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> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial
> project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the
> motives behind this proposal.

I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one for the
victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one for the victims of
Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc,

We would not need to mess with small time killers like Osama bin Ladin.

Fred

> ________________________________
> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>

> I support this project, and don't think it should get pushed off into
> some obscure corner of the internet. We should host it. We should host it
> because we stand against totalitarian repression; and reject the position
> that some knowledge, knowledge of the consequences of totalitarian
> repression, is to be repressed and not readily available.
>
> Fred Bauder



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David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
>
>> If we stood for something, it might serve to invigorate.
>
>
> You mean, taking a particular political position? I don't see that
> in the mission.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________ foundation-l
> mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I must agree with Mr Gerard, and taking that position, or any position
by the Foundation is a road I don't want to see WMF go down. I don't
want WMF to alienate anyone... anyone. The information must be free,
and global. For everyone.

Please don't intrepet this message as my defending any group, I'm
not. I'm against oppression. However, I don't think the WMF should
be for or against anything, politically.

Jon
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> I must agree with Mr Gerard, and taking that position, or any position
> by the Foundation is a road I don't want to see WMF go down. I don't
> want WMF to alienate anyone... anyone. The information must be free,
> and global. For everyone.
>
> Please don't intrepet this message as my defending any group, I'm
> not. I'm against oppression. However, I don't think the WMF should
> be for or against anything, politically.
>
> Jon

Oh, but we are, just by what we do. And the mass murders of the twentieth
century would have made short work of us. In fact, in the last regime
controlled by them Wikipedia is blocked.

Fred


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2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:

> Oh, but we are, just by what we do. And the mass murders of the twentieth
> century would have made short work of us. In fact, in the last regime
> controlled by them Wikipedia is blocked.


Controlled by the Soviets, who I understand were the subject of the
proposed wiki? I believe you have conflated two Communist
dictatorships that hadn't been on particularly good terms since the
1960s.


- d.

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2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
>> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial
>> project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the
>> motives behind this proposal.
>
> I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one for the
> victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one for the victims of
> Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc,
>

What about Carthage? What about the native Americans (general
estimates are we managed to kill off about 90% of them without really
meeting them)? An Shi Rebellion? Mongol Conquests? Shaka's conquests?

They we get the political fun ones. The islamic invasion of india.
Arab slave trade. The Muslims killed of in china. Nanking Massacre.
Anticommunist purge in Indonesia. The various post independence
Pakistan /India/Bangladesh stuff.



--
geni

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geni wrote:
> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
>>> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a
>>> memorial project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his
>>> concerns about the motives behind this proposal.
>> I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one
>> for the victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one
>> for the victims of Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc,
>>
>
> What about Carthage? What about the native Americans (general
> estimates are we managed to kill off about 90% of them without
> really meeting them)? An Shi Rebellion? Mongol Conquests? Shaka's
> conquests?
>
> They we get the political fun ones. The islamic invasion of india.
> Arab slave trade. The Muslims killed of in china. Nanking
> Massacre. Anticommunist purge in Indonesia. The various post
> independence Pakistan /India/Bangladesh stuff.
>
>
>
I agree. I just don't think we have the resources to make this
technically plausible, aside from the political implications that I am
concerned with, as I have referenced.


Jon-
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> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
>
>> Oh, but we are, just by what we do. And the mass murders of the
>> twentieth
>> century would have made short work of us. In fact, in the last regime
>> controlled by them Wikipedia is blocked.
>
>
> Controlled by the Soviets, who I understand were the subject of the
> proposed wiki? I believe you have conflated two Communist
> dictatorships that hadn't been on particularly good terms since the
> 1960s.
>
>
> - d.
>

Hard to keep things straight isn't it when the object is to make a point.
I speak of Red China, still controlled by Mao's heirs.

Fred


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2008/12/25 geni <geniice@gmail.com>:
> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:

>>> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial
>>> project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the
>>> motives behind this proposal.

