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
• The Register: Wikimedia Foundation bins community-elected trustee
• The Wikipedian: The Crisis at New Montgomery Street
• Posthegemony: Meltdown at Wikipedia?
• Witty's Blog : Strategy and controversy

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) Updated 20:07, 13 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 just added four more entries. Anyone who has followed the links already may wish to follow the new ones. I found the comments by Witty to be especially interesting. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:07, 13 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)

The board was structured to be populated by people who see and do things as Jimmy Wales likes them seen and done, and has a built-in method for expelling those who won't reliably do so. Nothing legally wrong with that, of course (and just dandy if you think Jimmy's a God-King), but he they really should have been much more clear about that while running "community elections" that give the impression that the WMF is something other than what it is. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 01:58, 15 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)

And an alternative reading: Instead of the Glassdoor survey Doc James used the WMF-internal survey, which apparently was recent as well as representative. Just then I don't understand what the fuzz is all about, and why this would be a reason to fire him. --Pgallert (talk) 13:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

No matter how unhappy they were with him for raising staff complaints or for contacting staff, the majority had no moral right whatsoever to purge off what they perceived as a pesky muckraking dissident. None at all. James Heilman is one of three elected representatives of the community and just because they could remove him under the bylaws does not mean that they should. Quite the contrary. Even if your least favorable reading of the tea leaves is on the mark, there is nothing remotely close to removing him for cause for the "sin" of having acted as the voice of disgruntled staff on the Board. It seems completely clear that the Heilman purge is related to the politics of the Executive Director's position and a staff revolt against her leadership, can we agree on that? Carrite (talk) 17:22, 12 January 2016 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 17:25, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Can we agree on that? -- Not necessarily, as multiple voices mentioned a sequence of actions, not just one. This just might have been the proverbial straw on the back of the camel. Now, entirely hypothetical, of course: If I sit on a Board and somewhat habitually twist data to manipulate decisions, what should the rest of the Board do? They would have to ignore me for the remainder of my term. Given the opportunity to kick me out entirely, would that not be the more honest reaction? --Pgallert (talk) 09:45, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Or maybe I'm just trying to scrabble around for a rational reason to remove Heilman while there actually was none. --Pgallert (talk) 11:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

from what is available information-wise there certainly was no rational reason for his removal--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:44, 13 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'sUser:Mrjulesd's (corrected attribution, The quote is above on this page.) 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)

I am unaware of any such email, so most of your questions don't really apply. I'm not saying that Patricio didn't send him such an email - I doubt it, but I don't know. I not only agree with Kevin Gorman 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?" I can say that I have never heard anyone say anything even remotely contrary to that. Board members are in communication with staff regularly. There are obviously important parameters and many ways that a Board member can communicate with staff inappropriately. It is absolutely false that the board ever forbid James from communicating appropriately with staff. It is also false - to my knowledge - that staff was ever generally forbidden from talking to the board. Indeed, there's a whistleblower policy that protects it. At the same time, in the staff->board direction as in the board->staff direction, there is appropriate and inappropriate communication. I'm happy to discuss further what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate communication, but it's not really controversial.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Elvey (talk · contribs), generally I post around here under my secret pseudonym, but since you mentioned my name... I didn't speculate anything of the sort. It is clear that James did communicate with staff members, and it is clear that this had something to do with his removal. I think communicating with staff is a good thing; there should be guidelines, but I was quite concerned when I read here that staff contact was forbidden. It's a common topic which Blue Avacado, a popular nonprofit magazine, covers pretty well at Should Staff Contact with the Board Be Restricted?. I've seen management which were comfortable with staff-board contact and those who were super-paranoid, and the paranoia is in my opinion unworkable: it breeds distrust all around.

What I did say 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"' and that 'I imagine James asserted his rights to some of the board's discomfort'. James has since said that some of the documents he had trouble accessing were revealed to him eventually and others were not. I've been in the same spot as James a few times when I served as a fiduciary for a few years on a couple (extremely different) boards. I've had to point out the statute to fellow board members and legal counsel and quite rarely ran into anyone who knew of it, even among my several Ivy-League educated lawyer friends. Even with the law on one's side, sometimes the delays, foot-dragging, and damaged relationshiops are frustrating to the point that you give up. In general, the academic literature on board governance and the trend in corporate governance is that boards need to be more inquisitive and demanding, not less. In fact, after Enron the audit committees of publicly-traded companies were given additional responsibilities and powers set out in SEC regulation, and many large nonprofits adopted some of the practices which came out like audits of internal control. Incidentally, lots of people think internal control is a financial thing which helps you prevent fraud, but that's not true. Internal control is just a word for the ability of an organization to effectively control itself so that it fulfills its duties to stakeholders. I have a copy of most of the COSO reports and can pontificate on the topic at length. Ultimately, however, the foundation of solid internal control is a tone at the top of uncompromising ethical standards, which was particularly pounded into me when I took auditing and accounting a few years ago in the post-Enron era. Which is the appointment of Arnnon is quite troubling. Ben Creasy (talk) 04:52, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry! I've corrected the attribution. You had posted (yes, as Ben Creasy) right after and I cut the wrong user name. Good points. I suppose I could add a question about your points. PS:Jimbo, please respond to the questions I asked in starting this section.--Elvey^(t•c) 19:47, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll throw in one more answer. As far as I know, James was not denied access to any documents that he had a right to see and there was no sense whatsoever that his dismissal had to do with him demanding documents which he had a right to and the board refused to share. If I'm wrong about that, I encourage James to share the details with me - surely there would be some chain of evidence illustrating the claim. I can certainly say that it was not something that I ever saw him raise to the board at all as being a problem. In my long experience with Wikimedia, I have never seen a case where there was any problem at all with board members having full access to all relevant materials. If James felt that things were being withheld from him, it's a shame if he never raised the issue in a board meeting or on the board mailing list, nor with me personally. I would suggest it is more likely to be something like his previous claim which was absolutely and conclusively refuted by the unanimous statement of all board members.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

So what documents would a board member not have a right to see? That looks like the crux of the issue right there. Jbh^Talk 15:51, 14 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)

Ok, well I wasn't really expecting you to have a sophisticated and balanced assessment of the situation. But still, there is no unhealthy relationship between the WMF board and Google. It'd be helpful if you could list specific things that you are afraid of in this regard. What negative things do you think Google might try to get the board to do?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:30, 14 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).

Software is hard

The numerous problems with software development can be utterly overwhelming, even to people spending 60 hours-per-week to pull the tasks together; meanwhile the intensity of programming can be so all-consuming that a good, successful delivery can still leave staffers emotionally drained, as if low morale. I like the term, "herding cats" to describe the mindsets of a programming team and then when successful, well what are happy cats? The quiet purring is not so easy to measure for morale. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:46, 15 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.)/ "

source=Tesla

Geshuri "oversaw all aspects of recruitment" at Google.

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 [11] ("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)
• The new appointment seems like someone who would use the power accorded to Board members for their own interests, especially given the irrefutable evidence pointing towards their involvement in a corrupt scheme. Esquivalience ^t 01:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
• ...The Washington Post.... "Geshuri was associated with the high profile “do-not-poach” hiring controversy in 2010 when he was an executive... Department of Justice later pursued an antitrust class action lawsuit" [12]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:52, 15 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)

This is quite clever. But again I say - it's absurd that we should ask people to learn about such things for the very very simple and well understood process of replying to a comment in a threaded discussion. Templates? Colons? Nowhere else on the web are people accustomed to such things and certainly as we see the world turning to mobile, such things are quite hard for people to accomplish, as compared to the normal and expected 'click on reply and type your response'.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:55, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

There could be other talk-page tools to help new users reply, but we need to add new features, meanwhile (even as templates), because many users have seen no improvements for "10 years". When new interfaces such as wp:LiquidThreads have been tried, then several older users complained that posts were slower, only one at a time, and examples of markup tables and infoboxes could not be shown screen-wide inside a posted message, and more screenshot images were needed to show examples. Hence, add smaller improvements each month. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:49, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, though I respect the WIMPS crowd, there is very little to learn compared with having to learn what all the icons on buttons mean, and where things live in menus, which can be changed at the drop of a hat. That's not to say that there may not be ways of improving the user interface - it is sad when anyone opposes these. And Wikkid77's template is one such.

Extending this we could easily have a little ^[reply] tag on the end of signatures which would work out the correct indenting, and tuck the reply in the appropriate place.

Maybe a few days dev effort, and 90% of the apparent confusion for new users would be solved. But people needs must have a whole new threaded discussion system from whole cloth, which is not the way things usually work in engineering - rather the incremental improvements are the key to progress.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 15 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)

• If you're writing an article for the Associated Press and this is how you start it....man the AP has become crap. (Edit) Read more....spotlight seeking is my immediate thought here but...who knows.--Mark Miller (talk) 02:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Mark Miller, I did feel that way when I read the original post. I still somewhat feel that way when I look at it now. My very short reply was based on such a feeling. But I do now feel others who have responded wrote much better replies than mine, so I am sorry for that. MPS1992 (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2016 (UTC) Oh and also the original section title implied to be quite insulting in the English that I am used to. MPS1992 (talk) 21:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Does Mr. Levashov's list of awards remind anyone else of a Wikipedia Barnstar page? From each according to his abilities.... Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

There was a bunch of tabloidish factoids that I removed a few days ago after the post here. Keep that in mind if your just looking at the bio now. --DHeyward (talk) 23:08, 14 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) —Preceding undated comment added 02:39, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

And alas - that is exactly the issue -- where an editor has written on the talk page: So I actually propose to make a note on how the state legally sanctioned the right for one to occupy property of displaced persons there is a strong suggestion that such is the desire of that editor. Like it or not, and whether you feel "guilt by association" is fine done in Wikipedia's voice, I do not. We differ. Collect (talk) 14:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

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).

The sources say the property had been owned by Armenians. They also say the person owned the property by 1944. The issue is the desire to link the two separate facts to imply the person was in any way complicit in the genocide. Simple. Collect (talk) 14:01, 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)

Was Vehbi Koç (1901 – 1996) known for being arrogant ? Pldx1 (talk) 11:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

He was actually noted as being rather nice to Armenian employees per sources - thus this attempt to link him to complicity in a genocide is exceedingly ill-wrought. Collect (talk) 14:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Aren't sources rather saying that "In 1942, Vehbi Koç, who had not played any role in the Varlik Vergisi, saw the opportunities it afforded him... through public auction at a price significantly below value" and "Koç, nevertheless, hired many of the former owners and treated them with fairness". Nice definition of being nice to his employees, isn't it ? Pldx1 (talk) 16:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Do you understand how a "public auction" works? If you win a lot at (say) $10,000, would you then pay $50,000 because "it was too cheap"? Really? In normal parlance, "public auctions" are open to anyone making a higher bid - just as we find people currently having foreclosed homes in the US being sold at 1/3 what the owners had paid for them. By the way, 1942 was significantly after the time frame of the "genocide" entirely (by more than two decades) - so implying that he condoned the genocide in some way by buying property during World War II at public auction is really a bad idea. I would point out that some houses in the US which had sold for more than $100,000 in 1928, sold for under $10,000 in the 1930s. Far under "value"? And had he been anti-Armenian, it is likely he would not have even hired any - which was the unfortunate case in parts of Turkey. In short, your sources exactly confirm my opinions on this. Collect (talk) 22:10, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

References

• The answer is simple Collect...when the sources make the claim and there are multiple, strong, reliable third party sources to verify it. That seems pretty simple.--Mark Miller (talk) 02:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  • And the source directly linking Koc to the genocide is what? Collect (talk) 13:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• According to adopt_a_conspiracy.com, it is highly unbelievable that User:Collect was not knowing that it suffices to click on a blue link like Varlik Vergisi to obtain access to another web page. Moreover, it is highly unbelievable that this user was also ignoring the existence of google search. Even on google.com.tr, one can find many accounts about the 1942 Varlık Vergisi. Building a conspiracy theory encompassing all the known facts is left as an exercice to the reader. Pldx1 (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• • Congrats on the Wikipedia Snark Award. The issue is whether Koc was complicit in a genocide as is the clear implication being made - where the genocide was more than two decades prior to his buying the property at public auction. We do not list Americans who bought Japanese properties by auction during WW II, as far as I can tell. Nor do we shame those Americans who bought Russian artifacts sold by the Bolsheviks. The issue is Koc's implied complicity in a crime, not his acquisition of property by auction. Had it been given him for his support of the genocide, that would be a different matter. But, so far, no source provided makes that claim. Collect (talk) 13:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

The "implication" exists only in your febrile imagination. We saw another example quite recently here. Do you get entertainment from fomenting this sort of thing? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Um -- do you give a rat's ass about WP:NPA, mon cheri? Using a blog to imply more than what the blog actually states is improper no matter what the eff your opinion is - and I find your position to be untenable for an actual encyclopedia. I do not chase you around to make "comments", Nomo. Febrility, indeed! Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:14, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

During WW II, the US had a 100% "wealth tax" on Japanese-Americans, and a 100% "wealth tax" on all properties owned by nationals or corporations of Axis nations, and of some Axis-controlled areas. It is interesting that an economist writing about "wealth distribution" suggested such taxes should be used to get redistribution of wealth. IMO, such "taxes" are inherently evil no matter their ostensible rationales, but the "official" rates for the Turkish tax were 12.5% on "war profits" for Muslims and 50% on non-Muslims, and a zero rate on Muslim personal rate, and a maximum rate of 50% on non-Muslim personal wealth. The problems lay in how local officials "estimated" wealth, which is another matter entirely. (source appears to be Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax). The actual source for the "effective tax rates" was from " C.L. Sulzberger, "Turkish Tax Kills Foreign Business," The New York Times, Sept. 11, 1943." (TURKISH TAX KILLS FOREIGN BUSINESS; Capital Levy Up to 232 Per Cent is Required to Be Paid in Cash Within a Month RATES ARE SECRETLY LAID Inequities Are Attributed to Local Boards, From Which There Is No Appeal). (At the time of the NYT piece, Turkey was generally deemed "pro-Axis, by the way.) As the sources state that the auction was in 1942, and the reliable sources clearly state that the auction was held before the person would be hit by the tax hike. In any event, there are no sources liking Koc to being behind anything approaching the Armenian genocide nor even of acting improperly at a public auction. Basta? Collect (talk) 13:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC) US "excess profits tax" during WW II was officially at a flat 90% rate. The problem in Turkey was not the official rate (for which the NYT is a very poor source, in fact) but the arbitrary determination of "wealth" by local officials. Even today, there are some who accuse the IRS of "arbitrariness" <g> and occasional rates over 100%. Some foreign nations have had official marginal tax rates on income well over 100%. Collect (talk) 14:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC) .

• Why is this discussion taking place here rather than on the article talk page? Breaking discussion up like this - particularly with such a biased title and presentation -, even if Jimbo says it is not canvassing or forum shopping, is very bad for the history of the article. This discusion will not be in the talk page archives for reference by later editors nor will it be in the other places where editors typically search like WP:BLPN etc.

  I suggest one of the article regulars or an uninvolved editor move this thread to Talk:Vehbi_Koç where it belongs. I also suggest that editors who bring issues currently under discussion at other places use neutral wording, the same as is required at the noticeboards, otherwise it looks as if the intention is to stir up drama or support for a particular position rather than advance the discussion because this page is by tradition exempt from WP:CANVASS, whether that is the intent or not. Jbh^Talk 14:19, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a discussion there. My issue is at what point should the issue of implying a person was complicit in genocide by something requiring exceptional sources. By the way, I had thought using "crimes against humanity" was more neutral that "complicit in genocide" but your mileage may differ. Cheers for dropping in. Collect (talk) 14:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, here is how people should think about this page. It's a good place for a more philosophical discussion of editorial policy, which often means using specific contemporary and meaningful examples, since philosophical arguments about pure hypotheticals can easily lead to the wrong answer and more heat than light. So in this case, the particular editorial dispute should be resolved on the talk page of the article itself, but we may productively chew on the principles here.

I would say that, per usual BLP logic, "implying that a family directly participated in crimes against humanity" needs really solid sourcing. But in this particular example, it seems the complex question revolves around what counts as "implying". It appears undisputed as a factual matter that "Vehbi Koç lived in a vineyard estate located in the Keçiören district near Ankara. The property, which was left vacant after the Kasapyan family escaped the Armenian Genocide, was acquired by Koç and became the Vehbi Koç museum in 1944 after a thorough renovation." So the remaining question is whether that sentence may lead the reader (correctly or incorrectly - I don't know) to assume that he 'participated' in the genocide or in some way benefitted from it. It doesn't say it, and it doesn't really even suggest it, but it is pretty hard to read it without raising that question in the mind of the reader, and whether or not that question needs to be raised really does depend on the sources and the full context - and I don't know the full answer. There are too many unanswered questions. The Aremenian Genocide is normally said to have been from 1914-1918. At some point between then and 1944 it was acquired and then later became a museum. When did he acquire it? If it was in 1916, then the link seems worth noting. If it was in 1938, two decades later, and if in the intervening years it had been state property or owned by others, then at some point, the past history really has nothing to do with Koç.

But if I'm worried about the implication that he benefitted from the terrible events there, or if I think that it needs to be noted that he did, then surely there are other parts of this biography that are much more specific. "In 1942, Vehbi Koç, who had not played any role in the Varlik Vergisi, saw the opportunities it afforded him as a businessman and took over many collapsed or confiscated companies."--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:43, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

He appears to have purchased it at public auction in 1942. I have this unfortunate belief that such wording in Wikipedia's voice as might suggest he had a role in the genocide (when he was 14 years old as he was born in 1901) might be improperly seen by readers as indicating complicity in the genocide. The purchase was made before the "war profits tax" was instituted, which also seems a bit problematic, but nowhere as near as the implication that he was involved in genocide. The grossly unfair tax (vide US wealth appropriation from Japanese-American citizens in WW II) was clearly unfairly weighed and enforced, but there is no indication that this person was involved in that personally. Thank you for noting that this is of far broader implication than a single article. Collect (talk) 16:44, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, on this issue, I would at the moment lean in your direction of thinking that it seems a bit unfair. If people want to point out that he made a lot of money buying up properties from people who had to sell due to an unfair tax, even if he didn't push to get the tax passed, etc., that does seem relevant to his biography. That someone fled between 1914-1918 when he was a teenager, and that he ended up buying the property decades later, does seem pretty minor overall, and very minor by comparison. My view would change upon someone producing reliable quality contemporary sources showing that there was a big issue about the property's history.

