On 28 May 2014 16:55, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 5/28/2014 5:59 AM, Fæ wrote:
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I do not really understand the point being made about not "engaging"
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I believe the point is that Wil, in particular, will not interfere with Wikimedia staff in carrying out their duties, assign them specific tasks, or otherwise attempt to supervise and direct their work. These functions properly belong to the employee's supervisor, so it's good for community members to keep this in mind generally, but especially important for Wil because otherwise his connection to Lila might create concern or confusion for the staff (as in the recent GitHub situation, which I believe was already mentioned). If those guidelines are respected, there should be no problem about Wil interacting with staff in an ordinary fashion. I'm sure Wil understands this and will be careful about it, and it's also good that Lila has said this publicly so that people have something to point to, in case anything is uncertain about whether Wil has some sort of special authority.
Thanks, that is a nice interpretation, it would be useful to have a confirmation that this was the intention of Lila's email.
It will be interesting to see whether in practice Wil has special authority, or not. It is quite hard to judge right now, having made so few contributions to Wikimedia projects, and as in the majority of discussions in various places (including Wil's English Wikipedia user page) his preferred form of first introduction is as "Lila Tretikov's significant other", which colours everyone's perception of how he should be treated.
Thanks, Fae