User talk:Jimbo Wales

Blocking Wikimedia projects in Iran

Hi, the Iranian parliament has passed a law according to which the general management of the Internet will be handed over to the armed forces and the situation of the Iranian Internet will become something between North Korea and China.[1] According to the plan, foreign platforms must either be officially active in Iran and comply with the requests of Iran's security agencies or will be blocked. I have no doubt that they will block Wikipedia and all other projects in order to get rid of all its political and sexual content and establish their own controlled encyclopedia. Transparency is needed, what is the foundation's plan for this? --IamMM (talk) 07:41, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I am still waiting for your reaction to this serious issue. @Ladsgroup: Did you try to inform the Foundation about this? I need to talk to Wikimedia officials about some important points about this restriction. IamMM (talk) 06:03, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd say.. what do you want the foundation to do ? Because as pointed out, North Korea and China are already clear precedents and you know that the Foundation has done and does wrt those. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:51, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

My goal at first was to raise awareness, but now I expect the WMF to take a clear stand. This is a big thing, about one million pages and thousands of volunteers will be affected by this limitation. I do not mean that the Foundation necessarily has the ability to take any effective action in this regard, but prior knowledge of this limitation can be useful in considering technical (possible) coping options. Adapting to unrestricted communication methods such as Starlink satellite internet can be somewhat helpful, as can changing the way we deal with open proxies. Even if there is no way to circumvent the restriction, the issue of protecting current content from censorship and securing the accounts of users who are disconnected is of particular importance. --IamMM (talk) 15:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I am also in agreement. This is a serious issue that should be attended by the WMF. I don't expect corporations to take a stand against Internet freedom, but I do expect the repository of human knowledge with non-paid editors around the world should at least, have a say on this matter. For instance, the policy for public proxies, especially for people from restricted countries, could be publicized more so editors from restricted countries could still edit anonymously. As most editors will only edit things that interests them or close to them, losing Iranian editors will be a serious blow to the project that WMF should take notice.SunDawntalk 05:10, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't WikiLeaks. What has Wikipedia to gain? Some edits. What would Iranian Wikipedians get if caught? Torture and prison. Not worth the risk. That would be a cynical game WMF plays with the lives and liberty of other people. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:47, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

The dual and immoral standard of the Wikimedia Foundation is not acceptable to Iranian volunteers. I vividly remember at one of the fawiki anniversaries how Katherine (WMF), who made a video call on behalf of the Foundation even praised the Safavid dynasty, which is notorious for its heinous crimes but did not show the slightest sympathy for the volunteers under censorship! I'm really curious to know if Saudi Arabia made such a decision, would WMF still be silent like this? Maybe Mr. Wales forgot how he advised Iranian users to consider the government's sensitivities about homosexuality? (Legitimacy to the censors) When you give a piece of bread to a hungry totalitarian monster, he does not thank you, only his appetite for eating your own meat. WMF behavior is shameful. --IamMM (talk) 12:48, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

"Maybe Mr. Wales forgot how he advised Iranian users to consider the government's sensitivities about homosexuality?" - this is false. I don't even know what you think I said that would even suggest that. I do think that all editors in all places around the world should be thoughtful about their *readers* even though Wikipedia is not censored simply because in order to educate - on any topic - you must start with the context of the learner. I have never said or suggested that we should in any way cooperate with censorship.

My standards are not "dual" in any way. I would say the same thing about censorship in Saudi Arabia as I would about censorship in Iran or in the UK or the United States.

Having said all that, I think it would be unwise and unhelpful for the WMF to engage proactively in cases where doing so is likely to be counterproductive. There are a great many places around the world where laws are in place which would permit governments to shut off access to Wikipedia - those laws are wrong - but in most of those places, the governments have made the pragmatic decision that Wikipedia is too useful and too popular to block. It is very hard to know the exact right move to make at specific moments in time - but principles are timeless. We stand against censorship and we try to fight it with wisdom and thoughtfulness rather than pointless bombast that may not actually work.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales eat good food? "Hell yes" Jimbo Wales eat so good food. Iran people and Russia people eat bad food and Jimbo Wales in USA eat good food! While we eat bad food. Good taste Jimmy? Like? ssr (talk) 01:34, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Glad to hear. I would like to draw your attention to a few issues. The government of Iran is not Iranian and it does not care about the interests of the people of this country. They blamed a telegram channel for the 2017-18 protests, so the journalist in charge (Roohollah Zam) was tricked into dragging him from France to Iraq, then kidnapped him and executed him in Iran. All this did not change their decision to shut down the telegram, which they admitted was the source of income for 3 million poor and marginalized citizens. Do not expect a government that destroys the jobs of its three million citizens with one click to pay attention to your encyclopedia. They did not have the necessary technical infrastructure before so they tolerated Western platforms, but in recent years thanks to their Chinese communist friends, they have sought to build a native version of anything controlled from within Iran. Given the experience of the homosexuality debate (here), I expect you to no longer be lenient with the demands of authoritarian regimes, you may not have intended to censor, but this is exactly what happened after you said that.

