worthwhile for those who care about Wikimedia's future to know.
I agree very much with what you said in reply to SarahSV. You present a very useful overview of how things could or should go in the future. Thank you for that.
Specifics about my choice to release the email below:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible -- like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make things right. By violating that private channel you're making it implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.
Meatball Wiki, as you know, has some wise words on this kind of stuff. http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ForgiveAndForget is a good page to remember.
And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances. But this isn't how we should move forward. Criticizing people's actions is fair game, even calling for resignation or other types of structural and organizational change. This kind of picking out of lines from private emails ought _not_ to be, in my view.
Erik
Erik,
Jimmy Wales and I have never had a working relationship, or an ongoing email correspondence. I'd guess we've exchanged under a dozen emails since 2008 or so, and spoken in person fewer times than that. I cannot think of a single example of an exchange where we came to an agreement. The much more common theme is that, the moment I express any kind of disagreement, he vanishes without a word.
So the "private channel" you mention has never existed between Jimmy Wales and myself. There has never been an agreement, either explicit or implied, between us about whether our communications are private. Given our past interactions, if he were to request of me that I keep our communications private, I would refuse without hesitation.
Where I do have a healthy line of communication with someone, I agree with you. It would take a very high bar (like fraud) for me to release such communications publicly. We would simply work through any differences together. I of course have this kind of communication all the time, as you know. This situation is nothing like that, though. Jimmy and I have no such relationship. And the bar is, indeed, pretty high: I read this as manipulative communication, at odds with Jimmy's publicly expressed goals, about things that impact the future of Wikimedia.
I did reply to Jimmy's email, and since my role is apparently something people are interested in, I'm including my reply below. You'll see that I was suggesting some of the same things you do, Erik. Jimmy never replied, though.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pete Forsyth Date: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:49 AM Subject: Re: A conversation? To: Jimmy Wales, James Heilman
Jimmy, thanks for following up -- and James, thanks for alerting me of this (it went to an old email address I no longer check. Good reminder though, I am putting an auto-reply on there.)
I see that we have three things under discussion, and I want to reiterate that I strongly urge the first:
1. JW and JMH have a private conversation with the support of an independent, skilled facilitator 2. JW and JMH have a truly one-on-one conversation 3. JW and JMH have a conversation with PF as informal facilitator
I appreciate being looped in here, but I want to say very clearly: I don't have the professional skills to serve as a facilitator here, even if I did I am too involved to do it well, and I also don't really have the bandwidth. However, I'm sure the WMF's HR department could refer you to some excellent people. (I could give referrals, but I'm sure the HR department is better equipped for that.) I think that the value of professional facilitation/mediation/ombuds/whatever is well known, so I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea unless asked.
In the meantime, I would very strongly urge you, Jimmy, to cease making speculative statements about James' honesty or state of mind. James is probably much less volatile than me, but personally I would probably freak out if somebody was saying stuff like that about me, either publicly or privately. It's highly inflammatory.
I would also request that you address (publicly, I hope) my main question about your interpretation of the board vote about "discussing long term strategy" as evidence of James' dishonesty. I think that is a point you could, and should, walk back without much drama. I think it's safe to say that it's highly obvious that you two agree about what constitutes "long term strategy," and that's fine -- but the fact that it's become a referendum on somebody's integrity is not, in my view, fine at all. I think it would help things a great deal if you could publicly acknowledge that point.
I'll leave the other points to be dealt with between you, ideally with professional support. I really can't play the mediator role here.
-Pete
Jimmy, given the fact that James has requested you release it combined with the fact that it contains no confidential information, please release the particular email James requested you release. You've said that you would release it when you received permission from the board, but it was a private communication between James and you that did not contain any confidential information. The combination of private emails from you to Pete, me, and I suspect the email James refers to, combined with your public statements, makes me honestly have serious doubts about your ability to place the interests of the WMF above your personal interests, something your position requires you do.
I'm expecting no bombshells in the email - I imagine it's just insulting or untrue language directed at James - but you can't keep claiming to be an advocate of radical transparency while refusing to release emails that don't contain confidential information that shine light on an issue of public contention. In three seconds, you could demonstrate that my concerns are unfounded and that your email was reasonable, and with a little more you could demonstrate that there were defensible reasons for removing James in the first place.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 9:21 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Manipulative behavior thrives in an environment where a person can say different things to different audiences, and can speak freely with the expectation they will not be held accountable for their words.
