For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
(To my knowledge) no one has an answer to this question that is backed by rigorous research. This is one vital demographic question to ask, but just looking at the sparse (self-selected) Category at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians is not really evidence that we're "exclusively" white. We really need to study it more.
Also, point of quibbling as an American: not looking to argue about it, but Obama is generally thought of as African American, as it says in the second sentence of his en.wiki article. It might offend people if you try and say our President isn't black.
Steven
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
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Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans" and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people. The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants. So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.
I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.
This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that there are big differences between middle class Americans of African and European origins.
Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American Wikimedians.
The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in Iran or Russia.
Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.
I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group. I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community. But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we aren't.
Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is: Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech persons who are not able to adopt wiki syntax. Participation in OTT [2] requires similar level of tech knowledge, if not higher.
Also, I think that it is possible that we are one of the causes, not the consequence of that stratification. Not intentionally, of course, but that our culture is giving fuel to those trends.
I wouldn't say that not so user friendly interface is the main reason for that kind of stratification. I suppose that the picture would be much different if we would be able to know social and ethnic composition of those who edit once or a couple of times and then leave Wikimedia projects.
Maybe it is about "our" and "their".
There are four Wikipedias written in the same language system: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian. All four communities are generally welcoming newcomers from other political areas. The question is just about treating some of those projects as home project and integration in the particular community. (Political issues are the other question: you don't need to be a member of different ethnicity to have political conflicts.) However, it is a matter of feeling some project as the home one or not. If a person don't feel particular project as their home project, that project is usually out of their focus.
So, maybe African Americans generally don't feel English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in English as their own.
If my assumption is true, there should be wikis [out of Wikimedia] used by African Americans. Anything on Wikia? However, existence of such wikis alone doesn't confirm my assumption.
Maybe it is about the fact that we are not the top trend on Internet for a couple of years. While Wikipedia was able to attract people in 2005 and to build communities around itself, other places are doing that now: Facebook, WoW... The most important factor in community building is having similar people around you. Which similarity would become a dominant one is not so easy question.
Maybe the answer is exactly in the possibility to create a community. Not movement, but smaller community, where people know each other. It is quite easy to do that at some language edition of Wikipedia which has 10-20 millions speakers in the background. It is easy if it is about language with a lot of speakers, but they have not too small but not too large territory in which they are able to organize community (Spanish speaking countries, WM UK, AU, NYC).
I had to think a lot about situations similar to African Americans. It is about a (1) dispersed ethnic group which (2) shares common language, (3) which is dominantly used by another ethnic group. India could have similar issues in the future, however, poverty is much more important problem there now.
So, maybe we have lack of projects where people would be able to feel as a part of community. Maybe we need more community-related services.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Race_and_ethnicit... [2] http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation
There seems to be nothing on Wikia, Black wiki is "about Criterion's video game Black". Black Books wiki is about "BAEFTA award-wining sitcom, Black Books." Nothing about African-American.
You're on to a real problem, which by the way, as should be obvious, Americans don't know how to deal with or successfully ameliorate. As you can see from this thread, denial is the usual defensive response which serves to avoid the kind of detailed serious discussion you are proposing.
If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist "African-American" wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be based on language differences. However, I doubt that would be acceptable to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.
I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and in published books and journals is included.
And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories: African-American culture | African American literature | African American studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles and issues linked from it.
Fred Bauder
Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans" and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people. The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants. So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.
I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual.
This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that there are big differences between middle class Americans of African and European origins.
Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American Wikimedians.
The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in Iran or Russia.
Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit.
I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group. I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community. But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we aren't.
Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is: Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech persons who are not able to adopt wiki syntax. Participation in OTT [2] requires similar level of tech knowledge, if not higher.
Also, I think that it is possible that we are one of the causes, not the consequence of that stratification. Not intentionally, of course, but that our culture is giving fuel to those trends.
I wouldn't say that not so user friendly interface is the main reason for that kind of stratification. I suppose that the picture would be much different if we would be able to know social and ethnic composition of those who edit once or a couple of times and then leave Wikimedia projects.
Maybe it is about "our" and "their".
