I understand the situation that Denny, Dariusz, Patricio, et al are in and I appreciate their attempts to address this issue. As a new member of the Arbitration Committee on the English Wikipedia, I've discovered that there is a great deal of anger about some of our decisions, and it is frustrating when we cannot release the information that shows that those decisions are clearly justified. So sometimes we have to say "trust us". Perhaps this is the situation here. Perhaps there is something James did, or perhaps the clash of personalities was too much. So they may have to do the same here and say "trust us"
However, for the community to have that trust, there has to be accountability and transparency in other areas. Members of the Arbitration Committee are known to the community and voted in by them, while most members of the Board are not accountable to the community in any way. The Committee does as much as it can transparently and is as forthcoming as it can be with public deliberations. The Board and the Foundation are not sufficiently transparent about things like the Knowledge Engine, and don't have a great track record with things like Superprotect. There are also concerns that Silicon Valley and the technology sector are over-represented on the board, while much of what the community and the Foundation supposedly represent - the entire world as opposed to the Global North, the open source community, cultural and knowledge institutions that work with GLAM, academia - are barely or not represented at all. So when you say "trust us", and you haven't addressed those issues, it's difficult to just accept what vague assurances are provided about this matter. Gamaliel (speaking for myself only and not the Arbitration Committee) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
