User talk:Jimbo Wales

James Heilman removed from WMF Board

It has been announced that by an 8-2 vote, James Heilman has been removed from the WMF Board — the legally governing entity of WMF. The resolution published by the Board LINK is absolutely devoid of any rationale for this radical step. An explanation of why one of three democratically elected community representatives to the Board was summarily removed is to be expected. As JW is one of the 8 Board members voting to remove Dr. Heilman, I ask him here now to comment. Thanks. —Tim Davenport /// Carrite (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

There is a thread about this at Wikimedia-l but it currently has no further information. Johnuniq (talk) 01:26, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Text from the mailing list:

Dear all,

Today the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees voted to remove one of the
Trustees, Dr. James Heilman, from the Board. His term ended effective
immediately.

This was not a decision the Board took lightly. The Board has a
responsibility to the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation to
ensure that the Board functions with mutual confidence to ensure effective
governance. Following serious consideration, the Board felt this removal
decision was a necessary step at this time. The resolution will be
published shortly.

This decision creates an open seat for a community-selected Trustee. The
Board is committed to filling this open community seat as quickly as
possible. We will reach out to the 2015 election committee
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2015/Committee>
to discuss our options, and will keep you informed as we determine next
steps.

Patricio Lorente

Chair, Board of Trustees

Wikimedia Foundation

• — xaosflux ^Talk 02:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to add me to those asking for a much more detailed response here, whether from you or the Board as a body. If eight people are going to overrule more than 1800, we need a better reason than the current one, which essentially boils down to "Because we can." Maybe this is defensible, but as things stand, it smells very bad. An explanation should have been immediately forthcoming upon the removal of a community Board member elected with overwhelming support. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 01:40, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd just like to thank Doc James for all the work he has done on Wikipedia.

If there is going to be a quick replacement - and there probably should be - I'll suggest that User:Raystorm, who finished 4th in the election and had the highest number of supports is the obvious choice, followed by User:Phoebe, who finished 5th. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

This is shocking. Unless a rock solid explanation is given, then James Heilman should be replaced by . . . James Heilman. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Why should there be? Given Dr. Heilman's standing in the community, I think it's fair to say that, pending further clarification, the Board's lack of trust in him reflects a lack of trust in the community as well. If so, why should the community hurry to participate in manufacturing consent for whatever the Board intends? I think the example of the electors of Middlesex in 1769 is much more to the purpose. Choess (talk) 03:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

In any case, I'll add my voice to be keen to hear why. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:16, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The explanation could be fairly benign, such as Dr. Heilman consistently being unavailable for WMF business. After all he's a doctor (an ER doctor to boot) and so has lots of unpredictable demands on his time. There are other explanations that would be more concerning -- such as WMF politics or a serious breach of protocol related to confidentiality or the like. The bottom line is that we just don't know. The longer an explanation takes, the more people will speculate. So a timely explanation will be helpful to all concerned. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I doubt that first explanation. Emergency room physicians tend to work regular, predictable schedules, except during disasters. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:47, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry if it seemed to some that I was rushing things above. I'd claim to be Doc James's biggest supporter on Wikipedia, except that I know there are many others who would also like to claim that honor. I do think that the community should continue to be represented by 3 seats on the board, so a replacement is needed. I do assume good faith by all parties involved. If Doc is not contesting this, there is likely nothing to contest. In short the only possible explanation is that the board and Doc held incompatible views on the direction of the WMF. It would be good to hear what those views are, and get further community input on them. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:50, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, I certainly hope there's a benign explanation for it, and I'm not exactly proud to be out in front shouting "Wilkes and liberty!", but if so, it's remarkably cack-handed. I'm on the board of a much smaller non-profit, and if we had to vote out one of our number, I'd expect us to do so with great deliberation, and to have some sort of explanation at hand when we did so, even if it was rather non-specific. As you say, the longer this goes on, the more people will come to believe they're being given a non-explanation because the explanation can't be made palatable to the community. Choess (talk) 06:03, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Did you know? John Wilkes fought for the right of his voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives. In 1768 angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the St George's Fields Massacre, when government soldiers opened fire on demonstrators that had gathered at St George's Fields, Southwark in south London. The protest was against the imprisonment of the radical Member of Parliament John Wilkes for writing an article that severely criticised King George III. After the reading of the Riot Act telling the crowds to disperse within the hour, six or seven people were killed when fired on by troops. In 1771, Wilkes was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In 1776, he introduced the first Bill for parliamentary reform in the British Parliament. During the American War of Independence, he was a supporter of the American rebels. Wbm1058 (talk) 05:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The argument "Because we can." seems to be in fashion. This is so similar to my issue in the section above this one, of being topic banned for no real reason at all, even in light of my 8 years of thousands of productive edits and no blocks at all, especially the argument "Because we can." as expressed quite ironically by Seraphimblade. Now you all know how I feel! So, I wonder if you'll take this "abuse of discretion" all meek and mild like you expect me to take mine??? In the meantime, I will join you in this fight simply because I am and have been for 8 years a vibrant and constructive member of this community and will continue to be so. "He who sacrifices some freedom for some security deserves neither and will lose both". Benjamin Franklin,Nocturnalnow (talk) 06:22, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

With respect, your attempt to vary a topic ban is not analogous with the forced removal of a community-elected WMF trustee. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:52, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The "Because we can" mentality at work is all that I am saying is similar. I think this "because we can" mentality and modus operandi was dramatically boosted and promoted by events General Wesley Clark identified quite a few years ago: and the subject matter the General is talking about is far more important to Wikipedia and everything else than this or my "because we can" episodes. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:46, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I couldn't possibly agree more that this should have been announced with a full and clear and transparent and NPOV explanation. Why didn't that happen? Because James chose to post about it before we even concluded the meeting and before we had even begun to discuss what an announcement should say. WMF legal has asked the board to refrain from further comment until they've reviewed what can be said - this is analogous in some ways to personnel issues. Ideally, you would have heard about this a couple of days from now when a mutual statement by James and the board had been agreed. For now, please be patient. Accuracy is critically important here, and to have 9 board members posting their own first impressions would be more likely to give rise to confusions.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:35, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

He was one of the few properly elected members of the board, so there have to extremely severe reasons to ditch him. Just because you can will mean the rest of the board has proven it's untrustworthiness. The communities are the proper sovereigns of the wikiverse, not the more and more disconnected bureaucrats in the foundation. The foundation is just a service organisation,it's bosses are the communities. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 10:42, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Jimbo, that is really fine to blame James for your own actions. --.js (((☎))) 11:34, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

In what way did I do that? I did not. I merely gave you a very clear, transparent, honest and NPOV explanation of why this was announced in this fashion. We were having a meeting about it, and hadn't begun to discuss how to give the full explanation to the community in fairness to everyone, and James decided to simply announce it without explaining anything. That's just what happened, it's a fact. If you take it as "blaming" him in some way, you are reaching beyond what I said.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:13, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales: 1. "this [firing] should have been announced with a full and clear and transparent and NPOV explanation. Why didn't that happen? Because James chose to [do X]".

Jimbo Wales: 2. "I did not [blame blame James for [my, Jimbo's] own actions]".

Can't have it both ways. -DePiep (talk) 09:24, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Either this was a long vented decision, then the explanation should come in syncron with the decision. Or it was some emergency, then at least that should be made clear. This are the only two valid circumstances for this decision against the communities, so some kind of explanation is not only possible but necessary. If you refuse to give any of this two valid explanations, you say that the decision was not valid. It may be valid in a legalistic way, but that's just bollocks. It has to be morally sound and legitimate, everything else cries for a complete new board. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 18:18, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, tell that to James. He's the one who went public without warning in the middle of the meeting. You are 100% wrong that this is a decision against the community. I know why I voted the way I did - and it has to do with my strong belief in the values of this community and the responsibilities of board members to uphold those values. If a board member fails the community in such a serious way, tough decisions have to be made about what to do.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:57, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

<squeeze>He was elected by the community, and thus was fully vetted. Most of those who voted against him are just poorly vetted members, without a proper community backing. So this was a vote by more or less random bureaucrats against the community, full stop. If this was not a decision against the community, what do you consider as such? The community should always have the last call over bureaucrats, WMF is just a service organisation for the community. Unfortunately they fail to see this and quite often regard themselves as something better. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 23:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

So how exactly has he failed the community, again? odder (talk) 21:23, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. I dunno. Maybe we'll find out when the statement is released. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 21:38, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

i am not so much worried about removing a person from the board. there are so many different characters and opinions in this movement that i find it an illusion to believe everybody can work with everybody. it is human, and it is ok. personally i like to read differing opinions and background information about the reasoning as this advances the cause and tends to involve more people, deeper. i like this also in a group like the WMF board - it always frightens me a little when i see 9-0 votes. but _if_ a vote is passed, i'd expect the whole group to stand by it, no matter of the individual opinion in creating this result. what i consider quite paradox though is that we trust ourselves as a community that we can produce wikipedia in a way we define it. Jimmy, why can we not trust this same community to judge if a board member is a good board member, in a legally binding way? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 07:00, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Hope the remaining board comes up with a good reason. I've met Doc James personally, and know about his merits in our project; I won't accept any weakish legalese putoff. --MBq (talk) 11:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

+1. -- Andreas Werle (talk) 17:28, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

From Doc James's statement "I have done what I believe is in the best interest of our movement". If legal takes out a specific explanation of what, specifically, Doc James did and tries to lose it in soft corners and vagaries, I will personally find that insufficient. Doc James took strong positions on matters that divide this community, including some the board has in the past acted on. The community elected him (and should elect his replacement, in my view, no fourth-place runners up please) and needs to know what, specifically, its representative did to get kicked off the board and not go quietly. His not going quietly (evidenced by his vote against) puts this back into the lap of the community. If he had resigned, that would be quite another thing, the matter would be resolved and we might not need to know. I'm content to wait and see, but the community does need to know the utmost possible. We may be dealing from the fallout from this for some time to come, especially if Doc James remains active outside the board or seeks a new mandate from the community, which he has every right to, he has not been banned.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:57, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Of course there has to be a new election, and DocJames must take part in it. If the community will elect him again, that's would be a harsh vote of non-confidence towards the non-elected members of that club. Only elected members have a proper vetting to belong there, non-elected members are imho some kind of second class members, they miss any real community backing. And community backing is the absolutely highest level of confidence in a community project. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 14:23, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• James Heilman is a good Wikipedian in my estimation, but some of the things people write above are without foundation. The winner in his election was by 900 votes nuetral, which means even for the Wikimedians who voted it was not any mandate. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:42, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I meant mandate in the strict sense of election victory, nothing more.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jimmy. Thanks for sharing your perspective. You said: "Because James chose to post about it before we even concluded the meeting and before we had even begun to discuss what an announcement should say." My comment is: The Board went to the meeting knowing that there will be a vote on James' removal, so the Board knew that there was a chance that James would be removed by the end of that meeting. In this case, is it fair to say that the Board should have prepared an announcement before going to the meeting, in case that announcement needed to be used? I understand that the Board members have a lot on their plates, being in the middle of the holiday season doesn't help, and the resources are limited, but given the position the Board has and the importance of this recent vote, I expected some more preparedness. --LZia (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't think we should have had a prepared statement in advance. The meeting was entered into in good faith by all parties, and the outcome was in no way a foregone conclusion. It would be premature to prepare a statement before there was a chance to have a full discussion among all the board members, including James. This wasn't a kangaroo court to rubber stamp a pre-written decision and announcement. What would have been better, in my view, is if James had waited to announce it in a time and manner that both his perspective and that of other board members could be presented fully.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Might I gently suggests this sounds like poor planning? If ejecting James was one of the possible outcomes of the meeting, those prepared to do so should have planned for it as a contingency (not a certainty), along with the possibilities that he might resign amicably, or might modify his position on the issue of contention. If the Board wanted time to craft a mutually acceptable statement of the affair with James, perhaps it would have been wiser to remove him after, rather than before, the statement could be prepared.

I can certainly envision scenarios in which the judgment of the majority of Board was correct and James was wrong (say, involving a conflict over funding the editing of medical content). I'm having more trouble imagining a scenario wherein it becomes necessary to remove James from the Board at once, rather than a week from now. There may yet be one. But it seems churlish to remove him from the Board, effective immediately, and then feel aggrieved that he made that event known on the same timeline you provided him. I don't prejudge you, but I hope there was one heck of an emergency to justify these steps. Choess (talk) 22:41, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

• Will the minutes of the meeting be posted with other meeting's minutes or elsewhere. When can we expect to have them posted? If they will not be posted then why not? Jbh^Talk 18:23, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I, for one, was shocked Doc James was ever appointed to the board in the first place, just from seeing his work on WP. While probably 80 percent of his edits are positive for the project, he does have some areas of questionable judgment, topics where he creates bitter divides, and acts entirely against the principles of the project. On several occasions, I have questioned his maturity to even handle being an administrator, much less a WMF board member. If this were Guy Kawasaki, I would be shocked, but I know that in the case of Doc James the board must have had its reasons and then some. You will find no criticism of this decision from me. LesVegas (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No one would expect criticism of the decision from you, given your history of disagreements with James. But I'd at least expect you to refrain from gratuitous grave-dancing, particularly when you (like most of the rest of us) know absolutely nothing about the actual facts underlying the decision. MastCell ^Talk 19:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No gratuitous grave dancing was intended, merely I was a bit tired of seeing all of Doc James's buddies angry at Jimbo over this and I was simply trying to give another perspective. Sure, nobody knows the details, but I'd be shocked if the (personal attack removed --.js) that I see in Doc James weren't also seen by the board. Unlike his little WP fan-club, nobody on the board worships him as a deity. When that's the case, it's much easier to judge his disposition and makeup. LesVegas (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

For what's it's worth, I don't see anyone particularly angry with me. And if they were, it wouldn't bother me because there's no reason to be angry at me, so if someone is angry at me, then they are mistaken.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:54, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

You should really stop this. There is a time and place to air your grievances but this not it. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 19:33, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

"shortcomings in character" ← is this kind of PA sanctionable? It probably should be. Alexbrn (talk) 19:36, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Only someone who worships an editor as a deity would think "shortcomings in character" was a PA! Every human being has some shortcomings in character. I happen to believe Doc James has more than many around here perceive, but I suppose that's my opinion, one that I am certainly entitled to. I have my reasons, and many others in the community would also agree, but I agree with Jules that this isn't the time or place to get into all of the specific grievances. I was just simply trying to give Jimmy my support for the board's decision to counterbalance the swath of angry critics. Since I've done that, you won't see me post any more about this. LesVegas (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

You're supporting a decision in total ignorance of the underlying facts, and based solely on your personal distaste for the person affected. That reflects poorly on you, and more pragmatically, it sets you up to look both petty and foolish when the facts come to light. I don't see people treating James like a "deity" in this thread. I see editors expressing concern that a person elected to the Board by popular vote was removed without explanation, and demanding transparency—both of which seem reasonable under the circumstances. MastCell ^Talk 20:17, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I think it is important to distinguish between two positions here:

1. Not being happy that a trustee has been booted without explanation.
2. Not being happy that Doc James has been booted.

There may very well have been good reasons, if they are supplied most of the critics will shut up. However the complete failure to articulate what is happening is in the finest tradition of bureaucracy, and completely at odds with the principles of the movement. I find it hard to believe that the board is incapable of coming up with a form of words that covers the events leading up to the dismissal, without falling into any legal quagmire, or casting un-needed aspersions.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:21, 31 December 2015 (UTC).

Sorry, if i disagree with You Jimbo, but "9 board members posting their own first impressions would be" transparency, not giving out any information is exactly what is "more likely to give rise to confusions".--Emergency doc (talk) 19:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

We agree in part and disagree in part. I absolutely agree that "not giving out any information" would be disastrous. Remembering that a man's reputation is at stake here, the responsible thing for the board to do is to consider their statements carefully for absolute accuracy, and also to work with James to ensure that his side of the story is properly heard as well. Bursting onto the wiki with random impressions and thoughts would not be helpful at all. Patience.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 20:54, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure, you (the board) had your reasons, but the way, the information came out was already disastrous. Well, I'll be pantient an waiting for information to come...--Emergency doc (talk) 21:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The board could learn a share from the astounding professionalism of the german inner minister: ... please understand why I don't want to give answers to your questions. Why? A part of those answers would irritate the population ... ... oh, did they already? --.js (((☎))) 20:58, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

To clarify Jimmy's comment "He's the one who went public without warning in the middle of the meeting." The vote had concluded and I had been requested to leave. I had therefore left the meeting before I posted anything and from my perspective the meeting was done.

With respect to board process, the community does not really elect people to the board, there is a community election that provides suggestions to the board that they may or may not approve. Per the board handbook the board is completely within its rights to remove board members without cause by a simple majority. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

@Doc James:. A question: are you preparing a statement on this matter? Or will you being issuing a joint statement with the WMF board? There is a lot of consternation on what has happened, I really feel this would help. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:23, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

"from my perspective the meeting was done..." No offense, but you not being in the meeting, does not mean the meeting ended and this does seem a little disgruntled, which causes many to become concerned for many reasons. I don't know, but maybe you should not have reacted immediately.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:28, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Not knowing Doc James, but sensing from the comments here something about his connection to the community, I would guess he simply felt like sharing with the people he represented as quickly as possible the crucial, bottom line fact of what happened. This is similar to how people react in a family tragedy or major event; immediately get in touch with the the rest of the family with the major news and then soon, very soon thereafter, get into the details. So, I think since he is obviously held in such high regard by many of you, he treated you like family by immediately telling you what he could. It may and is not the way corporate officials are trained to behave....i.e. to wait and come out with a joint and well thought out official statement...but I have a feeling that you should all perhaps be touched that this person who you trust and put his name forth treated you like family when this event happened. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

+1 very good point! --.js (((☎))) 07:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Jimbo: If you kick an elected representative out of an official meeting, it is not only predictable that he will asap tell that to his voters, but it is his natural moral obligation to do so (unless he beforehand would have agreed in free will to postpone this information for good reasons). To now attack him that he did so, the (leader of the) board not only shows a huge lack of empathy, but in knowing a bit about the communication tactics of WMF and the board it is clearly visible that the gossip spitting machine called Wikipedia helps putting the outcast in the center of attraction of the gossip investigators and thus drawing the attention away from the honourable persons who casted him out. If this "was" a deliberate communication stragedy one would have to praise it's effectivtiy while it would be morally disgusting.

The still remaining question is: How long will the board (leader/s) let this happen? Until they finally come up with their rendition. The damage is done to the condemned one by not only letting speculations grow and spread what evil he could have done - and never mind the facts, some things will keep sticking on him afterwards. And by writing "a man's reputation is at stake here" and "If a board member fails the community in such a serious way" they even heat up that unsubstantial gossip. Congratulations.

Honestly, Jimmy, please give us a reliable estimate When and where will you give the official statement on this case? (And meanwhile you really should stop circulating rumours.) --.js (((☎))) 07:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

You are reading things into my words that I did not say. I have not attacked him for going public early, I've merely stated the fact. If you think that reflects negatively on him, then that's your judgment and not mine. I will not be giving the "official statement" - that will come from the entire board, and I suppose most likely presented by Patricio in his capacity as Chair. I have circulated no rumors of any kind, so I have no idea what you are talking about in that line.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

To write "a man's reputation is at stake", "If a board member fails the community in such a serious way", "... to quietly resign, as many of us recommended to him", "this should have been announced with a full and clear and transparent and NPOV explanation. Why didn't that happen? Because James chose to post about it before" and "a man's public reputation is at risk here" are rumours and inflammatory. --.js (((☎))) 10:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

There is not "a man's reputation" at stake here, there are 10 men's reputations at stake, and the reputation of the board as such. --Tinz (talk) 13:55, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Is that board meeting still going on? One would assume that reasons for removal would be very clear for 8-1 vote, and legal check of final wording shouldn't take excessively long either, unless removal itself was somehow legally questionable. Frankly it is starting to look like board never expected that it would need to provide a public explanation, and is now scrambling behind the scenes to put together some polished statement that ruffles as few feathers as possible.--Staberinde (talk) 16:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Why doesn't the Board of Trustees post advance notice of its meetings and the matters it intends to consider?

While there may be matters involving commercial negotiations, pending legal matters or employer-employee issues which would not be suitable for public airing, I see no reason why a community-driven project like Wikipedia shouldn't provide reasonable advance notice to the community of planned actions of sufficient importance to require Trustee review and approval. Why does the WMF seem determined to forestall input by the community which does so much of the work to implement the activities the WMF is trying to encourage? The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 21:24, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

The WMF does not want the community to be involved. They want to discourage community input. They will not get involved in the daily activity of improving articles.

