After the ban was announced, StackOverflow founder Joel Spolsky posted an impassioned call to arms [1] to Meta Stack Overflow (the StackOverflow equivalent of MetaWiki/wikimedia-l). The community was not happy and a closing discussion was started. In the end the orginial post was closed and Spolsky agreed to rewrite it as a company blog post [2] instead. The discussion is IMO worth a read: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342480/should-the-time-to-take-a-stand-question-be-closed-moved
Another discussion that comes to mind is the straw poll [3] on the proposal to run a banner campaign to protest the imprisonment of Wikipedian and open source/content advocate Bassel Khartabil by the Syrian government. (The proposal was closed as lacking consensus.) Both of these discussions are about community action, and it makes sense that the WMF would have more freedom in how it expresses itself when talking in its own name, on its own blog; still, the discussions might offer some insight into how community members often view political activism for specific local concerns that's sort of happening in the name of a global community. [1] http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take-a-stand [2] https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/01/Developers-without-Borders-The-Global-Stack-Overflow-Network/ [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Free_Bassel/Banner/Straw_poll _______________________________________________ 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>
