[Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

2011/10/5 David Richfield <davidrichfield at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Regardless, what's done is done, for
>>> the moment.
>>
>> Except that WMF as steward of the open information can roll any of that blackout crap back.
>> Primary mission is spreading the knowledge, and now it.wikipedia obviously fails at it.
>
> it.wikipedia is not "failing" at spreading knowledge.  it.wikipedia is
> taking all steps it can to make sure that it can succeed at that aim
> in future.

This law proposal has been around in Italy for quite a long time. If
I'm correct it's about three years.
Last year there has been a period when the law was in the mainstream
media (while it was also dubbed as "legge ammazza-blog", "blog-killer
law"), but then (for other political reasons) the topic was forgot,
the law proposal eliminated from discussion in parliament, and nobody
discussed it much more.
At that time (~ 15 months ago) Wikimedia Italia issued a press
communique and asked on it.wiki Village Pump if there were Wikipedians
who would like to sign it to show their support. That communique
collected circa 300 signatures. There also was a discussion about
putting a link to it in the sitenotice, there was a large majority (>
2/3 of many voters) but given the fact that it seemed to be a strong
move, and in the meanwhile the topic "faded away", nothing was done in
the end.

In the last few days, though, the law proposal returned in the
mainstream and it is going to be discussed in parliament today and in
the next days. This time the community itself discussed and
autonomously produced the communique you see now. It was put in the
village pump and after two days of discussion where an *outstanding*
majority (I will say almost unanimous) agreed to lock the site and put
the communique in his place, we have arrived to the current
situation.So it has not been neither an easy or quick decision.

Hope that helps to contextualize the situation.

Cristian