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

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  My point is not that we should not consider South Africa for next year, my
>  point is that all places have their issues and once you start to exclude
>  countries for what is problematic to some there are few places where we can
>  have our Wikimania. In pandering to special interests we exclude many people
>  and countries and that is both a travesty and a tragedy given what we aim to
>  do.

I think it's a little bit of an oversimplification to suggest that the
safety of our members is a "special interest". We don't have any
census data yet, but I would find it hard to believe that the vast
majority of wikimedians are straight, jew/christian/muslim men. There
are a lot of places we can go in this world without institutionalized
bigotry that puts our members at risk to life or liberty. A single
murder, or a single rape, or a single instance of any other violent
crime would have a massive chilling effect on Wikimania, and possibly
all of Wikimedia. We should never run this risk, even if that means we
have to abandon Wikimania entirely. I don't like that option, but if
we start arguing about the lesser of two evils, or trying to justify
the risk that our members will be exposed to, then we aren't focusing
on the proper priorities, and we aren't making acceptable decisions.

Saying that "the number of rapes in SA is sky high", and then saying
that this isn't a reason why not to hold a Wikimania there is absurd.
It's easy for a man to say "Well, i'm not in any danger of being
raped, so I don't see a problem with it". It's easy for a straight man
to say "Well, i'm not gay, so I dont need to worry about the way gays
are treated", or even "Well, gays are just a small minority, and we
don't need to worry about special interest groups".

I say that Wikimania be canceled. Not moved or rescheduled but
canceled entirely until we have some sort of assurance that the people
who are making decisions about it are doing so in a responsible way.
Dismissing the safety of our members as a "special interest" is simply
not acceptable.

--Andrew Whitworth