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

[Christiano Moreschi]

That's as may be - though I will point out that Carolyn Doran would not even have stood up to a Google search, let alone a criminal records check - the whole-shooting-the-boyfriend thing wound up in the Washington Post. Seems like it took the wikinewsies approximately 5 minutes to find the archived stories. From there, again, it seems as though plenty of US states keep online free jail records, easily accessible, and certainly plenty do keep records of current inmates of the state prisons, again accessible online and for free (including Florida, which have a very dandy "Find an inmate" search button)! Remarkable!

The one thing I don't understand is this. Jimbo says he had no knowledge of this whole Carolyn Doran business until it hit The Register. That's fine, I guess we have to believe that. Did no one bother to tell him? Evidently not. I refuse to believe that no one at WMF knew anything until The Register made their phone call/published the story. What I am asking is who knew what when. The whole reaction to this has been one of confusion - this was always going to hit the press anyway, so surely a more coordinated response could have been planned?

CM

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.

> Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> > Actually, there's not necessarily any informant at all, though the Register have got their facts completely correct (as far as I can make out, this pretty much all tallies with my own data). Virtually all the data for confirmation of the facts is available online for free, though actually finding this data would either require a tip-off or a very impressive dirt-digging operation. 
> > 
> > Really, I don't think anyone's accusing Doran of stealing money from WMF (yet), much as she seems to have stolen from others.
> 
> Two issues here - the dazzling incompetence displayed by the WMF 
> people/Board in not doing a criminal records check
> 
> (over here, in the UK, you can't even breathe without getting Criminal 
> Records Bureau clearance, I'm sure fellow UK-based WikiMedians
> 
> can back me up here) - and if, and to what extent, people at WMF have 
> lied to us and to the media.
> > 
> > Fuckups can be forgiven and forgotten. Nobody ever trusts someone caught out in lying again, though.
> > 
> > CM
> 
> Hello
> 
> You relate your own experience in UK. I can relate my experience in 
> France. Background checks of criminal past are extremely unusual. What 
> is usual is to contact former employers (which is something I did when 
> we hired Sue and Mike for example).
> 
> It does not seem to be very common practice in the USA to check criminal 
> background. Originally, Carolyn was hired through a company. This 
> company did not do any check on her either, even though they were 
> providing bookkeepers.
> When Carolyn was hired by Brad through this company, we had only 3 staff 
> members.
> 
> One thing I will be absolutely insistent upon is that I have always told 
> the truth.  And to the best of my knowledge, other board members told 
> the truth as well. When she was hired, we had no idea she had a criminal 
> background, or it is pretty obvious we would not have hired her. You may 
> choose to believe us or not on this, but if you are going to call us 
> liars, I will ask you to provide proofs that we lied.
> 
> Also, we have been asked not to comment on personnel issues from our 
> legal counsel and I hope you would not advice us generally to not follow 
> the recommandation of WMF legal advisor.
> 
> Florence


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