Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Andreas Kolbe]

Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself.

User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, 
conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a 
short write-up of his study online:

---o0o---

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v_96mBI74-MJ:ocs.sfu.ca/aoir/index.php/ir/10/paper/view/185+%22Brenton+Stewart%22+black+wikipediacd=5hl=enct=clnkgl=uk

Paper 2: Working for Free: Motivations Behind Black Contributions to the 
Wikipedia Project


The dirty little secret of the Internet is that it’s built upon free labor. 
Internet labor exists in a unique dualism in that the production and 
reproduction of web and social networking sites as well as the design of 
some computer games and software are manifest as entertainment, leisure or 
hobbyist escapism - but not as labor. Greg Downey (2001) argues that this 
type of “flexible labor is hard to see” noting that “the commodification of 
the virtual serves to mystify the material.” Few entities in the new 
digital economy have capitalized upon this form of labour extraction better 
than the Wikipedia Project, the world’s first peer-produced online 
encyclopedia.  However, Wikipedia’s sole reliance on unpaid laborers means 
that it reflects the interests and biases of these contributors who are 
overwhelmingly homogeneous. This study is a descriptive investigation into 
the factors that influence African American contributions to the Wikipedia 
project.  Situated within Tiziana Terranova’s (2001) social-factory theory 
this research seeks to understand the role of racial/ethnic identification 
as a motivator, Wikipedia as a space for the extension of black 
volunteerism, and the topics most frequently edited by this community of 
Wikipedians.  

The findings suggest that while these Wikipedians contribute 
as a form of entertainment and support for the democratization of 
information they are also motivated by their racial/ethnic identity, highly 
cognizant of their minority status and tended to view their edits (labor) 
as a transgressive act that is ultimately beneficial to the black 
community. This research argues the social-factory forms the foundation of 
not only Wikipedia but also a multitude of online peer-produced communities 
such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. What is most significant about these 
communities is that their end product, the cultural knowledge of the 
masses, is freely given and results in enormous revenue for their parent 
companies. This investigation contributes to diverse literature including 
media and library  information studies as well as cyber and community 
activism. 

---o0o---

I'll let that stand there without comment; there are obviously several
ways one can look at that.

I know of at least one African American admin on en:WP, but only a handful 
of other black Wikipedians. A while ago I took part in discussions at
[[Ancient Egyptian race controversy]]; my impression was that black editors
there were given quite a hard time -- resistance to including works by 
black scholars, because they were deemed unreliable, etc., the standard
POV stuff. I tried to help out for a while, but then got sidetracked.

The influx of Indian editors will be an interesting challenge. I firmly
expect that at some point over the next 10 or 20 years, Indian editors will
have something like numerical parity with Western editors. At the moment,
being in a minority, they have trouble getting their points across. 

Look at [[British Empire]] for example, which paints a fairly rosy picture
of colonialism which would be considered ridiculously POV in India, or at
[[Famine in India]], an article written with a more Indian POV, where some 
of the same opponents are battling it out. What's NPOV depends on whether
you allow Indian sources or stick to Western sources. 

On top of it, an en:WP bureaucrat recently blocked an Indian editor in good
standing without prior warning and without talk page notice, for 2 weeks, 
for trolling and pov pushing at British Empire and talk (currently at
AN/I). Same crat also commented to another admin on their talk page,

---o0o---

How the WMF sees India as the new goldmine and is making a big din there 
with speaking tours and likes. More like a goldmine of copyvio, ethnic and 
religious fundamentalist POV. There will be a flood of dudes like 
{{User|X}} if their initiative works, which'll be funny. As you can see on 
the mailing list, which is public, all these leaders are queueing, IPL-
style feeding frenzy. X is after me, lol 

---o0o---

The other day, the same crat appeared to call another Indian editor a
retarded nationalist in an edit summary, never showed up for the 
resulting AN/I thread, and escaped without any sanction whatsoever.

A few mostly Indian editors have recently argued that the article 
[[Ganges]] should be renamed [[Ganga]], as that is now the river's official 
name in India. Now, to be sure, this is not 

Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Andreas Kolbe]

If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative 
dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would probably 
be Henry Louis Gates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates

He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front 
porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar. 
More saliently, he is noted as the author of 

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience

He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine

http://www.theroot.com/

There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's 
not like black people don't read it.

Andreas





  

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[wiki-list]

jayen...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
 So I think one reason why we don't see more diversity is that the 
 established, predominantly white user base is giving editors from other
 backgrounds a pretty hard time!
 

You could also add in the photo of the bare chested African adolescent that was 
proposed as a suitable image for the 'Primate' article.

