Carolyn Doran timeline

Sep 2007

• WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin at gmail.com Thu Sep 13 21:08:14 UTC 2007 I'm seeing a spade and calling it for what it is. The evidence before me smacks of gross disorganization, organizational immaturity, failure to support long term goals, and an unwillingness to follow through on the Foundation's mission. […] Pray tell, what happened to Carolyn Doran? I've asked on a number of fronts and been met with stone walls. The only thing those of us not in the Foundation have is that a resolution was passed [1] on July 4th, and six days later Cary Bass removed her from the staff list. [2] There's no copy available of the resolution, no explanation as to her departure, nothing. The Chief Operating Officer of a top ten web property vanishes, with no explanation of any kind?
  • Florence Devouard Anthere9 at yahoo.com Fri Sep 14 11:10:19 UTC 2007 As it ever occurred to you that Carolyn herself may have preferred so ? If the issue disturbs you so much, I have a suggestion. Just give Carolyn a call. Afaik, she is still living in Florida. You may try to find her contact on internet, or white pages ? I think that when you want to know something, the best you can do is to ask directly the person. No ? Best Anthere
    • Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Fri Sep 14 12:27:54 UTC 2007 Please don't anyone actually do this.
    • WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin at gmail.com Fri Sep 14 12:53:08 UTC 2007 [to Florence] Certainly. However, for a major entity such as the Wikimedia Foundation to lose it's Chief Operating Officer without making a formal announcement smacks of organizational immaturity. That this was not done, and that this is being *defended* smacks of reasons that the Foundation wants to keep hidden.
  • Florence Devouard Anthere9 at yahoo.com Fri Sep 14 16:48:06 UTC 2007 [to Durin] Actually no. I think that on the contrary that case was an example of us maturing greatly. Meanwhile, there is a confidentiality agreement with Carolyn to not further comment. Carolyn has the full right of talking to you, but we, as an organization, can not give details. In the past, there were some questions of how trustworthy the Foundation could be with confidential personal data. The Foundation was blamed because some private data were supposingly revealed and a couple of checkusers preferred to stop being checkusers when we requested them to simply give us proof of their real identity, because they feared that some spills could occur and their private data could become public. I find quite amusing that now you are trying to blame us for precisely respecting confidentiality :-) Regardless, I think you'll have to get used to the fact that as the organization is growing and maturing, all new hire and all new resignations will not be announced noisily, nor commented in all private details. You are perfectly free to try to guess who, why, when and what. Ah, and... in case you wonder, Sue started a quest to look for a new COO this summer. On related topics, I am myself starting a quest to look for a new treasurer since our current one (Michael) would like to move on. We may not do a BIG announcement about that. Before you start reflecting on bad hidden dark secrets, there is no secret. Michael [who?] has been on the board nearly 4 years. He does not have time any more for it. He is very busy with Wikia. He is part time working on west coast whilst his home is on the east coast. He indicated as early as end of 2006 that he would be ready to move out as soon as we found a good replacement. Recently, he urged me to start actively looking for a treasurer, as he feels we now have a staff in place allowing this change. No big deal. Just a person who want to move on :-) Anthere
• Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net Fri Sep 14 17:04:54 UTC 2007 Perhaps a simple announcement saying, "On mm-dd-yyyy Carolyn Doran ceased to be an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation for personal reasons," would have been enough to address your claims of "organizational immaturity". I'm sure that those in power will keep that in mind for the future. Some people would still not be satisfied unless they received enough information to write an article for "The National Enquirer" about the matter, but it would show even greater "organizational immaturity" to engage in breaches of the personal privacy of former employees. There will be occasions when serious irregularities surround the departure of an employee, but delving further into such claims requires more substance than speculation based solely on the absence of information. Would you really have been satisfied by "personal reasons?" Ec
• Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Fri Sep 14 17:08:00 UTC 2007 Are you stating that Carolyn resigned, and that she was not fired or laid off, or is it a violation of the confidentiality agreement to answer that? I would think the very least amount of transparency a public charity should have would be to clarify that point, and that the board should never sign a confidentiality agreement precluding even that. I can't think of any public charity so grown and mature that it wouldn't issue a public statement regarding the departure of its COO - which leads me to believe that it's lack of growth and immaturity that has brought the WMF to neglect such a thing.
• Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Fri Sep 14 17:16:16 UTC 2007 On 9/14/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote: > Perhaps a simple announcement saying, "On mm-dd-yyyy Carolyn Doran > ceased to be an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation for personal > reasons," would have been enough to address your claims of > "organizational immaturity". If that's what happened, then the WMF absolutely should have issued an announcement saying that. The fact that the WMF apparently didn't issue such an announcement makes it look like that's not what happened.
  • Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net Fri Sep 14 18:14:10 UTC 2007 I'm disinclined to read anything more than necessary into the circumstances. Any of us who follow WMF activities will acknowledge that it is only recently climbing out of a period of organizational chaos. If making such announcements had fallen within Carolyn's normal employment duties there could very well have been confusion about who would make the announcement when she was the person affected. The maxim of not attributing to malice what you can attribute to incompetence can have as much application to organizations as to individuals. I see no reason to suggest more sinister events. The experience of this incident suggests that procedures should be developed regarding the announcement of hirings and departures of employees. It is good at any given time to know who is or is not working in key managerial or public roles, and the effective dates thereof. How much more can be said about the circumstances of someone's leaving will vary with the circumstances. At times a cryptic comment may be as much as can be said. Take this theoretical example. If an employee is found pilfering small amounts from petty cash that person needs to go. A quiet departure may be best for everyone. There may not be enough evidence to support theft charges in criminal court, and simply participating may cost much more in employee wasted time than the amount that was stolen. Considering that some people have already complained that public knowledge of being banned from editing for a short period would irreparably damage their reputations, how much more damaging would internet gnatterings about petty theft be. Ec
• Sue Reed sreed1234 at yahoo.com Fri Sep 14 18:28:18 UTC 2007 There is a balance here that people are discounting. A simple email that said, "Employee X has decided to leave the Wikimedia Foundation for personal reasons effective xx-xx-xxxx. We wish her the best in her future endeavors." possibly would have cleared this all up. It doesn't make the Foundation look like they are trying to shuffle someone out the back door while no one is looking. Any further inquiries can be told that due to the confidentiality policy, no further information would be discussed. With the profile of Wikimedia and Wikipedia, any major staff member leaving the company is going to have an impact. Sue Anne
• Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Fri Sep 14 18:55:40 UTC 2007 […]
  • Personally, I see lots of things that suggest more sinister events. Many of them have been in private conversations, so I can understand why you might not have seen them.
  • […]
  • Stating that a high level employee of a public charity was fired for theft would be quite damaging. And without rock-solid evidence such a statement should probably leave out the "for theft" part. But stealing from a public charity is a quite serious offense. Don't raise strawmen about irreparable damage. I don't personally think that public knowledge of being banned from editing for a short period would irreparably damage someone's reputation. I do think that indefinitely displaying the proceedings of a circus court on a site with the pagerank of Wikipedia damages reputations, though, and I think it's utterly unnecessary. Issuing a statement saying the XXX was fired for undisclosed reasons also damages reputations. But it's much more necessary, it doesn't have to be posted on Wikipedia, it could be kept in robots.txt for all I care, anyone caught stealing from a public charity deserves it way more than someone who merely pisses off a few Wikipedia admins, etc., etc. Do I really need to go on?
  • Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Fri Sep 14 19:05:14 UTC 2007 > Issuing a statement saying the XXX > was fired for undisclosed reasons also damages reputations. Which, by the way, is a good reason why XXX is probably willing to resign rather than be fired, so as to make the statement become "XXX has resigned for undisclosed reasons". And if you don't have rock-solid evidence, then getting XXX to resign saves you from a wrongful termination lawsuit, and saves you from having to pay unemployment benefits (which in Florida are extremely hard to get out of based on "fired for cause").
• Erik Moeller erik at wikimedia.org Mon Sep 17 19:52:08 UTC 2007 On 9/14/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote: > On 9/14/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote: > > Perhaps a simple announcement saying, "On mm-dd-yyyy Carolyn Doran > > ceased to be an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation for personal > > reasons," would have been enough to address your claims of > > "organizational immaturity". > If that's what happened, then the WMF absolutely should have issued an > announcement saying that. That's what happened. I argued on our communications mailing list that a basic announcement of this type would be helpful (also for people who were in touch with Carolyn and now needed someone else to follow up with), but the rough consensus was against. IMHO there's a middle ground between "going into detail on every staff issue" and "not informing the community about staff changes": quick updates (perhaps in a smaller "notes" section on the WMF website). We'll see, maybe next time. There's also something to be said for the good ol' "Assume good faith". ;-) -- Toward Peace, Love & Progress: Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
• Casey Brown cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com Wed Sep 19 00:54:06 UTC 2007 One could say that Cary's removal of Carolyn from the wikimedia:Current staff page was the "smaller 'notes' section" that was wanted. The information of her leaving the Foundation was easily available, you just had to go and look for it.

Dec 2007

• 13th December 2007 23:24 GMT "Wikipedia COO was convicted felon", By Cade Metz in San Francisco, The Register.

• joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Fri Dec 14 02:19:10 UTC 2007 According to the Register, the Foundation's former COO was convicted felon. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/wikimedia_coo_convicted_felon/ This is just great. And now all the Register's previous material looks correct because they broke this nonsense. This is likely going to be all over the newspapers tomorrow. I'm so shocked and appalled that I don't even know what to say about this. Why were basic background checks not done and why didn't we know about this sooner. Are we trying to implode?
• Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 02:43:54 UTC 2007 Why would you do a background check for a pretty standard office job? I don't know about the US, but in the UK such background checks are usually only done for jobs where the person will be working with children, or similar. Pretty much every application form I've seen has the question "Do you have any criminal convictions, other than any legally spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?" (or words to that effect), and they just take your word for it. If WMF didn't ask, then that was a serious mistake (although an understandable one - by the time she was employed directly, she had been working as a temp for a while, so it's entirely possible that no-one thought to ask when checking for such things changed from being the agency's responsibility to being WMF's - of course, it may be time to pick a new temp agency...), if they asked and she lied, then its not really WMF's fault. You can't go around refusing to trust anything anybody says. I've missed out the possibility of them asking and her telling the truth, since The Register says Mike Godwin said the WMF knew nothing, and I'm assuming The Reg is reporting this correctly. I'm also assuming The Reg isn't just talking complete nonsense about the whole thing. I'm not entirely comfortable with either of those assumptions...
