I have been waiting for more than three years for the WMF to settle
the question (below) of whether our long-term editor community
supports political activism, and if so, what sort, by surveying the
opinions of established editors. I was promised that the WMF would
include such questions in their regular annual surveys, but those have
apparently been discontinued entirely. Why?
I agree with and commend the Foundation for strongly supporting the
Earth Day Live event along with KDE and Imgur. Climate action and
campaign finance reform is certainly not opposed by any more than a
tiny, sub-5% fraction of the long-term editor base, and I question
whether the vocal minority on this list opposed to the WMF taking such
a firm position actually want more fossil fuel production and more
political financial corruption, or if the outrage stems instead
because political parties have also taken stands on those issues? Are
we going to allow the platforms of the political parties govern what
we consider acceptable from the Foundation?
In any case, do we all agree that the ability to travel
internationally is still fundamentally essential to the continued
operation of the Foundation and its servers, personnel, hiring, and
ability to protect its employees and editors from government abuses?
US State Department Halts Passport Issuing Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarchAgainstNazis/comments/g7yrb7/us_state_departm…
Stephen Miller indicates immigration pause will be long term: report
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/494572-stephen-miller-indicates…
That is what we should be running banners and threatening blackouts about.
-Will
The people who
are loudest in their demands for consensus
do not represent the Wikimedia movement.
The voices loudest for the WMF doing something against the
Trump administration are not representative of the Wikimedia
movement either....
Is the Community Process Steering Committee currently
prepared to "engage more 'quiet' members of our community"
with a statistically robust snap survey to resolve this question?
Anyone can go to Recent Changes and send a SurveyMonkey link to the
most recent few hundred editors with contributions at least a year
old, to get an accurate answer.
Will a respected member of the community please do this? I would like
to know what the actual editing community thinks of the travel ban and
their idea of an appropriate response. I don't want to see community
governance by opt-in participation in obscure RFCs.
I would offer to do this myself, but I value keeping my real name
unassociated with my enwiki userid.
-Will