As a completely irrelevant side note, while I know about internment camps in this shameful episode in US history, I don't know very much about "wealth appropriation" in that context. Obviously people will have incurred great losses to the extent they were forced to sell all their possessions quickly and move into camps, but that's different from the government taking their wealth through outright expropriation or unfair taxes. I'm not trying to make any point at all in the current discussion, obviously: I'm just interested to learn more.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:50, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

The Japanese-American citizen internment, a truly horrid occurrence, was accompanied in many cases by loss of vast agricultural holding in California etc. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=74 is clear.

Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees were American citizens. The government made no charges against them, nor could they appeal their incarceration. All lost personal liberties; most lost homes and property as well. Although several Japanese Americans challenged the government’s actions in court cases, the Supreme Court upheld their legality.

The speed of the evacuation forced many homeowners and businessmen to sell out quickly; total property loss is estimated at $1.3 billion, and net income loss at $2.7 billion (calculated in 1983 dollars based on the Commission investigation below).

The farmers could never regain their own land - and there is some evidence that neighboring landowners sought the land for minimal cost.

Japanese Americans controlled less than 4 percent of California’s farmland in 1940, but they produced more than 10 percent of the total value of the state’s farm resources.

Shows why their lands were so readily bought up by their own neighbours. Collect (talk) 17:11, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, yes, appropriated property (land, art, etc.) is unsurprisingly valuable and other identified individuals benefit from appropriation to a degree that others (eg., scholars) comment upon. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

This part seems far far too specific for this talk page and should be on the article talk page. I'm unable to read Turkish so the source means nothing to me. Let's stick here to the high level philosophical questions.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding here. The property he bought at public auction was the Singer Binasi, located in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. See the court proceedings here: [13]. The Keçiören estate is located in Ankara and was acquired by Koç in 1923 (source: "Vehbi Koç tarafından 1923 yılında satın abnan Keçiören Bağevi"). These are two different properties acquired at two very different times. Étienne Dolet (talk) 18:14, 13 January 2016 (UTC) I relied on the version given above. So at the age of 22 he bought a major property at auction? http://www.agos.com.tr/en/article/10956/in-1915-the-state-openly-declared-war-upon-its-armenian-citizens does not back the claim you assert, alas. It states: During the debate over how the Çankaya Mansion had changed hands, Edward Çuhacı, a member of the Kasapyan family, had sent Agos a letter in April 2007. In that letter, he stated that their estate home in Keçiören now belonged to the Koç family. But if serious research were to be carried out on the basis of companies, then one would have to refer to the records of Chambers of Commerce. However, even that would be a difficult task. In this context, the İzmir Chamber of Commerce has published its records. When you look into those records, you see statements such as, “The abandoned property bail brought by the A company has been accepted”. That means: since the abandoned properties registered in the company’s name would be considered part of the company’s capital, they show this document so that their classification can be determined. Can you furnish an actual solid source that this 22-year-old bought the mansion? Clearly the Cankara Mansion was not bought by Koç in 1923. The Wikipedia article on the confiscated propertied does not mention Koç. (I fear I am learning far too much Turkish at this point). Re "Singer Binasi": your source is not readily available, making it impossible for me to verify that the source says a 22 year old person who operated a tiny grocery store had enough money to buy much of anything. ("Singer Binasi" = "Singer Building" AFAICT) http://www.haberturk.com/polemik/haber/787272-ataturk-olsa-varlik-vergisi-olmazdi is a recounting from a person who does not actually state that Koç was the initial purchaser - only that the initial auction of some property in 1942 had brought only 36 thousand pounds, that the tax asked for was 1 million pounds, and that Koç paid 450,000 pounds for the person's share in another building. Not giving a year, or saying anything about Koç getting the building for free or anything remotely like that. What cinches this for me as not being an accusation of Koç is his section: "Vehbi Koç (Businessman ) ' I've paid 600 thousand pounds ' "It was discretionary tax base of this tax . Each provincial commission was established . This commission put their objections to tax , there was no appeal and Turkish history husband was a unique tax . To get the largest tax in the regions they are located , civil service chiefs had entered the race. The cost of the two factories in Gemlik 48 thousand pounds when 40 thousand pounds of asset tax, 100 thousand pounds Anamur came in at 200 thousand pounds in property taxes to the lead mine . Look 's approach to tax millions falling on me at tax written here. after a long struggle , repeated tax appreciated me by proving that the written wealth Tax to have revealed 600 thousand pounds we pay for it all. "" In short Mr. Koç was himself badly hit by the tax from which he was accused of benefitting. Is this in inapt reading of this source? Your source you proudly give https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/TBMM/d09/c008/b095/tbmm090080950404.pdf mentions a 1944 payment - and has no relation to your claim of 1923 at all. So far you have zero reliable sources for your claim that the 22 year old bought the Singer Building where the person involved stated it was 1942 in a retrospective article, and the court record is from 1944. Collect (talk) 20:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC) Now can you give a remotely available reliable source for his getting the Kecioren estate for nothing? The sources clearly demonstrate that he was a aggrieved as anyone on the wartime tax. Collect (talk) 20:24, 13 January 2016 (UTC) Field Mar­shal Fevzi Çak­mak appears to be the person who sold the house you are interested in during that period after WWI. I can not find out how much he paid for it, nor the amount he was paid, though I doubt a Field Marshal would be forced to sell all that cheap, nor which member of the family actually bought the house (Koç's mother appears to have come from a major family as he took her name). No sign of complicity in anything much, though Çak­mak may or may not be the person you really would want to implicate. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Don't forget to sign your posts using ~~~~. Pldx1 (talk) 13:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

