Does anyone doubt that the English Wikipedia's longstanding,
pervasive, counter-factual, systemic bias towards supply side
trickle-down austerity libertarian objectivist economics due at least
in part to early influence of editors attracted to Jimmy Wales' former
public positions isn't at least partially responsible for the
situation Romaine describes below?
Would it be better to move the Foundation out of the U.S., fix the
bias, or both?
https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/808003564291244033
Sincerely,
Jim Salsman
---- forwarded message ----
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 04:33:53 +0100
From: Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Concerns in general
Today I was reading in the (international) news about websites with
knowledge on the topic of climate change disappear from the internet as
result of the Trump administration. The second thing I read is that before
something can be published about this topic, the government needs to
approve this.
Do you realise what the right word for this is? censorship.
Even if it is only partially.
Luckily there are many scientists working on getting all the data abroad,
out of the US to ensure the research data is saved, including on servers in
the Netherlands where Trump (hopefully) has no reach.
In the past week I was reading about the Internet Archive organisation, who
is making a back up in Canada because of the Trump administration. I did
not understood this, you may call me naive, but now I do understand,
apparently they have some visionary people at the Internet Archive.
I miss a good answer to this situation from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Trump is now promoting harassment and disrespect, already for some time,
What signal is given to the rest of the world if an America based
organisation is spreading the thought of a harassment free Wikipedia and
the free word, while the president of the US is promoting harassment,
disrespect and censorship on a massive scale.
This is just the first week of this president!
I am 100% sure everyone in the Wikimedia movement is willing to make sure
Wikimedia faces no damage whatsoever, including in WMF, but to me this
still starts to get concerning.
If we as Wikimedia movement think that free knowledge, free speech, freedom
of information, etc are important, I would think that the location where
the organisation is based is that country where liberty is the largest, I
do not know where this is but it is definitely not the US.
To my impression WMF is stuck in the US, so I do not believe they would
actually move when the danger grows.
But I think it is possible to make sure risks are spread over the world.
Certainly as we are an international movement that intends to cover the
knowledge of the whole humanoid civilisation.
To come to a conclusion, I think WMF and the Wikimedia movement should
think about a back-up plan if it actually goes wrong.
If you do not agree with me: that is perfectly fine, that's your right and
should be protected.
Thank you.
Romaine
The Wikimedia movement is both global and very ideologically diverse, and
has many contributors who have strong opinions in one direction or another
on certain political issues facing their area of the world. Many of these
contributors find it difficult to avoid using Wikimedia forums and
institutions to discuss or advocate for issues they feel very strongly
about. Recently, political advocacy on Wikimedia forums has risen
substantially, especially on this mailing list.
While I sympathize with the difficulties these contributors face in
remaining silent, it is important to consider the substantial damage such
actions can cause to the movement. We will be much worse off if half of any
given country's political spectrum can no longer cooperate in our mission
due to compunctions against supporting a community which hosts those who
use the community to advocate for positions that some may find
unacceptable. The issue of inadvertently alienating participants because of
politics has a self-reinforcing element: As we lose contributors
representing ideological areas, we have fewer willing to advocate for an
environment which allows them to participate without being bombarded by
hostile political advocacy. We are precariously close to the point of no
return on this, but I am optimistic that the situation is recoverable.
As an initial measure, I propose adding the names of a certain country's
top political leaders to this list's spam filter. More generally, I think a
stricter stance on avoiding political advocacy on Wikimedia projects is
warranted.
We face a somewhat more difficult situation with the Wikimedia Foundation
itself. Partly as a result of being relatively localized within a
geographic area and further limited to several professions, I suspect the
Foundation tends to be more politically/ideologically homogeneous. With the
WMF, we risk much more than just alienating much of the world, we risk our
Neutrality.
How far we must go to maintain neutrality has been a contentious issue over
the years. Existential threats have twice been responded to with major
community action, each with large prior discussion. (SOPA included an
extensive discussion and a poll with more than 500 respondents.) A previous
ED committed to firing everyone but part of the Ops team rather than accept
advertising, should lack of funds require it. (Whether to let the WMF die
outright rather than accept ads is as of yet unresolved.) More recently,
the WMF has taken limited actions and stances on public policy that
directly relate to the mission. A careful balance has been established
between maintaining essential neutrality and dealing with direct threats to
the projects.