The above aside the problem with a NPOV is that it is really the dominate POV. 
That maybe OK when talking about a flat earth, but people from other parts of 
the world can have a fundamentally different POV on may subjects than that 
found amongst a predominately young white middle class western males. Not least 
of which will be the concept of 'free culture' perverted by Libertarians. These 
societies have practised 'free culture' of 100s of years and been exploited by 
the commercialism of that culture by western elites for the last 150 years.



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[David Gerard]

On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself.
 User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart,
 conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a
 short write-up of his study online:


Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding
it everywhere.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

 If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative
 dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would
 probably
 be Henry Louis Gates

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates

 He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front
 porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar.
 More saliently, he is noted as the author of

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience

 He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine

 http://www.theroot.com/

 There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's
 not like black people don't read it.

 Andreas

The Root is open to broad public participation. And has an active comment
section attached to their articles, a good opportunity to add your
comment and relate the topic to the Wikipedia article on the subject, see
for example:

http://www.theroot.com/views/four-loko-hysteria-smack-classism

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Sue Gardner]

On 22 November 2010 05:00, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself.
 User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart,
 conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a
 short write-up of his study online:


 Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding
 it everywhere.


You're right, David. It's a fabulous, informative post that raises
important issues. Thanks, Andreas.
Sue

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Anirudh Bhati]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:13 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net 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.

 The short answer:

 snip
 this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive)
 generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then
 yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education
 and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and
 are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's
 applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you
 can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For
 what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but
 very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the
 only part of the U.S. to consider).

These generalizations would still apply had we been talking about the
Na'vi People. :)

What we are discussing is more of a social issue than an inherent
systemic bias in the guiding philosophy of the project or the
software.  The barriers to becoming a long-term Wikipedia contributor
are very low for a developed country like the United States viz.
education, electricity, computer and an internet connection.

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:35 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote:

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.

Apart from the evidence Phoebe put up,* it could be that
African-Americans do not formally register themselves for volunteering
programmes.  However, they probably have more pressing needs and
priorities than contributing to Wikimedia projects.

*http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/assets/resources/FactSheetFinal.pdf


 The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles
 which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.

I am quite convinced, that is what I have personally witnessed over
the last few years.


 The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed,
 unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are
 educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the
 habit of volunteering.

Absolutely, a large number of African-Americans are very poor and
semi-literate; they make up 14% of the US population and receive 37%
of its welfare payments.  This has got nothing to do with race, first
and second generation immigrants from Asia and even black immigrants
from countries like Jamaica are relatively better off than
African-American families that have been citizens for generations and
feeding off welfare without any change in their social circumstances.

The culprit is welfarism, not black culture (as some other
commentators refer to).  Cultures are often a symptom of the political
systems they exist in.


 All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good
 Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the
 opportunity arises.

Agreed. :)

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:14 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:


 Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related
 to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African
 Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13].

Contributing to our projects requires more than a computer and lulz.
Wikipedia is serious business. :)

What I mean to say is that we will tend to attract serious
contributors compared to any social networking website that is chiefly
used for entertainment.

anirudh

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Strainu]

2010/11/18 Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org:
 So for 200 years it's OK to classify anyone with a drop of African blood
 as black (and subject them to all forms of racism and discrimination),
 but once a 1/2 African is elected president, he can't be called black
 all the sudden?

 References:
 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act
 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

 Ryan Kaldari

My mail was not about whether calling Obama black is OK or not OK.
What's OK in the US might not be OK in Europe and vice-versa. I've
made the point that different cultures have a different vision of
races and especially about people of mixed origin.

What is not OK from my POV is people finding offensive to call him
almost black or anything else than black, as Steven Walling
suggested, that I don't really understand. It seems to me like the
fact (anthropological fact, that is) is skewed to...what purpose
exactly? But again, this is a European's POV, perhaps in the States it
really is necessary to call Barack Obama black.

Strainu


 On 11/17/10 2:18 PM, Strainu wrote:
 2010/11/17wjhon...@aol.com:

 In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
 steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:



 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it,
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black.


 Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
 Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian
 American

 Which shows only hot dangerous political correctness can get. I
 wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
 majority, such a person will be called an European-American...

 For those of you who speak other languages than English, I suggest
 reading the English, French, Spanish, Italian and/or German versions
 of en:Mulatto. You will get an extraordinary glimpse of what different
 groups consider relevant about this subject - the French have an
 interesting comparison of the term in several languages.


 I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that most American blacks
 are part white, since it's possibly also true that most American whites
 are part black

 Citation needed?:P

 Strainu

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
ethnic group living in US, which is named today as African Americans
and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic
minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious
underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is
English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.

This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with
women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome
backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that
there are big differences between middle class Americans of African
and European origins.

Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
Wikimedians.

The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th
century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the
country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual
and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot
of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects
were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot
of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in
Iran or Russia.

Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is
English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another
language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.

I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group.
I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open
Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American
females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a
comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is
about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should
be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community.
But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we
aren't.

Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture
distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is
not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively
simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech
persons who are not able to adopt wiki syntax. Participation in OTT
[2] requires similar level of tech knowledge, if not higher.

Also, I think that it is possible that we are one of the causes, not
the consequence of that stratification. Not intentionally, of course,
but that our culture is giving fuel to those trends.

I wouldn't say that not so user friendly interface is the main reason
for that kind of stratification. I suppose that the picture would be
much different if we would be able to know social and ethnic
composition of those who edit once or a couple of times and then leave
Wikimedia projects.

Maybe it is about our and their.

There are four Wikipedias written in the same language system:
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian. All four communities
are generally welcoming newcomers from other political areas. The
question is just about treating some of those projects as home project
and integration in the particular community. (Political issues are the
other question: you don't need to be a member of different ethnicity
to have political conflicts.) However, it is a matter of feeling some
project as the home one or not. If a person don't feel particular
project as their home project, that project is usually out of their
focus.

So, maybe African Americans generally don't feel English 

Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

There seems to be nothing on Wikia, Black wiki is about Criterion's
video game Black. Black Books wiki is about BAEFTA award-wining sitcom,
Black Books. Nothing about African-American.

You're on to a real problem, which by the way, as should be obvious,
Americans don't know how to deal with or successfully ameliorate. As you
can see from this thread, denial is the usual defensive response which
serves to avoid the kind of detailed serious discussion you are
proposing.

If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist
African-American wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be
based on language differences.  However, I doubt that would be acceptable
to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American
community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.

I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the
African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and
in published books and journals is included.

And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories:
African-American culture | African American literature | African American
studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles
and issues linked from it.

Fred Bauder


 Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
 well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
 ethnic group living in US, which is named today as African Americans
 and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
 the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
 say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
 The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
 So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
 referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
 first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
 not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
 because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

 I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic
 minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious
 underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is
 English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.

 This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with
 women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome
 backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that
 there are big differences between middle class Americans of African
 and European origins.

 Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
 females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
 that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
 would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
 Wikimedians.

 The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th
 century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the
 country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual
 and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot
 of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects
 were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot
 of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in
 Iran or Russia.

 Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is
 English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another
 language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.

 I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group.
 I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open
 Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American
 females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a
 comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is
 about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should
 be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community.
 But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we
 aren't.

 Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
 it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
 Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
 African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
 American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
 Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
 Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
 African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

 There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture
 distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is
 not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively
 simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech
 persons who are not 

Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Przykuta]

 Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American
 females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact
 that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I
 would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American
 Wikimedians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians

146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is 
active in wp

female:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Merewyn/Userboxes/Woman

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Disavian/Userboxes/Femalelimit=50

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Hmwith/ubx/femlimit=500

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Rhanyeia/User_female

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:UBX/female3limit=100

but... not everyone want to use these templates

przykuta

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:47, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:
 Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me
 well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big
 ethnic group living in US, which is named today as African Americans
 and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the
 the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would
 say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people.
 The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants.
 So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am
 referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the
 first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is
 not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but
 because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one clarifications:
* First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
background.
* Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
which ancestors came there as slaves I was referring to the culture
developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Sue Gardner]

On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:
 Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
 it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
 Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
 African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
 American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
 Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
 Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
 African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

Yes: click the link I sent.

African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide;
women make up 22.7%.

Thanks,
Sue

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians

 146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is 
 active in wp

After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian
Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However,
those numbers mean nothing:

* 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1];
population 300M+, English is native
* 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is native
* 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native
* 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native
* 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native
* 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native
* 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native
* 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native.
* 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is native
* 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native
* 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native

I tried to make put some other factors, but nothing has sense. There
is no consistency in the way on which Wikipedians are identifying
themselves ethnically, nationally or locally. It depends on particular
culture. (I used population of particular territories, not ethnic
population, but it won't change proportions significantly if ethnic
populations would be used.)

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 19:17, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:
 Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that
 it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African
 Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of
 African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of
 American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of
 Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is:
 Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less
 African Americans with tech jobs than American women?

 Yes: click the link I sent.

 African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide;
 women make up 22.7%.

The numbers are according to the tech workforce, not according to the
population. African Americans stay better than women, actually: 7.1%
is 59% of 12% and 22.7% is 45% of 50%.

Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related
to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African
Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13].
With some theories why is it so [14].

