Have you spoken to any lawyers about this? This seems like important due diligence, that I would personally feel was important to carry out before posting something like this.
Partial agree on this. I am hesitant to put the burden of paying for legal consultation on someone with a concern. However, at least on the first point, I think the poster would have discovered more specific guidance for transactions that affect trustee/director financial interests had they conducted sufficient research. Also, I think contacting the organization using a burner e-mail and giving them a few weeks for a response would have been appropriate for someone who didn’t want to incur legal fees on a concern that is not time-sensitive.
I think a crux here is the extent to which the post is an allegation versus a question. If it’s an allegation, then I agree it should be rigorously supported, which probably requires legal input.
Technically, the phrasing in the disclaimer makes it clear this is a question. I don’t think the tone throughout the piece makes that clear enough though—at least, not for my tastes.
Having said all that, overall, I do want EA to be a place where people can pose challenging questions like this. And I wouldn’t want us to censure posts like this just because the tone wasn’t right.
I agree with Richard and Will’s comments that the tone of the post is very allegation-y (and not very question-y). In light of this, I’ve edited my comment so that it ends with “the tone wasn’t right” instead of “the tone wasn’t quite right”.
In an ideal world we would have, but hiring a professional would take more money than we have, and speaking to a volunteer would run the risk of doxxing us.
We think the relative downside of posting this speculatively. If it turns out our suspicions are wrong, then it will be easy for someone with a legal background to explain why, and this post will be relegated to a graveyard where it would then deserve to be.
If it turns out that our suspicions are founded, then we believe this is important to highlight, in the context of all the recent discussion about Effective Ventures’s past activities.
As has been noted many times recently, it’s much easier to make anonymous allegations that stick than it is to protect oneself from reputational damage from such allegations. Given this, failing to do basic due diligence to check whether your allegations are founded before making accusatory public posts seems frankly irresponsible to me.
I would guess that if this allegation turns out to be totally unfounded, it won’t stick, and we’ll never hear from it again. If it turns out to stick despite being unfounded, my guess is it’ll be because the concern was substantive enough that cursory due diligence wouldn’t have found the problems with it.
There’s a good chance I’m being naive here, but I think reputational concerns are often overstated.
That said, I agree that making accusatory public posts without basic due diligence is irresponsible; I have a lower impression of the costs than you seem to, but the time and attention costs are certainly still real.
Have you spoken to any lawyers about this? This seems like important due diligence, that I would personally feel was important to carry out before posting something like this.
Partial agree on this. I am hesitant to put the burden of paying for legal consultation on someone with a concern. However, at least on the first point, I think the poster would have discovered more specific guidance for transactions that affect trustee/director financial interests had they conducted sufficient research. Also, I think contacting the organization using a burner e-mail and giving them a few weeks for a response would have been appropriate for someone who didn’t want to incur legal fees on a concern that is not time-sensitive.
Fair enough—appreciate the nuanced take as always!
I think a crux here is the extent to which the post is an allegation versus a question. If it’s an allegation, then I agree it should be rigorously supported, which probably requires legal input.
Technically, the phrasing in the disclaimer makes it clear this is a question. I don’t think the tone throughout the piece makes that clear enough though—at least, not for my tastes.
Having said all that, overall, I do want EA to be a place where people can pose challenging questions like this. And I wouldn’t want us to censure posts like this just because the tone wasn’t right.
“The claim we make is… that EVF/he has continually acted illegally in this respect.”
This is plainly an allegation.
To me, this reads pretty clearly as an allegation, and I think not checking with a lawyer in that case is irresponsible.
I agree with Richard and Will’s comments that the tone of the post is very allegation-y (and not very question-y). In light of this, I’ve edited my comment so that it ends with “the tone wasn’t right” instead of “the tone wasn’t quite right”.
In an ideal world we would have, but hiring a professional would take more money than we have, and speaking to a volunteer would run the risk of doxxing us.
We think the relative downside of posting this speculatively. If it turns out our suspicions are wrong, then it will be easy for someone with a legal background to explain why, and this post will be relegated to a graveyard where it would then deserve to be.
If it turns out that our suspicions are founded, then we believe this is important to highlight, in the context of all the recent discussion about Effective Ventures’s past activities.
As has been noted many times recently, it’s much easier to make anonymous allegations that stick than it is to protect oneself from reputational damage from such allegations. Given this, failing to do basic due diligence to check whether your allegations are founded before making accusatory public posts seems frankly irresponsible to me.
I would guess that if this allegation turns out to be totally unfounded, it won’t stick, and we’ll never hear from it again. If it turns out to stick despite being unfounded, my guess is it’ll be because the concern was substantive enough that cursory due diligence wouldn’t have found the problems with it.
There’s a good chance I’m being naive here, but I think reputational concerns are often overstated.
That said, I agree that making accusatory public posts without basic due diligence is irresponsible; I have a lower impression of the costs than you seem to, but the time and attention costs are certainly still real.