Fwd: Re: The other side of the crisis at WMFR - Wikimediafr

11 Oct 2017

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Sujet : Re: The other side of the crisis at WMFR
Date : Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:54:08 +0200
De : María Sefidari &lt;kewlshrink-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org&gt;
Répondre à : Wikimedia Mailing List 
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Dear all,

We would like to specifically address the allegations related to harassment
in this thread’s original email. We take all allegations of harassment
seriously. Earlier this year, the Board of Trustees was informed that
allegations of harassment had been made against the Wikimedia Foundation
Board Chair dating back to his time as chair of Wikimédia France. We
immediately directed the Foundation to investigate. The Foundation employed
independent, external experts and conducted an investigation. Based on the
information presented, the investigation found no support for the
allegations. That conclusion was conveyed to the Wikimedia Foundation Board
as well as the chair of Wikimédia France.

The Wikimedia Foundation remains committed to independent investigation if
presented with new information. Absent such information, we consider the
allegations to be without merit.

On behalf of the Board,

María Sefidari

El 8 oct. 2017 5:20, "John Erling Blad" &lt;jeblad(a)gmail.com&gt; escribió:

When I first saw the posts I thought it would probably be more opinions to
them than the very clear blame-game that were going on. Having a partly
anonymous community and a chapter that only represents some of the users
are an invitation to fierce battles.

Whatever going on at WMFR, I believe it is time for reevaluating the role
of WMF in this. I'm wondering if there should be a new board for WMF,
unless they get a new chair themselves asap. Reorganize, solve the
problems, and move on.

No, I do not know any of the people involved.

John Erling Blad
/jeblad

On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Marie-Alice Mathis <
mariealice.gariel(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

...
  Hello all,

 I haven’t had a real opportunity to introduce myself: I am Marie-Alice
 Mathis, 32, a now ex-member of the Board of Wikimédia France.

 The transition with the newly elected members of the Board is now complete
 and I gladly step down to get away from the violence, exhaustion and
 frustration of these past few months.

 I was a Board candidate because after completing my PhD I finally had more
 time to contribute to the projects and serve the community through the
 French chapter: after watching my husband Rémi Mathis do it for years I had
...
  a pretty good idea of what it meant. I did not know
our ED Nathalie Martin
 or our chair Émeric Vallespi before working with them, and now that I have
 I can vouch for their hard work and attachment to the movement’s values.

 Today, I have lost friends or people I thought were friends because I
 defended Nathalie and Émeric in good faith during the smear campaign based
 on the community’s assumption that they were the source and cause of all
 the chapter’s problems, real or perceived. Although I have worked with them
...
  closely for a year, I have been repeatedly informed
that I’ve been
 manipulated by Nathalie from the start and should not have blindly believed
...
  everything Émeric was saying. I’ve been personally
attacked on WMF sites,
 email lists, and social media for weeks, my every word scrutinised,
 questioned and mocked assuming I was either ignorant or lying. I’ve been
 told by so-called feminists who were endorsing a particularly sexist rant
 against me to “stop making inflammatory comments”. I’ve been called a
 conspiracy theorist because I questioned the role of our former chair
 Christophe Henner, now chair of the Board at the WMF, in the threats to
 withdraw our chapter agreement and the cutting of half our FDC funding.
 People close to Christophe who have resigned from the WMFR Board early in
 the crisis rather than take responsibility for their mistakes now call
 themselves victims and whistleblowers. The WMF, who is perfectly aware of
 the charges of sexual harassment filed by Nathalie against Christophe for
 facts dating back to when he was her boss at Wikimédia France, is
 pretending WMFR leadership has used the threat of legal action to
 intimidate chapter members and silence opposition.

 Some unfounded allegations have been made on this very list by prominent
 members of the community (and what is a newbie’s word worth in that case,
 right?): from extremely serious accusations of misuse of chapter funds for
 personal gain (that strangely enough never made it to the French justice
 system despite a so-called “rather convincing rationale”), to gratuitous
 ones that Nathalie was making the Board’s decisions for us and dictating
 our communication (I am old enough to write my own emails, thank you very
 much), to ever vague ones of “quite generous expenses reimbursement“. None
 of this has been supported by proof or tangible facts, but the goal of
 spreading distrust and dissent in the chapter and the wider community has
 clearly been reached. Even now that Nathalie has left her position and the
 Board has resigned, some are still defaming her in the French media in the
 hopes of winning the stupid argument of who were the bad guys in the
 crisis.

 I am also extremely disappointed that no one from this list asked us (the
 Board) what was happening when these allegations were made, with only a
 handful of people suggesting to wait before all the facts were known.
 Instead, you took for granted the very short and extremely biased English
 summaries of the Board’s communications (which were instantly circulated on
...
  this list without our consent and in violation of our
chapter’s bylaws),
 and joined in the chorus of outrage, condemnation and verbal abuse.

