[Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
[This essay was rudely rejected by the gatekeepers at Signpost calling it irrelevant but not explaining why. Could someone please suggest where I might submit this for a fair hearing by the WMF community?] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia) By Carmen Yarrusso Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at Brookhaven National Lab. He lives in New Hampshire and often writes about uncomfortable truths. Nobody can deny WMF has done a great service to humanity. Wikimedians and especially Wikipedians around the world deserve our utmost respect and gratitude for their outstanding efforts. But there's a political zeitgeist in the air that began with the Arab Spring that WMF can and should be part of. The WMF should stop pretending it's politically neutral (NPOV). The declared philosophy of the movement (see Movement roles/charter) expresses a clear political POV. There's lots of implied politics in trying to imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. WMF was part of an amicus brief in the past. There's been chapter and community political activism, including the recent Italian Wikipedia shutdown. The recent Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) forced WMF to take a clear political stance. WMF even helped organize an Internet Censorship Day: http://americancensorship.org/ , urging people to lobby Congress and petition the US state department against SOPA. That's political POV! But expressing POV on Internet censorship or expressing a commitment to free access to knowledge, transparency, openness, independence, quality, and privacy is fundamentally different than expressing POV in an encyclopedia article. The very essence of political knowledge is understanding and critically evaluating conflicting POV. Considering the present state and direction of our world, which is largely controlled by politics, isn't it time for the world's largest free knowledge resource to openly acknowledge that free political knowledge is at least as important to humanity as free encyclopedic knowledge? Isn't reliable knowledge about what our respective governments are doing in our names at least as important to our well being as reliable knowledge about the Brooklyn Bridge or the French Revolution? Encyclopedic knowledge becomes rather moot if we destroy our planet earth. Currently there's no comprehensive source of reliable political knowledge. Deceptive 30-second political ads on TV are certainly not a source of reliable political knowledge. Blathering TV pundits are not a source of reliable political knowledge. Even our mainstream media are not a source of reliable political knowledge. On the contrary, they often provide specious propaganda disguised as reliable political knowledge because their revenue is deeply dependent on special interest money. Though the Internet provides many sources of reliable political knowledge, it's spread out (hit or miss) and very difficult to assemble into a coherent body of knowledge on any given political issue. Thanks to WMF and the power of the Internet, countless millions of people around the world have access to a free source of vast, reliable encyclopedic knowledge. But these same countless millions have no source of reliable political knowledge, the kind of knowledge they need to critically evaluate the policies and actions of their government representatives. Why not? You Wikipedians have the power to change the downward spiral of the planet and to radically change the course of history by providing a free source of reliable political knowledge. By trying to maintain a staunch NPOV policy with no exceptions, the WMF has been throwing out the baby with the bath water. The WMF already has the infrastructure and the vast resources needed to provide the world with a free source of reliable political knowledge if it could get over this misplaced NPOV mindset and realize that political knowledge can be provided in a neutral manner where the WMF facilitates (necessarily POV) political knowledge without imposing its own political POV. How a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia) might work This idea is described in more detail under Proposals for new projects (see WikiArguments: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiArguments). Here are the basics of how a political knowledge Wikipedia would work as opposed to the present encyclopedic knowledge Wikipedia: For articles in the encyclopedic Wikipedia, NPOV makes perfect sense. But for articles in a political Wikipedia, POV
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
As a fictional example, let's suppose some members of Congress propose legislation to build a new Brooklyn Bridge. Under the subject: HR 999 Proposal to build a new Brooklyn Bridge, there would be one pro and one con argument edited only by members of Congress and one pro and one con argument edited by the general public. Why would political knowledge need to presented with a POV? That merely encourages confirmation bias. Dividing viewpoints into two different strands doesn't sound much like informing, it sounds rather a lot like providing a platform for soapboxing :) Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
As I understand it, part of the problem is that there are very strict rules on what the WMF can do as part of lobbying in the US. Under Section 501(c)(3), nonprofits are not allowed to use a substantial part of their spending on lobbying - meaning no more than 5% of the WMF's income can be spent on political lobbying. I'm not sure if this would fall under political lobbying, but it's rather close! It's also already done rather well by people like http://www.factcheck.org/. Let's not forget, as well, that what you're suggesting is very US-centric. Not all arguments are yes/no - well, technically all votes are, but there are also abstentions, and there are those who vote because it's the party line. There's also a few parts of the world where democracy is not considered a good system - this project wouldn't really help them. Richard Symonds Wikimedia UK 0207 065 0992 Disclaimer viewable at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Email_disclaimer Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk On 3 May 2012 15:00, Carmen yarru...@charter.net wrote: [This essay was rudely rejected by the gatekeepers at Signpost calling it irrelevant but not explaining why. Could someone please suggest where I might submit this for a fair hearing by the WMF community?] