Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-13/News and notes

{{Signpost filler image|image=File:Arnnon Geshuri - January 2016 by Myleen Hollero.jpg|caption=Arnnon Geshuri}}

In the wake of the surprise ouster of community-elected Trustee James Heilman ({{u|Doc James}}) from the Board of the Foundation, the new trustees appointed to fill other seats on the Board have raised widespread concern in the Wikimedia community (see previous Signpost coverage). Last week’s announcement of the appointment of Kelly Battles and Arnnon Geshuri raised concerns about the Board’s ties to Silicon Valley technology companies, especially Google, and the lack of Board members from non-technology fields such as education. Since then, more specific concerns have come to light regarding the participation of Geshuri in the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation case while a senior director of human resources and staffing at Google. Geshuri failed to respond to a request for comment from the Signpost.

From 2005 to 2009, a number of Silicon Valley technology companies, including Google and Apple, had illegal agreements which prevented recruitment of employees from other companies participating in the arrangement. The matter resulted in a United States Department of Justice antitrust action and a class action lawsuit of 64,000 technology employees, the latter of which claimed that the employees’ potential wages were suppressed due to their inability to be offered more lucrative employment by other companies. Geshuri held his position at Google from October 2004 to November 2009 and would have been an integral part of any such agreements regarding staffing. A [http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=477877 press release] from his later employer Tesla Motors noted that "Geshuri was director of staffing operations for Google, where he designed the company’s {{sic|legendarily}} recruitment organization and talent acquisition strategy. ... While he oversaw all aspects of recruitment, Google evolved into a technology powerhouse with 20,000 employees."

Aside from the illegalities and implications for employee wages of such agreements, the direct impact these agreements had on the fates of employees, and Geshuri's participation in the enforcement of them, is seen in a 2007 incident that was discussed in [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399555,00.asp a 2012 article] in PC Magazine and [https://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-steve-jobs-brutally-callous-response-after-getting-a-google-employee-fired/ a 2014 article] in PandoDaily. In March 2007, a Google recruiter emailed an Apple engineer, which set into motion a flurry of emails between top executives for the two companies, emails that came to light as a result of the later court cases.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs emailed Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, writing "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this." Schmidt brought the matter to Geshuri: "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." Geshuri replied:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|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.}}

In response to the immediate termination of the Google recruiter, Jobs emailed Apple’s HR director with a smiley face emoticon.

PandoDaily wrote in 2014:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|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.}}

Another incident almost exactly a year later was discussed in [https://pando.com/2014/03/30/court-docs-google-hiked-wages-to-combat-hot-young-facebook-after-sheryl-sandberg-refused-to-join-hiring-cartel/ a different 2014 article] from PandoDaily. Facebook was not a party to the inter-company agreement and Google executives were concerned about Facebook’s successful recruitment of Google employees. Geshuri suggested recruiting Facebook into the agreement, either voluntarily or forcing them through retaliatory recruitment of Facebook employees. In the antitrust case, Judge Lucy Koh summed up the matter and quoted what PandoDaily called Geshuri’s "quasi-Nietzschean rhetoric":

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|In March of 2008, Arnnon Geshuri (Google Recruiting Director) discovered that non-party Facebook had been cold calling into Google's Site Reliability Engineering ("SRE") team. Geshuri's first response was to suggest contacting Sheryl Sandberg (Chief Operating Officer for non-party Facebook) in an effort to "ask her to put a stop to the targeted sourcing effort directed at our SRE team" and "to consider establishing a mutual 'Do Not Call' agreement that specifies that we will not cold-call into each other." Arnnon Geshuri also suggested "look[ing] internally and review[ing] the attrition rate for the SRE group," stating, "we may want to consider additional individual retention incentives or team incentives to keep attrition as low as possible in SRE." Finally, an alternative suggestion was to "start an aggressive campaign to call into their company and go after their folks—no holds barred. We would be unrelenting and a force of nature. [Our emphasis]}}

