[Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

On 10/06/11 6:33 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> Thomas Morton, 05/10/2011 12:31:
>> On 5 October 2011 11:20, church.of.emacs.ml
>>> Are you seriously comparing that italien law to the proposed image filter?
>>>
>>> Are you aware of the principle of proportionality? What might be okay to
>>> do against a law that would kill Wikipedia is different from what is
>>> okay to do against piece of software that would most likely have only
>>> minor effects for the reader.
>> A quote:
>>
>> The problem, of course, with the principle of proportionality is that
>> usually it is invoked by one of the stakeholders, who blithely misses the
>> issue - which is that they are disagreeing over the consequences.
>>
>> The point being; for these hypothetical Wikipedians running such a protest
>> the consequence of an image filter may not match your own view...
> I agree with Tobias that this is a red herring.
> I'd like to add that despite the "us vs. them" feeling (WMF against the
> community and so on), I don't think anoyone can miss the difference
> between a "foreign" organization part of your own movement (and which
> runs your website) and the government of your country, with regard to
> effective actions required.
> We also have a small precedent, ace.wiki asking readers to boycott
> Wikipedia, an obvious absurd reverted by the global community (long
> story short).
>
I'm happy that the Italian language Wikipedia is back in business, and I 
hope that in the future projects will find better ways to protest than 
suicide strategies.  The key point is that Wikipedias are based on 
languages, not countries. For Italian there is a high correlation 
between language and country, but that does not mean that there are no 
readers in neighboring countries nor in the larger Italian diaspora. 
Other major languages are official in several important countries, and 
it would not do to shut one of them down in response to a bad proposed 
law in only one country.

Protesting bad laws should be a responsibility that belongs at the 
chapter level, under the assumption that it is the chapter that is most 
familiar with the laws of its country, and what can be done with the 
least harm to those around them.

Ray