Hi Eric, Speaking generally, I think that telling stories about Wikimedia content and platforms, and how content is created, delivered, or used, are all likely to be compatible with WMF's mission when the stories are written in an NPOV way. I must have missed the link to Andreas' arctic photography, but I can imagine how a story about a Wikimedian's work taking photos of icebergs and arctic wildlife could be written in such a way as to be compatible with the WMF mission to share knowledge of factual information (as opposed to analyses of that information or advocacy to take political action based on that information). Similarly, a story about the use of Wikimedia resources to assist refugees could likely be written in a way that is NPOV and compatible with the mission to share knowledge.
WMF, the affiliates, and the communities do good work that is not advocacy, and informs discussions of public interest, and contributes to the public good. I think that sharing those stories can likely be done in a way that is compatible with the WMF mission. Pine On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 4:12 PM, Erik Moeller <eloque...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior > <stuart.pr...@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote: > > > As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive > > issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that > > 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence > > ? > > [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change> > > Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position. > > It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and > presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly > communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and > fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to > enable many communities to collect and develop educational content. > > If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to > shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the > organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to > promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts > about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than > communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers > alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately > conservative about its own role. > > I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major > Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate > change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of > politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how > such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial > control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia > tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for > WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world. > > I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic > photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks > like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern > about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those > stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report? > > Erik > > _______________________________________________ > 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>
