[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimedians at Wikimania in Alexandria.

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
There are those that go to Wikimania and there are those that do not. When
people chose to go, they make up there own mind if they want to go, feel
safe to go. Many of the people who have written on the threads on the
subject of the relative safety of Wikimania have explicitly written that
they will not go. They are also the people who have kept these threads
alive.

At some stage this continuous bickering makes it less safe for the people
that do go.

You have to be realistic in what the organising committee CAN do. They CAN
organise a conference, they can talk to the Egyptian security organisations
and this may make Wikimania 2008 a fortress where the easy coming and going
of people we are used to at Wikimania is no longer possible. It is written
that "the risk is dismissed". In reality you can only know what is written.
If I were to work on the security of the conference I would not necessarily
be vocal about it. If I had privileged information on this subject I would
not comment on it publicly.

Perception of risk is important. But whose perception is relevant? Certainly
the perception of the people that would not go anyway is completely
irrelevant. It is only the people that hesitate to go as a consequence of
this fearmongering whose perception is relevant. You have to appreciate as
much as anything this fear is based on discriminatory understanding of the
situation. Assessing the reality of this risk is something few people are
really competent to do.

When people come to Alexandria and insist on bringing their cultural baggage
and make a point of it, it will increase the risk. When people come
primarily to the conference to meet and talk about Wiki related stuff it
will not impact the risk to the conference and its attendees.

The risk of crazy people in Alexandria has to be offset with the certainty
that many people cannot come to venues in the first world. This is a really
powerful argument why a venue like Alexandria should be favoured over
fortress America or fortress Europe.

PS in those fortresses a terrorist can also come up and blow up the
conference.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 7:54 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's clear that some of the previous threads about Wikimania drifted
> off-topic and became unproductive. However, I think that several
> serious concerns got lost in the noise, and that we cannot drop the
> topic from the list without addressing them, especially as people are
> starting to plan their travel. If we can be assured that safety
> concerns are being taken seriously by the WMF and the Wikimania
> organizers and are not being dismissed or ignored, this would go a
> long way toward improving the tone of discussion on the list.
>
> I have two main concerns with Wikimania so far.
>
> First, the coverage of the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy and
> images in the Muhammad article on Wikipedia have sparked protest from
> many people, some of whom have made frightening and violent threats of
> reprisal against Wikimedia. These threats become more immediate and
> worthy of concern in a region where there is recent history of
> violence in response to religious controversies. This would be an
> extreme reaction, but I don't think that we can discount the
> possibility. It only takes a few extreme voices to cause a serious
> issue, and we need to be aware that this may happen and have a plan to
> ensure that attendees are not put in danger.
>
> Secondly, I am also concerned that the local organizing team has not
> been sufficiently responsive to concerns about safety. A risk which is
> dismissed is one which is not being mitigated. Every location has some
> risk involved, and there should always be consideration of those
> risks. But I can't find any indication that this is happening here,
> and I would like to know that someone is considering it and taking
> reasonable steps to mitigate it.
>
> Even if the safety concerns were completely without merit, perception
> of risk is important to an event which can only be successful if a
> diverse crowd of people attend. People are going to choose whether or
> not to go based on what they think is true. If people do not go
> because they think they will not be safe, even if they should have no
> reason to think so, the event is harmed by the failure to address
> their concerns.
>
> So I would like to know:
> What plans are in place to ensure attendees' safety at Wikimania?
> What happens if we get threats of violence at the event?
>
> Cheers
>
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