A blanket ban sweeps in possible contributors and potential employees.
A well-crafted policy, properly administered, generally, would not.
Fred Bauder
On Sun, 5 Feb 2017 04:15:33 -0500
Yair Rand <yyairr...@gmail.com> wrote:
When and how the Wikimedia Foundation should associate itself
publicly on
policy and political issues is not a new topic, and (as I have quite
recently discovered) official guidelines have been around for nearly
five
years now. The Guidelines on Foundation Policy and Political
Association
[1], established by WMF Legal for internal use, specifically bring
up the
issue of "public endorsement or critique" of political policies,
listing
several requirements for doing so, and further requiring that they
"should
protect and advance Wikimedia’s mission “to empower and engage
people
around the world to collect and develop educational content under a
free
license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively
and
globally.” Accordingly, we will not support causes unrelated to or
inconsistent with that mission." The document goes on to list
several
examples such as anti-war activism and animal rights.
I think this is an excellent and necessary policy.
The recent blog post says "We strongly urge the U.S. administration
to
withdraw the recent executive order ... closing the doors to many
refugees." I have yet to hear any arguments regarding how that
statement
specifically protects and advances our mission.
I have, on the other hand, heard on this list many arguments by
people
explaining reasons why they feel very strongly that actions must be
taken
against a certain country's administration, about how they expect
that many
expected policies on general issues will cause harm in areas that
they
value. Areas that are not directly related to our mission.
I can imagine that some may feel that certain areas of immigration
and
travel policy may be so closely associated to Wikimedia's
functioning that
action on that front must be taken. I would expect such an issue to
be
discussed independently of the personal political wishes of those
arguing.
If decisions are made on the basis that the only relevant issue is
whether
any action would further Wikimedia's goals, I would trust that such
decisions were sufficiently reasonable.
However, if that is not the basis used, and some in the community
and WMF
are willing to have their own independent individual values and
goals
override those of the movement, to harm Wikimedia goals to support
their
own political goals... I would find it very difficult to support
such a
decision. I don't mean to speak too harshly, but the united goals
and
vision of the movement are the _only_ thing that holds this diverse
community together, the only means by which Wikimedia exists, and if
outside aims can take priority, we would likely find that many would
not
appreciate some using Wikimedia as yet another bullet in someone's
arsenal
to be sacrificed in a political crusade, to say the least.
"Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public
park. It
is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think,
to
learn, to share our knowledge with others."
Please let us keep it that way.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Foundation_Policy_
and_Political_Association_Guideline
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