Risker, > Your point #1, with respect to improving internal communication, is > primarily handled by other departments within the WMF (Learning, Human > Resources), with Communications as a resource rather than the primary > messager.
If WMF wants to have a different department lead efforts on internal communication (my impression is that currently no one is actually leading efforts in a holistic way) that would be OK with me. My impression is that as WMF is already strong on external communication, and I think that WMF should hire for what it needs rather than what it already has. If WMF would like to have someone outside of the Communications Department take the lead role -- and actually does assign somebody with relevant experience to work on this as one of their primary responsibilities -- then perhaps hiring an external communications expert into the chief communications officer role would still be OK. > Your point #2 is pretty much irrelevant; some of the best > communications leaders work for political campaigns, and they're usually > "hired guns" rather than true believers. There are a few exceptions, but > again, it's irrelevant, and not ethical to screen directly for political > affiliation - and possibly illegal to do so. Hmm. I don't know what percentage of political campaign communications leaders are "hired guns", but I'm not sure that this is a risk that I would want to take. That said, I hadn't considered your point that screening out candidates with work histories in politics might be considered an illegal practice; thanks for bringing that up. I'll defer to WMF HR and WMF Legal on that. I wonder whether screening out all paid jobs for political parties or campaigns (regardless of which affiliation or campaign was involved) would trigger the same kind of legal scrutiny as screening out one party or another (which I'm fairly certain would be a violation of U.S. employment laws). Perhaps this could get into such complicated legal territory and provide enough opportunities for lawsuits that it would be best to do as you suggest rather than risk lengthy and expensive litigation. I disagree that this issue is "irrelevant", but thanks for pointing out that this kind of screening may have its own kind of risks which I hadn't considered. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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>
