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

[Florence Devouard]

David Strauss 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
> yet to see a response that extends beyond the immediate safety of
> conference attendees. (And even those responses failed to address the
> danger for transgender and transsexual community members.) Even if we
> don't risk anything ourselves, we should care about more than our own
> safety: where we hold a conference shows what we consider acceptable.
> 
> The "points" system that arrived at this decision strikes me as shallow
> and inhuman, a failed attempt at giving the process a veneer of
> objectivity. With arbitrary categories of equal weight, why should
> anyone expect it to yield a good result? Even then, all the public sees
> is a bunch of numbers without justifications or accountability. When I
> buy a car, I don't create the categories "exterior color," "interior
> color," "CD player," and "starts up" with equal weight, yet "social
> areas" weighed equally with "local laws" in the bidding process. How
> useful are these "social areas" to the parts of our community whose
> social activities, even appearance, include aspects that would be
> dangerous in public Egyptian life? How many "points" is their freedom worth?
> 
> Alexandria was once distinguished as being the site of the Great
> Library, but the Egypt of today has more in common with the society that
> burned the library than the one that built it. Don't expect to find me
> at Wikimania 2008 Alexandria.
> 
> Sincerely,
> David Strauss
> 
> [1] http://www.gaymiddleeast.com/country/egypt
> [2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6724531.stm

hello

I will have only three comments.


I am very happy to see Alexandria as the next host city of Wikimania, 
the Wikimedia Foundation annual conference. Others already explained why 
it is a really great choice, so I will not comment any further on this.


Second, I was part of the jury with others. We looked carefully at many 
different criteria, and also offered our "gut feeling", and took into 
consideration comments provided on the meta talk and during the irc open 
meeting. Nothing was left aside.
Aside from cold "voting", most jury members sent details comments to 
explain why they voted in a certain way. They provided figures AND votes.
As Cary very well explained, the three bids were good bids. The three of 
them had some important strenghts and the three also had some 
weaknesses. We'll work on the weaknesses, and we'll surf on the 
strengths. Some people will always see some strengthes as stronger than 
the jury did, and the weaknesses are worse than the stronger did. As in 
ANY decision, there will be people happy and other unhappy. I still 
believe the process was fair, but no decision can make everyone happy. 
This has to be recognised. You are unhappy, you have arguments for being 
unhappy, you are free to provide this argument and that's okay. I am 
just sorry you are unhappy. But there is not a good choice on one hand 
and two bad choices. There is a preferred choice, which is probably a 
best choice.


The third point is that, however unhappy you are, I would urge you not 
to make attacks on people. It is not because you disagree with the jury 
that the jury did a bad job. I urge you to believe in our good faith and 
to believe that we did the best we could. You just simply disagree with 
us. I would not disagree with you that Egypt is not the most agreeable 
country in the world with regards to LGBT rights, I would not disagree 
with you that Egypt might be sometimes, in certain circonstances not the 
safer country as well; however, I do not think that having Wikimania in 
Egypt constitute in any way a support of this country political system 
(just as it was not either a support of the political system of Germany 
in 2005, the United States of America in 2006 and Taipei in 2007). Also, 
there are also great people in Egypt, just as everywhere else; and they 
do not deserve to be belittle, isolated or generally marginalized (which 
is what you propose) simply because they happen not to live in a country 
most agreeable to your personal beliefs.


Best

Anthere