Three days ago, the WMF put out a statement on the Wikimedia blog
explicitly urging a specific country to modify its refugee policy, an area
that does not relate to our goals. There was no movement-wide prior
discussion, or any discussion at all as far as I can tell.
It is the responsibility of the Board at this point to set a policy to
place firm restrictions on which areas the WMF can take positions. While we
value the important contributions of the staff, they should not be able to
override our commitment to neutrality. Our donors, editors, and other
volunteers do not contribute so that resources and influence can be spent
towards whatever political causes are popular within the WMF.
It is the responsibility of the community to ensure that our projects
remain apolitical. A neutral point of view is impossible if participating
requires a certain political position.
It is the responsibility of the mailing list administration and moderators
to act against this list's rapid slide into unreadability.
Thank you.
-- Yair Rand
I strongly support Yair Rand's post.
I am intensely interested in political issues, but try to discuss them in
political forums, not Wikipedia discussion threads.
While there will be some occasions (SOPA) where Wikipedia is directly
threatened by political footballs, and must be discussed, we should
endeavor to limit political activism to such issues, and not bring it into
every discussion where it might have a tangential aspect. Not all editors
share the same political persuasion, and allowing political discussions in
these threads (beyond that which is absolutely necessary) has the potential
of tearing apart the community interested in bring the sum of all knowledge
to the world.
Stephen Philbrick (Sphilbrick)
Dear all,
Today Wikimedia Belgium had the annual General Assembly
<https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/2017-01-28_General_Assembly>.
At 1 January 2017 the board had five board members. Every board member is
elected for a two years term, besides the president who is elected every
year. From these five board members, the two year term of two of them ended
(Romaine + Afernand74), as well as the term of the president ended
(Geertivp).
With no new applications for board members and the General Assembly and
board happy with how the past period has been dealt and how stable the
board has become, the General Assembly voted to give the three board
members a new term. Meaning that the board stays the same and as stable
team can move forward with our chapter.
The board is composed out of Geertivp (president), Romaine (treasurer),
SPQRobin (secretary), Afernand74 (National Liaison) and Lfurter (Gender and
Diversity Liaison).
See also: https://be.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board
Before the voting, the reporting from the past year was discussed, and the
board has been cleared responsibility.
The financial report from Wikimedia Belgium about 2016 can be found at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/
Wikimedia_Belgium/Financial/2016
The activity report from Wikimedia Belgium about 2016 can be found at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/
Wikimedia_Belgium/Activity/2016
Kind regards,
Romaine
Thyge, Craig, Dan, Rogol, Max, Neil, Mike, Ryan, Pete, Yair, and
Leigh, here are some questions I'd like you to answer, neither of
which are rhetorical:
First, what attracts you to the free culture movement?
What freedoms do you personally hold as ideal?
Finally, what does the Foundation's Mission statement mean when it
says to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and
develop educational content"? Does that mean political power?
> The WMF should not be taking political stances
> without input and consensus from the community.
The community has (s)elected the Board of Trustees, and the Board has
delegated policy-making authority to Ms. Maher. If you believe this to
be a mistake then you should run for the Board on that platform and
make your case if and when you are (s)elected. In my view Ms. Maher
has a more reasonable outlook than all of the Board's members I know
enough about to have formed an opinion on put together, and she has
been repeatedly proving it through her commendable actions,
statements, and efforts.
Nothing proves this more than Ms. Maher's message a few minutes ago on
the new strategy process. I take back all my previously stated
reservations. I was especially pleased to see this:
> Community Process Steering Committee [are discussing
> how to] engage more "quiet" members of our community....
That is *sorely* needed. Most of our best content creators don't want
to stick their neck out in policy discussions, even on their projects'
noticeboards and often even on talk pages, because of the risk of
harassment, reputation polarization, stereotyping, attracting stalkers
and tag teams, or putting their contributions into the cross-hairs of
organized advocacy efforts.