• luke brandt shojokid at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 02:58:30 UTC 2007 Yes, noted that David Gerard said on Tuesday July 17: "... FWIW, she left for personal reasons unconnected to WMF, who were sorry to see her go, and was very helpful in handover."
• Risker risker.wp at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 03:01:39 UTC 2007 There's a huge difference for a senior executive with signing authority - it is simply due dilligence. No wonder the audit isn't finished yet, now every single transaction she was involved in has to be properly tracked down. People forget that the WMF is a charitable organization and has some pretty stringent fiduciary responsibilities in law. Risker
• Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net Fri Dec 14 03:11:47 UTC 2007 Shit happens. She is no longer working with WMF. Any large organization will get these people from time to time, and unless she did real direct damage to WMF while she was working why should this be treated as such a big problem? It's disappointing that she didn't get the financial statements put together before she went to her secure government employment, but we should avoid obsessing over the problem. The obsessing can be more damaging than the original problem. Ec
• Avi avi.wiki at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 03:12:30 UTC 2007 It depends on the company. For the companies I have worked for, a background check including criminal record check is pretty much standard. Some even require drug tests, and I work in the financial services industry where there pretty much is no exposure to child care. –Avi
• George Herbert george.herbert at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 03:30:48 UTC 2007 My consulting company does background checks on everyone, and some of our customers do as well. Having a DUI conviction or arrest is not a disqualifier for an executive, financial, or technical job, usually. Not disclosing it would be grounds for termination if discovered, but that doesn't seem to apply here.
• joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Fri Dec 14 03:35:36 UTC 2007 She wasn't just convicted of drunk driving. According to the Register "Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest"
• Nathan Awrich nawrich at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 03:43:47 UTC 2007 No one - no one - gets a position as a corporate officer with a felony record including deaths, gunshot wounds, larceny, check kiting, etc. No one. Not even for a convenience store, let alone a major world-wide organization like Wikimedia. The fact that this information was not disclosed to the community and the public is disturbing - the fact that it was glossed over as if the question was inappropriate when it was asked of Ms Devouard is far more disturbing, if its true the Board was aware of the details.
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Fri Dec 14 05:13:10 UTC 2007 As Mike Godwin said to the reporter, ""We've never had any documentation of any criminal record on Carolyn Doran's part at all." There was no question of the board "disclosing" information that we did not have.
  • Nathan Awrich nawrich at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 05:18:23 UTC 2007 I don't want to badger you, and I imagine it takes time to craft an official statement/response to this issue, but when Mike says 'documentation' is that another way of saying you knew but didn't have documentary proof? Is this lack of proof the result of a failure to conduct a basic criminal background check ahead of hiring, or even a Google search that might have turned up the Washpost stories?
• Steven Walling steven.walling at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 05:34:11 UTC 2007 This seems to be pretty old hat. The disgusting part of the Register's story is that it relies more on alluding to things without evidence. There's no evidence that she was fired or resigned because of the Foundation finding out about her record. But the Register sure works hard to make it look plausible. And next they so blatantly hint that the audit has been postponed due to her, again without any credible evidence. Worst of all, they are trying to scare up hits with the heavy hint that somehow millions of donated funds have been mishandled. With zero evidence of any financial mishandling, they so clearly say that donators have been duped by an organization that hires felons willy-nilly. Disgusting. It makes me want to burn my press credentials. Critics hating Wikipedia's methods or community is one thing. But this is pure slander for the sake of profit.
• Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen at shaw.ca Fri Dec 14 06:38:33 UTC 2007 It looks like this may be yet another situation where a lack of openness by Wikipedia/Wikimedia is going to result in a vaccum into which all manner of suspicion can be easily projected. Kelly Martin noticed an odd silence surrounding Doran's departure back in July, [3] even if none of these allegations are actually true I suspect this apparent secrecy is going to give the story plenty of legs. I hope this all gets clarified as quickly and as publicly as possible.
• David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 10:02:23 UTC 2007 Mike Godwin's posted this, which he says (for obvious legal reasons) will need to be his final word on the subject (he says "on this list", but I suspect that the prurient asking on wikien-l won't count as a different venue): [4]
• Steve Summit scs at eskimo.com Fri Dec 14 14:29:13 UTC 2007 John Lee wrote:> This is appalling. Or else it's no big deal at all. Partly it depends on how you look at it. I don't know all the details of this case (and, frankly, I don't care), but my own opinion is that we demonize convicted felons far too much. (I'm speaking of society in general, not the Wikipedia community in particular.) We used to have a much more tolerant and forgiving attitude: once you've served your time, your debt to society is repaid, and (with perhaps a few exceptions) you're a free person. But these days, a felony conviction is an eternal, everexpanding black spot, and in most cases that's just wrong: if a felony conviction means that you can't do anything or participate normally in society for the rest of your life, we might as well say that all felonies are punishable by deportation or execution. > Even if only the broad outline of the story is true, this will> be a bad PR hit for Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Well, given the aforementioned trend in society (not to mention the reaction on this list), yeah. But it shouldn't have to be that way, and we on this list certainly shouldn't fan the flames.
  • joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Fri Dec 14 14:37:28 UTC 2007 Two problems: first, there were multiple convictions, some of which was for fraud. You never put someone with a fraud conviction in charge of money. For anything. And second, the Foundation survives on donations and if it makes bad PR decisions, donations go down and the entire credibility of all Wikimedia projects goes down as well.
