[Foundation-l] Contingency plans for Wikimania

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>  Gregory Maxwell writes:
>
>  > The lack of interest in making an optional request for information
>  > which may be useful seems seems callous to me.
>
>  WP:SOFIXIT
>
>  It seems to me that this is a function that community members could
>  implement themselves, almost certainly better than the Foundation
>  could, especially if a significant number of community members care
>  about it. The Foundation would certainly be happy to coordinate with
>  such a volunteer-driven project.
[snip]

In the message I responded to you stated that the collection of
emergency contact information would present considerable privacy
concerns.   Here you seem to be suggesting that the foundation would
instead prefer to pass off the collection to a volunteer driven
project.  This seems like a completely inconsistent position, but
perhaps I just do not understand.

>  I personally believe there are more efficient and effective means of
>  creating such a list than to ask the Foundation to do it for you.
[snip]

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what means could possibly be more
efficient and effective than simply adding a single additional field
to the official Wikimania registration form.  Could you please
elaborate?

[snip]
> The
> Foundation is already doing other contingency planning.

I'm sorry, I haven't really been following these threads and only
tuned into this one because it was thread-broken and looked like a new
thread.

The last I saw on this subject was your message dated Fri, Apr 18,
2008.  As far as I could tell it included 6 questions directly related
to safety and security (Qs 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11) and with the
exception of 11 (contact with the Egyptian government) all were
clearly delegated to the local team.

Some of the earliest concerns about safety were raised after the
safety advice provided by the local team were found to be in direct
contradiction with advice provided by professional travel agents (in,
particular with respect to advisable dress for women).  It was the
belief of some, myself included, that although the local team has the
greatest access to information they may, understandably, not be the
most objective parties available to assess the risks and mitigations
specific to their region and its local cultures.

With that in mind I hope you can understand why some people are
dissatisfied that the foundation's response to concerns about safety
is to restate that those issues have been delegated to the local team.

Given the large volume of mail that has already been exchanged on this
subject I do not expect that a uniformly agreeable fully solution will
be found.  I do hope that the foundation will at least accept the
easiest and most harmless measures, such a collecting an emergency
contact list, clearly promoting objective third party travel guides on
the conferences information pages, etc...