There has been discussion about this in the past.
To second Philippe's comment: A uniform process makes sense. In practice,
most of the advocacy or policy positions of the WMF have for years taken
the form of amicus briefs. And positions the WMF takes on behalf of
promoting, preserving, or collaborating on free knowledge fall under the
mandate of the LCA team (since this spring).
So we're starting from a position where that team has the most experience
and day-to-day concern with such positions. And there is no t yet an
organized community body that tracks such things - despite the idea of an
advocacy advisory group.
I do think there are quite a lot of different staff with "approval" in the
current guideline. Must it be so time-consuming? And I would love to see
the foundation practice delegating some of this bureaucracy and
responsibility to non-staff groups. We have no shortage of energy, talent,
and experience there in the community.
SJ
On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation <
pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi MZ -
I'm surprised by this, given that it clearly delineates that it doesn't
impact community requests at all, and only applies to requests that come to
the Foundation. It seems logical that there be a uniform process for
routing those internally and this is an attempt to transparently tell the
community what that process is. The alternative is to have no policy for
handling it and make it up every time.
Regardless, if you have specific concerns, perhaps you could lay them out
at the talk page and we can figure out if it makes sense to modify or
adjust the policy in some way?
PB
-----------------------
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
-----Original Message-----
From: MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com>
Sender: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:13:47
To: Wikimedia Mailing List<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: WMF Policy and Political Affiliations
Guideline
Geoff Brigham wrote:
Since the SOPA blackout, we have had a number of
requests come in for
public affiliations regarding policy and political issues. The Wikimedia
Foundation (WMF) is not a political organization, and many may argue
understandably that our role is to support great projects - not politics.
That said, we recognize that there may be select times where such
affiliations should be considered, and, in those cases, we should have a
review process in place, especially where there is strong community
interest in an issue.
To make sure that the right parties, including the community, are
involved
in the review process, we have created the Policy
and Political
Affiliations
Guideline<
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundati
on_Policy_and_Political_Affiliations_Guideline>to
clarify when and how the WMF associates itself publicly on policy and
political issues. This guideline is an internal ³rule of thumb² covering
requests to and actions by the WMF - without restricting the independent
actions of the community. The guideline sets out a number of different
types of affiliations and examines when review is appropriate by the
community, WMF staff, and the Board of Trustees.
This appears to be an unprecedented power-grab by the office of the General
Counsel. Was there any Board or community support for placing so much power
in an unelected and unaccountable lawyer?
MZMcBride
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Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266