On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 10:24, Fæ <faewik(a)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%2FCo…
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_…
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