No subject

First Wikimedia Foundation (and its governing body, the Board) should have =
a
mechanism to force the community to debate and search for a consensus. Call
it founder=92s flag or voice of conscience flag or whatever you want. This =
is
exactly what Jimbo did. He didn=92t impose his will although founder=92s fl=
ag
gave him the power to do it.

Secondly it should be stated clearly that once a true consensus is reached,
the community is sovereign in developing the project. The duty of the
Foundation is providing the means to put in practice those decisions. To pu=
t
a humoristic example, if the law of some state says that the value for
number pi is mandatorily 3.2 [1] and the community reaches the consensus
that we must explain clearly that the law is wrong, then if necessary the
Foundarion must avoid being under the rules of that state.

Perhaps some other hygienic measures should be taken. By example perhaps
stewards should hold only rights to change user=92s status but not to act a=
s
sysop of any project.



*The case of Images and other =93sensible=94 material*

Going to the images with sexual content I think that this should be
addresses in a parallel way as other sensible issues like:

1)      Images that could offend people of some religion.

2)      Images in fair use.

3)      Statements in biographies of living people.

4)      Statements that can harm the image of products or companies.

5)      Naming the articles when the name can carry a biased point of view.
By example naming the articles of small towns in Spain using the name
imposed by fascist dictatorship instead of the official Spanish name.

6)      Contents possibly infringing copyrights.

7)      Etc.

I think that in those cases we should not change our policies to make happy
the affected people but we should create mechanisms to guarantee we are in
the safe side: Not publish or publish only the safe official version until
we have enough evidences that the sensible material is right, legal,
relevant, and has educational purposes. Perhaps we must strength some
policies; perhaps to call somebody =93thief=94 in their biography we can=92=
t
accept any kind of reference but a reference providing clear evidences that
this is true. We also must give to the world clear evidences that we are
extremely serious and careful with this issues if we decide to put an image
=93sensible=94 there must be clear evidences that we have done our best to
guarantee that this image has educational content, that this image is
required for the project, that this image accomplish with the law. We can=
=92t
make happy everybody; our goal of providing the sum of all human knowledge
is above the interest of reaching a broader public or making happy some kin=
d
of readers. But we can make everybody agree with us that in =93sensible
issues=94 we have strong reasons to say every thing we say and to provide
every image we have.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

> Message: 9
> Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 23:42:44 -0700
> From: Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational
>        content
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <4BEE4264.9020408 at verizon.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3DUTF-8; format=3Dflowed
>
> On 5/7/2010 5:30 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
> > On 7 May 2010 16:07, Kim Bruning<kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>  wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote:
> >>
> >>> announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to
> >>> release the following statement:
> >>>
> >> Just to be sure:
> >> Are there no other statements that have been made by the board
> >> or are being planned to be made by the board on this subject?
> >>
> >> sincerly,
> >>         Kim Bruning
> >>
> > Kim, the board (and I) have been talking about this for the past
> > couple of days, and we'll continue to talk about it over the next
> > couple of weeks.  I think it's fairly likely there will be some kind
> > of statement or statements at the end of that.  I'm expecting that
> > over the next few weeks, we all will be paying attention to the
> > conversations on Commons and elsewhere, including here.
> >
> Just to come back to this point, the board has had some ongoing
> discussion and will be having a meeting on Tuesday, May 18. I don't know
> for certain that there will be a statement following that meeting, or
> whether there will be any particular outcome. I have been informed that
> some resolutions will be proposed, but I can't predict whether they will
> be acted upon.
>
> Also, did anyone keep a log of the open meeting from Wednesday in the
> #wikimedia IRC channel? Has that been posted anywhere for others to revie=
w?
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>