[Foundation-l] Election mailings

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 7/5/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I read somewhere quickly that you are research officer of the
> Wikimedia Foundation, and that you might have done this with that hat.

Of course not, and if anyone is indicating otherwise then I have
failed to be clear, they are being confused, or they are being
malicious.

I have attempted to make it clear in my posts on this subject matter
that my actions were purely my own, taken on my own initiative,
without the knowledge, approval, or assistance of others.

In fact, I think less of our official process for it's lack of
awareness or involvement in matters of participation.

I took significant efforts to make sure my actual actions were the
same as my intentions, and that my intentions were necessary, clear
with my conscience, and fair in accordance with a reasonable sounding
objective criteria. That said, I do not doubt that there were errors
made. Whatever errors happened in my mailing were entirely my fault.

In particular, I was burdened with a significant amount of additional
work because I did not request the assistance of others.  Had I been
working with the assistance of the foundation I could emailed all
email enabled users on all projects in minutes, rather than the many
hours of work that my solo efforts demanded.

Although I was confident that my would be objectively justifyable, I
anticipated a potential negative political outfall and a violently
negative reaction which would come from a small minority of interested
parties.  I could not subject others to that risk.

I know you disagree with my actions, but it was and continues to be my
position that failing to act would have been unethical.  Continuing to
cry "spam" is not going to change my position: I value the views of
those who received the mail more than those who had already voted ...
and the overwhelming response from them is positive.

I think I am done speaking on this matter.