On 9 January 2014 14:09, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
On 9 January 2014 13:10, Fæ <faewik(a)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(a)gmail.com
http://j.mp/faewm