Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt

A group of Wikimedia Foundation staff and volunteers served on the jury to decide on where to hold the Wikimania conference in 2008, and selected Alexandria, Egypt. (Full disclosure: I served nominally as one of the three moderators of the process, but did not take part in the decisionmaking itself.)

I have to say it’s an exciting choice. The New Library will be the host, and will be sponsoring much of the conference for this historic homecoming to the most significant repository of human knowledge in ancient times. The public relations value and the seeding of interest in the Middle East and Africa is a great opportunity.

However, the choice has not been without controversy. David Strauss was one of the more vocal critics, alluding to Egypt’s treatment of women, LGBT and dissidents. His initial post:

I’m offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe (rotation) trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other civil rights (local laws). While visitors to Egypt are certainly not at the same risk, I refuse to spend any money in a country that — as recently as 2004 — sentenced someone to 17 years of prison and two years of hard labor for posting a personal ad on a gay website[1]. A blogger was imprisoned in 2007 for four years for “insulting Islam and defaming the President of Egypt.”[2] Jimmy Wales even attended the Amnesty conference denouncing the censorship. No legal or cultural reforms since give me confidence that the situation has improved.

After a followup thread, there were some folks who agreed with him, but there has been no large outcry. Most folks seem excited and in support of the historic context and chance to engage a new community.

The choice of whether to boycott or engage has been a tough one. It happens with the Olympics, on trade, on technology transfer, and choosing conference venues. Given the international makeup of the Wikipedia community you’re not going to get consensus. When we chose Boston two years ago, there were folks who were upset because of the US’s foray into Iraq and the harsh requirements for visas.

Jimmy Wales has noted this, and has chosen “engagement” as his stance.

In honor of David’s concerns, I have decided to make the title of my own talk at Wikimania 2008 “Free knowledge and human rights” and I will use this opportunity to speak out against censorship and other violations of human rights around the world, including examples from Egypt.

Phoebe Ayers, who served on the jury, mentioned that the process is not perfect and that the team is willing to re-evaluate the criteria for future cycles. But this particular decision is final, and it seems on balance rather well supported.

She perhaps summed it up best.

Wikimania and Wikimedia are both global in scope, which means that while we can condemn censorship and loss of human rights everywhere we must also take into account a global range of values. Our projects focus specifically on free knowledge, and I expect that will be highlighted at the conference.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Wikipedia, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.