Thomas Dalton writes:
"Trustees agree that that, during their terms on the Board and for three years thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages or is personally derogatory of the Foundation or its affiliates or any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers."
That explicitly bans all public criticism.
That is untrue. Note the use of the word "personally" (it appears three times). The idea here is actually to *encourage constructive criticism outside of personal attacks*. The idea here is not to make someone who is selected for the Board the victim of personal attacks from other members of the Board during their term of service and for a limited period thereafter.
If this guarantee is in place, one result is properly that everyone on the Board will feel free to criticize Board or staff operations, programs, and initiatives without being the object of personal attacks, at least from within the Board or staff, for doing so.
What's more, the obligation has a definite time limit -- if you're a Board member and you want to write a tell-all book about what a terrible person another Board member is, you can do so, but you have to wait a while before selling your gossip. So, in short, you can be constructively critical regardless of this provision, and you then can engage in personal attacks after a a decent interval.
I should add that my own obligations as an attorney for the Foundation actually exceed those imposed on the Board. I don't find my attorney- client obligations particularly onerous, and I feel free to give the Board and staff my critical advice, even though I'm generally ethically barred from writing a tell-all book about their personalities or posting personal criticisms on Foundation-l. (Believe me when I tell you that the gossip is less interesting than you probably imagine.) In my view, Board members are holding fiduciary positions -- positions of trust -- so they have legal and ethical obligations that in some ways are similar to attorney-client privilege and even similar to physician-patient privilege (as Hippocrates stated, one must first do no harm).
Now, you may believe it ought to be appropriate for Board members to attack each other personally, to attack the staff, and to attack you, but I hold them and myself to a higher standard, and I don't think it's unreasonable to set expectations for mature, considered behavior that extends to constructive criticism but stops short of destructive conflict.
Is it your belief, Thomas, that as a lawyer working for the Foundation I ought to be able to issue public personal attacks on Florence, Jimmy, Kat, Domas, Stuart, Frieda, and Jan-Bart?
--Mike
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
I should add that my own obligations as an attorney for the Foundation actually exceed those imposed on the Board. I don't find my attorney- client obligations particularly onerous, and I feel free to give the Board and staff my critical advice, even though I'm generally ethically barred from writing a tell-all book about their personalities or posting personal criticisms on Foundation-l.
Are you really barred from all personal criticism of the Foundation or its members *for a period of three (or more) years following your departure*, merely by being an attorney? I don't think that's true, but even if it is, you get paid for this. The board members, on the other hand, don't get paid anything.
Thank you for the clarification, Mike. I suppose "ridicule" is also something that has to be done personally.
I am curious about the extension of this clause to all affiliates and their top tier of staff... That also seems like it's quite strong, but perhaps the definition of 'affiliate' is similarly nuanced? SJ
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton writes:
"Trustees agree that that, during their terms on the Board and for three years thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages or is personally derogatory of the Foundation or its affiliates or any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers."
That explicitly bans all public criticism.
That is untrue. Note the use of the word "personally" (it appears three times). The idea here is actually to *encourage constructive criticism outside of personal attacks*. The idea here is not to make someone who is selected for the Board the victim of personal attacks from other members of the Board during their term of service and for a limited period thereafter.
If this guarantee is in place, one result is properly that everyone on the Board will feel free to criticize Board or staff operations, programs, and initiatives without being the object of personal attacks, at least from within the Board or staff, for doing so.
What's more, the obligation has a definite time limit -- if you're a Board member and you want to write a tell-all book about what a terrible person another Board member is, you can do so, but you have to wait a while before selling your gossip. So, in short, you can be constructively critical regardless of this provision, and you then can engage in personal attacks after a a decent interval.
I should add that my own obligations as an attorney for the Foundation actually exceed those imposed on the Board. I don't find my attorney- client obligations particularly onerous, and I feel free to give the Board and staff my critical advice, even though I'm generally ethically barred from writing a tell-all book about their personalities or posting personal criticisms on Foundation-l. (Believe me when I tell you that the gossip is less interesting than you probably imagine.) In my view, Board members are holding fiduciary positions -- positions of trust -- so they have legal and ethical obligations that in some ways are similar to attorney-client privilege and even similar to physician-patient privilege (as Hippocrates stated, one must first do no harm).