Erik, thank you for articulating your views. As for my own actions, you have either made some incorrect assumptions about the background, or you operate on a set of principles that I don't entirely share. I'm pretty sure it's the former. I carefully considered whether to publish this email before doing so. I'm confident I'm on solid ethical ground (i.e., didn't violate anyone's rights), and I'm pretty sure the impact on Wikimedia will be positive in the end as well. Jimmy Wales sending this email, in my view, tends to damage our project. It's worthwhile for those who care about Wikimedia's future to know.
I agree very much with what you said in reply to SarahSV. You present a very useful overview of how things could or should go in the future. Thank you for that.
Specifics about my choice to release the email below:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing
it.)
Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible -- like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make things right. By violating that private channel you're making it implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.
Meatball Wiki, as you know, has some wise words on this kind of stuff. http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ForgiveAndForget is a good page to remember.
And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances. But this isn't how we should move forward. Criticizing people's actions is fair game, even calling for resignation or other types of structural and organizational change. This kind of picking out of lines from private emails ought _not_ to be, in my view.
Erik
Erik,
Jimmy Wales and I have never had a working relationship, or an ongoing email correspondence. I'd guess we've exchanged under a dozen emails since 2008 or so, and spoken in person fewer times than that. I cannot think of a single example of an exchange where we came to an agreement. The much more common theme is that, the moment I express any kind of disagreement, he vanishes without a word.
So the "private channel" you mention has never existed between Jimmy Wales and myself. There has never been an agreement, either explicit or implied, between us about whether our communications are private. Given our past interactions, if he were to request of me that I keep our communications private, I would refuse without hesitation.
Where I do have a healthy line of communication with someone, I agree with you. It would take a very high bar (like fraud) for me to release such communications publicly. We would simply work through any differences together. I of course have this kind of communication all the time, as you know. This situation is nothing like that, though. Jimmy and I have no such relationship. And the bar is, indeed, pretty high: I read this as manipulative communication, at odds with Jimmy's publicly expressed goals, about things that impact the future of Wikimedia.
I did reply to Jimmy's email, and since my role is apparently something people are interested in, I'm including my reply below. You'll see that I was suggesting some of the same things you do, Erik. Jimmy never replied, though.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pete Forsyth Date: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:49 AM Subject: Re: A conversation? To: Jimmy Wales, James Heilman
Jimmy, thanks for following up -- and James, thanks for alerting me of this (it went to an old email address I no longer check. Good reminder though, I am putting an auto-reply on there.)
I see that we have three things under discussion, and I want to reiterate that I strongly urge the first:
- JW and JMH have a private conversation with the support of an
independent, skilled facilitator 2. JW and JMH have a truly one-on-one conversation 3. JW and JMH have a conversation with PF as informal facilitator
I appreciate being looped in here, but I want to say very clearly: I don't have the professional skills to serve as a facilitator here, even if I did I am too involved to do it well, and I also don't really have the bandwidth. However, I'm sure the WMF's HR department could refer you to some excellent people. (I could give referrals, but I'm sure the HR department is better equipped for that.) I think that the value of professional facilitation/mediation/ombuds/whatever is well known, so I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea unless asked.
In the meantime, I would very strongly urge you, Jimmy, to cease making speculative statements about James' honesty or state of mind. James is probably much less volatile than me, but personally I would probably freak out if somebody was saying stuff like that about me, either publicly or privately. It's highly inflammatory.
I would also request that you address (publicly, I hope) my main question about your interpretation of the board vote about "discussing long term strategy" as evidence of James' dishonesty. I think that is a point you could, and should, walk back without much drama. I think it's safe to say that it's highly obvious that you two agree about what constitutes "long term strategy," and that's fine -- but the fact that it's become a referendum on somebody's integrity is not, in my view, fine at all. I think it would help things a great deal if you could publicly acknowledge that point.
I'll leave the other points to be dealt with between you, ideally with professional support. I really can't play the mediator role here.
-Pete _______________________________________________ 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
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:33 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy, given the fact that James has requested you release it combined with the fact that it contains no confidential information, please release the particular email James requested you release. You've said that you would release it when you received permission from the board, but it was a private communication between James and you that did not contain any confidential information. The combination of private emails from you to Pete, me, and I suspect the email James refers to, combined with your public statements, makes me honestly have serious doubts about your ability to place the interests of the WMF above your personal interests, something your position requires you do.
I'm expecting no bombshells in the email - I imagine it's just insulting or untrue language directed at James - but you can't keep claiming to be an advocate of radical transparency while refusing to release emails that don't contain confidential information that shine light on an issue of public contention. In three seconds, you could demonstrate that my concerns are unfounded and that your email was reasonable, and with a little more you could demonstrate that there were defensible reasons for removing James in the first place.