When these matters came to the attention of the Wikimedia community, many objected to Geshuri’s appointment to the Board. {{u|Cullen328}} wrote an essay detailing these incidents that concluded "Because of this evidence of Geshuri's misconduct in this scandal, I believe that he should not be a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees." {{U|Kevin Gorman}} [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/080849.html wrote]:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|The Wikimedia movement is not a movement whose direction should be set by someone with that degree of callousness - and the fact that he happily participated in the sort of anti-competitive agreement he did, which he must have known was illegal and which exposed his former employers to not insignificant liability, brings forth significant doubt as to whether or not he can reasonably be trusted to carry out his fiduciary duties as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation.}}

Even former members of the Board of Trustees objected to Geshuri’s appointment. Florence Devouard ({{u|Anthere}}), chair of the board from 2006 to 2008, [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/080850.html wrote] "I fully support" Gorman’s statement. Kat Walsh ({{u|Mindspillage}}), another former chair and member from 2006 to 2013, [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/080854.html wrote]:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|I think integrity is the most important and most difficult thing for a board member of this organization. One of the key things that distinguishes Wikimedia from other entities is that it does not take the easy path: it does not sell the privacy of users, it does not make restricted content deals, it does not believe influence over content or governance should be able to be bought. ... Organizations with tremendous reach and influence—such as Google and Wikipedia—have a great responsibility not to take actions that systematically harm the people that rely on them. To know that someone at such an organization participated in something unethical in this way does not give me great confidence in them for leadership in Wikimedia.}}

Community members also raised concerns about the vetting process for Geshuri and whether or not the Board was fully aware of his background prior to his selection. Some pointed out that these incidents featured prominently in Google search results for Geshuri’s name and questioned how they were missed by the Board. Jimmy Wales wrote that “I was aware (from googling him and reading news reports) that he had a small part in the overall situation” but regarding Geshuri’s prominent involvement and the revelations of the court cases, he wrote “I don't (yet) know anything about that”. Dariusz Jemielniak [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-January/080999.html wrote] that he missed the incidents because they were not prominent in the results in Google’s other language domains: "I'm investigating with the [Board’s Governance Committee] what went wrong with the whole process (that some Board members did not have full information) and we're hoping to come back with learning from this failure, as it was just one point of several that were suboptimal."

Requests direct to the WMF Board and the Wikimedia Foundation resulted in a statement from Board member Alice Wiegand, who told the Signpost:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|The Board of Trustees evaluates all candidates for their relevant skills and interests, and conducts a criminal background check. Our current process follows nonprofit industry best practices, and has consistently produced successful outcomes. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our processes and go beyond best practices in service to the movement’s values. Currently we are reviewing options to further strengthen and enhance this process, including possibly adding a public relations review.}}

Community members also raised concerns about the current Board's many ties to Google, including one member, Dr. Denny Vrandečić ({{u|Denny}}), who is [http://research.google.com/pubs/vrandecic.html a current Google employee] who works on Google's Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph draws from Wikipedia and Wikidata and Board decisions about these projects may affect Google's commercial interests. When asked by an editor about Vrandečić's involvement in such decisions, Wales wrote:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|If we are going to be that broad with our view of what "directly impacts Google" then virtually everything we do impacts Google. Denny has always been excellent about recusing himself from anything having to do with Google and indeed has been quite keen to bend over backwards to do the right thing. I think it very appropriate for him to give input and advice to the board and the staff and the community about issues relating to discovery on the website}}

Wiegand's statement did not respond to concerns regarding Vrandečić specifically, but she told the Signpost:

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote|The Board takes concerns about potential Trustee conflicts of interest very seriously. In accordance with our conflict of interest policy (:wmf:Conflict of interest policy), it is established practice that any Board member with a possible or perceived conflict of interest is recused from the relevant conversation.}}