[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimedians at Wikimania in Alex...

Tue Mar 4 16:06:39 UTC 2008

It is simply impossible to ever ensure that not one rape, murder, assault or
other crime will ever be committed against a Wikimania attendee. Cancelling
a single Wikimania, or reconsidering the whole idea, based on the fear of
one crime would be the absolute height of hysteria. When you leave your
house, or even before depending where you live, you implicitly accept the
possibility of danger. The danger is low enough that most people live
without irrational fear. This same principle is extended to international
travel in most cases, as it should be, and the idea that Wikimania planners
(volunteers, all) or Wikimedia should be responsible for the complete safety
of all attendees is just unsupportable.

If we don't have contributors who are experts on security who are also
willing to add to this thread... We are repeating ourselves with travel
warnings, travel registration, contacting embassies, etc. Ant has mentioned
her hope that these threads wait for further discussion until after the
report from Sue. This is reasonable, but I imagine there will be some that
will wish to lobby for the outcome they advocate in advance of the report -
hoping that list discussion will influence the result.

Nathan