Does anybody know if Susana is a subscriber to this list? If not, Andreas,
have you made any effort to make her aware of this discussion? She may have
relevant info to share, and it also seems proper that she should be aware
of a public discussion about her.
Ultimately, Andreas' question is (or IMO should be) about conflict of
interest. Would the Armenian government and/or the State Committee of
Science have expectations of Susana that are incompatible with the
responsibility of a Wikimedia Trustee? Or that would be difficult to
reconcile? Such questions should be asked of any candidate -- but when the
employer actually has a history of Wikipedia engagement, I tend to think
it's especially important to contemplate. We should be able to ask such
questions and explore the answers in a non-accusatory way.
I hope Susanna can provide her thoughts (ideally, in response to a question
on Meta Wiki, where it will be visible to voters, and available for
translation).
Also, commentary from somebody familiar with the Armenian government and
how its agencies function would be very helpful. Does anybody have expert
contacts you could reach out to for more information? One recent WMF
advisor comes to mind, I could reach out to her if somebody can formulate a
concise question to ask.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 12:29 PM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I cannot say much about the specific case, but in general: in small
countries it is not unusual that there is only one national
encyclopedia, and that it is directly or indirectly published or
supported by the government or an institution close to the government.
A good example is the Store Norske from Norway.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/2.1719/kein-geld-fuer-lexika-…
So it is not necessary to think immediately and exclusively about the
Soviet Union.
Kind regards
Ziko
2016-03-02 21:11 GMT+01:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru>ru>:
On 2016-03-02 20:58, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>
>
>
> Now, why are we bestowing Wikipedian of the Year honours on government
> employees of repressive regimes? If we had the US Secretary of Defense
> writing Wikipedia articles about the US Army, or had employees of the
> German government running Wikimedia Deutschland, I'm sure there'd be an
> outcry, even though those are countries with quite favourable records on
> human rights, press freedom and so on. The idea of an award would not
even
arise.
Susanna is (or was) a researcher, and every researcher in Armenia is a
state
employee. There are just no non-governmental
organizations who employ
researchers.
I do think there is a problem with a potential Armenian board member
(that
is, Turkish and Azeri Wikimedians would basically
consider board as not
legitimate), but I do not think the fact that she is or was employed by
the
Academy of Sciences is in any way problematic.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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