Which has the greater potential to empower volunteers, in the sense of allowing them more time, liberty, or both to contribute to WMF projects?

Seriously, none of these. I'm completely satisfied with my job, I like my boss a lot and although my pay is not much, I don't believe any spree of activism in U.S. ("Every two weeks, our volunteers telephone targeted U.S. government decision makers...blah blah" http://incomeaction.org) would give more money for spending to my local government in Estonia. It may come as a surprise, but not everybody on Earth is American. Don't get me wrong, U.S. is all nice and fluffy, but Wikimedia movement is global. Let's focus on that. Raul On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 6:13 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors

Dear James, You keep amazing me with the topics you bring up on this list. It might be just that I'm utterly naive and not understanding what Wikimedia is all about, but I seriously have a hard time seeing a connection at all with our mission - let alone how any serious impact could be achieved or how this could become a priority. While we all have political opinions on 'the big issues' (well, most of us) I think that almost everyone agrees that Wikimedia should refrain from taking a stand on issues not directly related with its mission. Even on issues like net neutrality, the use of free software in government or software patents there is a serious concern with many of our volunteers that we should not get involved with those discussions. So please, lets focus on what we're good at and where we can have a real impact. That is hard enough on itself. I would appreciate it if you could ask yourself more critically whether something you post would really support our mission, before you post it. While there are no stupid questions, some restraint can help in being taken seriously rather than being considered trolling. Kind regards, Lodewijk 2013/11/27 James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> _______________________________________________ Advocacy_Advisors mailing list Advocacy_Advisors(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors

The idea that the economic and physiological health of the editor pool isn't a large determinant of the proportion choosing to edit, if not the largest that we may have any meaningful control over after everything we've tried so far, simply does not seem defensible. What does it mean to empower a potential editor with the ability to share knowledge, if their circumstances leave them without the inclination to do so? That is the difference between empowering and merely enabling, is it not? A slightly more complete encyclopedia with society crumbling around it is not an improvement over a less complete encyclopedia in symbiosis with a flourishing society.

On Nov 28, 2013 10:09 PM, "Amgine" <amgine@wikimedians.ca<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', &#39;amgine(a)wikimedians.ca&#39;);&gt;&gt; wrote: It has been established by example that the English Wikipedia is able to influence its readership politically to generate very large scale effective political change from calls to action. We are also a primary source of information about health for both physicians and lay people. More directly, the Foundation now makes decisions about how to compensate editors and chapters based on the merit of their proposals as submitted, directly. So, for example, if there were a banner directing people to fixmyjob.comor heathcare-now.org, there is no reason to believe it would not generate very substantial support from readers and have a large actual, and probably measurable, impact on the extent to which they are truly empowered to contribute. Ignoring political realities of the factors that influence the day to day lives of editors, potential, current, and former, is just that -- willful ignorance. When the legal team was threatened with the potential troublesome overhead of removing links due to SOPA/PIPA, the community supported action to prevent that. When are we going to take action to support the wider editor community? Pretending that political and economic factors are somehow out of the scope of the mission requires imagining that the mission statement says something about them. It does not. What is the relative impact on a potential editor who might not be able to include hyperlinks to copyrighted media because of SOPA versus one who has to work two jobs to make ends meet? Why is political neutrality on economic issues preferable to political neutrality on intellectual property law issues? The latter is a subset of the former. Acting as though one side of economic political debates is not more accurate than their opposition in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is tantamount to the worst kind of "he said, she said" journalism, which in this case is not only an affront to the readers who expect occasional rational calls to action, but actively harms the rate at which the encyclopedia is improved.