The people who voted to remove James Heilman from the Board of Trustees are Patricio Lorente, Alice Wiegand, Frieda Brioschi, Jimmy Wales, Stu West, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Guy Kawasaki, and Denny Vrandečić. The reputation of the WMF and the people who voted to remove James Heilman is at stake here. One of the major problems is that "The Wikimedia Foundation has virtually no influence on what is written in Wikipedia." Wales says "I know why I voted the way I did - and it has to do with my strong belief in the values of this community and the responsibilities of board members to uphold those values. If a board member fails the community in such a serious way, tough decisions have to be made about what to do."[1] However, The WMF has failed the community a long time ago. If there were paid editors to deal with the WP:NOTHERE editors things could improve greatly. Admins currently don't police article content. Arbcom does not police article content. Problematic editors continue to make counterproductive edits and try to white-wash articles. The disruption on Wikipedia continues by advocates who are indistinguishable from trolls according to User:Larry Sanger. QuackGuru (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Ha ha, your user name just screams loud and clear to me how neutral you will be towards those editors you perceive to be promoting what you feel are "fringe" theories. Wbm1058 (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps announce some date by which an explanation will be issued. Edison (talk) 22:40, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I expect they'll just wait for the next thing to distract attention and hope this dies. That seems to be the normal strategy. Intothatdarkness 23:27, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Can you give even one example of that ever happening? Is there some lingering question you have from some past event that you'd like to raise with the board?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:00, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The Foundation suppressed the most recent survey of the proportion of female editors for almost two years. Will you please answer my three questions at #Remedies for the future below? EllenCT (talk) 02:35, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

"Even one"? Here you are: Superprotect, Media Viewer RfC, Media Viewer RfC on Commons, Media Viewer Meinungsbild in de.wp, Visual Editor, ... tbc... --.js (((☎))) 13:52, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

we need to know what happened--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:03, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the WMF board has gotten the message. If Legal needs to review the statement, WMF will release it on their timetable, not one that is desired by Wikipedia editors. Until more information is released, I'm not sure what else can be done here right now. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Err Liz, you ever worked with management in situations like this? It shouldn't take too long for the people involved to agree on a statement. 48 hours at most. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Except note that we aren't working "with management" - i.e. not paid staff sitting in an office working on it. We're working with an all-volunteer board living in very different time zones (James is still in Japan as far as I know, some of us are in Europe, some in the US) and working for a consensus statement that is as informative as possible with broad support. Takes time to do well. Think wiki-world, not corporate-world. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:27, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Depends how motivated folks are Jimbo, I've seen some statements hammered out quick-smart. And it's not as if the ten of you have a hugely complex statement to make either. I would have thought there was plenty of motivation to dispel all this speculation as quickly as possible.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:16, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

"Did you know" – that Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania was named after John Wilkes and Isaac Barré? – Wbm1058 (talk) 02:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Remedies for the future

Jimbo, why should the time or manner that an ejected member chooses to announce the ejection have any bearing at all on when or how the Board chooses to describe the rationale for the ejection to the community?

Will you please support a resolution requiring that board agendas be posted publicly in advance of board meetings, and that the minutes be posted before the next meeting's agenda is finalized, and that votes on unagendized items be deferred until the next meeting?

Would you please support an amendment to the bylaws requiring that a majority of the board be elected by the community? EllenCT (talk) 02:06, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I think I've explained the answer to the first question quite well already, but let me try again. The ideal pattern here would have been for there to be a clear, transparent and agreed explanation posted by all parties. He announced before we had the chance to formulate a statement that he would approve of. Our choice might have been to post something blunt and damaging to him, but it still seems better that we go slow and make sure that everything is done in a respectful way.

I would support as best practice the public posting of agendas for routine board meetings. I would support that minutes be posted promptly - but before the next meetings agenda is finalized is not really practical because we normally vote to approve the previous meetings minutes at the next meeting - every board I have been on does this. I would not support that unagendized items be deferred until the next meeting - we are working board and we have long board meetings and such a delay would not be helpful in any way.

I do not support any changes to the bylaws around the composition of the board at this time. There is a very unhealthy and plainly false view among some in the community that elected board members are more supportive of the community than appointed. It actually doesn't turn out that way in practice, and with good reason. All board members have a fiduciary duty to the organization, which means that caring about the community - the lifeblood of the organization - comes naturally to everyone.

One more point, which you didn't directly ask about but which I think is relevant - would it have been wise to be public in advance of this board meeting about what we were to consider? Clearly not. Had we made a different decision and allowed James to say, what benefit would there have been to publicly raising a cloud around him. He had made a different decision - to quietly resign, as many of us recommended to him, again there would have been no benefit to making public a cloud around him. It was important to have the meeting privately so that we could talk through the situation before deciding what to do. Remember, a man's public reputation is at risk here. It would be unfair and unwise to go public prematurely.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:53, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

<squeeze> I don't know whether the elected board members are more supportive of the community or not, that's not the point. They are just better legitimized to be on the board, as they are elected ba the true sovereign of this enterprise, the community, and not some back-room appointment by insiders. You and Larry Sanger have as well a good reason to be there, as founders, and, despite the quite byzantine nomination mode, to some extend the affiliate members. But the only true vetted members are the open elected ones. Nobody should be able to oust one of the few really elected members just because they can, without giving a good reason asap. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 10:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The board's support for the community was seen last year in the Superprotect statement. One of the reasons, the former elected board members are not in the board anymore and Doc James was voted in, was their position towards this affair (at least for my votings it was the main reason). Now he is removed again, while the Superprotect-supporters still fill the board. Whatever explanation will be given in the future, this is another blow for the trust, that I have in the board and their "community-support". --Magiers (talk) 12:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes I was given the option of resigning over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I see such a move as letting down those who elected me to do a difficult job. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:06, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. It is difficult but whether or not they knew it, or understood it, you were not elected to be beholden or owe duties to them, nor any block of voters; you were elected (that is, recommended by vote) to have fiduciary obligation and loyalty to the Foundation. Some of the comments here by others do not seem to countenance what a fiduciary obligation to a legal entity is, it actually disbars or preempts loyalty to voters or anyone else besides the Foundation, much less to the minority that supported your recommendation to the board. Thus, if the other board members see you as impeding their own fiduciary obligation to the Foundation, whether or not that is your intent (and thus no-fault (or cause) on your part), they are empowered to take action. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:38, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

• Jimbo, will you support an amendment to the bylaws prohibiting the removal of community-elected trustees without cause? The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 03:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, as I haven't thought through the detailed implications. But in this case, it isn't relevant as this was a removal for cause.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, would you support an amendment to the bylaws specifying that removed community-elected trustees be replaced with new community-elected trustees? We can add voting for alternates to the voting process next year so that you would have new trustees ready to go. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:52, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Legal protocols: Jimmy, you write just above that "this was a removal for cause". First, didn't the WMF's lawyers read the law and advise the Board that if the removal was "for cause", the cause needed to be embedded in the resolution removing the trustee? To do otherwise was to gamble that the vote would not have been 6–4 (sufficient for removal "with cause", but lacking the 7–3 supermajority required for "without cause"). A 6–4 result would have put the Board in a legal pickle, but even if the numbers for the supermajority had been privately ascertained before the meeting, there was no guarantee that all customers would buy when it came to the transaction; it's not something the WMF's lawyers should have exposed the Board to. So having embedded the "cause" in the resolution, there would have been no fuss now about exactly what the cause was—it would simply have been included in the announcement. Second, didn't the lawyers apprise the Board of the likelihood that that booting Heilman out of the meeting after the resolution was passed would almost certainly result in his announcing it publicly himself, and thus that the Board should have been prepared to do justice to the decision by releasing a statement already prepared? It sounds like the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing—before, during, and indeed well after the meeting, as it now appears. Tony (talk) 08:10, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• • Maybe state the cause within 24 hours? How long does it take to craft a reason for some seemingly arbitrary action? If you did not have a clear reason for the action, why the hell did you do it? And why is it so hard to state it that a gross delay is required? Edison (talk) 04:26, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
    • Because a man's reputation is at stake here, I think it wise to take it slow here. I care more about James' future than I care about your foot stamping impatience.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, you are constantly putting more fire into the gossip by saying you will say "something" later, adding tiny needle bits in every second posting. By that you are really doing harm, and I am convinced you know that. If you were interested in deescalation you wouldn't do that. (see my posting above) --.js (((☎))) 09:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Simply saying that I won't say anything inflammatory is itself inflammatory? That's a very strange way of thinking.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

You have said inflammatory things. Please don't twist my words. --.js (((☎))) 10:24, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you are right to not let others rush you into a statement that you wish to consider carefully. Everyone here has been told in more than one way that you intend to explain things in detail before too long.

We should all step back and let Jimbo find his words. HighInBC 09:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, but it isn't me we are waiting on.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I was perhaps being too subtle, I was trying to hint that you should not be giving the crowd little tidbits of information until then. You are feeding the frenzy and encouraging speculation. HighInBC 19:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo, is the Legal team actively working on this, or are some of them out of the office over the New Year break? As I mentioned on wikimedia-l, the longer the explanation is forthcoming, the more unfounded rumours will circulate and be taken as fact by some. I see the names of people I trust in that resolution, so I figure there must be some very good reason, but going on without explanation will undermine community trust in the Foundation, which obviously isn't good for anybody. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC).

Jimbo has said that he could have said something blunt and damaging. That implies to me that if the story was told bluntly, it would be damaging. In fact, I don't see a way it's not going to be damaging, if my reading of what Jimbo said is correct. But the fact that Doc James also hasn't said anything about the cause for which he was dismissed suggests to me there is dialogue going on that involves him, with a view towards an agreed statement.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:12, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The trouble is, the hinting is more damaging than anything. It's been repeatedly said that the removal is for cause and could damage someone's reputation, but no indication what that actually means. That could be anything from "Stole funds and bought a car" to "Pushed too hard in meetings." If it were something toward the first, I suspect we'd have seen a quiet resignation. But the statement must be specific, not some wishy-washy legalese like "Failed to meet expectations of a Board member." We need to know exactly why the Board saw fit to remove a community elected member without even consultation of, let alone referendum to, the community that elected him. Unless what happened was truly egregious, that shouldn't have happened. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:20, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The trouble is, the hinting is more damaging than anything [2]i agree with this statement,... logic and objectivity must be clear in any "statement" by the board and verifiable--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

There was no hinting, by the way. "Our choice might have been to post something blunt and damaging to him, but it still seems better that we go slow and make sure that everything is done in a respectful way." - this refers to a knee jerk reaction trying to rush out a statement to meet impatient demands for transparency RIGHT NOW. We could have done that, but we didn't. You'll get an accounting of what happened and it will be written carefully and thoughtfully.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:25, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Can you give at least a rough time frame within which we should be seeing such a statement, and an update on progress toward it? I'm not asking for down to the minute, but "We'll have it sometime" is pretty vague. And yes, your statement that James' removal was necessary to uphold the community's values is a hint that he did something very wrong, especially given that he ran on a platform of representing the values of the community on the Board. Maybe he really did, but the trouble is that we have no information. This eventuality (as well as the others, a resignation or a failed removal vote) should have been planned for before the meeting and the vote, unless this was a totally unforeseen emergency. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

It is obvious that giving a community-elected board member the boot will raise eyebrows, to put it mildly. So a really good explanation should be ready pretty damn quickly. However, if the only reason is that Doc was not a yes man on the board, you better hire Olivia Pope for that ;-) Cheers, Stefan64 (talk) 16:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Doc James gives us a reality check

Here, beginning with "With respect to board process", Doc James gives us a splash of cold water in the face to remind us/inform us of the reality of Wikipedia's structure. I think it is worth repeating:

"With respect to board process, the community does not really elect people to the board, there is a community election that provides suggestions to the board that they may or may not approve. Per the board handbook the board is completely within its rights to remove board members without cause by a simple majority."

For me the most important words are "the community does not really elect people to the board" and "remove board members without cause". So, to me this puts into question the comfortable notion that Wikipedia has a democratic component at or near the top of its structure. It also, to me, puts into question the reality of this being a community controlled entity in a structural way. To me this is not all that defining, to what degree a community is democratic, but what I think is defining and important is that people, as individuals, have a clear knowledge, of the degree to which the community they work within is democratic and what exactly are the degree of powers and controls which are retained by top level management of the community. I think that knowing and facing and dealing with the reality of one's circumstances, not the perception of the reality, is the essence of freedom. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, this procedure is utterly anti-community from the beginning. It's more like some centralised entity, that's the very opposite of a community project. The by-laws need to be changed towards more democracy as fast as possible, such irritant dictatorial behaviour must never occur in a community project, those, who partake, show by partaking in it their contempt for the community. With cause should be possible in emergency cases, without is so out of scope, nobody decent would have contemplated the mere possibility. But after the violent putsch with superprotect, and the kowtow to the putschists by the board afterwards, such thing should perhaps have been expected. But especially because the former board members put the dagger in the back of the community, this new members were elected, to finally get some pro-community members. Now one of them was ousted by the old Mafia. Anybody else thinking about Fifa yet? Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 16:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I just found an interesting article: Benevolent dictator for life. Not sure how compatible that concept is with the concept of democracy. Also, compare and contrast the very public, often lengthy, sometimes gut-wrenching – and reputation-damaging – process by which the Arbitration Committee removes misbehaving administrators from office. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:09, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

While I by no means defend this structure, the "recommendations" thing is a way of getting around Florida law (as others have pointed out), rather than a method of fooling the community. — foxj 17:13, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

We have been assured that the WMF is dealing with this in as timely a matter as possible. People have day jobs, people live in different time zones all of which affect the time it takes to do something that is careful and accurate. We do both James and the foundation a disservice by pushing for answers before they are carefully formulated and by attributing motive and actions to either before the full story has bee released.(Littleolive oil (talk) 17:19, 30 December 2015 (UTC))

With all due respect, @Littleolive oil, this is baloney. There should have been a statement indicating the reason simultaneously with official announcement of the action, which has already happened. Now we are in a situation in which something seemingly anti-democratic has taken place and the clique majority faction that caused the event is supposed to be given extraordinary time to explain themselves. We don't need spin, we don't need obfuscation, we don't need to make allowances because "people have day jobs" — we need an official explanation now. Carrite (talk) 17:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

There has been no "official" announcement, the announcement was a post by Doc James. If he wishes to give more information, thats up to him. But right now we are waiting for the official announcement from the WMF. Just as information on living people must be carefully added to the wiki, so must releases of information on living people be released carefully. Pushing isnt going to make it happen any sooner, lawyers are involved at this point according to Jimbo, they never move fast. AlbinoFerret 17:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

"There has been no "official" announcement" Well, [3] was posted, with the subject "Announcement about changes to the Board", to the "Wikimedia Announcements" mailing list (and to the "Wikimedia-l" list, as [4]) by Patricio Lorente, who signed it "Chair, Board of Trustees/ Wikimedia Foundation". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I was rejected from a job the other day, I need to wait a few weeks to find out why. When things need to be put together and explained well to outsiders, those not familiar with the full history (as it sounds like this has rumbled on for a while), we should expect to wait. As Jimbo says, if the WMF rush this out, it may well read wrong and create the wrong impression, which will lead to them being criticized - if they take their time and make sure it reads correctly and such like, they get criticized for being too slow. It's a lose-lose situation for them, whatever they do. Mdann52 (talk) 17:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

What we should seek is a quick statement which is factually accurate. These are not mutually exclusive things. Resolutions generally take the form of WHEREAS, WHEREAS, WHEREAS, THEREFORE. Here the WMF Board has published the THEREFORE and said not a word about the WHEREAS. So, let's have it. I'm not saying the Board majority is necessarily in the wrong in their decision; I am saying that when an unelected majority tosses overboard an elected minority, there is grave cause for concern. Carrite (talk) 22:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Since James seems to have jumped the gun on an official announcement, rightly or wrongly, or innocently with the best intentions; we have to deal with the fall out from that which is to wait for the statement that might have accompanied the timely, official announcement. And yes, timely for the volunteers who make up the committee. Demanding an organization operate to suit our impatience won't get us far. I don't see who the speculation and vitriol is helping, not James, and not the foundation, and not Wikipedia. Whipping everything up into a lather just creates a mess in my opinion. I prefer clarity and simplicity. Whatever happened with James, speculation swirling around him will only create a possibly lasting narrative that has ultimately nothing to do with the reality of the situation and is not fair to him or to anyone else. I won't argue this further. Just my opinion and my own impatience with the chaos being created around this issue. (Littleolive oil (talk) 17:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC))

Littleolive oil is quite right. I pointed out in my posts earlier that I believe Doc James has some serious character concerns and people got angry at me for having an opinion, assuming he is flawless and the board is out of line. The fact that Doc James would throw a tantrum and preempt the board from making a timely statement just so he could control the narrative, illustrates precisely what I have been talking about. Nobody yet knows why

DocJames was voted out, but if I am to guess he probably assumed he could do no wrong and then fouled up by acting from within either his own self interests or a misshapen sense of ethics and what is beneficial for the community. LesVegas (talk) 00:35, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I guess what we need to do is not judge. Whatever the situation it could be painful for all parties; we don't accomplish anything by adding to that.(Littleolive oil (talk) 04:43, 31 December 2015 (UTC))

Yeah, you're right again. I'm only making assumptions before the facts are out, and even though I think I'm right it's probably better to hold off until we know the full story. But once it's out, and if it so happens that DocJames did as I suspect, I will judge him and will relish doing so. Part of the problem is that so many editors practically worship him (I know you're not one of them) and the fact that they swoon and get googoley eyed around him makes them incapable of holding his feet to the fire whenever it needs to be done. I'll hold off on making premature assumptions, but if he did as I think, he needs to be held in shame and spat upon instead of relying on a fanclub driven bolster to puff out his chest in defiance. Or he could be truly innocent and the board could be the bad guys or it could be somewhere in between, but I'd be shocked, and will be the first to apologize. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. LesVegas (talk) 06:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

LesVegas, would your "concerns" over Doc James' character be in any way founded on the fact that you are a tireless apologist for quackery and he is an equally tireless advocate of a reality-based approach to medical topics? I think it is dishonest to make comments about another editor's character without being open about your own history with that user - especially when they are clearly trusted by the community at large. Guy (Help!) 17:56, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I am not without cynicism regarding the medical profession and its online lobbying, but unless and until someone makes such allegation, why should we assume it? The Board has overridden the will of the community - it's up to them to make a compelling explanation. For Doc James any allegation may be a personal matter, but for the WMF it is a personnel matter. Still, I would welcome if either side would say something to specifically exclude this, as with the other scenarios I've suggested. Wnt (talk) 16:13, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

To clarify no organisations or individuals outside of the WMF were justification for my removal. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:49, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

A reminder

The essence of 99% of Wikipedia drama is the demand for action/explanation/heads to roll <large>NOW!!!!one!!11eleventy</large>, versus the normal pace of everything at Wikipedia, which is that it will all be sorted before the WP:DEADLINE. I have never known Jimbo withhold an explanation gratuitously. I have known him take his time getting the facts straight first. I personally think there is a serious problem, especially since I trust James and I know he has a deep-rooted sense of fairness, but I don't think demands for anything right now are going to have any effect whatsoever. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Guy (Help!) 01:07, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

You can surely point me to some instances of normal pace of everything in wikipedia? That is instances where the rest of the project is kept in the dark about the reasoning behind significant decisions? IIRC the normal procedure is quite the opposite: Reasons are evident and are communicated as such before the decision itself is.---<)kmk(>- (talk) 01:33, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Another reminder: the best elected selected among "the 3 from the community" was elected selected by 2028 supports among 5167 voters (=39%), while 2583 voters (=50%) were without sufficient knowledge about the candidate to build their opinion. For the second best elected selected, the figures were 36% and 53%. Another remark. On Foundation:Board_of_Trustees, only five members have an "until" date greater than December 2015 (i.e. today's night). Should we draw some conclusions from this factoid? Pldx1 (talk) 09:37, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

"Neutral" != "No opinion". I had an opinion of every candidate, but still voted neutral on a significant number of candidates. For me a support vote was my preferred candidates, a neutral vote was an acceptable candidate (i.e. someone who I thought would do well on the board, but perhaps didn't speak to my preferences as well as the others) and an oppose vote was reserved for candidates I didn't believe would be appropriate for the Board. Dragons flight (talk) 10:43, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed that this is a specious reading of election results. Carrite (talk) 14:10, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Remember, this was not an election, but an ordered selection within the volunteers. Thereafter, the best selected were elected by the Board. Corrected accordingly. Any news about the four "out of date" (at least according to Foundation:Board_of_Trustees) ? Pldx1 (talk) 14:49, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

KaiMartin, how long have you been here? Wikipedia does not do rapid. Everything is always talked to death first. Guy (Help!) 09:42, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, the Foundation can be very rapid, when they want. Destroying trust in few hours (on a sunday by the way), but taking forever to make an excuse. --Magiers (talk) 10:30, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

In wikipedia "talk to death" is done before decisions are made. Arbcom won't ban you and tell "rationale will be provided in near future as our schedule permits". At this point it seems that they never intended to provide anything more than a generic statement with zero information, like that Patricio's email. Now they need to scramble behind the scenes because unexpectedly the proletariat started demanding explanations.--Staberinde (talk) 13:25, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep. This Board is operating backwards. Knowing that this action would be highly contentious, they should have crafted a resolution containing the facts and reasons, and then voted on it. The act of writing down an explanation and making sure everybody agrees with it is a way to ensure good decision making. The explanation is not just a mere formality to be crafted after the fact. Jehochman ^Talk 14:00, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Superprotect was not rapid. That commit you linked to from August 10, 2014 was discussed at least as early as July 31. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

And in any case, it is clearly a necessary protection given that there may be legal ramifications from some articles which cannot be shared. It is a logical extension of WP:OFFICE and one whose necessity is, I think, reasonably obvious. I have seen several situations where people have, in good faith, made edits that have implications they could not possibly understand without being appraised of details that cannot be shared without violating privacy. Guy (Help!) 17:47, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