There are four Wikipedias written in the same language system: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian. All four communities are generally welcoming newcomers from other political areas. The question is just about treating some of those projects as home project and integration in the particular community. (Political issues are the other question: you don't need to be a member of different ethnicity to have political conflicts.) However, it is a matter of feeling some project as the home one or not. If a person don't feel particular project as their home project, that project is usually out of their focus.
So, maybe African Americans generally don't feel English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in English as their own.
If my assumption is true, there should be wikis [out of Wikimedia] used by African Americans. Anything on Wikia? However, existence of such wikis alone doesn't confirm my assumption.
Maybe it is about the fact that we are not the top trend on Internet for a couple of years. While Wikipedia was able to attract people in 2005 and to build communities around itself, other places are doing that now: Facebook, WoW... The most important factor in community building is having similar people around you. Which similarity would become a dominant one is not so easy question.
Maybe the answer is exactly in the possibility to create a community. Not movement, but smaller community, where people know each other. It is quite easy to do that at some language edition of Wikipedia which has 10-20 millions speakers in the background. It is easy if it is about language with a lot of speakers, but they have not too small but not too large territory in which they are able to organize community (Spanish speaking countries, WM UK, AU, NYC).
I had to think a lot about situations similar to African Americans. It is about a (1) dispersed ethnic group which (2) shares common language, (3) which is dominantly used by another ethnic group. India could have similar issues in the future, however, poverty is much more important problem there now.
So, maybe we have lack of projects where people would be able to feel as a part of community. Maybe we need more community-related services.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Race_and_ethnicit... [2] http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation
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On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 15:47, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist "African-American" wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be based on language differences. However, I doubt that would be acceptable to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.
Language differences exist and they are consistent among the African American population. The origin of differences are creole language(s), probably of Portuguese origin (with West African substrate, of course), used in Caribbean. However, this is probably not enough for a separate ISO 639-3 code, while the differences toward Standard English are probably bigger than differences between Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.
I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and in published books and journals is included.
And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories: African-American culture | African American literature | African American studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles and issues linked from it.
I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.
I think this is part of a general dilemma about the so-called new technologies. On a very broad approximation, Internet (and Wikipedia) has from its beginnings been created and dominated by white, male, relatively young and tech-savvy people, and these demographics have tended to shape it to their own values and style. The rest of the world (which represents a large majority of the population), participates less in Internet/Wikipedia. I think both "these groups are less interested in Wikipedia" and "these groups find a more hostile environment" explain why these demographics are so underrepresented. Compared with the rest of Internet, I guess Wikipedia has been successful in attracting not-so-young people (people involved in teaching in particular), I'm not sure about other demographics. Cruccone
Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American Wikimedians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is active in wp
female:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Merewyn/Userboxes/Wo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Disavia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Hmwith/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Rhanyeia/User_female
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:UBX/fem...
but... not everyone want to use these templates
przykuta
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta przykuta@o2.pl wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is active in wp
After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However, those numbers mean nothing:
* 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1]; population 300M+, English is native * 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is native * 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native * 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native * 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native * 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native * 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native * 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native. * 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is native * 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native * 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native
I tried to make put some other factors, but nothing has sense. There is no consistency in the way on which Wikipedians are identifying themselves ethnically, nationally or locally. It depends on particular culture. (I used population of particular territories, not ethnic population, but it won't change proportions significantly if ethnic populations would be used.)
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 19:17, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is: Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
Yes: click the link I sent.
African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide; women make up 22.7%.
The numbers are according to the tech workforce, not according to the population. African Americans stay better than women, actually: 7.1% is 59% of 12% and 22.7% is 45% of 50%.
Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13]. With some theories why is it so [14].
The most worrying theory is: "The median age for black Americans (according to the 2000 census) is 30 years old, a full seven years younger than for white Americans. Black people therefore make up a relatively higher percentage of the population within the most relevant age groups -- Twitter is most popular amongst 25-34 year-olds."
