Let us assume for a minute that would not have taken any action whatsoever. Seeing Fox's habit of stretching and turning the truth upside down i would not be surprised if the next headline would have been "Wikipedia or Pedopedia? - Online encyclopedia endorses child pornography". Eventually the Foundation would have to respond to this in some way, if only to counter a web of lies being spun. Again, no matter what, we would have gotten a negative response. Had Jimbo released a written statement or open letter to the community the headline would have been "Failing Founders - Wikipedia founder fails to take decisive action". Fox was out to burn and pillage, and no matter what, they would have done so.
Also keep in mind that Fox news was actively pursuing large Wikimedia donors with a clear intend to make them "Guilty by association" of child porn. Hence, the truth is irrelevant in this case. No company wants to be associated with anything negative and therefor Wikipedia itself could have taken even more damage if we just headed to a shelter and waited for the storm to pass. If i would blame Jimbo for something, it would be the complete lack of communication and the removal of content which was in use and valid. Had Jimbo kept his deletion spree to unused sexual images the community response would have been more limited, while the breaking story would have been largely the same. Even so, we are starting to beat a horse that is dead and buried, with the Jimbo discussion going round and round in circles. Jimbo relinquished his founder flag and apologized. What else can we do? Ban him altogether? I would say it is best to lay the Jimbo issue to rest unless someone suggest that we need to take further actions - complaints won't change history. ~Excirial On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sure Mike, we were going to get bad press from Fox News no matter what > we did. You're clearly right about that, and I don't think anyone > would disagree with you. I'm not seeing how you go from that position > to endorsing (or at least defending against criticism) the panicked > response from Jimmy and the board. Reason would suggest that if we > can't change the message from Fox News, urgent action that earns > universal condemnation (as opposed to just condemnation from Fox) is > the wrong way to go. Now, instead of just further bad press from Fox, > we've got Jimmy giving up his founder status, a large group of angry > contributors, *and* more bad press from Fox. How is that defensible, > given that the outcome was predictable? > > Nathan > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
