Thanks Brad for spotting this and bringing it here, and also to Jimbo for
filling in a few more details.
Just as an aside, my thinking is that this must have needed to be an
emergency action. Because if the BoT has been mulling this over for
awhile, it would be very poor governance to not have a strategy for how
this would be communicated, and to only have WMF Legal on the case after
the fact. We already see this thread filling up with a bunch of
speculation that is unhelpful and unhealthy, not just for James but also
for the BoT and the movement in general. I trust that there will be an
explanation forthcoming, not only for why James has been removed in this
way, but also for why there was seemingly not any planning for how to deal
with the fallout of that decision.
Cheers,
Craig
On 30 December 2015 at 03:47, Newyorkbrad <newyorkbrad(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's been mentioned on this list
that Jimmy Wales (one
of the board members) commented about this matter today on his En-WP
talkpage. Since I assume many people on this list don't follow that
page, I have copied his comment below:
"Hi everyone. I couldn't possibly agree more that this should have
been announced with a full and clear and transparent and NPOV
explanation. Why didn't that happen? Because James chose to post
about it before we even concluded the meeting and before we had even
begun to discuss what an announcement should say. WMF legal has asked
the board to refrain from further comment until they've reviewed what
can be said - this is analogous in some ways to personnel issues.
Ideally, you would have heard about this a couple of days from now
when a mutual statement by James and the board had been agreed. For
now, please be patient. Accuracy is critically important here, and to
have 9 board members posting their own first impressions would be more
likely to give rise to confusions. -- Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:35, 29
December 2015 (UTC)"
I'm not endorsing Jimbo's comment -- or the reverse -- as I frankly
find this whole situation strange and unfortunate. However, it seems
relevant and I thought people in this discussion might want to be
aware of it..
I also agree that the information about the two new board members
should be circulated promptly.
Newyorkbrad/IBM
On 12/29/15, Steinsplitter Wiki <steinsplitter-wiki(a)live.com> wrote:
The removal is not transparent at all.
Apart from that James was community elected. A democracy words different.
Very disappointing.
> From: rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 16:51:14 +0100
> To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board
>
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 4:00 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> > issue here. This is hardly unusual. Regarding the removal itself, at
> > least
> > in the United States, it's fairly common for members of a body to be
> > able
> > to remove/expel one of their own. The Wikimedia Foundation Board of
> > Trustees bylaws explicitly allow for removal of a member, with or
> > without
> > cause. Unlike in older Board resolutions, there's a clear public
> > accounting of how each of the Board members voted (as opposed to
simple
> > numeric totals). James posted that he
will work with Patricio to
provide
like others on this thread i think the WMF bylaws are broken in this
respect. not legally broken, but morally. i'd love to vote for a
trustee, and i'd love to reverse my decision in case a sufficient
party is not happy. if in this case james does not want to have a
public discussion he is free to resign. if the board thinks it cannot
work with james anymore, and is able to remove him without him beeing
ok with it, without public discussion, then i do not find it
transparent.
best,
rupert
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