It says, as it is confirmed at least in East and South-East Asia, that we have a big problem, which would be just bigger as time is passing.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_Wikipedians [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Polish_Wikipedians [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Serbian_Wikipedians [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_Wikipedians [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_Germany [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_California [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_from_California [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_A... [10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Wikipedians [11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_Wikipedians [12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_Wikipedians [13] http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-whos-using-... [14] http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-study-results-2010-4
On 18 November 2010 13:44, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 17:31, Przykuta przykuta@o2.pl wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians
146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is
active in wp
After looking into the number of American, Polish and Serbian Wikipedians, I thought that the numbers are interesting. However, those numbers mean nothing:
- 3,561 are categorizing themselves as American Wikipedians [1];
population 300M+, English is native
- 1,779 as Wikipedians in California [7][8]; population: 36M, English is
native
- 1,450 as Australian Wikipedians[4]; population 22M, English is native
- 921 as British Wikipedians [10]; population 62M, English is native
- 689 as French Wikipedians [12]; population 65M, English is not native
- 616 as English Wikipedians [11]; population 51M, English is native
- 561 as Polish Wikipedians [3]; population 38M, English is not native
- 146 as African American Wikipedians; population 38M, English is native.
- 101 as Wikipedians in San Francisco [9]; population 3/4M, English is
native
- 68 as German Wikipedians [5][6]; population 81M, English is not native
- 24 as Serbian Wikipedians [2]; population 7M, English is not native
<snip>
Actually, none of these "statistics" are relevant, because the overwhelming majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality, age, sex, or race.
While I'm sure that Wikipedia's editorship is not particularly reflective of the world at large, using userboxes as a metric to determine representation of various groups is not particularly helpful. Many very involved users don't include userboxes in their userspace (myself included), or don't use the userboxes that involve sex, race, age or nationality. It strikes me that I see probably 50 language-skill-related userboxes for every userbox that confirms geographic location or sex.
Risker/Anne
Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself.
User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online:
---o0o---
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v_96mBI74-MJ:ocs.sfu.ca...
Paper 2: Working for Free: Motivations Behind Black Contributions to the Wikipedia Project
The dirty little secret of the Internet is that it’s built upon free labor. Internet labor exists in a unique dualism in that the production and reproduction of web and social networking sites as well as the design of some computer games and software are manifest as entertainment, leisure or hobbyist escapism - but not as labor. Greg Downey (2001) argues that this type of “flexible labor is hard to see” noting that “the commodification of the virtual serves to mystify the material.” Few entities in the new digital economy have capitalized upon this form of labour extraction better than the Wikipedia Project, the world’s first peer-produced online encyclopedia. However, Wikipedia’s sole reliance on unpaid laborers means that it reflects the interests and biases of these contributors who are overwhelmingly homogeneous. This study is a descriptive investigation into the factors that influence African American contributions to the Wikipedia project. Situated within Tiziana Terranova’s (2001) social-factory theory this research seeks to understand the role of racial/ethnic identification as a motivator, Wikipedia as a space for the extension of black volunteerism, and the topics most frequently edited by this community of Wikipedians.
The findings suggest that while these Wikipedians contribute as a form of entertainment and support for the democratization of information they are also motivated by their racial/ethnic identity, highly cognizant of their minority status and tended to view their edits (labor) as a transgressive act that is ultimately beneficial to the black community. This research argues the social-factory forms the foundation of not only Wikipedia but also a multitude of online peer-produced communities such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. What is most significant about these communities is that their end product, the cultural knowledge of the masses, is freely given and results in enormous revenue for their parent companies. This investigation contributes to diverse literature including media and library & information studies as well as cyber and community activism.
---o0o---
I'll let that stand there without comment; there are obviously several ways one can look at that.
I know of at least one African American admin on en:WP, but only a handful of other black Wikipedians. A while ago I took part in discussions at [[Ancient Egyptian race controversy]]; my impression was that black editors there were given quite a hard time -- resistance to including works by black scholars, because they were deemed unreliable, etc., the standard POV stuff. I tried to help out for a while, but then got sidetracked.
The influx of Indian editors will be an interesting challenge. I firmly expect that at some point over the next 10 or 20 years, Indian editors will have something like numerical parity with Western editors. At the moment, being in a minority, they have trouble getting their points across.
Look at [[British Empire]] for example, which paints a fairly rosy picture of colonialism which would be considered ridiculously POV in India, or at [[Famine in India]], an article written with a more Indian POV, where some of the same opponents are battling it out. What's NPOV depends on whether you allow Indian sources or stick to Western sources.
