I think we need to be very specific when we talk about advice to Wikimedians in Arab countries re going to Haifa. Encouraging Wikimedians who live in countries where it would be illegal to visit Israel to break the laws of the country they live in and attend such a public event strikes me as inappropriate and unethical (lobbying to change a law is something I see as very different encouraging others to break a law).
Encouraging a boycott amongst Wikimedians who legally could go to Israel is a very different thing. We all have real life POVs, but we are supposed to leave them at the door when we logon to Wikimedia.
Of course if this involves offsite blogs and facebook then it drifts into that contentious area of offwiki activities that impact Wikipedia. For me that's fairly easy - when I'm WereSpielChequers I'm a wikimedian, I don't use that identity outside of Wikimedia and some of my closest friends don't know about this hobby of mine. But for others I can see things getting more blurred, especially if they edit in their own name. For wikimedians from cultures and countries where Israel's continued occupation of the lands it captured in 1967 is considered illegal and unethical, and the consequent boycott of Israel is a cultural norm, the decision to host Wikimania in Haifa must be making it very difficult to keep their on and off wiki positions from getting blurred.
WereSpielChequers
On 6 July 2011 04:51, Kim Bruning kim@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 12:44:22PM -0400, dror1975@icqmail.com wrote:
It is important to note that we encountered this year unprecedented attempts to discourage people, particularly Arab people, from coming to the event. I don't blame anyone, and I respect the freedom of speech of everybody, but it is very hard to promote an event among Arabic-speaking people, when there are FaceBook groups and blogs, some of them initiated by Wikipedians, calling upon Arab people not to attend, and even spreading false information.
This is something I would like to counter, if possible.
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