We fear for the life of our fellow Wikipedian, Bassel Khartabil. Amnesty International has it that he is likely sentenced to death, his bed in prison is no longer his. What can we do when a fellow Wikipedian is in mortal peril? We can either wave our hands and religiously believe that our NPOV is sufficient motivation to do nothing. We can also look at what we have done for Syria and find that 732 Syrians known at Wikidata is not really good enough.
When you face an enemy, you may kill him but you will never make him a friend as you do not know him. At the Wikimedia Foundation we do not know about Syria really. When a neutral point of view is such a powerful argument, the argument loses its meaning when the only argument is your own. For this reason we must tell about Bassel, we hope that he will not be executed. For this same reason we must acknowledge that a neutral point of view is not neutral when effectively we do not know who he is and where he is from. Because of this we do not appreciate Bassel as one of our own, someone we hope is still a fellow Wikipedian.
You can help to edit his profile? Here is how:
2 Replies to “#MissingBassel – time to make your first Wikidata edits”