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(a)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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Denny Vrandečić
<vrandecic(a)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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James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine