Off the top of my head: 1. Because we have absolutely no idea, from the briefs given, about the technological stack and how well it meshes with our existing expertise as a movement, or the WMF's existing expertise as a technical entity; 2. Because we have absolutely no idea, from the briefs given, how much progress was made and thus how much work is needed or even if the projects were a failure; 3. Because the policy you're linking to is a policy for 18F, and it's totally unclear as to whether DARPA contractors or employees are covered by that, or whether the source code would be released or fall under the restrictions section given its origin in a military research arena; 3. Because "hey, we took a load of propaganda software from the US military and now we're spending donor dollars on it" looks *incredibly* bad and ominous to pretty much anyone outside the US, including most of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, areas we are trying to expand into as their populations come online more and more and areas the US military that wrote this software is continuously bombing the shit out of.
Basically it's far too early to make any useful determination about this, and even if it wasn't, the optics are atrocious. On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 1:54 PM, James Salsman <jsals...@gmail.com> wrote: > Re https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2016-April/001335.html > > Should the Foundation mount a campaign to rescue BOLT from whomever > took it down from the DARPA site? > > "The Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT) program is aimed at > enabling communication with non-English-speaking populations and > identifying important information in foreign-language sources by: 1) > allowing English-speakers to understand foreign-language sources of > all genres, including chat, messaging and informal conversation; 2) > providing English-speakers the ability to quickly identify targeted > information in foreign-language sources using natural-language > queries; and 3) enabling multi-turn communication in text and speech > with non-English speakers. If successful, BOLT would deliver all > capabilities free from domain or genre limitations." > > Program Manager: Dr. Boyan Onyshkevych > > Contact: boyan.onyshkev...@darpa.mil > > Here is another one that we need to rescue: > > "The general goal of the Social Media in Strategic Communication > (SMISC) program is to develop a new science of social networks built > on an emerging technology base. Through the program, DARPA seeks to > develop tools to support the efforts of human operators to counter > misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information." > > Program Manager: Dr. Rand Waltzman > > Contact: rand.waltz...@darpa.mil > > Are there any reasons that trying to do this might be a bad idea? > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
