What Michel said... This is a very interesting story, but I'm left to
imagine some crucial, looming details.
I have no first-hand knowledge of what really happened, but your
description of staff contacting a small number of Board members, and asking
for confidentiality, strongly indicates that the staff were fearful of some
sort of retribution, and each chose Board members who they personally
believed would protect them. This is an educated guess, based on our siege
mentality at the Foundation last November.
When the four of you were asked to hand over all information about the
case, that would naturally include any personal email communications. If I
were in your position, I would have respected the agreement of confidence
with anyone who had contacted me, up to and maybe even beyond a subpoena,
unless I had the authors' permission to release. If there is some legal
reason the Board members are not allowed behave according to this standard,
we need to make it very clear going forward. I doubt the staff would have
had these conversations if this is the case, and they had been informed so.
I'm also concerned that there seems to be a conflation between several
incidents--the original "Gang of Four" investigation was clearly a huge
mess and I would hope that apologies were made all around for what happened
there. However, protecting some sort of possibly compromising or personal
information is another thing entirely.
Hoping for more clarity,
Adam
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Michel Vuijlsteke <wikipedia(a)zog.org>
wrote:
Just to be sure I understand the issue: staff members
reached out
specifically to the four of you and asked for confidentiality, and then the
Board demanded 'all documents', presumably including some confidential
staff information, and James only very reluctantly shared it?
Michel
On 2 May 2016 19:10, "Denny Vrandečić" <vrandecic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In the following I want to present a personal
account of events leading
to
James’ removal as a Board member, as I remember
them. It was written
while
I was still on the Board, and the Board agreed on
having it sent. The
text
was heavily discussed and edited amongst members
of the Board, but in the
end it remains my personal account. I realize that it potentially
includes
post-factum sensemaking, affecting my
recollection of events.
October 1 and 2 2015, Dariusz, James, Patricio and I received phone calls
from a small number of Wikimedia Foundation staff expressing concerns
about
the Foundation. They asked explicitly for
confidentiality. I wanted to
approach the whole Board immediately, but due to considerations for
confidentiality, the sensitive nature of the topic, and the lack of an HR
head at the time, the others decided against at this moment. Effectively,
this created a conspiracy within the Board from then on for the following
weeks.
With Patricio’s approval, Dariusz and James started to personally collect
and ask for reports from staff. Unfortunately, this investigation was not
formally approved by the whole Board. It was also conducted in a manner
that would not secure a professional and impartial process. After a few
weeks, we finally reached out to the rest of Board members. They
immediately recognized the necessity for a separate formal task force
which
was set up very quickly.
The formal task force was created end of October. This task force
involved
outside legal counsel and conducted professional
fact finding. The first
request of the task force to the Board members was to ask for all
documents
and notes pertaining to the case. Unfortunately,
although there has been
more than a week of time, this has not happened in full.
The task force presented its result at the November Board meeting, where
it
was discovered during the second day of the Board
meeting that the
previous
investigation has not provided all available
information. Thus, the fact
finding had to be extended into the Board meeting. At the Board meeting
itself, James in particular was repeatedly asked to share his documents,
which only happened on the very last day of the retreat and after
several,
increasingly vigorous requests. Some members of
the Board were left with
an
impression that James was reluctant to cooperate,
even though it was
expected that since he participated in an investigation done in an
improper
manner, that he would be more collaborative to
make up for these
mistakes.
Due to that lack of transparency and information sharing, the Board
retreat
in November turned out to be extremely
ineffective. If we had all
information that was gathered available to the Board in due time, and if
that information was gathered more openly in the first place, the Board
could have acted more effectively.
I was worried that the confidentiality of the Board would not be
maintained, and I was particularly worried about James’ lack of
understanding of confidential matters, a perception also fueled by his
noncooperation and conduct. Some of his behaviour since unfortunately
confirmed my worries. I raised this as an issue to the Board.
While discussing the situation, James remained defensive, in my eyes
answered questions partially, and, while formally expressing apologies,
never conveyed that he really took ownership of his actions or understood
what he did wrong. This lead to a malfunctioning Board, and in order to
fix
the situation I suggested James’ removal.
I voted for James’ removal from the Board because of his perceived
reluctance to cooperate with the formal investigation, his withholding of
information when asked for, his secrecy towards other Board members, even
once the conspiracy was lifted, and him never convincingly taking
responsibility for and ownership of his actions and mistakes. This is
why I
get triggered if he positions himself as an
avatar of transparency. The
whole topic of the Knowledge Engine - although it played a part in the
events that lead to the November meeting - did not, for me, in any way
influence the vote on James’ removal. It was solely his conduct during
and
following the November meeting.
I am glad to see that, since James’ removal until I left, the Board has
been functioning better.
I hope that this account helps a little bit towards renewing our culture
of
transparency, but even more I hope for
understanding. The Board consists
of
volunteers and of humans - they cannot react in
real-time to events, as
the
Board was never set up to do so. Trustees -
myself included - made
mistakes. By opening up about them, I hope that we can facilitate a
faster
and more complete healing process, and also have
this knowledge and
experience available for future Board members and the community.
Denny
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