The most worrying theory is: The median age for black Americans
(according to the 2000 census) is 30 years old, a full seven years
younger than for white Americans. Black people therefore make up a
relatively higher percentage of the population within the most
relevant age groups -- Twitter is most popular amongst 25-34
year-olds.

It says, as it is confirmed at least in East and South-East Asia, that
we have a big problem, which would be just bigger as time is passing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_Wikipedians
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Polish_Wikipedians
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_Wikipedians
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_Germany
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_California
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_California
[9] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Wikipedians
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_Wikipedians
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_Wikipedians
[13] 
http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-whos-using-twitter-2010-4
[14] http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-study-results-2010-4

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 15:47, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote:
 If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist
 African-American wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be
 based on language differences.  However, I doubt that would be acceptable
 to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American
 community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.

Language differences exist and they are consistent among the African
American population. The origin of differences are creole language(s),
probably of Portuguese origin (with West African substrate, of
course), used in Caribbean. However, this is probably not enough for a
separate ISO 639-3 code, while the differences toward Standard English
are probably bigger than differences between Serbian, Croatian,
Bosnian and Montenegrin.

 I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the
 African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and
 in published books and journals is included.

 And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories:
 African-American culture | African American literature | African American
 studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles
 and issues linked from it.

I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at
least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it
looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Risker]

On 18 November 2010 13:44, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta przyk...@o2.pl wrote:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
 
  146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is
 active in wp

 After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian
 Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However,
 those numbers mean nothing:

 * 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1];
 population 300M+, English is native
 * 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is
 native
 * 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native
 * 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native
 * 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native
 * 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native
 * 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native
 * 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native.
 * 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is
 native
 * 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native
 * 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native


snip

Actually, none of these statistics are relevant, because the overwhelming
majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality,
age, sex, or race.

While I'm sure that Wikipedia's editorship is not particularly reflective of
the world at large, using userboxes as a metric to determine representation
of various groups is not particularly helpful.  Many very involved users
don't include userboxes in their userspace (myself included), or don't use
the userboxes that involve sex, race, age or nationality. It strikes me that
I see probably 50 language-skill-related userboxes for every userbox that
confirms geographic location or sex.

Risker/Anne
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Marco Chiesa]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:

 I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at
 least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it
 looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.


I think this is part of a general dilemma about the so-called new
technologies. On a very broad approximation, Internet (and Wikipedia)
has from its beginnings been created and dominated by white, male,
relatively young and tech-savvy people, and these demographics have
tended to shape it to their own values and style. The rest of the
world (which represents a large majority of the population),
participates less in Internet/Wikipedia. I think both these groups
are less interested in Wikipedia and these groups find a more
hostile environment explain why these demographics are so
underrepresented.
Compared with the rest of Internet, I guess Wikipedia has been
successful in attracting not-so-young people (people involved in
teaching in particular), I'm not sure about other demographics.
Cruccone

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Kat Walsh]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Brian J Mingus
brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
 I haven't seen the numbers lately but in the past it was true that the
 majority of Wikipedia's traffic came from Google. If that is still true it
 seems likely that Google's demographics mirror what we are seeing here. The
 implication is that what we are seeing here is indicative of the
 demographics of internet use in general, which does seem to indicate that
 these folks just aren't on the internet in the first place. There are of
 course other explanations, such as, they simply choose not to edit. But I
 believe if you check the demographic statistics from Hitwise and elsewhere
 there will be a strong correlation with this overall trend. Basically, these
 people are underprivileged in our society and it reflects in our
 demographics.

Commenting since I just looked at some of these papers...

There have been a bunch of studies on broadband adoption in the US;
there was one published just this month. According to it, 49% of black
households in the US have broadband at home; 68% of white households
do. Adoption is correlated with income and education, but even
controlling for that a greater proportion of white households use the
internet at home.
http://www.esa.doc.gov/DN/ (4.2 MB .pdf)

And a study on minority internet use specifically:
http://www.jointcenter.org/publications1/publication-PDFs/MTI_BROADBAND_REPORT_2.pdf
(844 KB .pdf)

Many who don't have broadband internet at home use it at public
libraries or community centers, but time on computers there tends to
be limited because there is more demand for computers than
availability.

But it's not *that* large a gap in access compared to how
underrepresented blacks are in the active Wikimedia community; I
expect it's more social factors than anything else.

Compare us to Twitter--there is a huge and highly visible black
community there; 26% of black internet users in the US use Twitter
(and 19% of white internet users), and also interesting to me is that
20-22% of US internet users Twitter across all income levels:
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/17-Twitter-and-Status-Updating-Fall-2009.aspx?r=1

-Kat

-- 
Your donations keep Wikipedia online: http://donate.wikimedia.org/en
Wikimedia, Press: k...@wikimedia.org * Personal: k...@mindspillage.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage * (G)AIM:mindspillage
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:14:37 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
mill...@gmail.com writes:


 As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one 
 clarifications:
 * First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
 African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
 that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
 background.
 * Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
 which ancestors came there as slaves I was referring to the culture
 developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.
 


