That is an obvious false equivalence. The issue isn't people rooting for the WMF to take political stances that mirror their own. The issue is whether or not that the WMF should recognize that its mission can intersect with or conflict with political stances and then act appropriately. The free dissemination of factual, neutral information and the ability of editors to participate in that dissemination is in many contexts a political act and the WMF should recognize this. To contend that Wikimedia activity is, can be, or should be always politically neutral is naive and comes from a place of privilege where your personal engagement will likely never be threatened by political interference.
On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:59 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:26 PM, Natacha Rault n.rault@me.com wrote:
...After all there is a notion called "freedom of speech".... Katherine Maher did a statement and so what? That does not prevent wikipedians from editing, and confronting opinions to approach NPOV (actually there is no achieved NPOV on Wikipedia in what concerns the gender biases as far as I see it).
I imagine that your response would be different if Katherine's position didn't match your own. What if she posted that she agreed that "extreme vetting" was an appropriate response to the risk of terrorist attacks, that nations with liberal refugee policies had experienced multiple attacks in recent years, and that radicalism is an existential threat to free societies? These are views shared by hundreds of millions of people (although not you, Katherine, or me). This hopefully illustrates why taking political positions beyond the mission is fraught with risk, and why the frequent demands that the WMF (or the community) do so are misplaced. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe