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

[Todd Allen]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 15/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
>   
>> Someone there must have known - the COO can't just vanish to jail
>> and no one on the staff/Board knows anything - and they neglected
>> to tell you. That's the other story of incompetence here ...
>>     
>
> Wait, wait, wait.
>
> You seem to be assuming the Foundation *had* to know about her
> extracurricular activities, but this seems to be a misplaced
> assumption.
>
> Let's look at the story again, shall we?
>
> ----
>
> First off, her past history. This is the stuff that a background check
> would have picked up - one doesn't seem to have been done. Fair dos,
> criticise them for that, you can consider it unfortunate or
> unforgivable according to taste. But if you don't do it, you don't
> pick up anything, however odd it may be...
>
> (I am assuming she didn't tell them. I would be quite bemused if she
> had and they employed her regardless)
>
> Secondly, her time at Wikimedia.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/page2.html
>
> * "Four months after Doran's hiring, on May 20th, she was arrested ...
> paid a $5,250 bond and was released that same day."
>
> So here's our first incident. Looking at the calendar, May 20th was a
> Sunday; it all happened on that one day; if she didn't tell anyone,
> how would the Foundation have known? I know this is all a matter of
> public record, but that doesn't equate to "people get told about it" -
> I'm sure *my* HR department doesn't scan the local paper every week to
> find out if I've been caught doing something.
>
> * An incident where she was stopped by immigration sometime in June
>
> Details entirely unclear; maybe they knew about it, maybe they didn't.
> Even if they did, there's no reason they would know the *content* of
> the interview.
>
> * "On July 4 ... the Wikimedia Foundation passed a private resolution
> concerning Carolyn Doran, and she was soon removed from the official
> Foundation staff list"
>
> ['soon' = on the 10th]
>
> * "A month later, she was arrested and jailed by the Pinellas Park,
> Florida police after a warrant was issued by the sheriff in Loudoun
> County, Virginia. ... This November ... she was extradited to
> Virginia"
>
> It seems that the 'carted off to jail' happened a good month after she
> *stopped* being WMF's COO. It doesn't strike me as desperately
> surprising that they didn't know about it - keeping tabs on the
> whereabouts of your ex-employees a month after they've left is very
> nice, and all, but not really required!
>
> ----
>
> The rest of it seems to boil down to "when we knew about it we could
> google and find confirmation!" Well, bully for you. How many of your
> current colleagues do you regularly google to check on their criminal
> pasts? If the answer is more than zero, um, this strikes me as a
> little worrying...
>
> We can legitimately criticise the hiring practices here, and I
> certainly won't argue with you doing so. But to think that Wikimedia
> somehow failed to notice an employee being sent to jail is just mad -
> it's something even the original article isn't claiming!
>
>   
Just what do you think you're doing, bringing logic and reason into a
perfectly good excuse to blame everyone and their dog for something?

Mistakes happen. This is a big one, and there better be changes to
ensure it never happens again, but I have a sneaking suspicion the
Foundation has damn well learned its lesson already. Can't we move
forward from here, and discuss prevention of similar problems, rather
than looking back and seeing who we can point fingers at and look for
conspiracies?

But, you know, conspiracy theorism is more interesting than suggestions
for personnel improvements. It's also useless, but hey, details.

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