Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Perhaps before people make random stabs in the dark about the nomination process this time around - which wasn't the old NomCom or any other former process - they might want to check the archives of this mailing list from late September or early October when candidates and nominations were

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Milos, is your email a wind-up? I find this idea that everything will be okay if we shut up and let Jimmy select his mates as our future trustees not just a scenario that should stay in Bizarro World, but the opposite of good governance. If this is how the WMF actually works, then yes, the WMF

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

I don't disagree that we need an explanation not only of his actions, but also on how he was selected without this being disclosed to existing trustees, but even at a show trial it's usually considered necessary to allow the accused to say a few words in their own defense. I'll be reserving my

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 7:51 PM, Fæ wrote: > On 11 January 2016 at 00:37, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > .. > This does not make sense. The existing trustees are *entirely* > responsible for the trustee selection process, including ensuring a > transparent and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Sorry, this continues to dig a bizarre hole. It would be rude or even unethical to nominate someone for a demanding trustee position in a NFP or charity without first personally approaching them in a friendly way and asking them if they might be interested and would like to be nominated. I do not

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 1:37 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > I can, however, generally add that we have not collected any nominations > from our donors, if this helps. I can confirm this, as I am sure nothing has changed since NomCom existence in relation to this issue, except

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 12:44 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 7:51 PM, Fæ wrote: > >> On 11 January 2016 at 00:37, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: >> .. >> This does not make sense. The existing trustees are *entirely* >>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Chris, there have been no resolutions since Denny assumed his seat that impact Denny's employer, as best as I can tell, unless there is an existing direct relationship between Google and one or both of the new trustees, and no one's provided evidence of that. I hope Denny will recuse from any

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What happened on the Board of Trustees?

Tobias wrote: >James, a longstanding community member, is accustomed to how we do >things on Wikipedia -- with transparency, an open discourse, but also >endless discussions on talk pages. Other members of the board have less >of a "Wikipedian" background, and are more accustomed to how things

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On 10/01/2016 04:04, Comet styles wrote: Jimmy has always been biased so I personally won't trust his words but the way this is playing out, its like James somehow revealed the pass codes to the WMF Nuclear launch codes or something...did he? A board made up to govern a community driven project

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

I think Mr. Geshuri schould comment on the issue. And I don't know Mr. Geshuri, have never seen editing him. So i can't trust him, especially after the google scandal. > Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 13:21:03 -0800 > From: petefors...@gmail.com > To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

I will admit that if I knew I would likely not be wiling to say without talking to others first. However I will never lie and I can honestly say that I do not. On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 2:27 AM, Fæ wrote: > Hi James Alexander, > > Thanks for writing here. As a WMF insider, do

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What happened on the Board of Trustees?

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 12:17 PM, Anthony Cole wrote: > I hope this person is blocked from posting again here. Utterly > inappropriate. He's on moderation, which means each of his posts to the list will be held and must be approved individually. As a rule, we don't like to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On 2016-01-10 10:49, Lilburne wrote: Meanwhile one knows that a Google appointed board member objected to James, presence at a meeting where they were most likely to be finalizing the appointment of another from the Googleplex, who is a little tarnished. Would you please remain civil. We do

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Changing the subject line

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 8:41 AM, MZMcBride wrote: > I'm amused that neither of you seemed to follow your own advice here, > starting and continuing a tangential (meta-)discussion without changing > the subject line to create a new thread. We'll all strive indeed. :-) You've

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On 01/10/2016 11:16 AM, James Alexander wrote: > Oh dear god everyone... [This is in general, not any specific person] > > I think everyone knows there are a lot of legitimate concerns to be > concerned about and certainly Arnnon's actions at Google are legitimate for > question however this

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What happened on the Board of Trustees?

I hope this person is blocked from posting again here. Utterly inappropriate. On Sunday, January 10, 2016, Austin Hair wrote: > On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 4:41 AM, Comet styles > wrote: > > honestly, WMF > > has taken a nosedive since

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Thanks WereSpeilChequers, I especially approve of "You could define a de minimis threshold, perhaps a shareholding that pays you dividends worth no more than a cup of coffee a month is not worth declaring. But for simplicity and transparency it might be easier to recuse from any decision where you

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Well spotted. Expressing the amount of ownership that rises to a conflict of interest in terms of a percentage of all shares in the company strikes me as startlingly inappropriate. Owning 1% of a company worth $400 billion would be a very, very significant conflict of interest for a board member.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On 10 January 2016 at 09:53, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: > On 2016-01-10 10:49, Lilburne wrote: >> Meanwhile one knows that a Google appointed board member objected to >> James, >> presence at a meeting where they were most likely to be finalizing the >> appointment >> of another

