A few days ago I asked what it was that we as the community could do to enhance transparency within the Foundation. This was not what I had in mind. Why would Jimmy or anyone else in a position of authority at the WMF seek to engage with those making criticisms when they'll be subject to acts like this; private emails posted without permission and shorn of context? I'm sure that Jimmy will think twice next time before trying to explain his thinking or give information, and who could blame him? There might be a line where it is acceptable to publicise an email without consent (say, if Jimmy had threatened to punch James in the nose), but IMHO even though Jimmy comes off as a bit of a jerk in this one, it falls far short of that line.
I know Pete that you meant well with your actions, but I fear that you may actually have done quite a bit of damage.
Cheers, Craig
On 11 March 2016 at 08:24, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Pete,
On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 9:21 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I carefully considered whether to publish this email before doing so. I'm confident I'm on solid ethical ground (i.e., didn't violate anyone's rights), and I'm pretty sure the impact on Wikimedia
will
be positive in the end as well.
It's hard to argue with this statement one way or the other (when you are sure, but you cannot prove.) From experience we have seen that Wikimedia is a big and distributed Movement and the impact of such actions on the Movement is unlikely to be noticeable .
Specifics about my choice to release the email below:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com
wrote:
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:
I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what
it's
worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing
it.)
It is problematic that you have checked with James but not Jimmy prior to publishing this email. The content of the email does not justify this action for me.
Erik,
So the "private channel" you mention has never existed between Jimmy
Wales
and myself. There has never been an agreement, either explicit or
implied,
between us about whether our communications are private.
There are norms that people follow in online communications. It is expected that you check with the sender of the email before publishing his/her email. People expect private conversations to stay private, and the definition of a private conversation is not complicated in most of the people's minds: if a conversation doesn't happen in a public channel, it's considered private.
Where I do have a healthy line of communication with someone, I agree with
you.
If you see that you don't have a healthy line of communication with Jimmy, you may want to consider not communicating with him at all. Initiating and/or participating in conversations about someone when you cannot have a healthy conversation with that person won't be beneficial. You will end up being in a position that you cannot improve things between the two of you, but you will have extra information that you will feel burdened to share with others.
I hope you think about what you did here, and you decide to take a different course of action in the future.
Best, Leila
-- Leila Zia Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pete Forsyth Date: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:49 AM Subject: Re: A conversation? To: Jimmy Wales, James Heilman
Jimmy, thanks for following up -- and James, thanks for alerting me of
this
(it went to an old email address I no longer check. Good reminder
though, I
am putting an auto-reply on there.)
I see that we have three things under discussion, and I want to reiterate that I strongly urge the first:
- JW and JMH have a private conversation with the support of an
independent, skilled facilitator 2. JW and JMH have a truly one-on-one conversation 3. JW and JMH have a conversation with PF as informal facilitator
I appreciate being looped in here, but I want to say very clearly: I
don't
have the professional skills to serve as a facilitator here, even if I
did
I am too involved to do it well, and I also don't really have the bandwidth. However, I'm sure the WMF's HR department could refer you to some excellent people. (I could give referrals, but I'm sure the HR department is better equipped for that.) I think that the value of professional facilitation/mediation/ombuds/whatever is well known, so I won't go into the details of why I think this is a good idea unless
asked.
In the meantime, I would very strongly urge you, Jimmy, to cease making speculative statements about James' honesty or state of mind. James is probably much less volatile than me, but personally I would probably
freak
out if somebody was saying stuff like that about me, either publicly or privately. It's highly inflammatory.
I would also request that you address (publicly, I hope) my main question about your interpretation of the board vote about "discussing long term strategy" as evidence of James' dishonesty. I think that is a point you could, and should, walk back without much drama. I think it's safe to say that it's highly obvious that you two agree about what constitutes "long term strategy," and that's fine -- but the fact that it's become a referendum on somebody's integrity is not, in my view, fine at all. I
think
it would help things a great deal if you could publicly acknowledge that point.
I'll leave the other points to be dealt with between you, ideally with professional support. I really can't play the mediator role here.
-Pete _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe