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