Hmm the lesson here is to realise that we have a wonderful community that shows some wonderful things about the human condition. However what I'm seeing is a lynch mob gathering on the wiki whilst all the decent people stay inside. The board should work out how to avoid and diminish such situations and not to just be a source of fuel and amplification.
R On 9 Jan 2014 14:44, "Fæ" faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 January 2014 14:09, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 9 January 2014 13:10, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
...
Though it's not unreasonable to infer that, they've made no such declaration - leastways, in their posts that I have seen, the phrase used is "frowned upon".
and the apparent swift termination of a long term employee,
Again, that's not apparent to me; she may have resigned, wither willingly or under duress. WMF comments on the matter have not made such facts clear.
You may be waiting an *awfully* long time for the facts to be made clear. I think Occam's razor applies and the specific case does not make all that much difference to the issue. WMUK needs to have a governance policy as to whether it accepts that employees, contractors and trustees can have undeclared past paid editing projects or secret accounts on Wikipediocracy (or similar) where they can play at being double agents (or whatever other good or bad motivation they might have).
I believe it appropriate for the Board of Trustees of Wikimedia UK to agree a policy at the next board meeting
to
require employees, contractors and trustees to publicly declare any
current
or past paid editing activities, or related unpaid advocacy that may represent a potential conflict of interest.
WMUK already has a CoI policy does it not? No hasty action should be taken, particularly while the issues discussed above are not clear.
I am not asking for hasty action, just a basic commitment that the board of trustees will consider a policy at the next board meeting. I am specifically not asking for knee-jerk reactions without consultation with the members of the charity, and probably consultation with WMF Legal, as now seems to be normal working practice for the current board of trustees.
As for the current WMUK COI policy, speaking as a past Chairman of the charity, no it does not adequately cover this. In fact you can drive a coach and horses through it with regard to these situations.
I have posted this same proposal at <
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#Declarations_for_paid_editing_and_...
,
however I recommend that should anyone wish to discuss specific
examples,
including naming or linking to the WMF employee case, that this is limited to this independent email
list
rather than using the WMUK wiki.
As a meta issue, I find it unhelpful to have discussions split between venues. Better to start one, and then post pointers to it elsewhere.
Apparently decentralized discussion is the wiki-norm. However I agree that having most of the discussion in one place is useful and considering recent actions by the board to delete critical discussion on the WMUK wiki, this list looks more open to free speech.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
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