Thanks for creating this document Yohann. It would be nice see the process and reasoning steps behind the creation of this document (or better still the document edit history and talk page!) . A couple of questions: 1) "The Covered Person shall not take any decision based on any political biases and any connections which he/she might have had or are currently having with any politically affiliated institution. He/she shall carry out his/her responsibilities in a manner that will serve to further the interests of WMIN only." Has there been a discussion of the definition of "political" here or how it would be differentiated from "ideological"? Is this based on an assumption that a knowledge-gathering project can be achieved without any "bias" ("knowledge is neutral")? What if "furthering the interest of WMIN" came in conflict with furthering the interests of the larger movement? Is there an "Ignore-All-Rules"-style clause? 2) The document notes that (c) voting is a situation that comes under "conflict of interest". What about the situation after voting - ie - there is a voter-expectation that leads to specific "Covered Persons" to come into a position of power and that there could be a conflict when favouring specific voting member(s). 3) The document does not suggest measures to reduce the effects of undetected (or undetectable) conflict of interest by such means as transparency of deliberations. Or if the organization does not wish to show extreme transparency, is there a system for supporting whistleblowers? best wishes Shyamal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Yohann Thomas <yohannvt(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Shyamal Apologies for the delay in replying to the email The process for creating the Conflict of Interest (CoI) policy had been going on with the previous EC. The current EC took forward their discussion with inputs from everyone. We had also floated an email some time back in this mailing list too Has there been a discussion of the definition of "political" here or how it By political, we mainly mean a political party. Regarding "Ignore-All-Rules" , there is no such clause. But here, we would want inputs again from the community that is such a clause required or not?? For the above specified situation, the investigation panel can be constituted to look into the probable CoI , as mentioned in the policy Currently, we are not at that level, where we need a highly specific policy..We feel that as the Organizations matures, the CoI policy can evolve with it.. Regards, Yohann Thomas Wikimedia India