Jimmy Wales was one of several speakers at the conference "How free is
the internet?" at Nobels Peacecenter in Oslo, Norway. Main sponsor for
the conference was Teknologirådet. He had a lecture "Can Wikipedia
promote freedom of expression?". Other speakers was professor Jonathan
Zittrain from the Oxford University with the lecture "Access denied: The
practice and policy of global internet filtering", Zena el Khalil a
blogger from Beirut talking about blogging during the siege of Lebanon
in 2006, professor Jon Bing from the University of Oslo with the
lecture "Where should we draw the line?", and several others.
Some overall information can be found at the page where the actual
download links resides. The downloads are from Telenor, one of the
sponsors of the conference.
http://www.telenor.com/downloads/nobels_fredssenter/ (English, download)
http://www.teknologiradet.no/FullStory.aspx?m=28&amid=5119 (Norwegian)
http://www.teknologiradet.no/FullStory.aspx?m=3&amid=5009 (English)
http://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/?did=9079661 (Norwegian)
John Erling Blad
Well, what do we need to do to convince them otherwise?
----- Original Message ----
From: Harel Cain <harel.cain(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:51:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] FYI: Welcome to this years Wikimania site: Egypt, the land with cultur ministers with special taste in history, culture and all the good things
It's a matter of convincing people to disregard their own government's
formal travel advisory (which as I said is very clear about Egypt at
this time; would Americans for example travel to a country that the
State Department strongly advises to avoid?). I know of two local
wikipedians who are still planning to go. We tried organizing a bigger
group at our local village pump but people are naturally rather
hesitant to go to a place where they (justifiably?) feel they might be
at risk, or just feel very uncomfortable or unwanted.
Israel's biggest newspaper Yedioth Ahronot runs an article today about
an organized tour to Egypt of Israelis of Egyptian origin, which got a
very "cold shoulder" from Egyptian authorities.
I don't want to turn this into a political debate about the
intricacies of the Israeli-Egyptian cold peace, though. I just wanted
to put the Egyptian minister's expressions in context.
I still hope to make it to Alexandria.
Harel
On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 8:38 AM, Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Harel;
>
> What would it take to get you guys to come?
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http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5160.3423.0.0
This is why the Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni's comment,
that he "would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian
libraries," is so disturbing. Hosni made the statement at a conference
held in the Egyptian parliament earlier this month.
</Heinrich_Heine>
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure I totally understand the contention that a policy is only worth
> having if you can be blocked for violating it. How many blocks are issued
> for violating AGF or NPOV? A policy or a guideline - but not an essay.
> Personally I'd prefer a policy, because it has the weight of consensus
> behind it and thus amounts to stronger encouragement than a simple essay
> from someone few have ever heard of.
On the English Wikipedia, we do have an informal policy, in the form
of the [[Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm]] (which is
short-linked from WP:SUICIDE and WP:VIOLENCE ). It says pretty much
exactly what you're asking for, if I understood your comments right.
There have been four attempts to address this question in policy.
Attempts 1 and 2 went down in flames because there wasn't enough
consensus on what to prescribe and how, in terms of prescriptive and
blockable policy.
Attempt 3 was my essay WP:SUICIDE, which is what the current essay
directly derives from. As it's an essay, it's not subject to the need
to get formal policy approval, and didn't fall over and die as a
result.
There was a fourth attempt, about four months ago, to make a formal
policy. It crashed and burned, because there still isn't enough
consensus on what to prescribe and how, in terms of prescriptive and
blockable policy.
I believe that making a prescriptive policy which is sufficiently
agreeable and understandable and enforceable is an extremely difficult
proposition. The essay strongly encourages anyone who thinks
something is, or might be, a credible threat to report it to law
enforcement and ANI and other venues. That's common sense, plus what
we've heard from Psychiatrists and Law Enforcement and so forth.
Writing down the common sense so that everyone knows "yes, that's what
we understand you should do, reporting it is appropriate and you are
encouraged to do it and we won't blame you or get angry at you if you
do" is good. That's what we did.
I don't know that this is the sort of thing that's amenable to a
prescriptive policy from the Foundation. I don't think that we should
not do it, for some philosophical or operational reason, and I won't
oppose another attempt by anyone to form such policy. But the
historical record is that it's very hard to write such prescriptive
policy and very hard to get buy in for it if you do. A number of
people have gotten extremely upset, frustrated, and burned out trying
to make that happen.
I believe that the current essay is a decent balance and it involves
no additional stress on anyone. If it needs to be promoted better,
such as to other projects or as a Foundation-wide essay rather than
just for en.wp, those would be easy and valuable expansions.
