On 22 January 2016 at 18:46, Ziko van Dijk <zvand...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello Fae, > > To be very clear, is it that you reproach A.G. that he did not disclose > relevant questionable behavior, prior to running as a candidate? > > Kind regards > Ziko
TL;DR No, I don't reproach Geshuri personally, everyone makes mistakes, I certainly have. For all I know he has no past trustee experience and the level of scrutiny he would be exposed to once appointed may never have been made clear to him. I do not expect Geshuri to be a fall guy, I expect the board of trustees to come forward and handle their governance failure fully and honestly, even if that means that more than one trustee will need to find the right words to exit gracefully. BACKGROUND Let's emphasise this point, the WMF is a very unusual organization, the board is scrutinized by the eyes of many passionate and committed volunteers - some to the level of a compulsive disorder - and the n * $100,000,000 the trustees are trusted to oversee during their terms to the benefit of open knowledge is considered a huge responsibility by us, the community. When this first was raised by my open letter two weeks ago, were I in Patricio's shoes I would have had a 30 minute phone call with Geshuri that day, and talked through allegations about his background. As the allegations in this case are entirely factual, there's a legal case to refer to, I would have advised him that if he thought he might resign to avoid a potential fuss in public, that it is better to do it within a couple of days rather than letting it run and get entrenched. If there had been a good chance that it would blow over as there was no meaningful conflict of interest/loyalties, nor any significant reputational damage that could damage the WMF, then I would suggest we talk to all trustees by phone that week, to answer their questions and go over the facts, as I would hope that the full board would continue to support him as a trustee despite the likelihood for criticism of the board's decision to appoint him. Unfortunately in this case I could see no chance that his part in the Google scandal would just blow over ($400m+ in damages is a *big* mistake). I expect Patricio would have made the same deduction. By not giving Geshuri frank advice on day one, we now have a Wikipedia article about him, a public vote of no confidence and a rising profile about his past on Google searches that he no doubt wants to leave forgotten. Lastly, adding "is there anything in your past" to a standard set of questions is not good governance. Trustees with this high a public profile *must* understand what it means to be a trustee on the WMF board. The Trustee who nominated Geshuri created this problem but not having a frank chat before his name was ever put forward, and the rest of the board of Trustees compounded it by never personally checking whether Geshuri understood the unusual commitment he would be making - as well as blatantly failing their duty of oversight to ensure the most basic background checks; such as Geshuri being named in past legal cases which should be a standard report to the board from WMF legal for candidates. More detailed checks than this are made for teachers with access to children, or shop staff with access to a cash till, but nothing is done for prospective trustees with decisions to make for our future, as well as approving how that huge pile of money gets spent and to whom... In this particular case, we have no reasons given as to why when Jimmy Wales knew about the Google antitrust scandal in advance of Geshuri's appointment, he failed to ask the obvious question of Geshuri's role, he failed to either talk to his fellow trustees about it or quietly ask the governance committee to look into it before a board vote. Instead we see the repeated excuse that this was not on the first page of Google searches in various languages. Bizarre. So, Geshuri probably deserves an apology from the board because they failed him. The board urgently requires an independent governance review, and if one does not happen because a few plasters have been stuck on the current process and exactly the same people who made this mistake think they are experts in good governance, that will be extreme hubris which inevitably leads to falling down another deep hole in no time at all. If anyone doubts this, they need to go back to the WMF blog post only a fortnight ago with glowing quotes from Lila and Dariusz which are now embarrassing to read. Hopefully they will never put themselves in this position again.<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/05/new-wikimedia-foundation-trustees> Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ 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>
