WMF staff reached out to a few chosen Board members, including myself, specifically with a request to maintain confidentiality. They were afraid of retribution. We followed with an earnest but incomplete investigation. In early Oct I pushed for moving the investigation from the initial group of 4-6 board members to the entire board. Instead another subsection of five board members were chosen to continue the investigation (a group which included Denny and Patricio but not myself).
I was involved, along with WMF staff, in preparing a summary of relevant details and submitted this to this new board group. Additionally Patricio, and Denny were cc'ed on the majority of my emails regarding the situation in question, and therefore I had the understanding that they would bring this information forwards. The information I shared was a full reflection of what I had learned during my conversations with staff.
As for my willingness to share all communications with the entire board, I believe I managed to communicate all relevant details without violating the explicit confidence requested of me by staff members. (Note that in later conversations I was informed that it may not be legal for board members to promise confidentiality to individual staff, as our ultimate duty is to the WMF as a whole).
On the other hand, I however, had requested multiple times before the November board meeting to see what information those 5 investigation board members were looking at. I was denied access to these details. Some of the documents contained key information I only become aware of in the last couple of months.
That we were not all looking at the same relevant evidence, I would argue, was one reason why the November board meeting was less than a success.
James Heilman
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 11:33 PM, Oliver Keyes ironholds@gmail.com wrote:
+1 to that question, which is the biggest flag I have here.
"The highest standards of confidentiality" is nice but, as you note, people presumably reached out to these individual Board members, rather than the whole Board, because they felt the individuals could be trusted a lot better than the Board as a whole. Which in my mind is totally understandable.
If people reached out in confidence, demanding that their experiences and information be turned over to the entire Board - without noting that as a caveat when first interacting with the source, or without asking for the source's permission - well, I'd be cagey too. Anyone who has ever dealt with human subject research would be cagey.
if people *did* grant permission, obviously that's an entirely different situation. But if they didn't, James was doing entirely the right thing by refusing to turn over, wholesale, information communicated to him and him alone, to a wider body that was quite clearly not trusted by the people making these reports.
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 4:03 PM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Denny Vrandečić vrandecic@gmail.com wrote:
The protection of any personal or confidential information was, to the
best
of my knowledge, at all time guaranteed and has not been compromised.
The
official task force, set up by the Trustees, worked under the standards
of
keeping confidentiality, obviously. I thought this goes without saying,
but
I am explicating it.
Was information passed to people on the task force without the original
sources' consent?
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