The statements Yair quoted are appropriate unless you believe "empower" in the Foundation's Mission statement merely means "enable" or "facilitate," without regard to economic or political power, so I'm very glad to see them, as I am to see all of the eleven sections in https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/consider-the-facts.html
Yair omitted mention of the descriptions of how, in each of those eleven cases, our volunteers are using Foundation projects to address the identified issues. Those who think discussion of these issues should be suppressed or are cause to leave could talk with the volunteers whose work has been profiled so that both sides can understand the motivations and concerns of the other. Maybe Roxana Sordo or Andreas Weith are on this list and can address the concerns raised about the description of their work directly? In any case, free culture isn't compatible with prohibition of discussion and censorship. And the impulses toward such suppression aren't rational, given the extent to which the human endocrine system regulates personal, group, hierarchical, and reciprocal relationships, as shown in Table 1 on page 192 of Daphne Bugental's (2000) "Acquisition of the Algorithms of Social Life: A Domain-Based Approach," in Psychological Bulletin 126(2):187-219, at http://talknicer.com/Bugental2000.pdf Regarding the Annual Report financials, it looks like the investment income the Foundation is earning has fallen below 1%. I don't think it's fair to donors to hold $47 million dollars in cash and equivalents as per https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/financials.html -- Are people waiting for the Endowment Committee to meet before investing? Does anyone know when the Endowment Committee will ever meet? On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Yair Rand <yyairr...@gmail.com> wrote: > An unscheduled CentralNotice just started running, linking to a rather > bizarre page [1]. Purporting to be the WMF's 2016 Annual Report, it starts > off with some text about refugees. "FACT: Half of refugees are school-age", > followed by some completely unencyclopedic text about the topic: "That > means 10 million children are away from their homes, their communities, and > their traditional education. Each refugee child’s experience is unique, but > every single one loses time from their important learning years. Many of > them face the added pressure of being surrounded by new languages and > cultures." The linked page goes on to detail some of Wikimedia's vision and > how Wikimedia projects aid refugee populations. Following that, we have an > entire page on climate change and some of its effects, similarly written in > a style that is not befitting the movement: "In 2015, [Wikimedian Andreas > Weith] photographed starving polar bears in the Arctic. As the ice > declines, so does their ability to find food. “It’s heartbreaking,” he > says." After all that, we finally have some pages on interesting statistics > about Wikimedia, mixed in with some general odd facts about the world, > followed by a call to donate. There are also letters from the ED and > founder linked. > > So, this could be a mix of coincidence and bad stylistic choices, and not > politically motivated at all, but it is getting increasingly hard to assume > good faith on this, especially with the blog post a month ago specifically > calling for a change in refugee policy. > > Using Wikimedia projects to push politics is not okay. If the WMF does not > accept this, I suspect many projects will simply block CentralNotices, > avoid associating with WMF statements, and quite possibly fork/leave. > > This is a serious problem. > > -- Yair Rand > > [1] https://annual.wikimedia.org/2016/?pk_campaign= > WikiBanners&pk_kwd=AR2016_dsk_short > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > 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 and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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>
