On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 10:24, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that the official announcement on Commons is worse than unfortunate.
The announcement by the Diversity Working Group on a sub-page of the VP of their recommendation to permit NC and ND license restrictions on Commons, comes after no attempt in advance to discuss the recommendation or its wording with Wikimedia Commons community *on Commons*.[...] Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AVillage_pump%2FCop...
Correction: The note on VP/C was a volunteer's note, there was no announcement by the Working Group.
To correct the absence of a Wikimedia Commons discussion about recommendation to fundamentally change what Wikimedia Commons exists for, the following proposal has been raised on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Proposal_t...
Everyone is free to add to discussion there, especially if there is any verifiable evidence that allowing Non Commercial or No Derivatives license constraints would enhance the mission of Wikimedia Commons rather than hamper it.
I would be particularly interested to read the evidence and see a (Wikimedia Commons) case book supporting the claim in the WG recommendations that "Multiple studies have determined that extant movement policies don’t just reflect the systemic biases, they make biases against marginalized communities worse, in effect, re-colonizing and oppressing diverse knowledge(ibid)" as the four references given provide /no evidence/ about Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia Commons in particular "re-colonizing", apart from tangentially using a similar word and so is misrepresenting the researchers and academics that wrote the referenced papers. Though I would be sympathetic to the proper review of evidence when it comes to decolonizing educational material, and taking action such as better application of curation methods, this statement as written appears unsourced political spin and is highly inappropriate from a WMF sponsored working group.
Thanks, Fae