>> I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one for the
>> victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one for the victims of
>> Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc,

> What about Carthage? What about the native Americans (general
> estimates are we managed to kill off about 90% of them without really
> meeting them)? An Shi Rebellion? Mongol Conquests? Shaka's conquests?
> They we get the political fun ones. The islamic invasion of india.
> Arab slave trade. The Muslims killed of in china. Nanking Massacre.
> Anticommunist purge in Indonesia. The various post independence
> Pakistan /India/Bangladesh stuff.


I submit that a wiki that could almost have been custom-designed to
attract the worst of the interminable ethnic arguments of en:wp would
have limited ability to produce educational content, but would be of
vast educational use for sociological study. I'm not sure that
*entirely* squares with the mission either.


- d.

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2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:

> Hard to keep things straight isn't it when the object is to make a point.
> I speak of Red China, still controlled by Mao's heirs.


Well, yes. (Who thankfully are not gross incompetents at the actual
management to the degree he was.) And it turns out that remaining
politically neutral is one of the best things we can do as well as the
cheapest and easiest, because we have the moral high ground and we're
not going away. And as economics shifts to information, we have
credibility to the skies. "Information wants to be free" means "it
leaks like a gas" and "running a Great Firewall is like trying to
carry air in a bucket".

Abandoning neutrality as a general operating principle (manifested as
NPOV on Wikipedia, variants on other projects where that doesn't make
direct sense) would be a disaster. Possibly a greater one than putting
ads on the site (and I wouldn't object to ads on the site, but I
realise enough people despise them that it'd be utterly unworkable).

Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our
fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality?

[.We will leave for the moment post-modernist arguments about the
impossibility of neutrality, or the quite accurate argument that
running an Enlightenment-style encyclopedia project is itself pushing
a huge and detailed point of view in all sorts of ways. You know what
I mean by the question.]

Oh, and Merry Christmas. That's CHRISTMAS, as detailed in the King
James Version! [* may not be 100% verifiable or not original research]


- d.


- d.

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On Wednesday 24 December 2008 19:53, you wrote:
>
> I posit that the "memorial project" is not essential. I think it
> would drain resources from our mission.
>
> Jon
As I explained in the proposal (again, did you read the proposal?) it is an
essential part of the WMF's mission.
--
Kurt Weber
http://blog.kurtweber.us
<kmw@kurtweber.us>

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Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 December 2008 19:53, you wrote:
>> I posit that the "memorial project" is not essential. I think it
>> would drain resources from our mission.
>>
>> Jon
> As I explained in the proposal (again, did you read the proposal?)
> it is an essential part of the WMF's mission.
I did read it... and I jsut read it again at meta to be sure I
understand again.

The mission... "...empower and engage people around the world to
collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the
public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."


I question how a POV memorial is educational content.


I also question alignments that could be generated by such memorials.


I question scalability... "They have a memorial, why can't I. You
don't think [insert event here] is important enough? I just won't
support WMF anymore".


With the above, when groups become alienated, I question our ability
to effectively disseminate the core projects (wikipedia, and others)
effectively and globally.


I question the technical strain on our resources. All of these memorials.

I question the political implications of having a worded memorial,
polarizing an otherwise neutral foundation, or the public perception
of the foundation.

These are only a few of the things I began to question when I first
read the proposal.


Jon-





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On Wednesday 24 December 2008 20:30, David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
> > Hard to keep things straight isn't it when the object is to make a point.
> > I speak of Red China, still controlled by Mao's heirs.
>
> Well, yes. (Who thankfully are not gross incompetents at the actual
> management to the degree he was.) And it turns out that remaining
> politically neutral is one of the best things we can do as well as the
> cheapest and easiest, because we have the moral high ground and we're
> not going away.

I fail to see how your conclusion follows from your premises.