• The basic premise of this talkpage thread appears to be false. I don't see any actual evidence of an effort to imply that the article subject "participated in crimes against humanity". There is an ongoing RfC at Talk:Vehbi Koç over whether to include the sentences: Vehbi Koç lived in a vineyard estate located in the Keçiören district near Ankara. The property, which was left vacant after the Kasapyan family escaped the Armenian Genocide, was acquired by Koç and became the Vehbi Koç museum in 1944 after a thorough renovation. There's a clear consensus at the RfC that this wording is appropriate, with Collect the only dissenter. Reasonable observers would not infer from the text at issue that Koc "participated in crimes against humanity"; instead, the sentences provide brief historical context.

  The high-level philosophical issues here are pretty simple: a) in an encyclopedia full of actual BLP problems, this sort of careless false-alarmism actually harms the cause of BLP compliance; and b) when a complainant appears on this talkpage, it's always best to verify independently that their presentation of the dispute is accurate, as it often is not. MastCell ^Talk 16:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Again you show up -- and insist "Collect is the only dissenter" -- Frankly if it is a BLP or NPOV violation, then being the "only dissenter" is a great and wonderful badge to wear. And calling this "false-alarmism" does you no credit at all. I recall those who opposed guilt-by-association arguments in the past have been called "false-alarmists" and yet I rather think that this is the best position for me to take. I am sure, of course, that you would zealously protect the non-negotiable policies of Wikipedia. "Category:Armenian Genocide" is heavily populated, and the main article has links to a massive number of Wikipedia articles. Examine please [14] which placed in an article subject to WP:BLP:

The wealth of the Koç family, however, originates from money and property which was appropriated through the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

Which makes clear the specific and deliberate intent to link this family and its living representatives directly with the Armenian Genocide which seems about as clear-cut an example as Jimbo might wish to see. Collect (talk) 19:10, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Just one question - in what way is it relevant to Vehbi Koç by whom and under what circumstances the property had been abandoned a couple of decades before? This is a serious question - there must be some connection that is important to people, or they'd be fine with removing it. Wikipedia doesn't work based on voting, so counting up how many people on each side isn't really persuasive to me. I'd just like to understand: what does that fact tell the reader about the life of this man?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:35, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I note above one clearly NPOV compliant <g> edit which makes the specific and direct charge that the family got their money "through the Armenian Genocide in 1915". Thank you. If I am too "zealous" for some on BLP and other NPOV issues, I wear that charge with pride. Collect (talk) 19:10, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

@User:Jimbo Wales. It doen't appear that 1915 is a couple of decades before 1923. Don't mix what is relevant of the 1942 Varlik Vergisi and what is relevant of the 1923 "Law of Abandoned Properties" (build atop of the 1915&1920 laws). Pldx1 (talk) 20:49, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Which would be nice if and only if 1. we establish through reliable sources that Vehbi was the direct and specific purchaser from the state (which we do not have) and 2. we establish Vehbi did not purchase it from the noted Field Marshal - where the sources seem to agree he did. We also have the catenation of the 1942 purchase which was also raised as indicating complicity in the genocide but which seems to have fallen by the wayside were it not for editors making such a connection by implication regarding that property. Clearly, moreover, linking the abandoned properties act to genocide is at least one step to far as far as Vehbi is concerned. Collect (talk) 00:10, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Please I need your intervention

Hi,

Since couple of days ago I tried to correct a misinformation on "bigraphy of a living person" at Spanish Wikipedia, but instead I got harrassed by an administrator and finally been blocked! Now I ask You this simple question, is this the wikipedia you are promoting and asking to be a part of!? You can check all my edits in Wiki English and others they were all "Anti-Vandalism," and authentics. Attached a copy of complain I made at Spanish Wiki board (in Spanish). Have a pleasant day Sir. (Mona778 (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2016 (UTC)) >

P.S. Beside, according to Wikipedia rule mentioning subject's height isn't relevant.

