[Foundation-l] Concerns for Safety

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dan,
>  It is a real American attitude that the WMF could be considered liable for
>  selecting a location like Alexandria. I find it is an utterly reprehensible
>  and disgusting attitude. Limiting this to Americans only makes this attitude
>  even worse.

The issue here is the safety of our volunteers, and you're really
bending over backwards to ignore it. Maybe you should start another
thread so you can share your bigotry about the "disgusting attitudes"
of Americans in a more appropriate place. I personally would like to
keep this thread on topic.

>  The potential risk has been so well covered that it is unlikely that any
>  claimant would prevail. They would not be convincing becuse the claimed
>  risks have been widely published in advance.
>  Thanks,

And you're completely ignoring how bad the situation would have to
become before an attendee felt that they needed to take legal or civil
recourse. People don't sue if everybody comes home from the conference
happy and safely. Nobody sued after Taiwan or Germany because nothing
bad happened in those places. Lawsuits and legal problems are going to
be raised after the shit has already hit the fan. Do you understand
that lawsuits would be a last resort after

It's amazing to me how you can still preach about how Wikimania is
about spreading our message to people and getting people involved, and
then go on to say that entire groups should be excluded (or, more
politically, that they should exclude themselves) because they have
concerns about the venue. Alexandria has problems, and so people who
are affected by those problems shouldn't be involved, right?.
Wikimania will bring in a lot of new volunteers, and next year we can
tell them that their safety and their participation don't matter. If
they have concerns or complaints that they can just shut up and stay
home. Gerard doesn't have any concerns with it, and apparently that's
the only criteria here that matters.

--Andrew Whitworth