Kevin,
You've been touting your experience on Boards in giving advice, and I have some experience there myself, so let's think of it in those Real World terms:
Regardless of what anyone's personal opinion on what may or may not be confidential, what may or may not be an insult or personal attack, what may or may not be etc., there is a very real legal shield of confidentiality in place not just for this board, but for any semi-professional organization that exists because personal opinion does not matter in the eyes of the law.
Multiple people are asking why James was removed. The answer has been given: the Board felt that they were unable to work with James, and due to the privacy of Board work, nothing can be disclosed further. While this answer is frustrating in a movement where we demand transparency for trust and collaboration (as we should), for Jimmy or anyone else to comment further would be - as an understatement - a poor decision, and one I'm sure Counsel would drop their jaw over, if not outright resign their position.
If you were in the same position, you'd do the exact same thing. If you didn't, you'd be opening up a hole for a lawsuit that you can drive a truck through. And that lawsuit and hole, friends, is what will be the death of the Wikimedia Foundation. Not this.
Keegan,
Jimmy has attacked James on a personal level in public multiple times, and sent frankly confusing private emails to multiple people off-list. There is no general 'legal shield of confidentiality' surrounding organizations in general. Sometimes employees are forbidden from making information public due to NDA's, etc. I've never heard of a board member being asked to sign an NDA regarding information of the sort apparently contained in the email. If the particular email in question is a reasonable email, it'll silence a lot of the debate around this issue; if it's not, it'll bring up a valid question and debate as whether or not one of our fiduciaries is capable of carrying out his duties.
When Jimmy has already defamed James publicly, no counsel in their right mind would have an issue with the publication of private emails that show Jimmy behaving in a reasonable manner towards James. As it stands, there is more potential damage to WMF if the email in question is *not* released than if it is, assming it is reasonable - although I have no doubt that James would not take legal action, when you combine Jimmy's public statements with the fact that James is a doctor, a profession where confidentiality is paramount, it starts to look an awful lot like defamation per se. Besides the internal and external brand damage caused by Jimmy's actions, you don't want to be in a situation where it looks like one board member is literally commiting defamation per se against a former remember removed for "cause."
BTW: besides there being no general "legal shield of confidentiality" around organizations or boards, any lawyer worth his salt will, accurately, tell the board members he's advising that unless there is a separate legal basis for confidentiality (like an NDA signed on a grant,) that each individual trustee is positively obligated to release information about their organization or obtained from board meetings if they believe that doing so is in the best interests of the organization. Releases of information should normally be coordinated with other trustees and with comms staff, but if you end up in a situation where you disagree with the rest of the board about whether or not it's in the best interests of an organization to release information, there's not a separate legal basis for confidentiality (and there normally isn't,) and you feel that releasing the information is going to cause more benefit (or avert more harm) to the organization than whatever damage it may do to the cohesiveness of the board, you are obligated to release that information.
But that is pretty irrelevant when we're not dealing with issues that really deal with the board as a whole, just an individual email that doesn't contain confidential information between two board members. Jimmy has no legal obligation to keep it confidential, or to seek the permission of the rest of the board to release it. Neither does James - he could release it this second if he decided to, but values privacy enough that instead of doing so he's asking Jimmy to follow through with his promise of radical transparency.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:33 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Jimmy, given the fact that James has requested you release it combined
with
the fact that it contains no confidential information, please release the particular email James requested you release. You've said that you would release it when you received permission from the board, but it was a private communication between James and you that did not contain any confidential information. The combination of private emails from you to Pete, me, and I suspect the email James refers to, combined with your public statements, makes me honestly have serious doubts about your
ability
to place the interests of the WMF above your personal interests,
something
your position requires you do.
I'm expecting no bombshells in the email - I imagine it's just insulting
or
untrue language directed at James - but you can't keep claiming to be an advocate of radical transparency while refusing to release emails that don't contain confidential information that shine light on an issue of public contention. In three seconds, you could demonstrate that my concerns are unfounded and that your email was reasonable, and with a little more you could demonstrate that there were defensible reasons for removing James in the first place.
Kevin,
You've been touting your experience on Boards in giving advice, and I have some experience there myself, so let's think of it in those Real World terms:
Regardless of what anyone's personal opinion on what may or may not be confidential, what may or may not be an insult or personal attack, what may or may not be etc., there is a very real legal shield of confidentiality in place not just for this board, but for any semi-professional organization that exists because personal opinion does not matter in the eyes of the law.
Multiple people are asking why James was removed. The answer has been given: the Board felt that they were unable to work with James, and due to the privacy of Board work, nothing can be disclosed further. While this answer is frustrating in a movement where we demand transparency for trust and collaboration (as we should), for Jimmy or anyone else to comment further would be - as an understatement - a poor decision, and one I'm sure Counsel would drop their jaw over, if not outright resign their position.
If you were in the same position, you'd do the exact same thing. If you didn't, you'd be opening up a hole for a lawsuit that you can drive a truck through. And that lawsuit and hole, friends, is what will be the death of the Wikimedia Foundation. Not this.
-- ~Keegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address is in a personal capacity. _______________________________________________ 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
Sent from my iPad
On 11 Mar 2016, at 6:11 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote: Kevin,
You've been touting your experience on Boards in giving advice, and I have some experience there myself, so let's think of it in those Real World terms:
Regardless of what anyone's personal opinion on what may or may not be confidential, what may or may not be an insult or personal attack, what may or may not be etc., there is a very real legal shield of confidentiality in place not just for this board, but for any semi-professional organization that exists because personal opinion does not matter in the eyes of the law.
Multiple people are asking why James was removed. The answer has been given: the Board felt that they were unable to work with James, and due to the privacy of Board work, nothing can be disclosed further. While this answer is frustrating in a movement where we demand transparency for trust and collaboration (as we should), for Jimmy or anyone else to comment further would be - as an understatement - a poor decision, and one I'm sure Counsel would drop their jaw over, if not outright resign their position.
If you were in the same position, you'd do the exact same thing. If you didn't, you'd be opening up a hole for a lawsuit that you can drive a truck through. And that lawsuit and hole, friends, is what will be the death of the Wikimedia Foundation. Not this.
And yet Keenan, Jimmy has indeed commented further and has further stated on numerous occasions that he would like transparency, and is working with the Board to release emails and provide a fuller explanation of their actions to remove James.
So when you talk about a shield of confidentiality for the Board, then if this is the case then Jimmy's actions in communicating with a non-board member (Pete) seems to put Jimmy in a very awkward position if he agrees with your statement that "for Jimmy or anyone else to comment further would be - as an understatement - a poor decision, and one I'm sure Counsel would drop their jaw over, if not outright resign their position." Or the very public utterances by Jimmy, not cleared by counsel, that he is a liar.
Just remember here that Jimmy sent that email unsolicited to Peter. It is not Jimmy I feel for here, but Peter. Peter gets an email that shocks him, and he feels is unacceptable and manipulative, possibly even defamatory. He responds to Jimmy telling him that he is not a mediator. Jimmy then makes comments on the list stating that he is in private communications with James to work through issues, to which I personally believed was an excellent and constructive thing for him to do. Yet we now see what sort of communication he is having with James: insults and denigration, and what looks like attempts to manipulate and inflame James.
If anything, that's incredibly unfair to James. On the one hand Jimmy can say to everyone that hand on heart he is working through things with James *in private*, and yet by doing so he can say whatever he wants to James and should James reveal their correspondence then he, and others like yourself, can claim that private communications were violated. Thus Jimmy can say what he wants with complete impunity, and at the same time appear to the wider community to be making good faith attempts at reconciling with James.
If I were in James' shoes, I would cease all communications with such a person and request a formal, third party, professions mediator. I would also advise Jimmy that any future communications that do not satisfy this condition can no longer be considered private and may well be publicised.
Jimmy: you need to stop calling, or even implying or suggesting James is a liar. I am not a lawyer, but I feel you are very lucky in many ways that you don't live in the UK, because I feel James would be well within his rights to sue for defamation from some of the things you have stated. I'm not sure if he would have grounds, or even much of a chance of winning, a defamation suit in the U.S. but I suspect he could try should he want to.
The bottom line is that a professional mediator probably now needs to get involved. If the WMF is unwilling to fund or provide one, then this issue is not going away. I suspect that regardless, James will campaign to be elected for the next available Board on a platform of making the Board's actions more transparent and accountable. The Board will be in a position, should he win, of not accepting the nomination or will need to allow him on the Board - and this time, should he be removed again the uproar will be extremely damaging to the WMF. The Board, in my view, has no one to blame but themselves for allowing this to occur.
