On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What other unfortunate laws are > happening elsewhere in the world and how do we track and maybe act on > those? I gave a very specific example in an earlier post this month:[1] "A [Kazakh] law that took effect in January 2012 required owners of internet cafés to obtain users’ names and monitor and record their activity, and to share their information with the security services if requested," as noted by Freedom House in its 2013 report on freedom of the press in Kazakhstan, among many other issues. In July 2012, Kazakh media reported that Jimmy Wales had "thanked the Kazakh government for creating conditions for significant achievements in the development of the Kazakh language Wikipedia". > And how do we articulate our role as an open educational > institution: recognizing, as Yann says, that education and openness > can be -- often are -- political issues? > I don't have great answers to the above questions. But I think they're > worth discussing :) > I do think this is an issue worth discussing, as is the fact that the (currently locked) biography of the President of Azerbaijan in the Azeri Wikipedia[2] is devoid of criticism, despite that same president being named the most corrupt person of the year in 2012[3] and human rights abuses under his regime repeatedly making headline news.[4][5] Yet I see no such discussion happening. Nor do I see the Wikimedia Foundation stepping up to the plate to issue, say, consumer warnings when Wikipedias become co-opted by political interests, as in the recent case of the Croatian Wikipedia, to give another example.[6] I think that is the least the Wikimedia Foundation could do. But rather than flagging and discussing problems openly with the community and the public, and devising solutions, the Foundation seems to be terminally resistant to the idea of saying anything that might be perceived as criticism of its own product. A bit of honest self-reflection would go a long way. You'd be surprised how much respect that would earn you. [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-March/077053.html [2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Faz.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3D%25C4%25B0lham_%25C6%258Fliyev%26oldid%3D3210360&edit-text= [3] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4cc_1359101045 [4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30888135 [5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364372/Prince-Andrews-close-friendship-torture-dictator-Ilham-Aliyev.html [6] http://www.dailydot.com/politics/croatian-wikipedia-fascist-takeover-controversy-right-wing/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
