[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the Wikimedia Foundation

[Andrew Gray]

On 16/11/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/16/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "...regardless of [their] nation, culture or language"?
>
> point of view, religion, sexual orientation, etc etc etc.
>
> I hope that someday the entire world will expect that
> non-discrimination will be the norm and that discrimination will be
> the exception which needs enumeration.

Back when I was working for a student union, there was a Plaque on the
wall of the bar (of all places) detailing all the many and myriad ways
in which the union did not intend to discriminate among people. It was
a very long list.

We occasionally sat there for hours debating a) if the existence of
such a list meant we were allowed to discriminate in any ways not
listed; and b) if there were any possible ways one could discriminate
against somebody which were left...

> Even so, if we're going to make it unreasonably long I can think of
> more important points to make than the fact that we don't intend to
> discriminate.

Fairy nuff. I just feel that if we are going to mention it, it'd be
nice to do it in a way that sounds good...

I actually quite like that [their] can be elided, and it leaves the
nice ambiguity - of course we don't discriminate against people, but
it's nice to state we don't distinguish among *knowledge* ;-)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk