Hi Tito and all,
Tito said, in part,
1) Okay, we have an "urgent" policy. What is the plan and procedure to
safeguard the human rights of someone? Example: If a
Wikimedian's human
right is in danger for using Wikimedia's/OSM's disputed map[1], what's the
"exact" procedure?
I do understand that the implementation plan is to be made (around 13:48
of the video[2]) and I fully understand that it is going to be difficult on
a global scale. However the execution plan and procedure will be more
important.
4) (around 20:00 of the video) "Three people on
the Wikimedia-l mailing
list asked ..." I am one of the three I don't think we/I asked about
royalty etc. What we speak about is about Wikimedians' lives in different
socio-economic backgrounds. This is connected with editor retention,
community health, (and human rights). I'll be very happy to discuss it
separately on my Meta-Wiki talk page[3] or elsewhere.
As for the first question, it is early days, but could you give some
indication what you think you can do to safeguard someone's human rights in
another country? You could open communication channels to human rights
organisations, perhaps, and inform them of problematic cases. Is this the
kind of action you have in mind? I must say I sympathise with what Geni
says in his mail – surely the WMF is quite limited in what it can do.
Geni's point about the WMF potentially being perceived as a hostile
campaigner (or, I would add, even a US foreign policy instrument), thus
increasing the risks of participation for individuals, is worth pondering
as well.
As Tito says, there was also a question about the feasibility of royalties.
This mentioned Tito's and others' posts here, though I think the questioner
was only using those questions about healthcare and minimum pay as a
springboard for their own question. They wondered whether there was any way
to get royalties or licence fees from re-users who use more than a certain
volume of Wikimedia data, and to provide support to volunteers in this
manner. The answer was that it didn't seem likely. But it occurred to me
that the for-profit Wikimedia Enterprise is doing a similar thing, charging
large re-users for API services. So couldn't some of the profits from that
business be used in the way the questioner suggested? The money would come
from much the same companies.
Andreas