Hoi,
An other problem with participation by proxy is that you are likely to
strengthen current bias. Wikimania 2018 has come and gone and we want more
and better information about subjects like Africa, There are many
approaches possible. Crucial is what it is we are to achieve.
* Do we want a better representation on "our" Wikipedia for the subject at
hand
* Do we want sufficient information for best practices like all the places
related from lowest to highest level of administrative and territorial
representation
* Do we want the information gap that has not even one percent of humans
coming from Africa to be filled
* Do we want our projects to be available for the people in Africa
* Do we want the projects in African language to thrive
The problem is that in order to make these things happen, truly happen, you
have to make it happen. By killing Wikipedia Zero for "obvious" reasons, we
will not have a second generation of students in Africa benefiting from
what we provided. It does not matter that we celebrate the first
generation, we failed them.
When we are to celebrate African academia, it is to be found in Africa, not
on American universities. The African American have sources, our sources to
their name, making them notable. When we are to accept African academia it
should be on their terms, their notability. When we want to see African
language Wikipedias thrive, we have to invest in their education, in
African education and not start at universities but at high schools, the
children of that first and second generation. When they write articles in
their language, never mind the subject of their class, there is room for
new articles. There is room for many students, classes, schools to make a
difference.
The mayors of Africa are as notable as "our" mayors. We need pictures in a
same manner like the Geograph project in the UK. But we have to leave it to
them what they write. Without them it is not for them.
The gender gap is important and yes, it exists at least in the same measure
in Africa. However, the #AfricaGap is at least as discriminatory and they
have to come from much father behind.
When the professionals are to take care of "our" interest and make a
difference, they might find it interesting that (probably) the first GLAM
project was to share material outside of our own comfort zone. Its major
impact was Indonesia, not the Netherlands. <grin> it might "inspire"
</grin>.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 23 July 2018 at 15:20, Paulo Santos Perneta <paulosperneta(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hello,
"*Given the extensive time commitment required for participation in the
WGs, I think that it's reasonable to expect that a significant percentage
of the members will be staff who are paid to participate because the time
commitment is probably too heavy for many volunteers *" (
2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
Pine W )
Isn't that a problem of "bias by design"? If the design of the groups
favors the participation of staffers, who are paid by the chapters to look
after their interests, isn't this an obvious conflict of interest? Why
would a staffer of Wikimedia Antarctida, whose relation to the Movement is
mainly defined by the salary (s)he gets at the end of the month, paid by
his/her chapter, be interested in participating in strategy discussions for
other reason than to advance the points and interests of Wikimedia
Antarctida? Even assuming those interests do not conflict with those of the
Wikimedia Movement (which is not granted), the expected input would still
be very limited in scope.
All the best,
Paulo
2018-07-23 0:04 GMT+01:00
Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>om>:
Speaking in general terms about diversity of the
WGs, this is a
challenging
topic even for people who have the best of
intentions. What do we mean by
"diversity" and "bias" in regards to the composition of the WGs?
That
discussion alone could be extensive and there might not be consensus on
the
definitions.
If the goal in general is maximum diversity on as many factors as
possible,
that is a difficult goal to achieve. Given the
extensive time commitment
required for participation in the WGs, I think that it's reasonable to
expect that a significant percentage of the members will be staff who are
paid to participate because the time commitment is probably too heavy for
many volunteers, and our existing volunteers already have plenty of
important activities to do.
There are other ways that this phase of the strategy development process
could be run that would be less burdensome for volunteers - and I
personally would advocate for such an approach - but the downsides that I
could foresee are that (1) the staff involved would likely also not be
sufficiently diverse for the aspirations of many of us, and (2) the
culture
and mindset of staff can be very different from
those of the volunteers,
so
there would almost inevitably be some loss in
terms of the richness of
the
conversations.
What I'm trying to do here is to encourage us to have realistic
expectations.
I lack the knowledge to comment on why particular individuals or groups
were or weren't included in the WGs and I hope that Nicole and Kaarel can
respond to the concerns that people raise here, perhaps in private
communications.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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