On 27 January 2012 06:38, Philippe Beaudette philippe@wikimedia.org wrote:

Hi everyone -

Sue has asked me to create a mailing list to discuss advocacy and Wikimedia's position in it for the future. Although I don't yet have the list created, I wanted to put out a call for moderators. If you're interested in moderating this mailing list (a bit more of an "active" moderation role, nudging people on topic, etc), would you please let me know by private email (philippe{{@}}wikimedia.org)? Depending on how many people express interest, I'll figure out how we proceed forward.

Thanks! pb

When you say " a mailing list to discuss advocacy and Wikimedia's position in it", do you mean a list dedicated to discussing how/why/whether we should use Wikimedia's visibility and credibility for political lobbying purposes - e.g filings in court actions, submissions to various government policy reviews and of course the recent blackouts?

If so, that sounds like an excellent idea. There are local political issues that might help or hinder our movement in many countries - Obviously SOPA in the US, ACTA in Europe right now, the proposed Internet Filter in Australia... Whilst we certainly shouldn't ever think that political activities are our primary purpose (and it would be against the rules of most countries for a Charity to do that anyway), I do think that we've only just started to flex our muscles in influencing governments to listen to our perspective. Certainly the encyclopedia contains neutrally-worded information, but delivering free-knowledge is a highly political and potentially subversive act!

Once they've got a baseline of organisational capacity, Chapters are ideally placed to get involved in this kind of advocacy in their countries/regions and I look forward to the day when, for example, 20+ Chapters can submit coordinated responses to a European Union Copyright review.

Sincerely, -Liam