[Foundation-l] Politico: "Wikimedia foundation hires lobbyists on sopa, pipa"

Sun Jan 22 23:09:27 UTC 2012

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I disagree - the null hypothesis is that the gain from lobbying isn't
> worth the cost, not that the gain is zero. (Cost includes far more
> than just monetary cost, of course.)

Ah, then the proper experiment would have been for Wikipedians not to
black out enwiki for a day and see how effective that was in changing
the debate?

Because, as you know, the blackout did entail a significant non-monetary costs.

The trick, of course, is that political experimentation of this sort
is similar to human experimentation generally -- the risk is that the
experiment, for all you learn from it, leads to negative consequences
down the line. My own view is that the blackout was unquestionably the
right thing to do, and I'm hugely proud to be associated in my own
small way with the people who took the risk of making our voices heard
this time.

--Mike