[Foundation-l] Censorship discussion: Thanks to all

Sat Jun 18 11:27:12 UTC 2005

Dovi Jacobs (dovijacobs at yahoo.com) [050615 04:02]:

> Overall, "pausing to evaluate the situation" is a good idea, and it is important to choose battles wisely. What worries me is that this might be more than just a pause, and put the issue on a back-burner indefinitely. And also how we evaluate which battles we choose to fight.

Indeed. Presumably the same semi-permanent back burner a Cantonese
Wikipedia is on.

> 2. When it comes to choosing our battles, we should remember that our choices *now* have implications for our *future* choices. Will we also deny Wikinews in Arabic if people in some countries are worried about that being blocked? Or certain other countries in Asia and Africa, or even a few left in Eastern Europe? A firm policy decision now will might prevent damage in the future if people (and governments and corporations) simply know, in advance, that censorship is not on the agenda at Wikimedia.

This is fantastically important.

> 3. When you decide which battles to fight, you first have to evaluate how strong you are! Wikimedia is not weak; Wikipedia (plus its sisters) have become invaluable resources provided by a well-known, well-respected organization. This is only becoming more and more so, month by month, and the trend is not going to be reversed. In other words, we have the *strength* to stand up to this in the long term. It is not all or nothing: We should assume that even the *worst-case* scenario is a ban that will be eventually be revoked, because no govenment will be able to justify banning it in the long term.

Yep. It's not hard to phrase it in terms of lost face either.

I agree with everything in this message.

- d.