@Tim Starling: Superputsch was implemeted in a cloak and dagger manner by some people inside the WMF especially as a tool against the community, to prevent the community to dare to implement it's will against the putschist in side the WMF. It had no positive meaning at all, it was pure might against right. And it was an overnight implementation by hostile WMFers, don't try to make some fairytales up around this. In a decent organization it would have never been implemented at all, and if some rough devs would have done so, it would have been ditched asap, as soon as somebody became aware of this emanation of community disdain. Some better solution for the implementation of the well-founded community consensus would have been developed by the programmers instead of this sub-standard solution by DaB, and everything would have been fine. But the WMF, and the board, chose not to be with the communitzy, but they acted explicitely against the community, they showed with absolute clearity their disdain and hatred of the unwashed masses. And those involved have yet to make sincere apologies for their completely repellent and disgusting deeds. Rhere was never ever, and especially not in that situation, a need for such a brutal anti-community instrument, full stop. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 18:48, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Preparation of that particular commit Magiers linked to, which is a configuration patch written by me, was requested on July 31, 2014. But that was just the configuration change. Erik Moeller proposed superprotection as a conflict resolution mechanism for site CSS/JS in November 2011. The relevant software development work was finally done in June 2013. These dates are straight from my email archives, not from memory. -- Tim Starling (talk) 10:18, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, so he prepared this before, perhaps not as such a hostile device, but it was implemented and used in August with pure hostility without a grain of goodwill towards the community, without any former community input, just to get some vain programmers pet project untouched by well funded complaints by the community. The whole implementation process of superputsch was hostility, might excess and disdain of the community with no goodwill whatsoever. All involved need to apologize sincerely for this extreme bad deed against the core of the wikiverse, the community. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 10:39, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Tim, thank You for these informations from behind the curtain. I don't know, if I think better of the Superprotect-deployment now, because it seems not an hazardous action of someone loosing his nerves, that just noone could step back from afterwards (which I always assumed), but it was planned long-term (of course July 31 shows still, that it was intendended against the German community, that held an RfC at this time). But nothing against You personally, that You even wrote: "I have not reviewed the situation on de.wp and have no opinion as to whether this is a good idea." The ones, that failed here blatantly were the members of the board, that proove their are not capable and willing to intervene in a severe conflict between WMF and community. This damaged reputation will always stay with them. --Magiers (talk) 11:15, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems rather odd to have expected a joint statement that both sides would agree when it's pretty clear that both sides had a fundamental disagreement. I am curious, though, as to what in James statement is so disagreeable that every board member couldn't reply individually? James didn't call into question anyone's reputation and it seems even a joint statement could have included every word he wrote - just as it could have included the WMF announcement in full. It's not like a joint statement would have changed what appears to be diametric viewpoints. Eight people voted to remove him, two voted to keep him. If hearing 8 reasons would be so convoluted and confusing to publish, what exactly did the eight vote on that they cannot express coherently? If someones reputation is truly at stake, there should be facts and conclusions drawn from an investigation as a mere philosophical differences of opinion on priorities would not jeopardize anyone's reputation. Who, then, made the motion to remove and what were the facts and conclusions the board adopted prior to dismissal (if I recall Roberts correctly, the board would have heard an outline of transgressions, someone would make a motion to accept the outline as fact, seconded and voted. Following that, another member would make a motion for dismissal, etc, etc).? For such an action as removal, the facts and conclusions should be strong enough to publish, unvarnished, without fear of undeservedly harming reputations. And what words or characterizations did James use that the WMF opposes and paralyzed their response? --DHeyward (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no real reason for a "list of reasons" as all that is necessary is that a majority of the board felt that the person was for any reason not acting in the full and best interest of the board or organization, or that their presence was not benefitting the board or organization. This is not a "stock corporation" for which shareholders have a strong legal right to representation on the board. That said, this was not handled well at all. Coherently or not. Collect (talk) 15:40, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

There's no list, but in every type of board that operates as WMF does that I'm familiar with (from non-profit Homeowners associations to the City Council to the body the regulates state police certification), the process is the same. Information is presented, motions are made, they are seconded and then voted on. In this case, I cannot see how there were not at least two motions (possibly many more). The first would be accepting some sort of finding of fact regarding misfeasance or malfeasance surrounding trustee conduct, responsibilities, and confidentiality. The second would be the removal motion. People that run for the seat should be entitled to see what is required of them and what is considered misfeasance or malfeasance. There doesn't appear to be anything criminal and is about defining and/or executing roles and responsibilities. The motion that outlined those expectations shouldn't be vague. Most organizations would point to a policy or guideline that was written down or, if not, spell it out in the motion, for all to see. It is one thing if DocJames disagreed with policy/guideline and was removed because they actively opposed it. It is quite another thing if DocJames agreed with the policy/guideline but disagreed that he violated it. We are not entitled to know which of the two situations the board addressed but we are entitled to know what the policy/guidelines are that they enforced through dismissal. Otherwise, how do we vote and what candidates do we choose? Expectations of trustee conduct, responsibilities, and confidentiality should be spelled out. Two out of three community elected members seem confused regarding those expectations. If this were a different problem, we'd call this a fundamental "community gap" of understanding. --DHeyward (talk) 18:53, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Further statement from Patricio

Here is a further statement from Patricio. From the last paragraph, it looks like it's all we're getting, and we might as well have got nothing, because, with regard to the dismissal, it contains more vagueness, obfuscation and mealy-mouthed weasel words than I have ever seen outside politics. What little it says effectively means "Doc James disagreed with the majority of the board about how to interpret his duties as a board member". That is so bland it won't convince anyone who's sceptical.

Though one can see that he may well not wish to do so, I wish that Doc James will run again. Then his post can be decided on by the people who actually matter – the editors. As far as I am concerned, I voted for him last time and I have no reason not to do so again. BethNaught (talk) 16:28, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Since the community's vote is merely a recommendation, if he did, and won, they would probably not reinstate James, because his view of the expectations for board members would still differ from the majority's. I see no indication that they plan to hold an election. I would not expect them to, actually. They will probably elect to the board whoever finished fourth, and that will be that.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:39, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

True, but there's always 2017. Nevertheless if the board hopes to retain any of its credibility it ought to hold a new election. BethNaught (talk) 16:46, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

They still wouldn't put him on the board. And I think this will be old news by then. There will be some bigger fish to fry by then, as well as the usual shift in community members that happens over a year and a half as people lose interest and others appear. It's just too long. And people would realize it was just a gesture and want to spend their vote elsewhere (which people would quiz James about "How will you get them to seat you?"). At the end of the day, outrage wasn't that big a factor in the ArbCom elections.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

That is a very plausible outcome as regards 2017. However I will say that outrage arguably was a factor in the 2015 board elections where all the old community members were thrown out. Also, I haven't made myself clear – if Doc James were elected again and the board refused to seat him, it might hopefully spark a constitutional crisis in the WMF (which, as you might guess, many would enjoy immensely). Which, when I think about it, means that they will be too scared to hold an interim election... BethNaught (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

..........and if they don't, instead merely appointing someone at their whim, the nature of the power relationship between the En-WP community and the Board and its employed professional staff becomes crystal clear. The operative word in this scenario would be "hubris" — "we don't care what you want or what you think..." The question would then become whether the community could be awakened to organize itself for its interests. (Possible, not likely.) Carrite (talk) 19:52, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Before we vote again, can we get a copy of the motion the board voted on that described the interpretation of "duty of trustee." They obvously made that finding before voting to dismiss him and we should know those duties beforehand so candidates can prepare themselved and the community will be properly represented. Also, is the board member that dissented in jeopardy now? --DHeyward (talk) 18:22, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps a bit more detail?

This is mystifying, and typical of those situations were less information leads to more – possibly damaging – speculation, as is already happening at the other place. On the one hand you are saying that Heilman was removed 'for cause', i.e. for some inappropriate action, that he failed the community in some serious but unspecified way ('not upholding the values of the community'). On the other hand there is Patricio's later statement, which suggest there was no specific action involved, only failure to meet expectations, and that the matter had been discussed for some months. This suggests there was no specific action, but rather that Heilman refused to agree some confidential matter that the Board wished to keep secret. So which is correct? I am not saying yours and Patricio's statements are inconsistent, but it is hard to make them so. Peter Damian (talk) 19:08, 31 December 2015 (UTC) [edit] Oh yes, you also said 'a man's reputation is at stake here'. Presumably Heilman's reputation? Add this to the various statements about being better for him to 'quietly resign', to avoid 'raising a cloud' this all suggests he did something very bad, some terribly inappropriate action that it would have been better to keep secret. But I can't believe that's true, and Heilman's actions after the meeting suggest it cannot be true. You or someone else need to provide a bit more context. Peter Damian (talk) 11:13, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I wonder what the board wants to keep secret... Certain ideas spring to mind. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 31 December 2015 (UTC).

"Failure to meet expectations?" The board has failed to meet my expectations in this fiasco. Edison (talk) 02:57, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I just stumbled on this discussion after an absence. It might be helpful if someone can summarize the positions of people on both sides for persons like myself just stumbling on this conversation. It is true that the Foundation can kick anyone off its board that it wants. But statements about "lack of trust" do reflect on the character of living persons and bother me. I'd like to see more specificity, if that kind of statement is to be made, and an opportunity for a point-by-point rebuttal. Coretheapple (talk) 15:04, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Try this, although I think it is missing this. Peter Damian (talk) 15:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Specific question: was Doc James ejected because he refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement?

Jimbo, was the action against Doc James taken because the Board asked him to sign a nondisclosure agreement and he refused? If so, what is the text of the NDA? EllenCT (talk) 04:10, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Now, if that is the issue, then we really might have a serious moral dilemma in play; because secrecy equates to removing knowledge, which seems the opposite of what an encyclopedia is all about. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:49, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Then surely he could speak up for himself as he would not be forbidden to do so. Doc James is being fairly mum, and he is clearly capable of speaking, yet he is confining himself to hopes that this will lead to greater transparency and the like. I'm not prepared to take up the torches and pitchforks when the guest of honor isn't.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:16, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

He says he 'under an obligation' not to mention specifics. I don't know why he is under such an obligation though Peter Damian (talk) 11:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

It does not follow that he surely could speak for himself in such a situation- a previously signed NDA could prohibit him from discussing a subsequent NDA that he refused to sign. --Noren (talk) 16:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes - someone else has just pointed this out to me. However (see his reply to my question on his talk page) he has said he will be making a statement at some point. Peter Damian (talk) 16:48, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

When the first one expires?

Jimbo, if Doc James had been ejected because he refused to sign an NDA, would you be allowed to tell us? Why or why not? EllenCT (talk) 19:49, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Nothing about any of this had anything at all to do with signing or refusing to sign any NDA of any kind. That's not even remotely relevant to what happened. During the entire discussion, there was never any mention of signing or not signing any NDA, nor am I aware of any controversy of any kind with James regarding signing or not signing any NDA.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:54, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

• Board members are rarely if ever put under NDA's unless they involve things like third party contracts. When people talk about board members having a duty of confidentiality, they're talking about an implied duty of confidentiality derived from the duties of loyalty and care (the fiduciary duties) that a trustee holds to his organization. None of the comments I've heard regarding James alleges that he broke any NDA or broke his implied duty of confidentiality; for instance, he would've been legally absolutely 100% upholding his fidicuariary duty to the WMF by rapidly annnouncing he has been removed as a trustee if he believed that prompt and transparent discussion of that decision was in WMF's best interests. This is true even if other WMF board members did not agree; as a trustee, you duty to place your loyalty to the organization you serve explicitly prevents you from ceding that judgement to any other person, even another board member. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 11:03, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Outright contradiction

You said "I know why I voted the way I did - and it has to do with my strong belief in the values of this community and the responsibilities of board members to uphold those values. If a board member fails the community in such a serious way, tough decisions have to be made about what to do." talk) 20:57, 29 December 2015 (UTC) That is, you voted for Heilman's removal because you felt he had not upheld the values of this community in a serious, not just a common or garden way. But in the Signpost article, Heilman says "I believe I have a good understanding of large parts of the movement; I share its values; and I'm outspoken. I think many voters probably expected that I'd say and do what I've done." That is, he claims he was upholding the values of this community, and that in resigning he was doing what the community would expect. Peter Damian (talk) 11:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. I disagree with him.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

So what exactly is the disagreement about what the community expects of its elected representative? How is this difference in opinion sufficient cause for removal? Carrite (talk) 15:54, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Twenty questions

User:Doc James has not told us what the dispute is over, citing some kind of obligation, and whatever statement is coming out of the board and legal department is likely to do anything but reference the real philosophical issues. Whatever it is, you don't want everyone on Earth to know about it, I get that. However our minds are likely to run in a few specific directions, and if we're totally off, each side could say that and we might believe that much and not be fixated on it going forward.

• The first thing we're going to think is NSA. I don't think anybody really believes nowadays that a top ten web site anywhere in the world is allowed to exist without helping the international spy apparatus in every way they possibly can. We've watched Wikipedia servers relocate to the national security zone of northern Virginia; we've heard uncompelling explanations of why readers' IPs are recorded in site logs. Though I'm not sure this legally works, I remember once Jimmy Wales said that you could ask him if he was subject to a National Security Letter and see if he still said no. I think it's time to ask that again, and to ask both sides: does Heilman's removal have something to do with mass surveillance or WMF's response to it?

• But why stop there? I might as well also ask: does this have anything to do with the Wikivoyage controversy and the suit that was filed against Heilman for inviting some of their people to contribute to WMF projects? I understand if you can't talk about that, but if you can.... please do.

I am not very clued in, so I would suggest those with a better ear to the ground suggest more questions. Wnt (talk) 22:00, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

This had nothing do with the NSA, nor with Wikivoyage.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:56, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

My statement which hopefully addresses some of the rumors. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Doc James' "Statement Regarding My Removal"
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I have been accused of three things by fellow board members: Giving staff unrealistic expectations regarding potential board decisions. I have always stated to staff that I only represented 10% of the board and have never given assurances that I could convince other trustees. I would be interested in hearing staff weigh in on this accusation but I consider it unfounded. Releasing private board information. I have not made public, private board discussions during my time on the board. I have however pushed for greater transparency both within the WMF and with our communities. I have made myself informed by discussing issues with trusted staff and community members and used independent judgement. Publishing the statement about my removal on Wikimedia-l. I was not asked by other board members at any time before its publication to produce a joint statement or to delay publishing the statement I had put together a few days prior. The first proposal to collaborate I believe was by myself here I was also not informed that the meeting was going to continue for the purpose of producing such a statement. I have always acted in what I believe are the best interests of the movement and the WMF.

Speaking for myself, I am not seeing anything here remotely rising to the level of a removable offense for cause, as has been intimated on this page by Jimmy Wales. The Board seems to be stonewalling with their explanation; they should be expected to provide one. Carrite (talk) 02:04, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

That's also my concern. I don't carry a torch for Doc James, by any means, but saying it was for cause when cause was not necessary to remove a board member raised an eyebrow from the lawyer side of me. Doc's statement, if it adequately sets forth the matter, still makes me wonder what the "cause" was (if any), and it might be wise either to expand on the "cause" or strike it (though that seems like trying to unring a bell at this point). The confidentiality matter of course could rise to that level, but also if it was purely internal within WMF, as seems to be the case given that the community knew nothing about this for months, could be seen as an outside board member trying to do what he's there for. It's difficult to judge without the full facts, and I urge candor where possible. In any event, if the board allows this to be the only relatively specific word on the subject, James's supporters might argue that a community-selected board member was removed over a question of internal WMF politics. I'm not saying that is so, mind you, I'm just talking about appearances and arguments. YMMV.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:29, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree, I do not find "cause" for removing in the above statement --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:52, 2 January 2016 (UTC)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:52, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Instead of reposting the entire thing here, I've analyzed the situation with the information as currently known here, on wikimedia-l. Although not in Florida, I am quite familiar through past positions with the legal obligations of trustees in California, and also consulted the board manual while writing this. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 11:10, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

There's a first statement by one of the board members, Dariusz Jemielniak aka Pundit, on the mailing list [5]. I still don't see any valid reason for the ditching of an elected member beyond far too much secrecy. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 11:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Doc James: This isn't very meaningful to me... unless I take it as a "not a no" on my first question. Transparency about what? Decisions about what? Wnt (talk) 11:33, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

User:Doc_James/Foundation has further information. EllenCT (talk) 06:19, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, r u subject to a National Security Letter?

Further to Wnt's question above, are you? Nocturnalnow (talk) 01:59, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Even if he was, he couldnt tell you. Read the page linked to in the section header. A NSL comes with a gag order. AlbinoFerret 21:01, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I see, however if he is not, he could say that he is not I suppose. Also, how can the U.S. government unilaterally issue a gag order on an American when Americans have Freedom of Speech? Seems mutually exclusive to me..."gag order" and "freedom of speech". Maybe the gag order is unconstitutional and Jimbo could fight it if he has been gagged. Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Because Americans can yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? If a gag order is issued by a court, it's a courtesy notice that case is a "theater" and yelling "fire!" is not allowed. Many cases have gag orders to preserve rights of the parties involved. Even if he fought it, the hearing would not be public. And also note that the prosecutor also can't discuss it either contrary to other cases where they disclose the accusation. --DHeyward (talk) 07:13, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I have been trying to research this and it seems that most of these NSL gag orders are not issued by courts but are attached to NSLs which are issued by employees of the government; e.g. "There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had".[6] There are even references to non-employee government contractors issuing NSLs with gag orders "attached". Also of interest is the volume of these and how few have been challenged in court.

"To my knowledge, there’s three recipients who have ever challenged the NSL gag. That’s of the hundreds of thousands that have been issued,” said Melissa Goodman, an ACLU attorney"[7]

Finally, the Supreme Court has yet to deal with the legality of these gag orders and lower courts have had mixed decisions. I am confident that any U.S. Supreme Court would rule that a government employee gagging an American citizen, without going through a court process first, is an unconstitutional attack on freedom of speech. So, if Jimbo is subject to a NSL in relation to his Wikipedia activities, I hope for Wikipedia's sake that some of those millions is spent on challenging it all the way to the Supreme Court.Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@DHeyward: "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a concept that has always been invoked for one and only one purpose: to put innocent people in jail for saying things that needed very badly to be said. It was used to make up a claim that constitutional rights in the U.S. are all enforced "except where there is a compelling state interest", where the compelling interest isn't really very compelling at all, except in the sense that the guy enforcing it has a gun to compel you. When fire is shouted in real theaters, no one is ever prosecuted - the story is always that someone else shouted it, I misheard, smelled smoke, something ... can't send people to jail for causing a real panic because no one knows what happened in a panic. The people who invoke this principle are censors, two-faced liars -- or those who, uncritically, have swallowed every word such liars have told them, when they should know better. Wnt (talk) 23:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

In any event, with the power of the NSA, it would be unwise of anyone getting one of these letters to openly discuss them, in text, in a forum where it is not easy to permanently remove things. Once on the internet, forever on the internet. They can be appealed, sadly to a secret court with a hand picked judge. but thats the only sane option. AlbinoFerret 01:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Look, it's well known that people who wish to communicate without leaving an email trail have exploited gmail drafts and other electronic drop boxes (why, even General Petraeus and his girlfriend communicated that way). Like it or not, the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" poses an almost irresistible challenge and opportunity for people to exchange information in ways previously unforeseen and in codes not easily broken. I probably don't need to say much more about this—and I'm pretty sure Jimmy can't comment—but I think I'd rather have Wikipedia in a world of imperfect justice than live in a "perfect world" without it. And in any event, it's not so easy to swim upstream against an NSL. Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 01:38, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

The idea here, I think, is as a warrant canary. If you're not subject to any kind of secret warrant, when someone asks you if you are, you can answer "no". If you are, you can still legally answer "I can't discuss that". That doesn't illegally reveal information about the warrant, but it does indicate that there is one. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:20, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I overlooked this before. No, I am not subject to a National Security Letter. It is perfectly fair to ask me from time to time, and if I am, I will either break it and tell you that I am, or I will not answer at all if that's my only safe legal option.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

"Because We Can" seems correct

After reading Doc James statement above, I am satisfied that the initial concern by Seraphimblade is correct. Doc's statement shows me that the so-called issues behind the axing are pissant bullshit and would only be acceptable reasons to bumpkins. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:57, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a remarkable degree of bad faith you show there to the other trustees of the WMF. Guy (Help!) 19:59, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't mean it to appear to be bad faith. Its just my feelings about one decision they made; feelings based upon the information available to me at this time. Nocturnalnow (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The dangerous precedent is being set by the Board majority; there's no "bad faith" about it — they need to explain themselves as to why a community-elected member was summarily removed, which they are most certainly not doing. And do remember "Chicago Kelly's Law" (established Jan. 2016): "Any time you have to beg for the assumption of good faith is an indication that you probably do not deserve it." Carrite (talk) 01:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

"Good faith" is appropriate then subject haven't had a chance to explain themselves. If they simply decline to provide a proper explanation, then it can be only "blind faith".--Staberinde (talk) 16:43, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

At last, an official explanation

Such as it is...

