On 07/20/2013 12:57 AM, Tilman Bayer wrote:
In much of Europe, for example, asking people about their race, or classifying them racially, is considered very offensive (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)#European_Union ). This is particularly true in my home country, Germany, for historical reasons
In every local society (country or region) there are some questions that are asked in censuses and surveys. In Sweden, it used to be "social group", which defined group 1 as academics, group 2 as those with secondary education, and 3 as workers and farmers. Today, as almost everybody has a secondary education but Sweden has become an immigration destination, a more common division is foreign-born and foreign background (having foreign-born parents). Such questions that are included in national statistics, could also be asked to the wiki community. We could work with Eurostat to find some question that can be used throughout the European Union.
My unscientific feeling is that the Swedish wiki community is the mostly the "white and nerdy" demographic, being young and having some college education themselves and Swedish-born grandparents with less education. To become more inclusive, the Swedish wiki community would need to reach out to more immigrants. But that seems to be about as hard as getting sports people to edit Wikipedia.
We could certainly survey current Swedish wikipedians to find out their social status and background, just like a U.S. survey could ask about race. But how should we use the results from such a survey? Should we start outreach programs to town districts where many immigrants live, and see if the survey next year gives any different results?