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?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se