James Heilman Removal FAQ
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Following the removal of James Heilman from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in late December 2015, a number of questions regarding this action arose on the mailing lists, wikis, and in private conversations with Trustees. The Board has compiled this list of answers to many of the most common questions. What happened? Dr. James Heilman was removed from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees following a 8-2 vote on 28 December 2015. Heilman was appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees at Wikimania 2015 based on his selection during the 2015 process for community-selected Trustees. Over time, his fellow Trustees came to the opinion that they lacked sufficient confidence in his discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information about the Wikimedia Foundation governance activities. The Board discussed the topic for several weeks, and the Chair called a special meeting to discuss the matter. During that meeting, after careful consideration, the Board voted to approve a resolution removing Heilman from his position, effective immediately. Why did Board members believe they could no longer work with James? A majority of Board members were of the opinion that James was unable or unwilling to maintain certain Trustee commitments around confidentiality, judgment, and discretion. This was not the result of any single action or opinion of James. This was not about a specific action, discussion, or disagreement over broader strategic issues. Many of the Trustees simply felt as though they had lost confidence in James’ ability to meet his obligations as a Trustee, and, in their opinion, James would not be able to regain that confidence. Confidence regarding Trustee business is very important to the Board. We are often called on to consider sensitive information and make important decisions in our roles as Trustees. This may involve governance of the Wikimedia Foundation, for example through the Board Human Resources Committee, or guidance on movement issues, such as our work with the Affiliation Committee or the Funds Dissemination Committee. Loss in confidence in one Board member affects the full Board's ability to do its work. In addition to the sensitive information we may handle, some processes or conversations need to be confidential while they are under consideration, so that we can have full, frank, and informed conversations. Even though we are committed to transparency about the outcomes of our decisions, it is important that we are confident we can trust each other as we make decisions together. There are processes and protocols to express dissent and disagreement that ensure full participation and consideration of challenging issues for all Board members. The majority of the remaining Board members felt that they and James were not able to agree on a common path forward. Despite several weeks of efforts, many of us held the opinion that we could not move forward effectively with James on the Board. Ultimately, given that, we felt it was necessary to resolve this before it further hindered the Board’s ability to do its work, especially before two new members joined the Board. What was the legal basis for the removal? The Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation allow any Trustee to be removed, with or without cause, by a majority vote of the Trustees then in office. See Bylaws, Article IV, Section 7. Although the Wikimedia Foundation's offices are now located in San Francisco, California, it was originally founded in St. Petersburg, Florida. We are a 501(c)(3) charity incorporated under the Florida nonprofit statutes. Why did the Board take this action over the holidays? The Board has been discussing and working with James on this issue for several weeks. Ultimately, we felt it was necessary to resolve before the new term for appointed Trustees. This unfortunately put us into the holiday season for many of our colleagues and community. Did James have access to documents for Board decisionmaking? Yes. James had - as all of us - access to all documents and information which he needed for his work and decision-making on the Board. Is James still a welcome contributor in other movement roles? James has proven himself as a Wikimedian in a variety of movement roles, outside the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. This decision is not about his work in other capacities. We look forward to his future contributions to the movement. Why didn’t the Board share more information immediately? In most circumstances, messages and statements on major decisions can be prepared in advance. Although we considered some potential draft announcements before last week’s meeting, it wasn’t possible to finalize any single statement. The meeting was to discuss the issue, including possible alternative outcomes. We wanted our discussion to be full and resolved, in order to inform our intended message. The Board has a responsibility to maintain discretion to protect everyone involved and the Foundation. We initially wanted to work with James to agree on a mutual statement. As that appeared unlikely to happen in a timely fashion, we have been preparing this FAQ and carefully ensuring that we respond to questions where we can. Ultimately, we have many responsibilities to uphold, high among them being our commitment to keeping the community informed. At the same time, we must balance that with our desire to do what we feel is in the best interests of the movement, and our wish to be respectful and fair to James. Why isn’t the Board sharing more about what happened? Transparency is one of the core values of the Wikimedia movement, but legally and ethically the Board is obligated to maintain a certain level of confidentiality to ensure frank conversations to reach the best decisions and to be respectful of others. We have an obligation to govern the Foundation on behalf of the public, in a way that requires some confidentiality and discretion. At the same time, we have to balance sharing information that enables the community to make informed decisions. The majority of Trustees come from the community, so we understand the community’s strong desire to have full information about any given issue. Sometimes the balance of providing accurate information, without getting into details about sensitive specifics, means that we can’t fully satisfy everyone. At times, this can be frustrating for you, and can be challenging for us. What is being done to fill the vacancy? The Board is consulting with the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee for their thoughts. This is a top priority, and we have asked Foundation staff to provide whatever support and resources necessary to make the outcome a success. Will the Board support and accept the next community-selected member? We are fully committed to filling the open community-selected seat through a transparent process, and look forward to welcoming the next eligible community-selected Trustee. The Board currently has six members who were active in the community prior to their involvement on the Board. We anticipate that number will be seven once the vacancy left by this removal is filled. We are fully committed to helping the new community-selected Trustee be successful in their role. Can James be a candidate for a community-selected seat again? Due to the removal from the Board, James is not eligible to be a candidate for the Board until the 2017 community selection process. Under the Bylaws, the Board oversees the rules and procedures for the community-selection process. If the Board determines that a candidate does not meet eligibility criteria, it may decline to appoint the candidate to the Board. Why are Trustees appointed? The Wikimedia Foundation bylaws were written in accordance with Florida law and nonprofit governance best practices to serve the unique characteristics of our movement. The Wikimedia Foundation is not legally a "membership organization" — we work to serve the full public and all audiences. The Bylaws allow the community to select some seats in order to ensure the Board retains community experience, and serves the international, decentralized nature of the Wikimedia community. Will there be an investigation? The Board resolution was fully in compliance with Board Bylaws and legal requirements. We took this action as part of our obligation to effective governance of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are confident in the process and outcome. We will not conduct any further inquiries. Why aren’t Board meetings public? The Board often handles sensitive or confidential information as part of its governance obligations. Public meetings make it more difficult for the Board to function effectively as the Wikimedia Foundation’s governance body. This does not diminish our commitment to our values of transparency and accountability. We publish Board minutes and resolutions, and we openly and transparently maintain our governance standards and processes in the Board Handbook. The majority of our Trustees are nominated to the Board through transparent, open processes, and as such, are accountable to the Foundation and movement, including its various communities. What are the Board’s next steps and priorities? We are committed to a Board that represents the community and strive for the highest standards for governance. This is necessary to effectively make decisions on the Wikimedia Foundation’s support for the Wikimedia movement. As such, filling the open community-selected seat is a top priority. We intend to make an announcement on the roadmap for filling that seat in the coming week. We want to improve our ability to communicate important information as quickly and clearly as possible. We will continue to have conversations among ourselves, and with you on how to progress in this area. We welcome your feedback and suggestions on the Board noticeboard. We are also focused on supporting the community and staff to finalize the Wikimedia Foundation strategic plan. More information on the Wikimedia Foundation’s strategic plan development efforts will be coming throughout the month of January. One of our next priorities is the success of the new Trustees who will join us over the coming weeks. We will welcome and support the new community Trustee who will step into the vacant community-selected seat, as well as the new appointed Trustees.

LINK — Carrite (talk) 04:25, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Shuffle, avoid eye contact, mumble, obfuscate. "Move along; nothing to see here." Edison (talk) 05:02, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I have still been given no reason not to trust Doc James. BethNaught (talk) 07:13, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Well this is frustrating. Heilman is being publicly dismissed for the board not having "confidence in his discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information" ... yet he is not giving us the slightest hint of to whom the board is secretly selling us down the river! What's the point of going to the wall for transparency and then not delivering? Or did the bureaucrats in charge just know that he's inherently too honest to sit down with NSA or some tech company to negotiate a secret betrayal? Wnt (talk) 10:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

This had nothing to do with the NSA or any outside party.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that he wanted to go public on some issues. The key phrase above is "...unwilling to maintain certain Trustee commitments around confidentiality, judgment, and discretion". So Doc James wanted greater transparency on certain aspects of the information he had, but the other board members did not want this. So I think the main think to take from this is that Doc James didn't do anything wrong, but just had too many disagreements over transparency then other board members. So Doc James's reputation should remain intact, and this doesn't look particularly favorable on the board members. Since generally speaking transparency is a good thing. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:28, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

This had nothing to do with him wanting to go public about any issues.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I would disagree with this statement. It had in part to do with me wanting there to be public discussion on our long term strategy. I recommended we introduce it in a Signpost piece and stated that I would be happy to draft something. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:26, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

@Doc James: were you denied access to documents concerning long term strategy, or asked to keep them secret, or both? I would support a board candidate who ran on an explicit platform of far greater transparency in strategy discussions, and I suspect a vast majority of the international community would too. 50.243.141.59 (talk) 18:17, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Documents concerning long term strategy were not kept from me in the end. Others were. And yes I was asked to keep the long term strategy documents secret after suggesting they be made more widely known and discussed. I have kept the documents secret. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:54, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Implying the WMF board has a secret long term strategy it doesn't want to tell its contributors about. Let conspiracy theories ensue... BethNaught (talk) 21:29, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It is not completely secret. We now have a press release [8]. And we had a slide describing a "knowledge engine"[9] back in June. It however is still more opaque than it should be. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:35, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Finally, some sort of epitope that doesn't taste like polyethylene glycol! John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was set up by the Knights in Knight Ridder (now part of The McClatchy Company) Website here. Funding the Discovery Department (mw:Wikimedia Discovery) for $250,000. In the note cited above, the Discovery Department's deliverables include:

• User testing and research on current user flows to understand the search and discovery experience
• Creation and maintenance of a dashboard of core metrics to use in product development
• Research on search relevancy and the possibility of integrating open data sources
• Open discussion with the Wikimedia community of volunteer editors
• Creation of sample prototypes to showcase discovery possibilities

That doesn't sound too different from what the mw: page has. Under the circumstances though I might wonder what "user flows" refers to, and where that data goes. Why do they call them "deliverables" - who are they delivered to?

Where it gets perplexing is that the linked document sounds very open, links to a mailing list that is archived, links to a FAQ, etc. It sure doesn't seem like a nefarious project, apart from the probably paranoid issue of the deliverables and the probably parochial fear of mainstream media, even fossil mainstream media money from 1991. And there's the reference to Wikidata, and nothing involving Wikidata ever ends well. So where do we go from here? This sounds like nothing for anyone to get fired over. Wnt (talk) 00:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

"Deliverable" is standard software industry jargon for "goal", often with some kind of implied time frame for when the goal is supposed to be met. And yes, a lot of people make fun of the word's use because it's such stereotypical bureaucratese. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 00:28, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: How do you account for the discrepancy of views on the "going public" aspect? And if, as it appears, the board has a mostly-secret long term strategy, how is encouraging more transparency about it inconsistent with the values of the Wikimedia movement, which you cited at the beginning of this drama as among your reasons to dismiss Doc James? BethNaught (talk) 15:57, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

That seems a reasonable reading. It remains for Dr. Heilman to explain the situation as best he is able. Layers of the onion are starting to fall away, slowly... Carrite (talk) 18:06, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

For me, the vibes coming from this FAQ feel sour, defeatist, and impotent. The vibes feel to me to be reflective of an entity which wishes to conform to a powerful global trend towards secrecy (confidentiality); and/or the other 8 Trustees were unable and/or unwilling to accept the personality and/or values of Heilman into their group. Whatever the reason, the failure to provide more details to the rest of us adds even more to the out of control movement towards what Peter Galison calls Removing (access to) Knowledge from the patronized and ill-informed masses/community/people. Nocturnalnow (talk) 19:27, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a whole lot of words to use to say nothing at all. Nothing in that statement clarifies anything, and I still have no idea from it why they decided on this course of action. "Lack of trust", alright, sure. That could mean he pushed for greater transparency and that people didn't like it, or that he threatened to unilaterally make it happen. Or, given the suspicions that he was being denied access to documents, it's also possible he was aware of something rotten and threatening to blow the whistle, but was shoved out before he could find proof. Is that necessarily what happened? No, but in the absence of specifics, imagination often tends to assume the worst. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:37, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

it seems DocJames wanted more transparency...the rest of them didn't --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:27, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Waiting for Jimbo to say "no, that's not the reason" without saying what the "reason" was. --Malerooster (talk) 21:47, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it sounds more like James wanted more autonomy in deciding what was confidential and what was not. Doctors (at least in the U.S., not sure about Canada) take oaths of confidentiality and have laws to guarantee confidentiality yet in no way do those laws supersede obligations to the care of the patient. I find it difficult to believe (actually incredulous), that of the members, a doctor's "fellow Trustees came to the opinion that they lacked sufficient confidence in his discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information about the Wikimedia Foundation governance activities." There must be some cause that lead to this as the opinion would not be formed based on intuition. To view this as a doctor, (or lawyer or any job that has trust obligations), it seems the dispute would be whether "the Wikimedia Foundation governance activities" are healthy or sick and whether that observation changes the nature of the confidentiality agreement. It doesn't appear the Board is making the accusation that he failed to exercise discretion, good judgement or that he released confidential information. The Board appears to not have liked his decision to tweet his removal or to not resign, but that's after the fact - but might have also given insight to the boards opinion. I wonder if all of this could have been solved with a "whistleblower" procedure where concerns about governance activities could be raised or escalated without a blind obligation to confidentiality. Being a project built on openness and free information, I, personally would like to see "maintain confidential Board information about the Wikimedia Foundation governance activities" to "respecting and following the process by which Board information and Wikimedia Foundation governance activities are disclosed to the community and the public." The process is what seems important and is compatible with transparency. The process can include checkpoints what is and is not disclosed. An "opinion" regarding "lack of sufficient confidence" is a "cause" a guess but a pretty weakly worded one. I'm betting lawyers changed "the board came to the conclusion the he lacked discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information" to "fellow Trustees came to the opinion that they lacked sufficient confidence in his discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information." The first is what normal people write when they mean "cause", the latter is what lawyers write when they don't want to define "cause." --DHeyward (talk) 22:38, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Pete Forsyth's blog post might be relevant here. His concerns seem reasonable: we refuse hundreds of millions from advertisements because of the fear that the advertisers would control us, then it seems stupid to allow hundred thousand restricted grants to control us. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:25, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The Knight Foundation describes what we are doing slightly differently than we do "To advance new models for finding information by supporting stage one development of the Knowledge Engine by Wikipedia, a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet." [10] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:51, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

So, like an open source competitor to other search algorithms (eg. google). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:39, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Another minor technical question regards the statement about a community selected replacement. Does that mean there's going to be an election, and if so when, where, what are the rules for it? As much as I am minded to vote for Doc James no matter what they say, or barring that, to put my support for Incitatus, whom I was considering nominating, I suppose there's a chance that Doc James has a specific replacement in mind, after the style of Aung San Suu Kyi. I don't know if either replacement has a chance of being seated really, but as we see from that case, sometimes it can be a powerful gesture at least to have one. Wnt (talk) 19:08, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

WMF Audit Committee member's report to the community

This post to the Wikimedia-l by WMF audit committee member Ben Creasy offers a somewhat disturbing alternative perspective of the Dr. Heilman dismissal LINK.

Ben Creasy on Dr. Heilman
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hi - my name isn't familiar to most of you,* but I'm another community member and I spoke to James when he visited San Francisco a couple months ago. James [Heilman] was an early mentor of mine when I was editing medical topics a number of years ago, so it was natural for us to meet up for coffee. As a nonvoting community member of the WMF Audit Committee, I get to see some privileged information and talk to the auditors once a year. If I recall correctly, James thought I might have been receiving emails about some sort of financial situation. When I said no, he didn't reveal any information about what the situation was, but if I recall correctly he said that the board wasn't letting him view some documents. I'm not a lawyer, but the general rule, mostly codified in state statutes, is that all board members have an equally absolute right to inspect and copy all books and records. See Martin G. McGuinn Jr. 1966 which notes that "a large number of courts have ... termed this right absolute and unqualified". So I told him his rights. We've never talked about it since. The announcement of his dismissal came as a huge shock to me, but I imagine James asserted his rights to some of the board's discomfort. I did come away with a question mark about what the situation might be and I figured I would bring it up at the next audit meeting (which hasn't happened), but as a nonvoting member I'm really not in a position to rock the boat or demand sensitive information. I can make gentle suggestions and ask questions, but I'm really just there as a courtesy. I imagine this message may spell the end of my tenure. Commenting on the three points: 1. Putting a few pieces together, it appears that much of the dispute centers around staff relationships. According to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMF_Transparency_Gap#Staff_communications_discouraged staff were forbidden to communicate to board members, which implies that there was also an unwritten rule strongly discouraging board members from reaching out to staff as well. Yeah, it's a convention to funnel all communication through the ED, but it's not necessarily a good one. In any case, the board needs to survey staff (quantitatively and qualitatively) to effectively review the Executive Director's performance. Further, this makes WMF sound like a fear-driven organization ("fear is the mind-killer"). The best employees - especially the developers - can easily find other jobs. In any case, we in the community are free to talk to staff all we - and they - want. It's hard to keep things secret in the wiki-world, even if the WMF seems to have done a pretty good job so far. If necessary, the community can organize a group to conduct surveys of willing employees and send it to the board, although I hope that won't be necessary. 2. As far as releasing private information, if anyone got something private, you might think I would have gotten something juicy sitting across a table from James, but I didn't. If the WMF had good evidence of disclosing private information, you'd think they would have revealed it by this point. Also, while there is a convention that "what happens in the boardroom stays in the boardroom", my understanding is that non-executive session discussions are not confidential. Which is not to suggest that James was describing board meetings to people. 3. While James has a great rebuttal, his announcement about his dismissal came after the fact, and it isn't worth cluttering up the more important substantive conversations with it any more. Incidentally, on the topic of director democracy and its rarity among nonprofits, Dent (2014) concluded in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law that "NPO boards are effectively self-perpetuating. If the director primacists are correct, the governance of NPOs should be a model of wise, long-term management effected by officers who are clearly subordinate to the board. In fact, however, a remarkable consensus of experts on NPOs agrees that their governance is generally abysmal, considerably worse than that of for-profit corporations". Just because a practice is common doesn't mean it is a best practice. I've been editing Wikipedia since 2007 under a pseudonym but joined the Wikimedia Audit Committee as a nonvoting community volunteer a year and a half ago. I monitor lots of RSS feeds so I noticed a solicitation by the chair Stu West and submitted an application detailing my accounting and board experience.I monitor but don't really too involved in administrative aspects of Wikipedia. If you connect the dots to my username, please keep it to yourself even tho it's not a big secret. References: 1. Martin G. McGuinn Jr., Right of Directors to Inspect Corporate Books and Records, 11 Vill. L. Rev. 578 (1966). Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol11/iss3/6 2. Dent, George W., Corporate Governance Without Shareholders: A Cautionary Lesson from Non-Profit Organizations (2014). Delaware Journal of Corporate Law (DJCL), Vol. 39, No. 1, 2014; Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-34. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2481646 Sincerely, Ben Creasy http://bencreasy.com/ (emphasis added —t.d.)

Not good. Carrite (talk) 17:51, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

...very interesting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:16, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

With respect, its sounding to me like Wikimedia needs a Constitutional Convention type event to include the current board resigning and a democratically elected brand new board of trustees taking the reins. Nocturnalnow (talk) 20:12, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Well the main thing I got from that, is that maybe Doc James wanted to communicate with staff members, but this was overruled by the board. It's a reasonable inference, although not confirmed in any way. It again fits in with "...confidence in his discretion, judgment, and ability to maintain confidential Board information" above. Any comments from Jimbo? --Jules (Mrjulesd) 21:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As a member of the board, Doc James had an absolute right to communicate with staff members if he believed it was necessary to fulfill his fiduciary duties. It's customary under most situations to inform management of communications board have with staff, but it's not at all required, and it's not atypical in the first 24 months of new management for board to have at least some direct conversations with staff that management is unaware of. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 20:06, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Why is the WMF Board telling the community things that aren't true?

I'm an old guy. Although I haven't talked about it much here, but I've spent a lot of time working with, against, and at cross purposes with government agencies, higher- and lower- level, especially boards of education and related organizations. The statement ("FAQ") released by the WMF Board of Trustees is typical of bureaucracy at its worst, marked by an exceptional lack of candor, and important instances of statements that are demonstrably false, at least in terms of the ordinary meaning of the English language.

I've read the WMF Bylaws regarding the Trustees with some care. When I read the Board statement, several things jumped out at me, and one in particular sent me back to review the bylaws. "Due to the removal from the Board, James is not eligible to be a candidate for the Board until the 2017 community selection process". There is, of course, no provision to that effect in Article IV of the Bylaws. There is no provision to that effect, so far as I can tell, in the laws of the State of Florida. There certainly are mechanisms which would enable the Board to reinstate Dr. Heilman. It is likely that the Board could reconsider its decision, although there may be time limits on this particular action. It certainly has the authority to rescind its decision. But, most important, there is no obstacle to simply reappointing Dr. Heilman to the position he vacated. The provision of the bylaws which requires the Board to appoint the next-highest vote-getter applies only when a trustee selected by the community is declared ineligible before taking office. In short, the Board's disqualification of Dr. Heilman is something they have made up out of whole cloth'. Where does the Board claim to derive the authority top disqualify Dr. Heilman? What's going on here is subtle, and intellectually dishonest. There is a provision of Florida law which prohibits an elected director/trustee from being re-elected until the next annual meeting at which directors are to be elected. But Dr. Heilman was not an elected director. He ws appointed by the Board following a community selection process. This is not mere semantics. If the community election were binding, then Florida law provides that "If a director is elected by a class, chapter, or other organizational unit, or by region or other geographic grouping, the director may be removed only by the members of that class, chapter, unit, or grouping". Moreover, in this case, "Whenever a vacancy occurs with respect to a director elected by a class, chapter, unit, or group, the vacancy may be filled only by members of that class, chapter, unit, or group, or by a majority of the directors then in office elected by such class, chapter, unit, or group". In other words, if Dr. Heilman was an elected director, he may not be replaced by the Board, but only by the community which elected him or by the remaining community representatives. In short, the Board is trying to have it both ways. For purposes of removing Dr. Heilman, he was not elected by the community, but appointed by the Board. For purposes of disqualifying him from being selected again by the community, however, he was elected by the community. (And, on the third hand, for keeping control of the replacement process, he was not elected, but appointed by the Board.

