On January 8, 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees issued "a short statement on recent comments by James Heilman". For completeness' sake, I'm pasting the text of that statement into this thread.
--- Recently, James Heilman wrote, regarding his removal from the Wikimedia Foundation Board: "It had in part to do with me wanting there to be public discussion on our long term strategy." [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=next &oldid=698553023 diff]. I wrote the following statement, which has been agreed to by the entire board at the time, names below: "The removal of James as a board member was not due to any disagreement about public discussion of our long term strategy. The board unanimously supports public discussion of our long term strategy, has offered no objections to any board member discussing long term strategy with the community at any time, and strongly supports that the Wikimedia Foundation should develop long term strategy in consultation with the community." * Dariusz Jemielniak * Frieda Brioschi * Denny Vrandecic * Patricio Lorente * Alice Wiegand * Guy Kawasaki * Jan-Bart de Vreede * Stu West * Jimmy Wales I would like to add to this, speaking for myself only, that the loss of trust that I felt in James was in no small part due to this kind of statement on his part, in which the thinking of other board members is being misrepresented to the community and to the staff. James apologized to the board for certain actions which he has chosen not to share with the community, which is his right. He asked for a second chance, and the board declined to give it. My own preference, as expressed to him repeatedly, is that he live up to the values of honesty and transparency that are core to our community, and certainly that he not continue to misrepresent what happened.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:31, 8 January 2016 (UTC) --- Source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/698800759/698801403>. Obviously a single mailing list thread can't and won't capture all of the information related to this removal, but it seemed remiss to omit an official statement from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees on the subject, especially when we have already included a number of other statements from individual trustees and the Board in this thread. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ 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>
