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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:26 PM, Natacha Rault
<n.rault(a)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.
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