[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

Sue Gardner sgardner at wikimedia.org
Mon Oct 10 19:16:34 UTC 2011


On 10 October 2011 11:56, Möller, Carsten <c.moeller at wmco.de> wrote:
> Sue wrote:
>> It is asking me to do something.
>> But it is not asking me to do the specific thing that has
>> been discussed over the past several months, and which the Germans
>> voted against.
>
> I may translate:
> As the German community has voted against filters,
> I was ordered to circumvent this vote by making some adjustments to the wording.
>
> That will not work. The vote was very clear agaist all image filters.
> The referendum was a farce, as we clearly see.
>
> Sorry, somebody is playing games with us.


Truly, Carsten, nobody is playing games with you. The Board's
discussion was sincere and thoughtful.

This is how the system is supposed to work. The Board identified a
problem; the staff hacked together a proposed solution, and we asked
the community what it thought. Now, we're responding to the input and
we're going to iterate. This is how it's supposed to work: we mutually
influence each other.

I'm not saying it isn't messy and awkward and flawed in many respects:
it absolutely is. But nobody is playing games with you. The Board is
sincere. It is taking seriously the German community, and the others
who have thoughtfully opposed the filter.

The right thing to do now is to accept the olive branch, and work with
the Wikimedia Foundation to figure out a good solution. You want to
train the Wikimedia Foundation that listening to you is the path to a
successful outcome :-)

Thanks,
Sue



--

Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

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