On top of it, an en:WP bureaucrat recently blocked an Indian editor in good standing without prior warning and without talk page notice, for 2 weeks, for "trolling and pov pushing at British Empire and talk" (currently at AN/I). Same crat also commented to another admin on their talk page,
---o0o---
How the WMF sees India as the new goldmine and is making a big din there with speaking tours and likes. More like a goldmine of copyvio, ethnic and religious fundamentalist POV. There will be a flood of dudes like {{User|X}} if their initiative works, which'll be funny. As you can see on the mailing list, which is public, all these leaders are queueing, IPL- style feeding frenzy. X is after me, lol
---o0o---
The other day, the same crat appeared to call another Indian editor a "retarded nationalist" in an edit summary, never showed up for the resulting AN/I thread, and escaped without any sanction whatsoever.
A few mostly Indian editors have recently argued that the article [[Ganges]] should be renamed [[Ganga]], as that is now the river's official name in India. Now, to be sure, this is not a clearcut case, as Ganges can still be found in a few Indian sources, and the name Ganga is only making slow inroads in Western news reporting -- it does occur a few times, but not that often yet. But one brilliant, tell-tale comment in the discussion was, "When Britain and the USA start using Ganga predominently instead of Ganges, then the article could be changed."
Now, this is India's holy river, and we always go on about how we want to educate kids in poorer countries. But we are telling kids in India that they can't read about their national river in an article that bears the name that is the river's official name in their country. Comments like that, "When Britain and the USA start using Ganga predominently instead of Ganges", are just arrogant and unfortunate, and an extension of the colonial mindset. If the US changed the spelling of Mississippi, I bet that Wikipedia would follow suit the same day, regardless of whether the media in India had caught up with that change or not.
So I think one reason why we don't see more diversity is that the established, predominantly white user base is giving editors from other backgrounds a pretty hard time!
Cheers, Andreas
If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would probably be Henry Louis Gates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates
He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar. More saliently, he is noted as the author of
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine
There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's not like black people don't read it.
Andreas
If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would probably be Henry Louis Gates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates
He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar. More saliently, he is noted as the author of
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience
He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine
There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's not like black people don't read it.
Andreas
The Root is open to broad public participation. And has an active comment section attached to their articles, a good opportunity to add your comment and relate the topic to the Wikipedia article on the subject, see for example:
http://www.theroot.com/views/four-loko-hysteria-smack-classism
Fred Bauder
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:13 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer:
<snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider).
These generalizations would still apply had we been talking about the Na'vi People. :)
What we are discussing is more of a social issue than an inherent systemic bias in the guiding philosophy of the project or the software. The barriers to becoming a long-term Wikipedia contributor are very low for a developed country like the United States viz. education, electricity, computer and an internet connection.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:35 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
Apart from the evidence Phoebe put up,* it could be that African-Americans do not formally register themselves for volunteering programmes. However, they probably have more pressing needs and priorities than contributing to Wikimedia projects.
*http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/assets/resources/FactSheetFinal.pdf
The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.
I am quite convinced, that is what I have personally witnessed over the last few years.
The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering.
Absolutely, a large number of African-Americans are very poor and semi-literate; they make up 14% of the US population and receive 37% of its welfare payments. This has got nothing to do with race, first and second generation immigrants from Asia and even black immigrants from countries like Jamaica are relatively better off than African-American families that have been citizens for generations and feeding off welfare without any change in their social circumstances.
The culprit is welfarism, not "black culture" (as some other commentators refer to). Cultures are often a symptom of the political systems they exist in.
All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises.
Agreed. :)
On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:14 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13].
Contributing to our projects requires more than a computer and lulz. Wikipedia is serious business. :)
What I mean to say is that we will tend to attract serious contributors compared to any social networking website that is chiefly used for entertainment.
anirudh
jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
So I think one reason why we don't see more diversity is that the established, predominantly white user base is giving editors from other backgrounds a pretty hard time!
You could also add in the photo of the bare chested African adolescent that was proposed as a suitable image for the 'Primate' article.
The above aside the problem with a NPOV is that it is really the dominate POV. That maybe OK when talking about a flat earth, but people from other parts of the world can have a fundamentally different POV on may subjects than that found amongst a predominately young white middle class western males. Not least of which will be the concept of 'free culture' perverted by Libertarians. These societies have practised 'free culture' of 100s of years and been exploited by the commercialism of that culture by western elites for the last 150 years.