In short, the Board has not been honest with the community, or with itself and its members. This is far worse than anything Dr. Heilman has been accused of doing. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 03:03, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(There are other matters on which the Board appears to be dissembling a bit, but they require more stringent examination. The WMF Board sounds a great deal like a government agency which knows it doesn't really have the legal authority to keep things under wraps, but is doing its best buck-and-wing to divert people's attention.)

There may be some perfectly good reason for all of this. Having been on arbcom I've certainly been in situations where one set of things is private but clear, but to the outside world they look very different. But this does disturb me in that we're getting a sort of half-baked unclear reason. It largely boils down to "we didn't like what he was doing." We probably won't know much past this due to NDA, but this whole thing is very strange, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm certainly no fan of Doc James', I disagree with him on a wide variety of matters, and would not have voted for him in the election. To me, however, this lack of clarity is very concerning. I broadly agree with Seraphimblade. NativeForeigner ^Talk 09:57, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: - no NDA is involved here. Trustees have a fiduciary duty to the Foundation - essentially a duty to act in what in their best judgement is in the interests of the Foundation. Although that often involves keeping matters confidential, a good fiduciary for an organization will also recognize when a complete lack of expected transparency will do more damage to the organization than help. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 19:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've not kept upt with this very thoroughly. Regardless for numerous reasons many bodies keep internal affairs private, but in this particular case I don't think their mixed approach is doing them any good. NativeForeigner ^Talk 20:34, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Note also that a trustee's fiduciary responsibility is an individual one. The WMF Board, in claiming that that Dr. Heilman's removal was "for cause", appears to be asserting that he has breached (or is likely to breach) his fiduciary reaponsibility by refusing to go along with the majority. That's appalling. If anybody's failure to carry out their fiduciary duties has been evidenced, it's the Board majority, by refusing to accept the legitimacy of dissenting views. It's disturbingly ironic that that a board which supposedly embodies "a diverse set of talents, experience, and competencies" has become insistent that differences of opinion on important matters cannot be tolerated. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 21:59, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing about his dismissal from the board had anything to do with him "refusing to go along with the majority". Nothing about his dismissal had anything to do with "refusing to accept the legitimacy of dissenting views". Nothing about his dismissael had anything to do with the notion that "differences of opinion on important matters cannot be tolerated".--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:00, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Look. I think the question here is that if it wasn't for cause, and it wasn't for deviating from majority opinion, then what the heck could it be for? If it's not for cause it's for other reasons (and a vote by majority). If it is for cause, then the reason would be somewhat self evident. I don't contest that it was a good faith removal for good reasons but it just makes absolutely no sense to me from the outside, and seems dodgy and self-contradictory. NativeForeigner ^Talk 11:08, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The continuing smoke screen, obfuscation, series of little attacks, and lack of a clear statement of why an elected member was thrown off the board casts the Board and even the Jimbo in a bad light. If there is nothing inappropriate behind the dismissal, then come clean and stop beating around the bush. Publish a sensible explanation and we can move on. This is unlikely to just fade from consciousness. Edison (talk) 04:52, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

In The News

• The Examiner (URL is www.examiner.com/article/the-doctor-is-out-says-wmf-board) The doctor is out says WMF board
• Wiki Strategies: Wikimedia Foundation ousts community-elected Trustee
• The Signpost: WMF Board dismisses community-elected trustee
• Wikipediocracy: Wiki doctor voted off the island
• Reddit: Dr. James Heilman removed from WMF Board of Trustees
• Heise online: Wikimedia Foundation feuert Vorstandsmitglied

Please feel free to edit the above list as new news reports, comments on major blogs, etc. appear. It is a convenience to the reader to be able to find all coverage in one place. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Guy Macon. FYI, examiner.com is not a reliable news site, nor are the others. In the wild is more like it. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 04:41, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

• You appear to have confused our policy for articles with our policy for user talk pages. If this was an article, citations would have to be to reliable sources. Because this is a user talk page, the only criteria is that a well-read site covered the WMF removing Doc James from the board. Even if the content of the pages are complete fabrications (a very real possibility in the case of Reddit) they would still be relevant and worth including in this list. We need to know what people are saying about this, because this has the potential of becoming a public relations disaster. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:17, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I've finally figured it out...

You can, too. Just read the Wikimedia-l mailing list closely, with an eye to internal politics. I've spelled out a reasonable reading of what happened elsewhere. The central issue involves the internal politics in San Francisco, opposition by some to the Executive Director's managerial style and content, and newbie on the Board Dr. Heilman "arrogantly" (his word) inserting himself into these internal politics, contravening a tradition of the Board not to engage in such contacts (with staffers being explicitly prohibited from such contact). The ED won a vote of confidence from the board, while Dr. Heilman was ostracized as a meddlesome, muckraking dissident. The majority tried to get him to resign, he declined, so they smoked him while they had a chance, before two new members came on the board who were not already predisposed to purging him off. There were also shenanigans over internal long term planning documents, which seem to have been initially denied him, but ultimately provided.

What the majority of the board didn't factor into their Machiavellian calculation is that James Heilman is our elected representative and that he has our continued support. If there is a new election, he should be re-elected. Carrite (talk) 06:01, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

According to rfc2119, and the usual rules of grammar, the last sentence of User:Carrite only says that, following the opinion of Carrite, the voters have the moral duty to reelect James Heilman. If Carrite was so sure of "[James Heilman] has our continued support", he would have written: "he will be re-elected". Pldx1 (talk) 10:47, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I doubt he's running, actually, thus the phrasing. I don't doubt he would win in a landslide if he attempts to run again. Carrite (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to hear the views of Doc James, Jimbo Wales and Kevin Gorman on Carrite's theory.--Elvey^(t•c) 00:40, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

IMHO bearing in mind catastrophically low trust that WMF employees show to they senior executives. I would think it is WMF board's fiduciary duty to contact key employees bypassing the senior executives and hear their concerns. If I were in the board I would insist that every board member interviewed key employees one-on-one without senior executives present to hear their side of the story. Currently 93% of the employees (people in the best position to tell) believe that the senior executives appointed by the board misappropriate the foundation's resources. The board members (the custodians of those resources) would breach their duties if they not investigate the accusations. Alex Bakharev (talk) 02:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Elvey:— You will probably be interested in William Beutler's blog, The Wikipedian, and his outstanding summary article "The Crisis at New Montgomery Street," which ties this all together nicely. It seems like there was a revolt of top staffers at WMF against Executive Director Tretiakova's leadership, which Doc James Heilman became embroiled in. The matter went to the Board. The ED won a vote of confidence from the Board majority and Doc James got whacked before the new Board members came on in January, replacing two (anti-Heilman) old-timers. The next layer of the onion is a revelation of the exact nature of the perceived problem with the ED's leadership — and why she received a reprieve from the Board while our democratically-elected representative was smoked in a power play. Carrite (talk) 05:59, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Carrite: I also think I've figured it out, but my speculation leads to a different conclusion. I think this post clarifies things. The way I read it, around the eve of the Board's decision to 'give Lila a second chance' Doc James walked around and talked to staff, despite being told not to do so. He then advertised the Glassdoor staff survey, encouraged WMF staff to participate (check out the sudden November 2015 activity), and took the results to the next Board meeting in order to sway the vote against Lila. That's my interpretation of the exchange on Wikimedia-l which went like this: "I did bring staff concerns forwards to the board but I was simply reporting these concerns" (Heilmann) and the sour reply by Vrandecic. Frankly, if that's what happened, and if I was a sitting member, I would not have been happy either: Most of the 'Don't trust the CEO' comments apply to Sue, not to Lila, the amount of responses is by no means representative, and popularising a review as bad as this one has the potential to do real harm to the WMF. Cheers, --Pgallert (talk) 11:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Questions for Jimbo Wales re. Doc James' dismissal

Are you willing to state for the record that Doc James has been sent an email from the board which states the reason for his dismissal? the Subject line of that email? that it has identified to him each instance (including what, when and where) of private information that he is accused of having released? that he's free to disclose the content of the email? If some things keep it from being disclosable, do they include: private information about James? A board member? An executive? A staff member? An administrator? A regular editor? Long term strategy? Survey results? A document James was unable to view? A document James was able to view? Do you agree with or dispute User:Kevin Gorman's claim that "As a member of the board, Doc James had an absolute right to communicate with staff members if he believed it was necessary to fulfill his fiduciary duties?" Do you agree with or dispute Ben Creasy's speculation that "Doc James wanted to communicate with staff members, but this was overruled by the board?"--Elvey^(t•c) 00:40, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal

For those interested in Wikimedia/Wikipedia reforms, I highly recommend the following: How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal by Dan Luu.

Key quote:

new person #1 joins

new person#1: WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF

old hands: yeah we know we’re concerned about it

new person #1: WTF WTF wTF wtf wtf w…

new person #1 gets used to it

...

new person #2 joins

new person #2: WTF WTF WTF WTF

new person #1: yeah we know. we’re concerned about it.

In my opinion, this describes much of Wikimedia (at least the parts visible to us -- I am sure that there is a lot going on behind the scenes that runs smoothly and doesn't generate any drama) and some parts of Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it describes much about Wikimedia as an organization in particular, which is a much more normal organization than most people hope or fear. Obviously all organizations have that sort of thing. It does, however, pretty accurately describe a lot about Wikipedia and I think one of the reasons does have something to do with Wikimedia. In the past (things are improving) the Foundation underinvested in engineering/product. This means that we are stuck with software that has not improved to keep pace with modern developments and our own learnings.

Let me give just one simple example. To respond to you I had to write ':' before each line. That's not so bad, but after I comment, you'll respond and it'll be '::'. Others will chime in and pretty soon we are up to '::::::' is that 5 or 6? It's madness. Anyone new thinks: WTF WTF WTF. It isn't like a proper threaded message system *even including the features that are special to wiki* (such as that anyone can remove anyone else's comment if they are being sufficiently a jerk, etc.) is impossible. But here we are.

Or, imagine that person A just doesn't get along with person B. Anywhere else, A just blocks B, B blocks A, and the software keeps them with minimal visibility of each other, especially in personal discussion spaces. Here, the main solution to that kind of personal conflict is to complain publicly and ratchet up the drama even more. It's madness. Anyone new thinks: WTF WTF WTF. It isn't like 'blocking' is impossible. But here we are.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:31, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Guy, if you consider Wikipedia/Wikimidia to be so dysfunctional, why do you contribute here so much? A serious and sincere question. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:24, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

@Mrjulesd: as Guy has already informed you, this kind of reasoning is fallacious, often referred to as the false dilemma. Ironically, you have unintentionally proven Guy's point about the problem with community decision making, which is mired in fallacies, groupthink, and inflexibility—all of the very things that stand in the way of Wikipedia's growth and evolution. Your mistake is in assuming that Guy's concern is misplaced and unhealthy, when it is exactly the opposite: your black and white thinking is precisely the problem. Viriditas (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Well whatever you think, it was a question I was genuinely interested in having an answer to. But to be frank I don't really understand people who are very unhappy with Wikipedia but still wanting to contribute. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I wish there was an easy way to reach you to help you understand why your thought process is very problematic. Since everyone has to eat to survive, let's use a food analogy: there's a favorite restaurant you go to with your friends and family. You have a good rapport with the staff and they try their best to service you and your needs. One day, you discover to your surprise, your regular order isn't cooked properly. You also notice that the service has changed a bit for the worse since the business let go of the last manager, who ran a very tight ship. The new manager might not be aware that things have gone downhill. What do you do? According to your argument, you should get up out of your comfy seat and walk out the door and never come back. That's simply wrong for a multitude of reasons. One, as a regular, valued customer, the business depends on your patronage and would benefit from criticism. They would also like to know if something is wrong so they can fix it, as a problem usually impacts more than just one person and could damage their reputation and eventually their business itself. There's also the employees who depend on the business for their livelihood. Finally, there's all the other people who enjoy the restaurant. So by not saying anything, by walking out and leaving for good because you we unhappy, you are essentially failing to do your job as a responsible patron, customer, and member of the community. Another way to understand this imperative is to review the fantasy films It's a Wonderful Life and Groundhog Day. While both are fiction, they illustrate fundamental philosophical truths about the role each individual plays in the greater fabric of reality. This is best illustrated by the concept of Indra's net. In other words, by arguing that unhappy people should just leave instead of trying to change things, you are failing to take responsibility for yourself and others, because every action you take impacts everyone, and not taking action or ignoring a problem is an action by itself. To summarize, you are compelled to act in every moment, and by failing to act you are directly responsible for the problem. Viriditas (talk) 00:42, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

But by the same token, if I visited a restaurant, and the service and food was invariably poor, my patience would eventually wear thin, and I would less likely to visit, how ever much I cared about any staff members.

Really, the main problem I see is that a lot of criticism seems to me to be non-constructive. I think that's what strikes me a lot reading this page and others. And I suppose that's I'm responding to in a way. When people moan, but don't suggest ways in which things can be improved. Also I see a lot of moaning that I don't really understand either. Obviously some aspects can be improved. But overall, on balance, I see Wikipedia in a fairly positive light. So when people make blanket statements like "everything is dreadful, and the sky's falling" it disheartens me because it doesn't seem to me to be rational, and also doesn't seem like a constructive criticism. I don't believe they really believe that either, because their contributions suggest otherwise, at least to my way of thinking. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 00:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

In my experience and erudition, the only people who object to criticism like this are those who subscribe to hardcore cult psychology which promotes conformism as a core value. You see this kind of thinking in political partisanship, in the ranks of sports fans, religious believers, corporate employees, and the military. Viriditas (talk) 02:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't object to constructive criticism, only non-constructive criticism and general woe betiding. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 02:23, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Did you read Guy's original comment and external link? It's entirely on point and constructive. Viriditas (talk) 03:12, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I was more responding to you calling my thinking fallacious, and to generalized points on contributors who are unhappy here but still contribute. My responses to Guy are below. But anyway, I think I've said enough on this issue, I probably wont respond any further. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 03:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Your question contains an assumption that the only reasonable response to problems in an organization is to leave. It does not consider the possibility that a reasonable response to problems in an organization is to attempt to fix the problems. In addition, as I was careful to point out, many parts of the Wikimedia Foundation are not dysfunctional. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:51, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

OK I suppose I should explain my angle. If I honestly thought that it was seriously dysfunctional here I don't think I would be motivated to continue. But overall I agree with most things that happen here. Not everything, but the majority of decisions seem to make sense to me. But if that stopped being the case I expect that i would probably not want to contribute. My contributions have been modest, but at same time they have taken me some time to achieve.

Following on from your original statement, what do you see as the biggest problems here? --Jules (Mrjulesd) 18:38, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation financial development 2003–2014. Green is revenue, red is expenditure, and black is assets, in millions of US dollars.

The number of admins promotions via RfA per year since 2002

Accountability to the community
Does the Wikimedia fundraising survey address community concerns?
Donate to Wikipedia and Pay for… What Exactly?
Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut'n'paste Visual Editor into the bin
Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor
Flow no longer in active development
--Guy Macon (talk) 19:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

What are "Millionen", please? Who prepared the charts with those legends? On my computer it was hard even to see that was the legend, it looked like "MIIIIonen" and I was embarrassed to ask. MPS1992 (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

@MPS1992: if you click on the image, you will discover that it was created in the German language. Using Google translate reveals that "millionen" is German for "millions". Viriditas (talk) 01:33, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Image:Wikimedia Foundation financial development-en.svg is now avaialable. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC).

OK well that's quite a lot to discuss. But let's start with the revenue/expenditure/assets graph. What do you see particularly wrong with it? --Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Generalising per se not particularly helpful. All are different. Visual editor well intentioned but clumsy. Having a big asset base makes economic sense, especially if you can use interest for grants etc. Ummm...more specifics? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:20, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Does someone who is brainwashed realize they are brainwashed? There is another way, its called Critical thinking. Also,S. I. Hayakawa wrote that faulty communication is the cause of most human problems and conflicts. Regarding both situations there are degrees. One example, when I was a boy we had civil defense drills and hid under our desks....yeah, really...preparing for "the Russians are coming". Much later I got to know a woman who grew up in communist Poland where, as a girl, they had the same drills and hid under her desk because "the Americans are coming". It was as unthinkable to her as it was to me that our respective side would attack first, yet we both were brainwashed into fearing the other "evil" side. I heard an audio of LBJ telling McNamara about the Vietnam War that "our job there is to train those people, and our training is going good?" Maybe the only important decision any of us really have to make in life is to what degree we think for ourselves. Nocturnalnow (talk) 04:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

If Jules cannot see that The WMF spending more and more money every year during a period when readership is down, the number of active editors are down, the number of active administrators are down, and the costs of actually hosting the website are down, further argument is unlikely to enlighten him. Spending $2 million a year for travel (more than $10,000 per employee)[11] is a problem. Refusing to answer reasonable questions about how money is spent [12][13] is a problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Spending more money would be unwise if the biggest problem was getting money. Since the movement does have some problems, most of which are not financial, and it is able to raise money then of course it is appropriate to spend money to try to better understand and ideally solve the problems that face us. The investment in Visual Editor was a prime example of using money to solve a perceived problem. As for your examples of problems, until recently our readership was growing faster than the internet, it may still be doing so, but with a growing proportion of people reading our content via mirrors rather than coming directly to Wikipedia. Numbers of active editors depends on your definition of activity; those who edit 5 or more times in one month are definitely down on 2007, but much of that drop is simply that the edit filters have stopped many vandals who previously would have done five vandalisms and been blocked. Editors who save over 100 edits a month in mainspace did drop between 2007 and 2014, but 2015 saw a recovery and recent months have been between the 2011 and 2010 levels. RFA is a problem and only partially explained by unbundlings such as Rollback. ϢereSpielChequers 10:55, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Disclosure. I was one of the volunteers who got a WMF scholarship including travel costs to attend Wikimania in Mexico, and a partial scholarship to Haifa. I'm also entitled to claim travel costs from Wikimedia UK for various events I have been a volunteer trainer at. Did the $2 million travel costs of "$10,000 per employee" that the article criticises, include the cost of volunteer travel? If so I think the comparison is wrong. Instead of comparing the travel costs to the number of employees it should compare the travel costs to those of other global organisations. ϢereSpielChequers 11:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

We got by just fine in 2010 by spending ten million dollars. Why did we need to spend fifty million dollars in 2015? What is the WMF accomplishing now that they failed to accomplish five years ago? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a spokesperson for the WMF, If you want to ask those questions I'm the wrong person to ask. I know the Commons upload wizard came in since 2010 and I think the second datacentre, for all I know that could be the highlights of the last five years or the petty cash. I haven't looked in detail at either budget and don't have an opinion as to whether the expanded spending is an overall success. Do you have any comment on the points I made? I have been keeping tabs on the numbers of >100 mainspace edits a month editors since my article in the signpost and the trend continues at least as recently as the November data. ϢereSpielChequers 14:49, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is relatively new (at least to those with long memory). Fewer editors, etc. maybe a widespread realization that encyclopedia writing, a thing known in the last century to have been done by specialists, is not in fact for everyone, but rather specialization is natural to the enterprise (thus the pages and pages this site uses to begin to explain how to do it) -- even when given away for free. Specialization is often attended with higher costs of production, education, recruitment, and presentation. So, turning this topic sideways, it becomes, How Messed Up Practices Evolve, sometimes becoming less or more messed up. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps our "Completely Messed Up Practices" are subliminal imitation?

Maybe the human condition is such that the "practices" of the leadership of societies are imitated at a subconscious level by sub groups within the societies? It is quite humbling to entertain, but what if Wikimedia/Wikipedia "messed up practices" are not self-directed but simply the result of osmosis from the trickling down of the "messed up practices" by those perceived to have the most authority, power and control over all of us? Here is an example of such "messed up practices" that I have been monitoring with wonderment for over 10 years:

See: "Narcotics" section

Mr. Chairman, what concerns me most is the way the threats become intertwined. In this case, there is ample evidence that Islamic extremists such as Usama Bin Ladin use profits from the drug trade to support their terror campaign.

Which is supported by this

And yet we had this, and then this, and then for the most visual representation of this example of "messed up practices becoming normal", Figure 1 on page 12 of this.

So, perhaps our Wikipedia example of Completely Messed Up Practices Becoming Normal is simply a reflection of today's "new normal". Nocturnalnow (talk) 21:13, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Long Response to User:Guy Macon and others

User:Guy Macon has posted a short statement on How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal followed by multiple links and two charts, which have provoked lengthy commentary, but it doesn’t appear that the commentary is getting anywhere. As to the two charts, I think that they are essentially unrelated, because one has to do with the English Wikipedia, and the other has to do with the WMF.

