Hi, 2015-03-13 5:54 GMT+01:00 MZMcBride <[email protected]>: > phoebe ayers wrote: (...) > > Education is apolitical.
Education is certainly not apolitical. People with different political opinions support education, but free education like the one promoted by the WMF is certainly more a political issue than social networks. That's why the WMF involvement is more logical than social networks and commercial entities. Regards, Yann > I don't see making the leap from being an > educational non-profit with an unusually heavy focus on engineering to > doing all of this and also engaging in political advocacy as being a very > good idea. If anything, we should play to our strengths and use technology > to mitigate surveillance as much as is reasonable, if this is a real > concern to our users. The extent to which Wikimedia users are concerned > still seems arguable, as people have noted that other sites such as > Facebook and Google contain far more private and personal information.[*] > >>I trust our legal team to make decisions about what legal actions to >>participate in. > > It's been noted that there are a lot of legal issues around the world that > the Wikimedia Foundation legal team could attempt to resolve. In fact, in > probably any case, helping out in some small country would be a lot more > likely to have a positive result over trying to fight the U.S. government. > Mass surveillance is an abomination, but I think the role of the Wikimedia > Foundation is to develop, support, and grow Wikimedia projects and I'm not > sure this lawsuit is really doing that. > > Whether the Wikimedia Foundation should be engaged in political advocacy, > and if so, who decides when and to what extent, seem like issues where > there should be Wikimedia community, Board, and staff involvement. > > I'm wary of the precedent that we're setting here in terms of this being > cited in the future as a reason to join other legal actions around the > world. I'm also wary of of the potentially dangerous and unbalanced power > it gives staff members to use Wikimedia as a political tool. I happen to > sympathize with the position being taken today, but what about the future? > > Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. :-) > > MZMcBride > > [*] Just as a side note, tracking users also comes up in the context of > trying to determine the number of unique page views for Wikimedia wikis. > There are values and principles questions at play, on a global scale. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
