[WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.

[Risker]

On Dec 13, 2007 9:43 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14/12/2007, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
> > According to the Register,  the Foundation's former COO was convicted
> felon.
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/
> >
> > This is just great. And now all the Register's previous material looks
> correct
> > because they broke this nonsense. This is likely going to be all over
> the
> > newspapers tomorrow. I'm so shocked and appalled that I don't even know
> > what to
> > say about this. Why were basic background checks not done and why
> > didn't we know
> > about this sooner. Are we trying to implode?
>
> Why would you do a background check for a pretty standard office job?
> I don't know about the US, but in the UK such background checks are
> usually only done for jobs where the person will be working with
> children, or similar. Pretty much every application form I've seen has
> the question "Do you have any criminal convictions, other than any
> legally spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?" (or words to
> that effect), and they just take your word for it. If WMF didn't ask,
> then that was a serious mistake (although an understandable one - by
> the time she was employed directly, she had been working as a temp for
> a while, so it's entirely possible that no-one thought to ask when
> checking for such things changed from being the agency's
> responsibility to being WMF's - of course, it may be time to pick a
> new temp agency...), if they asked and she lied, then its not really
> WMF's fault. You can't go around refusing to trust anything anybody
> says.
>
> Background checks probably wouldn't be done for a temp office worker.
There's a huge difference for a senior executive with signing authority - it
is simply due dilligence. No wonder the audit isn't finished yet, now every
single transaction she was involved in has to be properly tracked down.
People forget that the WMF is a charitable organization and has some pretty
stringent fiduciary responsibilities in law.

Risker