The rights and wrongs of this dispute aside (and, crikey, I really have not idea who is in the right at this point), and putting aside the right/wrong of releasing the email (I tend to side with Erik):
This is the form of language that e.g. men use to dismiss women as "emotional". It's vile and judgemental. It poses theories that James is either a liar, mentally ill or just so angry he can't think straight. It is not okay to say things like this, even in private. The effect of words like this can be damaging in the least. As a movement we should not accept this. Jimmy, whilst you may not have explicitly meant these words in the way they are being read, you need to perhaps step back and think about the impact of what you have written here. Tom On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 at 00:56 Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> wrote: > Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29. > I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html > > I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics > surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed > interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's > worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.) > > For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in > response to this list message of mine: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html > > -Pete > [[User:Peteforsyth]] > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > *From: *Jimmy Wales > > *Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM > > *To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman > > *Subject: **A conversation?* > > > James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been > struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I > realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by > people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't > really conducive to reaching more understanding. > > I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions. > Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of > line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that. > > One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that > one. > > Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional > intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just > don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that > are clearly not true. > > Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored > your perceptions on certain details. > > As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said > publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a > Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm > fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to > get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT > building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower > and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery. > > As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search. > It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try > to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a > pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to > biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a > false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that. > > Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with. > _______________________________________________ > 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> _______________________________________________ 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>