• Nathan Awrich nawrich at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 14:41:38 UTC 2007 A single felony conviction is different from multiple felony/other criminal convictions. It also depends on what the crimes are - some crimes obviously have profound implications against the character and judgment of an individual. Even if that isn't the case here, and it may not be, giving a ex-convict a fresh start is different from hiring them to operate your company. I'd like to agree with what someone else wrote - assume good faith is a principle of life that is included in policy at Wikipedia only because cynicism has become such a habit, particularly in the United States. I know I have difficulty adhering to that principle, especially concerning public figures, but I try! Thanks to Mike Godwin for clearing up that he and the Foundation are prevented from commenting in detail. Perhaps, though, you can answer some general questions?
  • Does the Foundation perform criminal background checks on prospective new hires at any level of responsibility?
  • If it does not, can this be explained so that we understand your reasoning on why it is unnecessary?
  • If it does, has it always?
  • Have you considered a general policy of informing the community prior to the anticipated publication of news concerning Wikipedia, when you have knowledge that would allow you to do so? --- Perhaps these are questions that the current Board and counsel are unable to answer as well, but they are governance issues that might impact future elections to the Board. Nathan
• Steve Summit scs at eskimo.com Fri Dec 14 15:32:32 UTC 2007 Have we confirmed that, or are we still taking the Register's anonymous informant's word for it? (I haven't followed the whole thread; apologies if this point has in fact been cleared up.) I shouldn't have said "it's no big deal"; clearly it's at least a little bit of a deal. But, as potentially serious as it is, I don't think it's a world-is-coming-to-an-end deal.
• Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Fri Dec 14 15:46:53 UTC 2007 Actually, there's not necessarily any informant at all, though the Register have got their facts completely correct (as far as I can make out, this pretty much all tallies with my own data). Virtually all the data for confirmation of the facts is available online for free, though actually finding this data would either require a tip-off or a very impressive dirt-digging operation. Really, I don't think anyone's accusing Doran of stealing money from WMF (yet), much as she seems to have stolen from others. Two issues here - the dazzling incompetence displayed by the WMF people/Board in not doing a criminal records check (over here, in the UK, you can't even breathe without getting Criminal Records Bureau clearance, I'm sure fellow UK-based WikiMedians can back me up here) - and if, and to what extent, people at WMF have lied to us and to the media. Fuckups can be forgiven and forgotten. Nobody ever trusts someone caught out in lying again, though. CM
• Nathan Awrich nawrich at gmail.com Fri Dec 14 15:59:17 UTC 2007 Apologies - had intended that for Foundation-l really. I suppose it would depend on the size and nature of the corporation. If it were me, a criminal check would be a default really - I've never had a job without a criminal background check, and I wouldn't expect anyone in a position of trust to be hired without one either. Maybe thats just me.
• Simon Walker stwalkerster at googlemail.com Fri Dec 14 21:29:47 UTC 2007 Fair enough if the board didn't know about it, but if it is the same person, which it appears to be, then it is not the Foundation's fault. What I don't understand is why everyone is making a big fuss out of it. If Carolyn Doran hasn't done anything wrong while working for the WMF, what's the big deal? If Carolyn Doran has done something wrong while working for the WMF, why isn't she just dealt with like other criminals?
• User talk:Jimbo Wales 23:57, 15 December 2007
  • LOL, chaps. This is all completely true. The woman's in prison - the Register have got their facts absolutely correct. I've known about this for yonks but didn't tell anyone. The really amazing thing is that nobody from WMF seems to have known. I remember obliquely quizzing Anthere about this on IRC one merry evening - she either genuinely did not know what had happened or she lied through her teeth to me. What was passing through her mind, I don't know. Someone must have known though...Sue Gardner? She basically seems to have got Carolyn's job. The jail records are pretty much all available on the web, though...hell, I've even got them still bookmarked AFAIK. Cheers, Moreschi 14:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Moreschi, if you knew about this, I regret that you never told me about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • As do I. I realise now that I should have done so. Apologies. I'm still baffled as to how nobody did tell you - surely the WMF staff of the time must have known, and I can't believe the Board were in total ignorance. Your COO gets dragged off to the clink and no one knows nor thinks to tell the boss. My word, the oddness never does stop at Wikipedia! (And to Swat - don't take my word for it, check the wikinews article). Moreschi 11:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
• George Herbert george.herbert at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 03:14:09 UTC 2007 Christiano; You implied yesterday on Jimmy's en.wp talk page that you'd known about the criminal cases before Cade's article... Was that imprecise wording, or did you actually have knowledge before the article ran about the arrests and history here? If you did know, did you discuss it with anyone else and give anyone a heads-up on it? Thanks...
  • Nathan Awrich nawrich at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 03:54:55 UTC 2007 It seems to me that whether Moreschi knew or not is probably irrelevant to the issues here, which in my view are mainly issues of governance and judgement. Out of curiosity, what would any of his possible answers to that question mean to you?
    • George Herbert george.herbert at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 04:07:13 UTC 2007 There are a number of good reasons. If the answer is yes, then Christiano apparently witheld information from the Foundation which Jimbo and others are saying they did not have prior to Cade Metz' asking for comments prior to the story. Christiano might both have known and been under the misaprehension that the Foundation did know, in which case not telling them makes sense. Or he might have chosen not to bring it up with them, knowing or suspecting they did not know. Christiano is up for Arbcom election right now. I think that everyone involved has good cause to want to know whether a candidate is knowingly withholding information from the Foundation. I am concerned enoughby the appearance of the situation that I just registered a tentative oppose vote; I will withdraw that and apologize if this has been a miscommunication and Moreschi did not in fact know before Metz' article, or if he knew but believed that Jimbo and the Board knew.
  • Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sat Dec 15 10:43:25 UTC 2007 I'd just assumed the Foundation knew about this about all this and were keeping quiet (as well they might, I suppose). I was as surprised as anyone by Jimbo's announcement that he knew nothing - which I of course believe. Oh, dear, what a mess this is. But really. Your COO gets carted off to prison and nobody at the organisation - Board, staff - knows anything. I'm prepared to believe this but only up to a point. Come on - there is something here we're not being told. I'd like to know as much as you who tipped off the Register - though please bear in mind the possibility that nobody may have done so. I repeat - all the information needed to get you started was available for free online. Perhaps they'd seen Carolyn's name in old WMF resolutions and wondered what had happened to her, or maybe they even looked at the archives of Kelly's blog! This would not have required Bernstein-level investigation skills. CM
• Florence Devouard Anthere9 at yahoo.com Sat Dec 15 08:59:48 UTC 2007 [Replying to Moreschi] Hello You relate your own experience in UK. I can relate my experience in France. Background checks of criminal past are extremely unusual. What is usual is to contact former employers (which is something I did when we hired Sue and Mike for example). It does not seem to be very common practice in the USA to check criminal background. Originally, Carolyn was hired through a company. This company did not do any check on her either, even though they were providing bookkeepers. When Carolyn was hired by Brad through this company, we had only 3 staff members. One thing I will be absolutely insistent upon is that I have always told the truth. And to the best of my knowledge, other board members told the truth as well. When she was hired, we had no idea she had a criminal background, or it is pretty obvious we would not have hired her. You may choose to believe us or not on this, but if you are going to call us liars, I will ask you to provide proofs that we lied. Also, we have been asked not to comment on personnel issues from our legal counsel and I hope you would not advice us generally to not follow the recommandation of WMF legal advisor. Florence
  • Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sat Dec 15 10:29:16 UTC 2007 That's as may be - though I will point out that Carolyn Doran would not even have stood up to a Google search, let alone a criminal records check - the whole-shooting-the-boyfriend thing wound up in the Washington Post. Seems like it took the wikinewsies approximately 5 minutes to find the archived stories. From there, again, it seems as though plenty of US states keep online free jail records, easily accessible, and certainly plenty do keep records of current inmates of the state prisons, again accessible online and for free (including Florida, which have a very dandy "Find an inmate" search button)! Remarkable! The one thing I don't understand is this. Jimbo says he had no knowledge of this whole Carolyn Doran business until it hit The Register. That's fine, I guess we have to believe that. Did no one bother to tell him? Evidently not. I refuse to believe that no one at WMF knew anything until The Register made their phone call/published the story. What I am asking is who knew what when. The whole reaction to this has been one of confusion - this was always going to hit the press anyway, so surely a more coordinated response could have been planned? CM
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:36:15 UTC 2007 "did no one bother to tell him?" "this was always going to hit the press, so surely a more coordinated response could have been planned" Moreschi, you are the only one who has claimed to have known in advance, and so my question is: why didn't *you* tell me? I learned that the Register was going to run some kind of story just hours before they ran it, and even then I had no idea what would be in it. If you knew something, why didn't you tell me? --Jimbo
  • Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sat Dec 15 11:49:10 UTC 2007 For the very simple reason that I found it impossible to believe that the COO of WMF got carted off to jail and nobody bothered to tell the boss (that's you). Evidently I was wrong. It's somewhat hard to believe, but it seems to be true. How bizarre. CM
  • Enrique Alvarez Sendero8 at latinmail.com Sat Dec 15 13:15:20 UTC 2007 Jimbo, Your own general counsel was interviewed for the story. Didn't he bother to clue you in on the questions he was asked? It appears to have been an email interview, so it should have been easy to tell you exactly what the questions (and answers) were. Did Cade request an interview of you? Russ
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sat Dec 15 11:56:56 UTC 2007 Again, I ask you. If you knew something, why did you not tell me? –Jimbo
  • Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sat Dec 15 12:09:32 UTC 2007 Because I thought it would be redundant! That it would be a waste of an email! Look, I knew nothing about this Register article. Bored one afternoon, I just followed the same trail of deduction and investigation that one has to assume the Register followed - all the stuff is there online - and I thought "Oh, no wonder they (WMF) kept that quiet!" I realise now that, sadly, I was wrong. Jimbo, don't look at me. Look at your staff/Board. Someone there must have known - the COO can't just vanish to jail and no one on the staff/Board knows anything - and they neglected to tell you. That's the other story of incompetence here - apart from hiring her in the first place - and if they had, you could have got a counter-spin machine working in advance for when the story eventually did go public, as sooner or later it was bound too. Look at your own staff, and ask "who did not tell me when they should have done?". They're your staff, not mine. Nor did I think it my concern to let you know in case of fraud concerns - by that time the audit had just kicked off, and if she has stolen money your auditors will find it. It seems unlikely anyway, and you have promised (and all plaudits to you for doing so) to put back in from your own pocket any monies she took out. CM
• joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Sat Dec 15 15:09:15 UTC 2007 Two points: first, not everyone bothers googling the names of people they know. Furthermore, there appear to be multiple people by the name of Carolyn Doran who have an internet presence, so even a quick google search wouldn't make it completely obvious unless you had some idea what you were looking for. Second, and more directed at you, you still haven't clarified whether you knew about this beforehand which you seemed to claim on Jimbo's talk page. Did you know about this?