> And as economics shifts to information, we have
> credibility to the skies. "Information wants to be free" means "it
> leaks like a gas" and "running a Great Firewall is like trying to
> carry air in a bucket".

What does this have to do with anything?

>
> Abandoning neutrality as a general operating principle (manifested as
> NPOV on Wikipedia, variants on other projects where that doesn't make
> direct sense) would be a disaster.

Why? I don't deny its usefulness and appropriateness for SPECIFIC PROJECTS,
but why must it be universal across all WMF projects?
--
Kurt Weber
http://blog.kurtweber.us
<kmw@kurtweber.us>

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Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 December 2008 20:30, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:
>>
>>> Hard to keep things straight isn't it when the object is to make a point.
>>> I speak of Red China, still controlled by Mao's heirs.
>>>
>> Well, yes. (Who thankfully are not gross incompetents at the actual
>> management to the degree he was.) And it turns out that remaining
>> politically neutral is one of the best things we can do as well as the
>> cheapest and easiest, because we have the moral high ground and we're
>> not going away.
>>
>
> I fail to see how your conclusion follows from your premises.
>
>
>> And as economics shifts to information, we have
>> credibility to the skies. "Information wants to be free" means "it
>> leaks like a gas" and "running a Great Firewall is like trying to
>> carry air in a bucket".
>>
>
> What does this have to do with anything?
>
>
>> Abandoning neutrality as a general operating principle (manifested as
>> NPOV on Wikipedia, variants on other projects where that doesn't make
>> direct sense) would be a disaster.
>>
>
> Why? I don't deny its usefulness and appropriateness for SPECIFIC PROJECTS,
> but why must it be universal across all WMF projects?
>
?

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> Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our
> fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality?

Yes, good thought, I think we could. After all, it is a sort of cemetery.

Fred



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I agree. As I said before, where would this stop? Memorial sites for specific incidents will lead to more and more requests. If we have one for an event, we must have one for all.




________________________________
From: Jon <scream@datascreamer.com>
To: kmw@kurtweber.us; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 7:13:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial

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Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 December 2008 19:53, you wrote:
>> I posit that the "memorial project" is not essential. I think it
>> would drain resources from our mission.
>>
>> Jon
> As I explained in the proposal (again, did you read the proposal?)
> it is an essential part of the WMF's mission.
I did read it... and I jsut read it again at meta to be sure I
understand again.

The mission... "...empower and engage people around the world to
collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the
public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."


I question how a POV memorial is educational content.


I also question alignments that could be generated by such memorials.


I question scalability... "They have a memorial, why can't I. You
don't think [insert event here] is important enough? I just won't
support WMF anymore".


With the above, when groups become alienated, I question our ability
to effectively disseminate the core projects (wikipedia, and others)
effectively and globally.


I question the technical strain on our resources. All of these memorials.

I question the political implications of having a worded memorial,
polarizing an otherwise neutral foundation, or the public perception
of the foundation.

These are only a few of the things I began to question when I first
read the proposal.


Jon-





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David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/12/25 Fred Bauder
>> If we stood for something, it might serve to invigorate.
>>
> You mean, taking a particular political position? I don't see that in
> the mission.
>

You have to admit that debate would be greatly invigorated.


Ec

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Fred Bauder wrote:
>> I must agree with Mr Gerard, and taking that position, or any position
>> by the Foundation is a road I don't want to see WMF go down. I don't
>> want WMF to alienate anyone... anyone. The information must be free,
>> and global. For everyone.
>>
>> Please don't intrepet this message as my defending any group, I'm
>> not. I'm against oppression. However, I don't think the WMF should
>> be for or against anything, politically.
>>
>> Jon
>>
> Oh, but we are, just by what we do. And the mass murders of the twentieth
> century would have made short work of us. In fact, in the last regime
> controlled by them Wikipedia is blocked.
I suppose that in that comment we have the perfect justification for
excluding the mass murders of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. These mass
murders are the product of our kinder, gentler twenty-first century, and
not a part of twentieth century savagery.