On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself. User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online:
Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding it everywhere.
- d.
On 22 November 2010 05:00, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself. User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online:
Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding it everywhere.
You're right, David. It's a fabulous, informative post that raises important issues. Thanks, Andreas. Sue
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:47, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans" and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people. The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants. So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.
As it is pointed to me privately, I have one corrections and one clarifications: * First, my impression wasn't that Obama was raised inside of the African American culture (first meaning). However, it is pointed to me that he was; which means that I was wrong in relation to his cultural background. * Second, it is obviously not clear that inside of the construction "which ancestors came there as slaves" I was referring to the culture developed by slaves and their descendants , not to the genes.
On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is: Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less African Americans with tech jobs than American women?
Yes: click the link I sent.
African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide; women make up 22.7%.
Thanks, Sue
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
I ask myself the same question whenever I go to teach the incoming classes of computer science students here at my university. Although this is California, and we are close to having no ethnic majority in the state as a whole,* the university population doesn't neatly mirror state demographics;** and the CS classes, anecdotally speaking, mirror it much less so. (It would be easy to claim that this is true nationwide, though the data*** doesn't actually back that up). And anyway, we know that formal education is a poor proxy for being a Wikipedian, or even for computer culture as a whole. You could probably just as helpfully look at the demographics of Silicon Valley,**** or any other big tech center in the U.S., and wonder why it was skewed white.
I've only personally met a couple of black Americans in my time going around the U.S. meeting Wikipedians, which again is totally anecdotal, but considering that I've met a few hundred American Wikipedians in total would seem to argue for a low rate of participation. But then again, the people I've met at Wikimania and elsewhere are highly self-selected, and don't necessarily match our actual editor base with any certainty (I think about the black editor I met once at a small meetup who had never been to any sort of meetup before, or as far as I know since). I think the truth is that we just don't know, the same way that we just don't know exactly how many women participate or why.
We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****
-- phoebe
p.s. race in America, as you can gather from reading the Wikipedia article below, is far from a dichotomy: I'd frame this question rather as what's our overall diversity, in terms of ethnicity and class and gender, with an eye to how we succeed or fail at being welcoming and representative; and how we address topical systemic bias overall.
* http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po40.htm ** http://statfinder.ucop.edu/library/tables/table_106.aspx *** http://elliottback.com/wp/black-diversity-in-it-and-computer-science/, data from here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07308/pdf/tab13.pdf; compare to national demographics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_... **** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California#Demographics ***** Things like university outreach programs do exactly this.
Well why only African American Wikimedians, I think the issue might be the same with other Racial Minorities in the US. How about Hispanic American or Asian American Wikimedians. Apart from social issues inherent to minorities, I think there might be something worth looking into, I doubt there would be any data available to look into it yet.
I seem to recall, there was also the issue of Gender bias among Wikimedians that was brought up earlier this year.
Regards
Theo
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively
white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
I ask myself the same question whenever I go to teach the incoming classes of computer science students here at my university. Although this is California, and we are close to having no ethnic majority in the state as a whole,* the university population doesn't neatly mirror state demographics;** and the CS classes, anecdotally speaking, mirror it much less so. (It would be easy to claim that this is true nationwide, though the data*** doesn't actually back that up). And anyway, we know that formal education is a poor proxy for being a Wikipedian, or even for computer culture as a whole. You could probably just as helpfully look at the demographics of Silicon Valley,**** or any other big tech center in the U.S., and wonder why it was skewed white.
I've only personally met a couple of black Americans in my time going around the U.S. meeting Wikipedians, which again is totally anecdotal, but considering that I've met a few hundred American Wikipedians in total would seem to argue for a low rate of participation. But then again, the people I've met at Wikimania and elsewhere are highly self-selected, and don't necessarily match our actual editor base with any certainty (I think about the black editor I met once at a small meetup who had never been to any sort of meetup before, or as far as I know since). I think the truth is that we just don't know, the same way that we just don't know exactly how many women participate or why.
We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****
-- phoebe
p.s. race in America, as you can gather from reading the Wikipedia article below, is far from a dichotomy: I'd frame this question rather as what's our overall diversity, in terms of ethnicity and class and gender, with an eye to how we succeed or fail at being welcoming and representative; and how we address topical systemic bias overall.
