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

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com>:

> John Lee wrote:
>> This is appalling.
>
> Or else it's no big deal at all.  Partly it depends on how you
> look at it.
>
> I don't know all the details of this case (and, frankly, I don't
> care), but my own opinion is that we demonize convicted felons
> far too much.  (I'm speaking of society in general, not the
> Wikipedia community in particular.)  We used to have a much more
> tolerant and forgiving attitude: once you've served your time,
> your debt to society is repaid, and (with perhaps a few exceptions)
> you're a free person.  But these days, a felony conviction is an
> eternal, everexpanding black spot, and in most cases that's just
> wrong: if a felony conviction means that you can't do anything
> or participate normally in society for the rest of your life, we
> might as well say that all felonies are punishable by deportation
> or execution.
>
>> Even if only the broad outline of the story is true, this will
>> be a bad PR hit for Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
>
> Well, given the aforementioned trend in society (not to mention
> the reaction on this list), yeah.  But it shouldn't have to be
> that way, and we on this list certainly shouldn't fan the flames.

Two problems: first, there were multiple convictions, some of which was for
fraud. You never put someone with a fraud conviction in charge of money. For
anything. And second, the Foundation survives on donations and if it makes bad
PR decisions, donations go down and the entire credibility of all Wikimedia
projects goes down as well.