• SlimVirgin slimvirgin at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 22:28:36 UTC 2007 [referring to "again I ask"] Moreschi, it's a good question. You were keen enough to broadcast on this list details of a private mailing list, together with your opinion on who is and isn't a liar, seeing it as your moral responsibility to involve yourself. So when you discovered something very serious about a Foundation employee who had briefly occupied a fairly senior position, why wouldn't you drop a quiet note to Jimbo, just to make sure he knew what you had found out? Even if you thought he maybe knew about some or all of it, why wouldn't you want to make sure? Sarah
  • Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 22:40:00 UTC 2007 As he's already said, he simply didn't consider the possibility that this could have happened without anyone at the foundation knowing. Perhaps if the foundation were more transparent more often, he would have thought it odd that they hadn't said anything, but it's pretty normal for the foundation to know stuff without mentioning it to us.
  • Red Rocket redrocketboy at googlemail.com Sat Dec 15 22:52:07 UTC 2007 It is not the job of ordinary editors to inform Jimbo of these things. Suppose he had sent Jimbo a note, what would Jimbo have done, if anything? Something like this is the sort of thing you'd expect him to know anyway. --Redrocketboy
  • John Lee johnleemk at gmail.com Sat Dec 15 23:03:33 UTC 2007

I don't like "Ditto" posts, but I'll make an exception for this - strong ditto here. I would have done virtually the exact same thing. If I were friends or having a chat with someone from the foundation I might have brought the subject up in casual conversation ("Oh, speaking of that, is this why..."), but otherwise I wouldn't have gone and blown the whistle (so to speak), simply because considering how hushed the whole affair was, I would have figured the foundation already knew. As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to bear for that. Johnleemk

• • G MZ solebaciato at googlemail.com Sat Dec 15 23:09:17 UTC 2007 To be quite honest had I known in advance I would have dismissed it as incredible that such a high profile media organization could be so naive when hiring. Giacomo
  • joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Sat Dec 15 23:56:32 UTC 2007 I'm also perplexed not only by the failure to tell Jimbo but by the failure to tell anyone else. Maybe I'm just a stuck-up self-righteous snot but I would have first gone to Jimbo and if he had known would have demanded disclosure by the Foundation. Even if you thought that Jimbo already knew about it why not let others know as well?
• Andrew Gray shimgray at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 02:41:15 UTC 2007
  • On 15/12/2007, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > Someone there must have known - the COO can't just vanish to jail > and no one on the staff/Board knows anything - and they neglected > to tell you. That's the other story of incompetence here ...
  • Wait, wait, wait. You seem to be assuming the Foundation *had* to know about her extracurricular activities, but this seems to be a misplaced assumption. Let's look at the story again, shall we?
  • First off, her past history. This is the stuff that a background check would have picked up - one doesn't seem to have been done. Fair dos, criticise them for that, you can consider it unfortunate or unforgivable according to taste. But if you don't do it, you don't pick up anything, however odd it may be... (I am assuming she didn't tell them. I would be quite bemused if she had and they employed her regardless)
  • Secondly, her time at Wikimedia.
  • "Four months after Doran's hiring, on May 20th, she was arrested ... paid a $5,250 bond and was released that same day." So here's our first incident. Looking at the calendar, May 20th was a Sunday; it all happened on that one day; if she didn't tell anyone, how would the Foundation have known? I know this is all a matter of public record, but that doesn't equate to "people get told about it" - I'm sure *my* HR department doesn't scan the local paper every week to find out if I've been caught doing something.