 But worse to me than all this, I am actually terrified at how easily the
 Wikimedia community can turn on a person, with no regard whatsoever for
 decency or legality, when it has made up its mind about who has no place
 there. I have personally experienced what it means to disagree with this
 angry mob: questioning the dominant opinion or calling out individuals’
 toxic behaviour makes you in turn acceptable collateral damage and a “fair
 game” target for harassment.

 Speaking of this, the movement as a whole needs to address the issue of
 staff-volunteers relations exemplified by the rapid turnover of executive
 staff across chapters. Nathalie stayed at WMFR an almost record breaking 4
 years, but at what cost? I’m being extremely serious in adding that this
 conversation needs to take place before something irreversible happens as a
...
  result of harmful group behaviour within the
community.

 Sincerely,
 Marie-Alice Mathis // AlienSpoon

 PS: for your information about my position regarding the WMF’s role in this
...
  crisis and their recent unilaterally added conditions
[
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grant_expectations_for_
 Wikimedia_France_-_2017-2018]
 for payment of our FDC-attributed grant, I attach my email to Katy Love
 from Sept 20.

 Katy, (Cc WMFr Board and Rémi)

 In the WMF "Grant expectations" document sent to the Board of WMFr, you
 mention as a condition for APG funds payment that I do not resign from my
 position on the Board until the governance review is complete, and that any
...
  Board member planning to resign must report and
justify it to WMF.

 You also mention that you retain the right to cease funding WMFr if you
 consider that legal threats are being used inappropriately to stifle civil
 and appropriate participation in the chapter. Moreover, you condition
 payment to being informed if the chapter leadership feels that legal action
...
  is appropriate to take against current or former board
members or staff.

 Let me be clear: these conditions are outrageous and unacceptable.

 First of all, my legitimacy as a Board member of WMFr does not come from
 any commitment to WMF but from being democratically elected by French
 chapter members. WMF has no say in who stays or not on the Board, and
 trying to intervene on such governance issues is, again, putting both
 organisations at risk of being legally recognised as co-employers.

 Second, as a (volunteer) Board member I have been subjected to harassment,
 sexist abuse, and unjustified allegations of misconduct by community
 members, that have impacted my health and mental well being to the point
 where I was no longer able to do my (paid) job in cancer patient care and
 my GP put me on medical leave. A large volume of this abuse took place on
 WMF property (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Le_Bistro
<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro>
...

<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro>
 <http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro> and the
 WMF-hosted,
 publicly archived mailing lists wikimedia-l and wikimediafr).
 You personally and on behalf of WMF encouraged French community members to
 challenge chapter leadership citing governance issues, without a word
 mentioning the violence suffered by the Board and executive staff at the
 hands of some French members during this crisis. Worse, you presented the
 Board's email condemning the harassment as inaccurate and problematic,
 which made the community feel all the more legitimate in their harmful
 attacks.
 When I reported the abuse in person to WMF employees during the site visit
 you personally empathised with my distress at the time, and thanked me for
 being honest about how your email to the wikimediafr list had made our
 already precarious situation untenable. And then you did nothing.
 My husband Rémi, who witnessed first hand the effects of the harassment on
 my health, called on you to release the site visit report so the misconduct
...
  allegations would stop. You didn't, until 3 days
before our General
 Assembly (where the allegations were repeated), on the same day you asked
 that I stay on as a Board member. Even your choice of words in the "Grant
 expectations" document is telling: "egregious incivility" is not what we
 are talking about here. We are talking about unacceptable and illegal
 defamation and harassment with serious real life consequences.
 Rémi also called on the wikimedia-l list to stop the unfounded allegations,
...
  and was attacked in turn because of "his conflict
of interest as the
 husband of a Board member". He also reported the abuse to the WMF
 governance committee, to the Suport and Safety team and mentioned it to
 Christophe Henner and Katherine Maher on Twitter, to no avail. To this day
 we haven't received any support or acknowledgement whatsoever. All the
 while the sexist abuse continues, and French editor MrButler was moderated
 on the wikimediafr maling list for his continued personal attacks against
 me. This is exactly the kind of behaviour the Board's email to the members
 was calling out, yet you continue to deliberately ignore it and refuse to
 do anything about it.

 Finally, your asking to be informed of any legal action against chapter
 members or staff is yet another example of the WMF taking sides while
 posing as a neutral arbitrator. Calling someone out on their toxic
 behaviour or actually filing a complaint are no legal threats or
 intimidation, but by claiming they are you are trying to silence victims by
...
  denying them their basic rights to legal protection.
At least two
 complaints have been filed against community members and more may be
 coming, including on my behalf. You will not be informed because it is not
 for WMF to decide whether they are justified or frivolous.

 For all these reasons I am deeply shocked and hurt by your payment
 conditions and will not abide by the terms of your grant expectations. With
...
  most of WMFr funding hanging in the balance your
unilaterally revised
 conditions amount to blackmail but I will not stay in harm's way at the
 request of the organisation who has failed me in every aspect when I came
 in good faith to work for the community. I will resign when I see fit to
 protect my health, and continue to speak honestly and publicly about your
 actions and empty words of safety and inclusivity.

 Sincerely,
 Marie-Alice Mathis, vice chair of WMFr
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