On 19 September 2012 15:43, Nicholas Jackson dr.nicholas.jackson@gmail.comwrote:
On 19 September 2012 14:13, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
I would ask that you resign from the board.
Perhaps it's not my place to say this, but here goes anyway. I've edited Wikipedia articles on and off for a few years, but after attending a couple of absolutely splendid local outreach events I was inspired to actually join the UK chapter and subscribe to this mailing list.
In the two or three months I've been lurking here, I've witnessed two campaigns for board members to resign, and I have to say I'm beginning to wonder quite what sort of organisation I've joined. I know almost nothing about the background to either of these cases, and to be honest I don't really think I want to know. Maybe the critics do have a point, after all. Certainly the trustees of a charity should behave with decorum and integrity, so I wouldn't want to gainsay any legitimate attempts to hold them to account. But it seems that all the necessary information was made available to the voting members well before the election, and they collectively decided that they'd still rather elect these people to the board. So in the absence of compelling further evidence, which this doesn't appear to be, I'd have thought that's that until the next election.
I'm on the board of a small educational charity myself, and I'm very glad that I and my fellow trustees don't have to put up with constant sniping from the sidelines, calls for our resignation, or suspiciously-timed articles appearing in the national press. If we did, I'd almost certainly just say to hell with it, and walk away.
I suppose my question is: does this sort of politicking actually serve the aims of Wikimedia UK at all, and if not could it perhaps stop soon? It just seems as though all this infighting does far more damage to the reputation of the chapter than the fact that one of the trustees was temporarily banned, under somewhat questionable circumstances, from editing Wikipedia, or that one of the other trustees might have got a handful of free leaflets in connection with a pretty cool-sounding outreach initiative he's working on.
Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I've got a stack of other things to do this afternoon so I'm going to get back to them.
Nicholas
Yes, indeed. It's an interesting question.
There is a site called Wikipediocracy which critiques Wikipedia and associated organisations. I *think* (but am uncertain of the timeline) this issue stemmed from comments raised there.
I'm a member of that site; for a number of reasons, but partly because I agree with some of the members that Wikipedia is corrupt in places and partly because it is always worth interacting with your critics.
Certain other people are members of that site, who tend to be a lot harder in their criticism and disdain for Wikipedia.
There is a balance over what issues of concern need to be taken forward as true concerns, and which ones are simply blown up out of proportion. Even then, genuine problems can sometimes be over egged by the WO community.
I'm concerned about transparency and openness - we are not as transparent as we could be (based on our ideals) so I tend to push in those areas.
It has made me unpopular; I get an appreciable amount of hate mail and anonymous threats. Following the Fae incident this ramped up somewhat. I get cold shouldered by others in our community because I am critical.
This is par for the course.
But on this issue; I am happy to press Roger for clarity about his commercial enterprise, and how the board is responding (i.e. I had no idea he offered to resign twice - that is the sort of information we should be sharing!!). I'm not pushing for his resignation, I am pushing for a clearly delineated situation where everyone is aware of the lie of the land.
Small charities are often subject to corruption; both nefarious and accidental. I've seen it happen numerous times (and picked apart the pieces for court afterwards). I am eager we build our charity on more progressive lines; that exhibit exemplary ethics and professional interactions.
It *appears* Roger's interactions have indeed been ethical here - we just didn't know about it. And perception of our organisation is one of the problems we need to address.
Tom