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia) By Carmen Yarrusso Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at Brookhaven National Lab. He lives in New Hampshire and often writes about uncomfortable truths. Nobody can deny WMF has done a great service to humanity. Wikimedians and especially Wikipedians around the world deserve our utmost respect and gratitude for their outstanding efforts. But there's a political zeitgeist in the air that began with the Arab Spring that WMF can and should be part of. The WMF should stop pretending it's politically neutral (NPOV). The declared philosophy of the movement (see Movement roles/charter) expresses a clear political POV. There's lots of implied politics in trying to imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. WMF was part of an amicus brief in the past. There's been chapter and community political activism, including the recent Italian Wikipedia shutdown. The recent Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) forced WMF to take a clear political stance. WMF even helped organize an Internet Censorship Day: http://americancensorship.org/ , urging people to lobby Congress and petition the US state department against SOPA. That's political POV! But expressing POV on Internet censorship or expressing a commitment to free access to knowledge, transparency, openness, independence, quality, and privacy is fundamentally different than expressing POV in an encyclopedia article. The very essence of political knowledge is understanding and critically evaluating conflicting POV. Considering the present state and direction of our world, which is largely controlled by politics, isn't it time for the world's largest free knowledge resource to openly acknowledge that free political knowledge is at least as important to humanity as free encyclopedic knowledge? Isn't reliable knowledge about what our respective governments are doing in our names at least as important to our well being as reliable knowledge about the Brooklyn Bridge or the French Revolution? Encyclopedic knowledge becomes rather moot if we destroy our planet earth. Currently there's no comprehensive source of reliable political knowledge. Deceptive 30-second political ads on TV are certainly not a source of reliable political knowledge. Blathering TV pundits are not a source of reliable political knowledge. Even our mainstream media are not a source of reliable political knowledge. On the contrary, they often provide specious propaganda disguised as reliable political knowledge because their revenue is deeply dependent on special interest money. Though the Internet provides many sources of reliable political knowledge, it's spread out (hit or miss) and very difficult to assemble into a coherent body of knowledge on any given political issue. Thanks to WMF and the power of the Internet, countless millions of people around the world have access to a free source of vast, reliable encyclopedic knowledge. But these same countless millions have no source of reliable political knowledge, the kind of knowledge they need to critically evaluate the policies and actions of their government representatives. Why not? You Wikipedians have the power to change the downward spiral of the
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Carmen yarru...@charter.net wrote: For example, in the encyclopedic Wikipedia, there's one article called Brooklyn Bridge... Actually, I've just considered this a bit longer (for my sins). It occurs to me that perhaps you're not looking at big issues (like abortion) but you perhaps mean something that would invigorate local politics? You did give the example of building a bridge after all. I suppose that would be an innovation: a wiki that covers political issues that would be considered non-notable on Wikipedia. The trouble you're going to have then, though, is participation. How many people are going to want to join together to create a few pages detailing the decision to stop the 34B bus service? Bodnotbod ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Carmen yarru...@charter.net wrote: The WMF should stop pretending it's politically neutral (NPOV). +1 -- James Michael DuPont Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 10:29 AM, Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Carmen yarru...@charter.net wrote: For example, in the encyclopedic Wikipedia, there's one article called Brooklyn Bridge... Actually, I've just considered this a bit longer (for my sins). It occurs to me that perhaps you're not looking at big issues (like abortion) but you perhaps mean something that would invigorate local politics? You did give the example of building a bridge after all. I suppose that would be an innovation: a wiki that covers political issues that would be considered non-notable on Wikipedia. The trouble you're going to have then, though, is participation. How many people are going to want to join together to create a few pages detailing the decision to stop the 34B bus service? Bodnotbod This would be a fantastic part of a locally-focused wiki, however. Taking the example of the Davis city wiki (http://daviswiki.org), local politics gets covered there all the time, with heated arguments taking place in the comments! So I suspect the solution for coverage of local issues is to embed them in context, which is more helpful anyway (when you have a site that describes the bridge, the body of water, the city, and the local politicians AS WELL as controversies around any of the above). In other words: all politics is rooted in community; some communities are bigger than others. As for the project proposal, I'd work on clarifying how you expect the wiki aspect to work specifically; it seems like this would be particularly hard to maintain. I suspect any system that limits itself to edits from a small group of people as you seem to propose doing wouldn't work very well. Additionally, I believe there have been a few stabs at similar projects from other groups that you might look at; Andrew Lih's idea for collective news annotation comes to mind, as do others. (As for the Signpost -- publishing full essays in support of project proposals is a bit much, but doing brief writeups of new project proposals on a regular basis in the Signpost seems like a good idea!) best, Phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
