Hoi,
Yes we can. Lots of Wikimedians talked about this but do not ignore the
fact that lots of Wikimedians had their reasons for not wanting to ask
attention for Bassel. We did not have a banner and is this our best
practice?
It is extremely unlikely that Bassel is still alive and I am not saying
that a banner would have made a difference but I do know why we do not know
this.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 5 February 2017 at 11:00, Pierre-Selim <pierre-selim(a)huard.info> wrote:
I'm really not sure we can say that we have let
one of us die in prison!
Especially that we did not care (lots of wikimedians talked about Bassel
as soon as they learnt about his situation).
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/10/08/bassel-missing-syria/
2017-02-05 10:45 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>:
Hoi,
Yair you are wrong. When our director spoke up against the ukaze of Mr
Trump about people visiting our office, the only office of the Wikimedia
Foundation, it directly affected our work, our mission. We have WMF
employees that cannot come to the office any longer. We have employees
that
cannot visit their family when there are grave
family situations.
The question is very much in what you call politics and the extend you
want
to excuse politics. When lawyers including the
person responsible for
prosecuting the law opine that an ukaze is illegal, it loses much of the
excuse. There are things we stand for as an organisation; we stand for
making our gender gap less. That is also very much political given that
Mr
Trump has it that women should dress like women..
Yair, you can not
defend
the inexcusable. We have values and when these
values are threatened,
when
they become political, they are still our
values.
We have let one of us die in prison [1]. The same argument. I will be
honest; I hate this. I have trouble believing that people can argue this
way. This was one of us and apparently we do not care.
Our reputation is in tatters [2] because of the way our servers are
energised. This may be politics for you but it is not to me. I do live
below sea level as it is. It is easy to compensate for this; we have the
money and when the WMF invests money in green energy and allows people to
invest with it to make our foot print smaller and help our readers, I
will
invest from the little that I have.
We seek to share the sum of all knowledge and for various reasons we
could
do much better. But to do better we have to want
to do better and my
experience is that we are not capable to do what is good for us because
of
politics. Internal politics.
Everyone may say what they want but politics affect us, they often affect
us negatively and for us the one thing that should guide us is how we
optimise our mission. When "politics" are required and have us say why
what
a government does negatively impact us, we should
and we do. We did so in
the past, we did so with China and now we need to do this with the USA,
Thanks,
GerardM
[1]
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2015/11/missingbassel-wikidata-as-
tool.html
[2]
https://rankabrand.org/websites/Wikipedia
On 5 February 2017 at 10:15, Yair Rand <yyairrand(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> When and how the Wikimedia Foundation should associate itself publicly
on
> policy and political issues is not a new
topic, and (as I have quite
> recently discovered) official guidelines have been around for nearly
five
> years now. The Guidelines on Foundation
Policy and Political
Association
> [1], established by WMF Legal for internal
use, specifically bring up
the
> issue of "public endorsement or
critique" of political policies,
listing
several
requirements for doing so, and further requiring that they
"should
> protect and advance Wikimedia’s mission “to empower and engage people
> around the world to collect and develop educational content under a
free
> license or in the public domain, and to
disseminate it effectively and
> globally.” Accordingly, we will not support causes unrelated to or
> inconsistent with that mission." The document goes on to list several
> examples such as anti-war activism and animal rights.
>
> I think this is an excellent and necessary policy.
>
> The recent blog post says "We strongly urge the U.S. administration to
> withdraw the recent executive order ... closing the doors to many
> refugees." I have yet to hear any arguments regarding how that
statement
> specifically protects and advances our
mission.
>
> I have, on the other hand, heard on this list many arguments by people
> explaining reasons why they feel very strongly that actions must be
taken
against a
certain country's administration, about how they expect that
many
expected policies on general issues will cause
harm in areas that they
value. Areas that are not directly related to our mission.
I can imagine that some may feel that certain areas of immigration and
travel policy may be so closely associated to Wikimedia's functioning
that
action on that front must be taken. I would
expect such an issue to be
discussed independently of the personal political wishes of those
arguing.
If decisions are made on the basis that the only
relevant issue is
whether
> any action would further Wikimedia's goals, I would trust that such
> decisions were sufficiently reasonable.
>
> However, if that is not the basis used, and some in the community and
WMF
> are willing to have their own independent
individual values and goals
> override those of the movement, to harm Wikimedia goals to support
their
> own political goals... I would find it very
difficult to support such a
> decision. I don't mean to speak too harshly, but the united goals and
> vision of the movement are the _only_ thing that holds this diverse
> community together, the only means by which Wikimedia exists, and if
> outside aims can take priority, we would likely find that many would
not
appreciate some using Wikimedia as yet another bullet in someone's
arsenal
to be sacrificed in a political crusade, to say
the least.
"Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park.
It
is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we
can all go to think, to
learn, to share our knowledge with others."
Please let us keep it that way.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Foundation_Policy_
and_Political_Association_Guideline
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