[Foundation-l] Is Wikip/media politic?

[Jakob Voss]

Hi!

A friend of mine is searching for a quote of Jimbo meantioning that 
Wikipedia or Wikimedia is not political. Maybe Jimbo said something like 
this during the Politics of Wikimedia panel at Wikimania or related to 
comparing Wikimedia with the Red Cross or it's because something with 
tax in the US. Does anybody has a quote with a source?

In my opinion every encyclopaedia is politic; Jean-Baptiste Soufron 
wrote about "The political importance of the Wikipedia Project" [1]:

"It seemed to me that, first of all, a real encyclopedia should be a 
place directed toward a political project of its own, and not only
toward some sort of simple scientific dictionnary project."

There is several distinct questions:
1. Is Wikipedia politic?
2. Does the community think that Wikipedia is politic
3. Is Wikimedia Foundation a politic organisation?

I think the answer to the first question is "yes", the answer to the 
second is "some do, some don't" and the answer to the third is "no" 
(isn't it?) - but how do you explain the difference in the answers?

Greetings,
Jakob

[1] http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=71

P.S: Mathias pointed me to two German newspaper articles that also 
mention politics and Wikipedia - but you know that you cannot believe 
everything that journalists write, especially when there is only a 
German translation and no original quote of who said what:

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub4C34FD0B1A7E46B88B0653D6358499FF/Doc~E197429C5610645CAB70619D096D35BC5~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html
http://www.weltexpress.info/index.php?artikel_id=983&rubrik=5&lan=de