On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:33 AM, Kim Bruning
<kim@bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
The problem is that BDS (and others?) are explicitly acting against wikimania. I'd love to hear more reports
on this. I think having a wikimania in haifa is actually going
to be beneficial to all parties. :-)
Strictly speaking, we don't actually know this to be a problem. There is no proof of the BDS campaign having dissuaded large numbers of potential attendees, especially from Arab countries. Any such potential attendees would have been dissuaded by other reasons, already discussed extensively on this and other lists, -- political climate in their countries, personal perception of attendance as implicit support of the Israeli government policy, etc..
By all means go on publicizing WM2011 among Arabic speakers. Once again, the local team has made it clear it is committed to helping anyone who would like to attend. But perhaps it's time to stop pretending it is entirely up to us whether Arabic speakers would be well-represented in this Wikimania or not?