Wikipedia Needs a New Entry for “Background Check”
by
on December 24, 2007,
Ah, Wikipedia. Lucky for you it's a long holiday weekend because this latest debacle may not hit many people's radar. However, it's time that you figure out that not all people are nice, not all people are honest, and sometimes, other people already know that. All you have to do is ask them.
Wikipedia is no stranger to fraudulent backgrounds; remember the mess back in February when it was discovered one of their most prominent editors was faking it? You'd think, after the PR nightmare that was, they'd have learned that if you can't trust the volunteers, maybe EVERYONE should take a turn under the microscope.
Either Jimmy Wales really wears some rose-colored glasses, or he isn't sure how to run an organization. Proof being that Wikimedia's former COO, Carolyn Bothwell Doran, was on probation for a 2004 hit-and-run. When The Register checked into her background, they discovered past charges of writing bad checks, theft, and oh, a little thing like shooting her boyfriend in the chest. Isn't that just the person any Board of Directors would want to be responsible for personnel and financial management? This is the person who was signing their tax returns, which showed $1.3 million in donations last year.
Wales' message to the Wikipedia community was laughable:
“We are very saddened and hurt by these shocking revelations. Of course we are doing soul searching about what we could have done different.”
Soul searching? How about a simple background check? Checking references? This is someone who started out as a bookkeeper sent by a temp agency and somehow ended up as COO. NO ONE bothered to do any of this before voting her in as COO in a BoD vote of 6-1?
Google may not even need to push Knols as a competitor to Wikipedia, because at the rate Wikimedia is piling up trainwrecks, there needs to be a total overhaul in order to maintain its position. Because it's hard to be taken seriously as a reliable source of information when the people working for you, either in a paid or volunteer capacity, aren't reliable themselves.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to profy RSS feed!
Charlie Schwartz
Eunice Lindsey
Nichole Mclaughlin
Mitch Roberson
Rolf Lopez
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
It’s somewhat ironic - Wikimedia has the duality of being simultaneously a massive global Internet presence (via Wikipedia) and a small nonprofit organization. Here it is more that small organization, which has made a mistake that is now running headlines because of the Internet giant aspect.
Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation made a mistake in not running a background check, but you have to take this in the context that the Foundation is a very small organization that didn’t have very much in the way of resources at the time and still operates on a very tight budget - the majority of the budget goes straight to the technical upkeep of the websites.
That Doran was promoted to an official-sounding title of COO is, in retrospect, a bad decision, but at the time it was in some ways a reward for someone who had done good work for the Foundation, with whom there were no known issues. Doran eventually left, and the Foundation had, *before* this incident, already set up a proper background-checking process.
This issue has been inflated out of proportion - one small foundation made a single hiring mistake: so what? There are no known lasting effects and the person has already left.
The Author is a little too harsh in this story.
Not a very well written story, as the Journalist was completely one-sided and taking Obvious shots.
Maybe wikipedia deserves to have those shots taken at them. But not by the journalists.
It is easy to armchair quarterback and takes cheap shots, but typically when an organization goes to a staffing firm to obtain someone to do financial work there is a natural assumption that the temp agency did a background check and has sent a qualified person. If the person does a good job, it is easy to see how they are moved up. Many large billion dollar organization with lots of resources and full time staff have made mistakes in hiring as shown by some of the highly publicized incidents where CEO’s and CFO’s had fake credentials. So, if large and well financed firms can make mistakes, then a why is a relatively new firm on a small budget being lambasted where no harm was actually done? Taking a leap in logic from one bad hiring decision in a new and growing organization to the accusations in the story makes no sense. I wonder if the author of the story has ever had to actually run an organization herself and had to deal with the thousand and one things that a business must contend with daily. This story has no credibility. Wikipedia does a great service for everyone, and although they may not be perfect, they do not deserve a cheap shot like this. I hope they keep up the great work they do.
I didn’t see a lot of cheap shots in this article. A fish rots from the head down, and we’ve seen (in the past year or so) the “head” of Wikipedia get into a battle over portraying himself as the “founder” of Wikipedia, rather than “co-founder”; switching on “nofollow” on external links (except for many to his Wikia $$ site), then denying against Brion Vibber’s word that he ever gave the switch order; backing the “pseudonym” of Ryan Jordan until public criticism overwhelmed Wales, then he found his moral compass; and now this COO flap which was brought to his attention by The Register, which he dismissed as an unreliable tabloid.
It’s not just “one mistake”, people. It is an arrogant — no, scratch that — REPEATEDLY arrogant leadership culture that never shows contrition for its blunders.
And, please spare us this notion that a background check can’t be afforded on a $1.2 million budget. They wouldn’t have even HAD to do an official background check — a Google search would have sufficed.
Great op-ed piece above. The whiners complaining about it are obviously engorged on Jimbo’s Kool-Aid.
No, but the author herself has deal with contract and temporary labor before on a national scale. Temp firms are like assembly lines; they toss bodies at a company with little to no anything. Most don’t require drug tests, and “financial work” is just a prettified way of saying “bookkeeping” which isn’t anywhere NEAR what would qualify anyone for a COO title, much less without a background check.
And “small non-profit” is sort of stretching it with $1.3 million in donations, don’t you think? Especially considering that most of the work is actually done by volunteers? There are EXTENSIVE criteria that have to be met for non-profit status, and one would assume that anyone out there in the world might think that you’d really want to check out a person thoroughly before they put their hand in your finances. I had extensive background checks and drug tests done for positions that dealt with FAR less money and responsibility. I was NEVER checked by any temp or contract house I worked for or through.
If this were the first issue with Wikipedia/Wikimedia having not sussed out the background on people it entrusts part of itself to, I would probably have cut them a little more slack. Fool me once, shame on you fool me twice, shame on me and all that. And in the interest of FULL disclosure, I find it curious that two of the commenters have the EXACT same IP address. Just a coincidence, right?
I think that background checks are a great way to find out information about yourself or others. I also think that these services, coupled with reverse cell phone lookups are some of the most useful out there.