Wikimedia-l March 2008

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167 participants
236 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria
by daniwo59＠aol.com 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

In a message dated 3/6/2008 8:10:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, innocentkiller(a)gmail.com writes: By "flaunting their sexuality," I was referring to being openly gay with a partner, holding hands, sharing a room, that kind of thing. I guess "flaunting" was a bad choice of words, "publicly displaying" would probably be closer to my point. A quick comment here: I think that in a conservative society people would expect men to share a room with men and women to share a room with women. That would not be raising any eyebrows. As for two men holding hands in public, one of the first things I noticed in my first exposure to Middle Eastern culture is that it is actually quite common for two men to walk down the street hand in hand. This is no more a sign of their sexuality than two men kissing each other on the cheek when meeting in some parts of Europe or the Middle East. Anecdotally, in the 1980s my friends and I used to love watching the Jordanian English news at 10 pm every night. The opening line was always "His Majesty the King today ..." which was often followed by our having a betting pool over how many people he would kiss. D **************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news
by daniwo59＠aol.com 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

In a message dated 3/6/2008 1:46:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu writes: around since then who have spoken to his integrity. The basic point here is that, while it would be worth talking about had any foundation money been spent extravagantly, Jimmy funded Wikipedia out of his own pocket for a long time, and the amount of cash we are talking about here is insignificant. Sorry, this is a false assertion. Apart from some established wiki-mythology, is there any evidence that Jimmy funded Wikipedia out of his own pocket ever? He did not. As for the amount of cash being insignificant, that too should be placed in context. For instance, the goal of the first fundraiser was $70 thousand, so $30 thousand is over 40 percent of that. The goal of the next fundraiser was about $300 thousand (I don't remember the exact number off hand), so $30 thousand is 10 percent of that. Danny **************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)

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[Foundation-l] German Right of Privacy in Computer Systems
by Mike Godwin 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

This looks like good news: ============================================================ Germany: New basic right to privacy of computer systems ============================================================ The German Constitutional Court published on 27 February 2008 a landmark ruling about the constitutionality of secret online searches of computers by government agencies. The decision constitutes a new "basic right to the confidentiality and integrity of information-technological systems" as derived from the German Constitution. The journalist and privacy activist Bettina Winsemann, the politician Fabian Brettel (Left Party), the lawyer and former federal minister for the interior Gerhart Baum (Liberal Party), and the lawyers Julius Reiter and Peter Schantz had challenged the constitutionality of a December 2006 amendmend to the law about the domestic intelligence service of the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The amendmend had introduced a right for the intelligence service to "covertly observe and otherwise reconnoitre the Internet, especially the covert participation in its communication devices and the search for these, as well as the clandestine access to information-technological systems among others by technical means" (paragraph 5, number 11). Parts of the challenges also addressed other amendmends which are not covered here. The decision of today is widely considered a landmark ruling, because it constitutes a new "basic right to the confidentiality and integrity of information-technological systems" as part of the general personality rights in the German constitution. The reasoning goes: "From the relevance of the use of information-technological systems for the expression of personality (Pers?nlichkeitsentfaltung) and from the dangers for personality that are connected to this use follows a need for protection that is significant for basic rights. The individual is depending upon the state respecting the justifiable expectations for the integrity and confidentiality of such systems with a view to the unrestricted expression of personality." (margin number 181). The decision complements earlier landmark privacy rulings by the Constitutional Court that had introduced the "right to informational self-determination" (1983) and the right to the "absolute protection of the core area of the private conduct of life" (2004). [...] Constitutional Court Press Release (only in German, 27.02.2008) http://www.bverfg.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg08-022.html Constitutional Court Decision (BVerfG, 1 BvR 370/07), (only in German, 27.02.2008) http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20080227_1bvr037007.html Video from the announcing the decision: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630696719785982383&hl=en Comprehensive press and background coverage (only in German) http://netzpolitik.org/2008/neues-grundrecht-auf-gewaehrleistung-von-vertra… Germany's Highest Court Restricts Internet Surveillance (27.02.2008) http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3152627,00.html The most spied upon people in Europe (27.02.2008) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7265212.stm (Contribution by Ralf Bendrath - EDRi member Netzwerk Neue Medien) More at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt
by David Strauss 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

phoebe ayers wrote: > On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david(a)fourkitchens.com> wrote: >> Cary Bass wrote: >>> The Jury for Wikimania 2008 bids have met and are pleased to announce >>> that Wikimania 2008 will be held in Alexandria, Egypt. >> I'm offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe >> (rotation) trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other >> civil rights (local laws). While visitors to Egypt are certainly not at >> the same risk, I refuse to spend any money in a country that -- as >> recently as 2004 -- sentenced someone to 17 years of prison and two >> years of hard labor for posting a personal ad on a gay website[1]. A >> blogger was imprisoned in 2007 for four years for "insulting Islam and >> defaming the President of Egypt."[2] Jimmy Wales even attended the >> Amnesty conference denouncing the censorship. No legal or cultural >> reforms since give me confidence that the situation has improved. >> >> Wikimedia and its projects have an abundance of people from marginalized >> groups and political advocacy organizations participating at every >> level. A place that persecutes, censors, and prosecutes such groups >> under the banner of snuffing out "Satanism" is not a location that >> affirms the pluralism and intellectual freedom of Wikimedia. >> >> People raised these objections early in the bidding process, but I have > > As a jury member, I do not remember any comments from you on this > subject, David; perhaps I missed them. At any rate, what are you > trying to accomplish by sending this message after the winner was > announced, and not before when we were discussing the bids? Other people raised these objections during the bidding process; I didn't have to. Even if no one had brought the issue up, everyone on the voting team should have been aware enough of the problems to them under consideration without further prompting. I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Egypt's human rights record would cripple the bid enough that it wouldn't win. > Wikimania and Wikimedia are both global in scope, which means that > while we can condemn censorship and loss of human rights everywhere So the "condemnation" amounts to docking a modest number of points for "local laws"? > we must also take into account a global range of values. What is this supposed to mean? How can we balance condemnation with toleration? > Our projects > focus specifically on free knowledge, and I expect that will be > highlighted at the conference. Even putting gay rights aside, Egypt's record of imprisoning political and religious dissidents is directly counter to affirming "free knowledge."

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[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimedians at Wikimania in Alexandria.
by Gregory Maxwell 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

It's clear that some of the previous threads about Wikimania drifted off-topic and became unproductive. However, I think that several serious concerns got lost in the noise, and that we cannot drop the topic from the list without addressing them, especially as people are starting to plan their travel. If we can be assured that safety concerns are being taken seriously by the WMF and the Wikimania organizers and are not being dismissed or ignored, this would go a long way toward improving the tone of discussion on the list. I have two main concerns with Wikimania so far. First, the coverage of the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy and images in the Muhammad article on Wikipedia have sparked protest from many people, some of whom have made frightening and violent threats of reprisal against Wikimedia. These threats become more immediate and worthy of concern in a region where there is recent history of violence in response to religious controversies. This would be an extreme reaction, but I don't think that we can discount the possibility. It only takes a few extreme voices to cause a serious issue, and we need to be aware that this may happen and have a plan to ensure that attendees are not put in danger. Secondly, I am also concerned that the local organizing team has not been sufficiently responsive to concerns about safety. A risk which is dismissed is one which is not being mitigated. Every location has some risk involved, and there should always be consideration of those risks. But I can't find any indication that this is happening here, and I would like to know that someone is considering it and taking reasonable steps to mitigate it. Even if the safety concerns were completely without merit, perception of risk is important to an event which can only be successful if a diverse crowd of people attend. People are going to choose whether or not to go based on what they think is true. If people do not go because they think they will not be safe, even if they should have no reason to think so, the event is harmed by the failure to address their concerns. So I would like to know: What plans are in place to ensure attendees' safety at Wikimania? What happens if we get threats of violence at the event? Cheers

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales in the news
by Brian 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