Ec

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Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial
>> project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the
>> motives behind this proposal.
>>
>
> I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one for the
> victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one for the victims of
> Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc,
>
> We would not need to mess with small time killers like Osama bin Ladin.
>
> Fred
>
>

It's a bit more complex than that, actually. (Granting, arguendo
that this idea had merit in the absolute, which is a position I
do not actually hold)

First in the case of the inquisition, certainly the Albigensian
crusade would be fairly clear-cut. but what would we say
about the stories of widespread torture by the inquisition,
- which at least have been claimed by some to merely be a
black legend, in terms of their widespreadness. Would we
take a POV position on the side of widespreadedness of
the Spanish Inquisitions abuses, or go for the more
conservative stance of concentrating on the atrocities
at the village of Alba for instance?

In addition, your listing is clearly not nearly exhaustive.

What about the jewish pogroms that predate the
holocaust in Nazi Germany? I think that it is poignant
that the wonderful play by Elie Wiesel by the name
The Trial of God, while inspired (allegedly) by a real
experience in the Nazi concentration camps, in fact
uses as its dramatic back-drop, the pogroms.

How about Christian persecutions in ancient Rome?

Eradication of native Americans by bio-warfare.
That again is a hard question in terms of choosing
a stance. Just as in the case of the Spanish Inquisitions
abuses, really genuinely thoughtful and sincere and
insightful people radically disagree on the validity of
those claims.

Even if you rule out one-timers, like the Al-quaida,
there is still the question of the more protracted
case of the Palestinian people, that again was/and
is ongoing in a fashion that is an extended conflict,
and equally as with the case of the Spanish Inquisition
and the Native Americans, a point of genuine and reasoned
argument as to the validity as an atrocity of the unmitigated
sort, and these denials are not merely the province of some
lone nutters, without any touch to reality.

To me these decisions about what to include, would not be
merely the "simple" one of choosing the "clearly right
perspective", I would personally claim there are always
going to be shades of gray, no matter which way you cut
it.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen






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Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 December 2008 11:02, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Yes. However, it could be a valuable wiki to create privately. Generic
>> hosting is (a) really cheap (b) often includes MediaWiki out the box.
>> The wiki is unlikely to be vastly overloaded, so cheap hosting would
>> do for a start.
>>
>> See http://www.sep11memories.org/wiki/In_Memoriam for a memorial
>> project for victims of the World Trade Center attack, for example.
>>
>> Although started with a strong POV, such a project could nevertheless
>> accumulate material of high quality historical and scholarly interest.
>>
> I still don't see how it's outside the WMF's scope, nor do I see how
> presenting a strong POV is necessarily bad.
>
> The WMF's mission is essentially educational, correct? And I submit that to
> be truly educated about such an event as this, one needs to see perhaps a
> more emotional presentation, to truly understand what it actually did to
> people.
>

One doesn't become truly educated when someone is playing games with
one's emotions. That just breeds true believers and more victims of
patriotic folly. Stalin died in 1953, and while there might have been
some justification for such a project while he was still in power, now
it is nothing more than picking at old scabs to see if they will bleed.
What Stalin did cannot be undone, but understanding the importance of
those events in world history is not helped by dwelling on the minutiae
of individual tragedy. Global tragedies are greater than the sum of
these isolated events, and distance from them provides us with the
opportunity for retrospective and dispassionate analysis.
> One would not say that the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., is
> non-educational, though it presents a strong POV and is focused more on
> presenting the human effects of the Holocaust than simple factual
> information. This is basically the same thing. It fulfills an essential
> part of the Foundation's educational mission that to now has been neglected.
>
>
The parallel to a Holocaust Museum in these circumstances would be a
museum for Stalin's victims. Perhaps you should be trying to establish
such a museum. A person entering the Holocaust Museum knows what bias
to expect, as would a visitor to your museum. It's not our job to be
promoting those biases.