** http://statfinder.ucop.edu/library/tables/table_106.aspx *** http://elliottback.com/wp/black-diversity-in-it-and-computer-science/, data from here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07308/pdf/tab13.pdf; compare to national demographics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California#Demographics ***** Things like university outreach programs do exactly this.
--
- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)
I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.
Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically different from the people we happen to meet.
I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is still relatively non-user-friendly.
And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over time. In fact, this research http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon Valley) tech, not gaining it.
I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.
We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****
I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population "women" or "African-Americans" or "Latino-Americans." We are likelier to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology, a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth.
My two cents, written fast :-) Sue
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)
I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.
Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically different from the people we happen to meet.
I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is still relatively non-user-friendly.
And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over time. In fact, this research http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon Valley) tech, not gaining it.
I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.
Have there been any studies on this issue within the open source community? Their community would be even more skewed towards tech, and their movement is a few steps ahead of us.
-- John Vandenberg
Thanks, Sue.
Obligatory current event tie-in -
Could we get a more multi-ethnic "I am a Wikipedian" campaign going for the fundraising drive?
As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million clones of him. Seeing more of the variety would certainly help attract attention, I think.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)
I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.
Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically different from the people we happen to meet.
I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is still relatively non-user-friendly.
And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over time. In fact, this research http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon Valley) tech, not gaining it.
I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.
We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****
I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population "women" or "African-Americans" or "Latino-Americans." We are likelier to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology, a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth.
My two cents, written fast :-) Sue
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well. So we're putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me. So I'm very happy about that.
pb
_______________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
pbeaudette@wikimedia.org
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
On Nov 17, 2010, at 3:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:
Thanks, Sue.
Obligatory current event tie-in -
Could we get a more multi-ethnic "I am a Wikipedian" campaign going for the fundraising drive?
As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million clones of him. Seeing more of the variety would certainly help attract attention, I think.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-)
I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable.
Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically different from the people we happen to meet.
I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is still relatively non-user-friendly.
And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over time. In fact, this research http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon Valley) tech, not gaining it.
I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information.
We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****
I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population "women" or "African-Americans" or "Latino-Americans." We are likelier to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology, a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth.
My two cents, written fast :-) Sue
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Ah, bueno. I was unaware of the Kartika version; excellent that the Foundation's already figured it out and was working on it.
Thanks, Philippe and MzMcBride. Good job to whoever thought it up earlier and did the test run.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well. So we're putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me. So I'm very happy about that.
On 17 November 2010 15:39, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, bueno. I was unaware of the Kartika version; excellent that the Foundation's already figured it out and was working on it.
Thanks, Philippe and MzMcBride. Good job to whoever thought it up earlier and did the test run.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Philippe Beaudette pbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well. So we're putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me. So I'm very happy about that.
Yep, it's good.
Side note, but one of the things I really liked about the Truth In Numbers documentary was the face it gave to the Wikimedia movement. It was really lovely to see dozens (hundreds?) of people from around the world -- multiple ethnicities, accents, locations. I don't know how representative those people actually were/are of the general editor population, but seeing them was inspiring nonetheless.
Thanks, Sue
George Herbert wrote:
Obligatory current event tie-in -
Could we get a more multi-ethnic "I am a Wikipedian" campaign going for the fundraising drive?
As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million clones of him. Seeing more of the variety would certainly help attract attention, I think.
There should be some appeals from editors very shortly. I can't guarantee that this link will work forever, but you can see a prototype banner here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&... late=2010_Editor_Banner1_US
MZMcBride
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.
The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering.
Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.
African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.
All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises.
Fred Bauder
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.
The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering.
Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.
African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.
All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises.
Fred Bauder
...Wow. Maybe you can follow Phoebe's example and cite some evidence?
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.
The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering.
Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia.
African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs.
All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises.
Fred Bauder
...Wow. Maybe you can follow Phoebe's example and cite some evidence?
A reaction like this is expected to any honest straightforward observation that is not politically correct. I lived in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver for yeara. I like Black people, but there are issues.
Fred Bauder
Hello,
In fact, I cannot remember that I have ever met in Germany or the Netherlands a Turkish or Moroccan Wikimedian. Maybe there was one, but he spoke good German and presented himself as User:Encylco-dude81 so that I did not notice the "migration background". :-)
According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from Wikipedia in German.