As to the second chart, the WMF financial profile, it is characteristic of successful non-profits. Income (mostly from contributions), expenses, and cash all tend to increase. As we see, WMF is a very successful non-profit. The flip side to that is that, as available money increases, if mission is not very clearly defined, and it isn’t that clearly defined for Wikimedia, there isn’t enough scrutiny as to whether the money is being spent wisely. Does Guy Macon or anyone else have any specific suggestions as to how the money ought to be retargeted? I would favor spending less on large software development efforts, which have included impressive failures, and more of the development budget on fixes and maintenance to existing software. I would also suggest reducing the overall development budget. I would also suggest spending money (something User:Jimbo Wales has mentioned in the past) on professional mediators to supplement the corps of volunteers in dispute resolution. I am sure that other suggestions can be made for where more money should be spent and for where less money should be spent. I would also suggest that one use of the cash reserve would be to deal with legal threats against specific editors, to establish that the WMF, with millions in reserves, will indemnify and defend individual editors against the occasional legal troll. (Legal trolls know better than to threaten defamation actions against the WMF, because it not only will throw money at the lawsuits, but recover its own costs.) That is just one thought. The multi-year profile of WMF finances indicates a successful non-profit, and so indicates that it needs to consider how to use its financial resources. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The other chart is RFA. Either RFA was too easy in 2007, or it has become toxic, or both. I think both. At the same time, nothing is likely to be done about it in the next few years, because the WMF has a policy that each of the language Wikipedias is self-governing, and the WMF does not plan to solve any problems specific to specific language Wikipedias. However, the English Wikipedia is too diverse and fractious to be capable of self-government in its present quasi-anarchic form. It needs some sort of governance reform, but the WMF policy of non-intervention mean that a community that needs governance reform but can’t agree on anything won’t get governance reform. The English Wikipedia won’t and can’t solve the RFA problem. The WMF can but won’t solve the governance problem. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I would like to ask Guy Macon, who is normally a problem-solver, to explain whether he thinks that anything in particular is dysfunctional and can be solved. There are some editors who like to say that the English Wikipedia is a toxic environment. Do they mean that it is toxic and should be abandoned, or that it is toxic and something should be done? If so, what? I disagree with the statement that the English Wikipedia is a toxic environment, and I think that Guy Macon also at least partly disagrees, because he does still try to solve problems rather than just complaining. I would say that the English Wikipedia has toxic editors, and that some of the editors who see a toxic environment are looking in a mirror because they are toxic. What in particular does Guy Macon think should be addressed for problem-solving? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Guy Macon

My previous comment was addressed to those who think that there is no problem. If you are in that group, please respond there. This is addressed to those who [A] agree that problems exist, and [B] would like to solve them. These are my personal opinions, and I may very well be wrong, but I do have a lot of experience solving organizational problems, and there are a couple of well-known organizations who have repeatedly called me in as a consultant when things start going off the rails in their engineering departments.

Wikipedia (For the Wikimedia Foundation, see the section below).

In general, I think Wikipedia is not broken, and does not need fixing. There are a few areas that do need fixing, but mostly the things we are doing now is the right things to do. I certainly don't think Wikipedia is "toxic" and I suggest that those who think that try getting away from those parts of Wikipedia that attract problem editors and try editing any article chosen at random. In most of the encyclopedia, everyone gets along and articles get written and improved with little or no drama.

One area that needs fixing is RfA. The core problem is that pretty much everyone agrees that it is broken, but whenever a particular solution is proposed there is a strong consensus against trying it, even on a limited-time trial basis. This is true for every proposal, good, bad, major, or minor. I don't have an answer to this problem and am uninterested in suggesting any solutions that are certain to get shot down.

The Wikimedia Foundation

The main problem at WMF is detailed in this chart:

Wikimedia Foundation financial development 2003–2014. Green is revenue, red is expenditure, and black is assets, in millions of US dollars.

What you are seeing is a runaway train that just entered a tunnel at full speed while halfway through the mountain the tunnel-diggers are working as fast as they can.

So what happens if the economy turns sour or there are a couple of highly-publicized scandals and the revenues stop growing ever-larger? I think we all know what the WMF will do when the inevitable happens, based on past behavior.

Unlike other charities, there is no obvious way to expand the scope of the good work that the WMF is doing, If the Red Cross gets a lot more income, they can increase the number of people they help. If the Nature Conservancy gets a lot more income, they can increase the amount of land that they keep wild. But if the WMF gets a lot more income, they can only spend a tiny portion of it on hosting Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. All of the core functions of WMF put together add up to a tiny portion of how much they are spending.

In 2005 Jimbo Wales said

"So, we're doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it's really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that's essentially our main cost." [14] (time code 4:35)

Let's be generous and assume that the core costs for 2015 are a hundred times larger than they were in 2005. That would be $500,000 dollars - 1% of the $50,000,000 the WMF spent in 2015. And let's give the WMF an extra $10,000,000 -- roughly 20 times my estimate of the current operating costs -- so they can have Wikimanias all over the world, buy furniture, hire lawyers, etc., etc. That's how much they spent in 2010, so I am pretty sure that with a bit of belt tightening they can get by with that much in 2015. The result of doing that would be that by 2020 The WMF could cover all expenses from the interest on their assets -- in other words, an endowment. The WMF could then stop asking for money. A subtle donate link on the main page would allow those who really want to to keep giving.

Finally, why are the details of what gets spent where a closely guarded secret? Seriously, take a close look at page 11 of this PDF and then look at this discussion. Why can't I get an answer? We are talking about fifty million dollars a year. We should be able to see, in detail, what was bought with that money. We should be able to see, in detail, how much was spent on furniture, computers, hosting, software development, paying lawyers, travel, etc. We are better than this. We can be open and transparent and give an accounting of what that fiftty million dollars a year is buying for us.

Solutions? I don't see any. I suppose that I could try to get elected to the Board of Trustees (and no, I am not going to discuss Doc James here, and advise all reading this to ignore any attempts to hijack this discussion in that direction). I suppose that someone could attempt to sue them into more financial disclosure, but that really looks like a loser case to me; no law says that they have to tell me what gets spent where. I am just saying that responding -- even if the answer is no -- would be the right thing to do.

If anyone is interested, I can detail my failure to get any WMF developer to discuss my proposal to reduce page weight, but it's the same story; I ask reasonable questions, WMF stonewalls me. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:10, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

• I have a solution. Strike. The situation will have to get much, much worse before it will ever get better. --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 23:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Your argument about RFA is incorrect. Several minor changes just passed. Townlake (talk) 17:27, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

• Too little though.. and it's still slim pickings editors from long standing editors with failed AfD's! --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 23:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

In the UK, the government regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, recommends that all charities aim to build up reserves (an endowment) of twice annual expenditure, which the WMF is still some way short of. You ask "So what happens if the economy turns sour or there are a couple of highly-publicized scandals and the revenues stop growing ever-larger?" Well, they can use their reserves, to the degree they think necessary. I wasn't sure what you meant by "I think we all know what the WMF will do when the inevitable happens, based on past behavior", given that they have never yet had a serious revenue shortfall. I do agree that their financial reporting is remarkably untransparent, even by commercial standards, and it should not be. Johnbod (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi John, I've just reread the advice and nowadays it is a bit more nuanced than that, perhaps it has changed since you were treasurer of WMUK. I'm aware of one UK grant giving charity that doesn't normally give grants to charities who are sitting on more than 12 months reserves unless they have a very clear plan as to what they are doing with them. That said assets are more than just free reserves, assets should include the capital value of things such as the servers that the WMF owns. I don't know how much that would change the chart or whether the chart is in American English and their definition of assets is closer to what I would call free reserves. But the picture may not be quite as portrayed. ϢereSpielChequers 14:49, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I am pretty sure in the event of a downturn and the WMF shows the impeccable management skills it has so far, Wikipedia & associated projects would *not* be a problem. Fork + a genuine legitimate 'the sky is falling' donation drive would cover the encyclopedia costs for a few years. Hell if the WMF continues its fantastic track record, I am pretty sure a good business case could be made to fork the entire thing a lot sooner. Google wouldnt exactly care, if another competitor can provide the same content for their search engine, they would bump it to the top of their lists. Although as an exercise, has anyone done a study of how long it would take to fork the 5-million article en-wp? Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:03, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Forking is not a problem from a technical standpoint. See Wikipedia:Database download#Where do I get.. I could do it myself -- one of my consulting clients has T5 line I can use if I need to. Hosting to serve such a large number of readers would be a much bigger challenge, but it's a challenge easily solved if you have enough money at hand.

So, let's assume that we have a shiny new fork and a great domain name, and some sort of new organization to manage the new encyclopedia. Start with an exact copy of Wikipedia, constantly updated so that an edit made on Wikipedia happens on the fork.

So, what changes could we make? Clearly we could add pages -- new pages for the new organization to manage the new encyclopedia is an obvious place to start. And we would have to make it clear that the fork is not the original, which requires more changes. The problem is, what do we do if someone edits a page on the fork? Try to get Wikipedia to automatically accept the edit? Good luck with that one. Lose all edits made on the page on Wikipedia from then on? This needs a solution before forking becomes viable. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:50, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

God no, my plan would be to transfer the administrator and bot-operator corps en-masse and just dont look back. You think Google will continue to promote wikipedia links once it becomes known its open-day for vandalism on ENWP? Given the EU's laws, once a few high profile libel/defamation threats hit, I estimate 3-6 months before a comprehensive fork would overtake wikipedia in the rankings. Hell, it would really only take the bot and automated operators who combat vandalism to stop work for a month and wikipedia would have to go into full page lockdown. Imagine 6 months of it... Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

What's your plan for making that "transfer the administrator and bot-operator corps en-masse" actually happen? I doubt that you could get 1% of them to move voluntarily. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:12, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I would say the WMF is making that happen all by itself at the moment. Its not there yet, but I can see it reaching the tipping point in the next 2 or 3 years unless there is a major governance turnaround. It would only take a relatively small amount of high-value people to become disaffected enough with the status quo to consider an alternative, then presented with a ready-made alternative, I suspect they would give it a trial. Fork first - present complete encyclopedia with new saner procedures, governance etc (I know you and I actually have had similar ideas in the past on what we would consider proper due process, so I assume others out there do too) to disaffected population, see what happens. You cant 'make' people do something they dont want to do, you can enable them to do something they do want to do. Especially when they are angry and disaffected. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:59, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Imagine an encyclopedia where *all* BLP's are on the highest form of protection. Enticing for a lot of BLP noticeboard regulars. You could probably get a significant sign-on from some of the most prolific vandal-fighting editors/admins by requiring registering to edit. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Several version of Wikipedia including the German language Wikipedia have flagged revisions on all articles, not just BLPs. I'm pretty sure the WMF would let us switch that on here if we had consensus. As for jettisoning our openness for a citizendium style wiki of registered editors only, you have two problems, firstly most of the community won't want that, secondly if you did fork ultimately you would be doomed to lose to a Wikipedia that still allowed IPs to edit. There are some things that would give a fork an advantage over the WMF version, most obviously a commitment to only make software changes that have at least majority support, and to invest money in development according to community priorities. But forking to do things that only a minority support would not be the best way to start. ϢereSpielChequers 15:42, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers:I don't know how you're doing it, I don't think it's on purpose, but you're always wreaking havoc witrh the chart with your edits. See my revert with this edit. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 16:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

very strange, seems to be a problem with editing via my new Windows PC. Thanks for telling me. ϢereSpielChequers 08:51, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

@Only in death and Guy Macon: As appealing as the talk of forking is, it is all too easy to meet a new boss same as the old boss. The biggest problem with Wikipedia is that it was built around centralized control, and that medium is becoming the message. Some time ago I made a suggestion at Meta:Usenetpedia - the precise methods aren't really very important, but the idea is, we need to create a completely decentralized 'pedia in which edits are shared over a network and different people are free to set themselves up independently as authorities on which version should be served as "the most current version", according to what set of rules. Wnt (talk) 13:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely, Guy Macon. I first donated because (and this is on record) of the open accounting that existed at the time. The situation now feels like a betrayal. --Elvey^(t•c) 21:42, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Comments on Reply by User:Guy Macon

Thank you for explaining. It wasn’t clear from your previous comments what audience you were speaking to, and so it wasn’t clear to what extent you were talking about complainers or to wht extent you were complaining. I now understand better. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

As to RFA, I agree that the process has become broken. On the one hand, it probably was too easy in 2007, but it is definitely broken and toxic since 2012. It won’t be fixed in the foreseeable future because of a more general problem with the English Wikipedia, which is that it can’t address problems that polarize and divide the community. RFA is a visible symptom of this more underlying and less obvious problem. The English Wikipedia doesn’t have a workable form of self-governance, and, because it doesn’t have a workable form of self-governance, it won’t fix its processes by its own processes. RFA isn’t the only process in the English Wikipedia that is broken, only a highly visible example. For another example, there isn’t any mechanism short of the ArbCom of dealing with toxic editors (except for trolls and vandals), and the ArbCom has too many functions beyond dealing with toxic areas and toxic editors, and so is very slow (which it hasn’t always been). Proposals to do anything about the ArbCom bottleneck, likewise, do not go anywhere, because the English Wikipedia doesn’t have a workable mechanism of self-governance. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Much as I agree with the "RFA is broken" meme and one of my charts is frequently trotted out to evidence it, the truth is that if we charted the numbers of both admins and rollbackers the pattern would look very different. We now have over 5,400 rollbackers, all appointed since Rollback was unbundled in early 2008. When Rollback was unbundled the number of RFAs collapsed and it ceased to be possible to pass RFA simply because you were a "good vandalfighter". Most of our 1300 or so admins are from before that unbundling. Yes RFA has changed in other ways and I do consider it in need of much reform. But the biggest change took place by consensus and I for one would not reverse it. ϢereSpielChequers 15:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

When the WMF is asked to address any issue about the English Wikipedia, they reply with a statement that it, like the other services, is self-governing. That statement is a ‘’myth’’ in two senses. It is a myth in the philosophical sense that it illustrates something about the beliefs of a culture (in this case, the WMF), but it is also a myth in the common sense that it is not true. As long as the WMF continues to think that the English Wikipedia can reform itself, nothing will happen. Maybe they (most of whom are Americans and so can read and write English) need to take a better look at what is actually going on in the English Wikipedia, which is that the encyclopedia continues to evolve but that its governance processes don’t work, and the insistence that the English Wikipedia can reform itself is a delusion. Maybe they are too busy raising money that isn’t needed and isn’t disclosed and traveling around the world promoting themselves. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

This gets us back to the WMF. I agree that they don’t need all of that money that they aren’t accounting for. I agree that they need to provide a better breakdown of their finances. The PDF is compliant with IRS rules, but isn’t sufficient. What is the $12M in other operating expenses, for instance? What are the numbers and functions of the employees who get paid $20M? What are they doing that actually does or doesn’t have anything to do with the encyclopedias and other Wikis? Also, is there any way of estimating how much of the $50M really has to do with the English Wikipedia (as opposed to other web sites)? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 January 2016

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Staff morale

We understand that there was a healthy 93% response rate among some 240 staff. While numbers approached 90% for pride in working at the WMF and confidence in line managers, the responses to four propositions may raise eyebrows:

• Senior leadership at Wikimedia have communicated a vision that motivates me: 7% agree
• Senior leadership at Wikimedia keep people informed about what is happening: 7% agree
• I have confidence in senior leadership at Wikimedia: 10% agree
• Senior leadership effectively directs resources (funding, people and effort) towards the Foundation's goals: 10% agree

The Signpost has been informed that among the "C-levels" (members of the executive), only one has confidence in senior leadership.

I expected it to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be that bad: 10% have confidence in senior leadership. Let's assume there was none of this controversy over James. What is the board going to do about staff dissatisfaction? II | (t - c) 03:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It is obvious that WMF needs a completely new board; it may not be easy, but this shows that the current board is failing miserably in doing its work and has to be fired, somehow. Nocturnalnow (talk) 03:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Pretty extreme. But... so is the figure of 10%. For the first time I'm leaning in this direction. An Rfc vote of no confidence might be worth discussing. Jimmy, your thoughts? It seems we are getting serious indeed. I am particularly disturbed by the board's unhealthy relationship with Google. Jusdafax 03:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this board has any unhealthy relationship with Google.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:02, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Nearly any relationship with Google is unhealthy. It's a privacy raping, data mining company, the very opposite of a healthy relationship. It's doing evil. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 21:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

It's obvious there's a serious problem, but is it the staff or the leadership? We're assuming it's the leadership. Flow was written by staff, right? --Elvey^(t•c) 21:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

If I had been in charge of the Flow project, one of two things would have happened; either [A] we would have delivered a product that was acceptable to the vast majority of our customers (that would be all of you in the Wikipedia community) or [B] it would have been cancelled during the requirements or preliminary feasibility stage. See Why does software cost so much and Learning From The Past: The History Of Structured Engineering. The fact that neither of those things happened clearly shows that it was the leadership, not the staff. Specifically, it shows that the leadership was worse than my leadership would have been, and I consider my ability to lead engineering projects to by rather average. As far as I can tell, there was no requirements phase -- nobody captured the requirements of the Wikipedia community. From that point on the project was doomed. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:39, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, I was recently reading and writing about a "benevolent anarchy" in management of a creative educational organization and the good that comes out of it. (See, James Franck Institute). Wikipedia is, at best, a benevolent anarchy, so it would not be surprising if the Foundation has some of that. Software development is a creative enterprise, an especially "pure" one in an environment where no creator will make a profit from the creation because it will be free. Those people who need to be creative will have an incentive in 'follow your muse', they will need a bit of benevolent anarchy, they will need the room to fail. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

That's right, and it's often forgotten that many managers don't give a hoot about staff morale. They may not even want good morale, they may want creative tension that makes people miserable. Some managers want high turnover too. Sometimes they're right. In this case? Don't know. Coretheapple (talk) 17:23, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Benevolent anarchy is not equivalent to stupidity. Google's 20% time might be considered "benevolent anarchy". But Guy is correct, both the 20% projects and the 80% projects are statistically likely to be disasters if they do not follow the tried and tested methods of project management to an appropriate extent. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC).

New WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri

Jimbo, was the WMF board fully aware of Arnnon Geshuri's central role in a major anticompetitive scandal at Google when they approved his appointment? In 2010, the Justice Department shut down the illegal collusion between Google and five other Silicon Valley corporations. Geshuri helped manage that collusion for Google. A class action lawsuit forced those companies to pay $415 million in compensation to 64,000 employees whose careers were damaged by the conspiracy that Geshuri was part of. Geshuri was directly involved in the ugly and humiliating termination of a woman who did not comply with the illegal scheme. He was chastised by federal judge Lucy Koh for attempting to pull Facebook into the conspiracy, and threatening retaliation if they didn't. Details can be found at User:Cullen328/Arnnon Geshuri. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:59, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I cannot speak for the entire board. As for myself, I was aware (from googling him and reading news reports) that he had a small part in the overall situation when he was told by Eric Schmidt that Google had a policy of not recruiting from Apple, and that a recruiter had done it, and that the recruiter should be fired, and he agreed to do so. As for your other allegations, that he "helped manage that collusion", the part about some "ugly and humiliating" termination, and chastisement by a Federal Judge, I don't (yet) know anything about that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Even if none of those details hold up, it is still a very poor substitute for a community elected leader who is accused only of being too open about planning. We have traded a coon for a fox here, and now we are on the menu. Wnt (talk) 13:55, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Wnt, did you read any of what I've written about this. James was not accused of being too open about planning. That had absolutely nothing to do with his dismissal from the board. I am a very strong advocate of the community, of transparency, and I would be the first to object, publicly and loudly, if the board had any intention of restricting open community discussion of planning for the future and deeply integrated community participation in planning. Don't believe the false narrative.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:05, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Up to now no reason whatsoever was given by any of the nay-sayers, just trust me, and, to put it simple: I don't. Tons of weaselling, content-less buzzwords and whole sentences with no content at all, so nobody knows the reasons, why one of the three properly vetted members was ditched by less legitimate, members. Here it is again in regard of this fishy trustee: He was involved in scandal, that was completely unacceptable, and the very opposite of everything the wikiverse should stand for. There has to be a massive Saul/Paul event in his live to make him trustee material. Can you elaborate about his complete change in attitude, that would justify his appointment? Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 18:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: The problem is he's essentially debating an empty seat. "multiple conversations around expectations for Trustee conduct, responsibilities, and confidentiality" on which you failed to reach a "common understanding" ... that tells me nothing. His version appears to be that he was accused of talking to staff (without claiming he knew how the vote would go), and of releasing private information of some sort (which he denies though he said he pushed for transparency). The third thing about his post-vote announcement is beneath discussion - you don't hold a vote to throw someone off the board unless you know how it's going to go. His version is what I was reflecting above; you can say that's not true, but I don't know if that's because of some minor error in my interpretation or something major.

Now my mind is not made up - I could be convinced that Doc James had to go, given some unlikely scenarios at the back of my mind. But you're in a credibility hole right now, because you've (a) annulled an election, (b) surprised us with two trustee appointments unexpectedly, (c) increased corporate background by doing so at a time when there is already too much, (d) in the background of already having issues with a super-hierarchical power structure - superprotect, suppression, an executive director I don't know why you need to have at all, etc. (e) have serious deficits in existing privacy policies regarding third parties and use of information for research, (f) have ongoing development at Wikidata and elsewhere that seems more directed toward making API information available for third-party companies than for development within Wikipedia. I am not saying that you are lying to us per se, but I think you may be insufficiently wary of corporate influence and associated ways of thinking. Wikipedia got stung before in a purely amateur-hour operation with the private Gibraltarpedia DNS lookups ... I shudder to think what the pros can think of. Wnt (talk) 19:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Plenty of references to reliable sources documenting what I said can be found in the essay about Geshuri that I linked to above. I am concerned that it seems like I was able to learn more about Geshuri's problematic involvement in a major scandal in a couple of hours on my smart phone than you were when completing your "due diligence" with all the resources at your disposal. I encourage you and anyone else here to familiarize yourself with the facts, and reconsider this ill-advised board appointment. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 16:56, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I've been working on the Arnnon Geshuri BLP, thus, learning a lot about him. He seems to be, in a great way, really dedicated to Tesla's future and making it a great company in a lot of ways. I particularly like his "kid in a candy store" metaphor in this CBS video. His background and public personality come across to me as consistent with a hard driving "whatever it takes" corporate executive. If that's someone who is useful in some way for WMF or not, I am not knowledgeable enough about WMF to say. But I can guarandamnteeya that the future of Tesla Motors will come first in his time and importance priorities, ahead of WMF, which should not be a surprise to anybody, and which I would bet he would readily admit himself...you can see his excitement for Tesla in the CBS video.