Chris
Hi Pete,
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 9:21 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I carefully considered whether to publish this email before doing so. I'm confident I'm on solid ethical ground (i.e., didn't violate anyone's rights), and I'm pretty sure the impact on Wikimedia will be positive in the end as well.
It's hard to argue with this statement one way or the other (when you are sure, but you cannot prove.) From experience we have seen that Wikimedia is a big and distributed Movement and the impact of such actions on the Movement is unlikely to be noticeable .
Specifics about my choice to release the email below:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing
it.)
It is problematic that you have checked with James but not Jimmy prior to publishing this email. The content of the email does not justify this action for me.
Erik,
So the "private channel" you mention has never existed between Jimmy Wales and myself. There has never been an agreement, either explicit or implied, between us about whether our communications are private.
There are norms that people follow in online communications. It is expected that you check with the sender of the email before publishing his/her email. People expect private conversations to stay private, and the definition of a private conversation is not complicated in most of the people's minds: if a conversation doesn't happen in a public channel, it's considered private.
Where I do have a healthy line of communication with someone, I agree with
you.
If you see that you don't have a healthy line of communication with Jimmy, you may want to consider not communicating with him at all. Initiating and/or participating in conversations about someone when you cannot have a healthy conversation with that person won't be beneficial. You will end up being in a position that you cannot improve things between the two of you, but you will have extra information that you will feel burdened to share with others.
I hope you think about what you did here, and you decide to take a different course of action in the future.
Best, Leila
-- Leila Zia Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pete Forsyth Date: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:49 AM Subject: Re: A conversation? To: Jimmy Wales, James Heilman
Jimmy, thanks for following up -- and James, thanks for alerting me of this (it went to an old email address I no longer check. Good reminder though, I am putting an auto-reply on there.)
I see that we have three things under discussion, and I want to reiterate that I strongly urge the first:
- JW and JMH have a private conversation with the support of an
independent, skilled facilitator 2. JW and JMH have a truly one-on-one conversation 3. JW and JMH have a conversation with PF as informal facilitator
I appreciate being looped in here, but I want to say very clearly: I don't have the professional skills to serve as a facilitator here, even if I did I am too involved to do it well, and I also don't really have the bandwidth. However, I'm sure the WMF's HR department could refer you to some excellent people. (I could give referrals, but I'm sure the HR department is better equipped for that.) I think that the value of professional facilitation/mediation/ombuds/whatever is well known, so I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea unless asked.
In the meantime, I would very strongly urge you, Jimmy, to cease making speculative statements about James' honesty or state of mind. James is probably much less volatile than me, but personally I would probably freak out if somebody was saying stuff like that about me, either publicly or privately. It's highly inflammatory.
I would also request that you address (publicly, I hope) my main question about your interpretation of the board vote about "discussing long term strategy" as evidence of James' dishonesty. I think that is a point you could, and should, walk back without much drama. I think it's safe to say that it's highly obvious that you two agree about what constitutes "long term strategy," and that's fine -- but the fact that it's become a referendum on somebody's integrity is not, in my view, fine at all. I think it would help things a great deal if you could publicly acknowledge that point.
I'll leave the other points to be dealt with between you, ideally with professional support. I really can't play the mediator role here.
-Pete _______________________________________________ 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
A few days ago I asked what it was that we as the community could do to enhance transparency within the Foundation. This was not what I had in mind. Why would Jimmy or anyone else in a position of authority at the WMF seek to engage with those making criticisms when they'll be subject to acts like this; private emails posted without permission and shorn of context? I'm sure that Jimmy will think twice next time before trying to explain his thinking or give information, and who could blame him? There might be a line where it is acceptable to publicise an email without consent (say, if Jimmy had threatened to punch James in the nose), but IMHO even though Jimmy comes off as a bit of a jerk in this one, it falls far short of that line.
I know Pete that you meant well with your actions, but I fear that you may actually have done quite a bit of damage.
Cheers, Craig
On 11 March 2016 at 08:24, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pete,
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 9:21 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I carefully considered whether to publish this email before doing so. I'm confident I'm on solid ethical ground (i.e., didn't violate anyone's rights), and I'm pretty sure the impact on Wikimedia
will
be positive in the end as well.
It's hard to argue with this statement one way or the other (when you are sure, but you cannot prove.) From experience we have seen that Wikimedia is a big and distributed Movement and the impact of such actions on the Movement is unlikely to be noticeable .
Specifics about my choice to release the email below:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com
wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what
it's
worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing
it.)
It is problematic that you have checked with James but not Jimmy prior to publishing this email. The content of the email does not justify this action for me.
