Dear friends,
As wonderful as it is to see this discussion unfold, showing how many of us
care deeply about humanism and the movement's impact in the material world,
I'd like to observe that it also demonstrates how underdeveloped our
movement-wide political processes are. To my understanding, our tools
consist of: a small group interested in participating in this mailing list,
a small group who attends to metawiki, and an infrequent meeting of
chapters.
It seems that all of these venues are frustrated by a lack of real power,
and Wikimedia-l in particular has the character of a pirate radio station
or underground newspaper rather than a place where we can build consensus.
There's certainly some value in the oppositional and antiestablishment
perspective that comes out of this arrangement, but perhaps we're missing
out on the benefits that would come from a fully-developed democracy?
One alternative approach would be that Wikimedians resurrect something like
a "membership organization" in which you collectively own the WMF and
directly elect the entire Board. Then you may find your questions
answered, and have a path to building lasting consensus around
movement-wide issues.
Adam
[[mw:User:Adamw]]
On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 12:33 AM, Christophe Henner <chenner(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hey,
I love that thread. Touchy topîc and yet an awesome discussion, Thank you
so much :D
A few month ago, little time after my election, I asked that question on
Facebook and provided my own answer. And yes, I do believe that saying
neutral knowledge should be freely accessible by everyone on the planet is
kind of a really really really really strong political statement.
I also think that "politic" discussion is hard to have as the word politics
can bare many different meaning. One of them is derived on how we use it
regarding national politics. We use politics as a word to include all
politics (economic, social, education, etc.). And political party, or a
political organization, will tend to adress all of them (or some).
That is not what we are talking about actually. To me, I mean politic as,
Asaf will love that, in latin (pertaining to public life). We are a
political organization, we stand for strong values, but we are not
political in the sense we're aligned with a specific party or candidate.
And I don't know about the US, but one thing I love with french wikimedian
is knowing some of them are so fare away from me on the political scale and
yet share values (if I had time I would love to explain how I believe this
is an exemple of why our political systems are broken ^^).
So in the end, to me, the question is where do we draw the line when it
comes to standing up for our values and, related questions, what are those
values we should stand up for?
But again, as a movement, we have the potential to have a huge impact on
the world. That is not neutral, that is a force of change and change always
is poltical.
Christophe HENNER
Chair of the board of trustees
chenner(a)wikimedia.org
+33650664739
twitter *@schiste* skype *christophe_henner*
On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 12:23 AM, Asaf Bartov <abartov(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 2:55 PM James Salsman
<jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The question I have been trying to ask, going back years now in fact,
is
whether
"empower" refers to the political power to secure and retain
the freedoms necessary and sufficent to contribute to the mission, or
some other kind of power.
Well, it's your lucky day: you're finally getting an answer!
WMF's de-facto interpretation of "empower" in the [[m:Mission]] does
*not*
include "political power to secure and
retain the freedoms necessary and
sufficient to contribute to the mission".
We do not directly solve people's lacking infrastructure (except
indirectly
via partnerships like Wikipedia Zero), we do not
provide computers to
billions of people who don't have them, we do not teach literacy to the
illiterate, we do not feed the poor so that they may contribute, and we
do
not declare war on North Korea to free its poor
people from the awful
tyranny they suffer under, to enable them to contribute. The list goes
on.
The concrete ways WMF worked to "empower" have been providing and
maintaining the main contribution platforms (the wikis), auxiliary
platforms (Tool Labs, Quarry, PAWS, Wikidata Query, etc.), funding for
*Wikimedia-related* activities via grants, programmatic resources and
mentorship, funding and support for international gatherings of the
active
community, and a few other things.
Your aspirational expansive interpretation (which includes paying editors
to enable them to contribute, if memory serves) of "empower" has never
been
close to what WMF, under its various leaderships,
ever considered
appropriate.
Now that your years-long query has an answer, perhaps you can stop
asking.
A.
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