[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

[David Strauss]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> (resend to the foundation list, plus a postscript)
> 
> On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> 
>>> Cary Bass wrote:
>>>> The Jury for Wikimania 2008 bids have met and are pleased to announce
>>>> that Wikimania 2008 will be held in Alexandria, Egypt.
>>> I'm offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe
>>> (rotation) trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other
>>> civil rights (local laws). While visitors to Egypt are certainly not at
>>> the same risk, I refuse to spend any money in a country that -- as
>>> recently as 2004 -- sentenced someone to 17 years of prison and two
>>> years of hard labor for posting a personal ad on a gay website[1]. A
>>> blogger was imprisoned in 2007 for four years for "insulting Islam and
>>> defaming the President of Egypt."[2] Jimmy Wales even attended the
>>> Amnesty conference denouncing the censorship. No legal or cultural
>>> reforms since give me confidence that the situation has improved.
>>>
>>> Wikimedia and its projects have an abundance of people from marginalized
>>> groups and political advocacy organizations participating at every
>>> level. A place that persecutes, censors, and prosecutes such groups
>>> under the banner of snuffing out "Satanism" is not a location that
>>> affirms the pluralism and intellectual freedom of Wikimedia.
>>>
>>> People raised these objections early in the bidding process, but I have
>> As a jury member, I do not remember any comments from you on this
>> subject, David; perhaps I missed them. At any rate, what are you
>> trying to accomplish by sending this message after the winner was
>> announced, and not before when we were discussing the bids?
>>
>> Wikimania and Wikimedia are both global in scope, which means that
>> while we can condemn censorship and loss of human rights everywhere we
>> must also take into account a global range of values. Our projects
>> focus specifically on free knowledge, and I expect that will be
>> highlighted at the conference.
>>
>> -- phoebe
> 
> p.s. as a postscript to this message which I also sent to wikimania-l, I'd
> like to point out that this is not a closed process, and if anyone feels as
> strongly about the criteria as David does, a message to the 2009 jury would
> be appreciated. We the jurors did our best good-faith effort to incorporate
> community concerns and use our own best judgment about this often
> contentious process; but we cannot fully represent the community without
> community feedback. We got little to no response to our calls for feedback
> on the criteria. Such sweeping statements as David makes are certainly best
> backed up with a little effort to provide data while decisions are being
> made.

The voting system, while flawed in my opinion, has little to do with the
fact that Atlanta was hurt more by being closer to a previous Wikimania
than Alexandira was hurt by Egypt's history of imprisoning gays and
political/religious dissidents.

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