  • An incident where she was stopped by immigration sometime in June -- Details entirely unclear; maybe they knew about it, maybe they didn't. Even if they did, there's no reason they would know the *content* of the interview. * "On July 4 ... the Wikimedia Foundation passed a private resolution concerning Carolyn Doran, and she was soon removed from the official Foundation staff list" ['soon' = on the 10th]
  • "A month later, she was arrested and jailed by the Pinellas Park, Florida police after a warrant was issued by the sheriff in Loudoun County, Virginia. ... This November ... she was extradited to Virginia" It seems that the 'carted off to jail' happened a good month after she *stopped* being WMF's COO. It doesn't strike me as desperately surprising that they didn't know about it - keeping tabs on the whereabouts of your ex-employees a month after they've left is very nice, and all, but not really required! ---- The rest of it seems to boil down to "when we knew about it we could google and find confirmation!" Well, bully for you. How many of your current colleagues do you regularly google to check on their criminal pasts? If the answer is more than zero, um, this strikes me as a little worrying... We can legitimately criticise the hiring practices here, and I certainly won't argue with you doing so. But to think that Wikimedia somehow failed to notice an employee being sent to jail is just mad - it's something even the original article isn't claiming! -- - Andrew Gray
• SlimVirgin slimvirgin at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 03:30:03 UTC 2007 [quoting zelinsky] That's why I compared Moreschi's silence over this with his broadcasting of the private mailing lists and who he assumed was "lying." Yet with this thing, he feels no responsibility to tell Jimbo -- and it makes no sense to argument that he thought Jimbo knew *exactly* the same things that Moreschi says he discovered, because what possible reason would he have for assuming that? -- and, Jimbo aside, also feels no responsibility to alert the community. I hope he'll explain why he had such a different attitude to the two issues. Sarah
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sun Dec 16 03:54:24 UTC 2007 John Lee wrote: > As Thomas says, if the foundation did not hush things up so much, we > would not be so inclined to attribute omniscience to them. I suppose > some degree of privacy is necessary, but this is the cost we have to > bear for that. I just have to say that I think it is utter and complete nonsense for anyone to ever accuse the Wikimedia Foundation in any serious way of being the kind of organization that tries to hush things up. My goodness. I have been involved in a lot of different kinds of organizations in my career, on the board of nonprofits, for-profits, worked in corporations, univerities, etc. And I have never seen any organization in the entire world, bar none, with a greater track record of absolute and nearly pathological transparency about everything. –Jimbo
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Sun Dec 16 04:00:46 UTC 2007 Christiano Moreschi wrote: > Jimbo, don't look at me. Look at your staff/Board. Believe me, we are all taking a very hard look at everything. My point is not to blame you or to go into accusations or complaints of any kind. Here is what I am saying to the entire community: I am one of you. I am here to work in my best efforts for the benefit of Wikipedia, for the benefit of our shared goal... As I have said for years: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." That's what we're doing. You, me, all of us. If you ever hear of anything like this again, please do not make the "bad faith" assumption that it is being "hushed up". Assume that I would be outraged if I knew, and come and tell me. I would really really appreciate it. --Jimbo
  • Steven Walling steven.walling at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 07:52:18 UTC 2007 Thanks for your sincere comments.
• Relata Refero refero.relata at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 05:43:37 UTC 2007 As a cursory read-through of the previous posts should show, there appears to be an obvious difference between the two situations. Many of us consider it normal, and relatively OK, for the Foundation to not need to disclose details of this sort of thing unless its hand is forced; many of us considered the opposite about the various private/secret lists/co-ordination mechanisms. Pushing a parallel between the two that isn't there will only damage you, not Moreschi. Let it go. We would be better served discussing JW's concern that we don't give the WMF enough credit for transparency than allowing this issue to descend into a toxic debate on personalities as well. RR
• Steven Walling steven.walling at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 08:11:17 UTC 2007 A non-profit with a teeny, tiny staff kept on a temp from an agency several years ago. Today, we learn she is a felon. So a bad mistake was made. Where this seems to have caused bad blood in the community (at least to my thinking), is where people have taken the Register's rumor-mongering too seriously. They take a honest hiring mistake on the part of the Foundation and turn it in to an engine pushing the idea that this has somehow had a continued effect on the charity's finances or the regular functioning of the project. I say we perhaps try and show a united front to this unfounded claim and act like adults: showing an assumption of good faith for the Foundation and getting on with the work at hand.
• G MZ solebaciato at googlemail.com Sun Dec 16 09:46:10 UTC 2007 If people think that way Jimbo you only have yourself and those surrounding you to blame. Whenever I have dared to point out any Wikipedia shortcoming on the site I have been attacked by those closest to you immediately. Is it any wonder people now think the worst and go elsewhere with their criticisms. Giacomo
• Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sun Dec 16 14:16:57 UTC 2007 You, Sarah or Linda or whatever the hell your name is, can keep well out of this. Just because I fucked over your little backdoors clique in the full light of day does not give you the right to follow me around chucking dung from the sidelines. CM
• Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk Sun Dec 16 14:23:12 UTC 2007 Aye, fair enough. Mostly. I guess some of us are carrying over our "reflex", as it were, from Wikipedia, where, to paraphrase Newyorkbrad, the first place we find out stuff (such as Zscout's recent desysop by JHS and then resysop) is flaming Wikipedia Review (of all places!). Be nice if some of this "pathological transparency" was carried over to WP...but that's for another discussion. CM
  • David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 14:22:08 UTC 2007 You'll be pleased to know I've just kicked Christiano from the list. Play nice or go home, kids. - d.
  • Marc Riddell michaeldavid86 at comcast.net Sun Dec 16 14:32:50 UTC 2007 Thank you, David. That's how we improve the civility of the culture, and make it healthier - one person at a time. Marc
  • Eugene van der Pijll eugene at vanderpijll.nl Sun Dec 16 14:43:00 UTC 2007 By kicked, do you mean "banned" (= stifling dissenting opinion) or "put on moderation" (= preventing the crap from flooding the mailing list)? I didn't need to see this message from Christiano, but his other messages weren't completely void of content (even if many people didn't like them). Eugene
    • Stephen Bain stephen.bain at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 14:47:27 UTC 2007 Filth is not a "dissenting opinion", and you insult people who really hold dissenting opinions by suggesting it is. How is it that people cannot comprehend that it's possible to disagree without descending into spiteful tirades? -- Stephen Bain
      • Mark Ryan ultrablue at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 14:52:24 UTC 2007 Lots of people descend into spiteful tirades on this mailing list. We don't ban (read: unsubscribe) most of them. We place them on moderation and do not approve their emails to the mailing list until they calm down and start making sense. Labelling angry, but honest, opinions as 'filth' is worse, in my opinion, than the actual content of such emails. ~Mark Ryan
    • David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com Sun Dec 16 14:53:11 UTC 2007 I unsubscribed him from the list. He could rejoin any time (we know from experience it's almost as hard to keep someone off this list if they really want on as it is to keep someone from editing if they really want to - that's why new suscribers start moderated), but I have no intention of putting up with this sort of rubbish being posted. - d.
