[Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption

[Birgitte SB]

Even if there is no corruption, there will be.

Just look at it dispassionately. Wikimedia has how many chapters? And aims to have how many more?  All self-organized, boot-strapped operations operating under different systems, in different cultures with varying tolerances for mixing self-interest with duty.  The odds dictate that some of these organizations will fail.  And there will be some level self-interest involved in failure or the floundering of chapters.  This should be expected.  The question is what sort of process we should have for dealing with chapters that exceed our tolerance for this sort of thing.  Ideally we should have such a process in place with clear expectations before there is ever any need to use it.  

But pretending corruption is something that won't happen or can be prevented on a absolute level is silly.  I haven't a clue what anyone is referring to as current examples.  I don't really care for politics and gossip, so I personally don't even want to know.  But it is worth talking about what sort of process we should develop to deal with such things for its own sake.  We can't simply depend on people being better than human.  Given a large enough sample, people will do what they do; what they have always done. It shouldn't be controversial to ask for a system to be put in place to mitigate the harm from people behaving in such a reliably predictable fashion as becoming corrupted by money or power.


Birgitte SB


--- On Wed, 7/14/10, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 10:27 AM
> Hoi,
> Thomas that is too easy. Even when there is no corruption
> .... the notion
> that this idea lives among our people is upsetting. It is
> well worth it to
> be careful this in our communication. I will argue that we
> are not good at
> getting our message out. It could get more of a priority.
> 
> Regular reporting is hard. Ask Sue for instance why she
> does not find the
> time to provide us with monthly updates.. I am convinced
> that she just does
> not find the time. That does not mean that it is sad that
> there is so little
> coming out of the office in the way of information. I
> believe that with more
> information we will not make this feeling go away; I do
> believe that our
> proceedings become less opaque.
> Thanks,
>        GerardM
> 
> On 14 July 2010 17:20, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > On 14 July 2010 16:13, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > And I am completely fine with treating my points
> as unfounded.
> >
> > Ok, then this discussion is over. There is no point us
> wasting our
> > time discussing unfounded accusations.
> >
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