"We are transparent in our operations, both to our communities and more generally to the public."

It has been over a week since the question of whether the WMUK board of trustees asked D'Arcy about his past Wikimedia contributions was raised. The silence from all board members is telling. I had hoped that the board or D'Arcy would use the opportunity to knock on the head what appears to be a minor past mistake of judgement.

Looking over D'Arcy's public profile and past clients, I am puzzled at how D'Arcy got invited to tender for the interim position for this specialist open knowledge charity. Presumably both the recruitment process and D'Arcy's contract represents a significant investment of 2013/14 Wikimedia grants and UK donations. I would appreciate it if the board or D'Arcy would meet the charity's stated value of transparency, by explaining for the benefit of both charity members and readers of this email list, if any current or past board member personally recommended D'Arcy the position, and exactly what process was followed to meet Wikimedia UK's published obligations to ensure an open process and competitive tendering to assure best value.

Thanks, Fae

On 18 November 2014 at 19:24, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:

It would be nice to hear from the board how this was discussed before offering the interim position. After all, in the several interviews I took part in for WMUK staff, pretty much the first basic question was along the lines of 'have you ever edited Wikipedia?' as a way of assessing what the candidate knows about Wikimedia; so I can not believe this would come as a surprise considering how sensitive the board is on COI and its perception by our community.

Fae