[Foundation-l] Statement to the Associated Press

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Uh, what records are you talking about? All of Jimbo's personal e-mails? Do
>  you want his bank statements, too? A top 10 website is going to attract a
>  lot of strange claims, and the Foundation and associated people don't need
>  to release a barrage of responses and records to each one - or they'd be
>  doing nothing else. Seriously - every new claim shouldn't be viewed as an
>  opportunity to paint the organization as neglectful, secretive and
>  anti-community. If you really want to feel like an insider, maybe that eBay
>  auction hasn't finished yet.

I'm specifically talking about not having to release individual
statements to each allegation. If relevant information wasn't hidden
in the first place, we wouldn't need to worry about carefully
releasing bits of it on demand. Call me a radical in this regard (the
label fits nicely), but there is a lot more transparency that we
should be demanding from this organization.

If a board member or foundation employee speaks to a donor about the
content of their wikipedia article, those conversations should be
logged. I personally don't think that too many of these conversations
should be happening anyway, at least not in an official context. In
this way, we avoid this he-said-she-said nonsense. I don't want to
have to take Jimmy's word for it any more then I am willing to take
Mr. Merkey's word. This is not me saying that I don't trust Jimmy, but
instead saying that if enough information was available for me to
research the topic myself, that I wouldn't have to employ trust at
all.

Most (except where prohibited by law) correspondence involving board
members acting in an official capacity should be made publicly
available. We can allow, of course, for other exceptions where
disclosing information which is barred by the privacy policy. If a
board member is having a conversation and they don't want anybody else
to know about it, chances are good that they shouldn't be having it.

--Andrew Whitworth