"I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own."
In the internal email that was leaked to the AP, Florence asked Jimbeau:
"... some people do wonder WHY would venture capitalists invest in us (be it in direct money, or indirectly, in giving their time). The mission of venture capitalists is to make money, in investing in companies. Given that mission, it seems entirely natural that people wonder why they are losing their time investing in us."
She was commenting on the same VC who Jimbo wrote about in 2006.
All of this caused me to wonder: so much has gone on between 2006 and 2008, but that same VC firm, Elevation Partners, has continued to show interest in the Foundation in some rather unusual ways. I accept the many points made against my argument by Dan, Teresa, Seth, Sage, Geoff and others. But is there a way around that? I wonder. Rather than just speculate, I decided to put together a timeline, based on documents I have at home. Some are private Google chats with people in the know, others are emails that were leaked to me, while still others are public or semi-public documents. To allay Sue's fears, there are no allegations and no insinuations, just a timetable of events.
June 1-3: Decision finalized to hire Sue. I can find no public minutes for this Board meeting.
June: Sue applies for work visa (received late November); also, Oleta the bookkeeper complains that Jimmy used Foundation funds for private travel. Jimmy blames
June 28-29: Jimmy informs Sue that she must meet with Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners in
July 2: Sue flies to SF to meet Roger, and flies back the same day.
July 3: Oleta informs Jimmy of Carolyn's misuse of credit card. Debt of $5,000 was already paid back before it was discovered.
July 4: Board votes to fire Carolyn.
July 7: Elections for Board end.
July 12: Erik is reelected to the Board.
Mid-July: Erik reports to the internal mailing list about his meetings in SF the previous week, including a meeting with Roger McNamee initiated by Jimmy. For those with access to the Internal mailing list, you will find the statement in the last paragraph: "On Jimmy's initiative, I also met with Roger McNamee, co founder of Elevation Partners (Bono's investment firm), who has helped us out a number of times already."
October 6-7: Board meeting in
October 30: Sue informs
October 31: Erik requests Board authorization to travel to SF as a Board member to interview potential job candidates.
November 26: Sue has received her work permit and is promoted to Executive Director. Erik recuses himself from the Board vote, explaining that he gave his reasons privately to Sue.
December 1: Sue assumes role as Executive Director (see Resolution above); also, Jimbeau announces that the WMF will adopt a Creative Commons compatible license. Even insiders like David Gerard seem surprised. The decision was announced at a
December 11: Sue provides Board with a job description for Deputy Director and announces that she offered the position to Erik one month earlier, i.e., the idea was floated in October and offered in November. Regardless, as Management Consultant, Sue did not have the authority to hire without Board approval until December 1.
December 13: Sue announces to Board that Erik has received his work visa. Assuming the process would take the same amount of time as Sue's, he would have had to apply a few weeks after her, i.e., in July (see above).
December 15: Erik's new position is announced on an internal mailing list.
December 17:
December 18: Sue announces to Foundation-l that Erik has been hired as Deputy Director.
To be fair, I think Elevation Partners is an outstanding firm, that has been very generous in its donations to the Foundation. I know because I opened the accounts for them to donate stock. But as Florence pointed out, the fiduciary responsibility of VCs is to their investors/partners, and they would certainly not be the first such firm to attempt to invest in Wikipedia. Still, I am left with two questions:- When did discussions about hiring Erik really begin?
- Who is really calling the shots at the WMF?
December 19: Erik announces that "Sue & I will try to be transparent about what we're doing & why."
Update: I was informed that the Foundation applied for Sue's visa in July, not June, as originally posted.
37 comments:
You know, your blog would have a lot more credibility if you would stop calling him "Jimbeau". Using silly names for someone you don't like is something that's done in kindergarten, or at places like wikipedia review.
I've always been a little bit suspicious about the timeline of Sue and Erik getting hired. This isn't because i'm suspicious by nature, or because I dislike any of the people involved, but because everybody has been so tight-lipped when it comes to providing the necessary information. For instance, why didn't people mention anything about the hire before it happened? Why don't we seem to know exactly when Erik and Sue started talking about this? I mean, if nothing inappropriate is going on, then it shouldn't be a big deal to put a date on things and say "this is when it happened, this is when we started talking, this is when we started taking action".
We have this situation now which looks terribly suspicious, and (as I've said many times before) a little bit of information from people would have cleared everything up.
Also, it's becoming a little strange to me that Jimmy seems so quick to request people be fired or that they resign when something happens that negatively impacts him. I'm not going to say I trust your account 100%, not because of any problem I have with you but because any observer should avoid following anybody's account totally. However, you do paint a very negative picture of many things, and that's troubling in and of itself.
For those of us not in the know with respect to Wikimedia inside stuff, lease explain who Erik is, and where the conflict here might be. Also how this relates to Elevation Partners. Thanks.
Erik was a Board member who was, in the past, rather outspoken about the Foundation and Jimmy. See my posts "A Question for Erik" and "An Answer for Ben and Matt" for details. According to the official narrative, a few months after he was elected to a second Board term, he was hired by Sue to the paid position of Deputy Director of the Foundation. This raised some eyebrows in the community.
Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners is by far the most significant donor to the Wikimedia Foundation. He figures prominently in several key junctures, including the hiring of Sue and the Foundation's change of license.
I would definitely believe that some Venture Capitalists would love to make money from Wikipedia somehow. All I'm saying is that such an undertaking is nowhere near as simple as a quasi-sale of Wikipedia.
Simply as a hypothetical and illustriative possibility, one might look into the porfolio companies of Elevation Partners, and see if any have what the VC's call "synergy" with what Wikipedia does. The possibility of having Wikipedia direct a lot of attention to such a company would be, not exactly priceless, but valuable. But again, it's not easy.
I was one of the people who originally raised questions about Erik's hiring, and it appears I did so for good reason.
This timeline basically proves what I was assuming earlier, that Erik's move from board to staff was planned much longer in advance than was announced. It took Sue approximately 5 or so months to recieve her visa, and yet Erik (seemingly) got his in a matter of weeks.
This discrepancy makes me question motives by those involved. Given Erik's non-secret desires to "become Jimbo" and run the Foundation, it really makes me concerned.
Danny, your timeline begins with Sue's hire, but if there is anything nefarious to this, shouldn't it start earlier with Erik's involvement in the ED job search?
Like others, I was a little taken aback by Erik's hiring as Deputy Director, given that it came by surprise and without public discussion. But jumping from Erik as highly (some have said overly) ambitious, to Erik as a co-plotter with Jimbo to turn Wikimedia into VC fodder, that's further than I can imagine.
Whatever Jimbo's personal improprieties, even if they spilled over into Wikimedia business, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't believe the things he says publicly (over and over) about free culture. It find it even harder to believe that Erik would intentionally scuttle Wikimedia in the way your previous post suggested. Erik has advocated specific ways to bridge Wikimedia and commercial interests (which many Wikimedians, myself included, have criticized), but that just makes it easier to assume good faith when it comes to his meetings with Elevation Partners. Jimbo, Erik and mean community sentiment are all at different places when it comes to defining the best interests of Wikimedia and Free Culture (and the tightness of the connection between the two). But aside from the issues of paychecks (Jimbo, Erik, Sue) and personal favors and grudges, the simplest explanation for the actions of everyone you've discussed is that they are working for what they see as the good of the projects and the project communities.
"Like others, I was a little taken aback by Erik's hiring as Deputy Director, given that it came by surprise and without public discussion. But jumping from Erik as highly (some have said overly) ambitious, to Erik as a co-plotter with Jimbo to turn Wikimedia into VC fodder, that's further than I can imagine."
Sage, I always appreciate how sensible and well thought out your comments are, so I don't mean this as a criticism of you, but I don't see why this scenario is so hard to imagine. If you have two highly ambitions people they can easily become allies and co-plotters if they have a mutual ambition in common. Jimbeau's been working hard to get Erik on his side, as Erik was always a vociferous, intelligent and powerful enemy. What better way to neutralize a bitter enemy who you can't vanquish than get him aboard the gravy-train?
