Dariusz Jemielniak <dar...@alk.edu.pl> wrote: >> Thanks for talking about it Dariusz.
>> Could you please make a serious declaration of interests as is being >> discussed at [1]. This will help set a ethical model for the rest of >> the WMF board to follow without needing a year to think about it. If >> you want to check some best practice examples of meaningful and frank >> declarations, take a look at WMUK's.[2] > I have no problem with that. You've provided links from WMUK, so until > there is something similar for WMF, I don't think we can expect all Board > members to make declarations (but I also think it would be a good practice > to develop a similar model for WMF board, just observing that I don't know > of one yet; I will ask). > I terms of shares, I am a major shareholder in Druid Multimedia sp. z o. o. > (Polish abbreviation for LLC), which developed the largest online > dictionary in Poland. If there are any discussions related to Wiktionary or > other dictionary services (e.g. within Wikidata) and the dictionary is > still published by the company, I am going to recuse myself. I also own a > significant number of shares in Insta.Ling sp. z o. o., which is a startup > oriented at online flashcard language acquisition (currently with about > 50,000 users in Poland and Germany). If there is ever a language > acquisition project discussed, and I'm still in, I'm going to recuse > myself. > I've also had a number of academic affiliations, but these can hardly be > considered a potential COI, I think. > […] This illustrates the common (mis-)interpretation of con- flicts of interests quite nicely: When it concerns Wikime- dia, "interest" is something non-material, "duty"/"honour"/ etc., the conflicting interests however can always be mea- sured in dollars. WMUK's practice recognizes to a degree that there are non- financial interests; that they have found nine people who can name their interests for the most part in one paragraph and none has friends or family shows the limits of such a system. To me this insistence on declaring (blatant) conflicts of interests or labelling them with price tags is a red her- ring. The "quality" of a trustee or staffer should be mea- sured only by how far they advanced the organization. Noone should be able to excuse damaging it with the argument that they did not profit from the downfall. Tim _______________________________________________ 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>