Spanish Wikipedia post
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(== problema con otro usuario == Hola, puedes solucionar la disputa entre mí y este usuario Pawita? sigue añadiendo "altura falsa" al artículo Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ. He añadido toneladas de referencias periódico fiable etc., pero él sigue confiar en una datos falsos!> (https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=K%C4%B1van%C3%A7_Tatl%C4%B1tu%C4%9F&diff=88326036&oldid=88326018) mire la foto abajo, si Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ es 1,90 m como (Pawita) afirma que él es, entonces el actor en su lado derecho Kenan İmirzalıoğlu (1,92 m) debe ser 2,10 m !? > http://durreslajm.com/sites/default/files/artikuj/ezel%202.jpg http://img.haberler.com/haber/885/karadayi-dizisinin-ekibi-birlikte-eglendi-4106885_9142_o.jpg véase también esta escena de la (serie Ezel) se puede ver Kenan está empequeñeciendo Kıvanç > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1aKE_Wibfo usted puede también buscar en la web claramente mencionado > Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ Altura : 1.87 m además, es como eso no es bastante también cambiando actores y actrices "Años activo" a su voluntad como éste que era correcta antes del cambio Çağatay Ulusoy de 2010 a 2011.(https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C3%87a%C4%9Fatay_Ulusoy&diff=88215443&oldid=88215240) *comenzó su carrera como figura "callejón"(2010). > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87a%C4%9Fatay_Ulusoy) (https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87a%C4%9Fatay_Ulusoy) Espero puede resolver la disputa y no necesita preguntar "Jimbo Wales". Gracias mucho (Mona778 (discusión) 16:53 12 ene 2016 (UTC)) P.S debajo nota se puede ver que hasta se atreve me acusó del "vandalismo"! Que es falso. Sólo trataba de corregir la información errónea. Es lástima, porque él sólo daña wikipedia como una fuente fidedigna. (Mona778 (discusión) 16:53 12 ene 2016 (UTC)) (https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Vandalismo_en_curso&diff=prev&oldid=88323691)

Hi, first of all Jimbo is not going to intervene, or at least he's no more likely to intervene than to win the lottery (not very.) Secondly, the Spanish language Wikipedia has it's own set of administrators. If you wish to contest a block there, you must follow the procedure there for doing so. We don't overrule other Wikipedia's actions. I hope this helps. KillerChihuahua 18:38, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks For the reply. But according to what you're saying you're not going to intervene even if the actions of the counterparty were wrong and uncivilized, I'm I correct!? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a02:1810:3812:ad00:b839:8aec:c52b:d157 (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I have no authority to intervene, even if I wanted to. I'm not an admin on the Spanish Wikipedia, or even an editor there. KillerChihuahua 19:22, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Most edited pages per year for the last 15 years

I thought you, and all the watchers, might be interested to read this article by 538. The Most-Edited Wikipedia Pages Over The Last 15 Years. From 124 edits on Creationism topping the list in 2001 to 7,290 edits on Geospatial summary of the High Peaks/Summits of the Juneau Icefield in 2015 (Deaths in 2015 was the true #1 but general list entries were excluded from the main rankings). The list gives an insight into the trends and popular stories of each of the last 15 years. Apparently we have a morbid obsession with tracking death and destruction as many of the top edited pages have to do with disasters and mass killings. For the top ten list for each year see this. --Majora (talk) 20:00, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

• Most edits for deaths/disasters or song/dance/beauty contests: I see in the lists (alpha...15) how the obsession about death was joined by some contests in recent years. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Looking at those most heavily edited pages for 2015, they were the work of a couple of very focused editors who made 99% of the edits to the article, from 7K-10K over a short period of time. I'd be interested in seeing a list of articles that had the most editors who contributed, not the most edits by an individual editor. But data is always kind of interesting if you look at how it is pulled together and see what aspects of Wikipedia is represented. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:09, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

True. If you discount the Geospatial article from the 2015 section the rest of the articles kind of make sense. The Charlie Hebdo shooting and the 2015 Pacific typhoon season being in there. The Geospatial article was basically one, very very focused, person. I do agree that the articles with the most unique editors would be interesting to see. --Majora (talk) 01:14, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Wow... almost 7300 edits to a single article by a single editor in a single year. Is that... dedication, or what? - ^theWOLFchild 03:06, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia in trouble?