Kind regards Ziko
Hello,
In fact, I cannot remember that I have ever met in Germany or the Netherlands a Turkish or Moroccan Wikimedian. Maybe there was one, but he spoke good German and presented himself as User:Encylco-dude81 so that I did not notice the "migration background". :-)
According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from Wikipedia in German.
Kind regards Ziko
-- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/
My impression is that the Turks in Germany are mostly manual workers. Not that they are stupid or anything; its more a matter how how they see themselves. Blacks in America, if in a perverse, self-defeating mode regard intellectual endeavors such as reading as "White".
Fred Bauder
2010/11/17 Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from Wikipedia in German.{{citation needed}}
I guess Turkish children, second or third generation of Turkish emigrants simply do not read anything in Turkish, and even speak very little Turkish{{citation needed}}
Oh dear.... Why, we wikipedians are so vulnerable to social and ethnical stereotypes?
My daughter use to copy-paste from Polish Wikipedia her homework and does not read any other encyclopedia. Does it mean she belongs to a "social class that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia" ? Maybe...
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer:
<snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider).
-- phoebe
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:43 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer:
<snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider).
-- phoebe
I haven't seen the numbers lately but in the past it was true that the majority of Wikipedia's traffic came from Google. If that is still true it seems likely that Google's demographics mirror what we are seeing here. The implication is that what we are seeing here is indicative of the demographics of internet use in general, which does seem to indicate that these folks just aren't on the internet in the first place. There are of course other explanations, such as, they simply choose not to edit. But I believe if you check the demographic statistics from Hitwise and elsewhere there will be a strong correlation with this overall trend. Basically, these people are underprivileged in our society and it reflects in our demographics.
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Brian J Mingus brian.mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
I haven't seen the numbers lately but in the past it was true that the majority of Wikipedia's traffic came from Google. If that is still true it seems likely that Google's demographics mirror what we are seeing here. The implication is that what we are seeing here is indicative of the demographics of internet use in general, which does seem to indicate that these folks just aren't on the internet in the first place. There are of course other explanations, such as, they simply choose not to edit. But I believe if you check the demographic statistics from Hitwise and elsewhere there will be a strong correlation with this overall trend. Basically, these people are underprivileged in our society and it reflects in our demographics.
Commenting since I just looked at some of these papers...
There have been a bunch of studies on broadband adoption in the US; there was one published just this month. According to it, 49% of black households in the US have broadband at home; 68% of white households do. Adoption is correlated with income and education, but even controlling for that a greater proportion of white households use the internet at home. http://www.esa.doc.gov/DN/ (4.2 MB .pdf)
And a study on minority internet use specifically: http://www.jointcenter.org/publications1/publication-PDFs/MTI_BROADBAND_REPO... (844 KB .pdf)
Many who don't have broadband internet at home use it at public libraries or community centers, but time on computers there tends to be limited because there is more demand for computers than availability.
But it's not *that* large a gap in access compared to how underrepresented blacks are in the active Wikimedia community; I expect it's more social factors than anything else.
Compare us to Twitter--there is a huge and highly visible black community there; 26% of black internet users in the US use Twitter (and 19% of white internet users), and also interesting to me is that 20-22% of US internet users Twitter across all income levels: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/17-Twitter-and-Status-Updating-Fall-...
-Kat
ve to get more contributors.
The short answer:
<snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider).
-- phoebe
I doubt many white people of any nationality from an impoverished background edit either. Poor education, restricted interests, etc.
Fred Bauder
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
Regarding this claim in particular: incidentally, I was just at the Boardsource conference last week, which is an annual conference for board members and CEOs of non-profit organizations; it happened to be in San Francisco this year. There were maybe 600+ people there from organizations all over the country. Just from looking at the crowd, at least 10% -- probably more -- of the people there were African-American; these are all people who are leaders in their respective organizations, which ranged all over the place but seemed to be lots of health & human service organizations: child abuse prevention, food banks, YMCA, etc; as well as many other types of non-profits.
And according to the U.S. volunteer agency stats on the subject, rates of African-American volunteerism are on the rise: http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/assets/resources/FactSheetFinal.pdf These rates lag behind the national average, but not by a huge amount.