I would *love* to see a frequent and statistically robust anonymous
channel from content creators to project and Foundation policymakers
consisting of more than just a 20 minute survey every couple years.
On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Michael Peel <email(a)mikepeel.net> wrote:
> Have you seen Katherine's statement at:
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/30/knowledge-knows-no-boundaries/
That statement is well worth reading. It says,
"we believe in a world that encourages and protects the open exchange
of ideas and information, community and culture; where people of every
country, language, and culture can freely collaborate without
restriction"
"we will continue to stand up for our values of open discourse"
+1
The charter of this mailing list says "potential new Wikimedia
projects and initiatives" are on topic here. There are no exceptions
given.
If some participants want to restrict what other participants can say
because their ideas are political, or don't conform closely enough to
what Wikimedia is already doing, or are repetitive, or annoying, or
opposed to somebody else's politics, then a new mailing list should be
created, Wikimedia-l-restricted, where the forbidden topics can be
specified clearly and without ambiguity, and all of the people who
want to restrict what other people can say can enjoy restricting each
other.
Good luck with that.
The complaints about messages complaining about recent political
events FAR MORE ANNOYING AND FAR MORE INAPPROPRIATE than the
complaints about recent political events.
-Will
It's Danish Wikipedia's turn to turn 15. (:
In those 15 years, the Danish community and passers-by have together
created a bit over 223000 articles. They had a small meet-up in Copenhagen
to celebrate a few hours ago, and some of the attention from the Danish
media is collected here:
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Presse_2017
//Johan Jönsson
--
It's been a while since the last official WikiCite update but I am thrilled
to announce that we have dates confirmed for *WikiCite 2017
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2017>*.
*WikiCite 2017* is a 3-day conference, summit and hack day hosted in
*Vienna* on *May 23-25, 2017* (back to back with the Wikimedia Hackathon
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2017>).
It expands efforts <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite/Newsletter>
that started last year in Berlin with WikiCite 2016
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2016> towards the creation of a
bibliographic repository to serve open knowledge.
WikiCite 2017 will be a venue to:
1. present on progress of existing and new initiatives around citations
and bibliographic data across Wikimedia projects (day 1: conference)
2. discuss technical, social, outreach and policy directions (day 2:
summit)
3. get together to hack on new ideas and applications (day 3: hack day)
For a summary of what was accomplished last year, you can read our report
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2016/Report>.
Additional details on the event, the application process for prospective
participants, travel support requests, and information about the venue will
be posted shortly on Meta <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2017>
and via the mailing lists, but we wanted to share the dates as early as
possible so you can save them in your calendar.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
Dario
on behalf of the WikiCite 2017 organizers
*Dario Taraborelli *Director, Head of Research, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org • nitens.org • @readermeter
<http://twitter.com/readermeter>
Dear Wikimedians,
It is our great pleasure to announce that during last weekend’s Board
retreat, we voted to appoint Abraham Taherivand as Executive Director of
Wikimedia Deutschland with immediate effect.
Abraham has joined Wikimedia Deutschland in 2012, has been the director of
our Software Development department, and interim ED in the past two months.
In all his roles he has shown vast experience and qualifications as well as
the much needed, deep commitment for Free Knowledge. We are convinced that
Abraham is the right person at the right time for Wikimedia Deutschland and
have great confidence that the management of the office is in good hands
with him. Abraham will continue to lead the Software Development department
on an interim basis until we have been able to fill this position with a
new permanent director.
Together with Abraham, WMDE staff, our members and communities as well as
other interested parties, the board will analyse and – where applicable –
revise the composition of leadership and decision making structures at WMDE
in 2017. Kurt Jansson, Sebastian Moleski and myself will be steering this
process and are available for your questions and feedback via email (
praesidium(a)wikimedia.de).
We wish Abraham the very best in this role, and the Board looks forward to
continuing to work with him. Please join us in congratulating Abraham!
For the Supervisory Board
Tim Moritz Hector
Chair