Well why only African American Wikimedians, I think the issue might be the same with other Racial Minorities in the US. How about Hispanic American or Asian American Wikimedians. Apart from social issues inherent to minorities, I think there might be something worth looking into, I doubt there would be any data available to look into it yet.
I seem to recall, there was also the issue of Gender bias among Wikimedians that was brought up earlier this year. Regards Theo On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, phoebe ayers <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic <[email protected]> wrote: > > For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any > > African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in > > a European country without African population, so everything seemed to > > me quite normal for a long time. > > > > I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, > > but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with > > university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are > > African Americans and present US president is almost, too. > > > > What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively > white? > > > > Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we > > solve to get more contributors. > > I ask myself the same question whenever I go to teach the incoming > classes of computer science students here at my university. Although > this is California, and we are close to having no ethnic majority in > the state as a whole,* the university population doesn't neatly > mirror state demographics;** and the CS classes, anecdotally speaking, > mirror it much less so. (It would be easy to claim that this is true > nationwide, though the data*** doesn't actually back that up). And > anyway, we know that formal education is a poor proxy for being a > Wikipedian, or even for computer culture as a whole. You could > probably just as helpfully look at the demographics of Silicon > Valley,**** or any other big tech center in the U.S., and wonder why > it was skewed white. > > I've only personally met a couple of black Americans in my time going > around the U.S. meeting Wikipedians, which again is totally anecdotal, > but considering that I've met a few hundred American Wikipedians in > total would seem to argue for a low rate of participation. But then > again, the people I've met at Wikimania and elsewhere are highly > self-selected, and don't necessarily match our actual editor base with > any certainty (I think about the black editor I met once at a small > meetup who had never been to any sort of meetup before, or as far as I > know since). I think the truth is that we just don't know, the same > way that we just don't know exactly how many women participate or why. > > We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the > readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are > outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both > want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant > amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons > why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I > can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible > categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this > diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we > should focus not on why so few people out of the general population > participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and > how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.***** > > -- phoebe > > p.s. race in America, as you can gather from reading the Wikipedia > article below, is far from a dichotomy: I'd frame this question rather > as what's our overall diversity, in terms of ethnicity and class and > gender, with an eye to how we succeed or fail at being welcoming and > representative; and how we address topical systemic bias overall. > > > * http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po40.htm > ** http://statfinder.ucop.edu/library/tables/table_106.aspx > *** http://elliottback.com/wp/black-diversity-in-it-and-computer-science/, > data from here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07308/pdf/tab13.pdf; > compare to national demographics: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population > **** > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California#Demographics > ***** Things like university outreach programs do exactly this. > > -- > * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers > <at> gmail.com * > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