-- phoebe
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors.
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
Wow, I don't even know what to say to that, Fred. Actually, I do. As a white American who has lived in the American south his entire life, the area with the most racial tension as a whole (you can localize communities in cities like LA or Detroit), that is entirely untrue. Statistics might be found that show that African Americans are less likely to be identified as volunteers in survey, but African Americans most certainly are even more community oriented than white folk.
I can think of five Wikimedians off the top of my head that are African Americans. I can think of almost ten Hispanic Americans. I can think of a Moroccan (@Nathan) because we have one on the English Wikipedia's Arbitration committee with FayssalF.
I don't pay much attention to age, gender, or sexual orientation on Wikipedia or other projects, because it doesn't matter. What we reveal about ourselves is our choice, and if you seek out personal information that is your choice. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
Oh, and as an afterthought, compare our articles on hip-hop[1] on the English Wikipedia to our coverage of country music[2].
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanci_Griffith
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living
in
a European country without African population, so everything seemed
to
me quite normal for a long time.
I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries
are
African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is
exclusively
white?
Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should
we
solve to get more contributors.
The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.
Wow, I don't even know what to say to that, Fred. Actually, I do. As a white American who has lived in the American south his entire life, the area with the most racial tension as a whole (you can localize communities in cities like LA or Detroit), that is entirely untrue. Statistics might be found that show that African Americans are less likely to be identified as volunteers in survey, but African Americans most certainly are even more community oriented than white folk.
I can think of five Wikimedians off the top of my head that are African Americans. I can think of almost ten Hispanic Americans. I can think of a Moroccan (@Nathan) because we have one on the English Wikipedia's Arbitration committee with FayssalF.
I don't pay much attention to age, gender, or sexual orientation on Wikipedia or other projects, because it doesn't matter. What we reveal about ourselves is our choice, and if you seek out personal information that is your choice. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
-- ~Keegan
I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when it does emerge.
Fred Bauder
I would not wish that world upon anyone, Fred. African Americans are underrepresented for the same reason that Native Americans and about 300 ethnic groups are: lack of internet access and, with access emerging, learning how to engage in the internet. It's not because any specific group does not have a desire to volunteer, as you asserted, it's because our (not black, white, North American, South American, African, Asian, Australian, European or sitting in a small hut at a weather station in Antarctica) ones and zeros are finally reaching populations. You cannot expect any group to embrace things like Wikimedia all at once, nor can we assume we're all white guys. There is no hope for focus our outreach if we begin with that approach, whether it is merited or not. To promote free knowledge, we must assume that everyone is just someone and the bridge is built from there.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.netwrote:
I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when it does emerge.
Fred Bauder
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
It's very desirable that people in different ethnic groups are on an equal footing and can engage and edit. It's also very desirable that if systemic issues prevent swathes of the national or global population doing so (issues can affect specific groups, locales, social categories, genders, ages, etc), then we try to identify and address those issues. But I would not go further and politicizing the issue or consider it a political one.
In other words if we examined barriers to entry and found som ebarrier would allow 15 million poor people, or 18 million african-american people, or 17 million single housewifes to be more able to edit, then those barriers are worth addressing and we would aim to do so positively..... but that's not the same as treating people not in those groups less positively.
Everyone matters as an individual, and that's so even if we aim as a foundation to maximize our efforts by removing barriers that research suggests may have wider impact or affect larger groups and sectors of the population.
FT2
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.comwrote:
I would not wish that world upon anyone, Fred. African Americans are underrepresented for the same reason that Native Americans and about 300 ethnic groups are: lack of internet access and, with access emerging, learning how to engage in the internet. It's not because any specific group does not have a desire to volunteer, as you asserted, it's because our (not black, white, North American, South American, African, Asian, Australian, European or sitting in a small hut at a weather station in Antarctica) ones and zeros are finally reaching populations. You cannot expect any group to embrace things like Wikimedia all at once, nor can we assume we're all white guys. There is no hope for focus our outreach if we begin with that approach, whether it is merited or not. To promote free knowledge, we must assume that everyone is just someone and the bridge is built from there.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net
wrote:
I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when it does emerge.
Fred Bauder
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- ~Keegan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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