Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
You should ask down at the village pump, then if the response is favorable, start a BRFA. On Feb 24, 2015 10:04 PM, "Maia Weinstock" maiapw@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
I have contributed to py wikipedia bot, which could easily enable functionality like this.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot
The user specifies an article or range of articles, the substitution to be performed, and the bot prompts you with each instance in the text, something like
"blah blah start an *unmanned* space mission to find out blah blah blah... Replace this instance (y/n/cancel)?
Anyways, I think anyone who would like to make such automated changes would have to install and learn how to use PyWIkiBot (which I have done) and then I think you need some bot authorization for a bot account on English Wikipedia (which I have not done).
Cheers, -Travis
On 24 February 2015 at 19:09, JJ Marr jjmarr@gmail.com wrote:
You should ask down at the village pump, then if the response is favorable, start a BRFA. On Feb 24, 2015 10:04 PM, "Maia Weinstock" maiapw@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
You also need to avoid making such a change in uRLs and quotations, or at least quotations that were originally in English.
Regards
Jonathan
On 25 Feb 2015, at 03:29, Travis Briggs audiodude@gmail.com wrote:
I have contributed to py wikipedia bot, which could easily enable functionality like this.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot
The user specifies an article or range of articles, the substitution to be performed, and the bot prompts you with each instance in the text, something like
"blah blah start an unmanned space mission to find out blah blah blah... Replace this instance (y/n/cancel)?
Anyways, I think anyone who would like to make such automated changes would have to install and learn how to use PyWIkiBot (which I have done) and then I think you need some bot authorization for a bot account on English Wikipedia (which I have not done).
Cheers, -Travis
On 24 February 2015 at 19:09, JJ Marr jjmarr@gmail.com wrote: You should ask down at the village pump, then if the response is favorable, start a BRFA.
On Feb 24, 2015 10:04 PM, "Maia Weinstock" maiapw@gmail.com wrote: Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
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This is why a fully automated bot is unlikely to be successful. Until you see the changes that are actually going to occur, you don't know what terrible mistakes might be made due to the unforseen types of usage. Hence my suggestion is to use AWB, which enables you to eyeball every change and SKIP those that are inappropriate. You can also update your rules on the fly to reflect new patterns you hadn't foreseen but suspect will re-occur. I also note that AWB has a checkbox to eliminate changes marked-up content, such as references, image file names, URLs, etc (which would be appropriate in this case).
In my not-so-humble opinion, the effort in writing the perfect bot for a one-off task is almost always going to be far greater than the semi-automated AWB approach. Even for a not-one-off task, I would still say to do the first use case as AWB to figure out what patterns are likely to be needed in the bot for ongoing use.
Kerry
_____
From: gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel and Elizabeth Case Sent: Friday, 27 February 2015 1:41 AM To: Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase theparticipationof women within Wikimedia projects. Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Random musings about a bot
You also need to avoid making such a change in uRLs and quotations, or at
least quotations that were originally in >English.
And filenames, too, in image syntax (although of course we should probably rename the image files, too).
Daniel Case
you can also do a bot request here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_requests
On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 10:09 PM, JJ Marr jjmarr@gmail.com wrote:
You should ask down at the village pump, then if the response is favorable, start a BRFA. On Feb 24, 2015 10:04 PM, "Maia Weinstock" maiapw@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
The mechanics of doing this aren't such a big deal. AutoWikiBrowser is probably the best way to do it as you can eyeball each change before it happens just to make you that you haven't done something inappropriate (like the unmanned vehicle example). It's a little tedious (to eyeball each one) but not labour-intensive really (click SAVE or SKIP).
But I think first it needs to be agreed within that community that they want this change. Otherwise you might be regarded as being Bold With A Bulldozer if you use any automated or semi-automated tool.
Kerry
_____
From: gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Maia Weinstock Sent: Wednesday, 25 February 2015 1:04 PM To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Gendergap] Random musings about a bot
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
I just had a look.
The category Space exploration's complete closure is around 8000 articles. I ran a quick speed check with AutoWikiBrowser. It can skip an article that doesn't contain "manned" in about 1 second (no human action required) and it takes however long you take to make the decision to make the change on articles that do contain "manned" (one click on either SKIP or SAVE). On that basis, it can skip all the articles in about 2 hours 15 minutes (if no human action required). Human action requires a chance at the displayed diff and then click SKIP/SAVE. I generally have that sort of task running in a background window and just flick over and see how it's going from time to time. Takes longer in total elapsed time but less boring that way, and overall the job gets done in far less time than trying to get other people to write and run a bot, noting the care that has to be taken to foresee things like "unmanned vehicle" that should not be changed if operating a totally automated bot.
Kerry
_____
From: Kerry Raymond [mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 25 February 2015 2:46 PM To: 'Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase theparticipation of women within Wikimedia projects.' Subject: RE: [Gendergap] Random musings about a bot
The mechanics of doing this aren't such a big deal. AutoWikiBrowser is probably the best way to do it as you can eyeball each change before it happens just to make you that you haven't done something inappropriate (like the unmanned vehicle example). It's a little tedious (to eyeball each one) but not labour-intensive really (click SAVE or SKIP).
But I think first it needs to be agreed within that community that they want this change. Otherwise you might be regarded as being Bold With A Bulldozer if you use any automated or semi-automated tool.
Kerry
_____
From: gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Maia Weinstock Sent: Wednesday, 25 February 2015 1:04 PM To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Gendergap] Random musings about a bot
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Wikipedia's manual of style has a section devoted to gender-neutral language (MOS:GNL). I think it would be useful to add something about using "manned" to the related essay 'Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language'.
Given the knee-jerk reactions by some editors to anything they perceive as "PC" language, I would caution against optimism. In the past, similar efforts to remove outdated, gender-biased terminology have met with resistance. For example, proposals to change the practice of using feminine pronouns to refer to ships have been vigorously opposed. While the manual of style encourages gender-neutral language, I am often reverted when trying to change outdated terms like 'aviatrix' to 'aviator' (WP:FEMFORM).
~gobonobo
On 02/24/2015 09:04 PM, Maia Weinstock wrote:
Hi all,
There have been numerous discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word "manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased. Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather labor-intensive...
Someone recently created a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312) It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen, perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org To manage your subscription preferences, including unsubscribing, please visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap