Hmm the lesson here is to realise that we have a wonderful community that shows some wonderful things about the human condition. However what I'm seeing is a lynch mob gathering on the wiki whilst all the decent people stay inside. The board should work out how to avoid and diminish such situations and not to just be a source of fuel and amplification.
R
On 9 January 2014 14:09, Andy Mabbett <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> On 9 January 2014 13:10, Fæ <faewik@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> Though it's not unreasonable to infer that, they've made no such
> declaration - leastways, in their posts that I have seen, the phrase
> used is "frowned upon".
>
>> and the apparent swift termination of a long term employee,
>
> Again, that's not apparent to me; she may have resigned, wither
> willingly or under duress. WMF comments on the matter have not made
> such facts clear.
You may be waiting an *awfully* long time for the facts to be made
clear. I think Occam's razor applies and the specific case does not
make all that much difference to the issue. WMUK needs to have a
governance policy as to whether it accepts that employees, contractors
and trustees can have undeclared past paid editing projects or secret
accounts on Wikipediocracy (or similar) where they can play at being
double agents (or whatever other good or bad motivation they might
have).
>> I believe it appropriate for the Board
>> of Trustees of Wikimedia UK to agree a policy at the next board meeting to
>> require employees, contractors and trustees to publicly declare any current
>> or past paid editing activities, or related unpaid advocacy that may
>> represent a potential conflict of interest.
>
> WMUK already has a CoI policy does it not? No hasty action should be
> taken, particularly while the issues discussed above are not clear.
I am not asking for hasty action, just a basic commitment that the
board of trustees will consider a policy at the next board meeting. I
am specifically not asking for knee-jerk reactions without
consultation with the members of the charity, and probably
consultation with WMF Legal, as now seems to be normal working
practice for the current board of trustees.
As for the current WMUK COI policy, speaking as a past Chairman of the
charity, no it does not adequately cover this. In fact you can drive a
coach and horses through it with regard to these situations.
>> I have posted this same proposal at
>> <https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Engine_room#Declarations_for_paid_editing_and_related_advocacy>,
>> however I recommend that should anyone wish to discuss specific examples,
>> including naming or linking to
>> the WMF employee case, that this is limited to this independent email list
>> rather than using the WMUK wiki.
>
> As a meta issue, I find it unhelpful to have discussions split between
> venues. Better to start one, and then post pointers to it elsewhere.
Apparently decentralized discussion is the wiki-norm. However I agree
that having most of the discussion in one place is useful and
considering recent actions by the board to delete critical discussion
on the WMUK wiki, this list looks more open to free speech.
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
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