[Gendergap] washington dc

[Risker]

On 7 October 2011 12:03, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am saying that you are questioning the decision of an independent body
>> to select a person for membership in the same way that he questioned the WMF
>> for selecting a person he did not consider appropriate. In short, he sought
>> a non-project sanction for on-project activities/concerns. I do not see a
>> difference between that behaviour, and members of this list seeking a
>> non-project sanction (i.e., removing someone from a chapter Board of
>> Directors) for on-project activities/concerns, particularly when the
>> on-project concern was....well, doing exactly what seems to be proposed
>> here.I agree that we need to be sensitive in general about how we discuss
>> these type of issues on a public mailing list. And in this case since one
>> party to the case is an active participate to this mailing list, we need to
>> take extra caution that we are not only hearing one side of the story.
>>
>
> That said, I don't think that it is actually a parallel comparison. We
> don't want users escalating disputes by calling employers because it can
> have loads of negative repercussions for Wikipedia as well as the person who
> is reported. But I see no reason that users shouldn't take into
> consideration whether they support having someone who has been banned on one
> WMF project in a position of trust in a WMF related organization or another
> wiki. ArbCom does the same type of thing when it vets users for positions of
> trust such as checkuser. People take into account an users past history when
> they vote for steward or WMF Board members. So, I don't have a problem with
> someone raising a concern about it in this situation.
>


Sydney, I'd agree with you if the "employer" involved wasn't the WMF.  There
is much that has not been sorted out between various layers of the
intersecting WMF communities; it's commonplace and quite acceptable on some
projects to criticize the actions of WMF employees directly (indeed, there's
a goodly chunk of it on the English Wikipedia), and there have been fairly
regular and public calls for the dismissal or sanctioning of WMF employees.
Now, I don't think that's a great working environment, but certainly the
widely held overall community view is that WMF employees sort of work on
behalf of the community as a whole, and that their actions reflect on the
movement/community as a whole. In fact, that is essentially what is being
argued for in this case, with the exception that it's a chapter member and
not a WMF employee involved.  However, that viewpoint was soundly repudiated
in this particular arbitration case; ironically, the position being taken by
members of this mailing list effectively contradict the ruling that has led
to the sanctions that the members of this list have expressed a concern
about.

That is what I am getting at here.

Risker/Anne
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