It's pretty embarrassing that regional Wikimedias have better governance standards than the (extraordinarily wealthy) international Foundation.
I don't understand how the Tides/Wikimedia general counsel believes that the conflict of interest of Maria has moved directly from being Board chair to being a paid consultant for an undisclosed amount "would be shortly mitigated by her stepping down from her trusteeship for unrelated reasons". On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 12:25 PM Dan Garry (Deskana) <djgw...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 at 12:56, Chris Keating <chriskeatingw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Thanks for the detailed comments. However, still, this doesn't really >> help that much. >> >> From your email it seems that over several months the WMF has created a >> new role which just happens to be ideal for its outgoing Chair to fill, and >> indeed could scarcely be filled by anyone else because it so closely >> relates to the Board's priorities. >> >> If this is allowed to happen then it raises serious questions about >> whether Board members make decisions about the WMF's priorities in order to >> create consultancy posts for themselves. As it happens I don't believe that >> is what has happened here, but one could be forgiven for drawing that >> conclusion. There is a clear appearance of a conflict of interest. And >> there is a real risk of undermining the credibility of pretty much any >> decision the Board might take in future, if people - the community, donors >> or the media - start to believe that those decisions are being taken >> because Board members will be eased into paid positions to implement them. >> >> No amount of reassurances that conversations happened in a particular >> order can avoid this. The letter and indeed the spirit of the WMF's >> conflict of interest policy may have been followed. But the object of the >> WMF's conflict of interest policy has not been achieved, quite the >> opposite. One can follow a policy and end up making the wrong decision, and >> that's what's happened here. >> > > I agree wholeheartedly with Chris's eloquent comments on this situation. > What has happened here is very inappropriate, and deeply troubling. > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LNIHNVELSYSCHYQYQWTC4ILEY33MQMZ7/ > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
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