I asked Ward about this and he said someone must be putting words in his mouth. Cheers, Brian On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Putting the utter stupidity of discussing Jimbo's sex life at all aside, I > will say that this episode rings true for me in one important sense. As an > employee of a for-profit wiki, I've had the *entire* 20+ person staff > agree > unanimously that they love Wikipedia despite Jimmy Wales, emphasis on the > "despite". Part of me recognizes that all this hullabaloo is a product of > the media's inane focus on the cult of celebrity, but still...wouldn't we > just be better off without him? My moral compass swings to a resounding > Yes. > > > On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 1:30 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 04/03/2008, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > The bigger problem are the allegations mentioned in the article about > > > use of foundation funds. Three specific claims are made: > > > -Jimbo tried to expense a $300+ bottle of wine > > > -Jimbo tried to expense a massage parlor visit > > > -Wikimedia foundation took away Jimbo's credit card. > > > Obviously, of it any of that were true, it would be super bad, and > > > nothing can be done but watch it play out. > > > But, far more likely, if it's false, the foundation needs to find out > > > that it's false, and then get that word out ASAP. I haven't seen > them > > > say it's not true. I haven't looked hard, but then-- nobody else > out > > > there is looking hard either. If I haven't seen "the facts" on the > > > issue, neither has almost everyone else. > > > > > > Sue Gardner did answer on Danny Wool's blog, fwiw. > > > > Mostly the media interest is as cheap tabloid filler. All the London > > commuter papers, with the focus of the "story" being dumping people > > using technology. In between fabulously newsworthy reports on Kelly > > Osbourne's haircut. > > > > > > - d. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > WikiEN-l mailing list > > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >

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[Foundation-l] Stillman Wiki Wall Update!
by Erik Moeller 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

Hey - you may remember that a while ago, we asked for community submissions on: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stillman_Wiki_Wall_Photo_Contest There was a pretty, light-up photo wall in our San Francisco office space when we moved in (the previous tenant was a designer), so it was only natural for us to use it to feature photos taken of and by members of the community. We picked 9 of the submissions and put them on our wall: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia_Stillman_Contest_Wall_1.j… This is still missing the little labels attributing the photographers and describing the content - those will follow shortly, and I hope we can get away with fair use until then ;-). But I can tell you, it really makes the pictures look quite amazing. It's the kind of low cost effort that really creates a "Wikipedian" atmosphere. We also have a big corkboard on our kitchen wall that has dozens of photos from Wikimedia events on it - it's really quite lovely. :-) -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimanians in Alexandria
by Mike Godwin 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

At Sue's request, and in response to the expressions of concern on this list, I've been looking into the question of safety for attendees at this summer's Wikimania in Alexandria. I did not have any presumptions one way or the other regarding what the likely answers to this question might be. Primarily by consulting sources I have in DC and in the security industry, who helpfully pointed me to online sources as well, I think I can walk through some basic issues for those who are wondering whether attending Wikimania in Alexandria poses unusual or exceptional risks. The short answer is this: while there are some parts of Egypt that might be problematic for Wikimanian travellers, travel to Wikimania in Alexandria appears to be not a threatening prospect in particular. I'll spell out some of my reasoning below. 1) If you research Egypt, you'll find that points of greatest tension involve the Egypt/Israel border (places like Gaza), which are emphatically not where we're going to be. 2) Many countries, including the U.S.A., routinely post updates for their citizens regarding risks associate with travel. In the U.S., there are "travel alerts" (concern about relatively short-term threats) and "travel advisories" (concern about longer-term, more systemic threats within a particular destination country). Currently (as of today), there are no "travel alerts" associated with any Middle Eastern destination -- there are of course many "travel warnings" regarding countries whose relationship with the USA is tense. (Take Pakistan, for example.) Egypt, however, currently has no "travel alerts" or "travel warnings" associated with it. Travel warnings: <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.ht > Travel alerts: <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/ pa_1766.html> 3) Despite how it may look to outsiders, the Egypt and Israel get along pretty well, under the circumstances. (You can blame/thank Jimmy Carter for this.) There are border tensions, but, as I have noted, we are not going to be situated at the border. 4) There is a useful general links for how the USA and other nations view the risks associated with travel to Egypt: <http://www.allsafetravels.com/CountryPage.aspx?countryid=149> (a multi-country listing) See also http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/publish/press/state/archive/1998/april/s… (an old alert from the US State department, but it gives you an idea how much things have calmed down since 1998). 5) Here's a recent report from Ha'aretz regarding border tensions, but one of the things you should take away from this article is that Egypt and Israel are actually discussing with each other how to respond to border problems. And, as I said, we won't be on the border. 6) Want the fullest possible warning of what can go wrong for Americans in Egypt? You can find it here: <http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1108.html >. But note how much this document references the Sinai and the border, which is where we won't be -- we'll be in Alexandria (a city of six million people on the Mediterranean Coast), or in transit to or from an airport (probably in Cairo, I'm guessing). 7) How to register with the local consulate if you're an American: <http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/tips/registration/registration_1186.html >. 8) Now, everything I've said with regard to safety talks primarily about Americans (that's most of the data I could put my hands on in a hurry) and, more importantly, assumes nothing about whether we'll be prominent as Wikimedians (or whether the protest against images of the Prophet on Wikipedia are going to be generating ongoing conflict). But it should be noted that there are Muslims everywhere, not just in the Middle East, and it can't be assumed that anyone who's not in Alexandria as a Wikipedian is necessarily any safer than if they're in (to take an obviously relevant example) Amsterdam as a Wikipedian. I can't give anyone any assurance that the images-of-the-Prophet issue won't heat up, or that the political situation in coastal Egypt will remain stable, but the evidence we have now suggests that the library at Alexandria is a reasonably safe and stable place to hold a conference, in my view. --Mike Godwin