I want to ask a question: how is it possible that the WMF considers itself an enemy of censorship and has kept among its stewards the staff of the institution that is providing the infrastructure to cut off the Internet in Iran? An employee of ArvandCloud (the company is currently building a local network that will replace the global Internet) is in the same position. It is painful that Iranian users loudly shouted their concerns, but the foundation refused to listen. Look at (Redacted), wearing a Wikipedia t-shirt while it is disconnecting 85 million ppl from the internet! Or (Redacted) next to the person in charge of the regime's soft (cyber) war. IMO, this is a scandal for the foundation, and if you listened to the cries of Iranian users, you would have noticed sooner. I would like to point out that the company cut off the global Internet for all Iranians for 5 days during the Bloody November 2019 massacres. Iran’s Hidden Slaughter: a video investigation by the France 24 Observers. It is time to stop obeying the demands of authoritarianism and take a pragmatic stance to have a real internet freedom. --IamMM (talk) 07:33, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I am also glad to hear, thanks! Aside Iran, there is Ukraine (let me talk on my local themes, that bother me). WMF has totally "cut out" money from Russia. Russian Wikipedians work and receive no single cent from WMF. Simultaneously, WMF assigns "hundreds of thousand dollars" to Ukrainian WM, and Ukrainian WP is widely known for violations of BLP and NPOV. WMF has Ukrainian board member (abovementioned NTymkiv), and WMF sends thousands of dollars to UWM and no single cent to RWM and allows no donations within Russia for Russians. And Jimbo eats good food! Like? --ssr (talk) 08:08, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are saying with "Jimbo eats good food" - it sounds like a humorous reference to something but I don't know what it means. In terms of the Russian government's policies which prevent the WMF from directly supporting the Russian chapter, I am disappointed in those policies and hope they will someday be changed. Trying to turn this into a criticism of the WMF as if we are biased against the Russian community is not correct.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:31, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you like the food that you eat, Jimbo? I like the food that I eat, generally. Hospital food, not so much. Most of the time when I see things between quotes I simply take that to mean an inference by the individual making the statement unless I know they are specifically quoting someone else. I, like Jimbo, wish any government policy that would limit exposure of people to articles on Wikipedia would be changed. But I don't feel it is Wikipedia's place to free the world. If you want freedom then do you. We want everyone to be able to edit here and we want to expand and improve the encyclopedia. On a side note: I do wish that people making claims would include some sources for what they claim. It's like, what food does Jimmy eat? How do we know its good? We need credible independent sources here to confirm this. --ARoseWolf 20:19, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Happy Birthday Jimbo!

For a moment I was worried that we had somehow spawned two rival birthday committees. None of us would be surprised, right? WaggersTALK 14:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

With competing messages all vying for the attention of the subject and fellow editors? I can see that being the next (edit) war campaign (lol). Don't mind me, I'm over here chewing on my tongue and sitting on my hands. --ARoseWolf 16:30, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Oath

I don't think it is any secret, but I would have, and will in times to come take and jump on a grenade to save you. We need you. Consider yourself hard to replace. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 19:16, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

You should probably scale back the cultist rhetoric. Did you not see the replies to your previous post? Posting things like that isn't helping. Philbert2.71828 03:46, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Global media policy etc.

Hello! I know Jimbo may not have time to ask but since many users monitor this page I will give it a try. I have been checking images on wikis around the world for many years and some are very strict about copyright and some are not. Some wikis host files that are free abroad but not in the U. S. Some wikis host files of buildings and statues even if that is not covered by freedom of panorama. The challenge is that it can be hard to persuade local admins to delete files if there is no clear and official rule saying something is forbidden. More than a year ago I asked if we could have a FAQ or something like that on media rules/policies (recent follow up). Recently I asked if we could make global restrictions on for example use of GFDL (usually each wiki make their own policies but I wonder if there can be exceptions since). I have probably been asking at the wrong place so if anyone know the place to ask I would be happy for a hint. --MGA73 (talk) 14:49, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't be the decider on something like that, but I can give a few potentially helpful thoughts.

First, laws vary around the world and I trust that local communities do what they can to follow both US law (we have to, because the WMF is based there) *and* local law. There may be errors, of course, such is the nature of a very large number of people doing a very large number of things. My point is just that we shouldn't expect or hope for perfect global consistency since laws do vary around the world.

Second, having said that - clear global principles are definitely possible and need to be communicated globally. Doing so is a challenge but this is part of the purpose of wikimania, various working groups, etc. I'm not sure exactly what the right place is for your question, but I'm sure someone can hop in here and give some suggestions.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:22, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia up for deletion

Wikimedia movement is nominated for deletion. I'm curious, is there any officially recognized terminology used for things? Note that Wikimedia redirects to Wikipedia movement. Dream Focus 02:28, 22 August 2021 (UTC)