[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia-blog] [Wikimedia Announcements] Joint statement from Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK

[Deryck Chan]

On 28 September 2012 22:39, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 28, 2012 9:45 PM, "Nathan" <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wow. I honestly didn't think the conflict of interest issue was this
> > serious.
>
> The conflict wasn't that bad, but the very poor handling of it casts
> serious doubts on how well Wikimedia UK leadership understands its
> responsibilities and its ability to carry them out. I suspect that is why
> the wmf has insisted on this.
>

I respectfully disagree. As I see it, the crux of the problem comes not
from the WMUK leadership's handling of the situation, but the continuous
hounding by outsiders against the Wikimedians involved in the conflict,
which from my point of view made it largely impossible for the WMUK board
to navigate through the conflict unscathed.

Perhaps that means I do agree there's doubt on how much ability WMUK's
leadership can deal with the conflict; but I simply don't see how it
could've been better handled given the situation WMUK was in.

Over the last two years WMF has become increasingly conservative over how
payment-processing should work, so much as to cause constant decry from the
local chapters, though it still comes as a surprise that WMF is retracting
payment-processing from WMUK. I can but guess that WMF is now becoming so
overly conservative that they would rather stop supporting local groups
altogether than risk the local groups bringing WMF into any trouble, a move
which I understand but am very disappointed to see.