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Re: [Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimedians at Wikimania in Alex...
by daniwo59＠aol.com 06 Mar '08

06 Mar '08

Just a quick comment here: I think the problem is that various issues are being conflated and confused, so that each person participating has valid points, but they are talking about different circumstances and therefore talking past one another. 1. Respecting local customs: This is a given anywhere you travel, and should be considered as such. For instance, when entering a mosque, you remove your shoes. When having dinner with the queen, you do not burp at the end of the meal to show your satisfaction. Most of this is common courtesy. There are, however, some societies where accepted social norms would truly impinge on the freedom of Wikipedians. For example, I am hard pressed to believe that Wikimania will be held in Saudi Arabia, where women are required to cover themselves in what Westerners would consider a restrictive fashion, or where someone like Florence would need a note from her husband or son to appear outside in public alone. That said, Egypt is not, I repeat, is NOT, in any way like that. It is a country whose economy is fueled by tourism, and they have seen Western women before. 2. Respecting local laws: I am not going to discuss the Egyptian sodomy laws per se, but suffice it to say that among Egypt's many tourists are many gay tourists, and I don't know of anyone arrested for that. In fact, it is harder to get into the Cayman Islands if you are gay. That said, do not have sex with your partner in midday in a bustling market. But hey, I would go so far as to suggest the same behavior in Amsterdam. 3. Travel advisories and terrorism: Yes there are travel advisories and yes there is terrorism. Such is the world we live in. There is terrorism in New York and London and Madrid too, and any discussion about which is more "dangerous" is, to me at least, like discussing in which make of automobile you are likely to be rearended (in the traffic sense). You wear your seatbelt and take the right precautions, and Fate does what it pleases. In 2002 no one avoided Indonesia because of threats of a tsunami. 4. Wikimedia stuff: This is perhaps the most interesting conundrum. I remember some dumb film where they dumped a bunch of bad guys off in Harlem with White Power t-shirts. They were not happy. In other words, the real question is, to what degree will the Muhammad image controversy impact the local population at the time of teh conference. Will the issue exacerbate? Are there angry people looking specifically for infidel Wikimedians, while they ignore the South Korean tour bus across the street? Could there be peaceful demonstrations? Could these demonstrations turn violent? Could the whole thing blow over? I think that this is the real issue and what Florence asked Sue to investigate. It seems to be the most intelligent next step. Danny **************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)

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[Foundation-l] We're not just here to run a hideously popular and expensive website, after all
by David Gerard 05 Mar '08

05 Mar '08

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23906 (in the bush in Africa) "Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine that was the only video camera owned by a local resident for miles around. The marginal benefit that one uncommon piece of technology can have when no others are around must be immense." Getting our content and the requisite technology out to the world has, as far as I recall, always been expressly part of what we're all doing here. - d.

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Wikimedia-l March 2008