Hi Illario,

Apologies, I probably explained myself poorly. I never said that a chapter is a representative of the Wikimedia community, rather I was trying to explain that João’s claimed experience (emphasis on claimed) in management and conflict resolution was a major factor in him being elected to the Board. At the time, WMPT thought that that could be very valuable to the chapter. So, we agree, a heterogeneous board is absolutely an advantage, but in this case the issue was not one of diversity, but rather of competence and alignment to the movement goals and principles.

In practice, he did not contribute to the management of the chapter, and he was not prepared to an increase of the chapter activities. He very quickly started demonstrating uneasiness with any procedural decision he did not personally vet (which are imperative in volunteer-based, collaborative projects), and soon after, without any previous warning, started sending legal threats going as far as using a lawyer to intimidate one of our most active members on behalf of WMPT (without discussing it with anyone beforehand), and resigned.

We have no intention to expose João even more in this public mailing list, so we will not provide a comprehensive list of the problems we found with his term on the board. But to make it clear, when this whole issue began to be addressed, even though we did not ask him to stay on the Board, we did invite him to continue on the chapter, working with us, as AffCom can confirm. Just not in any role with legal responsibilities.

Cheers,