Can we stick to advocacy issues on this list please?

On 29 November 2013 12:01, advocacy_advisors-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Which would help volunteer editors more? (Amgine)
2. Re: Which would help volunteer editors more? (James Salsman)
3. Re: Which would help volunteer editors more? (Raul Veede)
4. Re: Which would help volunteer editors more? (James Salsman)

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Message: 1 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 15:09:40 +0100 From: Amgine amgine@wikimedians.ca To: Advocacy Advisory Group for Wikimedia advocacy_advisors@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Advocacy Advisors] Which would help volunteer editors more? Message-ID: 52974EA4.1060203@wikimedians.ca Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On 27/11/13 02:24 PM, James Salsman wrote:

...

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.

Two points of disagreement:

• "that we may have any meaningful control over"
• "does not seem defensible"

I do not believe we have meaningful control over either the economic or the physiological health of the editor pool. We do note even have significant relevance to either hugely divergent measure.

Therefore it *is* completely defensible.

Until you can support your statements with objective, repeatable, observations you should probably avoid castigating others for what is your beliefs or moral codes. It tends to make people less aligned with your goals because of their opposition to your methods.

Amgine

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Message: 2 Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 04:23:44 +0800 From: James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com To: Advocacy Advisory Group for WMF LCA advocacy_advisors@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Advocacy Advisors] Which would help volunteer editors more? Message-ID: <CAD4=uZYT8zS9xZGNwWQXwMNKEBi6ULcnV_B5eLuwjU= hiYFCmQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

On Nov 28, 2013 10:09 PM, "Amgine" amgine@wikimedians.ca wrote:

...

I do not believe we have meaningful control over either the economic or the physiological health of the editor pool.

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.