Re: [Wikimedia-l] A conversation?

[Chris Sherlock]

> On 10 Mar 2016, at 8:25 PM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> 
> On 3/10/16 8:18 AM, Benjamin Lees wrote:
>> I was glad when I saw Jimbo indicate he was reaching out to James.  At
>> the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, maybe Jimbo should send James
>> another email, this time extending a clearer olive branch.  If we're
>> past the point of no return on that, then so be it, but I would be
>> happy to know that after three months of talking about and at each
>> other, you guys _sincerely_ tried talking to each other.
> 
> I agree completely.  My email, which seems so horrifying to a few
> people, was meant exactly as that.  The truth is, I am genuinely
> bewildered and finding it very hard to understand why James says things
> that the entire rest of the board find contrary to fact.

Christ Jimmy, you sincerely told him he was either a liar, emotionally stunted, 
or psychologically damaged! You think *that* is extending an olive branch?!?

> There is nothing horrible about encouraging him to think about whether
> emotion has blinded him.  When so many other people who know the facts
> are telling you that you have it wrong, it's a good idea to pause and
> reflect.

Then it’s a good idea to stick to, you know, the facts. Did you really
think that telling James that one option is he is a liar would be
conducive to reflections?

> And yes, it would have been more charitable and kind to include other
> options in that email.  I wrote it as an opening to a dialogue, not as a
> formal statement of position to be analyzed in public.  I invite people
> to think whether Pete's publishing of it was done in the interests of
> healing and harmony, rather than to further inflame and create drama.

“Charitable and kind”? What options might these have been? 

If that email was the opening to a dialogue, then you might want to consider
your own level of EQ!

Chris


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A conversation?

[Chris Sherlock]

> On 10 Mar 2016, at 5:18 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> 
> 2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth :
> 
>> I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics
>> surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed
>> interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's
>> worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
> 
> Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail
> to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can
> think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible --
> like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's
> totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff
> himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.
> 
> This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an
> honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make
> things right. By violating that private channel you're making it
> implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.

Erik, that was an unsolicited email sent to James *and* Peter. It was addressed 
to
James, but yet Jimmy sent it to Peter, and in it he alleged that “one 
possibility” 
is that James is a liar. The other is that he is too emotionally involved and 
it 
coloured his thinking. Why did Jimmy feel the need to send such a potentially
damaging set of accusations to James and cc in Peter? 

Oliver has said it best - that’s emotional gaslighting and it’s highly 
manipulative.
Telling James that he has a low EQ is focusing on James’ emotions and has 
nothing
to do with what James wanted answering. He wants Jimmy to give a clear 
understanding
as to why he was removed. 

James’ concerns about a search engine are still legitimate. There was indeed a 
secret
plan that Jimmy claims he didn’t know about until well after October - WAY after
October. It’s understandable and quite justifiable that in October James was 
very
concerned that there was a plan in the WMF for a competing search engine for 
Google.

So now Jimmy is still maintaining the line, which he has repeated more than a 
number of
times now, in public and evidently in private (yet takes care to cc in Pete) 
that James
is a liar, or has serious emotional or psychological issues. That’s a strange 
tactic,
and I for one am very glad that it’s now in the open. Trying to suggest that 
there is
emotional trauma is a good way to undermine someone’s confidence. And the way 
this was
done was to use the fallacy of the undistributed middle; which is:

James could be a liar
James could have poor memory or low emotional intelligence
James might be emotionally traumatised
James’ statements therefore don’t line up with the facts

In fact, James in my view is none of those things. Frankly, it would be 
laughable to
think that someone who deals with life and death situations in an ER for as 
long as
James has would be as emotionally traumatised as Jimmy suggests. And nothing in
James’ emails or public utterances has been crazy, and everything he’s written 
so far
is level-headed and attempted to deal with facts and events. Possibly James got
some things wrong, but that doesn’t make him any of the alternatives given by 
Jimmy.

Furthermore, Jimmy’s language (“liar”, “low emotional intelligence”, etc.) is 
not 
language I would expect to see in an email attempting to reconcile and hold a 
reasonable discussion. Imagine that James was someone who did have, as Jimmy 
said,
“low emotional intelligence” or who is “emotionally traumatised”. I wonder what 
the
effect on them when they get an email like this from a powerful person who 
helped
remove the individual from a hard-fought for position within a movement that 
person
holds dear and is dedicated to working on?

As for the drama - Jimmy can hardly be complaining about drama. Calling someone 
a
liar, which he has done publicly now a few times, can possibly be excused the 
first
time as an outburst due to a highly stressful situation. When it is said over 
and
over, and inside “private” communications then it needs to be called out as 
publicly
as possible. 

So Erik, Peter did a very difficult thing. In fact, it’s very brave because it 
leaves 
him open to accusations that he was “leaking” private correspondence. If Peter 
reveals 
it, then he knows some will see it poorly. Yet that email was unsolicited. None 
of the
information in that email is private, except for the appalling way that Jimmy 
wrote it.
There’s nothing in that email that Jimmy couldn’t have stated publicly. Except, 
of
course, if he’d written that directly to the mailing list there would have been 
an
uproar because it was out of line and manipulative. 

I am incredibly surprised by this behaviour, and deeply saddened by it. It’s 
not acceptable. 

Chris
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