If you want to do a real prescriptive policy, before you start, please
look at the history of the 3 failed attempts before you set out.
Perhaps the next try will be the one that succeeds, but I suspect that
all that will happen is that decent positive contributors who are
clearly trying to do a good thing for the project will get burned out
and disillusioned and likely leave. I encourage people not to get
burned out, disillusioned, and leave.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Chris Howie" <cdhowie(a)gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 18:08:15 -0400
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] School shooting threats
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 5:44 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> The question, then, is what if any moral imperative does this impose on us?
> And if some of us feel compelled to report such instances to the police, and
> others do not, what if any should the extent of policy be on this issue?
> Personally I can't agree to any Wikipedia policy that mandates or punishes
> behavior off-wiki. On the other hand, I do think a policy that encourages
> all editors to report specific school threats to AN and (when willing and
> possible) to the police is workable and a good idea. Frankly, I'm surprised
> and I'm sure many others would be as well to learn that there isn't already
> such a Wikipedia policy. At a minimum, we should have a policy of forwarding
> all such threats to the Wikimedia Foundation for "official" action if
> necessary.
If it only encourages people to do something then it's not a policy,
it's an essay, which is more than appropriate in this case. Even a
guideline would be better than policy.
IMO any threat with the slightest hint of seriousness should be
immediately reported. But making it a blockable offense to not report
would not only be very bad for the project, it would be unenforceable
in just about every case. Which would in turn make it generally a
useless policy.
On another note, a noticeboard where things like this can be posted
would be helpful. People who know how to go about reporting something
like this could monitor the page. (Law enforcement could even
subscribe to an RSS feed of the page history, if they wanted to be
proactive about it.)
--
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
OK, Egypt has a terrible government. The Foundation has taken steps to remediate the security situation. Can we get back to providing the sum of all human knowledge?
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com>
To: dex2000(a)pc.dk; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 12:48:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] FYI: Welcome to this years Wikimania site: Egypt, the land with cultur ministers with special taste in history, culture and all the good things
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 9:09 PM, dex2000 <sir48(a)lite.dk> wrote:
> I sincerley think, that this is going much too far and that the most heavy
> posters should be tranfered to another list or put on moderation. Their
> spamming drowns the views of people worth reading.
>
Well... I wouldn't put it as strictly as that, but it is true that the
literature discussion is slowly moving to off-topicness... While I
believe that all of you have interesting things to say about John
Coetzee and Elfriede Jelinek (both writers whom I recently read and
thus I'm somewhat interested in this topic), we should maybe get back
to the topic at hand - if anything more can be said about it, that is
;-)
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com
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> Are there any circumstances where someone could be elected to a project
> ArbCom without sysop? Should they then have this privilege?
>
> Who should be permitted to grant the privilege? Bureaucrats, or just
> stewards?
>
For the record, on ru.wp current arbcom there are three sysops and two
members who are not sysops. We have never had a sysop-only arbcom so far.
(The arbcom members are respected members of the community, and they would
be elected if they decide to stand for sysop, but apparently they do not
want to).
Cheers
Yaroslav
Anthony writes:
> And why should the board members
> include personal attacks/criticisms of outside parties in the first
> place? Your other comments have clarified that the agreement of
> employees is separate from the agreement among board members. So why
> should personal attacks/criticisms of anyone but current/former board
> members be included in the agreement?
The idea here is that no one who does business with the Foundation
should be subject to a public personal attack from Board members as
the consequence of having done so. *This doesn't mean that the Board
members can't criticize such an entity in other ways, and it certainly
doesn't mean anything with regard to the community, which continues to
be able to launch any personal attack it wishes.* Please note my
emphasis of the preceding sentence. In short, it obligates us to
treat other entities professionally and with respect even when we
disagree.
>> That's incorrect. The Foundation agrees to not to personally
>> criticize
>> a Board member "during the same time period," which is defined
>> earlier
>> in the provision as "during their terms on the Board and for three
>> years thereafter." The provision defines a coterminous mutual
>> obligation.
>>
> Touche. Upon rereading this, you are indeed correct.
Thanks.
>> As to your suggested changes in wording, feel free to make those
>> recommendations to the Board. Again, it's worth keeping in mind that
>> the drafting of this Statement was done at Board request.
>>
> That definitely surprises me. How exactly did the Board make such a
> request?
I think this question is best directed to Board members themselves and
not to me.
--Mike
Dear community members,
Though it was a (very) difficult decision to make, I have decided not to
be a candidate to the coming elections of the board of trustees of
Wikimedia Foundation as a community representative.