In Time, Chris Wilson says that the answer is yes. [15] Among his arguments:

• "...the number of dedicated editors has been in decline since 2007." (Based on a graph of data [16] that ends in 2012.)
• "...a large proportion of articles contain some sort of warning that they are incomplete, poorly written or inadequately researched."
• W/respect to the last point, he downloaded the revision histories of 25000 of our articles and found that "12% of the articles in this sample had some documented problem". (Is 12% a "large proportion"? I don't know, but I doubt it.)
• I would like to know what Wales and other watchers of this talk page think about the concerns raised in this article. Everymorning (talk) 02:51, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

• A good question, but the author of that article has a really dodgy methodology and seems to have overlooked the real problems and focused on superficial things that are not really a problem. For a far better attempt at identifying our current problems, see [ http://wittylama.com/2016/01/08/strategy-and-controversy/ ].

As always, I would like to stress that in my opinion Wikipedia is doing well and our problems are minor -- but that doesn't imply that we shouldn't try to fix the known problems and make the encyclopedia even better. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:55, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

We should follow what the Reliable Sources are doing. When they publish a crappy article, they don't ornate it with a depreciating tag. If you want to fix an article, then please do. If you are only a Galactic Patroller, quietly wait for a Galactic Reviewer. Pldx1 (talk) 08:54, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

As a former senior editor of Slate Magazine, Wilson has been peddling this angle for a while now. See here. Karst (talk) 10:32, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

A crude model is:

• Stage 1, create content
• Stage 2, tag the issues
• Stage 3, fix the issues

What Wilson has shown is that 12.5% are in stage 2. This snapshot effectively tells us nothing. What we need to understand is whether and to what extent the backlog of issues is being dealt with. Doing this is not helped by having whole classes of tags deprecated by the community.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:14, 15 January 2016 (UTC).

We should all be bolder in removing redundant tags, and nuking articles tagged for good cause. I very often find articles that have been tagged for years, and sometimes you look at the edit history and see that the issues were fixed long ago. Many of the tags are drive-bys, with no discussion on talk. I believe it would be a good idea to amend the templates to encourage people to remove the tags if they think the problem is gone - and potentially to ask those whose code-fu is strong to add a "this issue si fixed" link that removes the tag without having to play with markup. Guy (Help!) 19:23, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: I have to say that I love your idea of a simple "click here to marked this issue resolved"-type link on every cleanup template. I concur with your perception that many cleanup tags linger for years after the issue has been addressed and this would certainly help clear them. -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:39, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that “many of the tags are drive-bys, with no discussion on talk”, as you wrote. I’m not sure there is much benefit keeping arbitrary and vague (yet stern and authoritative-looking) appraisals. It’s also a waste of time for editors to try to guess the precise intention of the tag’s poster and then scrutinise the whole article in an attempt to determine whether the problem was indeed fixed (or even real in the first place), or how to suitably fix it. Perhaps we should be bolder in just removing tags that are unsubstantiated (on the talk page). Perhaps even a bot could help do that relatively easily (did the tag poster modify the talk page shortly before or after placing the tag?): first notifying the tag poster and asking for details, and only removing the tag after a grace period.

 — Wlgrin 01:51, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Communicating with WMF

Is this talk page the best place for ordinary editors to communicate with the WMF Board? If not, is there a specific page either in the English Wikipedia or on Meta for the purpose? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a proposed case at the ArbCom involving an administrator dealing with disruption caused by two particular trolls. Several editors, including respected former arbitrator User:Newyorkbrad, have said that the WMF needs to pursue legal action against the trolls for the malicious disruption. Is this page the place to make that request to the WMF, or should this be discussed somewhere else? (In a while, that request will probably be formally made by the ArbCom.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Unless the WMF setup has changed recently, requests relating to the English Wikipedia go to Mdennis, either via talk or email as appropriate. (You can safely assume that Arbcom and NYB are both well aware of this.) ‑ Iridescent 18:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Correct spelling - desirable or not?

Dear Jimmy,

Do you think the encyclopaedia should spell words correctly? Strange question, you might think. And I presume you would say yes, of course it should. I can't think of any possible reason why it shouldn't, and I guess you can't either. So you may be surprised to learn that over the course of a year, nine different editors have restored the word "should't" some 19 times to the article Wilderness hut, and two administrators have protected the article to ensure that this ridiculous error can't be corrected. The article is currently indefinitely protected.

I think the people responsible for this embarrassment don't care about encyclopaedic quality at all. I think they just find it funny to bait and provoke and insult people. And I think they bait and provoke and insult anonymous editors because such behaviour is not just tolerated but actively encouraged by the community. I wonder what you think? If you don't agree with me, I can give you hundreds and hundreds of other examples of absurd behaviour like this. 192.121.113.96 (talk) 02:17, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

The article is only semi-protected. So you could submit a request on the talk page and ask another editor to change it for you. Or you could create an account and fulfill the requirements to become autoconfirmed. Either way, a quick search of that article shows exactly one use of the word "should't" which I will now correct. --Majora (talk) 02:21, 16 January 2016 (UTC)