I'm combining responses to edward and Fae and then heading to the pool. B-)
edward wrote: >But she is about right, isn't she? I mean, there are millions and >millions of people who edit Wikipedia, about their garage band, e.g., or >about a company they were paid to edit for, or to write something >incompetent or plagiarised about history or philosophy, or whatever. >Some are remarkably good at it, many aren't. Most of these I suspect >would not call themselves 'Wikipedians'. Then there are those who are >regularly involved with the site, mostly as 'content contributors', but >who would also shudder to call themselves 'Wikipedians'. I would have >put myself in that category, when I used to edit. I care about the free >knowledge stuff, very much, actually, and I would always do my best to >ensure articles in my specialist field were reasonably accurate. Even >though I don't edit any more I still try and get stuff corrected >http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/02/23/islands-of-sanity. But I have >never seen myself as part of any 'community'. > >Then there are the people who _would_ call themselves 'Wikipedians', but >wouldn't have the time or location or money to go to any of the >'community events'. Finally there are the hard core, who talk about the >'movement' and who proselytise for it and who do turn up to such events. >So it's a minority of a minority of a minority, yes. That's a rough >picture, obviously, but I don't think the journalist meant anything else. Well, not quite finally. You've captured a few archetypes, but there likely many more. Who is and isn't a Wikimedian (or a Wikipedian) is probably as difficult a question to answer as "who is a Jew?" (cf. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F>). It's a question of identity and culture that's complex and without very clear or simple answers. This is also why any attempt to directly quantify Wikipedians is also prone to error. Putting aside the orders of magnitude difference between 22,000 and 22,000,000, is it fair to only look at _registered_ Wikipedians? Involvement with Wikipedia does not and has never required creating a user account. I think the journalist meant to paint a rough picture and she was successful in doing so. The counter-point being made here is that it's trivial to paint a distorted picture of nearly anyone or anything, but that does not mean it's fair to do so or good journalism. Fae wrote: >* What proportion of attendees at the conference were women? * >- Several emails in this thread have claimed it was high, nobody has >provided evidence. As Wikimedia funded conferences measure diversity, >publicly reporting this figure should be *a good thing*. I'm not sure this number is available off-hand. I don't believe sex/gender was recorded at time of conference registration, so you'd have to manually sample, I think? There's a group photo somewhere that shows many (but certainly not all) of the conference participants. If you think statistical survey data such as gender should be collected for all future wiki conferences, it probably makes sense to incorporate this recommendation into a best practices guide at outreach.wikimedia.org or meta.wikimedia.org and make future conference organizers aware of it. >* What proportion of attendees were Wikimedia Chapter or Foundation >contractors or employees and attending the conference could be considered >part of their employment? * >- At least one email here claimed that volunteers broke their backs >running the conference, which seems to overlook that a high proportion >of registered attendees were employees and probably did most of the >preparation. I asked this question last year about another conference, >it was never answered properly, as it was never measured. Again, this >ought to be *a good thing* to report on, as our values are to keep the >volunteer at the centre of everything we do and driving our movement >rather than paying Executives six-figure sums to tell us what we >should believe in. This feels like a strange question to ask. Aren't you asking specifically who the conference organizers were and how many of them were volunteers? I think <https://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Organizing_Team> answers this question. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
