Hi Victoria, Thank you for at least presenting your personal perspective on the disqualification of these 2 candidates.
I have to say, though, this seems to me like the least charitable possible view anyone could have taken from both candidates' statements. I'm sure this is not what you intended, but what I read from your message is that: 1️⃣ A bad-faith smear campaign from Israel will be enough to rule out any candidate who posts pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist messages, and disenfranchise voters who would support a candidate who opposes Israel's genocide of the Palestinians. 2️⃣ A single Board member having expressed anti-Israel comments on social media is more likely to bring the WMF into disrepute than rumours of the Foundation being careful to appease the ADL, a propagandist organisation that disseminates disinformation, that conflates any criticism of Israel with antisemitism and that denies that a genocide is currently occurring in territories under Israeli control. 3️⃣ A candidate who is looking to increase transparency and help the community better understand the work of the Board is immediately assumed to be incapable of recognising a need for privacy around any of those areas — even despite that candidate already being trusted by 2 different Affiliates with equivalently sensitive Board-level information. If the vetting process is immediately assuming pro-Palestinian viewpoints and pro-transparency viewpoints to be incompatible with Board membership, then the vetting process is not fit for purpose. I am finding it increasingly difficult to trust the judgement of a Board who thinks these 2 candidates are so dangerous that they cannot be voted on or trusted to be onboarded appropriately. This is exacerbated when the most recent other activities I have seen from the Board are replacing a queer woman of colour from a non Free nation-state of the Global South with a white financier from New York City (who I am sure is very competent) and publishing a policy that seems solely designed to stop the Arabic-language Wikipedia from displaying a flag on its logo because it makes some people who are currently supporting a genocide feel uncomfortable. The Board seems to think the extremist viewpoints of the news media of a country that is being condemned by a substantial proportion of the planet are more important to its reputation than representing the wider community and its diversity. Given that the Foundation is hosted and staffed predominantly from a country that is currently falling to anti-democratic extremism, it is hard to have trust and hope that the Foundation is willing and able to fight for knowledge and diversity in the face of rising hate and disinformation. (To be clear, I too am writing as an individual, not as a representative of any organisation I am a part of.) -- Owen Blacker, Cardiff GB, he/him User:OwenBlacker _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], 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/[email protected]/message/RXF3WVGJDYYQCNILC2EREKXSXTSBXN2V/ To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
