> > I can. You're displaying the literal-mindedness that's too common > on Wikipedia: everything has to be reduced down to a rule which something > either passes or fails and there's no such thing as nuance. The correct > answer is that while many things affect Wikipedia, not everything affects > Wikipedia to an equal degree. How do you figure out if a particular law > affects Wikipedia to a sufficient degree? It's hard--you discuss it and > maybe take a poll--but one thing you don't do is have an absolute rule > which insists that we must protest it if it passes the rule and we must > ignore it if it fails the rule. >
I appreciate the psychoanalysis, but I have to disagree. While "a U.S. law that affects Wikipedia" is certainly a narrow category, there's no clearly articulated reason for why this should be the limit to our political advocacy. It's hard to argue that a proposed law like SOPA -- which only theoretically might affect Wikipedia if it were passed, and only if we ignore the political realities behind enforcement decision-making -- is more important to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia mission than the permanent or intermittent blocking of Wikipedia in nations around the world. The general notion of free speech and free access to information is *the* core ideological underpinning of the Wikimedia movement (as clearly demonstrated by the SOPA protest), and there are certainly many opportunities for advocacy in this area once we accept that advocacy by the projects directly is a Good Thing. More broadly, I disagree that it is nit-picking narrow-mindedness to mark an important distinction between a project that does not engage in political advocacy (or take any positions at all, as a project) and one that does. First, it's not a one-off - like anything, once we've done it once, it becomes easier to do it again... and as I've tried to demonstrate, it's not difficult to argue that there are any number of other worthy problems we might decide to similarly address. If you disagree, just look at recent history. A year ago, no one would have predicted we'd take the whole project offline to protest a proposed American law. But just a short time after the Italians surprised us all, we've followed suit. Some (see the e-mail from Delphine) are even thanking them for making it possible. Second, it's not a minor philosophical difference, particularly not when we go from having literally no voice as an entity to undertaking an aggressive lobbying effort. The benefit of not speaking with the Voice of Wikipedia is that we have the formality of no organizational opinion to protect us from accusations of intentional bias. Once we surrender that formality, we also are no longer insulated from alienating contributors who object to (or argue fruitlessly for) specific positions. Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