This is not correct.  Barack was born in Hawaii, not known for having a 
large black culture.  His father left the family early.  Barack's white mother, 
married again and moved to Indonesian with Barack where he lived for some 
years.  He then returned to his white grandparents living in Hawaii where he 
attended Junior High and High schools.

He was not raised in an African American culture at all.

W
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 20:21,  wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
 In a message dated 11/18/2010 9:14:37 AM Pacific Standard Time,
 mill...@gmail.com writes:
 As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one
 clarifications:
 * First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the
 African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me
 that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural
 background.
 * Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction
 which ancestors came there as slaves I was referring to the culture
 developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.

 This is not correct.  Barack was born in Hawaii, not known for having a
 large black culture.  His father left the family early.  Barack's white 
 mother,
 married again and moved to Indonesian with Barack where he lived for some
 years.  He then returned to his white grandparents living in Hawaii where he
 attended Junior High and High schools.

 He was not raised in an African American culture at all.

I said to myself that I won't read article about him this time. For
me, it is perfectly the same what he is. But, obviously, I have to do
my homework in such situations.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Arthur Richards]

On 11/18/2010 11:21 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
 He was not raised in an African American culture at all.


Regardless of whether or not Obama was raised in whatever you consider 
to be 'African American culture', he has no doubt experienced life in a 
very different way from someone who has 'white' skin - something he 
likely shares in common with anyone living in the US who is perceived as 
non-white.  And just as there is no one 'white' culture, there is no one 
'African American' culture.  Culture cannot be defined strictly by the 
color of one's skin or ancestral roots.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Przykuta]

 Actually, none of these statistics are relevant, because the overwhelming
 majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality,
 age, sex, or race.

Sure, and user page with userboxes =/= (active) wikipedian. 

przykuta

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[WJhonson]

And my Knols are also not read in Africa

evidence
http://statcounter.com/project/standard/visitor_map.php?project_id=4543053

Although there is apparently one person in Pakistan who is interested.

The point of this message is that the reach in Africa doesn't seem limited 
to a  Wikipedia issue.  Nigeria at least speaks English (of a sort) so I 
don't know why they aren't more active.
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[Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Steven Walling]

(To my knowledge) no one has an answer to this question that is backed by
rigorous research. This is one vital demographic question to ask, but just
looking at the sparse (self-selected) Category at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians is not
really evidence that we're exclusively white. We really need to study it
more.

Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it, but
Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the second
sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
our President isn't black.

Steven

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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 *

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[theo10011]

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 phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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 *

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[WJhonson]

In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:


 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it, 
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the 
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black. 
 

Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian 
American

I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that most American blacks 
are part white, since it's possibly also true that most American whites 
are part black

W
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

 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.

The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans
rarely volunteer.

The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles
which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.

The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed,
unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are
educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the
habit of volunteering.

Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have
an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.

African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some
resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not
entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.

All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good
Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the
opportunity arises.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Nathan]

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.

 The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles
 which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.

 The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed,
 unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are
 educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the
 habit of volunteering.

 Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have
 an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.

 African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some
 resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not
 entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.

 All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good
 Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the
 opportunity arises.

 Fred Bauder



...Wow. Maybe you can follow Phoebe's example and cite some evidence?
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello,

In fact, I cannot remember that I have ever met in Germany or the
Netherlands a Turkish or Moroccan Wikimedian. Maybe there was one, but
he spoke good German and presented himself as User:Encylco-dude81 so
that I did not notice the migration background. :-)

According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go
to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to
social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when
they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from
Wikipedia in German.

Kind regards
Ziko

-- 
Ziko van Dijk
The Netherlands
http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Strainu]

2010/11/17  wjhon...@aol.com:
 In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
 steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:


 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it,
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black. 


 Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
 Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian
 American

Which shows only hot dangerous political correctness can get. I
wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
majority, such a person will be called an European-American...

For those of you who speak other languages than English, I suggest
reading the English, French, Spanish, Italian and/or German versions
of en:Mulatto. You will get an extraordinary glimpse of what different
groups consider relevant about this subject - the French have an
interesting comparison of the term in several languages.


 I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that most American blacks
 are part white, since it's possibly also true that most American whites
 are part black

Citation needed?:P

Strainu

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Strainu]

2010/11/18 Strainu strain...@gmail.com:
 2010/11/17  wjhon...@aol.com:
 In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
 steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:


 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it,
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black. 


 Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
 Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian
 American

 Which shows only hot dangerous political correctness can get. I
 wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
 majority, such a person will be called an European-American...

I meant to say how dangerous...should have read the email before
sending it. :(


 For those of you who speak other languages than English, I suggest
 reading the English, French, Spanish, Italian and/or German versions
 of en:Mulatto. You will get an extraordinary glimpse of what different
 groups consider relevant about this subject - the French have an
 especially interesting comparison of the term in several languages.


 I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that most American blacks
 are part white, since it's possibly also true that most American whites
 are part black

 Citation needed?:P

 Strainu


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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and
 African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.

 The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles
 which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.

 The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed,
 unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are
 educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in
 the
 habit of volunteering.

 Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans
 have
 an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.

 African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some
 resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not
 entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.

 All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good
 Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when
 the
 opportunity arises.

 Fred Bauder



 ...Wow. Maybe you can follow Phoebe's example and cite some evidence?


A reaction like this is expected to any honest straightforward
observation that is not politically correct. I lived in the Five Points
neighborhood of Denver for yeara. I like Black people, but there are
issues.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Strainu strain...@gmail.com wrote:
 2010/11/17  wjhon...@aol.com:
 Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
 Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian
 American

 Which shows only hot dangerous political correctness can get. I
 wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
 majority, such a person will be called an European-American...

This is rapidly going off topic, but...

Hispanic-American is European-American, too - just from Spain (and
some Portugal) rather than England.

Except where the native american population intermixed with the
Spanish (and Portugese), which was pretty much everywhere.


Actual lesson -

It's easy to get hung up on people's skin color or other arbitrary and
fuzzy labels.  What matters more is that we're not as attractive a
project to volunteer in for various social, economic, and (the
preceding sentence notwithstanding) racial groups.  Regardless of
how we label them, we need to attract participation from
internet-savvy members of all the populations we don't represent well,
over time.

Our international flavor helps with that, in that overall as a
Foundation and wider project we do have widespread inclusionism of
disparate peoples.  But introspection into underserved communities
within big countries (the US particularly) and into underserved
nations would be wise.  The latter is open to new communities but not
actively attracting them; the former, a US chapter with teeth could go
after.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

 Hello,

 In fact, I cannot remember that I have ever met in Germany or the
 Netherlands a Turkish or Moroccan Wikimedian. Maybe there was one, but
 he spoke good German and presented himself as User:Encylco-dude81 so
 that I did not notice the migration background. :-)

 According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go
 to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to
 social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when
 they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from
 Wikipedia in German.

 Kind regards
 Ziko

 --
 Ziko van Dijk
 The Netherlands
 http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

My impression is that the Turks in Germany are mostly manual workers. Not
that they are stupid or anything; its more a matter how how they see
themselves. Blacks in America, if in a perverse, self-defeating mode
regard intellectual endeavors such as reading as White.

Fred Bauder


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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Sue Gardner]

On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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.

Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)

I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.

Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are
disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe,
that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting
Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be
perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason
to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically
different from the people we happen to meet.

I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the
tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a
tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning
early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is
still relatively non-user-friendly.

And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States)
skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over
time. In fact, this research
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1forced=true
found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon
Valley) tech, not gaining it.

I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community
demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia
community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking
about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of
good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and
Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.

 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.*

I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's
probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population
women or African-Americans or Latino-Americans. We are likelier
to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and
Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia
characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology,
a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high
intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure
time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth.

My two cents, written fast :-)
Sue

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net 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.

 The short answer:

snip
this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive)
generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then
yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education
and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and
are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's
applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you
can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For
what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but
very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the
only part of the U.S. to consider).

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Brian J Mingus]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:43 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net
 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.
 
  The short answer:

 snip
 this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive)
 generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then
 yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education
 and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and
 are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's
 applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you
 can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For
 what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but
 very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the
 only part of the U.S. to consider).

 -- phoebe


I haven't seen the numbers lately but in the past it was true that the
majority of Wikipedia's traffic came from Google. If that is still true it
seems likely that Google's demographics mirror what we are seeing here. The
implication is that what we are seeing here is indicative of the
demographics of internet use in general, which does seem to indicate that
these folks just aren't on the internet in the first place. There are of
course other explanations, such as, they simply choose not to edit. But I
believe if you check the demographic statistics from Hitwise and elsewhere
there will be a strong correlation with this overall trend. Basically, these
people are underprivileged in our society and it reflects in our
demographics.
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net 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.

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.