Ec

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Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote:
> I fail to see how simply presenting a list of peoples' names and telling their
> stories constitutes "taking partisan sides in political disputes." It's
> educating people about the impact of these events, plain and simple.
>
If we cannot present the personal tragedy of those individual
foot-soldiers who were actually pulling the triggers, we are taking sides.

Ec

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Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our
>> fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality?
>>
> Yes, good thought, I think we could. After all, it is a sort of cemetery.
>
>
Maybe it would be better to start the project on Wikia. That would
certainly be better than trying to upset the balance that we have here
between what are often extremely divergent approaches to some topics.

Ec

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On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
> >> Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our
> >> fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality?
> >>
> > Yes, good thought, I think we could. After all, it is a sort of cemetery.
> >
> >
> Maybe it would be better to start the project on Wikia. That would
> certainly be better than trying to upset the balance that we have here
> between what are often extremely divergent approaches to some topics.
>
> Ec
>

I agree with the majority on this list that this proposed project is not
within the scope of the WMF and would better be hosted either on Wikia or
even on private hosting (which is low-cost as pointed in a previous
message).

The main reasons are as mentioned the problem of neutrality/POV and also
that once one such project is created many more proposals will follow and I
don't really want to see the WMF in a political role of deciding which
event/incidents/... in history and currently "deserve" a memorial wiki or a
wiki of any kind.

I do however believe that such a project is a good idea and also believe
that it being hosted outside of the WMF might even be benefitial and might
even be worth an organisation itself if the scope is extended to cover more
than "just" the victims of one regime, others have been already pointed out
in previous messages.

Also, Wikipedia is (currently) not blocked in "Red China" (this statement is
based on Original Research by living in Beijing, but is verifiable). And the
differences in system and split have been mentioned, although parallels did
exist.

Merry Christmas to all fellow Wikimedians,

Ian
[[User:Poeloq]]
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2008/12/25 Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net>:

>> Can you and Kurt come up with a proposal that doesn't abandon our
>> fabulously useful and marketable air of neutrality?

> Yes, good thought, I think we could. After all, it is a sort of cemetery.


I suspect it would turn into a universal biographical dictionary. But
that's useful too.


- d.

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2008/12/25 Ian A. Holton <poeloq@gmail.com>:

> I do however believe that such a project is a good idea and also believe
> that it being hosted outside of the WMF might even be benefitial and might
> even be worth an organisation itself if the scope is extended to cover more
> than "just" the victims of one regime, others have been already pointed out
> in previous messages.


Yes. I don't want to imply it's a bad idea, it's a good one and could
be done very well. I'm just not convinced it fits WMF.

It could be done very badly indeed, of course. A comparison would be
the network of critic of Scientology websites that formed in the late
1990s (including my own). These are long on factual detail, but are
often so bitterly pissed-off as to be all but unreadable if you don't
already agree.

And there's little educational point to a resource that only targets
those who already agree.


- d.

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> 2008/12/25 Ian A. Holton <poeloq@gmail.com>:
>
>> I do however believe that such a project is a good idea and also
>> believe
>> that it being hosted outside of the WMF might even be benefitial and
>> might
>> even be worth an organisation itself if the scope is extended to cover
>> more
>> than "just" the victims of one regime, others have been already pointed
>> out
>> in previous messages.
>
>
> Yes. I don't want to imply it's a bad idea, it's a good one and could
> be done very well. I'm just not convinced it fits WMF.
>
> It could be done very badly indeed, of course. A comparison would be
> the network of critic of Scientology websites that formed in the late
> 1990s (including my own). These are long on factual detail, but are
> often so bitterly pissed-off as to be all but unreadable if you don't
> already agree.
>
> And there's little educational point to a resource that only targets
> those who already agree.
>
>
> - d.

The whole point would be to provide an introduction to those who not only
don't agree, but never heard of it.

Fred


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