----- "Gordon Joly" <gordon.joly(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> All
prospective and current Directors of the Company should be
asked to
> reveal Wikipedia and related identities (e.g.
Commons) . And
perhaps all
> others (e.g. Twitter). It should be made part
of the fabric of the
> Company, which should be open and accountable.
My suggestion is to make it a
condition of becoming a Director of the
Company that you would reveal all identities online. Both Wikimedia
related and others.
Open and accountable. That's the mantra.
Not often writing on this list (though usually reading it) I have to interject here.
To *demand* that a candidate details all their WM-related identities/activities is, as I
see it, a completely valid requirement as it is directly and intimately related to their
possible Chapter-related responsibilities and public accountability.
To *demand* that they additional detail *all* their other online (and offline?) identities
is not so. We may not have a rigorously defined-in-law right to privacy in this country
but I believe it would be wrong to make this a *requirement*. By all means someone might
wish to release some additional, ie non-WM, information about their online persona(s) but
it would be intrusive, not to say an invitation to spammers and stalkers, to have to make
additional information public.
Every individual is entitled to keep their private life exactly that, and where such
online persona(s) are exist and are attributable to that private life I do not believe
voters or other WM-related people have any right to know about them when they would not
have any impact upon their ability to perform the tasks they are seeing. To give a few
examples what about where someone suffers from depression so has an online identity which
they use to seek mutual support from others? Where they are GBLT but would lose their
employment or family if it were to become public so use an additional persona online?
Where they have a blogging identity which 'whistleblows' on a business they are
associated with (eg police, ambulance, etc) where the same could happen?
There are many other use cases for online anonymity too which are completely valid and
would not impact on their ability to work for WMUK or the WM projects generally. We should
not be forcing such capable individuals away; restricting candidacy to solely those who
can make others believe they are 'squeaky clean' does a disservice to all the
possible candidates, and to the electorate too.
Alison Wheeler