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Oh dear god everyone... [This is in general, not any specific person] I think everyone knows there are a lot of legitimate concerns to be concerned about and certainly Arnnon's actions at Google are legitimate for question however this whole "google is controlling the board/wmf" line of thought

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Hi James Alexander, Thanks for writing here. As a WMF insider, do you know who recommended Arnnon to the trustees for a seat on the board? I can think of no reason why that should be a secret. Thanks, Fae On 10 January 2016 at 10:16, James Alexander wrote: > Oh dear god

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

I totally second James' invitation to avoid a certain tone, language and conspiracy theories. I will also add that the more those tone, language, and conspiracy theories are used in these threads, the *less* likely a good chunk of the community will participate in conversation. If we really want

[Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Recent threads query whether it is or should be a conflict of interest for a board member to support the appointment of someone who used to work at the same company, and whether multiple board members have shares or stock options with a particular company. So I have read the Conflict of interest

[Wikimedia-l] The errors in our way

Hoi, In the last months too much has been said about quality and what others have to do. This thread is about quality and its aim is not for Wikipedia to change its way, it will not. It is to discuss lack of quality in Wikipedia, a proposal that will improve quality but that will not be accepted

Re: [Wikimedia-l] What happened on the Board of Trustees?

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 4:41 AM, Comet styles wrote: > honestly, WMF > has taken a nosedive since Sue left and left the organisation in the > hands of Lila who has failed as a leader..not to mention her > 'baby-daddy' has been banned from most wikimedia wikis as well

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

Apologies for a slightly off-topic reply, but: On 01/10/2016 01:21 PM, Steinsplitter Wiki wrote: > I don't know Mr. Geshuri, have never seen editing him. So i can't > trust him, especially after the google scandal. I don't think board members need to be active editors. The board is supposed to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

10.01.2016 05:04 "Fæ" napisał(a): > > To help debunk conspiracy theorists, it would be interesting to find > out how many of the board of trustees have shares in Google, a useful > way of finding out who is part of the Googleplex. While I don't have, and never had (nor expect

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Fæ wrote: > Thanks for talking about it Dariusz. > > Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being > discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of > the WMF board to follow without needing a year to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Thanks Dariusz, nice example declaration for the rest of the board to think about. I look forward to reading about the WMF board follow-up, as this is an easy win to demonstrate improved governance, at a time when we need to count a few quick wins in the good-will bank. Fae On 10 January 2016

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Thanks for talking about it Dariusz. Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of the WMF board to follow without needing a year to think about it. If you want to check some best practice examples of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: >> Thanks for talking about it Dariusz. >> Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being >> discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of >> the WMF board to follow without needing a year to think about

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Dariusz, can you give me your reasons for ruling out an independent review into WMF board practice, along the lines of the review the WMF commissioned into WMUK three years ago? I would have thought this was an option to embrace. On Sunday, January 10, 2016, Andreas Kolbe

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

Le 10/01/16 16:40, Dariusz Jemielniak a écrit : On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Fæ wrote: Thanks for talking about it Dariusz. Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of the WMF

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Anthony Cole wrote: > Dariusz, can you give me your reasons for ruling out an independent review > into WMF board practice, along the lines of the review the WMF commissioned > into WMUK three years ago? I would have thought this was an

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Fæ wrote: > > > Thanks for talking about it Dariusz. ​Dariusz, would you please tell us who suggested​ Arnnon Geshuri ​ for a seat on the Board? Sarah​

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

> > > ​Dariusz, would you please tell us who suggested​ > Arnnon Geshuri > ​ for a seat on the Board? > > AFAIK we have not been sharing this information historically, and I don't think we are going to now - even the Board members themselves don't know, and quite likely should not know who

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Jan 10, 2016 12:33, "Florence Devouard" wrote: >>> Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being >>> discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of >>> the WMF board to follow without needing a year to think about it. If >>> you

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

Chris, I agree the points you raise wouldn't matter to a governance review. The board's handling of James's removal and their attitude toward transparency (and the preponderance of Silicon Valley people) are matters fou us to judge. I'd like an expert to look over the board's understanding of and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On 11 January 2016 at 00:37, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: ... > AFAIK we have not been sharing this information historically, and I don't > think we are going to now - even the Board members themselves don't know, > and quite likely should not know who nominated them. I also fail

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement about changes to the Board

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 5:37 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote: > >> ​Dariusz, would you please tell us who suggested​ >> Arnnon Geshuri >> ​ for a seat on the Board? >> >> > AFAIK we have not been sharing this information historically, and I don't > think we are going to now -

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Conflict of Interest Policy

> I am concerned that Denny may not have been recusing from discussions and > decisions affecting Google. This strikes me as exceptional, and that the > board doesn't find it so troubles me, and hints that you may all have > something to gain from independent advice. Out of interest, do you know