Now, you may believe it ought to be appropriate for Board members to attack each other personally, to attack the staff, and to attack you, but I hold them and myself to a higher standard, and I don't think it's unreasonable to set expectations for mature, considered behavior that extends to constructive criticism but stops short of destructive conflict.
Is it your belief, Thomas, that as a lawyer working for the Foundation I ought to be able to issue public personal attacks on Florence, Jimmy, Kat, Domas, Stuart, Frieda, and Jan-Bart?
--Mike
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Suggested Changes in the non-disparagement clause:
From :
during their terms on the Board and for three years thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages or is personally derogatory of the Foundation or its affiliates or any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers.
To: during their terms on the Board and for SIX MONTHS thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers.
This prevents personal disruption, and perhaps public criticism of the sort of thing that needs to be publicly criticised--it's basically the extension of WP:NPA to the board.
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you for the clarification, Mike. I suppose "ridicule" is also something that has to be done personally.
I am curious about the extension of this clause to all affiliates and their top tier of staff... That also seems like it's quite strong, but perhaps the definition of 'affiliate' is similarly nuanced? SJ
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton writes:
"Trustees agree that that, during their terms on the Board and for three years thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages or is personally derogatory of the Foundation or its affiliates or any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers."
That explicitly bans all public criticism.
That is untrue. Note the use of the word "personally" (it appears three times). The idea here is actually to *encourage constructive criticism outside of personal attacks*. The idea here is not to make someone who is selected for the Board the victim of personal attacks from other members of the Board during their term of service and for a limited period thereafter.
If this guarantee is in place, one result is properly that everyone on the Board will feel free to criticize Board or staff operations, programs, and initiatives without being the object of personal attacks, at least from within the Board or staff, for doing so.
What's more, the obligation has a definite time limit -- if you're a Board member and you want to write a tell-all book about what a terrible person another Board member is, you can do so, but you have to wait a while before selling your gossip. So, in short, you can be constructively critical regardless of this provision, and you then can engage in personal attacks after a a decent interval.
I should add that my own obligations as an attorney for the Foundation actually exceed those imposed on the Board. I don't find my attorney- client obligations particularly onerous, and I feel free to give the Board and staff my critical advice, even though I'm generally ethically barred from writing a tell-all book about their personalities or posting personal criticisms on Foundation-l. (Believe me when I tell you that the gossip is less interesting than you probably imagine.) In my view, Board members are holding fiduciary positions -- positions of trust -- so they have legal and ethical obligations that in some ways are similar to attorney-client privilege and even similar to physician-patient privilege (as Hippocrates stated, one must first do no harm).
Now, you may believe it ought to be appropriate for Board members to attack each other personally, to attack the staff, and to attack you, but I hold them and myself to a higher standard, and I don't think it's unreasonable to set expectations for mature, considered behavior that extends to constructive criticism but stops short of destructive conflict.
Is it your belief, Thomas, that as a lawyer working for the Foundation I ought to be able to issue public personal attacks on Florence, Jimmy, Kat, Domas, Stuart, Frieda, and Jan-Bart?
--Mike
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On 17/05/2008, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thomas Dalton writes:
"Trustees agree that that, during their terms on the Board and for three years thereafter, they shall not, in any communications with the press or other media or any customer, client or supplier of the Foundation, or any of the Foundation's affiliates, or in discussions on community mailing lists, blogs, or other community forums, personally criticize, ridicule or make any statement that personally disparages or is personally derogatory of the Foundation or its affiliates or any of their respective directors, trustees, or senior officers."
That explicitly bans all public criticism.
That is untrue. Note the use of the word "personally" (it appears three times). The idea here is actually to *encourage constructive criticism outside of personal attacks*. The idea here is not to make someone who is selected for the Board the victim of personal attacks from other members of the Board during their term of service and for a limited period thereafter.
You've changed "criticise" to "attack" (and continued to use "attack" in the rest of your email) as if the terms are interchangeable - in my view, they are not. If you consider all (personal) criticism to be an attack, then clearly you're going to have a problem with it. I view criticism as an attempt to improve things. If it's a person that needs to improve, then the criticism will be personal. I think it's just as important to encourage people to make constructive criticism about other people as it is the encourage them to make constructive criticism about anything else (really, I struggle to see how you can criticise anything other than a person or group of people - criticising what they do, rather than them, is just semantics).
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