[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[Anthony]

On 9/14/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
> > On 9/14/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> As it ever occurred to you that Carolyn herself may have preferred so ?
> >
> >
> > Certainly.
> >
> > However, for a major entity such as the Wikimedia Foundation to lose
> > it's Chief Operating Officer without making a formal announcement
> > smacks of organizational immaturity. That this was not done, and that
> > this is being *defended* smacks of reasons that the Foundation wants
> > to keep hidden.
>
> Actually no. I think that on the contrary that case was an example of us
> maturing greatly.
>
> Meanwhile, there is a confidentiality agreement with Carolyn to not
> further comment. Carolyn has the full right of talking to you, but we,
> as an organization, can not give details.
> In the past, there were some questions of how trustworthy the Foundation
> could be with confidential personal data. The Foundation was blamed
> because some private data were supposingly revealed and a couple of
> checkusers preferred to stop being checkusers when we requested them to
> simply give us proof of their real identity, because they feared that
> some spills could occur and their private data could become public.
>
> I find quite amusing that now you are trying to blame us for precisely
> respecting confidentiality :-)
>
> Regardless, I think you'll have to get used to the fact that as the
> organization is growing and maturing, all new hire and all new
> resignations will not be announced noisily, nor commented in all private
> details. You are perfectly free to try to guess who, why, when and what.
>
Are you stating that Carolyn resigned, and that she was not fired or
laid off, or is it a violation of the confidentiality agreement to
answer that?

I would think the very least amount of transparency a public charity
should have would be to clarify that point, and that the board should
never sign a confidentiality agreement precluding even that.

I can't think of any public charity so grown and mature that it
wouldn't issue a public statement regarding the departure of its COO -
which leads me to believe that it's lack of growth and immaturity that
has brought the WMF to neglect such a thing.