Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which governs the massive Wikipedia online encyclopedia and related projects, appointed Arnnon Geshuri to its board earlier this month. His appointment wasn't well received by the Wikipedia community of volunteer editors, however. And last week, an editor called for a "vote of no confidence on Arnnon Geshuri."

The voting, which has no legally binding effect on the Wikimedia Foundation, is now underway. As of press time, 187 editors had voted in favor of this proposition: "In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board." Just 13 editors have voted against, including Wikimedia board member Guy Kawasaki.

Geshuri has an impressive resume in the human resources field, having worked at Google from 2004 until 2009. While there, he oversaw a department of 900 recruiters who fielded 2.5 million job applications per year. In 2009, he took a job as head of HR at Tesla Motors, where he still works today.

The editors object to Geshuri's involvement in a high-profile "no poach" agreement between several large tech companies. In that deal, companies agreed not to "cold call" each others' workers. In 2010, the Department of Justice said the arrangement—which applied to Google, Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Intel, and Pixar, among others—violated antitrust law.

Ultimately, the companies reached a settlement with the government in which they agreed to avoid such deals in the future, but the companies did not admit guilt or pay any financial penalty. A class-action suit brought on behalf of affected employees resulted in a $415 million payout last year.

Geshuri's role was detailed in certain court documents that became public during the class-action litigation. Some of those details were reprised in a recent article in The Signpost, an online newspaper serving the Wikipedia community.

Articles from PC Magazine and Pando Daily reported that Geshuri was at the center of a 2007 exchange between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, the respective CEOs of Apple and Google at that time. Pando published Geshuri's e-mail responding to Schmidt, in which he apologized for a Google recruiter trying to hire an Apple employee.

Eric: 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. Thanks, Arnnon

That e-mail was followed up by a response from another Google HR manager, who encouraged Geshuri to "please make a public example of this termination within the group."

The details of Geshuri's involvement upset many of the editors who voted. "Even if his experience/qualifications (in the IT industry) was an important aspect, I find it hard to imagine that there wasn't a less controversial figure with similar qualifications," wrote one. "Please tell him to leave 'within one hour,'" wrote another.

"I have no more confidence for the whole Board, especially also to name Mr. Wales himself," wrote an editor whose sentiments were echoed by other voters. "The Board presents itself in a tragic condition, all faith lost that it could work for the best of the projects."

Several editors endorsed an e-mailed statement on a Wikimedia mailing list by Florence Devouard, a former chair of the foundation, explaining why she had voted "no confidence." It reads, in part:

I hoped very dearly that the board would actually issue a statement that would have helped me understand the decision... I hoped very dearly Arnnon would post on this list to address the issue and to convince me he was a good fit in spite of the whole situation. I waited... waited... waited... but nothing came... Kat completely nailed it with regards to integrity being one of our core values. You guys rock in most of what you do and I know it is hard... But here, I do not understand what you are doing. Please take my vote as a respectful record of my perplexity.

Neither Geshuri nor the Wikimedia Foundation responded to Ars' requests for comment for this story.