    • Michel Vuijlsteke wikipedia at zog.org Sun Dec 16 14:55:24 UTC 2007 Oh, why not say something along the lines of "This is unsuitable phrasing for this list ... infuriating as it undoubtedly is. Christiano, please don't do this again." and ask everyone to calm down? Michel Vuijlsteke
      • Eugene van der Pijll eugene at vanderpijll.nl Sun Dec 16 14:59:14 UTC 2007 Thank you for the explanation. As I said, I don't think that he went over the line in his mails to this lists, except for the last one which I agree was unacceptable. A permanent ban would have been too harsh; as long as it's clear that he can come back when he's cooled down, that's ok with me. Eugene
    • Marc Riddell michaeldavid86 at comcast.net Sun Dec 16 15:10:41 UTC 2007 Speaking just for me, Eugene, I don't care what the quality is, or has been, of a person's content, that does not give them a free pass to so blatantly disrespect another Community in such a foul-mouthed manner. There are many others on this List, and in the Community, whose quality of input is equal, or better, and who do not have to resort to such language. It is time we started calling each other on this. The vast majority of the Community is better than this. Marc
    • joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu Sun Dec 16 16:22:41 UTC 2007 I'm concerned here - Moreschi was to some extent provoked. While SV's question was valid, the phrasing was unnecessary and a single isolated outburst shouldn't lead to list banning. […] many of Moreschi's other posts were point of fact not spiteful tirades. A single outburst should not be by itself sufficient reason for this result. Moderation makes far more sense than banning.
• Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Sun Dec 16 16:31:08 UTC 2007 In any case, I think this is irrelevant. A non-profit organization with roughly a million dollars in cash and equipment isn't "tiny". Small, maybe, but not tiny. A big mistake was made entrusting the operation of such an organization to someone without properly investigating her background. Maybe the principle of "assume good faith" is being relied on too heavily here. We are told a process is in place to make sure it doesn't happen again, but there doesn't seem to be an acknowledgment that such a big mistake was made in the first place. No one has stepped up and taken the blame, and I think there's a lot of blame to go around. I guess legal considerations make it difficult. But I also think there are some people who really don't understand how negligent they were.
• Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen at shaw.ca Sun Dec 16 19:00:43 UTC 2007 G MZ wrote: > I cannot see what difference it would have made if Christiano had told Jimbo > - what would Jimbo have done differently? We could have had Jimbo be the one to break the story to us, rather than the Register. I don't like having forums that have traditionally been considered irrationally critical of Wikipedia turn out to be the best place to go to find out about Wikipedia's inner workings. It boosts the credibility of those forums at the expense of our own.
• Speculation on the list about 'confidentiality agreements' being the reason for the Board saying nothing. Jimbo responds:
  • Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Mon Dec 17 02:39:59 UTC 2007 I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was published. Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that.
• Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Mon Dec 17 02:42:00 UTC 2007 Anthony wrote: > On Dec 15, 2007 11:00 PM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote: >> If you ever hear of anything like this again, please do not make the >> "bad faith" assumption that it is being "hushed up". Assume that I >> would be outraged if I knew, and come and tell me. >> > Why you? Anyone who's an employee of the foundation is supposed to > tell "the Executive Director or the Board Chair". My request was a personal one, made to people I consider friends. I would like to hear about it, if anyone ever hears about anything like this in the future. Only you, Anthony, could spin that in such as way as to imply that I was implying that people should come to me *instead of* the ED or Board Chair. --Jimbo
  • Anthony wikimail at inbox.org Mon Dec 17 02:55:43 UTC 2007 Well, you already know about Michael Davis's prior legal problems, right? I don't think you're going to be outraged about them. I mean, you weren't even outraged about Carolyn's legal problems. Anyway, I also would like to hear about it, if anyone ever hears about anything like this in the future. And I probably actually will be outraged.
• White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com Mon Dec 17 02:51:41 UTC 2007 To all, Can we please get back to writing an encyclopedia? Pounding Jimbo, the foundation, each other or myself wont solve anything at this point. - White Cat
• Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton at gmail.com Mon Dec 17 02:56:15 UTC 2007 > I can only remind everyone, again, that the allegations in The Register > were unknown to us prior to the story in The Register. Confidentiality > agreements were not what kept us from "getting the whole story out at > once"... it was that we did not know about the whole story until it was > published. > > Confidentiality agreements have nothing to do with that. When I tried to remind people of that, Mike Godwin told me I was talking nonsense... I suggest you get your stories straight...
• G MZ solebaciato at googlemail.com Mon Dec 17 08:16:52 UTC 2007 A: I cannot believe Jimbo had PR people, if he does considering some of the "cock ups" that are made he should either fire them or listen to them more. B: I'm not 100% sure about all this story anyway - it's all too odd and too many things are not adding up at all. Am I the only person who has noticed the difference between the police mug shot and the glamorous blond who worked for Wikipedia. Has the woman had facial surgery? So I could forgive someone for not making the connection but not for failing to make basic checks and asking for references - people do that to the women who clean their floors in offices, yet alone handle the money. So I'm still thinking about this. Giacomo

See also

• Carolyn Doran
• Moreschi