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

[John Lee]

On Dec 15, 2007 5:40 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/12/2007, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
> > Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007
> >
> > Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> > > For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that
> > > the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the
> > > boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to
> > > believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre.
> >
> > Again, I ask you.  If you knew something, why did you not tell me?
> >
> > --Jimbo
> > -------------------
> >
> > Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on
> > this list details of a private mailing list, together with your
> > opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral
> > responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something
> > very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a
> > fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo,
> > just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought
> > he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make
> > sure?
>
> As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that
> this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing.
> Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would
> have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty
> normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.

I don't like "Ditto" posts, but I'll make an exception for this -
strong ditto here. I would have done virtually the exact same thing.
If I were friends or having a chat with someone from the foundation I
might have brought the subject up in casual conversation ("Oh,
speaking of that, is this why..."), but otherwise I wouldn't have gone
and blown the whistle (so to speak), simply because considering how
hushed the whole affair was, I would have figured the foundation
already knew.

As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we
would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose
some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to
bear for that.

Johnleemk