[Foundation-l] Statement to the Associated Press

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 4:54 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>  Andrew, an organization that has to treat every unsubstantiated
>  allegation seriously is an organization that is extremely vulnerable.
>  It can easily be sent into a tailspin, dedicating 80% of its time just
>  refuting statements that haven't been backed up in the first place --
>  and many people will still accuse it of bad faith, and play bait and
>  switch. So, you published that e-mail, but how about that phone
>  conversation the other day? And the private meeting?

Look at it from the other angle, where information that is intended to
be kept secret (private mailing lists serve as a good and recent
example) aren't. Information that is intended to stay private is being
sent out to all sorts of people with negative intentions. If a
communication that you are engaged in is potentially embarrassing,
maybe you shouldn't be engaged in it? Go off the assumption that at
any time, an email or a taped phone conversation, or whatever could be
leaked to the press. With this in mind, do you do things a little
differently?

>  If you start out by believing that there might be sinister goings-on
>  at WMF, no amount of transparency will convince you otherwise. If you
>  start out from a _neutral_ position, you must demand evidence for any
>  allegation made -- and distance yourself from a source if it
>  repeatedly fails to provide such evidence.

I'm not making any allegations about anything whatsoever, and I'm not
blindly believing anything I've heard yet. In fact, I'm still
half-convinced that Jimmy is a regular saint with a terrible PR agent.
I take any blanket statement of complete innocence with a certain
grain of salt, but that's mostly because I've become accustomed to
hearing celebrities proclaim their own innocence, and then go to
court/prison/rehab when "new evidence" comes out later.

For instance, it would have been a lot better in my eyes (and maybe
other people would have been less happy with this) if Jimmy had said
"I acted in a way that I thought was appropriate, although in hind
sight it may have been possible for Mr Merkey to have misinterpreted
something I said, and for him to believe that I was going to edit his
article improperly", there wouldn't have been anything else to say
about it at all. Instead, we got "it's nonsense" (which, admittedly is
what some people asked for). If it turns out there is substance to
this allegation, then Jimmy could get nailed both for the original
problems and then for lying about it. If it's not an issue then it's
not an issue, and I certainly don't have anything further to say about
it.

--Andrew Whitworth