I'd also add that Sue arrived in the U.S. the final week in June, 2007. I first met her on June 29 at the St. Petersburg meetup, although I think the rest of the staff met her before that. Jimmy was also present at this meetup.
Jimbo never called for Oleta to be fired. Danny is a liar.
Danny you wrote that Jimmy demanded that an employee was fired for raising concerns about his use of foundation money for private travel. Who is actually calling the shots at the foundation and how does this fit with Jimmy's and Sue's claims that Jimmy has been paying these things himself? I'm somewhat confused by the conflicting explanations we are being given. This would be a lot easier if people starting telling the truth.
Andrew, my H-1B application was submitted in late November. Here's an excerpt from the receipt notice:
http://scireview.de/temp/rn.png
We're now entering the territory of pure conspiracy theory and paranoia, a natural development for this particular blog.
Update of the Gift Policy in january : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Update_of_Gift_Policy_-_january_08
New statement by Novell chief scientist, Merkey. Jimmy Wales treading awfully close to extortion?
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/123909
Since I am obligated to protect my own good name, I feel compelled to
address various allegations in order to distance myself from this
controversy involving Mr. Wales so the facts are not spun into something
they are not. As such, I issued the following statement to the associated
press in response to their inquiries regarding my involvement with Mr.
Wales and his business dealings. This statement was sent on Friday, March
7, 2008.
--- STATEMENT TO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ---
"According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales agreed that in exchange for a
substantial donation and other financial support of the Wikimedia
Foundation projects, Wales would use his influence to make Merkey's
article adhere to Wikipedia's stated policies with regard to internet
libel "as a courtesty" and place Merkey under his "special protection"
as an editor. Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the
Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and
mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of
Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the
Arbitration Committee for frivilous and unsubstanciated claims after he
terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia
Foundation."
Erik email me about this line in my earlier comment:
"Erik has advocated specific ways to bridge Wikimedia and commercial interests"
I should explain what I was referring to:
pediapress.com, and less specifically, some of the issues Erik raised (maybe not exactly advocated, but at least seemed to support) regarding brand management and the use of logos by downstream content users. The introduction of flash video has also been characterized by its
critics as giving in to commercial interests (in the sense that it
removes incentives for development and deployment of fully free video
technology, and enables the continuation of proprietary regimes). The flash issue in particular is what I was thinking of when I wrote "myself included" among the critics.
These are things that make it easier to believe that a meeting with VCs was benign, and harder to believe that Erik would have been up to something like a selling-Wikipedia-conspiracy.
Anonymous at 6:49: there is an enormous difference between trying (and succeeding) to get hired by WMF and trying to undermine WMF for profit. That Jimbo and Erik, after working for several years to develop WMF into a free culture-based organization, would then conspire to make it a vehicle for other people's profit, when they (Jimbo in particular) could have pushed the project in other directions from the start if they had wanted... that's just not a credible theory.
Anonymous at 6:49: there is an enormous difference between trying (and succeeding) to get hired by "WMF and trying to undermine WMF for profit. That Jimbo and Erik, after working for several years to develop WMF into a free culture-based organization, would then conspire to make it a vehicle for other people's profit, when they (Jimbo in particular) could have pushed the project in other directions from the start if they had wanted... that's just not a credible theory."
If they pushed the project in other directions, it never would've been created in the first place. If they continue to push the project in other directions, there may be a community and/or press revolt. It's easy to present the party line that's been going on for years, yet secretly trying to cash-in. And *when* the cash-in happens, not if but when, the community backlash that will no doubt result will be irrelevant anyway, as the encyclopedia's already been created. Erik I'm sure has much better things to do that defend himself from wild conspiracy theories - the fact that he's responded is a sign that Danny actually has him concerned.
