[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: WMF Policy and Political Affiliations Guideline

[Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation]

Hi MZ -

I'm surprised by this, given that it clearly delineates that it doesn't impact community requests at all, and only applies to requests that come to the Foundation.  It seems logical that there be a uniform process for routing those internally and this is an attempt to transparently tell the community what that process is. The alternative is to have no policy for handling it and make it up every time. 

Regardless, if you have specific concerns, perhaps you could lay them out at the talk page and we can figure out if it makes sense to modify or adjust the policy in some way?

PB
-----------------------
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc 


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com>
Sender: wikimedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:13:47 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List<wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: WMF Policy and Political Affiliations
 Guideline

Geoff Brigham wrote:
> Since the SOPA blackout, we have had a number of requests come in for
> public affiliations regarding policy and political issues. The Wikimedia
> Foundation (WMF) is not a political organization, and many may argue
> understandably that our role is to support great projects - not politics.
> That said, we recognize that there may be select times where such
> affiliations should be considered, and, in those cases, we should have a
> review process in place, especially where there is strong community
> interest in an issue.
> 
> To make sure that the right parties, including the community, are involved
> in the review process, we have created the Policy and Political
> Affiliations 
> Guideline<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundati
> on_Policy_and_Political_Affiliations_Guideline>to
> clarify when and how the WMF associates itself publicly on policy and
> political issues.  This guideline is an internal ³rule of thumb² covering
> requests to and actions by the WMF - without restricting the independent
> actions of the community. The guideline sets out a number of different
> types of affiliations and examines when review is appropriate by the
> community, WMF staff, and the Board of Trustees.

This appears to be an unprecedented power-grab by the office of the General
Counsel. Was there any Board or community support for placing so much power
in an unelected and unaccountable lawyer?

MZMcBride



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