On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 12:03 PM, Denny Vrandečić <vrandecic(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Just a few points of clarification:
* I have, to the best of my memory, passed on information only with the
understanding of my sources. If any of my sources disagrees with that,
please send me a message - I want to know and understand that I made a
mistake there.
* We are not talking about the information being shared with the whole
Board (this was not clear from my account, sorry). No one was asked to
forward information to the whole Board. Instead, external legal counsel was
collecting the documents: they were sent to the lawyers, under
attorney-client privilege, not to the whole Board or the Task Force.
* I am surprised to see James state that he was informed at a later point
that his duty as a trustee is towards the WMF, although that explains a few
things. He was sitting in the same room when we received legal training at
our first Board meeting, and he also signed (and, I assume, read) the same
documents I had.
I am rather sad to see so many assumptions of bad faith. I was hoping that
by being more open about the events, it would help with transparency and
healing. It was not easy to have this account published in the first place,
and now I start to see that it was possibly a mistake.
It strengthens my resolution to stay away from Wikimedia politics, and I
hope that this will free up the time and energy to get more things done. I
am thankful and full of respect for anyone who is willing to deal with that
topic in a constructive manner.
Denny, thank you for your summary of events and your willingness to provide
information that wasn't widely available. I hope you continue to be willing
to do that, even understanding that there is no guarantee that criticism
will not be part of the result. Talking through these things brings up
points of confusion and misunderstanding and helps clear them up for
everyone, and this is a good thing. An example - if the WMF/board hires an
outside law firm, the attorney-client privilege is between the WMF and the
firm; individual employees are not protected against disclosure of
information by the firm to the WMF because the employee is not the client,
the WMF is.