Regarding this claim in particular: incidentally, I was just at the
Boardsource conference last week, which is an annual conference for
board members and CEOs of non-profit organizations; it happened to be
in San Francisco this year. There were maybe 600+ people there from
organizations all over the country. Just from looking at the crowd, at
least 10% -- probably more -- of the people there were
African-American; these are all people who are leaders in their
respective organizations, which ranged all over the place but seemed
to be lots of health  human service organizations: child abuse
prevention, food banks, YMCA, etc; as well as many other types of
non-profits.

And according to the U.S. volunteer agency stats on the subject, rates
of African-American volunteerism are on the rise:
http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/assets/resources/FactSheetFinal.pdf
These rates lag behind the national average, but not by a huge amount.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[John Vandenberg]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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.

 Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)

 I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.

 Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are
 disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe,
 that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting
 Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be
 perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason
 to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically
 different from the people we happen to meet.

 I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the
 tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a
 tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning
 early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is
 still relatively non-user-friendly.

 And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States)
 skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over
 time. In fact, this research
 http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1forced=true
 found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon
 Valley) tech, not gaining it.

 I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community
 demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia
 community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking
 about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of
 good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and
 Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.

Have there been any studies on this issue within the open source community?
Their community would be even more skewed towards tech, and their
movement is a few steps ahead of us.

--
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[MZMcBride]

Fred Bauder wrote:
 [a bunch of inflammatory comments]

... and an entire mailing list facepalms. Good grief, Fred.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Philippe Beaudette]

We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well.  So we're 
putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the folks 
we have are not ... well, people who look like me.  So I'm very happy about 
that.  

pb

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Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

pbeaude...@wikimedia.org

Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share 
in the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://donate.wikimedia.org

On Nov 17, 2010, at 3:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:

 Thanks, Sue.
 
 Obligatory current event tie-in -
 
 Could we get a more multi-ethnic I am a Wikipedian campaign going
 for the fundraising drive?
 
 As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million
 clones of him.  Seeing more of the variety would certainly help
 attract attention, I think.
 
 
 
 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com 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.
 
 Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)
 
 I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.
 
 Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are
 disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe,
 that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting
 Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be
 perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason
 to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically
 different from the people we happen to meet.
 
 I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the
 tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a
 tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning
 early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is
 still relatively non-user-friendly.
 
 And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States)
 skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over
 time. In fact, this research
 http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1forced=true
 found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon
 Valley) tech, not gaining it.
 
 I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community
 demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia
 community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking
 about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of
 good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and
 Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.
 
 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.*
 
 I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's
 probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population
 women or African-Americans or Latino-Americans. We are likelier
 to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and
 Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia
 characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology,
 a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high
 intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure
 time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth.
 
 My two cents, written fast :-)
 Sue
 
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 george.herb...@gmail.com
 
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[MZMcBride]

George Herbert wrote:
 Obligatory current event tie-in -
 
 Could we get a more multi-ethnic I am a Wikipedian campaign going
 for the fundraising drive?
 
 As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million
 clones of him.  Seeing more of the variety would certainly help
 attract attention, I think.

There should be some appeals from editors very shortly. I can't guarantee
that this link will work forever, but you can see a prototype banner here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/viewtemp
late=2010_Editor_Banner1_US

MZMcBride



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[George Herbert]

Ah, bueno.  I was unaware of the Kartika version; excellent that the
Foundation's already figured it out and was working on it.

Thanks, Philippe and MzMcBride.  Good job to whoever thought it up
earlier and did the test run.


On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Philippe Beaudette
pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well.  So we're 
 putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the 
 folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me.  So I'm very happy 
 about that.



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herb...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2010/11/17 Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com:

 According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go
 to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to
 social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when
 they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from
 Wikipedia in German.{{citation needed}}


I guess Turkish children, second or third generation of Turkish
emigrants simply do not read anything in Turkish, and even speak very
little Turkish{{citation needed}}

Oh dear Why, we wikipedians are so vulnerable to social and
ethnical stereotypes?

My daughter use to copy-paste from Polish Wikipedia her homework and
does not read any other encyclopedia. Does it mean she belongs to a
social class that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia ?
Maybe...


-- 
Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

ve to get more contributors.

 The short answer:

 snip
 this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive)
 generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then
 yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education
 and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and
 are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's
 applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you
 can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For
 what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but
 very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the
 only part of the U.S. to consider).

 -- phoebe


I doubt many white people of any nationality from an impoverished
background edit either. Poor education, restricted interests, etc.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Ryan Kaldari]

So for 200 years it's OK to classify anyone with a drop of African blood 
as black (and subject them to all forms of racism and discrimination), 
but once a 1/2 African is elected president, he can't be called black 
all the sudden?

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Ryan Kaldari

On 11/17/10 2:18 PM, Strainu wrote:
 2010/11/17wjhon...@aol.com:

 In a message dated 11/17/2010 1:23:04 PM Pacific Standard Time,
 steven.wall...@gmail.com writes:


  
 Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it,
 but
 Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the
 second
 sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say
 our President isn't black.


 Obama is exactly half-black and half-white.
 Funny how he is African American but of course he is equally Caucasian
 American
  
 Which shows only hot dangerous political correctness can get. I
 wonder if in 2050, when the white population will no longer be be in
 majority, such a person will be called an European-American...

 For those of you who speak other languages than English, I suggest
 reading the English, French, Spanish, Italian and/or German versions
 of en:Mulatto. You will get an extraordinary glimpse of what different
 groups consider relevant about this subject - the French have an
 interesting comparison of the term in several languages.


 I suppose it's intellectually dishonest to claim that most American blacks
 are part white, since it's possibly also true that most American whites
 are part black
  
 Citation needed?:P

 Strainu

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net 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.

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.


Wow, I don't even know what to say to that, Fred.  Actually, I do.  As a
white American who has lived in the American south his entire life, the area
with the most racial tension as a whole (you can localize communities in
cities like LA or Detroit), that is entirely untrue.  Statistics might be
found that show that African Americans are less likely to be identified as
volunteers in survey,  but African Americans most certainly are even more
community oriented than white folk.

I can think of five Wikimedians off the top of my head that are African
Americans.  I can think of almost ten Hispanic Americans.  I can think of a
Moroccan (@Nathan) because we have one on the English Wikipedia's
Arbitration committee with FayssalF.

I don't pay much attention to age, gender, or sexual orientation on
Wikipedia or other projects, because it doesn't matter.  What we reveal
about ourselves is our choice, and if you seek out personal information that
is your choice.  On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.


-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Keegan Peterzell]

Oh, and as an afterthought, compare our articles on hip-hop[1] on the
English Wikipedia to our coverage of country music[2].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanci_Griffith
-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Sue Gardner]

On 17 November 2010 15:39, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote:
 Ah, bueno.  I was unaware of the Kartika version; excellent that the
 Foundation's already figured it out and was working on it.

 Thanks, Philippe and MzMcBride.  Good job to whoever thought it up
 earlier and did the test run.


 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Philippe Beaudette
 pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well.  So we're 
 putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the 
 folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me.  So I'm very happy 
 about that.


Yep, it's good.

Side note, but one of the things I really liked about the Truth In
Numbers documentary was the face it gave to the Wikimedia movement. It
was really lovely to see dozens (hundreds?) of people from around the
world -- multiple ethnicities, accents, locations. I don't know how
representative those people actually were/are of the general editor
population, but seeing them was inspiring nonetheless.

Thanks,
Sue

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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

 On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net
 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.

 The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and
 African-Americans
 rarely volunteer.


 Wow, I don't even know what to say to that, Fred.  Actually, I do.  As a
 white American who has lived in the American south his entire life, the
 area
 with the most racial tension as a whole (you can localize communities in
 cities like LA or Detroit), that is entirely untrue.  Statistics might be
 found that show that African Americans are less likely to be identified
 as
 volunteers in survey,  but African Americans most certainly are even more
 community oriented than white folk.

 I can think of five Wikimedians off the top of my head that are African
 Americans.  I can think of almost ten Hispanic Americans.  I can think of
 a
 Moroccan (@Nathan) because we have one on the English Wikipedia's
 Arbitration committee with FayssalF.

 I don't pay much attention to age, gender, or sexual orientation on
 Wikipedia or other projects, because it doesn't matter.  What we reveal
 about ourselves is our choice, and if you seek out personal information
 that
 is your choice.  On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.


 --
 ~Keegan

I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression
of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a
few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when
it does emerge.

Fred Bauder


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Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Keegan Peterzell]

I would not wish that world upon anyone, Fred.  African Americans are
underrepresented for the same reason that Native Americans and about 300
ethnic groups are: lack of internet access and, with access emerging,
learning how to engage in the internet.  It's not because any specific group
does not have a desire to volunteer, as you asserted, it's because our (not
black, white, North American, South American, African, Asian, Australian,
European or sitting in a small hut at a weather station in Antarctica) ones
and zeros are finally reaching populations.  You cannot expect any group to
embrace things like Wikimedia all at once, nor can we assume we're all white
guys.  There is no hope for focus our outreach if we begin with that
approach, whether it is merited or not.  To promote free knowledge, we must
assume that everyone is just someone and the bridge is built from there.

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.netwrote:

 I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression
 of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a
 few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when
 it does emerge.

 Fred Bauder


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-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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