I also endorse Cullen³²⁸'s views about Geshuri's appointment to Trustee as being ill advised. Geshuri's substantial involvement in the illegal "do not call" scheme is a dis-qualifier for a position of trust, aka "trustee", in a not for profit foundation, imo. Nocturnalnow (talk) 05:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I don't know what your understanding was at the time you voted to appoint Geshuri. But when you say "I was aware" but imply (and this is supported by what Dariusz wrote) that other board members were not aware, it is disturbing. This information should have been shared with the other members to inform their vote. Your characterization is not correct. As you can see from the documents, he wrote, "In general, we have a very clear ‘do not call’ policy (attached) that is given to every staffing professional and I reiterate this message in ongoing communications and staffing meetings. Unfortunately, every six months or so someone makes an error in judgment, and for this type of violation we terminate their relationship with Google." This means it was not a reaction to Schmidt suddenly informing him of this do-not-contact policy ("he was told by Eric Schmidt"). Nor was Geshuri's role "a small part". It was a long-term policy that Geshuri had been enforcing. Schmidt apparently didn't even say (at least not in the email chain) that the recruiter should be fired, just that it should be stopped. That was Geshuri's way of enforcing the illegal and unethical deal. Mattflaschen - Talk 07:18, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

These are about our new trustee

Jimbo, can you please expand your explanation above concerning why he is suitable to be a trustee in light of the info below? Nocturnalnow (talk) 06:09, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I'll offer my views when the time is right. At the moment, I'm waiting for a staff report and some board discussion to take place. It would be inappropriate for me to offer a public opinion at this early stage.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:03, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

source=PCmag

"In response, Google's director of staffing, Arnnon Geshuri, wrote that the employee who contacted the Apple worker would be "terminated within the hour.""

source= PandoDaily

"What happened next is just one of many specific examples of how people’s lives were impacted by the Techtopus wage-theft cartel that was taken down by the Department of Justice antitrust division, and is currently being litigated in a landmark class action lawsuit.

The Google recruiter’s email—in which she identified herself as “a Recruiter for the ‘Google.com Engineering’ team formerly known as the ‘Site Reliability Engineering’ team”— was sent out on the morning of March 7, 2007.

That evening, Steve Jobs forwarded her email to Eric Schmidt with this note:

"Eric, I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this. Thanks, Steve"

The next day, March 8, Schmidt sent a hurried email to Google’s top HR people:

"I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple and this is a direct inbound request. Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening? I will need to send a response back to Apple quickly so please let me know as soon as you can. Thanks Eric"

Google’s Senior Staffing Strategist Arnnon Geshuri (now at Tesla) replied almost immediately, assuring Schmidt that the recruiter would be fired, and that Google HR did all it could to make sure that its recruiters were aware of the illegal non-solicitation agreements. The language is brutal, and as you’ll see, there’s an almost sadistic, military glee on all sides with the way in which the Google recruiter is “terminated”:

"Eric, On this specific case, the sourcer who contacted this Apple employee should not have and will be terminated within the hour. We are scrubbing the sourcer’s records to ensure she did not contact anyone else. In general, we have a very clear ‘do not call’ policy (attached) that is given to every staffing professional and I reiterate this message in ongoing communications and staffing meetings. Unfortunately, every six months or so someone makes an error in judgment, and for this type of violation we terminate their relationship with Google. Please extend my apologies as appropriate to Steve Jobs. This was an isolated incident and we will be very careful to make sure this does not happen again. Thanks, Arnnon"

Apologizing and groveling to Steve Jobs is a recurring theme throughout these court dockets... as is the total disregard for all of the not-Steve Jobs names whose lives and fates are so casually dispatched with, like henchmen in a Hollywood film. Geshuri’s decision to “terminate within the hour” the recruiter was enthusiastically seconded by Google’s VP for Human Resources, Shona Brown:

"Arnnon-Appropriate response. Please make a public example of this termination within the group. Please also make it a very strong part of new hire training for the group. I want it clear that we have a zero-tolerance policy for violating our policies. This should (hopefully) prevent future occurrences."

But in the back-and-forth involving this illegal arrangement, nothing summed up the contempt the executives in the wage-theft cartel had for those lower down than Steve Jobs’ response to this episode, in an email that was unsealed last week by Federal Judge Lucy Koh. (That email is embedded below, along with the other emails in the thread.)/ "

Google class action lawsuit re: our Trustee

The publicly available claim, published by the D&O DIARY journal, accuses our trustee on page 5, pdf page 8 of 72, item numbered 14. Our trustee is accused of;

being a "conduit" in "implementing the illegal scheme" as well as

"He( our trustee ) created the formal "Do Not Call" list." and

"enforced the agreement".

additional information

• All Board defendants ....did not do due diligence ...to preserve their position on the Board , their professional relationships, and their compensation and power pdf [15] ("Board" in regards to the PDF, not WMF) --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:55, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

You should eventually make clear that the above mentioned "board" is NOT the WMF board of trustees". --Túrelio (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

of course, though it is obvious per the source, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

• The appointment of Mr. Geshuri should be reconsidered. Carrite (talk) 23:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

A short statement on recent comments by James Heilman

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." 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)

James's statement (the diff) was made after you voted him out. That's a tough way to prove your point. Next, those "certain actions" (pre-vote, I must understand) as mentioned do not form part of a misrepresentation towards the community because they were not shared. And of course you could state whether the Board did accept those excuses, or did undertake any other action to solve the issue(s). -DePiep (talk) 09:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

As I said, this is an example of the type of thing that caused the board to lose trust. I view it as a pattern of behavior that, it seems, is likely to continue.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I do not understand Jimbo writing here "live up to the values of honesty and transparency that are core to our community" while this case is kept under Board and Legal secrecy: no community involved to be honest & transparent with. -DePiep (talk) 11:11, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I was chatting with Patricio after my removal wondering about further details regarding justification and one of the few things he mentioned was my email to the group were I suggested I would be happy to write about the Knowledge Engine in the Signpost. You Jimbo responded very negatively when I made this suggestion. You Jimbo brought it up again a few weeks latter. We now have a community member asking for further details here

With respect to my apology, what I apologized for was going out of process, ie speaking with staff. However in my defense, both the chair and vice chair were aware of these conversations. And nearly all other board members were also having conversations with staff.

I am willing to have my actions and inaction in relation to those of my fellow board members subjected to independent review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:06, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You have a clear statement from every single member of the board that this has nothing to do with your removal. Time to drop it, no one is going to buy it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I would be willing to be part of the team doing the reviewing. Right now I have no position on any of this because I don't have enough data. I have already signed our confidentiality agreement when I was elected as one of three 2015 arbcom election commissioners. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:22, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If it's really about the long term strategy, and whether to make them public: To not make such stuff public is a clear message against the community, as only the community has the legitimate right to develop a long term strategy, the service organisation WMF can help with this, as it's the duty with a service organisation, but is has absolute no right to do so behind closed doors. --Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 11:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

It is not about the long term strategy, and we have a unanimous statement from the board that it is completely false. We absolutely believe 100% in the community approach to long term strategy. I also believe that it is not possible to work constructively on a board with someone who completely misleads the community about such a thing.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Count me among those wanting to know a lot more about this "Knowledge Engine," and the long-term strategy mentioned by Doc James, and his removal from the Board "for cause." DePiep, above, also speaks for me. The removal of a community-elected member of the WMF Board is a matter of urgent concern, especially when Doc James states that he was attempting to bring important information to the attention of the community and was effectively retaliated against. By God, Jimmy, this issue now appears extremely ugly. Something appears terribly wrong in the way this is being handled. I suggest that making a clean breast of this entire subject has become crucial. Jusdafax 11:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

agree w/ Jusdafax--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:22, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You now have a clear statement from the board that there is absolutely no truth to his claims. He is free to talk about long term strategy with the community, just as he always has been. I don't know how to be more clear: you have 100% of the board - community members, appointed members, longterm members, everyone saying the same thing: it just is not true. Why is he pushing this narrative? I don't know.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

What do you expect when all that has come through from the board is some vague statement with generalities that does nothing to enlighten anyone? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:49, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(ec) Then why not take him up on his offer of submitting the situation to an independent review? If the review agrees with you, that could really help to settle this. If you're confident that the Board's view of this is the right one, you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain from that, and James has already agreed to it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:51, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

However, the Devil's in the details. Who would select the review panel? How many would be on it? Who would determine what documents are to be reviewed? What kind of time frame would be allowed? And many more. Jimmy, you and the Board are saying Dr. Heilman is lying. This is another stunning development. Jusdafax 13:06, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Count me among the clean breast lovers, because surely, this is not the better way from any perspective. Ladling out hints in dribs and drabs, leaving it to conspiracy theorists to try to figure out what happened for the lack of any better option, this doesn't look good in any way. Even if you end up telling the whole story over time, no one will be sure if it's a work of interactive fiction. You might as well just face the music, tell the whole story, if it costs you a grant it costs you a grant, if it makes you look like a corporate appendage, well, I bet the new board will figure out a way to do that anyway soon enough. At least you'll have closure. Wnt (talk) 14:15, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

We were discussing the grant application to the Knight foundation for funding for the Knowledge Engine and the documents associated with it back in Oct. During that conversation I stated I would be happy to write a Signpost piece about it as these documents gave the clearest idea I have seen about what was being proposed. I stated that I wanted to see clear community discussion before we accept these restricted funds for a new and very ambitious long term project. You responded negatively to that proposal. Patricio mentioned this as one reason for my removal in a gchat. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:11, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(ec) re Jimbo Wales: "no truth to his [James's] claims" - so Jimbo, these statement are not true: "[Patricio and I, James chatting] details regarding justification [...] my email to the group [...] about the Knowledge Engine"; "You Jimbo responded very negatively"; "You Jimbo brought it up again a few weeks latter"; "what I apologized for was going out of process, ie speaking with staff"; "However [...] both the chair and vice chair were aware of these conversations"; "And nearly all other board members were also having conversations with staff".

You Jimbo may choose to keep silent about Board's motivation (turn silent actually, because initially the Board was willing to publish a statement), and you may choose to follow WMF Legal advise into this. But then don't spin around words like 'honesty, transparency, NPOV explanation, very clear, misleading, is not about [topic X], ', and especially not 'community'. What you are actually saying, and will say after Legal clears this for outing, is: this is a Board thing and we will not assume responsibility vis-a-vis the community. -DePiep (talk) 13:15, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Be careful about the misdirection - you're still falling into the trap that I'm warning against. James' removal from the board had absolutely nothing to do with any disagreement about transparency regarding the long term strategy of the Foundation. I am a much stronger advocate of transparency than James, so if there were a serious board disagreement about that, I would have been on James' side on that one. That's not relevant - he's raising it for reasons that I leave you to conclude... a narrative that he was kicked off the board for wanting to bring some crucial information to the community is exciting and makes him look heroic. But it simply isn't true.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Based on the nonreply above I don't think I was entirely wrong to look for conspiratorial issues, even if they had nothing to do with this. Wnt (talk) 14:30, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. I am not subject to a National Security Letter.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:55, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

re Jimbo. The 'this is not about'-statement is quite specific, and so leaves open a huge space for what it does could be about: Talking with staff? A *short* term strategy thing then? Jimbo twice, over weeks, objecting to an open discussion of Knights Foundation/Knowledge Engine for a non-strategic reason? And no I am not "falling into the trap" of "misdirection" (by James). I am testing your statements. You call James a liar and distrustworthy in public without putting the proof in public. This does not make James "heroic". It does make you something else. At least you could admit that WMF is hiding behind Legal. -DePiep (talk) 16:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

You have a statement from the entire board, signed by every member, indicating that what he said about why he was dismissed was simply not true. What further proof do you want? This is not a rhetorical question - what is it that you really want to see? I was there, I was on the phone call, and what he's claiming as a reason for dismissal is was never even mentioned by anyone as a reason for the dismissal. He now says - latest story - that it was for "talking to staff" - we all talk to staff in various ways. He knows that isn't the reason, either. Ask him why he's not telling you the full story.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

"Ask him why ..." - could be the same reason you don't: Legal advises silence ("WMF legal has asked the board to refrain from further comment until they've reviewed what can be said - this is analogous in some ways to personnel issues." you wrote above, Dec 29th). The Board's declaration is a reply to James's outing, and so was made up after the fact (another Legal Dept fingerprint). By personally accusing him of lying, ("My own preference, ... honesty") is another 'personnel issues' trick Legal Dept supported. "what he's claiming as a reason for dismissal" -- "a" as in singular? He published three Jan 2 (iow, what are you talking about? Exactly which statements by James are you actually calling upon being lies?). "He now says - latest story - that it was for "talking to staff" " - He already said so on Jan 2nd (same link), not a January 8th 'latest'. And in there, he added it was about "expectations". Since you somehow do not remember this one, the question again exactly which statement is not true. Next, in that James Jan 2 statement there is another after-vote issue you bring up: was or was he not aware that & invited for the Board was to discuss the joint declaration? The 'he choose to do' is another after-the-fact found problem; always useful in 'personnel issues'. All in all, this a lot of Legal/HR Dept speech. -DePiep (talk) 21:12, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

By now we are supposed to see by interpolation the Unmentionable Point we are being circled around. For now, no more questions. -DePiep (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Doc, Jimmy, I find myself scrambling to get up to speed in this discussion. I had heard of the Knight Foundation but knew little else about this deep pockets org until today. Review of their history leaves me uneasy. At this point I'm assuming nothing. I get the feeling, however, that there are questions here I don't even know to ask. Jusdafax 13:49, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not sure the "one of us is lying, and since I have the better track record in transparency and telling the truth, everyone will just see that" approach is going to work very well here, because it is based on an incorrect premise. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:13, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If you mean James is trying that argument, then I agree with you. If you mean that I'm trying that argument... well, I'm confused why you should think that. I bought you testimony unanimously agreed to by the entire board - 9 people. They are all very well known to the community in various ways.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Well yes, thats rather the point. I think your view of the community's opinion of the board is at odds with the community's actual opinion on the board. I am not sure relying on 'these people are trustworthy' when there are quite a few skeletons lurking in closets that the community is aware of is the right tack to be taking. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:23, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

None of those people are known to me, and I'm the one deciding what my opinion is on this. There's one person who I have reason to think (based on observing past behavior) is generally honest and interested in transparency. There are 8 people I know nothing about, except that they are pretty much a walled garden issuing generally content-free statements (this last one excepted). And one person I know has been less than honest in the past, but who is using a "he's lying because I/we say he's lying" strategy. This is not going to work for me (which I acknowledge is meaningless to you). Your problem is, I don't think it's going to work for a much larger proportion of editors than you seem to think (which might be meaningless to you too). --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:28, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Most of this board were already members when it deceived the community by not acting against rogue developers and their mischievous actions in the superprotect disaster. How do you think is their standing within the community, that they failed so blatantly? And as long as absolutely no reason beyond I don't like him is brought to the front (and up to now there is nothing else), ask yourself who will be trusted by the community. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 15:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

As Tim Starling pointed out recently, the overall narrative of the situation makes James' story seem more credible. Even if we ignore James' dismissal, we have an unusual restricted grant announced long after it was awarded. It is described as "phase one" by Knight but we have no idea what the other phases look like or how much money is involved. Given that it exceeds $100k, we would expect it to be specifically approved per the Gift policy. We have an employee survey which shows shocking discontent, and which has not been revealed unlike previous surveys. I dug up mention of that survey on my own, with no help from anyone. If you could at least tell us whether the board is working on a response to these questions, it would make us feel maybe a bit more comfortable. II | (t - c) 16:08, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimmy, I agree with the above assessment by the ironically-named Imperfectly Informed. Given the shock of the current article in the Signpost regarding astonishingly high levels of mistrust in rank and file employee morale, the ongoing lack of transparency and demonstrable hostility towards the fired community-emplaced Board member, and the trend towards corporate funding of Wikimedia, with Google having deep and dubious ties in the WMF Board, I'm not convinced by the "trust us against Doc James" approach. And it has taken a lot to shake my blind faith, speaking as a former WMF volunteer in the San Francisco office in 2009-2010, working with the now-legendary Cary Bass and next to the great Mike Godwin. You know who I am, I've disclosed my identity. It has taken this avalanche of Dark News to force me into this corner of saying this here and now in this dramatic manner, but... God damn it man, you have got to do better than this. Jusdafax 17:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

What we have here, is a failure of communication. The only close-to-concrete thing we have from the Board side is Jimbo's note above that:

• "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."

James wrote:

• "With respect to my apology, what I apologized for was going out of process, ie speaking with staff. However in my defense, both the chair and vice chair were aware of these conversations. And nearly all other board members were also having conversations with staff."

Jimbo replied directly to that:

• "You have a clear statement from every single member of the board that this has nothing to do with your removal." (I will point out, Jimbo, that the statement at the top of this thread says nothing about out of process actions or speaking with staff, so your reply doesn't make any sense to me. Do you see what i mean? Do you maybe want to strike and respond to what he actually wrote?)

But apparently Jimbo and James are not talking about the same events or they have very different perceptions of the same events. What would be useful for the community would be if each of Jimbo and James gave each other permission to define what they believe the "certain actions" were that led to the loss of the board's trust and the dismissal. Rather than making accusations of lying, why not AGF and try to understand how you are perceiving things differently? That is something best done in private (of course) but you would each set an amazing example for the community if you worked it out here. I don't think either of you are liars, and both of you are very important to the community. Jytdog (talk) 16:50, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. It is very difficult, but I am happy to try.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:17, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

That is good of you. I hope you do try. The inability of the board and James to make a joint statement is causing a lot of drama, as lack of consensus often does around here. This is exactly the kind of leadership that it would be useful for you all (James too) to show - that you can reach consensus even on something as difficult as this. Jytdog (talk) 23:44, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Given the history, but also the absolute bungling mess and total lack of professionalism that the board has shown since these events, you will find, Jimbo, that there is a significant proportion of the people who voted for James who are unwilling to believe a single word of what the board continues to try not to say. This comes on top of a long list of disasters that others have summarized above. As for your claim to be a bigger champion for transparency, please back it up with the details on the restricted grant from the Knight foundation immediately. Talk is cheap, actions speak volumes. MLauba ^(Talk) 18:02, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

What sort of details do you want? I'll have to talk to others to make sure there are no contractual reasons not to do so, but in my opinion the grant letter should be published on meta. The Knight Grant is a red herring here, so it would be best to clear the air around that completely as soon as possible.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: - if contractural reasons present a barrier to fully disclosing the details around the grant, the grant should be returned. This grant is for $250,000. WMF has over $70,000,000 in reserves - the missing grant money could be replaced without any other part of WMF's programmatic work suffering. I could understand accepting some contractual limitations associated with much larger grant or if we were a much smaller organization, but there's absolutely no reason at all why we should give up any fraction of our ideals re: transparency over a grant that could easily be replaced from our reserves and that barely represents one day of WMF's normal operating budget. There's precedent in the movement for returning grant money that's believed to come with strings attached - WEF fully refunded their entire startup grant as soon as they had their own funding sources in place. User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 22:34, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The mindset, that could even think keeping this secret is absolutely not compatible with the wikiverse. It should have been made open in September, better even before that. Keeping such things secret is an offence towards the community. If some donor expects secrecy about such things, he's the wrong one and should be put on a black list of rogue people/companies. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 18:24, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you completely on the general principle. I would like to remind you, however, that it doesn't make sense for the staff to report publicly every single conversation they have with potential donors or every single proposal that people make to them. Only when something rises to a certain level of importance does it make sense. In this case, the overall thinking has been openly published since at least *May* of last year. diff. A grant to support further exploration and R&D in this area is hardly controversial and certainly not something that would require secrecy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:32, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

So then you would not object to James sharing with the community via a Signpost article about the so-called "knowledge engine" project, everything that he knows about the project? He seems to think that you object to that, but now here as you say "hardly controversial and certainly not something that would require secrecy" it sounds to me like you would not object to James writing about it in the next Signpost. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:13, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking for The Signpost, we would definitely be interested in such a piece from Doc James. There are a lot of questions from the community regarding this project and this would be an excellent chance for the Board to clarify whatever misconceptions exist in the community about this matter. Does he have the Board's permission to do so? If not, will someone from the Board or the WMF be willing to write such a piece to inform the community what this matter is about? Gamaliel (talk) 17:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Would be great. Should also solve the mystery that James's proposal to discuss this Knowledge Engine/Knight Foundation long term strategic issue in the community was not allowed in September, and the same proposing mail later was made an issue once again by a Board member, and was discussed with Patricio WMF-Chair last week for absolutely not being related to the voting-out, and again on this page was ruled out again as unrelated. While the Knights earmarked contribution was only announced last week, so in September would have been a big scoop for James! Oh and we all want to know if this relates to James's stand re Undisclosed paid editing, of which he is aware both by professional background and by editing area. -DePiep (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but perhaps what's needed is a good, clear article simply stating the facts. DePiep, thanks for drawing our attention to his paid editing contributions. Don't agree with all of them but by and large very thoughtful. Makes me saddened about this recent turn of events. I wasn't acquainted with him from Adam. Again, I'm distressed that his integrity has been called into question. This is a person who chooses to use his real name, and it bothers me that this is happening to him. I'm not expressing an opinion on his removal, just the way it has been characterized. Coretheapple (talk) 20:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Am still happy to write something if given permission to do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:58, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I am having a hard time reconiling Jimbo's statement ("...certain actions which he has chosen not to share with the community, which is his right."[16]) with the above. Are you free to reveal exactly what happened or have you been asked not to do so? --Guy Macon (talk) 03:07, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

"have you been asked not to do so?" - or advised not to do so? Remember, Guy, at the moment WMF Legal dept has taken over communication (as Jimbo said, above). This might as well mean that anything James says, may/will be turned against him, (btw, JW & the Board already did here, calling James a liar by untestable private judgement). Another Legal fingerprint (/Human Resources, as a "personnel issue" not Board workings) is that Jimbo, cleared by Legal, keeps injecting after the vote-statements (including the 'liar' claims). A trick to paint James without having to take responsibility for the vote itself, and a trick to get James into self-criminalising etc. Actually, the Board nor Jimbo has made any statement about the reasons that were present in the voting. By now, these vote reasons might as well be spinned 180 degrees for Legal reasons. We only know one thing for sure: the Board will not take responsibility in face of the community. -DePiep (talk) 09:44, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that unless a board member has signed an NDA he or she is perfectly free to speak his mind concerning a nonprofit board from which he has departed. Indeed, given the "lost my trust" comments that have been made by the founder, which reflect upon his character, I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't be well within his rights to speak his mind. Coretheapple (talk) 17:29, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

This has the feeling of Richard Feynman and the Challenger disaster. A blue ribbon panel was appointed to review the tragedy. There was a scripted pat for the panel to follow but Feynman, ( being Feynman) ignored the script to the chagrin of Rogers. He started talking to employees and engineers. He discovered the disconnect between management and employees in addition to finding the fault part. Going off script is not necessarily bad when the script is poorly written. --DHeyward (talk) 07:26, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

A review of governance

We have a WMF board member on Google's payroll and seemingly (I'm not certain because he won't answer my questions either at The Signpost or on wikimedia-l) not recusing from discussions and decisions that may commercially impact Google, and another on Tesla Motors' payroll who is accused of serious wrong-doing on Google's behalf. And others with very close ties to Google and Tesla. Then there's the dismissal of a community-nominated trustee that many have concerns about.