After four years on the board, and over one year and a half as its
chair, I observe that the organization has matured a lot.
In 2004 the Wikimedia Foundation was a tiny organization (total expenses
23 000 dollars) set up and led by Jimmy, running three servers from
remote Florida and hosting projects with frequent denial of services due
to unsufficient technical support, Wikimedia has now grown into a six
million dollars organization, operating over 300 servers, led by an
accountable board, with a new office in San Francisco and a staff of 15.
Operations are now guided by a brand new mission statement, with defined
values, procedures, policies, and charters. Fully independently audited,
the Wikimedia Foundation receive the financial support of thousand of
small donors, as well as support from commercial companies and major
foundations.
Wikimania, our annual conference was first held in 2005, one year after
I joined the board. Wikimania then travelled from Frankfurt to Boston,
Taipei, and Egypt, with the great honor of being hosted by the New
Library of Alexandria this year.
In the past four years, new projects were started (eg, Wikimedia
Commons, Wikinews). Wikipedia rose from rank 500 in october 2004 to rank
8 in october 2007 of most popular websites in the world. As of April
2008, Wikipedia attracts 683 million visitors annually, reading over 10
millions articles in 253 languages. Other projects are thriving and made
available in more and more languages every year (eg, Wikibooks,
Wiktionary etc…). All Wikimedia projects are now freely available
worldwide on the internet with an excellent quality of service.
Those are fantastic, tremendous achievements!
I am proud I was part of it.
Of course, all this was not my own doing, but was made possible by the
dedication of all board members, of previous and current staff members,
contractors, and most of all, of community volunteers. Good job, everyone!
I want to thank the 2004 voters, who elected me to participate at the
organization level, and the 2005 voters, who confirmed me on the board
for two additional years. My nomination as chair in 2006 and renewal in
2007 was probably more a stroke of luck :-) I was given the difficult
task to help Wikimedia to mature from a Founder-led group to a mature
organization with a dual board/executive set-up, various policies and
procedures, as well as controls to prevent or limit damages. In short, I
had a position of interim chair :-) The 2007 board trusted me to
stabilize the transition to the new Executive Director. Twenty months
later, I consider the job done. The disappearance of the previously
recurring question "but what if Jimbo is hit by a bus this morning ?" is
in itself a sufficient sign :-) The organization is more solid than it
has ever been.
I would like to offer a special "thank you" note to Jan-Bart, the
vice-chair, for the highly valuable work on the board. Jan-Bart is one
of these “outsiders”, that some think should not be on the board. I
could not disagree more. Outsiders may share our values deeply, bring
expertise that does not exist within the active community, and provide
an external view sometimes very refreshing on our in-house debates.
Building an organization that could accompany the exponential growth of
the Wikimedia projects was, as you can imagine, quite a challenge, and
did not always go without tensions. I read with much attention the
community petition started after the board reorganization announcement.
It would be a serious misconception to imagine that board members always
fully agree on what is decided by the board as a whole. Board members
can (and do) disagree. Sometimes, no decision is made because there are
irreconcilable factions. But often, they agree to a compromise, so that
a needed collective decision can be made. Directions are not set in
stone and it will be the responsibility of the next board to deal with
the future. Various trends are showing up right now, as pointed out in
the petition or by various emails to this list.
After the decision over reorganization of the board, I was placed in a
rather impossible situation. New blood is highly necessary to the board,
but the unique position opened to an elected community representative
places me in direct competition with these new, “third” generation
leaders currently being candidates. If three positions had been opened,
it would have been an entirely different matter, but this one position
truly deserves to go to a brand new member, with fresh energy and ideas.
I wish the candidates all the best of luck. The new board member can
count on my support to welcome him or her after the elections, during
our roughly 2 weeks of overlapping presence on the board.
Though I will reduce my participation, I will certainly not quit the
projects. My heart is dedicated to them and to our love of knowledge. I
intend to keep on “thinking global”, even if I act more “local”. Since
my first days on the projects (February 2002), my focus has been on
transparency, volunteer involvement, decentralization, bottom-up
decision making, and love for cultural and linguistic diversity. I will
stay available to share my time and energy with those who are, with
pride but modesty, supporting our projects as well as their values. An
organization is at the service of a cause, and the primary interest and
focus of its members should not be the organization itself, but its
mission and, even more important, the vision behind the mission and the
values shared between all members. Our vision should be our credo, day
after day: bringing knowledge to every single human being on Earth.
Love
Anthere / Florence Devouard