The fact that Jimmy made Wikipedia (and related projects) a not-for-profit is a testament to his own stupidity; he thought it was a viable as Nupedia (which wasn't). Elevation Partners (the smart/savvy ones) is Jimmy's attempt to reap some type of "reward" for giving away billions; I am sure that there is some way that Jimbeau is getting (or will be) financially compensated. Remember ... Jimmy is an Objectivist. As for Erik, it has been well known for years that he wanted to be Jimmy, or at least enjoy the fame that Jimbo has. And Jimmy was smart enough that when given the opportunity he remembered the old adage ... Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. By making Erik an employee, he has effectively silenced Erik; Erik will also be compensated. Now if Erik could get rid of Sue he'd be all set to take over ...
The above is the most spot-on comment on this post. It's really all in front of everyone, but I think many still have a hard time believing that something closer to the worst case scenario is actually true.
I'm confused. Why did it take Sue so long if Erik got his papers in 2 weeks?
This is the first time I read an explanation of what caused Carolyn's quiet disappearance: she was fired for a $5,000 credit card misuse. Has this been revealed before?
The money was reimbursed before it was caught, and the matter closed.
Huh; I didn't know eric was involved with pediapress. (I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the pediapress poster I busted my ass making for boston wikimania was never displayed.)
Yes it was reimbursed, so in effect she gave herself a $5,000 loan through the foundation credit card. And this was covered up by Jimbo and the rest of the Board to hide their mindbogglingly idiotic decision to convert a temp worker into COO without even a background check.
And remember when the whole Doran criminal-background story broke, how Jimbo sanctimoniously said if it turned out any money was missing, he would personally replace it? Obviously he knew at that time he wasn't risking a cent, since no doubt at the time of the credit-card issue already it was checked if there was any further wrongdoing by her.
I just checked, and nobody on Wikipedia Review ever spelled Jinbo Wales' name as "Jimbeau" until Danny himself did it, and then only in reference to what appeared on this blog.
Having said that, I think it's actually rather kind of Danny to spell it that way, given that it will reduce the page's Google ranking on searches for the word "Jimbo."
"Jimmy Jones Wales" strikes me as more fitting than "Jimbeau".
Either way, whatta whore.
Maybe Eliot Spitzer and Jimmy Jones Wales here could take a run at Hillary and Obama on the "Objectivist Party" ticket for guys who only give a damn about themselves.
"I'm confused. Why did it take Sue so long if Erik got his papers in 2 weeks?"
It's a lot easier the second time around?
The difference in time might be due to work histories. Sue, from Canada, is more like to have worked in America, or with American companies, versus Erik from Germany.
I don't understand at all. According to what Danny is saying the board fired Carolyn because she used the credit card but returned the money before they even realized it while Jimmy Wales used the credit card and had to be prodded to pay it back. Maybe they should of fired him too.
Does the scan that Erik provides really prove that he applied in November? Is it possible that he applied months earlier, got the visa as a result that application, but also submitted a second application in November just to get the receipt to use if he ever needed to hide when he submitted the genuine application, and then cancelled that second application just after receiving the receipt? Alternatively, is it not possible that the scan has been doctored? Erik is, after all, a computer expert.
I appreciate that this may sound like paranoia, but if Erik did really apply much earlier than he said he did, and that came out, then that would obviously have very serioous consequences for him and his obvious life ambition to head the foundation - so serious that he may have been motivated to take extreme steps like this.
I have to agree. The piece that Erik posted doesn't really prove anything other than he applied for something in November. Could it have been a more permanent work visa rather than the H-1B which is only temporary? And that's why he only showed a couple of lines, but none of the document? Erik's long desired goal would suggest that he would say anything to make his dream come true.
Also, Erik's scan doesn't explain why his application process could have been so quick compared with Sue's. Someone above wrote:
"The difference in time might be due to work histories. Sue, from Canada, is more like to have worked in America, or with American companies, versus Erik from Germany."
But this surely would mean that Erik's application would be longer than Sue's, not the other way 'round!
I am bothered by the entire hiring process for Erik. There was no posting of the job anywhere prior to his hiring. Any claim that a search was conducted to find a domestic candidate suitable for the position is fraudulent. It's obvious that Erik was hand picked for the position, and I believe this violates United States labor law.
This is covered at http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/h1b.htm, "The employer...took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the alien worker is sought" That never happened, as no job posting for this position ever appeared. I think Erik's hiring is illegal.
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