Three years ago the WMF commissioned a review of governance at WMUK over perceived conflict of interest at board level [17]. Is it time for an independent review of WMF's governance and the loyalties of the individual board members? Or would a really well-informed article in the Telegraph or New York Times shame them into sorting this out, and save the donors the expense of an independent review? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:39, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Wow! "well-informed article" and "the Telegraph" used together in a sentence. That's unusual.....

But seriously, I'd be interested to know what specific actions the WMF board is taking that commercially impacts either Google or Tesla. NickCT (talk) 15:55, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

So would I.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:20, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Jimbo: So would I. - Then why not have some Board members with knowledge open a community discussion about this long term strategic issue? Could also solve your ignorance, while having 5/9 Board members from Google by now. What were you thinking inviting those? -DePiep (talk) 11:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

How about discussions and decisions around the development of the knowledge engine, "a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy public information on the Internet", and the development of WikiData? Both of these directly impact Google. Do you think it would be appropriate for him to influence board discussions or decisions about these things, or even be present when they're being discussed or decided? I'm not saying Denny is anything but highly principled. He seems to be. This is about recognising a classic financial conflict of interest and acting appropriately. Has either of these projects been discussed at board level since Denny was appointed? Was he present for those discussions? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:27, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

If we are going to be that broad with our view of what "directly impacts Google" then virtually everything we do impacts Google. Denny has always been excellent about recusing himself from anything having to do with Google and indeed has been quite keen to bend over backwards to do the right thing. I think it very appropriate for him to give input and advice to the board and the staff and the community about issues relating to discovery on the website.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:13, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

NickCT, maybe making some new sort of modified browser search, which won't show ads? :p --Ochilov (talk) 21:00, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Just imagine: New search engine, made my WMF. All Wikimedia website pages are indexed faster than ever, Wikimedia sites pages are showed in priority, instead of ads - nice invitations to join some edit-a-thons :p --Ochilov (talk) 21:12, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

• Jimmy, read these emails. They were penned by Arnnon, who was just appointed a trustee. They speak to pretty significantly illegal behavior (that has resulted in one $435m settlement so far,) and are the type of thing that you would expect to be turned up in a normal due diligence review before appointing a trustee to an organization as large as WMF - but it seems that his involvement in that series of incidents wasn't known to the board before his appointment was announced. Combining the fact that at least from the outside it looks like their was a failure of due diligence w/r/t Arnnon's appointment and to many Wikimedians it looks like an individual we trusted and who seems inherently very unlikely to intentionally disclose confidential information because his professional career relies on it was removed from board, can you understand why some of us feel a review of governance is warranted? User:Kevin Gorman | ^{talk page} 23:36, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

those emails don't paint a good picture of this individual...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:47, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Remember, as Neryorkbrad points out on Wikimedia-l, Arnnon hasn't had a chance to put his case to us. If he's learned and grown from this experience, I'm sure many would forgive him. But, while there is still active litigation, we are unlikely to hear Arnnon's current perspective. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Another New Year ready to change the world

I have more ideas to improve WP but, of course, I remember every new advanced template will get deleted if mentioned here, so we need some type of "users union" or "working groups" to support new software or policies. The typical forums seem to be very negative, perhaps because people are so busy they want to discourage anything more on their plates. Anyway, some specifics:

• Multilevel wikilinks: I still see people want to wikilink individual names in a webpage title, so I wonder if we could underline the first letter in a 2nd-level wikilink, such as "The writings of Thomas Jefferson on Methods of Farm Irrigation after 1800" where the wikilinks have an underlined first-letter, while the webpage links are regular text, and users with all-underlined links would notice the separate links already. Anyway people want something like that.
• Measurements in words: WP has over 50,000 pages with phrases like "several miles" or "ten kilometers" or "a few litres" and so perhaps we could undelete Template:Convert/words (from 5 Jan 2014) to show {convert/words |several|miles} as "several miles (dozen km)" or also { convert/words |a few|litres} as "a few litres (a few US quarts)". Although that was 2 years ago, something like that could still help users.

Because it now only takes 1 or 2 people to delete an advanced template, then we need a working group to support long-term improvements. There is hope for the future. Things to ponder. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:24, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Several miles is most usually not a dozen kilometres. Several miles is most usually six to ten kilometres. I do not think that converting "several miles" to anything would be helpful. I do not know about your fluid volumes example.

I am not sure about the second level wikilinks. Which people want something like that? MPS1992 (talk) 01:33, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Many people have tried to wikilink words in webpage titles, but I don't want to name specific people due to hounding. As for "several miles" as a rough figure, in U.S. culture the word "several" is typically treated as 6-8 so the range of miles would be "6–8 miles (9.7–12.9 km)" as closer to a "dozen km" rather than 6 km, but perhaps a parameter could be added for other cultural subjects where "several" might be considered as only 4-5. For other units, a few cm would be {convert/words |a few|cm} to show "a few centimetres (a couple of inches)". Anyway, your reply illustrates exactly why the phrase "several miles" needs to be converted in words, lest people imagine several miles as only 6 km (~3 miles), but a working group could decide the specific phrases. For example, in some cultures, a zero number '0' is called, "naught" (or "nought") rather than "zero" and the template would need some cultural options. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:42, revised 23:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Hounding?

Which sources say that in U.S. culture the word "several" is typically treated as 6-8? MPS1992 (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

There are discussions about quantities in words: couple (2~3), few (3-5), several (more than a few), dozen (12-13), many (not as high as 'most'), but the word "several" can also mean "various" as in legal terms to denote more than one, so the issue is to consider several as more than a few in terms of miles. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I ask again, which sources say that in U.S. culture the word "several" is typically treated as 6-8? MPS1992 (talk) 23:28, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

If several does mean 6-8 in US culture does that mean we should take that meaning here, or only in articles written in American English? Other versions of English may well use other definitions such as more than two but less than many or more than two or three but less than many, or even more than a couple but in the context not too many to count if I could have been bothered. Wouldn't it be clearest to leave a vague term vague rather than ascribe a more definitive appearing but quite likely incorrect meaning? ϢereSpielChequers 13:32, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes. MPS1992 (talk) 14:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations Wikid; your suggestion that some kind of working group of Wikipedians will be able to define the word "several" is by far the funniest thing I have heard this year. Hopefully when you convene it it will be able to rule on "a few" and "some" and nail down precise meanings for other non-specific quantities too. pablo 22:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Glad to make you happy again, Pablo. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

• Looks like forumshopping to me, re the quantity-wording. I've met Wikid77 mainly at Template talk:Convert. Two years ago Wikid's parsing template set was replaced by Module:Convert. (btw, since then, the number of transclusions has doubled). A very few functionalities were not migrated, mostly because they were complicated_to_use/isolated/disputed_grammar. The grammar issues, including several wording issues, repeatedly are brought up at the talkpage (and usually answered adequately by module-maintaineer Johnuniq). A dozen abandoned parsing templates were deleted recently in batches: TfD, TfD, TfD, TfD.

"undelete Template:Convert/words" -- well, there is a process for this.

"it now only takes 1 or 2 people to delete an advanced template" -- 'Advanced'? About a pre-Lua parsing template that was superseded two years ago? Anyway, each TfD has more than two contributors, and there are some excellent reasonings for deletion in there, that would make even a second !voter not even needed.

So, forumshopping. -DePiep (talk) 05:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Word 'several' now means more than a few/some

Scholarly research, by interviewing English speakers in central Europe, has revealed the general meaning of word 'several' as being more than some or a few, despite older dictionary definitions that considered it as merely "more than two but not many" (as if similar to "a few"). See book pages: Joseph Smied (2008), English Projects in Teaching and Research in Central Europe, pages 85-86. Those pages compare various studies of quantifier terms (a few/handful, some, several, many), during 1969 to 2006, and strongly conclude the word 'several' (in modern usage) is ranked much more than 'some' or 'a few'. Hence, Wikipedia should definitely explain terms such as 'several miles' lest people imagine the amount as only ~6 km (3.7 mi) or half of modern notions about several miles. Again, a working group could focus usage for each measurement, rather than avoid explanations for readers. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Legally it means "more than one". That source itself states that opinions of lexicographers differ. Vague quantities like these are used deliberately, and meaning depends on context. pablo 11:48, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Clearly, there are several definitions of the word. How is this important again? Carrite (talk) 19:08, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Pablo noted the issues where 'several' could be mistaken in another context. In fact, because opinions of lexicographers differed then that is why the study interviewed people for actual usage, and they found the modern meaning of 'several' (in a quantity) as meaning more than a few/some but less than many, in both English and the Czech language. This study thus also emphasizes the danger of relying on dictionaries as a source, precisely because the context usage is difficult to convey in the limited scope of a dictionary, where the context of "several miles" would be very different than "several parties" in a legal document (as merely more than one party). Again because most people in this discussion think 'several' could mean as little as "2 miles" (3.2 km) rather than a dozen kilometres, then it is crucial to convert for context (as a measurement) when miles is a primary unit. There is little danger of misguided values because each editor is responsible for using a template in the text. Meanwhile one source recommended a phrase such as "around 10" when a conversion centers near 10. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:16, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• As a highly experienced rook shooter, I know 'several' means more than a rook can count, which is up to two, and less than a normal man can count to in the blink of an eye. I have read this somewhere years ago; God knows where; but does it really matter because it's obviously true. Giano (talk) 19:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

The working group proposed would need to include rook shooters in order to be sure of proper cultural thoroughness. Would you be prepared to serve on the working group? MPS1992 (talk) 20:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• While I cannot resist saying that a couple is always, or should always be two, the value of User:Wikid77's suggestion lies in the meat, not the detail of the examples. For example "several miles (a mile is 1.6 km)" might be a better solution, but the actual idea is sound. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC).
  

Relative indent for talk-pages

For the problem of ":::::" I have created a relative-indent template (in user space to avoid instant wp:TfD delete) which will indent +1 ':' when appended to the end of a posted message, see: {{inreply}}.

The Template:inreply will indent a reply message, as a relative level deeper, when appended to a posted talk-page message, as if being another colon-indent ":" level further inward. To indent by a 2nd level, even deeper, then use {{inreply|2}}. Note how the level number, such as "|2" is relative to the current message, as 2 deeper than that post, not just deeper than the talk-page margin; for example at level 3 deep (":::"), the parameter "|2" will indent as if 5 deep (":::::").

Example of two replies 7 deep, each indented - For 2 replies together:

  ::::::: This is another post. -User:Xxx 06:15, 4 July 2016 (UTC) {{inreply}}Here the first reply. -User:Zzz 06:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC) {{inreply|2}} Then the 2nd reply 9 deep. -~~~~

will show result:

This is another post. -User:Xxx 06:15, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Here the first reply. -User:Zzz 06:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Then the 2nd reply 9 deep. -User:Xxx 06:45, 4 July 2016

So a working group could discuss changing talk-page policies to allow relative indent in talk-pages, which would likely meet extreme resistance as the real reason many improvements have been difficult. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:26, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

What is the problem of ":::::"?—Wavelength (talk) 22:51, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It's faster to type, for sure, but for me I have to get close to the screen to count ::::: to see how many I need to use. Past 3 or 4 I could see that template being pretty useful tbh. SQL^{Query me!} 22:58, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Why would it be deleted if it is put in template-space? I think it would be useful for some people. I might use it. I don't always count the :s correctly. Neutron (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

No idea. I never said it would :) SQL^{Query me!} 23:07, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I was responding to User:Wikid77. Neutron (talk) 23:09, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Trying to understand your ethics. Are there any?

Dear Mr. Jimbo Wales,

While many of your pages I find interesting, I don't find them thoroughly researched, however entertaining. The pages on living people often border on sensational and slanderous. I, myself, am enough of a public figure to have my own page which apparently someone else wrote and which I cannot edit, as I try, and the methods to do so are fairly obscure. The information is scavenged from old press and various blurbs on the web.

Couldn't I also be a source? I certainly wouldn't need it as a resume, but if this is where people go for information, not just entertainment, is there not an ethical boundary that you would like to uphold? It would in fact make this site more legitimate and it's a good thing to do, it's a humanitarian thing to do. I can't tell if this is tabloid or not you have created. Would you please give me the ethics or at least concept that you have behind Wikipedia? Is it anyone can write anything as long as they find something published on the subject? In the page about being wrong "you might be wrong if your friends think you're right but everyone else doesn't". Hmmm.. Have you run that by the ancient Greek philosophers?

In the worst case, I find some of your pages slanderous and damaging. For example the page on Nicolai Levashov. Wow, that editor tore that scientist apart. I do happen to know he was a legitimate scientist, a theoretical physicist with an actual degree! And I do actually know the child he cured of a brain tumor. Who is alive and well. Granted, it's pretty out there, but shouldn't there be some neutrality? Shouldn't there be some room for conjecture and debate rather than punitive judgment and un researched, violent attitude that is practically medieval? It's witch-hunty. Put that word in your Wiki. But I'm sure if the writer never heard of Tesla he or she would do the same if presented with that material.

It is unfortunate that we have all this brilliant technology and we allow the lowest common denominator to make it useless rather than using it to raise the bar. We certainly have nothing to lose though with our climate rising, overpopulation, starving immigrants, mass shootings, terrorism, chemical addiction in foods and so forth. You get my meaning.

I am thinking of writing a piece on Wikipedia for the AP, because as my colleagues and I peruse through it, it leaves a lot to question. The big one is, can we, as a first world society, afford to call this "information", when in fact it is entertainment, often at the expense of other people and ideas.

Your response would be appreciated and duly noted, Oh, by the way, I'm an original reality star from NYC's The Real World, MTV, 1992. I know so well how reality can be distorted for the masses for entertainment purposes.

Regards, Rebecca (Becky) Blasband, London, UK LondonRAB (talk) 22:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia's articles follow the consensus view of reliable independent sources. In this case the consensus is that Levashov was a charlatan. If this is a problem, it is one which exists in the real world, and it is not Wikipedia's job to fix it. If by Tesla you mean Nikola Tesla, we have a long and well referenced article on him. As an electrical engineer, it reads well to me. Obviously we don't say much about the silly claims of free energy promoted in his name by modern-day cranks, at least not in that article. As an electrical engineer I am of course biased in one important respect: it seems weird to me that anybody might not have heard of Tesla, what with his name being used for the SI unit of magnetism and all. Guy (Help!) 22:29, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Becky, I look forward to your piece about Wikipedia in the Associated Press, and I am sure we will all read it with interest and sympathy. MPS1992 (talk) 23:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

LondonRAB, the article on you, Rebecca Blasband is probably out-of-date because it has rarely been edited over the past four years. That's one problem we have, not enough editors, and there is no staff to ensure that every one of the 5 million article is updated. 99.9999% of editors are volunteers. If you have some suggestions for updating your article, your input would be welcome on Talk:Rebecca Blasband if you can provide Wikipedia with some reliable sources that provide new information on your career. You obviously learned how to edit Wikipedia or you could not have posted on this talk page.

I'm not sure why you term this a question of ethics and lay the responsibility at Jimmy Wales' feet. If you have any objections of articles that you think are scandalous, I encourage you to post your concerns at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard where editors can see if problems exist. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:40, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Rebecca. Just a small addition to the posts by JzG and Liz. If you feel that your own article is factually incorrect, distorted or outdated, then it is probably better to ask for help on the talk page of the article rather than edit yourself. The reason is very difficult to be neutral when talk about yourself and your friends in real life. Read Wikipedia:Autobiography for more information.

Regarding you question: no, your own words said on Wikipedia website cannot be used as a source for the articles. The reason is simple - Wikipedia has no means to ensure that the editor making the statement is really you and not an impostor. Still any personal websites, blogs, twitters, etc. can be used as a source of noncontroversial information about the authors. E.g. if you publish in your own blog that you have personally witnesses Mr Levashov healed brain tumors it can be potentially a statement in Nicolai Levashov article: American screenwriter Rebecca Blasband praised Levashov in her blog and wrote that she personally witnessed him healing a person from a brain tumor (ref to the blog). The statement would be considered properly referenced because the public blogs by the person can be a source about the person's opinions, but some editors might object that it is not notable enough since Rebecca Blasband does not have authority in medical matters. Still most probably the sentence will be accommodated to the article as we are trying to balance negative information about living and recently deceased people. This is how it works, it looks casuistic and it certainly not ideal but there are reasons for this and all the other systems works worse. Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:39, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

A couple of suggestions on how to improve your article:

• Post your comments, along with reliable sources that back them up on the talk page. Please realize that we cannot assume that anybody who claims to be you is actually you, so the sources are the key.
• Send us some good photos of yourself, where you clearly own the copyright, and properly release them with a free license (e.g. CC-BY-SA). You can upload them at Commons or on Wikipedia itself. If you're not 100% sure about whether you own the copyright, it is likely owned by the photographer. Maybe ask your agent about this.
• There has been discussion about a "right of reply" to bios on Wikipedia, but this has not been implemented (or even gotten close to being adopted), but there are ways to do-it-yourself. Just get something published in a reliable source. Or (maybe) on your own blog as mentioned above. Or my favorite, record a video and post it on YouTube. A common name for this exercise is "Wikipedia - Fact or Fiction?" We can then link to the video in your article, see e.g. Ice-T. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:57, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

If you find your article unduly negative or in conflict with the truth, we can stub it and start from scratch. That's the decent thing to do and we multiple precedents for doing this. Jimbo himself has stubbed articles deemed to be atrocious. --DHeyward (talk) 06:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

under what circumstances should Wikipedia be used to directly imply that a family participated in crimes against humanity?

Talk:Vehbi_Koç#Discussion represents my understanding of Wikipedia policy regarding such, but other editors feel that if a property is, according to reliable Armenian sources, confiscated entirely from an Armenian family, and a Turkish family later (quite later per the sources), ends up with the property, that it is proper for us to imply that the Turkish family was complicit in the Armenian Genocide in some manner. My position is that Wikipedia should never be used to promote any inference of "guilt by association" without exceedingly strong sources beyond those furnished. Any other opinions? Collect (talk) 02:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• Where is policy named WP:SYNTH that I believe answers the question. If a reliable neutral source makes the conclusion we can report it, if the source is notable we might report this, otherwise the answer is no. Usually in ethnic conflicts we do not consider sources belonging to one of the sides to be neutral. Alex Bakharev (talk) 02:37, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

While the matter at hand is certainly an appropriate one for discussion, your section title is the most preposterously over the top example of "Have you stopped beating your wife? that I may have ever read. Gamaliel (talk)

Never. We should clearly state what reliable sources have to say on the subject, and what reliable sources have to say on the significant opinions of others on the subject. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:42, 12 January 2016 (UTC).

I'd rather we refrain from the WP:FORUMSHOPing here Collect. Besides, none of the sources are "Armenian", as Collect wants us to believe. Quite the opposite, they're from the other side of the spectrum. They're from Turkish scholars and thus would be nearly impossible to have any sort of partisanship for genocide related studies as advocates for Armenians. Moreover, these scholars are noted to be the top in the subject of Turkish Republican history and have been awarded the highest distinctions to that effect. So there's no question as to why these sources cannot be considered reliable and strong enough already. Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)