Hi Erdal,
Before anything, I would like to recommand you to very very well check your facts. But I
see that you are trying to do this. Have some feedback from all turkish editors. Ask some
friends in Turkye to check as well. Perhaps Erik Zachte could help you on checking
statistics ? Or another developer might ? (Hashar, can you help on this ?)
The second point is that I would recommand low profile *as much as* possible.
I think making major reports to inform anyone on the planet that Turkish government is
doing censorship or that there are multiple individual moves in that direction is a *very
bad* idea. Same for starting an email campaign and call for help from Amnesty
International. Please, do not do this. Avoid threatening the government as well, as you
are NOT sure it is the government who might be responsible of it (you are not even sure
there is censorship, doubly less for knowing who is the instigator).
Generally, we are not here to say what is good and what is not good, or how authorities
should manage their countries. We try to demonstrate that freedom of information is better
in the long run, but we are not an advocacy group supporting human rights.
If you "attack" the government, and it is responsible of the current situation,
you do not let room for it to politely claim it was all a mistake, apology and restore
full access. You do not let room to keep face, you contribute to escalating a conflict.
If you "attack" the government and it is not responsible of the current
situation, you will upset it toward us, and this will not have good consequences in the
long run.
Whatever the government, we do not want to be expressely seen as an advocacy group saying
what they do is bad, we should rather stay low profile, and remind that we have a strong
neutrality policy and are not taking sides.
If you really feel you have to make it known what is going on, I think you should
advertise it just as you would in a wikipedia article. Just report facts (decrease of
access as shown in recent statistics; report from xxx wikipedians that they cant access
the site anymore. Cite your sources if you can (people is tough, but stats do not fear
anything). Stick to facts, and do not draw any public conclusion. Do not make a long rant
on how horrendous it is that censorship exist, that human rights are not respected. Just
let the reader make its own opinion on why access is impaired and where it could come
from. You might indeed mention in the article that it might be a temporary technical
problem.
In short, let a back door so that the situation can resolve without getting in a war
necessarily and upsetting people.
Anthere
Wikimedia Foundation
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