Policy talk:Human Rights Policy/Archive 1

Mirror to Meta?

Hi @Varnent:, are you hoping to have all future policies on f.w.o only? It would be nice to maintain a full set of mirrored policies, like the Privacy and CoC pages. –SJ talk  05:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey @Sj: sorry - meant to post these edits from my staff account vs. volunteer. But on holiday leave - so was logged into volunteer account. Although either way for this particular edit... Anyway, to respond to your question. I am curious what your thoughts are on advantages of mirrored policies. My understanding is the origin of that is primarily related to restrictions placed on what was at that time Foundation Wiki. We have recently expanded capabilities on Governance Wiki (formerly Foundation Wiki) to greater facilitate community interaction (specificially allowing for translations and use of talk/user pages by SUL accounts) and reduce need for duplication. However, there may be advantages to duplication that has just not come up yet, so curious what you see as advantages as someone with more historical knowledge. Our desire has been to reduce the need for duplication as it has caused problems over the years, but I recognize there may be issues which have simply not come up in regards to housing them primarily on one wiki. --Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 07:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

:) Both seem fine. It's good to have just a single set of talk pages and just one place to work on translations. But perhaps also worth doing something for WMF policies that scales well to those from other parts of the movement -- say having a complete category here of whose pages may be protected mirrors from a 'wiki of origin', w/ talk pages redirecting to that wiki. –SJ talk  03:48, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sj: Ah - I think I see what you mean. So some sort of technical method we could use to "mirror" content (maybe translated if available) from central wikis (or one central wiki) and a notice stating the wiki of origin (similar to Global Userpages) and then talk page automatically redirect users to the originating central wiki's talk page for that content. I wonder if this idea, Phab ticket, or extension already exists somewhere. I do not think without several middle and duplicate maintenance steps this is currently possible - but I think the setup we are building on Governance Wiki could adapt to support this rather easily if it is technically doable (which - parts of it seem like they should be - but - that's usually the statement right before we learn it's insanely complicated). Does that sound like an accurate summary and roadmap reaction? Are you aware of anything similar to this out in the wild right now? I think we sort of came close to that with the previous setups - but the need for duplicate maintenance created problems over time. - Gregory Varnum (Wikimedia Foundation) [he/him] (talk) 20:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Be the change you want to see

WMF is not the ACLU of the world and its primary Mission is quite big already. Therefore, the best way WMF promotes human rights has always been by doing and setting an example. This document doesn't even acknowledge this role and instead states that «Wikimedia's free knowledge projects depend upon the human right to freedom of expression». That's correct in a legal sense but focuses on a passive role. The four actions listed in "How We Implement Our Commitments" can be summarised as: avoid, talk, beg, defer.

(See also Sj's message for a more diplomatic way to say the same.)

Some examples of things Wikimedia does which directly reinforce human rights (articles per UDHR):

• free licenses and free software (articles 18, 19, 22, 26, 27);
• right to fork, democratic Wikimedia chapters, governance by consensus and community rule (article 20);
• open data and transparency (article 21);
• free software and privacy (article 17 as extended to include privacy e.g. in CFR art. 7, 8);
• multilingualism (article 2).

WMF in recent years has been backsliding or even actively working against most of these things it was created to defend. It's therefore in no position to preach to anyone about human rights and should get the house in order first. Nemo 11:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)