Erik,
So the "private channel" you mention has never existed between Jimmy
Wales
and myself. There has never been an agreement, either explicit or
implied,
between us about whether our communications are private.
There are norms that people follow in online communications. It is expected that you check with the sender of the email before publishing his/her email. People expect private conversations to stay private, and the definition of a private conversation is not complicated in most of the people's minds: if a conversation doesn't happen in a public channel, it's considered private.
Where I do have a healthy line of communication with someone, I agree with
you.
If you see that you don't have a healthy line of communication with Jimmy, you may want to consider not communicating with him at all. Initiating and/or participating in conversations about someone when you cannot have a healthy conversation with that person won't be beneficial. You will end up being in a position that you cannot improve things between the two of you, but you will have extra information that you will feel burdened to share with others.
I hope you think about what you did here, and you decide to take a different course of action in the future.
Best, Leila
-- Leila Zia Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pete Forsyth Date: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:49 AM Subject: Re: A conversation? To: Jimmy Wales, James Heilman
Jimmy, thanks for following up -- and James, thanks for alerting me of
this
(it went to an old email address I no longer check. Good reminder
though, I
am putting an auto-reply on there.)
I see that we have three things under discussion, and I want to reiterate that I strongly urge the first:
- JW and JMH have a private conversation with the support of an
independent, skilled facilitator 2. JW and JMH have a truly one-on-one conversation 3. JW and JMH have a conversation with PF as informal facilitator
I appreciate being looped in here, but I want to say very clearly: I
don't
have the professional skills to serve as a facilitator here, even if I
did
I am too involved to do it well, and I also don't really have the bandwidth. However, I'm sure the WMF's HR department could refer you to some excellent people. (I could give referrals, but I'm sure the HR department is better equipped for that.) I think that the value of professional facilitation/mediation/ombuds/whatever is well known, so I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea unless
asked.
In the meantime, I would very strongly urge you, Jimmy, to cease making speculative statements about James' honesty or state of mind. James is probably much less volatile than me, but personally I would probably
freak
out if somebody was saying stuff like that about me, either publicly or privately. It's highly inflammatory.
I would also request that you address (publicly, I hope) my main question about your interpretation of the board vote about "discussing long term strategy" as evidence of James' dishonesty. I think that is a point you could, and should, walk back without much drama. I think it's safe to say that it's highly obvious that you two agree about what constitutes "long term strategy," and that's fine -- but the fact that it's become a referendum on somebody's integrity is not, in my view, fine at all. I
think
it would help things a great deal if you could publicly acknowledge that point.
I'll leave the other points to be dealt with between you, ideally with professional support. I really can't play the mediator role here.
-Pete _______________________________________________ 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
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Sent from my iPad
On 11 Mar 2016, at 9:24 AM, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
If you see that you don't have a healthy line of communication with Jimmy, you may want to consider not communicating with him at all. Initiating and/or participating in conversations about someone when you cannot have a healthy conversation with that person won't be beneficial. You will end up being in a position that you cannot improve things between the two of you, but you will have extra information that you will feel burdened to share with others.
That's pretty unfair. It was Jimmy who initiated this off list correspondence with James and Peter. He didn't ask Peter if he wanted to be a mediator, and I think Peter's response makes that clear. In fact, saying that Peter was an active participant in this discussion off list is totally inaccurate. As you can see from the response that Peter provided to Jimmy (which he has shared with us now), Peter has taken great pains to make it clear he doesn't want to be involved in direct correspondence on this issue and he wants any discussion he takes part in to be in public.
Basically, whilst I respect your views on this situation, in my view the email you are directing to Peter is better directed to Jimmy.
Chris
The rights and wrongs of this dispute aside (and, crikey, I really have not idea who is in the right at this point), and putting aside the right/wrong of releasing the email (I tend to side with Erik):
This is the form of language that e.g. men use to dismiss women as "emotional".
It's vile and judgemental.
It poses theories that James is either a liar, mentally ill or just so angry he can't think straight.
It is not okay to say things like this, even in private. The effect of words like this can be damaging in the least.
As a movement we should not accept this.
Jimmy, whilst you may not have explicitly meant these words in the way they are being read, you need to perhaps step back and think about the impact of what you have written here.
Tom
On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 at 00:56 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in response to this list message of mine: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From: *Jimmy Wales
*Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
*To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
*Subject: **A conversation?*
James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't really conducive to reaching more understanding.
I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that one.
Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that are clearly not true.
Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored your perceptions on certain details.
As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. _______________________________________________ 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
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