"Is the Wikimedia movement political?" For starters, some important points: 1. If you redefine a word to include "literally everything", you've defined the word out of existence. The word becomes no longer useful for conveying any information, and therefore, by any measure, you've simply made it harder to communicate. 2. If two people are debating "Is X Y", and they completely disagree about the meaning of Y, they're debating words, not things.
I have to bring these points up, because in these situations some people, completely seriously, state that "everything is political". Obviously, this completely reduces the debate down to nonsense, as much as it would to say "everything is apolitical". The answer to the question "Is Wikimedia X?" when defining X to be universally-inclusive, is yes regardless of what series of letters you fill in there. Similarly, when X is a null set, the answer is always no. (In the likely event that there was a more subtle point being made with the wording, I'm afraid I missed it entirely.) So, to the actual concepts here: Assuming we mean "political" as in "relating to government policy, legislation, or electoral activities" (given that it is, you know, what the word means), then the answer is _generally_ no. There is broad agreement that Wikimedia must never deliberately influence elections, and, excluding the efforts by our affiliated corporations, the Wikimedia projects typically avoid trying to influence government policy/legislation except in order to avoid being seriously harmed by the government. The WMF and affiliates also occasionally make limited efforts to influence governments (without getting involved in elections) in ways that will advance the Wikimedia Mission. Nobody editing some article on prehistoric vombatiforms is thinking, "if I improve this article, my side will win the election!". If one wants to argue, "freeing knowledge is inherently tied to government actions, so Wikimedia must be broadly involved in all areas of politics and elections", that's, well, wrong. If one wants to argue, "freeing knowledge doesn't necessarily need to be associated with elections and such, but Wikimedia should get involved in indigenous rights and labor reform because we, as individuals, care about those things", it's not nonsense, but it's also a position extremely strongly opposed by the Wikimedia community, for good reason. Wikimedia is about allowing people to freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Its purpose is not to influence elections or governments. If one uses a definition of "apolitical" which falls under that, then yes, the Wikimedia movement is apolitical. -- Yair Rand בתאריך שבת, 25 באפר׳ 2020 ב-11:50 מאת John Erling Blad < jeb...@gmail.com>: > It is said quite often that the Wikimedia-movement is apolitical. In > strongly believe the movement with its goal has never been, and never will > be apolitical. When we say that knowledge should be free and fully > available for everyone, then we make a political statement. It may not > align with you favorite love/hate political party, but it is still a very > strong political statement. > > So please, don't claim the movement to be apolitical. We may not align with > any specific political party in any specific country, but we are still not > apolitical. > > /jeblad > _______________________________________________ > 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>
