[Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[Nathan]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The question is that all Internet people in Italy is having strike
> because the project of law can be stopped if not approved. If it will
> be approved, it's harder to do something.
>
> It means that any action must be done now.
>
> Ilario
>


Sure, I understand. My immediate gut reaction was that I'm leery of
Wikimedia projects, of themselves and independent from the WMF,
getting involved in political advocacy and protest actions. On second
thought, though, I suppose if a U.S. law placed an untenable burden on
the English Wikipedia, we might take some action in our organizational
self-interest.

I do think the WMF should have a role in this decision; I suppose the
question of project self-negation hasn't really arisen in the past -
but I'm not sure that, as a general rule, projects should be able to
voluntarily make themselves unavailable.